Transmutation in the South

Chicago is the North you know to think of when living in the South, especially the Deep South. You kind of know of New England, but not really. Not enough to consider it. Just like you wouldn’t the Pacific Northwest. Maybe it’s because we follow the rivers, but North is Chicago, Baltimore, NYC.

I spent years in Alabama within my own solitude, at the base of commercialized Appalachia, on Muskogee land, once plantation. I sat in the energies lingering in the earth, now paved with roads, littered with commercial buildings and heavy traffic. I sat, listening to the stories all these activities have silenced. Made easy to ignore for some.

I felt the sadness, betrayal, and longing of the people removed from the land’s natural intentions. I felt their fears, the spells they cast with tears and blood. I felt the animals displaced, looking for a way to persist, to coexist, while every decision worked against them through ignorance and fear. I watched the invasive species grow to be celebrated purposefully, while native species were lost and forgotten in time.

I felt the haunting remnants of Appalachia mystics. The owls in the trees would bring you to your knees. I felt the energy signatures left by each, and I craved escape to Louisiana, to the land that felt like the comfort of a mother. Not because she didn’t know pain, but because she experienced it so wholly she transmuted it to beauty, where it could coexist.

And it’s there, on that land, that my soul is free to dance with its ancestors. To dance again. To transmute, as they had.