Ritual

Come on in, and enjoy the fog. It stuck around from last night and this morning. I love the glow the fog takes on from different light sources. It feels close and comforting. The air seems to sit heavier on everything and the sounds become muted and somehow seem to travel in strange ways. It also makes me thoughtful.

So for those that don't know I work in a hardware store that supplies a little bit of everything and raw iron and steel. And we get the occasional strange request. Such as the jittery woman looking for 'razor blades and surgical tubing' and the numerous folks making beer bongs, the folks altering other types of bongs, and of course stills. The most recent made my brain pop out a bit.

I got some folks into body modification who were asking for rope, stainless steel rod, hooks, and flat bar. When those items didn't click in my brain I asked 'For?' and they said 'Oh uhm ... we're doing a suspension...' expecting me to go 'Ew' instead I said 'Cool, describe how you're setting it up and I'll see what I've got that will work for you.'

The funny part was they were going to do things that sounded awfully similar to the Sun (Thirst) Dance. I asked 'Is there a convention or gathering or something going on that you're doing this for?' and the girl with the corset like pierced back said 'No, well we're doing it with a group of about 20 or so, and we're pitching in for supplies but we're doing it because we want to experience the high.'

I started thinking about it, because there is this part of me that sometimes questions the co-opting of First Nations rituals but the more I thought about it, the more I realized they were using the ritual exactly as it was meant to be. They hoped to engender a closer bond within their community through a shared experience that was spiritual in nature. They may have secularized it with the phrase 'getting high' but even those experiences I've had of getting high with friends creates a bond amongst those doing it.

It fascinated me because here is one group that is subjugated by the dominant culture, and another sub-culture sees a ritual they use for community building and they imitate it. Sure it's placed into a different context so that culture can own it but the ritual is essentially the same.

It amazed me because both cultures are expressing their needs for the exact same thing, community in the face of a dominant culture that is oppressing them, in the exact same way.