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In honour of recently performing my spoken word piece âThere Is No Worldâ (video forthcoming) on stage for the first time since Fairy Creek, I want to share a reading of my photo essay âI Feel The Energy of Places.â
You can find that essay here and for more context on Fairy Creek you can also read my piece for Rabble, âThe human cost of defending forests at Adaâitsx Fairy Creek.â
Please jump ahead to the 2minute mark of video if youâre not interested in preamble and just want to hear the essay. It is about many things including living as a nomad, the imbalance of care in a relationship, and, of course, the utterly maddening heartbreak of attempting to save the trees.
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When I ran for political office in 2020, on the day of the election, a user on X (then known as Twitter) messaged me to say that he wanted to vote for me but couldnât bring himself to do it because of the fanciful sentiment in my bio.
âWords ARE Spellsâ it said.
Because they are.
But the Twitter user disagreed. He explained that this sort of thinking wasnât suited for governmental service, that it didnât make sense and that I was out to lunch.
While his hunch that I am not suited for government is probably correct, his certainty that âWords ARE Spellsâ is unreasonable and even ludicrous statement reflects back to us just how clueless most people are to the power of beliefs, actions, thoughts, and, yes, words.
spell
/spel/
1. write or name the letters that form (a word) in correct sequence
2. an ability to control or influence people as though one had magical power over them
Nowhere is the power of words more obvious than in politics. Policies and laws begin as words on paper. What more to you want from me, Twitter man? People in power make up rules and we have to abide by them. Because words. The deed to a house. A rental contract. Marriage licenses. Non-disclosure agreements.
Words bind us, they shape and guide our behaviour. Most of what we have is words.
We could get into the science, metaphysics, or occult of it all, looking at proof for the power of words and how they create of reality, but do we need to? You know this truth just as well as I do.
You know it every time you say the wrong thing and have to live with the regret, the consequences. You know every time you go for the joke and land it, when you get a laugh or the smile out of them. You know it when you say âI love youâ and âI canâtâ and âPlease?â
Words arenât just spells. Words are spells that alter timelines.
In the infinite multiverse words are our steering wheel, our rudder.
While sometimes the wind and the waves may be strong, altering our course despite how we steer, most of the time we have the ability to choose in which direction we go.
âChoose your words wisely.
The fate of the multiverse may depend on it.â
A few months before I ran for office in 2020, I wrote and captured the âWords ARE Spellsâ monologue for a local film competition. Using dating as a way to ask questions about the world (as I have been want to do), I attempted to convey what I see as an underlying truth: that beneath all the storiesâbeneath all the wordsâitâs our feelings that really run the show.
Which is something I think we need to talk about today with a sense of urgency: how our feelings guide our words and how our words shape our feelings and how this dance between the two creates the world.
I want to talk more about this but Iâve hesitated to share this monologue because, as I was making it, some of my feelings got in the way of my words. It was early pandemic and though I was swiping through dating apps, I felt ashamed for wanting to meet up with someone in person. So I lied. âNot that I wanted to meet up in person anyway.â
While the idea and the intention behind the monologue remain, I donât like putting words into the world unless theyâre just right. (Which is why I experience anxiety after nearly every newsletter I send. What once seemed iron clad becomes riddled with holes in the light of your witnessing. Did I really think that was the truth? Silly girl.)
The pandemic was a weird clusterfuck of a time so I donât fault myself too harshly for not knowing how to navigate it. But my lack of precision concerns me. If I got it wrong then, what am I getting wrong now?
I still have the same problems I spoke to in the video. I still donât really know how to navigate my own needs against the needs of others. I still tell myself to stay off dating apps (Kelly, youâre such a mess. What are you trying to seek connection? You need to focus on bettering yourself first). I still struggle with my need for validation. I am still trying (and failing) to achieve equilibrium. I am still convinced that an overuse of emojis will shoot even the most exciting romantic connection dead in the water.
And I still believe in the power of words.
When you understand the power of words, it can overwhelm.
When experience your words come to life, it can terrify.
When you see the subtleties of the multiverse, how shifty timelines are, it can imbue a sense of responsibility greater than you know how to hold.
Each one of us is the captain of our own ship, navigating the winds and waves, steering ourselves towards an ever-approaching horizon. If you find yourself off course, see if the power of words to bring you back.
Remember that even the smallest course correct will, over time, drastically alter your path. Go gently. If you are anything like me, using words to beat yourself up for not being âgoodâ enough, start with releasing those words.
Even in a society that uses words to keep us in line, to keep us docile and prostrated to a economic system bent on death and destruction, the hardest spells to break are the ones we cast over ourselves.
Ultimately your wordsâthe stories you tell yourself and othersâare in your capacity to control. Choose them wisely.
The fate of the multiverse might depend on it.
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I woke up this morning to the sound of rain, and it felt like my desire.
I was equal parts happy and sad.
Sad at firstâ
Frustrated.
Am I not yet empty?
How do I still conjure so many feelings?
How can one body feel so much?
And then I woke from my half-sleep and remembered the drought.
I remembered the sad snow pack and the bare mountainsâ
And I gave gratitude for the rain.
I remembered that bodies are meant to feel.
That we are meant to yearn, and drip with desire.
That there is nothing sad about the wet, wet rain.
So I offered myself a re-frame: your tears, the water from your eyes,
They keep your body fertile.
Just like the water from the skies keeps the earth blossoming, growing anew.
But if our desire leads us to disappointment, what to we do?
We anger.
We shame.
We blame.
Ourselves most of all.
It's too hard.
I want to give up.
Why me?
Would you have the skies give up?
Dry up?
I am not here to encourage you to let your grief or anger overwhelm you.
Or to let your despair to take root.
I am here to remind you that desire is a path, and all paths lead to mirrors.
A friend asked me this morning, as I was lying in bed listening to the rain, Can we get all the love we need from ourselves and not rely on another person?
No, I responded.
We are communal creatures.
I am because you are.
But we can learn to live with less yearning.
We can let the rains pass through us to water new seedsâ
And weeds.
To help them grow, and we decide which to keep and which to pull.
And we decide what serves and with whom we want to build.
And we trust.
We pray that the rain continues to come.
Not in torrents or floods.
Gently.
Softly.
Slowly.
So when the storms do come, we are no longer afraid of the rain.
Because we know that we are the climate.
We are the change.
The above is of the belowâ
And our only job is to learn to let life flow
Anna Valeska Pohl is a performance artist based in Berlin, Germany.
Listen to our conversation on spiritual practice, the gift of loneliness, and the process of creating intuitive and vulnerable artwork.
Dear readers, Iâm available for hire as portrait photographer and photo essayist. Reach out ~ kellytatham [at] gmail [dot] com and view more of my media work on Instagram or my website.
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The world we live in is built out of story.
When we moved on from the trees and the mountains and the fields and into homes and cities, we built them out of story. Tales of who we are, how we live and love and breed.
We left ânatureâ behind and wove a new narrative.
Everything is story.
Blue is for boys and pink is for girls.
Love belongs to two people under God.
Work is done Monday to Friday.
School is where you learn how to operate in the world and if that system doesnât work for you, there is something wrong with your brain.
We made it all up.
We had our reasons. Those stories served us at the time.
Or, those stories served the people who held the power, and that was that.
But the time has come to dismantle old stories and tell new ones.
There is no separation between us and the earth and the narratives and myths that define us. We are an ecosystem undivided.
If we want to sustain human life, we must leave stories rooted in conflict behind.
I know how much we yearn for a simple, singular narrative.
We donât want it to be messy or complex.
But it is.
We have the tools at our disposal to create a society where everyone is taken care of.
Itâs the trauma of colonialism and the refusal to acknowledge white supremacy within our systems and structures that holds us back.
Itâs this trauma that flattens the world, that tells us âitâs complicatedâ so we donât even try to understand.
When there is nothing to understand but pain.
And the actions that stem from it.
Ending the conflicts that hold us all prisoner starts by embracing this truth:
There is no truth. There are only stories.
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