Number of participants: 10
Location: Learning Grounds garden @ de Zandweg allotment garden, Rotterdam South
Date: December 9th, 2023
Duration: 14:00-20:00 (2 pm – 8 pm)
Co-conspirators: The SPIN Collective
Ingredients: smoke, fire, cold mud, rain drizzle, fog, a heavy grey winter sky, the gravity of saturated clouds, low-lying sky and drizzling rain, vegetable scraps, eggshells, newspaper, handmade paper, late summer flower elixir, a shovel, a text on the interdependency of touch and the traces of others, a gathering of individuals holding the collective weight of their personal and systemic grief, handmade quilts, pillows, hot chocolate, spiced tea, ginger cookies, steaming spicy tamales, songs, tears, laughter
Soft Score
BEGIN
14:00
Checking in.
Welcome and introduction.
14:15
Warm and fortify the body, drink spiced tea, and eat ginger cookies.
Fortify the fire, add firewood to the fire burning in the wood stove.
PREPARING THE GROUND
14.30
A grounding practice.
Write to your sorrows on handmade paper prepared from waste materials.
Write to the weight of the grief that each is feeling in the present moment.
15.00
Prepare to leave the warm dry hut and to greet the cold air, the drizzling rain.
WINTER GRIEF CIRCLE
15:15
Form a circle around one of the garden beds, in the front of the garden.
Together listen to an excerpt from What World is This? by Judith Butler as it is read out loud.
Listen together how touch, reciprocity and the traces of others creates a relationship of bodies to one another, living bodies, objects, earth, air, fire, and water.
CIRCLE (continued)
15:40
Sharing grief, sharing sorrow.
Read out loud, or read in silence what has emerged during the collective writing in the hut.
Breathe and give space for a pause to what is spoken out loud or in silence.
Take note of the water vapour emerging from the exhalation of breathing, speaking bodies and how it meets with the cold drizzle and the mist.
16:10
Preparing for a burial, composting grief.
Take turns digging a hole using one of the shovels in the garden.
Add the written letters to the freshly dug holes.
Add any kitchen scraps and other organic waste that each has brought from their living spaces.
16:35
Close the holes, using bare, wet hands, on slick, cold muddy ground.
16:55
Toasting grief, toasting the ground.
Each makes a toast to the ground, from a bottle of late summer flower elixir, prepared a few months ago, when the ground was dry and saturated with the warmth of the August sun.
With each toast to the ground, take a moment to acknowledge and give gratitude to all that has been shared.
REENTRY AND REGROUNDING
17:05
Exit the cold and the drizzle, enter into the warm hut.
Add firewood to the glowing embers in the wood stove.
Share and enjoy hot food.
Drink hot chocolate, devour spicy tamales.
18:50
Reflect and resonate as a collective: hum, sing, share reflections, listen and feel into the crackling fire.
Quilts, food, fire, and warmth are offered as support.
19:45
Check in, a final listening round.
20:00
END
