THE URBAN MYTHIC

place-based care + collaboration, and how the stories are present Exactly where you are

this past saturday, after a period of the most levelling, consistently formless/dread-filled days i have experienced in years— i had the precious ~re-weaving experience~ of presenting secret city: encountering the urban mythic for dr. sharon blackie’s substack, the ‘art of enchantment.’ if you are a paid subscriber of hers you can click the title and watch the full recording <3 if not— let’s take a little journey, one i’ll hopefully be revisiting for a fuller-length period of time in my own online mythic space.

thanks to sharon, the first time i did a formal presentation on the urban mythic was in april 2023 for her [no longer in existence] online mythic imagination network. i’d been sharing photos and writing about the urban mythic without naming it as such for years up until then, in real-time, on my instagram— it was My Life Itself. i realize now, a kind of animism of urbanity— which purposely includes so-called ‘derelicted’ or ‘abandoned’ or junk/litter-strewn or industrial areas (like the ones in which i grew up!), as well as ‘inanimate’ structural ‘objects’ like playground sprinklers or bridges.

it is a challenge for me, in a way— because sharing this is sharing, Truly, the essence of Me. it is the literal way i see the world, the way i Live, the way i orient. its so Inherent to me sometimes i can’t even clock ‘what it is’ or any sense of separateness from it. it is Through the sharing with others and listening to/receiving their feedback that i continue to understand What This Really Is, why it is so important (especially after such a formless time in which the purposelessness seeped into it all). it is an Honor to share this work; to tell the stories of these beings, and my Own story; to re-weave myself over and over back to mySelf.

perhaps the greatest thing the beings in/of the urban mythic have taught me— is the experience in real-time of how stories are born in collaboration with the landscape. this is what our ancestors did— and this is what we can Still do, even and Especially if we think we live in modernity under the deranged reign of the overculture. even and Especially if we live in an urban landscape and not nearby or in more sprawling, rural / wild spaces of more ‘traditional beauty.’ the stories are still out there. and there are so many stories that only You can tell— because you are the one to Notice and begin and (importantly) maintain relationship with the beings and landscapes around you.

i’m born and raised in new york city and still living here, for nearly now 40 years; after some of the greatest heartbreaks and sudden upheavals of my life during 2021 i was hell-bent, with a fervor/desperation/immediacy unlike any other time in my life, on trying to get somewhere else. this feeling alternately waned and intensified throughout 2021 and especially 2022; could it be the UK? italy? new mexico? new england? colorado? california? — ‘heartbreak like that says you can’t go home again’ …

in winter ‘22 into ‘23 when my first big attempt at moving to a riverside town in upstate, new york collapsed along with my mental health and one of the most painful bodily injuries i’ve sustained— i began to, by Necessity, need to hold space for the possibility that something needs me to be here, in my home city. in this exact small radius of where i was born. something needs me to not run away; even if i feel resistance. something needs me As Its Storyteller. as its messenger. this city, these beings— that raised me and helped me stay alive.

when i think about What This Really Is— i think about Love. i think about being loved. about belonging, and acceptance, and shelter. about Seeing, and profound reflections of Self in landscape. about the understory, and different/deeper levels of meaning and symbolism. about making space and being curious, and Returning and Returning.

i realized recently that although the urban mythic is woven throughout All my work and what i write and post online, and have been sharing for years— there isn’t a Specific place for these things to live that is more accessible to ‘the open internet’ in ways instagram and facebook aren’t. so in the name of that effort, i will post This entry here on substack. i have some new urban mythic / improvisational storied-riffing videos i need to [somehow] edit and post to my youtube, as well— in the meantime there is one new video about the altar to the firebird squirreled into this substack post from this past july— and a playlist of older videos called wild body dreaming including those my brother shot with me [that wanted to be formed at some point into a documentary!] from spring 2021 right before all the upheaval really took hold.

i’ll drop one of those videos in again below, about ‘being claimed by a place’— i’m actually in the area where the 20th ave trees / edge-holders are. i was thinking about ‘dance for the edge-spaces’ at that time— and what i called ‘wild body dreaming’: channeling the essence of a place through my own body, through dance/movement— which for me is inspired by the ‘wild land dreaming’ of aboriginal culture/lore— in which the humans are being dreamed by the land, and have a responsibility to walk the songlines and keep dreaming/keep being dreamed, for the health of humans and land alike. a collaborative weaving of stories, a weaving and re-weaving of the world itself. so inspiring, so powerful, and Still so relevant— i first read about this in david abram’s ‘spell of the sensuous’ (even back when i was in college, i think), and heard about ‘wild land dreaming’ from martin shaw in recent years— it slotted into something very specific in me— you’ll see in the video below and the others in the playlist (some of which are from my time in manchester at pomona island in 2021), that the teachings and philosophies of the urban mythic are crystallizing, forming, Present; something climbing into and out of itself, making itself Known.

this has been my life itself; these have been my Sustainers.

i’ll end this post for now by dropping in some photos and (for the first time, all-together in this way!) introducing some of my spirit-family of the urban mythic. <3

{i’ve also gone back into this post to add some year-dates to each, of when we met, to further expand/clarify that sense of chronology and relationship-over-time. this has been, in a more ‘conscious’ way, a thematic marker of the last near-decade of my life}

***

dragon, in the lagoon

— who showed me how ‘inanimate objects’ can be ensouled— can carry energy— can carry the understory/another layer of meaning in addition to what we can see with our eyes

{2018 most likely}

grandmother tree

— the Origins at the threshold of this journey in Return to myself, now 9 years ago— who gave me a safe place to go, to sit in the terminus of her branches, to Return and Return— she was My Place during my restlessness, lostness, and displacement i tried to suppress in my new life in brooklyn with my fiancé at the time ..

{2015}

the water horse of astoria (the stone looking towards the water, in the right of the photo)

— who gave me a place to sit in the river that night until my suicidality changed ..

{2022; no longer earthside in the same way .. }

mother cove / the east river

— who has been a sheltering place and a Genesis of so much / i won’t forget how she told me, lovingly and firmly, when i was being called to visit her every day during one winter, and i felt hesitation and resistance— that if i expected to see the same thing i’ve seen a thousand times, that maybe she doesn’t have anything to teach me ..

{lifelong ‘knowing’ of this cove but this is the First place i landed after i moved my things from my fiancé’s home in 2015; a deeper Knowing came in late 2019 onward since getting involved with 36.5/a durational performance with the sea}

the great green lion / the triboro bridge

— who has been my city mountaintop, my thin place, my guardian and my protector— my impossible chasm to span, over and over; the place i went that could’ve been my exit from the world that reminded me how much i wanted to live

{first ever walks in 2012; became more Weighted during my on-and-off crisis/suicidality time a few years later (2016 onward?), especially 2018/2019}

says it all ..

— ‘i became the bridge’ <3

grandfather

— my dearest love; who has touched me in ways no other being has— who taught me what a true sheltering sacred masculine could feel like— who taught me how to accompany a being through its full life cycle— through injury/dismemberment, change, and ultimately death— who reordered my understanding of how plants can also communicate their essence / send signs after they no longer exist on the earthly plane —the babes (new little trees you see to the right of grandfather) who continue to teach me how to be with loss while also acknowledging what is growing and what is new

{my earthside relationship with him took place from late 2017-2022; and blessedly the babes Persist ..}

the 20th ave trees / the edge-holders

— where i was drawn over and over during the pandemic, to the edge of the edge of the neighborhood, the industrial litter-strewn stretches of sidewalk, their gnarled and strange shapes

{2020}

the machine city

— what the edge-holders are holding the edge against ..

{2020}

the altar to the firebird

— that i stumbled upon in the old-growth forest in queens right after making a choice to leave my partner-at-the-time soon after autumn equinox 2019; i was reading the maiden king by bly/woodman and found literal fabric fiery-colored flower petals that looked like firebird feathers on the ground in the woods, leading up to this incredibly mythic tree ..

{2019}

the altar to the waterbird (with the great green lion in the background)

— an echo to the altar of the firebird; a place for grief the first time i intentionally wanted to Be-With it, my own ‘wild edge of sorrow;’ i realized later i was holding space for myself at the water i would’ve plummeted into after jumping the bridge

{2020}

sunswick creek

— the now-underground stream who sang to me from the sewer system— who has taught me about persistence, about essence, about interconnection of past and present— about the medial edge-space of the tidal / salt marshland that was once so ubiquitous to my home neighborhood […] second photo is ankle-deep (at points) flooding in the park through which sunswick once flowed above ground

{started getting to know her, again through involvement in 36.5/a durational performance with the sea in late 2019; she started singing to me late 2021 after i returned from a life-changing initiatory weekend in colorado ..}

16 oaks grove

— the 16 doors, 16 grandmothers, the druids in the grove— who showed me about holding space for old-growth and deep tradition amongst the noise and the cars/buses passing, as the overculture grows up around you

{in conjunction with getting to know sunswick; i think i took my first actual walk there in late 2021?}

the grieving stone (the dark stone in the water at just-right-of-center in the photo)

— who would become my cailleach at the water’s edge, a being to sit with, wait, grieve; who my boyfriend-at-the-time and i found during a practice ecotherapy session on a dark and foggy evening; the resemblance of a person stooped over in the shadow and weeping ..

{2020; no longer earthside in the same way .. }

the edge-mulberry

— who taught me what it was and is to root into exactly the sheer-ness that you have around you— even without soil, even without ground— you Find A Way— you root, you grow fruit, you give life

{2024}

the tree of life, persisting in the gravel airport parking lot

— who i first was able to just-glimpse through a fence outside a storage place, and eventually found the way to behold in Full— who showed me Just What Can Grow, and how abundantly, even without similar kin around you, even in full-on industrial conditions

{2021 i believe}

alistair

— who reminded me of my promise to the trees; and who held my specially-crafted promise-to-myself ring for a full week in his bark-hollow before i told the story of the handless maiden for the first time

{2021 i believe}

the birds laid to rest (and there have been many over these years)

— are a huge part of the urban mythic i have never mentioned/included with the other beings, until now.. they literally taught me how to Be With death, with a closeness and intimacy in a way i never had; i literally had never physically touched ‘a dead thing’ until i was called to bury my first semi-newly-dead pigeon (this photo is the first-ever burial site). they taught me about responsibility and devotion. what it meant to bring into ‘the family of things’ — dead beings stepped over and left behind, in whatever form/state and whatever age in which i found them. what it meant to carry them to a resting place— to listen in to what resting place they wanted— to cry and pray/sing over them. to claim them, in the way the woman in the story of the crescent moon bear does for the spirit-birds she encounters so intensely on her way up the mountain ..

{spring equinox 2021 onwards}

the tree of roads not taken (with all the shoes hanging in it!)

— where i’d go to give thanks for all the things in my life that didn’t work out, that i had to give up, that had to end— and how those ‘roads not taken’ led to other, different, deeper/more aligned paths having spaciousness to emerge

{2020/2021; no longer earthside in the same way .. }

the wilds of the deep heart

— the wildland behind the construction fence i entered upon returning home, when i longed for my partner-at-the-time and pomona island in manchester UK i had just spent the summer/early fall with .. a waterfront build-site long-abandoned due to flooding that is now again trying-to-be-built-on— the namesake of my work in the world— my own private city-forest, just me and the other animals, being sheltered, being held, in shared ecology— land and water that has taught me about the honor of being a witness, of being the one to make prayers and weep— of what you Can do when you Can’t stop the bulldozer ..

{late 2021; and in continued transformation}

and— the New mulberry

— who cracked open my heart a week or so before my birthday this year, who reminded me of how intimate and Palpable it is to ‘be claimed’— whose name doesn’t want to be shared here (yet?) ...

{2024}

***

there is so much more to say — !!

it was challenging to just write a tiny bit about each. but each time i do this— as lost as i feel or get in/throughout my life— i understand the Greater Story i am a part of, and have a Responsibility to. a bit of graffiti on the williamsburg bridge once told me: NO ONE CAN WALK OUT OF THEIR OWN STORY. all of these beings helped me to stay inside my own story; as literally agonizing as it has been at times.

my dear friend margery sent me some lines from miguel de unamuno yesterday after watching the presentation on sharon’s substack:

“from your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.”

more on this Soon. and All-Ways;

THANK YOU

<3