We are exiting the regimes that were built on our sweat and limb; the systems that silenced the melodies of a shared meal; the mass culture that taught our children that they were never enough; the ideologies that made us replaceable parts of an anonymous quest for frozen freedom; the trickle down politics of pyramid schemes and distant gods.
Our journey is urgent, and so we have placed the swift and the strong at the back…and the frail, the toddling, the elderly, the slow, the ‘uncultured’, the ‘unfettered’, ahead of us – for we’ve long realized that, unlike the exodus of that legendary age, our quest is not for ‘new lands’ flowing with milk and honey. Our quest is for new ways of noticing. And unlike that ancient collective, our form is not a stretching line, but a dancing circle. In our stuttering, bovine steps, we will unravel new continents beneath our feet, subtle worlds with wild treasures; in festivities of love and spontaneous surrender, we will dance new worlds into our reckoning. A humming exodus is now underway, and our home lies in the shimmering distance: the kind traversed with an embrace.
Painting by Leslie Anne Cornish
