Violets: the sacredness of masking | Part 2
/a call for wildness in a time of collapse
yellow Forest violet, viola sempervirens, photograph by rebekah
Since I was a young child, I have had this felt sense of Spring being liberation incarnate. The smells, the newness, the juices rushing us towards a delicate awakening. I mean, flowers haven’t always existed! The world was once mostly green! Somewhere in the abyss of forever, the angels collaborated to give us dew drops on colored petals.
Here we are! Violets’ heart shaped leaves are popping up in a carpet of welcome. Heart healers. First ground cover. Green people pushing up their blanket from the loamy soil. And then! The delicate fingers of efflorescence.
How can one tiny, itty bitty petaled being offer so much medicine for these unknown times?
The yellow forest violets (aka evergreen or redwood violets) viola sempervirens say:
Let your grief take you home
nurture yourself back into yourself
soft, kind, lulling us to sleep
The seduction of spring
Come let the ache of winter, the cracks of brittle and hard
Let them lay down with me.
I will hold you, accompany you through this tunnel of grief.
As time sputters forward, then back, on and off
the dense wood can begin her journey into your bones
fortifying what needs strength
and comfort.
We are with you. You are not alone in your sorrows.
And though you’ve taken the role of griever
It’s not your birth role only
It is one part of many
One portal to beauty.
Yellow, color of the sun, bright being
Inside both of our bodies, a center of wild light.
Where I live the yellow violet flowers are unfurling from the forest floor. All violets give us intimate accompaniment through grief. This year I have come to know them as teachers in the multifariousness of masking. The yellow forest violet, viola semperviren one of the more uncommon violets, offers us their own distinct gifts. Let’s explore a bit more about masking and deepen into the offerings of this flower.
Most of us have worn a mask. We’ve worn one for halloween, in a performance or perhaps we’ve been lucky enough to wear one during a ritual. Wearing a mask or even seeing someone else wear a mask can give us permission to excavate the unconscious, touch our animal nature, remember our wild bodies. In many parts of Europe, masks and costumes have been worn for centuries to celebrate life and its transitions. My partner and I have become completely fascinated by the traditional costumes and masks of the region of Castilla Y León in Spain where they’re from.
In 2020, when the pandemic broke out, we all had to wear face masks. There was a sense of mystery and quiet this period elicited, a time out of time, a deep unknown that echoes the mythic practice of masking.
We didn’t know if we would live or die. We didn’t know if someone we loved would live or die. A virus is a wild being. A lifeforce teaching us about the potential of lifeforce! Threatened with extinction, mutate! Inhabit another life and destroy it so you can continue on! A virus is a tightrope walker using every source of energy to survive, terrifying us with its ability to defy predictability. Through our global experience with the virus, we’ve learned in exquisite details the care we are capable of enacting. In 2020 we began to face our fragility as humans, no one could escape confrontation with death, we were forced to stop and care. We rested thus galvanizing an earthly wildness revival: loggerhead turtles had a record breaking breeding season. Less ships in the oceans meant dolphins and orcas could communicate more freely, humpback songs were heard more distinctly and left their calves more frequently to get food. Cheetah pups could hear their mama’s chirps without the sound of safari vehicles. Water and air quality improved. (check out the documentary called The Year the Earth Changed). These are only the scientifically studied effects of wildness rehabilitating. To this day, these positive impacts still echo within us; in stark contrast with the ecological devastation caused by the weapons and bombs used by the US imperialist machine on Earth and all of her inhabitants.
So why did we stop this collective caring? While the pandemic is still unfolding, the ruling class orchestrated its denial: we were forced to stop masking and back to life-as-usual. Those continued to mask began to build a truly caring community. I’m curious: what would be possible about our own wild nature if we applied this level of collective care to all? The virus is our teacher. We are powerless to overcome such a wild being. As a species, we’ve gone to catastrophic lengths to avoid the mythic confrontation of death. Capitalism is fear of wildness, fear of death, fear of life. But there is something hidden we don’t understand yet about why we’ve needed to explore the limitations of capitalism. Wildness is our nature as much as the screech of the hawk and the tree roots growing up through concrete. We have yet to comprehend this human foray into the death rattle of capitalism as part of a greater cosmic chaotic wildness. In the unraveling, the mask of white supremacy and patriarchy are being peeled off, revealing their true faces.
In my last missive, an homage to the gifts of masking and unmasking, I spoke of the “chasmogamous” violet flowers. Their familiar bloom, their flowers responsible for the distinct flavor of candies and perfumes. They set seed similarly to how most flowers do. In chaos. Chasmogamy, otherwise known as “open marriage”, is how the majority of flowers pollinate. Everything flying around everywhere and, somehow, finding the fit needed for the moment to reproduce.
But violets (and a few other plants) secretly hide another “cleistogamous” (closed marriage) flower. This one emerges in late summer, out of view from the human gaze, under the leaves. These pale flowers never open and self pollinate inside their closed pods, popping them out in autumn. The advantage of this type of pollination is that less flowers are needed: petals, pollen and large amounts of nectar aren’t needed. It’s a type of pollination mutation some plants have adapted to due to severe conditions. It can lead to genetic mutations enabling an inability to reproduce.
As a neurodiverse person, I’m enchanted by violet's adaptations, using two modes of reproduction for survival. It’s very much how I’ve lived much of my life. I see the visible violet flower as a kind of gorgeous mask (as discussed in the previous piece). Masking is a quite beautiful skill; an enactment of performing socially acceptable behavior to survive in a world that doesn’t want to see our hidden gifts. This can and does exhaust us. What lies beneath our mask? What is our hidden cleistogamous flower?
The thing about the yellow forest violets, viola sempervirens:, they are of the wild, they aren’t common like the violeta odorata that came here from Europe. To come upon a stand of viola sempervirens is to behold awe. I visit a stand of them frequently in a forest near where I live, all year round I court them. In spring, there is always delight in seeing their blooms emerge.
Yellow flowers and yellow violets connect with our solar plexus. Here lives our self identity, sense of self, center of self. How we choose to mask and how we mask out of survival is sacred. Our instinct for life is what leads us to mask. Instinct is unruly, untethered to social norms. Instinct is wild. A closed flower, self seeding, self preserving, a light in a dark place.
The instinct to mask comes from our center, our inner light, wild and uncompromising. Our bodies know better than our thinking brains. We have healing to do from what led us to mask but the instinct to mask is genius.
I’m here to support people nurturing their instincts. Care for ourselves and our communities is a natural instinct. Learning with the plants and as part of a small neurodivergent cohort is the support we need to reclaim our precious instinctual bodies from the grips of oppression. All of us together doing this work is the support we need to move through these unknown times. I believe this is the belle epoque and the love revolution we are craving.
