Pentagram

Gaxuxa

You are a young woman called Gaxuxa, you live in the valley. Tonight as you were coming back from the hot spring with your youngest sister you witnessed Odei —your soul sister, the light of your life…— being taken away by missionaries. You’ve heard they were searching the area for a while, you know this is not a good sign. A node in your stomach, an immense weight on your chest, your head gets fuzzy. You could exchange a brief last look with her… and stayed composed as you saw her being dragged away. You went on with the rest of the evening, putting a lot of effort in pretending that nothing was out of the ordinary. Your sister is too young luckily to understand the situation and mention it. Now that everyone in the house is asleep, you are laying awake in horror, starring at the wooden beams above your bed. Thoughts are passing through your mind like mad birds. You’ve heard what they do to women like you and Odei. Where was she now? What were they doing to her? Will they come to get you next? You can picture the needles poking her skin. The hands of these self proclaimed spiritual men violating her body, their eyes catching fire when discovering the spiral shaped birthmark on her thigh… Would they throw her in the river to see if she floats? You wish they had come to you instead, you would have taken all that pain, even death, if that would mean Odei could live. She was a true miracle. You know within yourself the sad truth: a new system is spreading like the plague, quick, violent, deadly. It was clear that they would never understand that they are blinded by a fake god. How can one be so sure of their belief to destroy the light of our world, to contest the essence and power of our life? Your anger is burning through your whole body, you feel feverish. You are scheming… In any other occasion you would get all your accomplices together, summon genies, but this would be a suicide mission at this point. You realise in your agitation you walked out of the house. You are now standing outside in your nightgown. The sky is clear tonight, you stare at the eyelash of a moon that smiles at you in the dark sky lit by an infinity of stars. You are swallowed by the immensity of the cosmos. The fresh breeze of the night is wrapping you softly. Is it Odei caressing you gently, you wonder? You blow kisses back. How to get her out? is it already too late?

The Land

You are a land. You are collective, multiple, infinite. Entities, living beings, and spirits occupy, cross, and move your collaborative body. Constantly. Paradoxically you have borders, delimited by a species called “humans”. You “belong” to one of them and have been passed from different generations as their “property”; a concept obscure to you. Humans have evolved to be obsessed with separating things from each other. Ownership is an alien idea for your cooperative mind in constant mutation, always exchanging, receiving, giving, reacting, transforming, becoming. You’ve been the silent witness to many changes and manifestations, ideas taking shape and falling apart. Your seemingly inanimate state is a facade, you are an agent of a cosmic time. Nothing belongs to you. Your longings are influenced by your interconnectivity, you feel the pull of the universe, all the forces that transcend and transform you. The human touch has changed you. You’ve been the stage for diverse agriculture projects, and long occupied by species “sheep”. Currently you are a monoculture of species “wheat”, you are fertile with producing the seed. Helped by external human forces all the ressources of your collective body is pulled to that production. You’ve been noticing that it broke many connections to other species, previous shared experiences have gone missing, you are lacking the diversity that makes you whole. The neighbouring forest that you once shared so much with is becoming more and more estranged to you. But you still leak into each other, and they are becoming strangely stale. What will become of your once vibrant collective mind? How can you resist and invite others back into your shared existence?

Ilargi 

Your name is Ilargi, you’re a DJ and part of a transfeminist activist group organising raves as a resistance tool to the hyper-surveillance system. It’s 8am and you are just starting your set. The sun is starting to rise, the first beams are grazing the bodies, the clearing is bathing in a dim glow. Morning is your favourite time to play, you love the gentle intensity of each beat shaking the tired and drugged dancing bodies. There is something so special about reaching this state of exhaustion, when your body is so tired and empty that it’s charged of a new energy inaccessible otherwise. You’re jubilating preparing your next track, you touch, turn, tickle buttons on the mixer mechanically, the spiral shaped tattoo on your left hand is floating all over the decks, you feel like a smooth trickster, a puppet master. The crowd elevates, you see all the energy mingling, twirling, swirling, they are screaming your name. These moments always throw you back to ancient times. Worshipped for your connection to the moon, your followers were chanting your name, dancing for you and your siblings. Another time… with other rituals. Everyone assumed then that you were a night person. But the moon is still there even when she doesn’t shine through the depth of the night. What better time than sunrise to face the infinity of time and space? You’ve been sliding through so many waves, but this is definitely your favourite life so far! As frequencies buzz brains and skins you wonder: what will the beliefs of tomorrow be made of?

 The Fluid

 You are a fluid entity. You flow through a channel that goes from the high point to the deeper one and somehow always end back up although you feel like you always flow down. You’ve slid, slipped, slurped your whole existence. Along the way, in this never ending movement you exchange with your surroundings. You’ve seen many corners, bounced, bumped, bloomed against many surfaces. In the last years you’ve witnessed an unsettling change. Creatures alien to your ecosystem have invaded the landscape. They are spreading new materials, unmet particles that transform your world. This new cycle feels unprecedented. Today you’ve met, melted, merged with an opaque fluid that felt curious, bitter, thick, toxic. As you slide through, you’re carrying and becoming this substance that darkens your spirit and intoxicates your next encounters. Your movement is affected, you move slower but develop a certain grip. It is as if your fluidity is not your sole property anymore, you are charged with something vibrating, shaking, bursting. For the first time ever in your infinite renewed cycles, you are slipping out of your destined path. This unexpected event installs a feeling of uncertainty within yourself. You are troubled. Crushed by the contingency of existing under these new circumstances. How will you come out of this symbiosis? How will it transform you and the world around you?

The Star

You are a star. Your celestial body contains the same components as most things in the universe. Hydrogen. Helium. This knowledge makes you feel closer to the world. Connected. Interwoven. A sense of belonging. Even if it feels lonely at times, as isolated in an infinite space as you are. Your incandescence is fading but you find comfort in knowing that you are essential, and that your light will still echo through time and space for longer than your existence. That somewhere, somehow you could help navigate, channel dreams, generate hope. You’ve witnessed millennia passing through. You’ve received all the wishes that were sent to you, you wonder what will happen to them once you will not be there to carry them… You contemplate this pool of longings: a shared desperate call for Gaxuxa and Odei to be reunited mingles with a desire to transcend the concept of property, twirling with the need to be worshipped forever while being wrapped by the will to mutate, evolve, enter symbiosis, multiply infinitely… How strange to hold this cosmic knowledge. Does hope travel with light? What could you, a fading shiny ball in a story beyond comprehension, possibly wish for?