Hold Steady
“We must survive the night - and all the other nights. We must survive the flood. We must not just survive but thrive in mud.”
Photo by Lubov’ Birina
Surrealist Prophecies #10
The tenth in a sequence of surrealist prophecies written using the divinatory technique of automatic writing (with subsequent revision). The theme of the sequence is the collapse of our global civilization due to uncontrollable climate change, leading to a mass rejection of both faith and reason and the re-enchantment of our world among the ruins of our failed creations. Some of the poems in the sequence are set before the Fall and portray the spiritual and emotional dilemma of our current crisis. Some describe the Fall itself, and the strange changes in thought and perception that will be needed if any are to survive a world in which humanity has been radically de-centered. Some describe the world to come, a world newly alive with gods and spirits yet free of all dogma or fixed belief – a world of beauty and strange magic.
The tenth prophecy is placed in the mouth of a survivor, waiting expectantly with a small band of other survivors for the flood waters to recede. The old world is gone, but the shape of the new world is not yet known.
Hold Steady
Hold steady. The hints of a new life are ready to poke gray fingers up between the cracks in the sidewalk and burst straight out through this chalk graffiti. Don’t be too greedy. We are not yet sure. Let the waters recede a little. We will then know more.
The floods have come. We are no longer what we started from.
Hold tight, hold fast. The level is dropping slowly, but what’s past is past. The last of the old world still must rot. The last of its thought.
Hold steady. The hints of a new life are ready to poke gray fingers up between the cracks in the sidewalk and bloom green and bright.
We must survive the night - and all the other nights. We must survive the flood. We must not just survive but thrive in mud.
From mud reborn. From blood and fire. From flooded halls and broken bits of fallen walls we must conspire.
The world is new. It need not take the shapes it took before for me and you. Don’t be too hasty. We are not yet sure. Let the waters recede a little. We will then know more.
Christopher Scott Thompson
Photo by Tam Zech.
Christopher Scott Thompson is an anarchist, martial arts instructor, devotee of Brighid and Macha, and a wandering exile roaming the earth. Photo by Tam Zech.
