May 14, 2004
#94 :: Sage
It grows wild in the desert here. One of the ironic blessings of wildland brushfires - which can devour entire housing tracts and splinter their communities forever - is that they smell intoxicating as destroy lives. In Native American ritual - as in coastal Southern California, the burning of sagebrush is a process of cleansing and renewal. This bundle was collected and bound by an old hippie who works the Venice boardwalk on weekends. He heaps raw sage on a weathered Guatemalan blanket, and with great patience and something of a distant, worried look in his eye, bundles the stalks together with cotton yarn and sells them for a dollar or two. We smudged our house in Venice a few years back - half giggling, half solemn as priests - in a ceremony that was by turns awkward and reverent for two people who despite Catholic upbringing had found their spiritual centers somewhere far away from organized religion and ceremony. Now that we've moved again and settled in, perhaps it's time to do it again.