Λένε ότι σήμερα έχεις γενέθλια; (They say that today is your birthday)

This video and text piece is part of an ongoing exploration of ritual, body, springtime, ancestral tracings, and research as performance. Dedicated to the wild, the holy, and the strange.

This year I am in Mykonos for Saint Lazarus Day—

eating a bread man,

Theas, aunties, are throwing petals

on an old and treasured icon of the Virgin Mary,

who is being carried back from her yearly sojourn.

The village madman—

comes through with his sailboat—

cutting through the sneers of judgmental grandmothers,

he walks an invisible procession of his own

to shake my hand.

Chronia Polla, he says.

Happy birthday!

After the icon is once more safely in her domicile,

other mothers kiss my face,

outside the church walls,

the same refrain on their tongues—

happy birthday!

They’re all insane

or it’s all our birthdays.

Tearing off a piece of Laz,

being careful to remove his clove eye,

I’m sure that this rite is fundamentally about the miracle of bread—

of materials merging,

mixing with water and yeast to rise up and feed the hungry—

of the power that comes

from giving up our body to feed another.

It’s the pure pleasure of these gestures,

with the backdrop of spring.