ROOTS MEET BELOW THE CROSSROADS

EDITED BY TRACY SCHLAPP & DANIEL WILSON

During October, we will release a four-part series from the Bridgeworks Oregon program at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, Oregon. The program was designed to produce the collaborative chapbook, Roots Meet Below the Crossroads with the women taking the lead to select themes and produce work that they refined over the time and finally, perform for their peers in the prison’s Chapel. The book is divided into four sections: rope, blade, mirror, lantern. This week we will begins with the mirror and the poem Sisyphus, The Tragedy of by Comrade Candle and Warmed in the Sun by Samantha Jensen.

HECATE’S LANTERN
Equally comfortable in Hades, the heavens, and, the seas, Greek moon goddess Hecate traveled the crossroads. She accompanied outcasts, guiding them through the dark with her luminous light. She is often pictured on ancient pottery with three faces: maiden, mother, and crone. The tools of her trade vary in the telling. For our purposes, she carried a lantern to light the way forward and a mirror
to reflect the past. A rope was used to lash what she wanted to carry with her and a blade to cut away the excess.

Hecate’s Lantern, a multi-session storytelling workshop, was designed for a group of interested writers in Coffee Creek Correctional Facility’s medium-security wing. In our first session, we agreed that each participant would begin with the image of a crossroad and see where this took them. From this junction, we developed a piece of writing to create this book. Each of us then prepared our piece to be told to the larger community. The project received generous support from the Regional Arts & Culture Council, just before Covid shut down Coffee Creek to volunteer programs. The project started and stopped a few times before we were able to meet regularly in our classroom on J Block. Thank you to Mr. Roy for all of your help.

In our culture, we let facts and statistics wield great authority: What happened? What is true? What adds up? There is a sense that we can manufacture a concrete truth. Our judicial system is built on this — or more specifically, on the notion of a truth beyond a reasonable doubt.

The language each of us uses shapes our understanding of the world and our response to it. Looking through Hecate’s mirror, we see a version of the past, and a version of the truth—what we remember. But every car’s side-view mirror has a cautionary tale printed across it: Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. The reflective lens distorts the view. With this in mind, we apply Hecate’s lantern to the text. Employing a broader perspective, we add context to those facts. We may be able to better establish a relationship to that past. We can add flesh to the history. And through that work, we may eventually write a new way forward.

A story needs to be worked and reworked. There are places that need to be cut away as they no longer serve the narrative. We find sections that need to be moved, and bound more firmly to the central story. Throughout the process, our sorceress Hecate keeps us company with her multiple viewpoints. One face contains the naivete of youth; another, the forgiveness of the mother; the third, the wisdom of the crone. Like all witches, she helps us cast a spell to captivate our readers. | TDS & DJW