SAUNA
Channel: Sid Branca
Date: 2020-04-08

Sauna (2020) // a video poem
Text, audio, and video by Sid Branca. Footage shot in Haukijärvi, Finland in 2016 // text written in 2019 and recorded in 2020 in Chicago, USA. Originally conceived as a live reading with projected video for the event SAUNA! at Iceberg Projects, curated by Marlo Koch and Betsy Johnson, May 5, 2019. 

when I step into a sauna, I think of the woods of Finland 
a little building perched part-way up a hill, just at the edge of the forest
a witches' house in a fairy tale
a big stack of birch wood logs beside it
the forest spreading out behind 

you step inside and take off your clothes like preparing for a ritual 
because you are 
and move across a damp interior boardwalk 
thinking about the beach towns of your childhood
until you reach the basins of cold water you will douse yourself with 
it's no freezing lake but it's bracing 

and then comes the second entering, the step into heat 
the delirium that sets in at one hundred and twenty degrees
a little window that shows you the forest 
as you feed logs into the roaring fire 
and pour water over the rocks 

out in those woods in the early spring
before the heaviest rains and the mosquitos 
the trees already dripping
my blood felt sweet and full of green 
and I felt humid 

so overwhelmed by the presence of something 
the old god made of wet dirt
and the slight decay that brings the greater growth
I sank down to my knees at the foot of a tree 
and felt myself so far inside my own body
that its borders reached the canopy 

I remember the vision of my first night in that country:
I dreamt of a beast who came to me 
with the face of a kind, rough man
with antlers splintering forth from his forehead
his body a mystery of limbs 
muscles with a scent like dirt 

like the creature who crawled over me 
in a field in wisconsin when I prayed hard
whose holy body was all soil 
all soil and deep wishes 

they seem to come from the same strange place
hovering just outside my range of vision
so too the weight of air I felt upon me 
that I thought was Alexander's ghost 

this beast eats hay and roasted meats and dreams 
the first few breaths of spring 
songs in an unknown language

when the sun rises so early that the morning
still holds the secrets of the night
old pagan gods will come to put their tongues inside our mouths
and remind us that we too are made of spring

in my early childhood, we bent the saplings together
we lashed them with twine into shape
swaddled them with blankets 
built our little lodge out in the field 

Ted making the fire, feeding it for hours 
until the fire was so much more than my little body 
I never knew how he could be so close 
how he could take that heat and carry it
stone by stone 
into the place we'd built 
so we could crouch there, sweating,
in the belly of a warm beast. 

in my most holy moments
-- and by holy I perhaps mean 
most true 
most worthy of remembrance 
most of a gift to myself and to others 
most present 
and again most true -- 

in my most holy moments I am in two places at once
and by two I mean one plus many

so often the state of hovering a few inches above my body
is the vantage point I have been prescribed 
a method of preservation 
of perseverance 
of parsing out 
or is it the perspective with which I have been diagnosed 
a given circumstance, this doubling, 
a necessary condition on a bulleted list 

but in my moments of greatest joy 
I have slid back inside myself
a penetrated image
not a soul living in a fleshy nest but one organism containing many 
an orchestra all playing the same song with different notes 

my self is my body but my body is also the leaves in the forest
and the rain dripping from them 

you said the last thing either of us needed was more flesh
and I agreed because flesh is sometimes a synonym for pain 
but now I wonder what if I could just keep adding
to grow immense and fleshy and expansive
like Tetsuo, destroyed 
by my incomprehensible vastness 

I think of scraps of language, 
the body's largest organ

and I think 
"the medium is the message” 
the medium is the body
and “the message is death"

but as I fall asleep to descriptions of humid forests 
dappled light in damp sunbeams 
this thought does not distress me 

because in my holiest moments 
I become so aware of my body 
and yet that embodiment is everywhere 

all that sweat holds it all together
and in the end we all float out like steam.