Illocutionary Meditations by Hannah Torres

The meditations in this small book were originally intended to be spoken— with one’s lips or in one’s head— in a measured, repetitive manner. They are not mantras, insofar as they are not intended to aid in the induction of a particular state or achievement of a spiritual goal, nor is the shape, sound or semantic content of the words they contain essential to that achievement— though the words themselves are important to the practice.

This practice attempts to include the dual-connotations of the concept of meditation, by either offering you a choice to meditate on the words, or to use the words— in their rhythmic, sonorous or semantic dimensions— to meditate without an object. 

They are illocutionary because they are practices of utterance, which provides the set of conditions for both the subtraction of intention and the impact or effect of the content itself. Though both of those are liable to play a part in the effects of the practice, the fact that the practice is illocutionary is a specific attempt to have to do with something that is not strictly lingual or cognitive, while at the same time present in those moments, like a shadow in the background. 

I crafted this practice while I was in the process of leaving my chosen religious tradition, as an attempt to replicate a similar practice there. While it emulates that practice, the text I have written for it subtracts the theological tenants of that tradition that became increasingly untenable for me to affirm. They are meditations and not prayers, because they make no appeal to any one or anything, opting instead to themselves be as objectless as possible (as illocutions,) and to articulate observations and metaphors for the simple task of navigating daily life in something like a simple poetic verse. 

I no longer practice the illocutionary meditations, and while at first it was because I did not want to have to do with something that was a mere echo of an element of a tradition I have come to strongly oppose and therefore did not want to have to rely on in the endeavor to find my own way, it eventually simply became tedious in and of itself, though I do remember and say them intermittently from time to time. 

I do not deploy them out and into the world in the hopes, or with the logic that, maybe they will help somebody somehow, but because I regard them now as poetry, which means that their value and their beauty are different now. This could be true for anyone, but especially for me as they are products and signifiers of my journey, as I fall along the slopes of time, and their brilliance or grime or the nature of the fact that they just are changes as I go, like suns rays through the cheap plastic crystal that hung in my childhood bedroom window. 

Thanks for reading. XO — Hannah