"I've been thinking about ritual," I said, handing her a book by Gurdjeff, who we'd recently discovered was a shared favourite. "That's all any ritual or ceremony is trying to do, to make manifest in the material world an intangible shift in spirit. So I've been thinking that anything can become ritual, painting, or writing, or cooking or making a bed. All of it transforms, makes clean. Making dinner, alchemizes disparate things into a whole. I feel like I am always transmuting things. Always changing them. All day long."
–– Claire McMillan, American author
Source: Claire McMillan. Alchemy of a Blackbird. Toronto: Atria Books (Simon and Schuster), 2023; p. 165.
via: Commonplace Book 2024, 2025, p. 35.
