THE WHEEL TURNS: A PORTAL OPENS INTO A STRANGE NEW YEAR
by angeliska on December 31, 2016
We are coming through the tunnel of winter, passing through the portal into a new time. The sun is being reborn, and with it, a new day – & a hopefulness.
It’s almost gone, this wild and unpredictable year that put so many of us through the ringer in truly brutal ways. I’m trying to sit with it, to look back on my own experience of this year, and all that I’ve learned. In many ways, this was a great year for me – a beautiful year filled with learning, growth, and big opening up into my own strength and independence. I’ve had some year that were big, bad doozies before, and while I watched many of my loved ones get raked over the coals by 2016, I was feeling pretty okay about it all, at least for a while there… There were so many deaths, big deaths – huge gaping losses of so many our beautiful heroes. I’m no stranger to death and loss, having experienced so much of it in my life. I lost some people this year, for sure – many old friends, and people who were significant in my past (in good and bad ways.) Some real good people passed on this year – and not all of them were famous (or, at least not beyond their own neighborhood block).
The Wheel of Fortune has been showing up constantly in the tarot readings I give, and serves as a poignant reminder not only of the turning of the year and seasons, but also of the twists and turns of fate. It’s easy to get caught up in notions about good luck and bad luck when this card shows up for us, but it’s so essential to try and find a sense of equilibrium amidst all the changes. Finding a calm, still center within yourself is at times the only way to sit with uncertainty. The Wheel is constantly spinning – sometimes we’re up, and sometimes we fall down – yet this is where we can find a deeper awareness about our journey and the lessons we’ve been given to learn and grow with.
Sometimes I feel like an ancient crone, seeing the world from the vantage point of centuries past: wars, famines, political upheaval, plagues, revolutions, tyranny – all turning over and over again. It never seems to stop. We want to believe that next year will be better than the last one – but the truth is that every year is filled with both good and bad things. I’m trying to be grateful for the good things, for the happy moments. The shock of this year’s election, and what looks to be a gruesome and horrifying aftermath has me wondering: what if one day we look back on 2016, and remember it as the last good year? The last good year before things got really, really bad. The reality is that most of us have no idea what really bad even looks like. Most of us have never gone without clean water to drink or food to eat for very long. Most of us have never lived in a war zone. Most of us have lived in the absurd luxury of being able to waste our time staring at screens endlessly in the ridiculous comfort of our climate controlled homes. I wonder if that will be the case, though – going forward? What will it be like for us if war comes here? If the chickens finally come home to roost… It’s the Year of the Fire Rooster, coming up here – Year of the big pompous, vermilion-wattled cock, yellow feathers fluttering in the breeze. It fits, doesn’t it? A year where everyone is threatening to set it all on fire. It doesn’t feel peaceful. It feels like a time of upheaval and disillusionment. Time to rub the sleep from our eyes and arise from our feather beds of complacence and comfort.
Change is extremely uncomfortable. It’s not easy, at all. But we’ll all have to, whether we like it or not, now. The wind is blowing, and it’s bringing with it a hard rain. Pray it douses those raging fires a little bit. I’ve been so, so angry the past few days – an incandescent flaming sword of rage. It’s a terrible feeling, and something I’m seeking to temper within myself. When the fire pours out of me and spatters others, I always feel worse. Not better. Even if it feels warranted. I’m trying to learn to be the water instead. To channel the fire into making things, instead of destruction. To angle it elsewhere, let it spill onto the rocks – not repressing it, or turning it inward. Steam hisses up, the hazy smoke obscures what’s below. It’s got to go somewhere constructive. I am being hit hard with so many lessons at once this week – most of them about illusions, boundaries, trust, and restraint. I’m failing at a lot of them, I feel. I’m doing my best, but my best still feels shitty. I think I’m supposed to be wiser than this by now, but then I remember that I’m human – and that we all keep fucking up at this stuff until we get tired of doing it over and over again, repeating the same karmic lessons repeatedly. Until we decide to change. It has to come from within, because moving these puzzle pieces into a new configuration just ain’t cutting it. Saturn and Pluto transits are moving through me, working on me hard, doing their psychic surgery. Last night, as I was trying to fall asleep, I had a vision of these giant planets, lost gods in white masks performing open heart surgery on me. My chest was draped with a curtain, but I could feel everything. Everything.
I’ve been thinking about how life and our perceptions of it can change so drastically within the space of a few hours. How rapidly our illusions can be shed, even (and especially) the ones we clung to so dearly. To see yourself (sometimes, in a photograph) blithely trusting that all would continue as planned, that no nasty surprises would leap out to trip you up, that you could keep on believing, just a little while longer… I think this year has been that way for a lot of people, on many different levels. I’m feeling it pretty intensely right now, and it’s not fun – but most likely very necessary: that our illusions and self-delusions be shattered. Let’s walk through the broken looking glass into a strange new year, with eyes wide open.
There’s this strong collective sense of deeply desiring to be done with this year – 2016, the dumpster fire of a year, as so many are referring to it. But then what? What will 2017 bring? Something better? We all want so much for things to just get better, get easier – be simpler. But these are not simple times. One of my amazing astrologer friends was looking at my chart at giving me a little heads up that this year to come would not really be any easier – for me, or for anyone. For me in particular, there’s going to be a lot of make it or break it celestial activity – heavy teachers delivering big lessons. I’m already feeling it – hard. I groaned inwardly (and probably audibly too) when she told me this… You know that feeling – like, when do I get a goddamn break? More lessons? More hard stuff? Sheeee-it. When does it get to be easy? I feel like I’ve been going through some pretty rough lessons my whole damn life. I have, and I will continue to – because that’s what it is to be human. This one is my go ’round – and I drew the dead mom card, and the hurricane card, and a bunch of other doozies. I also drew the soft comfy bed card, and the roof over my head card, and the healthy brain card, and most importantly – the amazing community of loving friends and family card. It’s all relative – and maybe somewhere, somehow, it evens out. We shall see. But what I’ve been contemplating lately is all the lessons: the challenges and obstacles and trials and pitfalls that actually just never, ever stop your whole goddamn life long. Because that’s how it works. We come here to learn and grow and be tested and we basically keep doing that until we die. And then, we keep doing it some more after that. And some more. And often, we get better at it. That’s the beautiful part about attaining maturity, I’ve discovered lately. It’s actually totally awesome. No adults ever told me about that when I was younger, I think maybe because I wouldn’t have believed them anyway – or maybe because they hadn’t realized it themselves yet. It is extremely gratifying to learn from your mistakes, how fail better, and even to have figured out how to do stuff well, how to take excellent care of yourself and other creatures, to make a good life. Growing up ain’t so bad, turns out. Can you tell I’m a Capricorn going through some major Saturn transits? No wonder I’m kind of enjoying this shit. I said kind of! Anyway – newsflash: there’s no happy ending hog heaven truffle buffet that we all get to dive into like a pot of gold after the shitshow rainbow. The shitshow rainbow and the truffle buffet are both ongoing, continuously. I think we do have a choice about most of what we choose to participate in, or engage with energetically – and the fact is: taking responsibility for your own happiness and your own suffering are paramount. I’m working with this truth, and grappling with it – on a daily basis. Pain is part of life. It just is. One day, every one you know and love will die. And so will you. And so will I. You and I will probably keep getting our hearts broken in all kinds of ways. The heart breaks and break until one day, it opens. Is that from Rumi? I think so. What we do in the meantime matters – and while we can’t protect ourselves from the pain of life (or, in doing so, also protect ourselves from the happiness), I do believe we can refuse to suffer. How exactly to do that, I’m still figuring out. And I’m apparently choosing to suffer until I do. I’m ready to break in my new boots and go tramping out into the shitshow rainbow, and find the joy in the midst of it all. I’m prepared to live as fully as I can until it’s my time to stop – and I have a huge high heap of stuff I want to to manifest and accomplish and experience until that day. I have some good dreams, some good visions for what I’d like to create, and share with the world. I want that for all of us. I want to believe in big, wild possibilities for us. For you and for me. So let’s dive in, eh?
This photograph was taken on the first day of the new year on the land where my people have lived for so long. A place of deep knowing. I was feeling very hopeful. I want to feel that way again. I think I will. New Year’s Eve was my mother’s birthday. It feels good to gather out on the land where she lived and died. To sit around the fire with family, blood related and spirit found. Come back home. Come back to center. Be rooted and anchored in that old earth, that old, old love. Feeling the support of dear friends around me like strong branches, deep roots. Out in Lone Grove, time does something strange. It’s a place I belong.
Mystic blue. Queen Allyson, heart-sister.
Sisters in the haze of a brand new year. Photo by Allyson Garro.
Three wise women.
Our beautiful group of happy campers on New Year’s Day last year.
Me & my Jo.
Julia.
Conjuring.
Olivia. (I forget who took these three photos! If it was you, please remind me?)
Sparkle magic.
Creek magic.
Fire magic.
Winter magic. These three photos are from last year’s New Year’s Eve celebration out at Lone Grove, taken by Gorgy.
Cold creek white dog.
May you who are reading this now be blessed in the new year. May you stay safe and warm, and may those you love all be well. Keep the homefires burning, keep your light going. We’re going to need each other, okay?
I love you. Thank you for being here with me.
More to read from New Year’s Eves of yore:
✶ OWL WELCOME
✶ AULD LANG SYNE
✶ YEAR OF THE HORSE
✶ NEW YEAR’S EVE FOXFIRES AT THE CHANGING TREE
✶ FUCK THE PLAN 2012
✶ AN EPICALLY EPIC AND FAIRLY TARDY YEAR IN REVIEW – OR, HOLY SHIT: 2011!
✶ A Bright Blue Wish
✶ New Year’s Redux
✶ Stargazer Honey
✶ Blue Moon
✶ Lone Grove New Year
✶ Pink Moons
✶ The New Year
✶ Lucky Stars and Garters
✶ La Nouvelle Année
Keep On Doing What You Do / Jerks On The Loose
by angeliska on December 22, 2016
I’m sad and angry for her. I’m sad and angry for us, for all the women, for the immigrants, people of color, Muslims and Jews, queer and trans folks, for the earth. For the water. For all the little children, and the old folks – for all of us. We’ve got to do the hardest work now – of showing up even more, staying strong, staying alive, keeping our noses above water. Everyday, fight. Don’t give up, don’t back down.
“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” – Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
Nobody around here knows what happened to you
No one will ask you to explain
You have your arm around a drastic measure
All of your efforts down the drain
There might be something here you could get into
Or just be quiet by yourself
Oooooooo. . .
Stare at the stuff up on the shelf
You work too hard
to take this abuse
Be on your guard
jerks on the loose
Look who
did it to you
Joker over there
with nothing to do
Don’t let ’em
get through
Keep on doing
what you do
Why don’t you listen to my little pep talk
Instead of what that person said
And now I’m gonna open up the window
And you will come in off that ledge
You work too hard
to take this abuse
Be on your guard
Jerks on the loose…
Jerks on the loose…
Jerks on the loose!
(by Terre and Suzzy Roche)
I’ve been wanting to share this song that has been such a helpful anthem to me for a long time. I grew up listening to The Roches, but rediscovered this song a few years ago when I was going through a particularly tough time. I listen to it whenever I feel sad, discouraged, or beat down by the world and the people that sometimes can be huge jerks. It always helps, a lot. Right now feels especially apt, on a larger scale than ever before. This is such a disturbingly surreal moment we’re having in this country, in the world. As cynical as I can be about politics and the general state of things, nothing could have prepared me for where we’ve ended up, in just a few short months. It’s hard to conceive that this is our reality. I don’t even know how to write about it, how to put my disbelief and shock into words that even begin to convey all the things I’m feeling. I’m dumbfounded, utterly gobsmacked by how completely fucked up this current turning has turned out to be. I could never watch the movie Idiocracy all the way through, because nothing about it felt funny or satirical to me at the time. It all just felt real – and now it really and truly fucking is. I understood that a massive paradigm shift was occurring, and that it would likely be ugly, bringing all the poison up to the surface. I don’t know why I imagined it would be gentler than this, or that common sense, good judgment, and justice would prevail. I truly thought that our next president would be a woman, and that this would be the turning of an ancient tide. I was wrong, and I’m starting to understand why. I am horrified, and I am afraid. I don’t want to be, but I am. It can be a little paralyzing, that fear that makes you want to turn everything off, all the screens, all the lights. Hide under the covers, hide away. If the monsters can’t see you, they’ll go away. But they won’t. The monsters are here to stay, it looks like. There is no vanquisher, no silvery warrior riding in at the last minute to set things right, chase the baddies down into their suck-holes, slimy tails slithering behind them. I mean – I haven’t quite given up hope yet, but we’re cutting it so close here. This feels like one of those bad dreams you keep trying to wake up from, but every time you slam the door and run outside, you find yourself still in the room with the bogeyman. He’s coming towards to, reaching out his hands to grab you where the sun don’t shine, and you can’t move, can’t scream, can’t wake up. He is in power now.
What can we do? Well, a lot actually. Hopefully you have read all the articles explaining how, written the letters, signed the petitions, called your representatives every day, rang their phones off the wall. I know there are a lot of resources out there for how and where and why to get motivated and pitch in, organize, participate in active resistance to this heinous bullshit. I won’t compile all that here for you, because I think (I hope) you already have access to that information, and are acting on it. There’s a lot of good stuff out there, ways to help, ways to find something to do. We have to. We must. Because with so many of us being hit by this blow right in the old nervous system, our animal selves are going into fight, flight or freeze. A few immediately talking of running, taking flight – but I don’t actually know anyone who is actively planning to move to Canada, or any other country as a result of this tainted election. We have to stay and fight. This is our home. We have to stay present, stay deeply grounded and rooted in our communities, in our bodies, in our truth. To keep from going into that paralysis place, playing possum, shut down – that happens. I’m seeing a lot of people I love having PTSD reactions from this election. I know I have been – anxiety sweats, legs aching, flooded with cortisol, mind blanking, numbing out.
A series of explosions woke me from peaceful dreams (gathering wet sticks for my dogs to fetch) at 6am the other morning. Men’s voices shouting through a loudspeaker across the street. Flashing blasts that rattled the windows. I rolled to the floor & grabbed blindly for my phone to call 911, thinking it was crazed white supremacists lobbing bombs into the nearby projects. Crouching near the window, trying to deduce what was happening – I thought the voice on the loudspeakers was yelling something about WWIII. I slowly realized it was the police, with a search warrant for an apartment across the street. Flash grenades are a diversion tactic. This kind of action is especially terrifying for anyone with PTSD. My legs turned to jelly, cowering against the bed. Instant fight/flight/freeze all at once, nervous system glitching. It took a long time to settle down. Is this normal? My neighbor frantically texting, asking me if I was okay. She thought the same thing was happening, and I can’t help wondering if our minds went there because we’re both Jews.
Later that afternoon, I received a disturbing prank call, from two ranting men talking over me and laughing. They called back after I hung up, and left a message questioning “why I would have an immigrant on my answering machine in Trump’s America”. They accused me of being the devil, threatened bad Yelp reviews, and told me that they’d be sending their pastor over my way. To do what, I’m not sure. I don’t want to know. It freaked me out though, that dude-bro bullying – being ganged up on in a way I hadn’t experienced since school days. It’s such an effective way to make you shrink immediately – as if being small would help you escape their notice. Back hunched, always looking over your shoulder. When I went to check the mail, it was with trepidation. Would they be waiting around the corner to jump me? Would my fence be sprayed with a swastika? I grew up with this, expecting this, confronting this kind of feeling nearly every day. Our country feels like one big high school, with the loudest and meanest swinging baseball bats, thoroughly savoring their rage. The jerks are on the loose. It felt exhausting to be taunted like that, after such a brief night of interrupted sleep, after giving of myself, my energy, trying to help people all day. I give my work my all, trying to offer compassionate spiritual service to those who come to me in pain, in fear.
I think of all the people I know, working every day in the trenches, trying to do some good for and with the people who need it most, and how beat down and worn out most of them were feeling, even before the election. What now? When I came back from Morocco, I expected to have a lot of people coming to see me for tarot readings – but I expected them to be shattered, depressed, broken. Many are, of course. It’s really hard to not be. The surprising thing is that most have been coming to me on fire, wanting to know how they can best be of service, motivated to get involved, to contribute, to be active in the resistance. To fight! Let’s be ferocious warriors of love. I’m seeing the women come together in such a powerful way – inspiring each other and encouraging each other forward. In this post, I’ve shared images of warrior women that inspire me to be braver, more determined, more fearless. Let’s build each other up, and keep each other strong. Let’s make sure we have the backs of those who lose their hope and are deep in despair. Don’t let them get trampled under the dark waves. Lift them back up. Protect those who are being attacked. Defend them, stand up for them, and for what you know is right. Give of yourself, show up, and don’t be silent. Don’t you dare just shrug and turn away, Don’t you dare think that the jerks won’t come for you, because eventually – they likely will.
Help in the way you are best equipped to help. Help through empathy, not pity or sympathy. Give in such a way that you can honestly say, “It is my pleasure.” Do your one small piece, do the thing that you do, or the many things – but do them often, regularly. Do them in such a way that you do not get overwhelmed, burnt out, and just shut down. You cannot fix it all. It is too big. But you can offer your little pieces, with a fierce and determined heart full of love. This is how we make shift. This is how we can be the change we want to see. Keep on doing what you do. Do it more. Be kinder, more patient – with yourself, and especially with strangers. The more you learn how to fill up your cup, the more you have to offer. It will be important to stay in a place where we can always treat strangers with graciousness. Even if we’re in a bad mood, or feel that they’re messing up. I’m working on this a lot lately. Let’s treat each other with extreme gentleness. Rumi said: “be with those who help your being.”
Be with those who help your being.
Don’t sit with indifferent people, whose breath
comes cold out of their mouths.
Not these visible forms, your work is deeper.
A chunk of dirt thrown in the air breaks to pieces.
If you don’t try to fly,
and so break yourself apart,
you will be broken open by death,
when it’s too late for all you could become.
Leaves get yellow. The tree puts out fresh roots
and makes them green.
Why are you so content with a love that turns you yellow?
– Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
Surround yourself with the people who fill up your cup rather than drain it, or spit bile into it. Make meals together, tell stories. Circle the wagons, cozy up. We’re in it for a long haul here, it looks like. Who are your people? Make room for them. I tell this to myself, most of all.
I have thought often of Sister Simone Campbell’s revelatory words of wisdom on how to be spiritually bold when I heard her interviewed by Krista Tippett from On Being:
“One is the doing something. I sometimes think we, in the United States, think we ought to do something about everything and that it’s my job to fix everything. Well it’s not. That’s way beyond us. It’s more important, I think, that we listen deeply to our stories and then see where it leads. And that’s the piece. If we all do our part in community… Whatever our part is. Just do one thing. That’s all we have to do. But the guilt of the — or the curse of the progressive, the liberal, the whatever is that we think we have to do it all. And then we get overwhelmed. And I get all those solicitations in the mail. And I can’t do everything. And so I don’t do anything. But that’s the mistake. Community is about just doing my part.
I think doing your part is the toughest as a young person because you’re finding your place — you’re finding your place. And so the challenge always is looking to the future. It looks dark. When I was in our formation program in the community, this one retreat guy giving us a retreat said that faith was walking through a mist with your eyes wide open. And that’s what it feels like when you’re trying to find your place. But then the amazing thing is to look back. It looks like it all was a straight line. You can see the straight line of light and that makes us who we are. And so I refer to the groping in the dark and that piece of listening for the nudges and paying attention, paying attention to where the nudges are. And don’t procrastinate too much. Just do it. Act on it. And you’ll know the right way for you forward. If you find yourself not doing anything, beginning to save yourself — ‘I can’t do that, and I can’t do that’ — it’s because you’ve got too many ideas in your head. You’ve got to — focus can help. At least, that’s what happens to me.
For me, the religious life is about deep listening to the needs around us. The question becomes, ‘Am I responding in generosity? Am I responding in selfishness? Am I responding in a way that builds up people around me, that builds me up, that is respectful of who I am?’ All of those questions are at the heart of how we discern best steps forward.
It really is that inside listening to where you’re being called. And what do you — what gift do you have to offer to the situation? You could offer a bunch of lamentation, but lamentation doesn’t often help. And — but what gift do you have to offer in this — to this situation? Who can you connect with? Where — what can you offer? Now, the other piece is, is we can lament a lot, but the other piece that I haven’t really talked about it all and — but I goof off a lot — is joy. That joy is at the heart of this journey. And if we — too often, progressives are really grim. I mean, it’s not a very good advertisement. “Come join us. We’re so miserable.”
I mean, that really isn’t — because the amazing wonder is that we get to live this life in relationship. We do live in an amazing country as painful as it is with our arrogance. We get to know all kinds of people. We live in a hugely complex, multicultural setting, which is not shared in very many places in our world. There are tremendous possibilities. And I get to be here and talk with you all. I mean, that’s fabulous. So the giving, the finding your niche is about life giving and enjoying the life that is given to you and to others in the process.”
– Sister Simone Campbell
Cheyenne or Arapaho woman Pretty Nose at Fort Keogh, Montana, United States. She is wearing cloth dress with woven cloth belt and buffalo robe, as well as earrings, bracelet, rings and necklace. Collotype. 1879
I don’t know where now I first came across these words, or who originally wrote them. If you know, please tell me so I can give credit where it’s due. But I want to share them all the same, because I think these are truths to sit with:
“There’s a surge of divine feminine energy within us at this moment. We are undergoing a spiritual mutation of sorts. As we have entered the Aquarian age – there is a prediction that 1/3 of the world will commit suicide, 1/3 will go mad, and 1/3 will awaken. Earth IS shifting us vibrationally so that we do not kill her. Those of us who awaken will be the ones to survive. In order for our species to survive we need to function more from an empathetic state. This state is achieved through self-love, self-actualization, and service. It is no longer about status, but what we can give. We are no longer in the age where “me” and “how far I can get” is important. This is why we have a lot of people committing suicide in recent years, and why more and more people are turning to pharmaceuticals as they experience the intensity of this shift. Those of us who have stepped out of the illusion, who have experienced these gifts – it is from a place of love and service that we help our fellow beings. These gifts enable you to be of service from the shift of living from ego to living from spirit. The old way of living is done, if you’re reading these words – it’s over, that life, that you…gone. You can choose to delude yourself for some time, but know that the truth will never be dampened. You will always know and carry within you the truth of your spirit. You will face the dark and illuminate yourself. You will purge fears, egotistical chokeholds, and limitations. You will trip and fall many times, and then there will come a time where you do not trip so much. Where you live from the heart and can feel the world. Her rocks, her crevices, her breath, and her warnings. That time is now. Face your inner sun, and let it guide you. This is part of the shift from “me” to “we”. Every person is important. Every being is important. If you have this ability, you signed up for this role. Here are the beginning tools. They wouldn’t have been presented to you if some part of you was not looking for them. Grow, and expand. We need your love, we need your light, and we need you to be who you really are.”
“Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim is from the Sahel region of Chad, where devastating droughts and floods are now the norm. As co-chair of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change, Ibrahim works to contain the humanitarian and ecological fallout from the vanishing of Lake Chad, a lifeline for an estimated 30 million people in Chad, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Niger. ‘If women come together, they can have more impact than any agreement, than any negotiations,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Because we know that the future — it’s coming from us.’”– From The Glowing Colours
I’ve shared this quote before, but I think it’s never been more relevant than it is now, so here you go:
“The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.” – T. H. White
After the Election: Buddhist Wisdom for Hope and Healing
Toward a Worldwide Culture of Love – by bell hooks
“This is always the measure of mindful practice—whether we can create the conditions for love and peace in circumstances that are difficult, whether we can stop resisting and surrender, working with what we have, where we are.
Fundamentally, the practice of love begins with acceptance — the recognition that wherever we are is the appropriate place to practice, that the present moment is the appropriate time. But for so many of us our longing to love and be loved has always been about a time to come, a space in the future when it will just happen, when our hungry hearts will finally be fed, when we will find love.”
– bell hooks
Sojourner Truth – Civil Rights Activist, Women’s Rights Activist
We’re heading into dark times. This is how to be your own light in the Age of Trump – by Sarah Kendzior
“I want you to write about who you are, what you have experienced, and what you have endured.
Write down what you value; what standards you hold for yourself and for others.
Write about your dreams for the future and your hopes for your children.
Write about the struggle of your ancestors and how the hardship they overcame shaped the person you are today.
Write your biography, write down your memories. Because if you do not do it now, you may forget.
Write a list of things you would never do. Because it is possible that in the next year, you will do them.
Write a list of things you would never believe. Because it is possible that in the next year, you will either believe them or be forced to say you believe them.”
And so we press on in an attempt to achieve presence, wanting to contain it in our simple hands, in the overcrowded gaze and in the speechless heart. We try to become present. And so, the pain.
– Rainer Maria Rilke
Notes from the Resistance: A Column on Language and Power – Summer Brennan, In Defense of Linguistic Infrastructure
“No one person can defend everything in America that will need defending in the age of Trump. What we must do, instead, is to find our particular hills to defend, and then to defend them as if our freedom depended on it. Even if these battles are lost, the very act of writing down the progression of that loss, as Winston did, is an act of resistance. The hijacking of public language, as is happening now, is a way to shift perception—to bend and control thought—and must be resisted.
I would like to invite readers to join me in doing this. Get a diary or journal and write down as many words as you can that relate to the things that you value. Fascism favors sameness; it represents a desertification of language and thinking. You can fight sameness with diversity. Inside this thought-desert, we must learn to be jungle oases. If you plan to defend nature, write down the names of birds and landscape as a start. Write phoebe, warbler, wren, heron, starling, swift, swallow. Write dale, dell, coppice, coomb, swale, swarth. Let your language soar and spread. Get closer and write root, leaf, stem, stamen, stigma, filament, sepal, pistil, petal. Write down how the world and words around you change.”
I wrote this the morning I discovered the election results, way out in the wilds of the Atlas Mountains:
This feels so goddamn heavy. It just really hit me, and waves of grief & hot tears. Last night I lay in bed fervently praying for a miracle – and instead a different truth came to me: I remembered that I am a healer, & that the world will need us all to remember our purposes, our reasons for being here – and wake up fully to offer our love and light and strength and fierceness and wisdom to the world. The artists, writers, musicians, warriors for good must rise up together and commit to our lives and our work, our joy and our communities. The time for complacency and distraction, for division and numbness is over. Feel your fear, honor your despair – but don’t let it win. Don’t let him win. He can’t have our hearts, our minds, our spirits. Stay strong, brothers and sisters. Let’s keep each other whole.
Norns of Winter – Solstice Wishes
by angeliska on December 21, 2016
Last night was the longest and darkest night in 500 years, or so I was told… I was up late writing, and the moon shone bright over my backyard, illuminating the bare trees and dead leaves. Tonight I honor the completion of a vow of celibacy I made on the Summer Solstice – a promise to myself to reevaluate my relationship to love and sexuality. I learned a lot during this time, and grew so much. It was an amazing experience, and I recommend it to anyone needing to reconnect to their own Eros energy and reclaim that power. Perhaps I’ll write about it more at some point, but for now I just want to acknowledge that work and its completion. Full circle – promesa completa.
I woke this sunny, glorious Winter Solstice morning feeling hopeful and excited to honor this sacred holiday with ritual and an enormous bonfire! This feels like an important time to gather, to huddle close together. I want to honor the darkness within us and all around us. This moment, more than every before, we must learn how to not take for granted the luxuries of warmth, of light, of full bellies and friendships. I don’t believe that freedom should be a luxury – but it’s becoming apparent that the freedoms many of us have gotten used to enjoying may soon be infringed upon by more megalomaniacal madmen. People are feeling the darkness, feeling the fear. For centuries, this season was a season of death – where surviving another brutal winter was not a given – not assumed. We needed the brightness and the sweetness, the sparkle and the candles. We needed to be together and make magic so that we would not lose our hope. That is why this holiday is so important to me – and tonight more than ever. Acknowledge the dark, and its lessons. It’s time to wake up. The light is coming back. Find the tiny spark within you, and blow it into flame. Find it in the ones you love – don’t let each other’s sparks burn out. Keep the light in you blazing. Your fierce fire is needed now, more than ever. Share your light.
The Norns twist our fates, threads woven and stretched, combed and cut, twining in their long grey fingers. Trust the turnings, though they seem tangled and torn. Greater powers than we are at work. Wake up. Hold your hands around your heart like a candle. Protect your flame.
Here I am, dressed as Snow Queen–Ice Witch–Norn of Winter for last year’s Midwinter Night’s Dream – the 3rd Annual 12th Night Austin Parade + Costumed Ball.
Last year’s celebration was so magical… Sadly, we must take a break from making it all happen, but you can relive our dream of a winter’s night parade here:
12th Night Austin from Justin Wilson on Vimeo.
Major thanks to Justin Wilson of Leaders & Flares for this magical capture!
The Norns: Urd, Verdandi and Skuld, 1930, by Charles E. Brock. Illustrations and Color Plates for The Heroes of Asgard by Annie and Eliza Keary
“The origin of the name norn is uncertain, it may derive from a word meaning ‘to twine’ and which would refer to their twining the thread of fate. Bek-Pedersen suggests that the word norn has relation to the Swedish dialect word norna (nyrna), a verb that means ‘secretly communicate’. This relates to the perception of norns as shadowy, background figures who only really ever reveal their fateful secrets to men as their fates come to pass.”
“Another old norse thing – especially of interest to those who like the Norns – is the concept of Nornegröt (“porridge of the norns”). It is a porridge given to the new mother right after her having a child and then as a sacrifice to the Norns. Usually three small sticks are placed upright in the porridge to represent the Norns. Once tasted it is placed under a tree as a sacrifice to the Goddesses. This could be an Ashen tree or an Elder tree. This is also known by other names such as Sarakkagröt and Barselgröt.
More about this custom can be found in Harald Grundströms article “Sarakkagröt – nornegröt – barselgröt – lystenbit” from 1956.” – from Trolldom & Hoodoo
Oh what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and equinox. This is what is the matter with us, we are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table.‘ — D.H. Lawrence
Gustav Adolf Mossa
Jean-François Millet, Nuit Étoilée (Starry Night), c. 1851
Solstice Night
To Winter
O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors:
The north is thine; there hast thou built thy dark
Deep-founded habitation. Shake not they roofs
Nor bend they pillars with thine iron car.
He hears me not, but o’er the yawning deep
Rides heavy; his storms are unchain’d, sheathed
In ribbed steel; I dare not life mine eyes;
For he hath rear’d his scepter o’er the world.
Lo! now the direful monster, whose skin clings
To his strong bones, strides o’er the groaning rocks:
He withers all in silence, and in his hand
Unclothes the earth, and freezes up frail life.
He takes his seat upon the cliffs, the mariner
Cries in vain. Poor little wretch! that deal’st
With storms, till heaven smiles, and the monster
Is driven yelling to his caves beneath Mount Hecla.
– William Blake
Av Theodor Severin Kittelsen
“Crystal Palace by John Richter ”
Frost Flowers – It is as beautiful as it is rare. A frost flower is created on autumn or early winter mornings when ice in extremely thin layers is pushed out from the stems of plants or occasionally wood. This extrusion creates wonderful patterns which curl and fold into gorgeous frozen petioles giving this phenomenon both its name and its appearance…
Found on A Winter’s Tale: To wholly consort with mirth and with sport, to drive the cold winter away
holy tree
[BRING ME BACK A DOG // THE NORNS]
I’m not happy being a person, 3liza!! I wish my hands were paws, I wish I was a dog.
☾ Problem Glyphs is a project by Eliza Gauger in which sigils are drawn in response to problems you send in. There are over 200 glyphs so far.
☾ Four lessons of the winter season by Karen Clarke – from Beth Maiden’s Little Red Tarot
☾ Trickster, woman, and the long dark
written by Sharon Blackie
☾ The Lost Female Figures of Christmas – Part I
☾ The Lost Female Figures of Christmas – Part II
☾ How ‘hygge’ can help you get through winter
The vague cultural concept doesn’t translate easily into English, but it has helped Denmark become the ‘happiest country on Earth’ despite long, dark winters.
☾ A Single Woman Is a Witch: Battling to Save the Art Environment of Mary Nohl
☾ THE MONSTERS OF CHRISTMAS
I wrote about Norne from Slumberhouse a few years back I know, but I’m still obsessed with it – and expecially love wearing it at this time of year. The descriptions and reviews just send me:
“Sunnesette claret embere stains the skie a lustre frigid blush, valel kidelene snowing stars to drope like feathers at a pineneedle floor; lofty wintrus seafrost aerate procede a causatume caesura of incandescence midnight mane, shone crilliant coruscate flitterous & blusterous frore gale of December’s lurid boreale breath[.]
[Notes:] fogcaked needle, lichen, fern, moss, hemlock, incense”
Slumberhouse Norne: Tolkien’s Forest from Kafkaesque
The Bridegroom of Snow: Ancient Carols and Folk-Song for an Albion Winter
By Michael Tanner
“For the Winter Solstice, Michael Tanner (Plinth, United Bible Studies, The A. Lords) has very kindly put together another fine Solstice Mix…
This is another collection of hymns, carols, folk standards and field-recordings from the past 800 years. Many of these artists carry over from the previous FRUK mix put together a few years back – which made me wonder why, despite several attempts, so few artists manage to evoke winter particularly well? In my opinion, these are the select few that stand up to scrutiny. Whether it’s the pointed, bird-like quality of Jean Ritchie’s bare-branch voice or the hollow, reverent filigree of Dolly Collins portative organ, something about their use of minimalism perfectly captures the stark landscape, stripped of colour and commotion. A place which, when fortified and protected, is not an unpleasant place to be.”
Creative Costumes of Still-Practiced Pagan Rituals of Europe
Coil || A White Rainbow ( Winter Solstice :North )
My writings from Winter Solstices of yore:
☾ SOLSTICE SISTERS
☾ PERCHTA
☾ POMEGRANATE STAR RITUAL FOR THE WINTER SOLSTICE
☾ COLD WINTER MOON, SOLSTICE BLUE
☾ WINTER SOLSTICE – BRIGHT STARS + FIRELIGHT
☾ WINTER SOLSTICE – BLOOD MOON
☾ Winter Solstice – Messe de Minuit
☾ Winter Solstice – Dark Season
Ô Saisons, ô Châteaux !
by angeliska on November 5, 2016
Ô saisons ô châteaux,
Quelle âme est sans défauts ?
Ô saisons, ô châteaux,
J’ai fait la magique étude
Du Bonheur, que nul n’élude.
Ô vive lui, chaque fois
Que chante son coq gaulois.
Mais ! je n’aurai plus d’envie,
Il s’est chargé de ma vie.
Ce Charme ! il prit âme et corps.
Et dispersa tous efforts.
Que comprendre à ma parole ?
Il fait qu’elle fuie et vole !
Ô saisons, ô châteaux !
Et, si le malheur m’entraîne,
Sa disgrâce m’est certaine.
Il faut que son dédain, las !
Me livre au plus prompt trépas !
– Ô Saisons, ô Châteaux !
Well, they say in Texas that if you don’t like the weather – just wait around five minutes and it’ll change! Or was that Mark Twain about New England? Anyway, we’ve definitely adopted it as truth down here, and it just goes to show… Since my last post about it being so unseasonably damn hot and dry, a blessed cool front rolled in (finally!) and a raucous rainstorm soaked us good. The turning of seasons always feels poignant to me, and I seek to mark it, always coming to write here so as not to let it get away from me. And thus, this space has become a place where I remark upon the changing light and apologize to unknown readers for not writing more often, not posting any kind of regular updates about this and that in the way I used to. I don’t need to, in the way I once seemed to – or, I only need to sometimes. And this is one of those odd times – up late when I should be sleeping and enjoying a last night of rest in my sweet bed after hours of meticulous over packing. I fly to Morocco in the morning. Ever since Hurricane Katrina, international travel has felt dire to me. I didn’t realize it until the summer before last, when I flew to Colombia. It was the first time I’d left the country in ten years. The last time before that, I’d been a month in Serbia, Greece and Spain with my grandfather, and flew back two days before the storm hit. It didn’t occur to me until I was having a fairly severe panic attack en route to the airport to fly to Bogota, and took me a while to calm down and realize what it was all about. My body remembered, a glitch in my nervous system, telling me: “The last time I went far away like this, I came back and my life was irrevocably changed.” I was convinced on some deep level that it was the last time I would ever see my house, my dogs, my friends. Because that did happen once before. The last time.
I’ve been musing on the fact that not everyone obsesses about tying up loose ends before an international vacation. That they just excitedly get ready, and go – on a relaxing and enjoyable vacation. I’m trying to get my brain around that part, and it may catch up and hit me somewhere over the Atlantic tomorrow night that I’m about to have an enormous amount of fun, and be completely dazzled by the wonders of Marrakech and the bright stars above the Sahara. In the meantime, I’m mildly freaking out about the scores of emails I never wrote, thank you cards not sent, writing my will, kissing my dogs goodbye seventeen times (apiece), and you know – other important stuff like writing this. Why so dire? I have been reaching out to friends I haven’t talked to in a while, and feeling bad about the ones I haven’t made contact with yet. Because what if I die? What if that giant meteor everyone wants to vote for hits us and we all die? I know it’s not logical at all – that it’s my nervous system doing its weird PTSD thing, but it still seems very possible to me. I’ve been thinking about mortality a lot – in a good way, rather than in shitty morbid way (a la my teenage years). It’s part of why I jumped at the chance to go on this adventure to Morocco despite the fact that it’s financially a little terrifying for me right now. Because life is short, and what if this is my only chance to go? I don’t want to leave this earth having never seen Morocco. Not to mention that I get to go with a fantastic crew of my favorite folks, and celebrate my best friend’s birthday! What could be more amazing than that? I think the word for what I’m feeling is “anxietment”. It’s like excitement, but with anxiety added! I’m like a dog that loves to go places but feels worried about riding in the car. Kind of happy nervous panting. I’ve been reading Paul Bowles again before this trip (of course), and thinking about his wise words that I’m sure I’ve referenced here at least once or twice before. They’re so true, I don’t mind doing so again:
“Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don’t know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It’s that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don’t know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”
― Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
and this too:
“The only thing that makes life worth living is the possibility of experiencing now and then a perfect moment. And perhaps even more than that, it’s having the ability to recall such moments in their totality, to contemplate them like jewels.”
― Paul Bowles, The Spider’s House
I’ve been focusing on that more and more – staying present for those miraculously perfect moments, and realizing that my life is wonderfully full of them! I am happier and more content than I have been in years – and it’s an amazing feeling. A hard earned place to arrive at, after a lot of really deep healing work, internal metamorphosis, and growth. I had to walk through a lot of darkness, loneliness, fear and fire to get here. I know how quickly it can all change, so I seek to savor it, to stay in this place of remembering how to connect to the source of my own joy as much as possible. I learned that when you protect yourself from pain, you also protect yourself from joy. So I get to see what’s possible when I open my heart completely to both. In some ways, even if I did die tomorrow (or the next day, or the next) I like to think that I’d die happy and content with the life I’ve lived. I several books in me it would severely pain me not to have gotten written. I want to be a published author. (Though, as of this year, I am! See below…) I have a lot of love I’d still like to share. So much more I want to learn in my time here, places I want to travel to, experiences I definitely want to see and feel and know. So I plan to stay alive, for a long, long time, actually. And to stay in this place of strange and surprising happiness as much as I possibly can. It is a choice, sometimes. To be responsible for your own happiness, and responsible for your own suffering (and therefore, not responsible for anyone else’s happiness, or anyone else’s suffering!) Pain is part of life. Not negotiable. It exists for a reason. Suffering is optional. I keep trying to remember that! In the meantime, I will recall and contemplate the bright autumn light, garlands of flowers made for summer queens, morning glories gloriously tangling up fences, all the wonders of my garden, all the love that surrounds me, all the joys I can choose to honor every day. I don’t think I really understood gratitude practice until this year. Not really. But I’m starting to – and it feels so good. I have so much that I am deeply grateful for. It’s really something.
I found this creature on the ground at Barton Springs Pool. I feel like it looks like a goblin child’s toy, dropped as it ran to hide from prying human eyes…
I am so honored and thrilled to have two of my poems published in this amazing Folk Horror Revival’s incredible new anthology Corpse Roads. An epic collection of spellbinding poetry, focusing on folk horror, life, death and the eeriness of the landscape by many creative talents both living and departed. 100% of sales profits from this book are charitably donated to The Wildlife Trusts.
Happiness
O seasons, O castles,
What soul is blameless?
O seasons, O castles,
I pursued the magic lore
Of Happiness, which no one escapes.
Oh long live to it, every time
That the Gallic cock crows.
But! I shall never want again,
It has taken charge of my life.
That Charm! it took hold of soul and body,
And dissipated every effort.
What to understand about my words?
It makes it flee and vanish into air!
O seasons, O castles!
And, if misfortune takes me away,
Its disgrace with me will be certain.
Its contempt will take me, alas!
To the quickest death!
– O seasons, O castles!
What soul is blameless?
From THE POEMS LOOKED AT: or, NOTES
“Happiness, By Arthur Rimbaud. 1958. It is good to have Rimbaud tell us that the going after happiness is as inevitable for a person as being affected by gravity is for a solid object. The light and the heavy are in seasons and castles, time and edifices. And Rimbaud tells us happiness is a magic study, but we have to give ourselves to it. — As a cock in France crows, you can hail energy in any living being concerned with happiness. Something in us can, irritatingly to self, use self-importance against happiness; but this is a burden. Self-importance can seem to be a charm, but it scatters the energy of self and body. — Again, we must put together the non-weighing seasons and the weighing castles — though both seasons and castles have shape of a kind. — When one definitely goes away from happiness — the hour of flight — death will be yielded to. — Therefore, again, O seasons — O time as visible; and O castles — O weight as white and distant.”
From Hail, American Development (Definition Press)
© 1968 by Eli Siegel
And here’s another little poem fragment I found somewhere that wants to be here too:
The Crypts
Here
in this church
put away
the girls sleep
lemon trees
the boys sleep
cypruses
the old men sleep
torn up by the roots
the women sleep
splintered doors
the children sleep
dried apples
Greek, anonymous, from “Selected Translations.”
Ciao for now, y’all. Thank you for reading.
Texas Holy Water
by angeliska on November 3, 2016
Is it November, or is it still August? It’s hard to tell honestly – hard to say that Fall has come here, because the earth is cracked and the leaves are crisped, but not with winter’s chill. Sweat still trickles down my backbone, bristles my brow, taints my bangs into wet swirls pasted to my forehead. Our recent local Halloween parade was a sweltering procession in damp costumes, flags and banners hanging limply as we wound our way through dark streets and overgrown alleyways. No hint of crisp in the air, no wind, no shiver – except for the internal shudder that we’re setting new and terrible records for the hottest days in recorded memory. For years, the summer doldrums would often keep me from writing, being unwilling to sit with a hot and whirring computer perched on my lap. I would always rather be doing something else in summer, getting outside, swimming or running around with my dogs. Autumn feels like the perfect time to curl up cozy with a cup of tea and write. So, for many years in a row, I would find myself sharing something I had started writing in the hottest days of summer, but never got around to posting until fall. I would warranting this oversight with the fact that it still in fact, felt like summer. I remember writing that in September, maybe a couple times in October. But never in November – until now. It’s hot, y’all. Hot enough that I want to still go jump in the springs, dive in the river. It feels wrong, and weird, and maybe like it’s our new normal. We had such a rainy spring and summer, and were blessed with sweet water in the creeks (though many were cursed here in Texas with flooding and downed trees). I think about water all the time – my heart’s element, blessed restorer, healer, mother essence. It is such a sacred substance.
Some nights I lay awake and can’t sleep, thinking about the countless factories churning out countless plastic doodads to be sold in countless stores only to then be discarded and tossed aside to join the flood of garbage that clogs our waterways, our oceans, the bellies of our sea animal friends. How can I even can them my friends, when I do so little to protect them? When I sip my iced coffee from a disposable straw, out of a plastic cup, purchase my countless seemingly needful items encased in cellophane wrappers. It is so hard to effect real, radical change as one person, and even then – what? What then? Some days it feels too late. I started writing this as a happy piece – about the blessing of clear, clean water we enjoy in nature here in Austin. I’ve been thinking about how much we take it for granted, assume it will always be there. Lately, I’ve been thinking about this when I shower or take a bath – what a miracle it is to have hot water to wash in, clean water to drink, water to flush the toilet, to wash my dirty clothes. What luxury we live in, and how little we realize it.
Every day, my news feed (on social media) is rife with stories and videos about the water protectors protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline. I listen to the news nearly every day, and so rarely hear any stories on what is happening there. Mainstream media isn’t taking much action to report the violence being committed against peaceful protestors who are putting their bodies on the line to protect this precious resource that we all require for our survival. It is time to have awareness about out world, and the ways it is irrevocably changing. It is time to realize that mere awareness is not enough. How will you contribute to making changes for the better, to fighting the good fight, to walking a path that honors the life-blood of the Earth? How will I?
This message came to my inbox while I was writing this, from one of our beloved local community groups here in Austin. Here’s one very easy way to offer your assistance:
“Austin Stands With Standing Rock
As you all know by now, the world is watching the events unfold at the Standing Rock camp in South Dakota. This past weekend, friends of this community were arrested for doing their part in protecting the water. Cars were impounded, lives are placed on hold.
The work the native peoples and their supporters are doing in opposition to this pipeline is not just about protecting their families and their water, they are standing up for all of us, for our water and in defense of our Mother Earth. They are bravely standing strong in the face of armed resistance, fast approaching inclement weather and the general hardships of maintaining camp out in the open, round the clock.
Bob is headed up this week to help where he can. We are asking you, the community, to contribute any financial support that you can, along with your prayers, in this time of need. Any funds that you may have to share will go a long way and will be deeply appreciated.
The supply drives have been a huge success (thank you!) and now, one of the best ways to help is to directly support those on the front lines by donating funds to post bail which is averaging over $1500 per person, as well as impounded vehicle fees and upcoming legal fees.
Please send any donations that you can contribute to the following PayPal address:
austin4standingrock@icloud.com
Bob will take the donations up with him and help those arrested this past weekend. Please help where you can… Even small contributions from everyone could really add up. If you do not have a PayPal account or would like to support another way, please respond to this message.
Thank you for your support, prayers & solidarity.
– Sanctuary Council”
My favorite summer moments were spent in the company of these two magical beings (my dear friend Allyson, and her dog Neville) down by the water. At least once a week, we try to get our butts down to the greenbelt to savor the sacred springs! It’s heaven.
So yes. I wrote this months ago, but want to share now, even though it feels odd to. It feels like a good time to acknowledge the magic and beauty of what we have – so that we might be even more inspired to advocate for it.
When August finally comes in Texas, it feels like hitting the final stretch of a marathon – we’re exhausted but determined, almost totally spent, but somehow with a gritting of teeth we push on, knowing that the end is in sight. If we can just make it through August, school will start and the populations of students and teachers start buzzing as they fill the hives again with their studious industry. September will arrive eventually and usually not really be any cooler, but there’s a sense of hope in the air, instead of the blatant desperation rising up from the baked earth, the pitiful trod upon greenery crisping brown at the edges, the trees aching for rain.
We had a very rainy spring here, so the greenbelt has had plentiful water nearly all summer. Last week, when a surprise thunderstorm or two rolled through, the whole city sighed with relief. Earlier that day, I had embraced my ailing and much beloved lacebark elm, asking it silently, “What do you need? What will make you better?” The answer came quickly, a ragged sigh that echoed in my bones: WATER! Please, please, water. I looked up at the bright blue sky through its browning leaves and tattered branches and wished hard. Two hours later, fat drops pelted my grateful face – even though no storms had been predicted hours before. Weather witch’s water wishes, and likely not just mine.
I started waking up earlier this summer, trying to shift from my usual nocturnal ways because it’s cooler in the mornings, and you can get down to the water before everyone else and their dogs and their kids clutter the air with barking and laughter. I don’t mind them really, but one of my dogs (not mentioning any names, MOON) likes to bark even more raucously at other dogs and children, and it can be stressful. We try to go about once a week, if not more – but last week, almost no one was there. The water had receded and was murkier than it had been all summer. Fat dragonflies skated over the slow ripples, while huge black turkey buzzards soared over the bluffs. A heavy knotted rope hung listlessly from an oak branch, bereft of the elated bodies, full of bravado, that normally swung from it into the green deep.
Moon learned to swim recently, something I wasn’t sure she’d ever be capable of, having only three legs. She’s a very determined girl, though – and she’d follow me anywhere. At the beginning of the summer, she just barked frantically when I swam more than a few feet away from her. Grrizelda isn’t a huge fan of swimming, but is also the most loyal of beasts, and so will paddle out to me with a concerned expression on her seal-like face pushing out of the water, making little squeaks and whimpers, her black clawed paws scrabbling at me. I took Moon out of the shallows one day, with my arms supporting her belly, guiding and gliding her through the deeper water – the way you teach a little kid to swim. She seemed confused and freaked out, so I didn’t push her too much – but the next time we went to the river, she surprised me by swimming right past and making out for the far shore. I had to swim after and spin her around – but she did great. Only one front leg to paddle with, but the kid’s a natural. Talk about determined.
Look at her go! I’m so proud of my little three-legged doggie for taking to the water like a true mermaid this year. I wasn’t sure she would ever be able to really manage it, but she has truly surprised and delighted me by learning to dog paddle!
My sweet friend Fiona and our pups glorying in the springs.
Barton Springs bliss.
When the greenbelt’s full of water, which it thankfully has been all summer, I wonder why anyone complains about summer in Texas. Every time I’ve gone down there and jumped in, I’ve just been in awe of how beautiful it is, how lovely the cool currents feel on my legs, how gorgeous the sycamore leaves fluttering against the sky and the silvery rapids flowing over the rocks are. It’s free, and there are so many different points on the trails you can get to, so even when it feels crowded, there’s always enough water, always enough shade and sky for everyone to enjoy. I meet people all the time who never, ever venture down into that glory, and I remember being one of those people. What a fool I was! Even when the greenbelt dries up, there’s still Barton Springs – which feels like heaven on earth on a blazing day. It’s paradise there, truly – 68 degrees year round and my favorite shade of nearly black teal at its deepest point. I spend plenty of time during the hottest parts of the day hunkered down in my dim living room, ceiling fan spinning overhead, and the air conditioning blasting. But the water calls to me, beckons me to dip and swirl like a mermaid, cooling down the white hot core of me, so that even a heavy summer night with no breeze feels tolerable. The only way to survive the hot weather down here is to get in the water, as often as you can. People complain of Austin changing (and I used to be one of those people, constantly and vociferously – but that’s really another story), but I say that as long as there’s water in the springs, grackles in the pecan trees, and fireflies in the springtime, I’ll know I’m home. What would happen if that changed, too? Our planet is changing. Surely you feel it? How will we continue to see those changes manifest? How long, really, will we all be able to continue this way? I wonder every day. I want to do more than wonder.
August
No wind, no bird. The river flames like brass.
On either side, smitten as with a spell
Of silence, brood the fields. In the deep grass,
Edging the dusty roads, lie as they fell
Handfuls of shriveled leaves from tree and bush.
But ’long the orchard fence and at the gate,
Thrusting their saffron torches through the hush,
Wild lilies blaze, and bees hum soon and late.
Rust-colored the tall straggling briar, not one
Rose left. The spider sets its loom up there
Close to the roots, and spins out in the sun
A silken web from twig to twig. The air
Is full of hot rank scents. Upon the hill
Drifts the noon’s single cloud, white, glaring, still.
– Lizette Woodworth Reese, 1887
Frog + Toad in August Storms
by angeliska on August 29, 2016
I’ve discovered a strange pattern recently – a restlessness in my spirit that seems to hit me every year around this time, and keeps me from sleep. Some unseen goblin has been sitting on my chest like the one in Fuseli’s painting The Nightmare, although instead of swooning dead away with fright, I am just a tight little ball of nerves, anxiously tossing and turning beneath my thin summer blanket. I normally don’t suffer from insomnia, or don’t notice if I do usually – being habitually such a night owl and giving myself the luxury of staying up most nights as long as I like, writing, reading, puttering or watching movies. When I finally get tired, I go to bed – even if that happens to be 3 or 4am. It used to be even later, when I was really hammering away on something. The wee hours are sacred time, when the rest of the world is fast asleep, and no one is expecting anything of you. But there are times when I’d like to just fall asleep at a normal, reasonable hour, and wake up when the day still feels new – and it’s on those nights lately that my mind races through every regret, every letter and email unanswered (lord, so many!), each and every instance where I meant to be a better person, a better friend, but then disappointed myself, and others. What is it that keeps me up? I can’t quite put my finger on it, because overall right now, I feel very content and for the most part, quite happy. Is it related to my mother’s August death, or Hurricane Katrina, or the demise of my last long-term relationship – all of which gut punched me in August, during the dog days of Southern summer. It must be some elusive muscle memory, an old story only my body remembers, my nervous system engaging back into instinctive flight or fight. It’s something I can’t quite put my finger on, but realizing that it hits me every year is almost a comfort – because maybe next time round, I could actually prepare for it. Stock up on Epsom salt and kava kava, or book more massages. I have to do something, because the cortisol that floods my body makes my limbs contort with stored up tension and ache deep in my joints. Maybe it’s all this rain we’ve been having, the barometric pressure shifts, or the dampness and mold in the air. The no-name storm that squatted malevolently over Louisiana what felt like an eternity finally moved west, and has been doggedly soaking our cracked and crispy Texas soil. We’ve needed it, so I can’t complain, and I am delighted to hear the little tree frogs, golden-eyed peepers that talk to each other quietly all night long. Big chubby-bellied toads hop around the yard, splaying their fat fingers over hundreds of tiny grey mushrooms with moist, tattered caps that will vanish as mysteriously as they appeared, once the rain blows over.
I buried these sweet babies in the roots of my favorite rose bush, so that they might bloom again – in a different form. Every night, their brothers and sisters serenade me in a chorus of gentle peeps, teaching me their language in my sleep.
These days and days of rain were a boon to us, and a bane back east. I’ve written about this before – the mixed up feelings I have when August storms curse the wetlands and coast but bless our parched earth. Hurricane season means we might finally get a blast of rain, but a weakened system, not capable usually of wreaking quite so much havoc. I get hypervigilant around this time of year, keeping an eye on the weather, on the tropical depressions and the threat of whirling winds. Even without a hurricanes in the Gulf (yet, and heavens forfend) this year, Louisiana has been nearly drowned by these persistent rains. They’re saying this is the worst disaster since Hurricane Sandy, and yet I can’t help it – I perceive something a little different in people’s responses and reactions to this kind of shitstorm happening in the deep south. There’s a shrug of the shoulder, a kind of blind eye, a certain diffidence in the body language that I wish I could stop interpreting as, “Well, they do live down there in the swamps anyway…Don’t they know any better?” Maybe I’m wrong about that. I know a lot of people care. But it’s weird to see what people care about, or what their social media feeds tell me they care about, anyway. I get it, it’s not a totally valid source of information to weigh judgment against – and it’s less about judging and more about just inputting the information I come across, and determining what exactly to do with it. I mean. We’re talking about 60,000 homes and businesses. More than two feet of rainfall in three days. One hundred thousand people evacuated. It’s a helluva thing. And it’s here, at home. We can’t just shake our heads when whole towns are underwater. Of course, we’re going to see more and more of this. Much more. It’s easy to become inured to it, to all of it – all the terror, disaster, suffering going down in the world… But if you’ve lived it once before, you can’t just ignore. I can feel the fear and sadness rising up through the roots, blowing through the pines. I want to tell them I’m sorry. So sorry about everything that was lost, everyone that drowned. I hope they find a way to make it right again. It takes some time. And some things never come back together. It’s never the same, after. I know that now.
The recent deluge we experienced for days on end down here in Texas was much needed, but it made me melancholy. I have been feeling extra sensitive, soft underbelly exposed – as vulnerable as these poor sweet tree-frogs I found drowned in the rainwater filled cat food bowls early one morning after a night of storming. It seems strange that an amphibian could drown, but apparently, they can. I mourned these two meeting their fate in this way. It’s rare that I get to see these guys – usually they’re hiding out in dark nooks and crannies around my porches. I love eavesdropping on their conversations (I’m listening to them as I write this). I wonder what they’re saying to each other.
Frog totem brings cleansing. I’ve always known I carry this medicine, even though I resisted it when I was younger. I remember feeling like the ugly Frog Princess around all my swanlike girlfriends. Pale with big eyes and easily hurt feelings, so thin skinned and affected by toxic energy in ways I didn’t even understand at the time. I would hunker down on my little lily pad of self-pity, not realizing what gifts I had. Taking it all so much for granted – the way young folks do. I feel so grateful for my years on this year, and what some maturity has brought me, and taught me. For instance – how lucky I am to have Frog medicine! They leap between worlds, and can cleanse negativity and bad spirits. I keep a little rose quartz frog with me when I read tarot for people, and I know she helps me in my work. Also: I don’t know why I ever thought frogs were ugly. I don’t know how I ever thought I was. We’re not – not at all.
“Frog sings the songs that bring the rain and make the road dirt more bearable.
Frog medicine is akin to water energy, and the South on the medicine wheel. Frog
teaches us to honor our tears, for they cleanse the soul. All water rites belong to Frog,
including all initiations by water.”
From Medicine Cards, by Jamie Sams, and David Carson.
I found a strange thing, a few years back – this mummified toad trapped by a metal star in my yard that I use to cover over a pothole. It was a chilling discovery – imagining this creature stuck and not able to get out… I’ve been thinking about all the crazy water rescues I’ve been seeing videos of – people and animals overtaken by rising floodwaters. I think about the people trapped in their attics in New Orleans, 11 years ago. Trying to hold on, hoping someone would come to the rescue. Sometimes you get saved. Sometimes you don’t. About a year after I found the toad mummy, another toad got trapped in the dastardly star. I know, I should probably just fill that hole in to avoid more toad mishaps, right? But this huge fat toad was stuck in the circle in the center of the star – half in, half out. That circle is about the circumference of a quarter. It was just the damnedest thing. I didn’t know if I should try to pull him out by the legs, or push him on through, but eventually I got him out! A smaller toad was waiting worriedly close by, and I could almost hear her voice talking to her husband, “Murray, I told you you were too fat to go through that hole! But did you listen? Of course not. You gotta lay off those slugs, Murray!”
Poor mister toad. I was grateful to be able to save the one I found, if not his brother. Now I always watch out for them.
A glorious golden thunderstormy afternoon. Everything sparkles and flashes bronze in the setting sun.
I found this big dude chillin’ in my watering can recently and thought maybe he was stuck. So I put him in the garden. Today, he’s back in the can. Sorry, toad friend! The watering can is clearly Barton Springs for toads.
Evening walk after the storm. All is quiet, painted dripping rose gold. The hush of water soaking the earth, and fireflies winking bright into the night air. I know how lucky I am. I count my blessings. The roof over my head. The high ground I live on. All my books out of boxes and up on shelves for the first time since Katrina. I’m home, and I’m safe, and it’s beautiful. I’ve been working really, really hard to make it that way. To convince my nervous system that it’s as okay as the rest of me is. It’s still hard, eleven years later. My lucky number. I’m doing the work. It helps. But the storms keep on coming, and it hurts me to see the water rising, see people losing everything. I remember.
This is from my old friend Desier Galjour in New Orleans – she’s been boots on the ground doing flood relief down there, and I think what she says here is so, so important.
“Thoughts and observations after 2 weeks of helping folks that got flooded out. Going through Katrina has taught me how to deal with events such as these on a purely triage mode mindset. I am able to pinpoint where immediate help is needed, starting from day one helping with rescue efforts. Most people are in a panic and it’s up to us to stay calm and get the job done. Russel Honore has been quite an example, for me since Katrina, on how to do this. Thank you sir. Once folks get to a dry spot the next step is to make sure they are fed, dry, and can have a cot to sleep on. Home base so to speak. The animals that are in need of rescue are next. We got flooded in areas that were filled with livestock, horses, chickens, etc. Not an easy task to get them to dry land and fed. Not to mention most people who donate chow don’t have a feed store in their neighborhood so getting specific feed for all animals is critical. Folks came in from other states, towing their boats, to help rescue folks who were still in floodwaters. Thanks go out to them and I MUST say that local Law Enforcement will continue to deal with flooding and when THEY want some kind of permitting process, so be it. This means that the regular guy from that particular town has a decal on his boat, a laminated card, that states he is prepared and familiar with safety. We need to have this. Why? Because when you get a guy from Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, into a town he has never seen dry, much less flooded, we know a local will be able to partner up with him to continue rescuing folks. The LAST thing we need is a bunch of guys who head into an area they are completely unfamiliar with and now we have to rescue THEM. This IS a safety issue, NOT a money making venture. This is not the first, nor will it be the last, time we have had to deal with being told to stand down. So here we are now getting food and cleaning supplies to as many people as we can. We haven’t stopped. Folks are sleeping in hot tents. Animals are still pouring into shelters, vets, etc. I know this can be tiring to read but it can be exhausting to live through. We have a long way to go and I will continue to collect donations for folks who are so hard headed you have to practically hit them over the head with a bucket of cleaning supplies. I will continue to monitor situations and report to whomever is in charge or can help. I will continue to fight hard for those who are in shock and can’t speak for themselves. Dana DiPerna has been tireless and we are still getting supplies to folks. dgaljour@gmail.com is my Paypal. Second Harvest Food Bank is also awesome if you don’t feel comfortable with donating to a Paypal account. We are in the very beginning stages of this event. Don’t stop paying attention now, please. Thank all y’all.”
and from my friends Jami Girouard and Jay Pennington:
“If you are an able bodied person within the greater New Orleans area and your schedule permits, please try and make it over to an area affected by flooding to help with the gutting process. A big group of us went this Saturday, and it took about 14 of us total to gut an entire 3 bedroom house in a day :: There’s 50,000 of them that need to be gutted. There’s houses where only 2 people are working on them. If it took 14 of us to gut an entire house in a day can you imagine how long it will take 2 people to do that work, especially elderly people or people that aren’t able bodied? It’s exhausting work but our fellow Louisianans need us right now and if you went through Katrina you know how daunting that reality is. Even if you have limited mobility or can’t lift, there’s stuff to sort through and support to give. It’s really devastating over there y’all.”
If you can’t be there physically in person to help, (and aren’t able to make it to my Fais-Do-Do Fundraiser on Wednesday!) but still want to offer assistance, please consider donating to these reputable organizations that are doing great work. Please do not donate to Red Cross. Thank you.
SECOND HARVEST
TOGETHER BATON ROUGE
This mural is from Rayne, Louisiana – Frog Capital of the World! It looks like they’ve taken a fair amount of flooding in all this. I’ve always wanted to go there, for their Frog Festival (though I would never eat frog legs – the horror!) I just wanna hear some good Cajun music and maybe watch some frog races!
We’re putting together a little backyard Fais-do-do Fundraiser to get some money and donations together for the folks affected by the terrible floods in Louisiana. It will take place on Monday evening, August 29th, which is also the 11th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. After losing my home in the storm, I want to honor the day, the dead, and all those who were affected by rallying support for people who need it badly right now. I’m inspired by all the folks stepping up to serve in the “Cajun Navy” – helping out their neighbors because that’s just what you do! So we’re gonna get some money and cleaning supplies and other needed goods and send it to Louisiana! Let’s sing and dance and be together. It felt so good to gather last year, for the full moon. Very healing. We’re keeping a close eye on the weather – we may have to postpone/reschedule if it thunderstorms… I can’t fit that many people in my living room! So please do some weather magic for us, eh? The irony of a flood relief benefit getting rained out is just too much! There’s a 60% chance right now. If we postpone it, we’re thinking this Wednesday, August 31st. Oh, weather gods! Please cooperate with us. With everybody.
(Update: I think we’re going to have to postpone it – I just can’t handle the potential stress of everyone getting dumped on after working so hard to set everything up. So Wednesday it is. I am finding myself compulsively refreshing my weather app, checking radar, monitoring the tropical depressions as they move into the Gulf. This is what I do around this time of year. Watch and worry. So tonight, we’ll be here at home, if anyone wants to drop off donations. The house is ready, everything is prepared. I will light the candles for the dead, and play New Orleans music and it will feel like a Hurricane Party maybe, except I never celebrated those things. I hunkered down in terror or got the hell out. But I’m safe now. I’m going to keep finding ways of showing myself that until all of me believes that it’s true.)
Very good advice on how practice self-care when writing about difficult subject matter from Bhanu Kapil:
1. In what sense is creative writing a form of cultural and institutional revenge?
2. Take pristine care of your blood.
3. Every day, orient to joy and pleasure. How?
4. Scrub your arms up to the elbow with salt then rinse them in cold water.
5. Change your clothes and shower when you get home, even if you are tired.
6. Let nettle and oatstraw steep in a mason jar and drink the resulting infusion.
7. Chelate long-held, chronic trauma, anxiety and fear. It’s time.* I love you. *How?
8. Remove yourself from situations that cause you distress. How?
9. Spend time with your beloveds. Who are your beloveds?
10. Drink hot water in the morning.
11. Write anyway.
12. Write until you reach the edge of something, whether it’s the world, the community you live in, or your skin.
I’m listening to Bessie Smith’s big full-bellied blues as I write this, and praying for Louisiana – for the living and the lost, the waters and the earth. Even though Bessie’s singing about missing Mississippi, I think I know that feeling.
Muddy Water (A Mississippi Moan)
Dixie moonlight, Swanee shore
Headed homebound just once more
To my Mississippi delta home
Southland has that grand garden spot
Although you believe or not
I hear those breeze a-whispering:
“Come on back to me”
Muddy water ’round my feet
Muddy water in the street
Just God don’t shelter
Down on the delta
Muddy water in my shoes
Reeling and rocking to them lowdown blues
They live in ease and comfort down there
I do declare
Been away a year today
To wander and roam
I don’t care it’s muddy there
But see it is my home
Got my toes turned Dixie way
‘Round the delta let me lay
My heart cries out for muddy water
If you’ve still got it in you, here’s some collected writings
about my experiences with Hurricane Katrina,
in reverse chronological order. Dig in:
✸ Reverse Phoenix – Hurricane Katrina, 10 Years Later
✸ 6 YEARS ON – FRAGMENTS + WET FEATHERS
✸ Storms – 5 Years
✸ Hurricane Katrina: Four Years Later
✸ New Orleans in August
✸ One Year
✸ Lower Ninth Aftermath
✸ MARDI GRAS APRÈS L’ORAGE
✸ AFTERMATH: REVELATIONS
✸ JUST WHEN YOU THINK IT CAN’T GET ANY WORSE
✸ Calamity
✸ The Triumph of Death
✸ What can you do?
✸ Katrina
30 YEARS – SEIZURES
by angeliska on August 8, 2016
Today marks thirty years since the day my mother died. Nearly half a lifetime, it seems – and so much of my life that I’ve had to live without her. I have spent most of those years hiding. Body hunched and curled over to shield the shameful wound of my unbearable, unspeakable grief. It lives at the core of me, every day. Everything I lost when I lost my mom. The door where I came in, that source of unconditional love and support, all her magic and wisdom and essential Maggie-ness, which I can only experience through the stories and memories of the people who knew and loved her, and through the precious objects she left me.
Her absence has shaped my existence in countless ways. I tried to be tough and stoic for so long, even as a very small (and very scared) child. I didn’t cry, I didn’t grieve, I didn’t let on that there was anything wrong – even though everything was. When I was forced to admit to someone who didn’t already know that my mom had died, they would say, “Oh, I’m sorry!” and look very uncomfortable, and I would say “It’s okay.” But it’s not. It wasn’t then and it isn’t now. It will never, never, ever be okay that my mother died and left me to have to figure out how to survive without her. I’m tired of pretending, tired of lessening the horror of my loss to make other people more comfortable. It is a raw place in me like the scar left when a tree loses a big branch, an essential piece of itself, necessary to uphold the structure.
Children need their parents. For survival, for healthy growth and development, and really for everything. Those who have lost one or both to death or abandonment may walk with their chins up and their upper lips stiff, but they suffer every single day without the love and support of those people who should have been there to raise them. And they hide – from a society that has forgotten our rituals for grieving and honoring the dead, and from themselves, because reckoning with the enormity of that loss can be truly terrifying. This is the work that I have been doing. Learning to stop hiding from myself, and from the world. Step by step, year after year, I make slow progress. I have learned to cry, in front of other people especially, which is so hard. I have learned to let myself be vulnerable, to ask for help, and to seek it myself. I work on processing the deep traumas the trainwreck of my childhood inflicted on me, with therapists and healers who understand how to treat trauma in the body, in the nervous system, where it lives.
And I write. I write to know myself, to remember my memories, and to feel things I had for so long been afraid to feel. I wrote this piece, or began the process of writing it, two years ago in a writing workshop with my hero, Lynda Barry. I could barely get through reading it aloud to the class because I was sobbing so hard. I still can’t make it through without crying, and that’s okay. I share it here for anyone who is willing to bear witness. I have learned that grief must be witnessed and shared to be fully processed, so I thank you in advance for reading, and for your willingness to be a part of this process for me.
Sacred Memento of a beloved mother.
Seizures
I am seven years old, chasing madcap after my cousin Luke, who is ten. We are tearing through my grandparent’s tiny country cottage out in the Hill Country, where my family has lived for generations: a ghost town near Llano called Lone Grove. I don’t remember why I’m running after him like a crazy wild thing, but I’m determined to catch up, to escape the close confines of the little house with its heavy smell of burnt bacon, dust, and old people. Maybe we’re racing out to the ditch to go race dirt-bikes, me on the back clutching my cousin’s skinny ribcage tight. Though perched precariously, I want to imagine myself both as tough and romantic: like Nicole Kidman glaring cooly over Tom Cruise’s shoulder in the the Top Gun poster that hangs on my cousin’s closet door at home. It’s much less glamourous when we limp back down to the house later, our kneecaps skinned fresh into what will later become one big scab. For now though, we are exuberant – full of sweet tea with six spoons of sugar mixed in, desperate for some kind of life and action in this place where all the adults whisper in low worried voices and tell us to keep it down. I rush out onto the porch, Luke’s hair in a long rat tail just out reach of my grasp – the screen door banging behind me with a shotgun crack. I don’t know how many times we kids have all been hollered at not to do that very thing, but this time it’s him, who whirls on me with hazel eyes flashing. “Don’t you let that damn door slam when your mom’s in there having seizures! Don’t you have any respect?”
I don’t know exactly what a seizure is, but it sounds bad, the way we hear the grown-ups talking. I think of the word seized, seize the day, and I think it must mean: grabbed, taken, stolen. The cancer is taking my mom away, shaking her body like a rag doll in the mouth of a wild dog until there’s no life left in her. I stand on the front porch, shaking, staring blind at the magic rock embedded in the side of the door frame. It’s hot, hot in late July and a few minutes ago I was dripping with sweat but now I’m cold, cold. This stone cottage was built for my great-grandmother to live in, back in the thirties. Someone took the time to make sure that the very best little rocks were set right where you could see them, going in and out – the smooth edge of the speckled polished granite I always touched for luck, and my favorite: a piece of smoky quartz with a tiny phantom rainbow hovering at its core. How did those colors get in there, I’d always wondered? They seemed suspended somehow, like the blue glow on the tip of a match-head or a patch of iridescent oil skating over a puddle. My finger strokes at it, trying to make it move, but it doesn’t budge. I can’t go in or out now. The red number of my cousin’s soccer shirt is receding down the driveway, hazed and wavy in the heat. His shoulders are hunched up high like his body hurts, and I want to run after him but I’m stuck here. I want to say sorry but I don’t know who to, and I have the sense that if I try, it will knock something loose in me and Luke and all the grown-ups that will never be able to be put back together. No one is allowed to cry here, or we will all drown. It hasn’t rained in weeks and weeks.
I can’t apologize, and if I go back inside, I might get yelled at more, or worse – just recede into the murk of concerned murmuring like another shadow, get lost in the sickroom hush. There’s nothing to do in there but make myself very small, hunch up in the corners of the dim living room with a old National Geographic from before I was born. On the other side of the front door hangs one of my mother’s watercolor paintings: this one of a roadrunner with a dead lizard hanging half out of his mouth, pausing mid-dash. One the other side of that wall hangs a picture of a horse torn from one of my coloring books. With my black crayon I made the horse regal, a Black Beauty stallion with a starry white blaze, and emerald green eyes. A gift to my mother, to try and cheer her – to show her that I care. I do. I don’t know how else to say so except staying quiet and out of the way, coloring pictures, maybe being an artist, like her. The horse stares down its long nose at the wan figure in the hospital bed – but her eyes are very rarely open to see it. I had worked hard on making sure it was colored in as perfectly as possible, no straying from the lines, no messiness. I knew, as an artist, it would matter to her that I could do a good job, take care with making it just right. After someone tall tacked my picture up in her room, I worried about it. I had learned recently that black was the color of death. What if my black horse seemed like some kind of bad omen, or served as a dark reminder of what was coming? It felt like it was coming fast, the way Texas thunderstorms come up on you suddenly. One minute the sun is shining too bright – and then the air changes. The heady odor of tin is sharp and metallic in your nose – making you look up to see those bruised-looking storm-clouds pulsing on the horizon. Everything speeds up, like a freight-train rushing towards us down the track.
My cousin Luke was obsessed with locomotives when he was younger, and he had these model sets where you could move the position of the tracks to your pleasure. The train could go over the bridge and into town, or it could careen off the edge of the kitchen table if you directed it that way – nothing was inevitable. This is not like that, some part of me knows. I don’t know how to shift the path, swerve the course of this juggernaut that screams towards my mother’s body tied to tracks, wrapped in white bedsheets. I am too little. A few days before, I was pushing her, grown so thin and frail in her wheelchair over the gouged out tire tracks on the dirt road. We go halfway down, to where the crepe myrtles are blazing vibrant fuchsia, so pink it sears the eye. I try to make encouragingly poetic and mature comments about the beauty of the blooms, but she is too tired to respond with more than a breathy whisper. I don’t know it yet, but this is the last time she will leave her bed and see the world beyond the robin’s egg blue room where her life is folding in on itself. This is the last time chance I will ever have, to talk with her, about anything before it all collapses. I want so much to say the right thing: find the perfect, magic words that will make her smile, paint the orange freckles back on her face where they’ve faded grey. Change the direction of the train tracks. Banish the black horse from high up on the wall. Unslam that damn door.
Margaret “Maggie” Merrill Cook Polacheck
December 31, 1947 – August 8th, 1986
And, if you’d like to read more about this journey, here you go:
888
WILD BLUE YONDER
NO ROOM IN MY HEART FOR THE BLUES
FAMILY VACATION – HANK WILLIAMS’ GRAVE
STAR-CROSSED TROUBADOURS
Foxes in the Rain
Triumvirate Lemniscate
Gustav + Mama – August 8th
UP FROM THE DEPTHS – New Moon in Pisces Eclipse
by angeliska on March 9, 2016
Moonlit Dreams, by Gabriel Ferrier
The new moon in Pisces eclipse is inviting us to plunge into the depths, a voluptuous mermaid or wizened sea-hag who beckons us with long green fingers into her cold and wet embrace. Watch with round and wondering eyes the silver scythe of a moon setting on the horizon, that light coming down low – sinking slowly into the water. A fingernail paring belonging to a maiden goddess, glowing like an ancient opal. The reflection of your own face so familiar, wavering on the liquid surface. What shipwrecks lie beneath? Long kept secrets are being revealed. We are being given the opportunity to contemplate the deeper mysteries, to hold our breath and dive down to the ocean floor, hunting the pearls of wisdom until morning.
Birth Of The Pearl, by Edmund Dulac
Pisces is my rising sign, and usually the first thing people guess when they’re trying to figure out what I am in the zodiac. The eyes give it away, probably. One astrological interpretation of my chart described me thusly:
“Generally, you have inclinations and tendencies for the following:
professions dealing with occult matter or mediumships, religion,
seafaring, acting, psychometry, clairvoyance, painting,
poetry, mysticism, and espionage.”
I’d say that sounds about right!
from The Symbolist Tarot (A project I sincerely wish had come to fruition!)
I’ve been thinking about the Queen of Cups with this moon, and what she has taught me about self-care, and the dedication necessary to re-route the urge to help and heal every other broken baby bird in our lives when it is often ourselves most direly in need of healing. It’s easy to become a martyr from this place of constantly pouring out, without ever taking the necessary time and space to replenish. Compassion must begin with the self: because there are no truly selfless acts. The gifts you share with others must be offered freely, because it is truly your pleasure to do so. The best way to prepare for that work is to know how to give to yourself, and how to graciously receive the kindness and self-compassion that you would selflessly offer someone else. The Queen of the Waters teaches us how to refill our own cups from the bottomless well of the spirit, and to drink deeply – refreshing the places where our spirits have grown frayed and withered. Take the time to sit alone, to reflect, be still and quiet as a calm tidepool. What would be most nurturing for your soul right now? Perhaps it’s taking the time to write by hand in your journal every day, to converse with yourself in a friendly way – to transcribe and meditate on the dreams that come through in sleeping time, when the subconscious mind wakes up and wanders through other worlds. This is a powerful time to be creative – to dance, draw, dream and let the hidden messages from our subconscious psyches drift to the surface. Take long baths, anoint your skin with nourishing oils, or maybe receive a massage, some healing touch. Watsu is a gentle form of relaxing bodywork that takes place in a pool of water. Spending some time swishing around in a salt water float tank can be incredibly restorative, and becoming more and more easily available. Go swimming, in fresh water from the springs, if you can. Spend time nurturing friendships that feel reciprocal and supportive. If you’re ready to do some serious emotional healing, it might be time to find that skilled therapist or healer who really gets you, (or who at least might be smarter than you) – ideally someone who practices a modality that is effective in releasing ingrained old patterns or trauma that you’re ready release. It helps to drink lots of water – always, but especially when doing deep emotional clearing work. Ingesting and immersing in good water helps reconnect us back to the source, the primeval headwaters from which everything originates.
Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom, by Ilya Yefimovich Repin
This spring new moon is beckoning us towards a powerful time of renewal: of coming back into the body, and awakening consciousness. It’s time to open up our hearts like the bright blossoms and new leaves bursting forth outside! We are being given new opportunities to tend to our own healing and return to the work of nurturing new growth. Spring is a powerful season for clearing any stagnancy or old wounds from the past that have been hurting and blocking us for too long. This is a perfect time to do some spring cleaning and deep clearing of inherited pain from our family lines.
I have been seeing representations of that heavy ancestral energy show up in many of the tarot readings I’ve given for quite a while now, and have been actively seeking an effective method to assist my clients in moving through their familial baggage. I feel very called now to offer a way for my beloved tarot clients and dear friends to partake in a method I’ve found to be incredibly helpful, called Family Constellations. This April, I will be very honored to host a beautiful healer and longtime friend from the Bay Area, Akasha Heather Christy, who facilitates this amazing healing modality. Akasha will be leading a workshop for us here in Austin, at my home.
Here’s some information about this work from her:
“This is Akasha writing you from the Bay to invite you to this workshop that Angeliska and I are cultivating. It is my great pleasure to have the opportunity to come to Austin and share this work of Family Constellations with you. Angeliska is herself an amazing healer, and I am honored to spend this time with her, and with you all, doing this much needed work. Family Constellations provides a means to identify the unspoken and unconscious emotional patterns which affect our lives. It reveals the stagnant patterns which extend through generations of ancestry in a phantom-like manner, showing up in unaccountable ways, dragging on our spirits – in order to open a door towards deeper soul level resolution and healing.
By revealing the places in which we have given over our attention, our life force, and our dreams, we can see how we are respecting those who came before us. We are always seeking to respect our families – our ancestors. That being said, when there is tragedy in the family line that has gone unnoticed or ignored, it wreaks havoc on our lives. We can spend our whole lives unconsciously focusing on these places that are unresolved. Whether it is genocide, war, lost love, lost children, displacement, addiction, mental illness or loss of fortune – any of these things in our family history can impact how we live our lives now. This weekend event is an opportunity for us to gather and go into these hidden places, and share the process together with the morphogenic field in order to offer resolution to ourselves, and those we love.
Why come?
Because you have an issue which doesn’t seem to be going away – problems that take too much of your attention, and are able to trace sources of the issue back to your family of origin.
You are willing to allow your intuition and feelings be a source of exploration and resolution – you are willing to let go of logic long enough to allow the mystery to show you the way through to new perspective and opportunities.
You are open to working with others, to witness and serve those around you to discover new healing for old wounds.
You are thirsty for a new experience in your life – ready to make a change, and allow yourself to operate differently.
This experience stands to completely transform your perceptions around how you relate to your family and loved ones, and will offer you a greater capacity to let go, open more, and share more deeply. It will offer a level of internal resolution that will serve every relationship you have – including and especially with yourself.
We will be sharing this work on Saturday, April 16, 2016 from 12 noon – 6pm and Sunday, April 17, 2016 from 12 noon – 6pm
If you’d like more info, or to register, contact us soon!
☾ Mexico’s Haunting Underwater Sculptures
“The Lost Correspondent” by Jason deCaires Taylor in the waters of Grenada.
I’ve been dreaming, not surprisingly, of water for the past few nights. Water in dreams is emotion, and so I always try to pay attention to the currents: where is it choppy, with rough waves – or tranquil, clear and serene? Is the water a rushing flood, a tidal wave, a pristine spring, or a polluted puddle? Pay attention to what the water is doing in your dreams. It will tell you so much.
Last night I dreamt of inspecting exotic mushrooms for sale at the hippie food co-op. I can’t make up my mind about which fungus would be best (black and robust with thick stems like tree trunks, or slim pale straw mushrooms that look like little ghosts), so instead I select a petite aristolochia specimen, with intricate crazing designs on its heart-shaped leaves and big floppy dutchman’s pipe blossoms that are periwinkle blue with confetti sprinkles that look splatter painted on. The man I nearly married is sitting at a table nearby, and we amiably discuss my marvelous plant until the store manager approaches and asks if we’re “in loooooove“. We both pause awkwardly and are silent, not knowing how to answer, until I put my hand on his shoulder and say, “We were once, a while back – very much so. But not now. Not anymore.” It doesn’t feel bad to say this. We are at peace. I go to the lake, an old place, somewhere in Upstate New York. The water is clear, sea-glass green, but with fuzzy black shapes covered in algae, indistinctly waving beneath the surface. I start to wade out, to investigate what they might be, but something stops me. It doesn’t feel entirely safe. I say to my friend who is perched above me on the rocks that there has always been something about lakes that creeps me out. She says that the other lake we visited that one summer is truly ancient: formed millions and millions of years ago. There’s something in the way she says it that seem to imply that this lake is perhaps artificial, man-made, possibly polluted. I get the feeling that the Slithery Dee might live there. Something that might wrap an eel-like black tail around my ankle and yank me down. The dark shapes in the water look like people. Maybe the frozen statues of figures standing in circles. Lost ancestors waiting beneath the waves.
The night before last, there was a big storm in my dream – prophetically perhaps bringing the real thing not long after. I was supposed to go in to a doctor’s appointment, but they called me from the office, not wanting me to risk it. The sky was dark grey, and the wind was starting to pick up. Electricity is crackling in the air, making the new leaves shiver. Fat drops were starting to come down, but I was thinking about chancing it and trying to get on the road anyway, when I noticed that it had actually been raining heavily for days. My yard was flooded, but not in bad way – just, a water feature that got beyond itself. The long neglected pond had filled up and overflowed its confines. Two bright koi fish that had been languishing in the few inches of brackish water near the bottom were now swimming happily in lazy arcs around the roots of the lacebark elm. I’d thought anything living in the pond that my former partner created had perished years ago, but apparently not. Two shiny carp, like the dual fish symbol in Pisces, and not the first time I’ve dreamt of these magical totems. I wonder for a moment if maybe I should try to scoop them up and return them back into the pond, but then realize that they’d just swim right out again. So I start planting some seeds that I find instead, for little pale blue flowers called baby blue eyes. I find a buffalo skull washed up from under the porch and decide to hang it up. The flood hasn’t ruined or destroyed anything the way it used to in my dreams. The floods used to erupt suddenly, sweeping my rickety wood cabin down the river. It used to be enormous tidal waves I ran from, huge moving walls of emotion that threatened to engulf me, drown me, suck me under. They would sometimes crash over me when I could no longer out-run them, but I’d survive it somehow. Coming to, bobbing in the water, eyes salt-blind, grasping for the waterlogged leather handles of old suitcases stuffed with soggy family photos, old love letters with their carefully inked words of longing rinsed away, just blank wet paper now. Not much is salvageable, disintegrating cardboard boxes containing important documents, histories, memories, secrets. All gone. I would have these dreams often, before Katrina hit, even. But now maybe something has finally shifted again. My world can flood a little, and it isn’t a total disaster. The storm can come, but it doesn’t keep me cowering at home anymore. The overwhelming feelings rise up and can now be felt, and completely processed. The good things are made free again. What was neglected can now be restored with love. New seeds filled with potential appear to be planted. The old bones of what has passed can be reclaimed and honored.
☾ Dream Reliquary is a project by artist Caledonia Curry, also known as Swoon. It is a space for people who wish to participate in the creation of a sculpture containing a large repository of dreams transcribed from people all over the world.
☾ Many wonders are being revealed in the depths, including an adorable new species of octopus: Casper, the Friendly Deep Sea Octopus Who’s Entirely New to Science
☾ The Nuit Report March 4-10. Solar Eclipse in Pisces. There are so many fantastic astrologers out there right now, sharing their wisdom and expertise with us so generously. I have found that checking in with a gifted guide to the cosmos on a regular basis has helped me understand my own shifts and transitions so much more. Aepril Schaile has become a mainstay in that practice for me, and someone I feel thrilled to know in this life. I love her grounded and wise way of communicating, and the way she imparts even challenging or heavy concepts with grace, compassion and humor. Check her out:
☾ Aepril’s Astrology Oracle March 9-10: called back
☾ Aepril’s Astrology Oracle March 7-8: deep sea exploration and revelation
☾ Aepril’s Astrology Oracle March 2-3: A Non-rational, Ungrab-able, Undulate-y, Ubiquitous, Water Portal.
☾ ASTROLOGY MARCH 7TH-13TH: THE APHOTIC ZONE from AUSTIN COPPOCK
☾ The Courage to Heal: Solar Eclipse in Pisces from Chani Nicholas
☾Chiron: Healing Through Bridging & Weaving from Rasa Lila Healing
☾ The Symbol of Piscean Era: the Fish
R.I.P. DAVID BOWIE – A Paean For The Goblin King
by angeliska on January 14, 2016
After my last sweet visitor had headed home the night of the 10th, after a perfect and beautiful birthday, full of friends and children and kindness and sweet medicine and pierogis, I sat alone at my kitchen table covered in sweet gifts and roses and flickering candles burning down low. A last glass of champagne, chuckling and weeping over heartfelt birthday messages from dear ones faraway, and then the news: The Thin White Duke had left the building.
A shard of sorrow in my hands, turning it over and over like a piece of obsidian: but no shock, no disbelief. I had known, somehow, that we would all be saying goodbye soon. Of course. This day, that moment, it was his time. I could feel the deep peace of a life well lived, of a life’s work well done, and the release that follows as such a bright star breathes one last and then evaporates into everything.
Capricorn brother. I always felt an affinity, with his birthday two days before mine, and now his death coinciding with the anniversary of my birth. So I’ll never forget – as if I ever could fail to remember my admiration for that elegant elfin alien, such an otherworldly, brilliant being. So full of passion and incredible talent and preternatural grace. Him passing on my birthday felt like a very peculiar gift. I cried tears of love, gratitude and deep happiness for the gifts he shared, for every soul that he inspired. I see so many people I love struck deeply by this loss, bereft and adrift.
Grief’s arrow can affix you to a moment, can paralyze you – or it can spurn you on and motivate you in powerful ways. When death strikes, I see some people get lost, sink down into themselves, get numb under blankets of apathy and depression. I see others fired up, fucking in the bathroom at the funeral, staying up all night writing songs, stories, poetry, love letters. When you beat a tomato plant or a rose bush with a stick, it will think its life is in danger. Faced with mortality, it will attempt to reproduce itself hurriedly – just in case there won’t be another opportunity. This could be it, you know? Animals do it, fish do it – and we do it. Biology and creativity – sex and death. I am hoping fervently that more of us will fall into that fevered excitement instead of a sorrowful haze.
I want to ask you to stay present with this one. Keep feeling it, keep your eyes and heart open. Let his death wake you up, make you remember what it felt like to discover that you weren’t alone, that there was an anthem for your strangeness, and a guide through the wilds of self-discovery to the cosmos within. Countless flocks of blossoming freaks found their sherpa in him: he led the way up the mountain ahead of everyone else, sure-footed, brave and indomitable, leaping from rock to rock and scaling impossibly sheer heights. He kept going, kept pushing – against all resistance, laughing in the face of fear. He made it irrelevant. Singing onstage in a mini-dress and thigh-high boots, coming out loud and proud because someone had to, goddamn it.
That man worked so, so hard. He pushed himself to the limits of his own psyche and beyond. He let himself be tempered, hammered into different shapes – constantly transforming, an alchemist of creativity. He survived the maw that consumed so many of his genius peers to become a wise old man, (but not too old). Instead, he sacrificed his alter-egos on the altar of fame, killed off the worn out personae, and continued to fashion new masks to protect the man inside, the one none of us ever met, or saw. King of all Capricorns, the Goblin King, Thin White Duke, Aladdin Sane, Ziggy Stardust, little snaggle-toothed, strange eyed Davy Jones.
David Bowie was a true genius, and in true saturnine sea-goat fashion, he endured, persevered, always working, growing, manifesting — and he was richly rewarded for all his efforts, all his magic. He held the glory, he was the glory. So, how could he be just gone? No, not gone — but here, closer than ever. Now he’s everywhere, all around us, like embers floating on the wind — let his spark alight on your skin: let it burn you, mark you, scar you. Let his essence surround you, embrace you, and ignite in you that same drive, that same passion, the willingness to push off and fly. Now he is immortal. He gave you permission to be a beautiful weirdo, so don’t forget to honor him by continuing to stretch yourself past your own internal or external boundaries.
Please keep doing the sacred work of connecting, keep sharing yourself with the world by doing your magic, whatever it is, with the same dedication, focus and verve that Bowie brought to the table for us to feast on. Step up into his shadow, into the hole his absence has torn in the fabric of our reality: get playful, look deep, transgress (and don’t apologize), wander far away from your comfort zone, discover those other archetypes within, and let every wild facet shine. Be willing to be uncomfortable, to be fabulous, to be both elastic and silvered steel. Do all this in thanks for the gifts he laid at our feet.
He came here to do his work, and he really fucking did it. With such great aplomb! We only have a lifetime, however long that is, to shine, to do our big work. That’s all any of of get. We are mortal. Our time here is brief. Do something righteous with what you were given: your brains and body, your imagination and your own singular perspective. Ars longa, vita brevis: art is long, and life is short. We will be listening to the songs of this poet forever. We get to keep them with us. He hasn’t truly left us at all. Feel how close he is? Do you hear the music? Sway with his spirit, dance for him.
And then get to work!
David Bowie interview on the Russell Harty Show, 1973
“What do you worship?”
“Life. I love life.”
My friend Allie Paull (she’s an incredible astrologer, check her out @allie_astrology ) commented on my recent post about true Capricornianism these wise words about Bowie, and time – and I really couldn’t agree more:
“I have found Capricorns to have a special relationship with time. The concept of time… the passage of it… the honoring of wisdom from before… The wildest and least traditional Capricorns I know (many) have these fascinating attachments to demarcations of time: a penchant for vintage, watches, paper ephemera, handwritten notes and diaries, old books, spending time with much older people. Saturn – Kronos – Father Time. My favorite moment in the documentary Moonage Daydream was when David Bowie smiles as he tells an interviewer, ‘I hate a wasted day.’ I nearly collapsed in my chair in swoony delight and whispered in my partner’s ear, ‘Capricorn.’”
I can’t help thinking of this poignant quote from him, highlighting that very idea:
“As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I’ve got left?”
And this one, too (which I feel deep in my bones):
“I’m a real self-educated kind of guy. I read voraciously. Every book I ever bought, I have. I can’t throw it away. It’s physically impossible to leave my hand! Some of them are in warehouses. I’ve got a library that I keep the ones I really really like. I look around my library some nights and I do these terrible things to myself — I count up the books and think, how long I might have to live and think, ‘Fuck, I can’t read two-thirds of these books.’ It overwhelms me with sadness.”
And here’s another, just to drive it home:
“Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming.”
The soundtrack to all of this is of course the savage, irreverently Brechtian swagger of Daddy Saturn / David Bowie himself singing Time:
“Time, he’s waiting in the wings
He speaks of senseless things
His script is you and me, boy
Time, he flexes like a whore
Falls wanking to the floor
His trick is you and me, boy
Time, in quaaludes and red wine
Demanding Billy Dolls
And other friends of mine
Take your time
The sniper in the brain, regurgitating drain
Incestuous and vain
And many other last names
Oh, well, I look at my watch, it says nine twenty-five
And I think ‘Oh God, I’m still alive’
We should be on by now
We should be on by now
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la
You are not a victim
You just scream with boredom
You are not evicting time
Chimes, goddamn, you’re looking old
You’ll freeze and catch a cold
‘Cause you’ve left your coat behind
Take your time”
I feel like including a song by Joanna Newsom about time here, (another January Capricorn), because I think he would’ve loved this one. It came out the year before he died, so who knows – maybe he did:
When I think about his life and death and legacy, these lyrics really say it for me.
White star / blackstar.
“Time passed hard
And the task was the hardest thing she’d ever do
But she forgot
The moment she saw you
So it would seem to be true
When cruel birth debases, we forget
When cruel death debases
We believe it erases all the rest
that precedes
But stand brave, life-liver
Bleeding out your days
In the river of time
Stand brave
Time moves both ways
In the nullifying, defeating, negating, repeating
Joy of life
The nullifying, defeating, negating, repeating
Joy of life
The moment of your greatest joy sustains
Not axe nor hammer
Tumor, tremor
Can take it away, and it remains
It remains
And it pains me to say, I was wrong
Love is not a symptom of time
Time is just a symptom of love
(And the nullifying, defeating, negating, repeating
Joy of life
The nullifying, defeating, negating, repeating
Joy of life)
Hardly seen, hardly felt
Deep down where your fight is waiting
Down ’till the light in your eyes is fading
Joy of life
Where I know that you can yield, when it comes down to it
Bow like the field when the combs through it
Joy of life
And every little gust that chances through
Will dance in the dust of me and you
With joy of life
And in our perfect secret-keeping
One ear of corn
In silent, reaping
Joy of life
Joy
Again, around–a pause, a sound–a song
A way a lone a last a loved a long
A cave, a grave, a day: arise, ascend
(Areion, Rharian, go free and graze
Amen)
A shore, a tide, unmoored–a sight, abroad
A dawn, unmarked, undone, undarked (a god)
No time, no flock, no chime, no clock, no end
White star, white ship nightjar, transmit, transcend
White star, white ship–nightjar, transmit, transcend
White star, white ship–nightjar, transmit, transcend
White star, white ship–nightjar, transmit, trans”
– Joanna Newsom
Some thoughts on the subject by wise friends:
“I see we have already begun with the “art and music are officially dead” rhetoric. What an insult to Bowie’s memory and legacy to assume that the gift he gave us is finite. That the inspiration, example and beauty of his work won’t fuel and drive literally millions of artists who grew up with, discovered him later in life, and cherished him. Enough already. Stop looking backwards. Good art is not an exhaustible resource.”
– Fyodor A. Pavlov
“I know you are all upset about the passing of David Bowie. I am too indeed… But something you should know. He is totally at peace and went back to the stars hecame from. He is home now feeling totally complete, and fulfilled all his earthly duties. No regrets… He did that all and more. Muse city… Now utilize this knowing to motivate you to do the same. He would certainly approve of you mourning him in the glory of following your muse.”
– Marcella Kroll
I’ve been taking some time to listen and read, to watch interviews and find treasures and glean things I didn’t know. Looking forward to a really beautiful, well-written biography soon – or maybe there already is a definitive one someone could recommend?
★ Read the Speech Tilda Swinton Gave at the Opening of the V&A Museum’s David Bowie Exhibit
“The image of that gingery boney pinky whitey person on the cover with the liquid mercury collar bone was – for one particular young moonage daydreamer – the image of planetary kin, of a close imaginary cousin and companion of choice
It’s taken me a long time to admit, even to myself, let alone you, that it was the vision and not yet the sound that
hooked me up – but if I can’t confess that here and now, then when and where?
We all have our own roots
And routes
To this room”
– Tilda Swinton
★ “Look up, I’m in heaven”: Bowie’s haunting farewell “Blackstar” is a triumph
“Something happened on the day he died/ His spirit rose a meter and stepped aside/ Somebody else took his place and bravely cried, ‘I’m a black star,’” Bowie sings on “★”, his voice multiplied and filtered for the line’s last four words. “I’m not a pop star/ I’m a black star.” For what it’s worth: “Black star,” in physics, can refer to a black hole or a white dwarf that’s cooled down to the point that it stops emitting radiation. Both objects are theoretical.
“Sometimes I don’t feel as if I’m a person at all,” said Bowie to Ingenue Magazine in 1973. “Sometimes I’m just a collection of other people’s ideas.” That was more than 40 years ago, but one line on “★” carries a similar idea: “At the center of it all/ Your eyes,” repeats Bowie with particular menace. Like his best lyrics, it could mean anything, but it reverberates in a particular way against the backdrop of his disappearance, his continued enigma, his withdrawal from everywhere but the distant planet he now finds himself. The core of Bowie — or of everything — is not what he is, but how he’s seen. Or really, the two are one and the same. There is no David Bowie except the one you imagine, and it is always possible to imagine him.
“There is a singular energy that moves throughout each person, but it’s all fluid. It’s transmittable. It’s like a disease. You can give it to somebody,” says Fortune. “It doesn’t have to begin and end with your birth and death. It’s something that can be moved through time and space, if you can separate your individual essence from your intellectual ego and allow it to become this broader thing that can be shared and passed along. Reincarnation, occult practices, interdimensional travel, eternal life — all of these funny ideas that humanity has played with forever that Bowie has tapped into throughout the arc of his career, I think it all comes down to this one basic concept. This is me, this is mine. I manifested this. But you can have it too. It’s not singular unto me. It’s singular in the sense that I have carried it to this point, and now you can take it, too. That’s what I think he’s all about.”
– BY SASHA GEFFEN
I held off on watching Lazarus as long as I could, but when I finally did, it just socked me in the gut.
Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth…
Oh, mortality. Mortal gods, mortal man. It’s rough, man.
Still, we have these bright candles, and…
Some memories:
I was 13 years old dancing to Rebel, Rebel and Changes in my best friend’s bedroom. Jean Genie and Suffragette City and this whole flamboyant world that was unfurling before us. I think she had the Changesbowie cassette.
It didn’t matter that we were late to the party. It didn’t occur to us that this music had had its moment and the scene was dead long before we came onto it. It was timeless, and it belonged to us. I am finding that this is still true – that teenagers everywhere dance in their rooms to this music and feel completely as if it were made just for them. These are the songs that woke us up, that turned us on. Your body and the world around you and with in you is going through so many ch-ch-changes. All you can do is turn, and face the strange.
I used to play Hunky Dory over and over again in the little one-room shack I lived in when I was 17. I had the album, and would just keep flipping the record and moving the needle – never tiring of the process. I wanted the music. I loved Kooks, and Andy Warhol. I remember my friend Kathie Pandora singing those lyrics to me in her raspy voice:
“Andy walking, Andy tired
Andy take a little snooze
Tie him up when he’s fast asleep
Send him on a pleasant cruise
When he wake up on the sea
He sure to think of me and you
He’ll think about paint and he’ll think about glue
What a jolly boring thing to do”
I always think of her when I hear that song, or sing it myself. I still like to sing it. But The Bewlay Brothers will always be my favorite Bowie song, ever. It was, and is – so powerful. It was eldritch and mysterious, and it made me think of the beautiful, troubled men I thought of as my brothers back in the day. They were terrible and always doing dangerous, evil shit. I was worried constantly that they’d die. Two of them are dead to me now.
Now my Brother lays upon the Rocks
He could be dead, He could be not
He could be You
He’s Camelian, Comedian, Corinthian and Caricature
One remains, and he’s the brightest and best of them, anyway. Evan, who we always affectionately referred to as The Goblin Prince. He has always epitomized the Thin White Duke for me: effortlessly elegant and for a long time bleached white blond, with all the moves, the genius, the wicked grin. Dancing with a cigarette, drawing in the dark.
He wrote this, the other day:
“The star collapses, and when it has almost reached singularity,
when its influence becomes infinite and spacetime
cannot exist within it, it is transformed and
–despite its death– continues to release energy.
Goodnight, my oldest teacher, to you and your little white saxophone.
Goodnight, my Blackstar.”
I had a cassette tape of Low that I damn near wore out when I first moved to New Orleans. “A New Career in a New Town” became my personal soundtrack for leaving my hometown at the age of just barely 20, and strangely enough (I just realized this), it was then and there that I did embark upon what eventually did become my career: reading tarot. My first apartment there was in my beloved castle on Esplanade and Bourbon, in the tower room with the bay window on the third floor. I lived in there for a few months, until the much larger apartment I ended up staying in for many years became available. That time was very special to me: I was starting a new beginning, all by myself. The apartment was grand, only one room that was mostly the floor to ceiling bay windows overlooking the overgrown courtyard, with an odd little crooked kitchen. The big room was painted an ugly shade of blue that I never got around to repainting, but it made me think of the line in Sound and Vision:
Blue, blue, electric blue
That’s the colour of my room
Where I will live
Blue, blue
My bedroom now is a much prettier shade of blue. I’m glad the song still applies…
David Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King was my first human (sort of) crush. Before that, it was just anthropomorphic animals, like the hot fox in Disney’s Robin Hood, or Dangermouse (his eyepatch and British accent made the fact that he was a cartoon rodent easier to overlook.) I know I’m not alone in this, and it’s been a comfort, over the years to realize that the desires of so many young girls were awakened by that character. I had a poster from the movie that I would practice kissing on, until the paper his lips were printed on started to get faded.
I’ll paint you mornings of gold.
I’ll spin you Valentine evenings.
Though we’re strangers ’til now,
We’re choosing the path
Between the stars.
I’ll leave my love
Between the stars.
★ Neil Gaiman Gives David Bowie a Proper Origin Story in “The Return of the Thin White Duke”
My friend Reiner insisted on buying me a cd of Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) at a used record store on my first visit to New York. I think I was 18. It was wintertime, and snowing a lot. The hard edges and manic energy of those songs still bring back the feeling of exploring NYC, hunting for the lost ghosts of party animals of yore. I’d play the cd when I was getting ready to go out, doing my makeup and pinning things into my hair. We spent New Year’s Eve in a dilapidated concrete warehouse (or maybe it was a parking garage?). I was wearing my 1930’s cloth of gold dress, which was constructed of real metallic threads and thus conducted heat and cold. I was freezing and having my ear talked off by coked-up Russians. Reiner was really passionate about this album, and his love for it was passed on to me. I think he listened to it a lot when it came out, back when he lived in Berlin. Exciting times. My favorite track was Ashes to Ashes.
I’m happy. Hope you’re happy, too.
I’ve loved. All I’ve needed: love.
Sordid details following.
★ MEET THE MYSTERIOUS ‘WHITE WITCH’ WHO EXORCISED DAVID BOWIE’S COCAINE PALACE
“There was a beautiful Art Deco house on six acres, an exquisite site property and a terrific value at just $300,000, but he took one look at a detail I hadn’t noticed, a hexagram painted on the floor of a circular room by the previous owner, Gypsy Rose Lee. ‘A great deal of codling and reassurance got us through that crisis, and I went and found the Doheny Drive house. Built in the late fifties or early sixties, it was a white cube surrounding an indoor swimming pool. David liked the place, but I thought it was too small to meet our needs for very long, and I wasn’t crazy about the pool. In my experience, indoor pools are always a problem. This one was no exception, albeit not in any of the usual ways. Its drawback was one I hadn’t encountered before and haven’t seen or heard of since: Satan lived in it. With his own eyes, David said, he’d seen HIM rising up out of the water one night.’ Feeling demonic forces moving in, David felt strongly that he needed an exorcism and asked that his new found friend white witch Walli Elmlark be called upon to lend her assistance to remove the evil from his surroundings. ‘A Greek Orthodox Church, in LA would have done it for us (there was a priest available for such a service, the people had told me) but David wouldn’t have it. No strangers allowed, he said. So there we stood, with just Walli’s instructions and a few hundred dollars’ worth of books, talismans, and assorted items from Hollywood’s comprehensive selection of fine occult emporia.
There he (David Bowie) was, then, primed and ready. The proper books and doodads were arranged on a big old-fashioned lectern. The incantation began, and although I had no idea what was being said or what language it was being said in, I couldn’t stop a weird cold feeling rising up in me as David droned on and on. ‘There’s no easy or elegant way to say this, so I’ll just say it straight. At a certain point in the ritual, the pool began to bubble. It bubbled vigorously (perhaps ‘thrashed’ is a better term) in a manner inconsistent with any explanation involving air filters or the like.’ The rock and roll couple watched in amazement. Angie says she tried to be flippant – “Well, dear, aren’t you clever? It seems to be working. Something’s making a move, don’t you think?” – but I couldn’t keep it up. It was very, very strange; even after my recent experiences I was having trouble accepting what my eyes were seeing.’ Angie insists that she would peek through the glass doors which lead to the pool every so often and was dumb founded by what she saw. ‘On the bottom of the pool was a large shadow, or stain, which had not been there before the ritual began. It was in the shape of a beast of the underworld; it reminded me of those twisted, tormented gargoyles screaming silently from the spires of medieval cathedrals. It was ugly, shocking, malevolent; it frightened me. ‘I backed away from it feeling very strange, went through the doorway, and told David what I’d seen, trying to be nonchalant but not doing very well. He turned white but eventually became revived enough to spend the rest of the night doing coke. He wouldn’t go near the pool, though.’”
★ David Bowie, UFOs, Witchcraft, Cocaine and Paranoia
“Early in life, Bowie had established his interest in all matters extraterrestrial. As a Brit teenager, David had helped edit a flying saucer newsletter. He admitted to me that he loved science fiction and was fascinated with life in space and the possibility that quite a few cosmic visitors had ended up on our earthly shores.
During a conversation, Bowie had gone out on a limb revealing that he had once had a close encounter. In the book Laugh Gnostic, author Peter Koening paraphrases what Bowie said: ‘A friend and I were traveling in the English countryside when we both noticed a strange object hovering above a field. From then on I have come to take this phenomena seriously. I believe that what I saw was not the actual object, but a projection of my own mind trying to make sense of this quantum topological doorway into dimensions beyond our own. It’s as if our dimension is but one among an infinite number of others.’”
★ David Bowie: Closet Occultist!
Q: “So were you involved in actual devil worship?”
A: “Not devil worship, no, it was pure straightforward, old-fashioned magic.”
Q: “The Aleister Crowley variety?”
A: “No, I always thought Crowley was a charlatan. But there was a guy called [Arthur] Edward Waite who was terribly important to me at the time. And another called Dion Fortune who wrote a book called ‘Psychic Self-Defense‘. You had to run around the room getting bits of string and old crayons and draw funny things on the wall, and I took it all most seriously, ha ha ha ! I drew gateways into different dimensions, and I’m quite sure that, for myself, I really walked into other worlds. I drew things on walls and just walked through them, and saw what was on the other side!”
David Bowie, interviewed in NME, 1997
★ David Bowie: Mystic, Magician, Wizard, Shaman, Shape-Shifter, Pagan, God
★ Station To Station
“One of the many lies we tell children is that there’s no limit to the imagination. Of course there is. Even the most consuming and perceptive of minds reaches its borders and retreats. Expanding the mind is dog’s work, as grueling as it’s often fruitless; few attempt it, fewer succeed in it, and those who do often come out twisted and torn. In 1975, binging on cocaine, living in paranoid isolation and making a rock record, David Bowie succeeded.”
★ The Fall To Earth: David Bowie, Cocaine And The Occult:
Here are two extracts from Peter Doggett’s excellent new book The Man Who Sold The World: David Bowie And The 1970s, covering the star’s all time low, 1975
★ Bowie in Berlin: David Bowie moved to Berlin in the mid-70s in the grip of a cocaine addiction. But the city purged his demons and pushed him to new creative heights. Rory MacLean remembers their nights in his Hauptstraße flat – and one wild night out with Iggy:
“He dressed in baggy trousers and dowdy shirts, and enjoyed the Berliners’ disinterest in him. No one bothered him on the street, unlike in star-struck LA. One night on a whim, he climbed onto a cabaret stage to perform a few Frank Sinatra songs. The local audience shrugged and asked him to step down. They had come to see a different act. Away from the limelight, he composed, painted and, for the first time in years, ‘felt a joy of life and a great feeling of release and healing’, as he put it.”
★ In Memoriam: David Bowie’s Top 100 Favorite Books
★ David Bowie Answers the Proust Questionnaire
DAVID BOWIE – JOHN, I’M ONLY DANCING (AGAIN) 12″ (1979) I started to write a caption for this image & it ended up becoming this. I used to dance to this 12-inch all the time, before I lost it (& all my other records) in Hurricane Katrina. Photo of the record by Mat Maitland
Wild Is The Wind
★ How David Bowie Helped Nina Simone Out of a Slump
“He’s got more sense than anybody I’ve ever known. It’s not human — David ain’t from here.” – Nina Simone
★ “David Bowie: are you here, man?”
photograph from my friend Stephanya Tyler
★ Bowie Street sign ch-ch-changed to honor David Bowie in Downtown Austin
★ Sign the petition to keep “David Bowie Street” in Austin – won’t you?
★ Arcade Fire, Preservation Hall Band To Lead Second Line For David Bowie
OWL WELCOME
by angeliska on December 31, 2015
On this last day of the old year, I find myself a little at a loss for words. Or perhaps, with too much to say to even know where to begin. Sometimes, I just get all worded out. I talk for a living. I speak all day, from my heart, mostly to strangers and seekers who often become inspirations, and even friends. At the end of the day, I need silence, stillness. Lately, the words seem to flee my mind – names of people I’ve known for years, titles of objects. This tells me that it’s time to be quiet, to listen. Not to try and describe or explain, or make sense of. I’ve been working on this more lately – sitting still, being quiet, with intention. Watching my thoughts dart around from past to future like the inky floaters that mar my vision. This year, I want to get better at deep listening. I want to truly absorb the heartfelt stories people tell me, and never be far away, thinking of another thing. I want to listen to wise people talking and draw while I do, because I’ve heard that you learn and take it all in better that way, and I think it’s true. I think if I can get better at listening, I can be a better writer, a better friend, and better at what I do. So though I have many resolutions again this year, this is the main one I am thinking about tonight. In honor of being quiet and listening, I’m not going to write much here just now. My bed is calling me, and the clothes that must be packed in a bag, and the road out tomorrow to the land where I go at this time of year. It all calls me back, and I’m going to listen. I will let the images of last year’s journey out to the land tell the good story, and some poems that have been keeping me company this year. Let it be enough. It is.
Winterborn, I.
Wand + Water + Earth
Scrying sky.
Miracle Fair
Commonplace miracle:
that so many commonplace miracles happen.
An ordinary miracle:
in the dead of night
the barking of invisible dogs.
One miracle out of many:
a small, airy cloud
yet it can block a large and heavy moon.
Several miracles in one:
an alder tree reflected in the water,
and that it’s backwards left to right
and that it grows there, crown down
and never reaches the bottom,
even though the water is shallow.
An everyday miracle:
winds weak to moderate
turning gusty in storms.
First among equal miracles:
cows are cows.
Second to none:
just this orchard
from just that seed.
A miracle without a cape and top hat:
scattering white doves.
A miracle, for what else could you call it:
today the sun rose at three-fourteen
and will set at eight-o-one.
A miracle, less surprising than it should be:
even though the hand has fewer than six fingers,
it still has more than four.
A miracle, just take a look around:
the world is everywhere.
An additional miracle, as everything is additional:
the unthinkable
is thinkable.
– by Wislawa Szymborska,
translated by Joanna Trzeciak
A year and some days ago I watched breathless as the Full Wolf Moon in Cancer rose, wreathed in haze over the sycamores. I had been drawn outside by the call of a Great Horned Owl, hooting in the treetops. It’s a rare blessing to hear one here – as my street is more home to the Barred Owls. At my table, candles were lit, truths told, and hearts resolved. A year later, it’s still a tangle. The heart still wants what it wants. I have recurring dreams where I can talk to owls, speak their language.
The front door of the stone house where my family has lived for generations. True pun by my aunt. Every year she opens her home to a flock of wild birds who come to roost in the trees to celebrate the new year. She makes us warm and welcome.
My Aunt Ruth. Owl-woman. I come from a long line of them. They know things.
Beloved Annick. I took this photograph not long after she had gotten some terrible news about her most favorite person in the world. She has a very brave and loving heart.
let it go – the
e.e. cummings
let it go – the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise – let it go it
was sworn to
go
let them go – the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers – you must let them go they
were born
to go
let all go – the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things – let all go
dear
so comes love
Ace of Cups. One of the many big blessings in my life, this lady right here. I feel so damn lucky every day to have Allyson walking in this world with me! She teaches me so mcuh about the joy of being alive, and about true friendship.
Sycamore queen.
The Empress.
Travel companions.
Our afternoon.
Quiet time. My sweet cousin Lindsay.
My cousin Luke made this amazing video of my dogs Grrizelda and Moon running and frolicking and I really feel like it is the best thing ever. I never get tired of watching it! My yin yang dogs are the best things that ever happened to me. Being a cat person for so long, I never would have imagined that one day I would have two German Shepherds! They are so amazing and smart and kind and funny and sweet, and it’s really hard to ever be lonely with these girls at my side. I love them more than anything.
Filthy puppies are hard to take photos with!
True hearts.
Patient Grrizelda. Dark one, shadow dog. Sweet and sensitive and wise. So many feelings, this dog has. Very emotive. She is a huntress, and my guardian. Keeper of my heart. Most loyal. I don’t know what I would do without her.
Moon Kin. Little girl, puppy heart. She is my ray of sunshine, my happy moonbeam. Three legs. Indomitable, brave and relentlessly good-natured, my joyful playful companion. She makes me laugh every day.
Strength. Allyson and Neville (Grrizelda’s boyfriend dog).
Sequence gown.
Blanket rainbow.
Where I put my wishes.’
You get some sunsets out there.
I believe in living.
I believe in the spectrum
of Beta days and Gamma people.
I believe in sunshine.
In windmills and waterfalls,
tricycles and rocking chairs.
And i believe that seeds grow into sprouts.
And sprouts grow into trees.
I believe in the magic of the hands.
And in the wisdom of the eyes.
I believe in rain and tears.
And in the blood of infinity.
I believe in life.
And I have seen the death parade
march through the torso of the earth,
sculpting mud bodies in its path.
I have seen the destruction of the daylight,
and seen bloodthirsty maggots
prayed to and saluted.
I have seen the kind become the blind
and the blind become the bind
in one easy lesson.
I have walked on cut glass.
I have eaten crow and blunder bread
and breathed the stench of indifference.
I have been locked by the lawless.
Handcuffed by the haters.
Gagged by the greedy.
And, if I know any thing at all,
it’s that a wall is just a wall
and nothing more at all.
It can be broken down.
I believe in living.
I believe in birth.
I believe in the sweat of love
and in the fire of truth.
And I believe that a lost ship,
steered by tired, seasick sailors,
can still be guided home
to port.
– by Assata Shakur
Lone Grove azure, witch-oak fingers.
Hana-bi.
DAZEDN CONFUSED
Serious stash of fireworks! We put on quite a show.
World Changing.
I had a minor head wound morning. Not an excellent way to wake up, but I was fine. Packing the car (prior to coffee, big mistake), I walked into the back hatch and nearly clocked myself out cold! Noggins bleed so much! My uncle was so perplexed by me taking this admittedly ridiculous picture – but it was so gnarly and giallo, I just had to.
Oh, and – my other intention for 2016 is to learn more about self-compassion. The more I can show it to myself, the more I can offer it to others. It’s good work.
“Be softer with you. You are a breathing thing. A memory to someone. A home to a life.”
– Nayyirah Waheed
Let’s all work on being more gentle with ourselves in 2016, yeah? I am more excited about the year to come than I have been about any in the past that I can remember. I think there has been quite a but of trepidation for me in contemplating the future, for many years now – because nothing felt steady or sure. Everything was still so unformed, and my source of stability had been uprooted for a long, long time. I’m changing that, healing it, fixing it – through a lot of dedication, hard work, and love. I’ve had a lot of really good changed this year – and finally changes I’ve created and initiated instead of merely having to surrender to! I am so grateful for all the good things that have come into my life in 2015. Lots of strong magic, and big healing. So today, I stand firm in the now, looking towards whatever tomorrow and the year ahead holds with open, clear eyes. Cold winter night, inner light shining. I gently rise and softly call: Good night, and joy be with you all…
More to read from New Year’s Eves of yore:
✶ AULD LANG SYNE
✶ YEAR OF THE HORSE
✶ NEW YEAR’S EVE FOXFIRES AT THE CHANGING TREE
✶ FUCK THE PLAN 2012
✶ AN EPICALLY EPIC AND FAIRLY TARDY YEAR IN REVIEW – OR, HOLY SHIT: 2011!
✶ A Bright Blue Wish
✶ New Year’s Redux
✶ Stargazer Honey
✶ Blue Moon
✶ Lone Grove New Year
✶ Pink Moons
✶ The New Year
✶ Lucky Stars and Garters
✶ La Nouvelle Année
