That Cosmos
The Quiet Beauty of Small Things
Today is slow, and inviting toward introspection. I have gratitude, for this time of year is for letting go, turning in. As an introvert, autumn turning into winter is my favorite time of year. It is natural to spend more time in bed, sleeping, reading, knitting or sewing. It is a great time for journaling.
I can easily appreciate the small things I notice, the beautiful things I read, or hear or see. I find I have time to weave them all together, and psychically my world is a beautiful quilt of small victories.
The tree outside, from the view of my small back porch is orange and yellow dragon-fire right now. Its leaves rain down in bursts of wind.
I had homemade jam on toast at breakfast. Sweet and red.
Two nights ago I discovered that I can indeed attach the dead body of a moth or beetle with hot wax onto paper, and that the heat from the wax and candle does not burn up papery moth wings. New terrains in my personal practice of collage will be explored.
My most recent issue of Bitch Magazine came in the mail yesterday. Articles on video game gender-bending, witches hexing the patriarchy, and psychedelics as medicinal- all in one issue. I’m about it.
Also the library, treasure trove for rabid intellectual curiosity. It’s always there, just waiting to be consulted.
I found an old scarf I forgot I had yesterday. It’s made of wool-felted flowers. It’s really a wearable wool garland. I can drape flowers around myself, and just… walk around like that.
Small beauties, noticed, create a largely beautiful life. Sometimes, and indeed in these times,
this practice is more important than ever.
Gratitude for little things, in tandem with right action against oppression
create a Beautiful Life.
For in folding ourselves in beauty, we must not forget our world that needs healing. But more on that another time.
Right now, it is right and good to seek sanctuary in small and beautiful things.
I’m diving into these stories remembering the lives of people of color lost to police brutality and murder.
“Excessive force” is coming up a lot.
The need for a grown man trained in tactical police maneuvers to physically put his entire weight on a black woman of average stature, breaking her sternum and causing her death
can only be triggered by
either fear,
or lust for power,
or the intense combination of both, and more than those things.
All are heart and world- breaking.
We must socially conquer fear and lust for force. Power can be healthy, but a desire to use force and conquer is
antiquated.
The paradox lives on. And we do.
And if I scroll down far enough I can
click on an article called
“15 Child Stars Who Grew Up Hot.”
What, exactly, will happen?
Like, how’s this all going to go? How bad will it get before the getting gets
Good,
More toward compassion,
again?
I wish I could
Google that shit, but
Even the Cards only tell me what I’m willing to hear and
I’m not
Don’t want to
Crawl back in bed, hide behind my eyes,
Open wide.
Meditation is now
Observation.
Notice,
Take right action.
god is green
God is green and god is good, and we thank Her for our food,
life, connection,
kaleidoscopic majesty of beauty
and nourishment.
Radical Self-Acceptance
Since this past weekend I’ve begun to ask myself: what if I chose to love all of me, starting with everything about my body? I love my blonde hair. That is easy to love. My world and my culture make that easy to love. I love my fair skin. The culture I’ve grown up in makes that easy to love too. But then, how can I love my hormonal acne that pops up on my chin? Those red spots that fuzz my “fair complexion?” In what ways might I choose to love my tummy pouch, the bumps of hair trapped beneath my skin on my legs? I am pale, I am pink, and I am red. I am body, I am mind, I am spirit, and void. I have so much more in me than my external parts. And yet my physicality must relate to something else inside me, something beyond world physics- these are parts of my design that are sacred, even.
And in getting comfortable with my body I extend this comfort, this love and become comfortable with all of my prickly parts of Self. In what ways do I shrink and what do I resist? Which parts of me do I hide, and where do I compartmentalize? My inner Slut, my Judgement, Defensiveness. That fear of being or seeming selfish? Where does that come from? These are also spaces that need love. Shadow work tells me that therein lies my power, my light, too.
A very deep-feeling woman by the name of Carrie Hilgert (carriehilgert.com) once wrote that “To see myself in excruciating detail demands that I match that with absolute self acceptance.” And embodying that Virgin/Earth archetype how I do, an eye for detail I do not lack…
This morning I was really feeling myself. I chose not to wear makeup, just for today, warts (acne) n’ all. I’m kind of thinking this relates to my prayer from last night. I prayed to give less fucks about externally imposed standards, and more fucks about what needs to happen in this world, for Love.
So. That journey of healing to love all of me- that requires lots of self-knowledge. And this is not initially pretty. Radical self- love and acceptance, in one way and one day at a time, is that translation of judgement to healthy discernment. And that self-love translates to world love. WE, all of us on this planet now, need to be healed, and heal.
I think I might wear makeup tomorrow. And I’ll still be feeling into me.
Ocular Plasticity.
Unity/Equinox
Can I marry my inner Wild She-God with my studious Hermit Sage living in the Library of Time?
How does my mud connect with my kiln, making vessel, holding soup?
I know that
connect,
it does.
But how does raw Shakti dance red in front of
Mage of dusty page?
Salacious, sad?
Resolved,
Simply free to Be.
Delicate Construction
Axis of Inner and Outer
So, So Exciting.
Even Still
Interactions and their shades of being, seeping, leeching, bleeding.
Windows of clarity
UNIBUNNY
Face on Your Pie and a Dinner Party
Would’ja look at that?!
Cellular
Trumpet the News
Rider-Waite-Smith type 
Judgement:
Swaths of orchid petals effuse from
My heel paths.
I have time for truth and beauty
Love and honoring mySelf
And in this light I braise the concept of time to fit
My agenda.
I’m a goddess-girl and
Structure is new terrain.
When I am called upon it just comes out of me. Lately my psyche is constantly swimming with other-worldly ephemera; phrases that just come and go like an eternal marquee of “Spirit Says.” I am honored to play this game and overwhelmed with any task toward pinning it down. So far, the only answer is to just begin.
I have neglected writing for fear of what I might find there. I favor collage lately as a medium of expression, because it so many things at once; a choice face for Marquees of Ephemera.
My dreams are still vivid and now increasingly involve esoteric symbols that simultaneously frighten and encourage me. In one, my beloved black tourmaline, whose energy guards me like that of the knowing black she-panther I once visioned lying on a table receiving massage, just disintegrates, easily, into thousands of pieces and powder. Full of powerful, latent protective energy. But the disintegration…
In last night’s dream I was tasked to pick out a tarot deck for myself from a shelf lined with many. By Someone. And the one I chose was made just for me, and would henceforth energetically belong to me, and I would radiate its energy. The deck was in another language. Something like Italian or French, but not either of those. It’s artwork was soft and surreal. The first card I drew, and the only one I remember was The Heirophant, an angelic androgynous face peeking down from Sky, eye closed but holding down its cupped palm as if to gently lift any being willing to climb into it.
And in another dream I am walking through an artist’s community, seemingly post-apocalypse, but long enough beyond a revolution’s crumbling tower that peace is freely known by all surviving peoples and their children. I spoke to a woman about her found-object art, with which she was using to house found plants, seeds, stalks and pods and we traded knowledge.
If I were to align my reality with my subconscious I’m not sure what I’d find in my life. But I’m running out of the part of my life and time when I can ignore the fact that this is how magick gets made. And I have this power so I need to get comfortable with it. And with my subconscious. And use it well.
Summer Solstice Ritual 2016
Crown your
Will
with
Rose Medicine.
herbs. wood wand. feather. labradorite & quartz.
Iphigenia; Sacrifice is not martyrdom. “The heroine knows she must leave her father’s house and return to the feminine values suppressed by the patriarchal relationship.”
And Freedom shall awhile repair;/ To dwell a weeping hermit there!”
A Summer Solstice
Ritual, Divination, and subsequent Activation Art:
I am clear and strong in my boundaries and so my heart can remain safely open.
Ram.
From the Desk of Dysnomia: Entry 2
A Call to Armor, Forget About Arms
In California, January 2015, a woman was raped behind a dumpster while she was unconscious. Two men bore live witness to the event and after a year of deliberation, her rapist was finally sentenced to serve just three to six months in prison for three counts of felony sexual assault.
In March 2016 a law was passed in the state of North Carolina that legally prevents gender-queer citizens from using the bathroom that matches their identity.
Early on the morning of June 12, 2016 a mass shooting occurred at a gay nightclub in Orlando Florida. Mainstream American media calls this the worst mass shooting in United States history.
If you think that these events are unrelated you are mistaken. Their common thread is woven all the way through the tapestry of disdain for the feminine. This disdain is in vogue. Homophobia, sexual violence, mass homicide, and gender discrimination are symptoms of this diseased psychodrama.
I’m writing this as a call to armor, breast-plates on, Athena-style. Arms are over with. War is on our door step, we can’t deny, but we can deny the illusion that a bit of metal with a combustive element is the answer to surviving this war.
The problem with gun ownership is that the only people who seem to cling to guns for “protection” are already myriad layers deep in the protection of privilege and their only fixation on weaponry is toward protecting that which they already benefit from.
If only it were mostly queers, femmes, and witches carrying the guns… but it’s not. Because we are the ones who recognize the responsibility of our own power, which we wield in healthy and life-giving ways.
And we serve justice too, in ways healthier yet more lasting than confinement, violence or death. We hex, we light a candle, we karmically bind with hot wax and string. We march, a pack of banshees moaning in the streets, wallowing in grief because raw emotion has a place at our table, always. We hold each other, and spew glitter-gold, not vitriol. We open our hearts when violence knocks and we will always speak.
We will never stop expressing in a world that promotes repressing. This is true power, the power in vulnerability, which is a power most feared by our world. The She-god returns, and all Her devotees, women, men, and everyone in-between move fierce through the collective pain-body of this rape, this massacre, this discrimination.
I beseech all the Aphrodites and Adonises light candles anointed with oil of Venus, for Love. Ophelias, burn Rosemary “for remembrance” tonight. I ask Priestesses of Kali to dance harder, and the Hecates to huddle with Shadow, for there is much to learn in Void.
And for those grieving, I ask nothing. Continue doing what you are doing, unapologetically. Grief is a toggle between love and loss. Feel it all, there is room. If our world will not hold space for you, we will carve it out, like the Pieta from marble peeking through.
So, armor on, Athena-style. We are warriors, gentle, and powerful, and we move ever forward, non-linear, but spiraling out nonetheless.
Entry #1 from the desk of Dysnomia
I like the way my fingers vibrate when they tap in succession over keys
Or a desk.
I like the way my mouth tastes bad after a good cup of coffee.
I like the way my mind feels after a good cup of coffee; puts a bad taste in the mouths of a culture frightened by my
Pen-tongue.
If this is mightier than a sword, then what can the daggers in my eyes do
When my soul has a bone to pick?
Since I am done looking down,
Some best look away.
I like the way my bones feel when my soul notices their part to play and
I like the way you feel when you listen to what I’m bound to say
Yin and Yang Ing
People are loud in the Summertime and it is with
Great Pleasure
I disengage from it all.
My soul is spring
Retrograde into Winter melting back into
Spring,
Constantly crocuses pushing up through frosted
Soil,
Sucking themselves back, circling
Into the bulb that will then remain dormant.
Something shiny,
I depart,
And wait for warmer rains again
To pace my labyrinth further out,
Then further in,
Cresting, and plowing, or some say:
Waxing- Waning.
how are you okay but not great i am
longing
deepening
not sure from where it stems but
nostalgia is part of it
for a time
i thought i found myself
but i found out now i’m still finding me
so nostalgia is only part of
dread
dread is part of it
i’m finding
me and the dread part
is
letting go of the old and embracing the new
which is scary and this feeling
is nothing
all people experience this
departure
of the self from the self from
the other not prepared for
self-changes in the other
part of it is
steeping
from somewhere
not sure where but
i will likely return there in
longing
Growing Pains
Dance between tongue and leg,
erratic and full of shadow.
Sometimes you have to work hard for pleasure.
Sometimes, not all the time.
And why should everything come with ease? Says the inner other.
Dance between leg and tongue,
Erratic as the gods would have it
learning to walk talks and
which talks should never walk,
but you do walk them.
Sometimes your legs
which are erratic and full of
shadowy desire
lead you, and sometimes
this path unfolds with ease.
Sometimes.
Not all the time.
Infinite Dionysus
Life in the magenta egg.
Happy New Moon in Taurus
Life Record 05.05.16
Wild(h)erness
You know I am the river
And you are the dam.
You know I am Nature, Growth, and
You are the suburban gardener
Trimming your hedges
Just so
Against the height of your fences.
You know I don’t believe in
Control, and
Control is all you believe in,
Playing with your chemistry set.
If you had your way,
Life would run like an Easy Bake Oven.
You are blinded by my brightness and
Darkness alike.
I go further in any direction
Than you’ll ever dare to go.
You know I am wild,
And you are afraid.
Prayer
Blessed Failure, who doth surround us,
Hallowed be thy name.
Deliver us from our own perfection.
Let us never arrive, but only expand,
Forever,
Ah-women.
It Flows Freely Out
Eostre; universal energy
Our celestial gods are almost all retrograde, and I left my identity at the bank. Had to go back a second time, but at least I didn’t stub my toe again. I re-membered, you see, to raise my foot even higher when I put it down.
“They put my brother under water, but I think they forgot about me.” -Princess Chelsea, No Church on Sunday
Some, I’m gettin’
IMVERYBUSY1111
QueennofHamm and her Legal Tenders
RSVP: Starry-Pied Garden Party
dont forget your crackerhat
Bernie Conjunct Virgo in the North Node
We are virgin-birthing a new paradigm of the like our culture has never seen. We have a long way to go; we are obviously still uncomfortable with this shift toward greater good. Amid a lot of New Age talk of an impending love and light-filled Age of Aquarius, we are certainly not there yet. Our age is an era of brother against brother, because brothers don’t see brothers, they see enemies. And sisters are not yet part of the equation. Not completely. Not in the way that true feminine power is culturally recognized as significant.
We still massively abuse our planet (the Great Mother), as we collectively pray to Father(s) in the sky, and we are still incapable of seeing our world holistically, non-dually. The idea that we are literally emotionally and spiritually all connected, and that the material, emotional, and spiritual realms are all interdependent, and none more important than each other, is quite new.
It’s getting rough out there, isn’t it?
This election season in our United States has opened our eyes to national ideological schism of how much progress can be made, or unmade. This promise of progress is uplifting. For those of us who have long been fighting the good fight, the taste of relief is tantalizingly almost on our sore tongues. We’ve been screaming that long: Is anyone paying attention to this shit? Does anyone give a fuck anymore?!
In our souls we are aware that in the light of hope, we cast a big shadow: progress can be unmade, particularly by people who believe the worst is over, and in believing this, will turn a blind eye to suffering as it arises in various forms. Those that believe racism is dead, sexism is no longer, and that poverty is reserved for citizens of foreign lands who don’t matter because they are heathens that we can’t see…
There lies part of our collective shadow.
Healing will be put by the wayside, and if our next president is a hate-monger, many of us know that it will be a long time before our scales of truth can be picked back up again with something akin to dignity. At best, we are shamed. At worst, irreversible damage will be wrought. And we already have a long list of reparations to see to. As a citizen of the United States, I bear my cross with humility. Even if every fiber of my being stands against the specific patriarchal imperialist pain wrought by my ancestors, I am responsible, because I am one who can make a difference.
So I write…
And it is rough out there.
Consider the old adage that it’s darkest before the dawn. Consider a more complex notion of integration, that to reach enlightenment, or the light, you have to dig deep and befriend Shadow. Finally, consider something far more primal: birthing pains. And yes. This is something The Goddess is familiar with.
Even if Bernie Sanders becomes the next president of the United States, and as a nation we have the opportunity to begin reparations on our international reputation as THE schoolyard bully, we have hundreds of years of colonialism, pain, and suffering to answer for. It is time to start sucking out the poison from the wound, starting with ourselves, our history, and our behavior, and healing outward in empowerment to those we have systematically abused the world over
Bernie Sanders is just one man who has, over and over, pledged willingness and a devotion to doing just that. We have to be ready to take this on as a collective, and if he becomes the leader of our nation, this is a positive way to let our entire world know we are ready to take responsibility for our collective history. Make no mistake people; karma is at work here. We can’t pretend to know how it will erect balance in our world, or in our country again, but it will.
According to ancient Greek lore, the star maiden Astraea was a goddess of justice. She was the last divine being to leave earth in disgust due to the pain and suffering wrought by human behavior. She carried scales (we still see them next to her, as our lovely Libra constellation) with which to karmically weigh any dispute. When she retreated from our war-torn earth, she took her place in the skies as the constellation Virgo.
This Virgin energy of justice, of bearing karmic weight, of healing in service to the voices and empowerment of the historically oppressed is paramount in our time. The North Node, our collective gear toward destiny and fate, is also in Virgo right now.
Virgin energy, one of the most collectively misunderstood archetypal energies, is our present.
Bernie Sanders, born when the Sun was in Virgo, is an archetypal inspiration of our time. I hope we take that next step, alongside his vision, one that so many of us share. If it does not happen, if he does not become an elected leader beyond the amazing Senator and healer-leader that he already is, and has always been, it is okay.
Those of us that share his vision are hyper-aware that the world might not be ready for this. It needs it. We need progressive, loving vision. But perhaps we are not there yet as a collective.
Even so, we are now in a phase of consciousness-raising. Through his platform, and his campaign, Bernie Sanders has created the impetus for a conversation our nation has been avoiding for a long time. Indeed, in truth to balance, the hate-mongering egomaniacal platform of Donald Trump has had an equal hand in this conversation creation.
Proof that there is beauty in darkness.
And so here we are, collectively: red pill, blue pill?
Obviously, this episode is to be continued…
Bath Church
Sometimes it’s all I can do to
Crawl in a dark tub
With a glass of wine and
Contemplate my own divinity.
I always come scrambling out
Scratching away at some paper with ink.
Ritual release makes me a creatrix.
And I think this is how the Dark Mother
Comes to me
In the wet
Remembering depth I only have
In a giant chalice my body floating as if
In a womb.
Ostara 2016
Tied
Going against the tide, are you willing to be beat bloody raw by it?
Douse your fiery head
Face first,
Smoke rising from the
Foam.
Was it your mother?
She teach you how to stand resolute and firm?
Going against the tide,
Titan-ed up,
Refusing to be tied up?
Trying to marry my vision with my present
I just read something by Sarah Durham Wilson of Do It Girl . I know I have to work with her one day, whether at a retreat, or otherwise. Her piece sparked the forthcoming:
I am at a critical point in my life. Not only because I am young and barely aware of the concept of my life path, and not only because I am running out of money to pay my bills, and support my home and my life that I am building with my partner, not only because my old relationship with food needs to die, and I must now step into the truth that, as long as I consume food harvested out of pain and hatred for life, I cannot embody true love;
And not only because my old relationship with sexuality is still chiming its death knell, and I am daily dancing between releasing and revisiting shame related to the Magdalene Wounds and my inner truth as a sacred whore for God
Not only because of these things, but because
I feel it. Something is happening to me, and the world, and the less separate I feel the more I dive into myself. The more I dive into my individual calling I know it is of the world, this world. Yes, I am worldly, yes I am young and have much to learn.
In the past year I have learned I am a witch. I have learned to call in four corners, and to harness synchronicity for the benefit of myself and my loved ones. I am still learning to trust my craft, and to trust that my soul-work is enough, that the fact that I am doing my best is enough, and most importantly
To forgive myself when I know, in my soul, that I am not practicing my best effort.
I am enough, even when I don’t give enough. I am enough.
Isn’t that an eternal lesson? How many lives must we live to learn that one? Who does not struggle with that, internally?
Our world mirrors this individual struggle externally, collectively: the war, the disrespect, the poverty, disease, and senseless death outside the bounds of the natural spiraling of birth, life, passing, recycling…
Externally our world does not love the world. So we must do our individual utmost; do the inner work, of looking within and finding love, and then sharing that with others, and collectively,
The world can love the world. We can love us, when we believe we are enough. I am enough, so are you, and they, and them, and us.
I feel something is happening. I am awakening to my own embrace, and as I uplift every personal desire as sacred, I uplift the desires of our world, collectively. We each need to feel safe and valued in our expression of Self, and leave nothing to the dust collecting in our unresolved Shadow.
For now, I’ll keep dancing and writing and making and c0-creating with kindred spirits, and I hope along my way I’ll meet many other souls in need. I will heal myself to be a healer. To those souls in need I can then comfortably say: yes, you are enough, and so much more. You are love(d).
V Day Street Art Show
PDA Project:
A radical V-Day gift for my lover, myself, and the world. Some collaborative and co-inspired art, showing
From February 14th, 2016 until The Art Disappears
at
Uninhabited Building That Needed Some Beauty, North Davidson Street, Charlotte, NC.
The world needs more love, and we’re here to make it.
I don’t sleep
It is late and there are no rain sounds and I am alone, awake. It is the dark moon and I still can’t sleep at night.
There is work to do. With everything I am the wee hours call me to conjure. My hair is pink lemonade, I have crescents for ears (I’m hungry) and hungrier still to go deep and as I finally ramp toward inspiration it is time for all good girls to find rest behind their eyes.
I tend to find motion.
I long for home, with my familiar, one who is human warmth in my bed who gives life to my stuffed rabbit doll and puts breakfast dreams on a plate in front me, with love, and when I take my whole tea collection out of the cabinet and leave it strewn about in a failed attempt at herding a colony of ants,
He simply puts it back.
For every white light in our house two are orange, two are blue, two are red, and one is rope of rainbow fitted beneath our table. Every meal has the potential for cosmic adventure and every surface tells a story written by a person with a great gift for beauty.
And this makes me write beauty, too.
This is why I have crescents in my ears, of the moon. This is why I wear necklaces made of shell, of stone. This is how I remembered I am magick, ink for blood, herb flesh and quill-bone.
This is why I do not sleep.
This is why I long for home.
Cosmic Ecstasy
Love is a portal, sacred sex a door:
Malleable
What makes you think? Graffiti of the Public Sphere
Today my muse has nearly dried up. With every keystroke I hope that I defibrillate her back to life. I can hear my own heartbeat stutter, and only I can save me.
I’ve been distracted, I’ve been hurt. The mundane buzzes ever louder, jet-like through my ear, sticks around long enough to piss me off, and move back out the other. In the meantime what’s sacred to me waits patiently. The sacred will never fight against the mundane. Clearly, She’s above that. She doesn’t need to fight for attention.
I need to wait for a direction.
How much stillness can I muster? I fear it. I fear stillness. I can’t go home again, not yet, and here out in the bar atmosphere of the public realm I only hear buzzing, buzzing, buzzing.
I’m a scribe for life around me. Is anything coming out of me of me? No, and it never will be. I’m a simple channel. It matters where and to what I’m tuned. I don’t always have control of this.
Buzz
Bank foreclosure, so fucked up, okay, here’s how it works. We buy the house with banks. When I buy a house that’s owned by Wells Fargo, it’s a big bank we get our money from Deutche bank Bank of America, Bank of America owns the home, I take it back to Bank of America and say I own this property, basically Bank of America gets money Are you fucking kidding me?!
Boom boomboom You make me feel like I am free again. Boom boomboom. Boom. Boomboom. You make me feel like I am free again. However long I stay, I will always love you.
That’s why I don’t feel bad about anal rape gang bang.
What am I listening to?
We’ve gone beyond…
And so after all this, how can I not order another beer? And after all this I still can’t go home.
And those are only the freeloaders who don’t contribute anything.
I’ll stop the world and melt with you.
Are you with me?
A while back I had a novel idea. That is, I had an idea for a novel. This was months ago, and I was so inspired I began research immediately, and started drafting character studies, and began an outline. It’s been months now. Months and months, but not a whole year. I’m going to write a letter to my inspirational idea for that project, and see if it is still interested in collaborating with me to see it into fruition… if it sounds crazy, then that’s what I am.
I’ve been reading the book Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, and I can easily get on board with her notion that ideas and inspirations are their own “genius” or, energies that visit host to human host in an attempt to be materialized. I hope I haven’t disappointed the idea for that novel that visited me. It’s been a while.
All I can do is ask, so I did, and this is what came out of me:
Dear novel idea,
First, I have to make my apologies for leaving you bereft in your infant stage. I am sorry. I became distracted by certain activities in my own life, like moving, and all the emotional drama attached to it. Then my painter’s muse showed up, and so did my essay muse. She’s been pretty adamant lately, and demanding. She has a lot to say through me.
You are not so demanding, and I think you’ve been patient. I hope so. I hope the silence on your end doesn’t mean you’ve moved on to a more active candidate. I remember when you first fell upon me, in a stroke of spiritual realization that, as we all travel as mirrors in this world, we have to realize that what we hate most and would fight against in the world, we own within ourselves. And you gave me a wonderful insight as to how I might artfully and interestingly express that to others! In-fucking-valuable, I say! Thank you external genius of relative incarnations!
I still want to work with you, if you will with me. I cannot promise that tonight I’ll do more than read some of the materials we’ve already made together. I am weary from a full day of job applications, resumes, and cover letters. I can promise that tomorrow I’ll do a character interview, at least. And, I’ll try drafting some more of our outline. Honestly, it’s daunting. It’s been years since I’ve written fiction, but I know you’re here to help me, if I help you. I have faith in the Muse of your visitation.
I humbly beg forgiveness for my own absence, and I request your return so we can once again work together. I’ll put pen to paper, finger to keyboard, and let flow in your name.
In creative solidarity and with all the magic ink in my pot,
B. Wilder
***
Dear B. Wilder,
I am unsure if we are finished working together. I can tell that I’ve been at the back of your mind. That’s what happens when you open your brain to me. Show me some attention, some real active attention, and you’ll be able to tell if we are still a proper fit for one another.
I know you’ve got the brains, the attitude, the realizations… but are you confident enough in me, in yourself, to get your fiction styles on? Of course writing a novel is a commitment. Anything worth doing is a commitment! Even getting up in the morning and making oatmeal is a commitment. What is it about commitment that’s got human beings so up the wall, back down and drugged in an alleyway over the notion? You’d think it wasn’t a human invention…
Let’s start with some reading tonight. Maybe revisit your notes on that historical fiction class you started to take online? All I have to say is: we’ll see. It really is mostly up to you.
You have the power. That’s why I came knocking on your mental door. I literally don’t have hands, otherwise I’d do it myself.
Also with love and understanding to your human plight,
Novel Idea.
TransPORTation
“What did you guys talk about?” one scene from a play: Life Vignets
Setting: From a pinpoint of candlelight on a high table lights brighten to reveal two artist lovers, BRIAN and CHRYSTAL, sitting opposite one another, sharing a joint and gazing at each other with interest. The kitchen is artfully decorated in punk bohemian flair.
BRIAN: [expression inquisitive] Wow, you were on the phone with Annalise for a long time. Like, two hours- what did you guys even talk about?
CHRYSTAL: [sips tea and takes joint from BRIAN, thoughtfully looking at a piece of abstract art on the refrigerator behind Brian’s head. Then, facing Brian]
Well, [inhales smoke, pauses, then exhales slowly] we talked fashion, feminism, art, music, stuff about you men, deep space [takes another quick breath to continue prattling on] creative revolution, practical tips for making real life magick and the fate of human existence and this planet.
You know. The usual.
BRIAN: [eyes widen as he takes the joint that CHRYSTAL now passes to him, inhales, and exhales smoke in a laugh]
CHRYSTAL [Laughs in turn, smiles, and sips tea coyly, looking back at BRIAN over the rim of her mug]
Lights dim back down to a single candle.
End scene.
The waves the waves: Creative Purging
It comes in waves.
Yesterday I felt nothing and today I feel everything, like if I don’t pick up a paintbrush and a pen, it’s going to hurt.
Last week I got sick, and my head felt like a balloon. I felt like I needed to vomit creativity. I got on the floor on my hands and knees to the Muse, begged her for some magick, for some relief
And she appeared as I let loose on a large piece of cold press watercolor paper with a sharpie and the vicious cycling of my hand’s movement across the surface of it.
Scribbles, just scrapping out my virus. Me, my tired body, and whatever comes out of me a poison
A healing tonic,
Both.
Next, splats of wax dripping like snot from my nose onto the page and then black paint, only black, inky and dripping, the ooze of congestion.
I didn’t finish the painting that night, and now, even as it remains unfinished I feel I’ve already overworked it. It’s magick is displaced somehow. I hope I can get it back, but, it was really about healing all along.
Now, my cold is mostly all gone. My partner’s sick now though. I feel like I should make him a cup of tea, and and hand him a paintbrush.
“Don’t make it pretty,” I’ll say.
Because sometimes you don’t feel pretty.
Then, it’s not about pretty, it’s about Art.
Verbal Alchemy 