October 30:
I JINXED IT. I started writing this newsletter twice and I sputtered to a stop halfway through both times. I'm tired and blank! I got nothin'. But I didn't start this thing for it to be hard, I didn't want to miss a month, and if I can't serve the main course, I'll serve you the sides, the scraps.
October has actually flown by, an unexpected surprise after the extended length of my August and September. I sent in my notice at work. I confirmed my last day. The pile of work remains huge and anxiety inducing but the list of events and tasks grows shorter everyday. My honey and I celebrated their birthday with a fancy tasting menu dinner which put me to delicious sleep by 9.30pm. I killed it on the birthday gift front. I got to go to Bangkok a few days ago for a meeting of amazing, engaged, generous, babely people, I got to spend quality time with dear friends who went with me and I didn't think about my day job even once. It was bliss. I spent time on the plane and during breaks making lists for what happens after this job is over. I did two short tarot reads for some new friends and it felt so good to be able to have that energy and give it to someone else again, something I haven't been able to do since the end of July.
The hard things remain hard, remain present. I wanted to write about the heaviness of the hard things, about sadness, but in the end I guess I also didn't want to. I thought, isn't that so boring? Good things, bad things, nothing and blankness. One after the other after the other. But that's been the only way to move for me.
I'll see you in November 😘
Sides 'n' Scraps
I wanted to write about the 5 of Coins and 5 of Cups from the Ostara Tarot, which both feature snakes, a symbol I couldn’t quite parse but was very drawn to. I didn't manage that but it did remind me that in 2012 I wrote a poem about serpents called "In Our Uncleanliness, We Bear Monsters", an attempt to tie together the myth of the snake-woman queen of what is now Lisbon, whose spurned body and fury created the city's seven hills, the maiden Pyrene, who bore a serpent after being raped by Heracles, "honoured" by her rapist who asked the mountains she died in to remember her name, and a clone of the formerly extinct Pyrenean Ibex.
Things I read that felt very 5 of Coins: 1) "Poverty is such a huge relationship killer and we don’t talk about that enough. How hard it is to have or maintain a healthy relationship while struggling to survive. When you’re just so exhausted you fall in to a survival routine & thats all there is." 2) "so much depression, anxiety, stress & suicidality is caused by capitalism. we really really need to talk about how not being able to meet our basic needs and how giving away 80% of our days to jobs that drain & exploit us leads to serious mental health issues for a lot of people"
This Twitter thread on prison abolition by @razorfemme and the myth of how they keep us safe from "monsters" covers so much of what I talked about in my last newsletter!
Previously, I wrote about The Devil and the Two of Swords; “You wanna lie down thinking about it because that weight is heavy and that responsibility is hard. I don't think it's a devilish thing to want the easy, even knowing that it doesn't absolve us or solve anything. To want to feel good in a way that makes you forget your responsibilities, in the face of the work it all involves. Seems human.” If you'd like to subscribe, click here. If you like what I write and share and want to support that, here’s my tip jar. Please feel free to share this newsletter with a friend 💌
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