When the class you are attending emails the night before saying: “wear your most comfortable clothes.”
No one has ever been as qualified for a job as I am for this one.
Author: MKAster
new cast members
I love when the symbols change, the signals of next and new. Before now, the last few years were thick with birds around me, and constantly finding feathers on the ground, in my bag, on my clothes. Before that, it was years of garter snakes and bees.
Aside from a few found feathers here at this house in late summer, nothing presented itself. Those feathers were almost like a handoff or assurance, a sort of: this is where we leave you.
No birds visit my feeders here. There was the strange fly infestation, constant scout ants, then the two bee stings. Those all seemed to signal a finality, like a firmly placed bookend. Then, there was the eclipse, like the end of a reel of film finishing as a new one rolls out empty length, before the short countdown. In August, one obvious, wonderful moth on my door for several days, but that was all.
Now, here, it’s all spiders, ladybugs, and slugs. I’m so curious about this. A ladybug slowly crawling across my keyboard, another on my doorframe, another on my shirt. They were active and vibrant and just greeting, but due to the season, also sort of urgent.
With the spiders, it feels like the whole house is fully encased outside in cobwebs. It feels protective — many, many webs in every direction. Precise sentries sitting at the center of the crafted traps, waiting. And two nights ago, the one across my jeans, gentle and calm, just sauntering a hello.
And today I got in my car and where a passenger should be, was just an extremely fine and delicate web, from passenger visor to headrest, and the little spring greenish web spinner was hanging from the rearview mirror, like: see? It was gorgeous and she had built it in a little over 14 hours.
Slugs have specific significance for me, and it’s interesting to see them now (if sometimes in the house). Their presence communicates a lot to me, very clearly. Less of a bookend and more of a several page visual break between dense stories in a collection.
I’m curious to see if these will remain turning up. And, if they will perpetuate their significance and messages. While I’m grateful for these (the sudden flies and ants were alarming), I have to say, I miss the birds a bunch. Not having a transparent window over the sink has been a little loss, but gaining immense north facing windows has balanced that out.
the new season
Reviewing everything I wrote this summer, it was pretty much just chaining fears about global warming, nuclear war, putting my child through change, and extreme weather. Here’s one in not its worst state.
I’m so grateful for the grey, cool, desperately needed rain. I’m already full-on with making squash and mushroom stews, thick soups, and warm breads. Give me wool, coffee, herbal tea, and excuses to hang out and read, and I’m good for half a year.
And in the past couple months, 3 people have asked me to give them tarot readings. 😍 I haven’t been brave enough to do it yet, but I’m gonna. Because everyone deserves a little extra guidance from the ether now and then.
palms / chrysanthemums
Earlier this year, for a number of months, I felt like I had chrysanthemums in my hands. It was an odd, sudden sensation one day, both palms full, each with the soft weight of a chrysanthemum in the middle.
I hadn’t ever seen a nice chrysanthemum, just obligatory ones in grocery stores every autumn growing up, with brash harvest colors and struggling, spidery blooms. But the chrysanthemums in my palms were full, generous, neatly feathered. Some days they felt white, and some days they felt light yellow.
Sometimes I loved that they were energetically there, and some days I felt frustrated because I couldn’t understand what they were supposed to mean. Sometimes I would try to shake the sensation from my hands, but they just remained. They felt like being around people who know a lovely surprise that’s coming to you, but it hasn’t arrived yet.
I drafted notes for a poem about it, looked up chrysanthemum meanings, researched what it could possibly mean to energetically feel like you have chrysanthemums unfolding from your palms, and then then slowly, the sensation dissipated.
But today, in a florist shop there they were, my chrysanthemums. Or ones that looked like them. I chanced upon them on a day of my son asking if it was snowing, and having to say no, it’s ashes. He asked, from what. I said, Well, …everything. And then explained that sometimes things have to burn entirely to be renewed.
I can’t take pictures of each one in each of my palms, because I can’t hold the camera and the flowers at the same time.
A bad thing: A strange, extreme outbreak of house flies?! Eclipse energy? Last gasp of a very old, detrimental belief, symbolized? Who knows! But I killed between 70 and 100 in 3 days. I love having superior reflexes; If I were rolled on a stat sheet, I’d have a 19 dexterity (there is that one time on the shuffleboard court…), but only probably like a 7 physical strength so good thing they weren’t flying bears (leave me alone… I’ve been listening to a lot of Critical Role podcast). The pest man could find no reason for them at all. He just foam-sprayed some cracks around the foundation and said good luck. Of course, they seem gone now, after basically a horror film for 3 days.
A good thing: When I sent out a rash of 10 manuscripts earlier in the year, I did so with the hope that at least 2 would come back with a non-form rejection of: “We passed on this, but all really liked it and it went far. Please try us again.” And they did! And even getting that far is really hard! Imagine what would happen if I could really spend time writing and reading! How exciting.
eclipse season, cont’d.
The wildfires grow so that by the end of the day, breathing is difficult. I bolster my lungs. All light is rubbed-raw pink, or beige tinged, like the walls of a smoker’s home. Just ashes falling now.
Dreams and sleep and information have all been wild around this last eclipse. A few nights ago I had an epiphany while watching The West Wing (leave me alone, I’ve never seen it and it was Adam Arkin episode). It was a tremendous shift, posing as a smooth one, like simply rounding a corner in a familiar neighborhood or like stumbling upon an overgrown formal garden and its right amount of concept, and juxtaposed feral growth.
Before sleep I tug at my red grounding to the earth, making sure, clear blocks that look like burnt bricks, comb my green of white threads, frown at my weak yellow; not canary or goldenrod, more a thinned butter. But marvel at the saturated prussian blue, the plum-black purple.
A few weeks ago, in a not-yet-sleep-but-not-still-awake was shown: my own hand pulling a heavy brass knob closed behind me; a thick door closing off the before. My baby on my hip, my dogs at my feet in a new, lit, white and pink, all warm, calm, and possible. A relief and a *finally,* and the space expanding for us to walk in and be now… just this gratefulness, and relief. And promise.
__________
Yesterday, a passing, but somehow it feels like a gift. This is just something else he crafted to share. If I think of Ashbery, all I think of is: permission. His work grants permission. Or at least, it has always granted me permission where I have otherwise not been able to find it. All personal space, and all clouding out, and filling in.
Some John Ashbery Poems
even at the end, perfect timing
solar eclipse in Leo
A strong thing happens when a subject really resonates with me or I feel it extremely deeply; I become paralyzed to talk about it. Or write about it. It’s like I feel too much and speaking about it or trying to communicate it (I fear) will only fall short, and thus kind of mar it somehow. Lessen it. So with some things I don’t even take the chance.
It’s that way with this eclipse. Maybe it’s because it’s hitting me personally (which I’m excited about… personal revolution is my jam), with my Sun and Mercury sitting in my natal chart at 4 degrees Sagittarius. Everyone is feeling this eclipse, but some people will be *really* feeling this eclipse. (see: the President. Scores of people have already written about his natal chart and the possible impact from the eclipse. ) And it’s not just for a day, the resonance for everyone has been long leading up to, and will last long after.
For themes that will be continuing / deciding themselves, playing out now and moving forward or ending, look back at your calendar / journal / emails from the end of February through March of this year, the most recent eclipse season.
The best I can offer are links to writings and postings that are deftly written and considered. Happy eclipse, all.
Steven Forrest – The Big August Eclipse
my friends give me the best gifts
So far, two steller’s jay feathers at the new house.
H-, last week: I like this new house a little bit.
Me too, little kid.
everything i watched while The Tower card dismantled its last, and then thin fronds ached up though ash-new land.
Almost two months ago there was a two-week period of nothing; just metaphorically dotting & crossing the last marks in an afterword, and closing a back cover. Then, spreading open new, aspirin-white pages, watching everything remaining rush to arrange and take places, like a show about to start. One last thought of gratitude, and then surveying across the clear new, and nebulous.
That very quiet period was a strangely still pocket, not totally unlike just after H- was born, when feeding 5-6 times per day and through the middle of the night left me with a lot of time of just having to sit, and be. During that time I cranked through a ton of viewing and this time, albeit a smaller window, was the following…Read More »
every thing here
Weeks back, the osprey returned for a second year to the cell tower, viewable from the kitchen window. The nest is newly preened, the male flying low over, ripping branches and twigs, hauling them up and up for his mate to arrange, make. She beds the nest, awaits the chicks. And the river fish he brings to her, hooked on talons, dragged dripping, wiggling over our heads.
Last week, I found a fish on the lawn, dropped in the yard. It was fresh, silver scales, neatly pierced through like binder rings had impaled its back. The head was mostly eaten, but maybe distasteful and thus disposed of. That I found it before the ants was surprising. That I found it before Fred the dog, more surprising.
H- was shown and explained to about the talons, the head, the proximity to the nest. Now sometimes he will look up, cock his head and say: “…’member fish?”
Years ago I had wanted to plant something tall enough to obstruct the view of the cell tower. Now it’s valued, marking time by hosting a paramount symbol of seasonal change. There’s a lot that’s compelling about it, crowned with an immense nest, twigs and weavings sticking over in every direction, the contrast of it.
And later, in the late summer, the young will hop among the woven twigs, try out voicings, cry for days while the parents sit watchful in a nearby tree, coaxing them to hunt and fly by remaining away. And then they’ll all leave until spring again, when the mates return, embodying absolute fidelity and seamless harmony. The silence of the abandoned tower in the colder months entirely wipes clean the slate of previous seasons, like shaving too closely to the skin.
*
There’s been a bird feeder outside the kitchen window for years. Aside from winter, it rarely gets a visit and when it does, only from the sparrows. But suddenly it’s a sanctuary. The juncos chase away the song sparrows, the red winged blackbirds remove the house finches, the scrub jays flee the steller’s jay, and the single crow removes everyone…
1481hyperion 