#journal 2023

[birch-bark-scribbles]

I brought home a copy of the cold my sister's boyfriend had from our Christmas trip- fuckin great.

I need to remember to seek out mullein this year so I can properly thank it. One sip of this tea had me honking out mucus within moments. Truly the most potent decongestant I've ever run into and I wouldn't have survived the last six months of incessant illnesses and crying without it.

[birch-bark-scribbles]

Meditation on the Winter Solstice and Grief. 12/20/23

Winter's silence is a space for deep healing. It brings rest as welcome as clean water to the thirsty. It is a pause and a respite. The season can be harsh: don't make it harsher. Walk lightly so as not to slip on the ice. Let the cold soothe the pain. The grief. The loss. Let the feelings transform like water into whorls of ice. Let them melt and run down your face, or sublimate in the sun. Trust. Wait. Breathe. Feel the steadiness of the rock. Don't try to control the water cycle, how your feelings heave and freeze and thaw. Lean into the foundation, the bedrock. The healing must reach everywhere. Not just the skin but the bone. Light the hearthfires and love them. Rejoice that even in the depth of bitter loss, life moves: water and fire in the heart of the Earth.

[birch-bark-scribbles]

Family Christmas survived. I'm finally home!

Beyond the family stresses this visit highlighted, I found myself very weighed on by the change of biome. This was my very first time visiting the Sonoran Desert (or any desert at all), after growing up on the US east coast. I can count on my hands the number of times I've traveled west of the Appalachians. I found the desert itself very beautiful and inspiring, but the city itself seems like an act of violence against that landscape, making itself an ugly and depressing place in the process. I found the trip to be, overall, very disquieting yet instructive.

As soon as I stepped out of the plane, I felt like my eyeballs were drying out. That was a bizarre and unsettling experience. My skin went straight to hell from the dry air; even though it actually rained twice while we were visiting! It wasn't enough to stop my arms from going straight to eczema hell, no matter how often I moisturized. On the most basic physical level, my body hated being there. I guess I've gotten spoiled on mountain well water, because even the water tasted horrible (to me). I felt like I was being slowly fried like a potato chip and I have never in my life been so grateful to return to the wet, the cold, and the green.

Kind of petty complaints, I know. I've grown up in forested biomes and known more or less nothing else, so of course I wouldn't appreciate it, but still. I got the feeling looking around at the city and from talking to my sister that no one else actually likes living in the desert cities, either. All of their architecture and infrastructure is built to survive the heat and pretend that they do not live in a desert. Other people are better qualified than me to talk about the horrifying water misuse that colonization has imposed in the American Southwest so I won't rant about it, but I will say that many of those problems are glaringly obvious even to a newcomer, and it deepened the ugliness of the place. The antipathy between city and the natural systems keeping it alive was visible in every ugly inch, lessened only in those places that embraced the desert for what it is.

I know it sounds as though I hated it, and to be honest, for the most part I did. Except! For the brief hike we took, out in the desert, under the unreadable gaze of these impossibly massive rocks. The saguaros were an intensely powerful presence in the land, to my limited sensibilities. Everything I learned about their life cycle and their place in the desert systems (especially their alliance with palo verde trees) left me speechless with awe. What a powerful and beautiful place that desert is, when it's not ripped up and covered in cement, or turf on life support. The minimally managed desert in the state park was sparsely vegetated, with muted colors. Everything there amplified the presence of the incredible, towering red rocks that dominated the landscape. It made me understand why people would live here and love the land. The mountains seemed to me equally awe-inspiring and unwelcoming. The entire place felt unfriendly to me, but to be frank, it had no reason to be otherwise. The antipathy was mutual; I could feel in my bones that I didn't belong there. I appreciated its austere beauty, I thanked it, and I left. I'm glad to have had the experience, but I do not intend to return.

[birch-bark-scribbles]

Winter Solstice 2023

Oof, I've been in such a haze that I completely forgot that the Solstice is coming up fast. I have a lot of ideas on how I could celebrate, as the solstice is pretty symbolically rich for where I am in my life right now. I have some thoughts about my approach to holidays more broadly as well, but I think they're best saved for another post.

Unfortunately I only have so much time for myself this solstice, as I'm reluctantly doing one last out of town Christmas this year to support my mother. That's a story for another time as well, but it means I'll be on a plane for eight hours on the Solstice day itself. Plenty of time to meditate and read, but not a lot of time to visit my favorite river, or for private ritual. Compromise is in order.

I have some reading and music planned for the plane and the airport, since I always read and listen to music to pass the time there anyway. I like having a few books to rotate through to suit my fidgety brain, and my planned list includes:

The Book of Taliesin trans. Gwyneth Lewis and Rowan Williams (finally getting to the actual poetry after the brilliant translators' introduction)

A Rattleskull Genius: The Many Faces of Iolo Morganwg by Geraint Jenkins. What's a holiday without some time with your crazy uncle, after all.

Where Many Rivers Meet, a poetry anthology by David Whyte. As much as I love to nerd out over medieval poetry, sometimes a modern meter is more to my liking. There's some deep beauty in his writing, especially around grief, that I want to spend more time with.

With my limited time at home I am hoping to do some order-specific ritual centered around the hearth. Last year I did the first two thirds of the ritual, the preparation stages, but depression got the better of me and I never went through with the ritual itself. I'm hoping to actually go through with it tonight.

I won't be able to do a vigil for the Longest Night this year, and my other planned activities (visiting my favorite river with gifts, baking, decorating the apartment, a planned series of meditations) will have to wait until we return home. But that's alright; nothing about this year went as planned and recovery is not a neat process.

One day at a time, however short or long.

[yellowsubiesdance]

i absolutely have to clean my car out tomorrow, and the grief is setting in so hard

i’m so emotionally attached to her, this is the hardest goodbye i will ever have to make

[birch-bark-scribbles]

Snow for my job (utilities) means waves of emergency work, and sometimes very long days (14 hours today, whoopee). My role is a desk role at the moment but I stole a moment on my dinner break to stand outside in the dark and the falling snow, listening to the wind. Growing up in a climate where snow was a once a year treat (if that, nowadays), every snowstorm feels like utter magic to me. Even with the outages, dangerous roads, and late hours, it's worth it to see the breathtaking snow-blanketed mountains and softly glowing skies. Climate change has made me keenly aware of what a precious miracle snow is.

The beauty is still inspiring even after a grindingly long day and I want to think on ways I can show my appreciation.

[yellowsubiesdance]

when i was 21, i thought i was a grown up, i thought i had life experience, i thought i knew so much

and at 26, i see 21 year olds and i see how immature they can be, some of the terrible things they say, and i can’t even begin to understand what i’ll see in 21 year olds when i’m 31.

it’s just a constant reminder that you are never done growing, learning and maturing. you’ll always be less mature than someone else, and more mature than someone else. and because we’re all humans and the world is constantly changing in front of us, we’re always going to have moments of immaturity, we’re always going to make mistakes, and we will always be learning how to be better. and the true sign of growth and maturity is how open you are to changing, or how averse.

[yellowsubiesdance]

look at this dog i got to enjoy on my way into work