One: Notes
Part of me wants to go over there and pick up the Tarot books and read anything about the Hanged Man, but I don’t want this to become a research paper…
Expand to contain. I am trying not to use expansion and precipice, I am sick of everything being a precipice. Skunk cabbage generates its own heat. It’s not waiting, goddammit. Thinking about the level of heat beneath the soil. Hungry times, waiting for things to pop, soon, but they’re not here yet, now
The breeze is bitter, and fingers are freezing, I left the house without them. Optimism or just pure rush. I don’t want to write in first person right now, but I don’t want to write in second person either.
I don’t want to talk about transformation and growth. I am not interested in portals. The overuse of portals. Sometimes you must wait in discomfort. There are few true before-and-after moments in a life which sometimes can only be recognized by Father Time in retrospect. Everyone and their brother a portal. I’m not going to use the portal word, I say, as I use the damn portal word over and over and over. The eternal shifting of time and cycles which demand your attention, your attention to inattention. Relief
Something about wants and fears, fear and time don’t care. They do and they don’t. Interlocking. Everyone has their time.
Two: Writing
Pisces is not an end, it is a foreword. In the lands of winter it tastes a bit like desperation — blood is flowing and food is preparing, but where is it? Stores are dwindling and relief will be here soon, and there is nothing that you or I can do to speed it up. Another ice storm feels like an insult, with the anxious anticipation of what’s to come roiling in your stomach.
The male Red-winged Blackbirds are staking out their territories. It’s not yet time for the marsh to grow in, so as they stand sentry in bare trees, it’s possible to see the boundaries they are preparing to defend. It’s discernible in the relative distances and the particular snags they’ve chosen. Soon this won’t be so visible, and soon the females will be here to begin nesting. But for now, we must wait in the cold and steadily-lightening gloom, sentries at our posts.
This essay was originally published on my now-retired Substack on March 7, 2023. It has been migrated and updated on May 25, 2024.