on Hope/on Praxis/the Cycle of the Seasons/the Work

the ninth day

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frost-encrusted oak leaves covering the ground

is this my beautiful house? is this my beautiful wife?

TOPICAL: this is part of The Cycle of the Seasons series

I’m surprised by how far along we are. Three-quarters of twelve days, all the minutes and hours, all behind us in linear time. It doesn’t get easier, though, the closer we get to twelve. It’ll be a relief to have finished when we get there, but first, we have to get there.

Today was busy and difficult and I’m experiencing a mood dip, probably because of *gestures at everything* and also, it was too warm in my room last night and I didn’t sleep very well at all. The temperature in my state has been known to be fucking ridiculous — start the day dressed for cold weather, and by evening you might be out on the deck in shorts, breathing humidity after a thunderstorm that lingered instead of clearing the air. But it’s getting more ridiculous, more off-balance, because of how the climate is changing the weather patterns here. The summers are much hotter, the winters a lot colder, and the weather itself bounces back and forth so much it literally gives me a headache because the barometric pressure plus whatever flora thaws and refreezes and thaws again, plays havoc and my confused body releases a whole bunch of histamine, just in case.

The cycle of the seasons is different in here than out there. In here, it’s easier to mark the time and shift with the day length and the time of the moon. In here, it’s easy to forget that we are protected from a lot of the chaos out there.

I don’t celebrate New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day any more, not because I’m personally boycotting them, but because my new year starts after the last harvest festival at Samhain. My new year starts after the harvest has been shared, measured, and stored, the fields now resting, the animals finding warm deep places to sleep until the spring. My new year starts with the stories of our ancestors told by lamplight. My new year starts with a new cycle of living in close quarters with those I love the most. We learn some of the hardest lessons about ourselves and how we deal with stress in the early part of our year. It reminds us that we are woven together, whether by chance or by choice, and things are all the easier if we can learn to live in harmony.

Tonight I am tired because the day felt very long. I am yawning but not ready for bedtime quite yet. I’m still working on the last bottle of water I filled for today. I’ve crossed off the things we did and I checked all the little boxes, clearing my virtual desk in preparation for tomorrow’s work. I am hoping that everyone in our household can sleep a good restful sleep tonight. I am hoping that I wake up with no migraine tomorrow, in spite of the wackypants weather that’s forecast.

I wish for you what I wish for myself: time in which you do not remember to worry.

— Nix

Our days traditionally begin at sunset. The darkness is all around us but we are safe here together inside these walls that we have fortified with love and with sacrifice.

featured image is a photo by Andrew Ridley on Unsplash

on Generational Trauma/on Hope/on Praxis/the Cycle of the Seasons/the Work

the eighth day

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comic drawing of a fox, eyes closed, while wind blows leaves past, with the text 'it fucken wimdy'

MERCURY IS IN GATORADE AGAIN

TOPICAL: this is part of The Cycle of the Seasons series

I started up my Welsh lessons again on Duolingo! I’m going back through the early lessons because they updated the course and there are words and tenses I wasn’t familiar with yet, so instead of googling the answers, I want to know what they’re talking about (literally). I can absolutely say that dwi ddim yn hoffi pys, because the only peas I’ve ever actually liked were right out of the garden and my taste-memory wants nothing to do with ‘peas’ from the grocery store. Maybe if I grew my own? Anyway.

As I was looking for something on Facebook (ew), I stopped by my sister’s profile, like I do every few months. There were some photos of a Christmas gift exchange, and I don’t think I have ever seen a more awkward and sad looking gift exchange. Where is the dark-outside-light-inside feeling? Where is the mood lighting? Why are you all on chairs when you could be on the floor? Why do you look so sad?? SHOW ME ON THE TREE WHERE CHRISTMAS HURT YOU. (My oldest nephew did not look sad in the slightest, I think he’s impervious)

Since I track the weather and lunar cycles, eclipses, retrogrades, Sabbats, and cross-quarter days, of course I knew that Mercury stationed direct retrograde (very funny, Mercury) in Capricorn today. Do I know what that means? Not really. I’ve read some commentary by astrologers whose opinions I generally trust, and the only thing I know for sure is that each one is different because a) they are in different signs each time [what even is a Capricorn? I’M NOT SURE], and b) we are different each time and so is the world. All I really know is that Mercury is in Gatorade again and we have to slow down, shut our mouths, and think before we speak or act or decide.

I opened all the packages that were stashed in the mudroom today and we ran them through a decontamination cycle and then I brought the things that are gifts (I got to do the buying of the House gifts to everyone this year) for 12th Night up to my room so that I can put them in bags stuffed with tissue.

… oh, did I not tell you about our decontamination procedures? Most of us are immune-compromised and even if we weren’t, we really fucking do not want COVID or anything else getting in the house. Anything coming into the house from outside goes through a decontamination cycle. Items are handled with gloves or bare hands that can be sanitized afterward. If your clothes touch the thing you’re unboxing, put it in the decon laundry hamper that lives in the mudroom. (prepare yourself ahead of time or you might end up very cold if you have to take off your shirt and pants, trust me on this one) Near the beginning of the pandemic, we bought medical-grade UV lights and have them set up in our mudroom — it’s kind of an airlock room between an outside door and an inside door — for radiating the heck out of stuff. This UV light is too dangerous for contact with people, and a few of us have at one point opened the door and discovered too late that one of the lights hadn’t turned off properly, immediately left the room with our eyes shut, asked for an antihistamine and allergy eye drops, and kept our eyes shut for at least fifteen minutes. We’ve got light-blocking curtains on the windows and UV-blocking plastic lining the inside and outside of the glass on the door. We have a process for letting everyone know the downstairs is closed for decon, and we even decon food that we order out.

ANYWAY, the gifts are now upstairs. I still haven’t read my book, but I did get to give our toddler a back rub and I had a delicious meatball sub for dinner and I have doughnuts left and I am having a cold Guinness and my current favorite playlist is bouncing around the inside of my skull (earbuds are so nice sometimes). So really, things are pretty damn good here.

May you find as much intense enjoyment as a toddler pausing for maximum backrub feelings.

— Nix

P.S. Would you believe me if I told you that our decon procedure was part of what led to a breakup I had early in the pandemic? Apparently you can take something so personally that it ruins a brand-new relationship. I mean, it happens, I guess. I’m kind of on hiatus right now.

P.P.S. Which reminds me, the person who broke up with me is a Capricorn. I don’t know if that has anything to do with anything.

Our days traditionally begin at sunset. The darkness is all around us but we are safe here together inside these walls that we have fortified with love and with sacrifice.

featured image is a comic that appears to have originated here on Tumblr in 2021

on Hope/on Praxis/the Cycle of the Seasons/the Work

the seventh day

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a basket of cinnamon sugar doughnuts on a wooden table

insert joke about resting

TOPICAL: this is part of The Cycle of the Seasons series

Tell me you’re exvangelical without telling me you’re exvangelical: you’ve successfully forgotten how to Christmas, but unfortunately, jokes referencing a translation of the book of Genesis come to mind FAR too quickly. I think I ruined the joke.

This is the third or fourth day in a row that I have been trying to find time to read a specific book (Stardust by Neil Gaiman, a used copy I bought from the local library), and failing to find that time somewhere. I did finally do an extra load of dishes. I also did a load of laundry and played Stardew Valley some more, but my mind is so occupied with all the things to take care of right now that I keep forgetting what my plans are in the game and I end up wasting game time trying to remember what I was doing. It feels like what this year was like.

Oh, and I requested cinnamon sugar doughnuts in my grocery wants list — group shopping lists are one of the best community living tips I could give — and I ate two of them in quick succession even though it would have been nice to save five for later instead of four.

Some of us spent time last evening having a rueful laugh about people that we know who’ve honestly wanted to try communal living but ended up with problems that felt unsolvable. The thing about living in community is that you are going to get on each other’s nerves. There will always be something that happened that no one can recall happening, or an item is lost but turns out to have been put away in a place it doesn’t belong, or a person who doesn’t buy groceries has drunk all the milk. If you, as a group, don’t have a strong commitment to working out your problems willingly and without your ego taking center stage, it’s next to impossible to live in any kind of harmony as a group of people. Community living sounds beautiful until it’s hard, and then it falls apart so easily and with so many outward spirals of harm if there hasn’t been any foundational work done ahead of time.

Speaking of books I have been wanting to read and not getting to read yet, I have Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World, and there is a part of my brain’s CPU runtime that is completely occupied with being aware that I have not read this book yet, because it feels like a very important book and I want to have already had the privilege of reading it.

Anyway. I have been experiencing a lot of sensory overload this week, and looking for ways to comfort myself where I can. Hence, a lot of Stardew Valley, and also many bread products, and small naps. I took a short nap after dinner because I couldn’t seem to think — my brain might have been wrapped in fuzz — and I woke up feeling weirdly disoriented. I know it’s still today, but I feel like I don’t know where I am. Maybe I’m in a video game, wondering why I went to this area of the map. What was I going to do? Will I figure it out if I look in my inventory again? Oh hey, a doughnut!

The end.

May the things that comfort you be within reach.

— Nix

P.S. This was incredibly disjointed. Welcome to my mind, I suppose? Eek.

Our days traditionally begin at sunset. The darkness is all around us but we are safe here together inside these walls that we have fortified with love and with sacrifice.

featured image is a photo by Jovan Vasiljević on Unsplash