Whatever It Takes

So, I was going to do a detailed Potpourri post today, but then, well, you know.

I had to meet a campaign volunteer in the next town to drop off materials.  I met her, dropped them off, went to the drug store and picked up a prescription, and came home.  By then it was 4:00 and I hadn’t eaten since breakfast.  So I started to cook and was overwhelmed by the smell of gas.  Turned off power to the gas line, went outside, and called the gas company.

They sent a nice young man who spent almost an hour checking for a gas leak.  Couldn’t find anything.  Said he could smell something but it didn’t smell like gas to him.  He said that there have been several calls about sewer gas over on this side of the lake.  I have a call into the builder for Monday morning.  Air conditioning off and windows open.

But let me tell you about the woman I met.  She’s elderly, probably early 80s.  It was in the 90s up here today and she was about to go canvass a hilly mountain town.  In the afternoon sun.  With a terrible cold.  She was out canvassing last weekend, too.

I keep running into these women who have just decided that Trump will not stand and they will do the difficult grunge work necessary to take him down, starting at the local level.  I am in awe of them.  Guys, we could use some help.

#ClimateStrike

Today marks the beginning of a week of climate activism.

Envisioned – and then made real – by activist and hera Greta Thunberg, young people are striking, blockading,and engaging in other forms of activism in various cities and locations around the world over the next week.

What do they want?

As Thunberg said in her testimony before Congress earlier this week: “I don’t want you to listen to me – I want you to listen to the scientists…And then I want you to take real action.”

(And she is living with integrity, even when it significantly inconveniences her.)

Make no mistake – the youth are leading this movement.

How can we adults best support them?

The UK Student Climate Network offers a five point guide:

1. For those who have children, enable them to participate.
2. Encourage your local school(s) to support students’ participation.
3. Let local media know you support the movement.
4. Center the voices of the young people who are leading the movement (aka, don’t try to take over).
5. Take direct action yourself.

The site offers further details as to how you go about all of the above.

350.org has additional suggestions:

1. Participate as an ally! (Again, center the voices of the LEADERS of the movement, and that’s not us, fellow grown ups.)
2. Spread the word on social media.
3. Organize in your community.

Again, the site offers further details as to how you go about all of the above.

In the era of TrumPutin, everything feels like an emergency all the time – that’s part of his con – but this truly is an emergency of global scale and the window for us to do ANYTHING to ameliorate the coming disaster is rapidly closing. Many of us will be in the Summerlands before things get really dire, but these young warriors will not, and we owe it to them to do everything in our power to support them.

(The above video is merely a short snippet of Thunberg’s testimony. The hearing lasted for two hours, and you can get the video of the whole thing here.)

Image from the Global Climate Strike website.

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It’s That Simple

Words for Wednesday

Victor Anderson once said that white magic is poetry and black magic is anything that works.  What happens when poets bump into Witches?

My poem, dedicated to Hera, was all my dreams and visions I had visiting the birthplace of Hera on the island of Samos, Greece. Intuitively, I felt the poem should be performed as an invocation with candles and incense. Alkistis and Peter agreed. I felt I had found a publisher who understood my art—yay! And a framework to help this Oulipian poem jump out of itself to its audience. But I was thinking about this from the perspective of poetry.

Little did I understand this same group of occultists was thinking of me as a “witch.” And not only a witch, but an exemplary witch! WHOA OMG. Wait, hold up. What is the definition of a witch? Are all poets witches?! And we just don’t know it?

I began a two-year-long digestion of occult materials to try to understand this question. What I have learned has blown my mind. I cannot say I have answered this question; the materials which comprise the occult world would take a lifetime in themselves to master. But at the May 2019 follow-up conference to Psychoanalysis, Art and The Occult—aptly titled 100 Years of Modernism and the Occult—we spoke at length and I got feedback on my thoughts of what defines an artist as a witch.

Please consider a humble offering of my learnings below:

First, I want to lay a foundation by sharing the thing which most blew my mind in getting closer to the occult community. As a thinker, I had been of the position that all gods and religious beliefs seemed interesting to me, so why not believe in Hera? (To me, Hera represents the last of the “female goddesses” before we went to a male hierarchy of gods.) Ok great. I believe Hera exists; I believe I can feel her, and I believe I can write a poem which to the best of my ability represents or captures what it felt like to “speak” to Hera. Ok cool. So it turns out, that would be invocation.

Well, when you get into the occult community and the literature, it’s not just about “talking” to or “communing” or “feeling” spirits. It’s also at the other extreme, evocation. Evocation is the practice of calling a spirit into a room, getting its signature on a piece of paper, interpreting its messages as divination, and then sending the spirit into the world to do your bidding.

You should read the rest of this short but powerful essay here.

Picture found here.

Every Girl Needs

1.  You need a secret stash of money.  Sadly, it can’t be in a bank or investment account, because you will have to report that on your taxes, or when you apply for a mortgage, or when you buy a car, or whatever.  This is a stash of money that your partner does not know about.  Women in my mother’s generation used to shave a little bit off the “grocery allowance” that their husbands gave them.  It’s the money you will use to get away from him if he’s abusive, to pay for an abortion if he gets you pregnant, to help out your sister when he says, “No, she should have stayed with her abusive boyfriend.”  In the end, he’ll die before you and you can use the money for a lovely headstone and perpetual flowers.
2. Don’t let him take that picture and don’t you take it and send it to him.  Yes, I know.  We’re all pretty modern and sophisticated.  He says that if you really love him and really trust him, you’ll let him do it.  Say no.  There is literally no way that this ends well and, someday — when you are applying for the divorce you just know right now will never happen, when you go through the break up that you just know right now is impossible, when you are trying to start a business, or run for office, or to get a loan that right now you know would never be necessary — someday you will not be sick to your stomach when those pictures don’t surface.
3. Make him explain it to you before you sign it.  The more he insists that you just sign the tax return, loan application, mortgage, etc. the more you need to insist that he (or his accountant, lawyers, partner, etc.) explain ever single figure to you.  With my abusive ex-husband, I used to keep saying, “Sorry to be so stupid, but I don’t understand.  What is this figure?”  Eventually, they may decide to do it without you, which is better, or to just not do it (better still).  But do not sign what you don’t understand, can’t verify, aren’t able to corroborate.  I know.  You love him.  He would never compromise you.  He wants you to show that you “trust him.”  If all of that were true, he’d satisfy you before asking you to sign.
4. When he insists that if you just “trusted him” you’d send him those pictures, sign that form, transfer those funds, etc., and you can’t hold out, agree, but only if he’ll show that he “trusts you” by giving you the password to his bank account.  After all, fair is fair.  You’re going to trust him with a picture that could get you fired, get custody of your kids taken from you, make it impossible for you to run for office.  So he should trust you with his bank account.  If you’re going to trust that he won’t get mad, or get drunk and brag to his friends, or make a mistake when he hits send, well, then, he should be willing to trust the same for you.  If he’s unwilling, well, then, so are you.
5. How fast could you put your hands on your passport, on cash, on your mortgage, on your health insurance manual and cards, on the deed to your house, on you last joint tax return?  Is there a reason why you and a girlfriend can’t store those for each other in an easily-to-grab redweld?  Look, of course, you’re right.  He loves you and you’ll never need these.  All the more reason why it should be simple for you to stash these with a sister, girlfriend, lawyer.

Monday at the Movies

I’m there, if for no reason other than the bears.

The Magical Battle for America 9.15.19

Now’s probably a good time to remind everyone to check/refresh the wards on your home or wherever you do this work.  Be sure that you’re rested, grounded, and in a comfortable position.  Maybe wrap up in a blanket or cloak or grasp a stone or talisman that matters to you.  Grow your roots, send them deep into the soil, let them intertwine and grow small hairs to attach to the mycelia in your own landbase.

Breathe.

Anchor yourself firmly to your landbase.  Notice a small detail that will call you back when this working is finished.

Ground and center.  Cast a circle.

Breathe.

As you move to our American plain on the astral plane, you can see again the safe hillock where you do your work.  You can see the five giant banners, shining in the sky:  Walden Pond, the Underground Railroad, the Cowboy, the Salmon, and Lady Liberty.  Do they seem more defined since we began our work?  Do they have anything special to tell you this week?

For a few moments, just sit on your hillock and allow yourself to become comfortable. This place should be feeling very real to you by now; we’ve been working together to create it for months and months.  What’s become familiar to you?  A tuft of prairie grass?  Buffalo off in the distance?  The scent of sand carried on the wind?  You’ve been involved in a months-long magical working here, joined with magic workers from across the globe.  Feel your connection to this place on the astral plane.  It is always here for you, always a source of strength.

As you look across the American sky, you see the Underground Railroad banner growing larger and larger in the sky.  It fills the entire sky and becomes three-dimensional.  You step into the banner and join a small group of people, speaking quietly in the dark.  They are planning to escape from the plantation where they have been enslaved.  They will need to be ready to leave everything at a moment’s notice.

You can feel their fear, but also their courage and determination.  When they hear an owl’s call, they know it is time to go, running quietly under the dark night sky.  As you wish them well, you feel a bit of their courage and determination growing in your own heart. See that courage and determination as a bright light, growing stronger and stronger in your heart.  When it is the right size, feel the light move into your throat, your arms and legs, your back.

You can stand up to this evil administration, to the capitalist system that is destroying the planet, to those who would drag us back to times when women, people of color, LGBTQ people, and others were unequal.   You can do difficult things, thing that scare you, things that seem impossible.  You will bring this light of strength and determination back with you from the astral and will share it with others, just and those who traveled the Underground Railroad have shared it with you.

Breathe.

Return to your own body, your own landbase.  Open your eyes.  Rub your face, move your arms and legs.  Notice the detail you selected to call you back from the astral.  Open your circle.  Drink something, maybe strong coffee or ice-cold milk.  If you like, have something to eat, maybe some vegetable soup or some granola.

During the course of this week, you may want to visit the Underground Railroad several times in order to strengthen its presence on the astral.  You may want to repeat this working.  You may want to place something on your altar to help you to remember the courage and determination that you now possess.  You may want to journal about your experience.  Are you inspired to make any art?  Can you sit beside a warm fire, or light incense, or stare into a candle?   What actions are you inspired to take for the Resistance?

Picture found here.