16 on the 16th Series: November
Someone just walked next to me and stopped, pointed and said “omg it’s jumbo fatty!” and he and his companion laughed and laughed. I was quietly eating a breakfast sandwich on a bench minding my own business when this MAN calls me jumbo fatty? I thought, there is no way he’s talking to me. And I turned to look at he was looking at a flyer. But damn that got me. He calls me jumbo fatty when clearly I had picked off the top of my breakfast sandwich as to save on carbs and to get the perfect bite. Brought me right back to elementary school though.. Wow.
2. I’m getting the hang of working full time but dang I don’t know if it’s for me. I hope the capitalism revolution comes soon and relieves me of this burden. I’ve had less time to sing, less time to write, less time to edit… I’m still trying to do all I ever do but I’m feeling strapped and needing to let go of something.
3. Big piece of the last month is my parents moving and putting their house up on the market. I’m sad about it for sure but it’s also put into perspective how long ago I moved away from St. Paul. I had this thought as I was doing laundry and trying to count how many different places in the world I’ve washed my clothes. I moved away when I was 18 and now 18 years later my parents move out and 36 doesn’t seem that old to live two adult lives.
4. I have a two year old friend named Isa. I’ve been friends with her parents for years, but I think I can say that she and I are friends now. I love the way she sees the world and she teaches me so many things! When we walk around she sees things way high up in the sky because her whole perspective is from such a short vantage point. She notices things on buildings, birds in the sky, things on peoples’ balconies. I rarely walk around looking up so much.
5. Smell and memory are so funny. I wrote a note in my phone that I was next to someone who smelled like a comforting soap I had when I was a kid. It reminded me of my pound puppies and feeling really safe. Now as I’m writing it I can’t imagine the scent but it was so powerfully connected to memory that it conjured up a specific moment and emotion. Why is that?
6. I’m cooking Thanksgiving this year and I am so excited. I’m preparing for it like it might save us all from the tragedies of the world which is a little extreme but I really need something to look forward to. And then I got to thinking that maybe gratitude can save us all. Gratitude, and green bean casserole, hopefully.
7. It’s weird, the little things that stayed tied up in the house and little griefs that were popping up while I was there cleaning up. It makes me feel like I’m losing Ebony again. Ebony was my sweet pet from 1996-2014 and I found him in the back yard on Nov 2. He was a beautiful black cat that I said fell off a witch’s broomstick on Halloween and into my yard. When he was alive he had the perfect balance of giving you space when you need it and staying close when you needed comfort. Since he has died, he has come to me when I am feeling lonely and I can feel him sitting with me, so when the best day for me to fly home was Nov 2nd I knew he would be near by.
8. Don’t look down the barrel of the dark future. Time inevitably moves forward but you don’t have to stare it in the face as it does. You can live in the now and try not to anticipate.
9. I am one of the biggest criers I’ve ever met. I’m not sure if other people cry as much as me but I’m just around myself the most so I think I cry more. Why do we cry? Is it uniquely human? I feel like the reasons I come up with are synonyms with weak but maybe that is just my conditioning. The other morning I cried as I did chores around my house and I looked around at how much I accomplished during my cry and I refused to believe that was a weakness.
10. Sometimes I’m in a space and I can feel the ghosts from the past there and it’s sort of flipping me out that someone will be in my old house and feel my ghosts there. Not all ghosts are dead people, just dead times.
11. What the fuck is in neem oil? I have a plant with meely bugs and I’ve been spraying neem oil on it and it’s been helping. I looked at the ingredients and I thought - dang the amount of trust we have in the FDA to protect us from horrible things and the amount they fail.
12. So I debated telling this story but here I go. Nov 3rd was a big astrology day - Pluto in the last degree of Capricorn was opposing Mars in the last degree of Cancer. Mars is going to go retrograde through Leo and Cancer at the end of this year and Pluto is moving out of Capricorn for the last time and into Aquarius, (something we’ve all been looking forward to) so this was a glimpse at this opposition which will happen again but instead of at the last degree of Capricorn/Cancer, it will happen at the first degree of Aquarius/Leo. Okay if this sounds like mumbo-jumbo I’m sorry, stick with me. An opposition with Pluto, the god of the underworld, the unspoken meaning of things, the underbelly ickiness, in the sign of the patriarch and Mars, the god of war, passion, wills and wiles, in the sign of the home is going to be explosive. It is going to kick up something unsaid and bring it to light and then reveal it in a way that gives it more legs than you thought possible. So anyway, I got in a big fight with my dad that day. Probably the biggest fight I’ve been in with him (or maybe anyone) ever but we were standing on a piece of the Earth in my parents old back yard where I had buried my treasures and performed my first spells and there was no way I was going to let him or anyone else boss me around. I felt powerful and dominant in places in myself that used to bring me shame. It was a necessary and good fight and he and I were both better for it. I knew that this opposition was happening and I assumed I’d feel it somehow in my life with Mars being my ruling planet but when I looked up the astrology and saw “Mars opposes Pluto at 4:36” I laughed and laughed because 436 was our address.
13. A lot of America likes Trump and that makes me sad. 2025 is a big year for the beginning of the next era. Uranus goes to Gemini which happened during the revolutionary war, civil war and WW2, and Pluto stays in Aquarius. We just can’t know for sure what will be the tipping point so I promise to love as much as I can and share it with people who don’t expect me to love them.
14. Lots of astrology at the end here I guess… Mercury is in Sagittarius now and soon going retrograde which means double check your account for the end of the year and start saying no to ease your load. Mercury doesn’t do a great time in Sagittarius anyway and now going retrograde I would expect a lot of delays and a lot of miscommunications that ruffle feathers. Spread love, spread patience, spread you legs… whatever helps
15. The more I get into sharing the more greed becomes insane to me. Like the amount of money Elon Musk and Jared Kushner and Peter Thiel have is just crazy. And I pay taxes at a higher rate? If they even pay at all? Ridiculous. Can we all as group stop funding them and make them realize how much they need us? You go first. It’s something we can’t do alone.
16. I’m doing a lot of research about the Adam and Eve Story for Queer’ecital and my biggest take away is that the knowledge they got from eating the apple was shame. They looked down and saw they were naked and were ashamed. That’s fucked.
