Categories
Newsletter

harvest season

It’s harvest time, so of course here’s the obligatory golden field of wheat photo. I’ve definitely noticed more corn around, and the bigger, thicker squashes in people’s urban gardens (so envious, my tiny container garden right now consists of a few scraggly cherry tomatoes and kale that is 90% eaten by caterpillars).
The wheel of the year has a cross-quarter celebration August 1st, one of the ones halfway between a solstice and an equinox. This one is Lammas, very much a celebration of harvest — of what we planted in the spring at Imbolc (February 2). I’m thinking back to the intentions that I planted and noticing that I really am in a different space, and really did plant energetic wishes that are now blooming.
Here, the wild blackberries are also really ripe, so our plans have been to make some bread and some blackberry jam (which will probably actually be squashed blackberries, not formal jam with the boiling of the jars and all that). I haven’t made time for that yet, but it will happen! I feel flexible with my celebrations, though I like doing a little something, at least, day of.
This year, I did a tarot spread (I know, shocker) from Little Red Tarot, who I found because they have a “Queering the Tarot” series that has been fun to read. The article with the spread also has more information on lammas and the energies of this time of year.
Enjoy! And happy harvesting, of whatever it was that you have been planting, nurturing, and growing.
— Zed
PS: Exciting announcement — Erotix: Literary Journal of Somatics is almost ready! It’ll be out at the end of August.

Categories
Newsletter

light yourself on fire

“Success is not a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.”

— Arnold H. Glasgow

How do I light a fire under me? How do I get back to the fifteen projects on my to-do list that I started a year (three years) ago and haven’t gotten back to? Or do I let them go, cut them, decide they are as done as they are ever going to be?
It’s hot here. August can be brutal. I’m in tank tops most days, forgetting to put on some sort of bra. It feels exposing. Sloppy. Unheld. All of the fire dials are up to red, all of the parks say “no smoking!,” the Berkeley hills caught on fire a few days ago and spread for acres. The dried out golden grass catches easily.
But I don’t catch easily. Sometimes I wither. Sometimes I’m that obnoxious green that is so dense it’s almost impossible to break it or rip it.
I keep waiting for someone else to set the fire. For deadlines, for some sort of external motivation that will ‘make me’ do this work. But it’s not going to just happen. It’s not flowing in the morphic fields waiting for me to step into it. It’s me — I have to do it. I have to set myself on fire.
— Zed