I love writing lists (especially with a quality pen): summer to-dos, groceries, bird ID’s, books to-reads, quotes by my 90 year-old besties, and truly, the list of lists goes on. I wasn’t sure how I wanted to approach this blog post because it’s been too long. Most ideas felt stale and/or completely missed the mark. During those 6 months, so many monuments were built for collapsing empires and dreams shattered in congruence with foundations setting as seasons changed from cold, to wet, to sticky. But the idea of a list felt like a start, or maybe just an illusion of control given the fluctuating circumstances.
>Jan 2021: I wrote my first song on guitar in plenty of years in honor of my partner’s 30th birthday (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvqkVgCkwFk). Gabe has the pleasure of checking out the next age for about 2.5 months before my planets arrive to blow out their candles. I wrote this diddy with the idea that it would be my first love song ever. What it ended up turning into was a piece reflecting about the give and take of relationships rather than straight up L.O.V.E. Thankfully our dear friend and fantastic bass player, Pat, got a last minute text a day or so into the process and was game to help me. Fast approaching deadlines are my love language. I gave myself Thurs and Fri to complete my end and Pat finished his within a couple hours. Gabe’s Sunday birthday started out with us sitting in the car blasting this thing I’d thrown together that just worked out. When the spirit moves you, I guess…
>Feb 2021: Relief came in the form of the first Moderna vaccine. The side affects were still pretty unknown and I seemed to get all of them. I would 200% do it a 1000 more times if it didn’t mean getting COVID again and watching people pass away from afar.
>Mar 2021: My best friend died in the earlier days of March. She would have been 101 this year. I played all the songs she’d requested at her funeral. I stared at her open casket the whole time and hummed in duet to “How Great Thou Art” imagining her singing boldly, eyes closed, toes tapping.
She watched me attempt to Charleston while she decorated the construction paper Mardi Gras hat only weeks before. She’d scolded me for slacking on my facility wide decorations and gave me the side eye throughout the week. I secretly love getting scolded from my elders. It’s the only love language they know.
>Apr 2021: My stepma turned 70 and I wrote this to sum up my April.
‘An Outline’
I approach each day on point shoe. A plate spinning on a pencil tip in the left hand. Three tri-colored bean bags circling the air above the right. A parrot squawks and yammers atop my head at the thoughts I thought I was not speaking.
Surely today will be less caffeinated. Surely today will have less rotations. Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to be still enough to feel a revolution.
It’s too close to the newest moon for night crawlers to bare themselves on grass. The moon wears a mask tonight. I see its eyes and wrinkled forehead. Again, she forgot to put on spf but at least her 14 days are up.
I wish the werewolves would come already. I want my dog to teach me a thing or two. I want to see what true packs are made of and who governs who. I want to travel by foot and forget warm showers and plush sleep. I wish a couple sacrifices and a plant medicine midwife might set me free.
I hold it out like a newborn, a rebellion to death. Here is my love to you, my loaves and fishes. Here is my revolution of bloody water on our hands, into wine. Here is my sacrifice to you, facing the change, certain that it may not. Here is my bell tolling to all of us sinews, flesh of my flesh, of those we have crucified.
Good night moon.
>May 2021: Gabe graduated with a 4.0 and received a technical certificate in Entrepreneurship. Right after he started guiding with The Wisconsin Fly Fishing Company where he continues to blow my mind week after week. We can’t give enough thanks to this community and how it continues to prove it is brimming with good people.
At the end of the month, I handed over my job at the retirement home to a beautiful soul and caught my PR fish a week later (it was a Northern, for those who wonder).
>Jun 2021: My ladies and I scoured the streets of NOLA for good-times and what-have-yous. All in good fun, I assure you! But damn do I miss me a good back-alley crawfish boil and my beautiful sisters. Also more and more big-ups/tidings of great thanks to my high school homie turned coven constituent, Brooke Sauvage. We could not have raved, sipped, indulged as savagely without you.
>Jun 2021: As of the 15th, I am the conductor of the youth orchestra within my community. Let’s just say it is hard not to answer the backdoor for that life-sucking imposter syndrome. 2020 to now has been all things tough reflection or as we witches refer to as, shadow work. I don’t think I’m alone here. The stagnation of our communities and world compels us to slow and watch our struggles rise to the surface. We’re forced to sit with and stare at all of it. So I’ve decided that’s what I can bring to the table. The honesty that comes with genuine passion fueled by intuition, but is also in the struggle alongside your struggles.
>27 Jun 2021: I sip my Spotted Cow in the canopy of trees now blocking my view of the city streets below. My dog stretches out sopping wet in the perfect amount of sunshine to dry. Gillian Welch sings softly while I type up this wild six month list and I’m glad, for what it’s worth. And it is worth it! The healing, the grieving, the recognizing, the prayer in words on paper, and letting go for more space to love and more life to live.
A Homegoing 