i’ve been thinking a lot about the inner lining of my stomach as i usually do under certain circumstances. this time it is not of the circumstance of intuition or trust, but the one of purity. this time, i look at the lining of my stomach with a dark and critical eye, a pitiful one, asking it to make itself pure— asking myself to make myself pure ;; the stomach lining, is after all, more of the self than the brain will ever be. the brain cannot be the brain without the stomach lining, that special tissue of receptors and receivers, the one as sticky as fly-trap tape, lapping up anything that gets close. what a mistake to be so open of a person just in case, only to find it all gunked up in the lining of the stomach. i need to be cleansed of it all. i need to be pure. if only i could take my tongue scraper and scrape it all away, all the food, the drink, the gum, the vitamins, the minerals, the sugars, the stories, the lies, the truths, the anger, the sadness, the agreements, the confessions, the laughter, the exhaustion, the jealousy, the insecurity, the requests, the instructions, the rules, the expectations, the opinions, the regrets.. scrape it all out and tap it on the side of my sink until it washes down the drain. if i scrape myself pure, i’ll run clear like a glass prism ready again to take the light of the world and spectrumate it into perfect rainbows across a plane.

i think about this as i walk up the main strip and while running down the subway stairs. i think a bout it in my sleep too, i think; dreams filled with nonsense people telling me nonsense things, constantly presenting me with illusions in which i do know better, so why am i still there? i think about this as i watch the Sun cross the line from Leo into Virgo, and can only laugh a little bit at how exacting this all is. the need for pureness just as the curtain opens to the act of the Virgin, the ruler of harvest and vile, picking and decomposing and throwing excess back into the earth to find their way into new karma, because they’ve done their work for now.

it is hard not to look anywhere but up. eyes in the clouds, i remind myself of my insignificance, just like the others passing me now, that i am not a gaping open wound, despite feeling like one. i can’t look at the others because their looks feel like gawks, questioning the gold in my ears and the glitter on my eyes, questioning the silk on my body. questioning the deep contemplation on my face. i can’t bare to be perceived knowing that i carry in my stomach a whole lot of mistakes, failed attempts, safety blankets, trust issues, bad habits, judgements.. and they can see it in my eyes and they can smell it on me.. so what if the only nice thing i got today was to look like a beautiful goddess, though i am not one; i am human, flawed and ever-changing and today, quite vulnerable to these facts that i fail to remember are true for everyone across the board.

THE ALBEDO, THE VIRGIN, THE ILLUSION

In the traditional alchemical process, purification can only commence once the substance being transmuted is cooked down to a uniform black matter in a phase called Nigredo. From a psychological standpoint, as established by Carl Jung, (whose deep studies in alchemy led him to his pioneering ideals he’s known or today), this is when one goes through the dark night of the soul deciding to exit the suffocation of their own shadows after a period of despair.

Once the darkness is realised, purification, the Albedo, can begin. Despite the idea of becoming a pure being an appetising one, a pretty one even, the Albedo phase may be the messiest step of the alchemical process, and certainly one of the hardest. The Albedo of the self is when one begins to pull out what lies in the unconscious, releasing false perceptions, and integrating even the most seemingly unbearable personal aspects of the self, with the conscious. Through this sort of self-filtration, one is meant to realise their ego, their shadows, and their wounds, not as hinderances, but as the necessary evolutionary moments that ultimately led up to the present quest of individuation.

The Albedo aligns well with the sign of Virgo. Virgo comes from the word virgin, and is often associated with purity, cleansing, and harvesting. It is also the sign that rules the digestive system and the enteric nervous system, more commonly known as the gut-brain. In the Tarot, Virgo is associated with the Hermit, who symbolises the endeavour of a soul searching quest. Much like the Albedo phase, Virgoian energy requires focus and stamina, as well as a certain amount of will power to collect and organise the starburst energy of the preceding Leo, grounding and integrating what gloriously can grow from chaos, into form.

Jung warns us of what can happen when remaining in the illusion of purity of the Albedo:

“In the state of 'whiteness' one does not live in the true sense of the word. It is a sort of abstract, ideal state... In order to make it come alive it must have 'blood,' it must have what the alchemists call the Rubedo, the 'redness' of life."

The idea of purity is pretty; it feels like a good forever to be in, and just like the harsher side of Virgo, can turn its nose up to the abysmal nature of the lived experience, in its mess, uncertainty, and chance of misgivings. What uprooting the shadows below teaches us, is that our ‘darkness’ is not bad, but is just evidence of life lived. The purpose of the purification is to restore vitality, not removal of the self.

WOMANHOOD AND PURITY

Lucrécia Neves, the main character of Clarice Lispector’s The Besieged City, is a girl who wishes to scrape herself clean. She strives to be pure and perfect and modern, wedding a man she doesn’t necessarily love, and adorning herself in clothes of fashion rather than of preference. Her own evolution is mirrored back at her in the way her home city of São Geraldo, once rural and raw, suddenly becomes modern throughout her adolescence into adulthood. Amidst the rapid change of both her surroundings as well as the racking up of societal expectations (marriage, dress, the behaviour of a woman), young Lucrécia Neves searches for a way to arrive fully formed to herself; early in the book, she talks about becoming a horse, or a statue to avoid facing her own imperfections as human being:

“Dreaming of being Greek was the only way to not to scandalise oneself,”

and again,

“…Lucrécia, instead of being born for the life of a woman, is immobilised into an object, into a statue.."

Lispector highlights the weight of living through Lucrécia Neves; one particular part jumps out at me that speaks to how burdensome and nearly heartbreaking confronting the shadow self can be, due to the fact that many of the origins of the shadow may be inherited from childhood, or have developed before we knew better:

“Individual life? the dangerous thing is that each person was dealing with centuries.”

I can say that my own yearning for purity shares these origins, as well as in the collective striving towards purity— especially amongst women. Women have been expected to, sold, and pushed for purity since Eve took the bite of the apple. From cosmetic procedures to claims of being ‘just a girl’ at the ripe age of 32, the idea of purity is factored into the daily goals of womanhood, suppressing the messiness, ambiguity, and flaws that are involved with being human, when in fact, much of what makes womanhood so divine is the immensities of grotesqueness we endure. From bringing life into this world to bleeding to the never ending fluctuations of emotion, and our ability to bounce back from it all tenfold, is our power.

HOW DOES ONE BECOME CLEAN?

i suppose this is a letter to myself when my hands get antsy and my face distorts into a compressed look of dissatisfaction at how ugly i’ve lived life. how impure. how some of these messes i’ve made over and over again, waking up from them each time disgusted at my own immaturity.

i need to remember, one doesn’t become clean; one transmutes and transforms. one expels the unnecessary and plants seeds for what will be eaten in the next season. one alchemises. one accepts. it’s all part of it. like the hundreds of sketches that live under some of the greatest paintings of our time, like the layers of compost bedding the forest floor. one doesn’t become clean. one becomes and becomes again, over and over just as the trees every Spring season, just as the generations of a city, layer upon layer. purity is not a perfect void to achieve, purity is promising to continue, heart shined forward through the good, the bad, and the ugly.

All brown and perfectly balanced jewels today. I check my email to confirm with A. that we will meet at the yellow diner. I leave the house. New York is different today; it’s a more true New York, a New York that unfold as you choose it. I choose, and stories begin to scrawl themselves on my hands and arms. Every moment going forward, I move to keep them legible until I can piece them together.

It’s 11am, yet I already know my day will extend far into the night. It’s Jupiter’s day after all, my day. I am free.

I arrive first, and they put me in the booth they always do, on accident. A. arrives in yellow and in always red with a smile surrounding her big blue eyes. She recounts her evening as if breaking news while we both drink coffee and sift through the big menus. We order yellow food and I drink yellow-orange juice. We talk and talk about what magic yellow August brings, how we both feel it tonight, already tonight, in the deep summer air. There really is something happening, I promise to my thighs pressing on the taped leather of the booth. Outside the fishbowl windows is New York unfolding, my New York, our New York, different and choosing in it’s true way.

We leave the diner. A. pulls out her cassette player and puts an earbud in my ear as we stroll the main strip, the strip void of time and order. The strip that will define all our memories, the one that will be a starting and ending point for every story. Down the main strip I can be anonymous, somehow, even when I am not. I can make a guess for the future and it will happen. Look hard enough at the conglomeration of shops and signs and you will see no particular place, no particular language. Sometimes, you only see what you need. Sometimes, you only see someone you want. Sometimes, it is dark and silent, save for the old clock, and you slow your pace so its ticking will go on forever.

Just before we veer off, we promise to meet around midnight.

The day continues; Polish meringues and mail errands, a swing on the street, a blessing for a new home. I still am balanced with my jewels and my stories, now tracing down my back, my legs. I hope I don’t sweat them off.

A. lends me her blow dryer and shows me her temporary room. It is reflective of her vagabond spirit, which I’ve always admired, decorated in memory and art and poetry. Traveling is the foundation of A. and I’s friendship, and though we’ve never travelled very far together, we have a shared appreciation for the things collected in the transient. She reminds me of how rich life is when you extend outward. When you poke and prod at what’s given, and ask for more.

She shows me her miraculous shopping spoils that were discounted, just for her. She shows me her tapes and she shows me the tree outside the window, now green and bursting with leaves; it was bare when I saw it last Before I go, I take the blow dryer and say a prayer that all this magic does arrive in the shape she’s hoping it will.

*

I get home, and my room is bigger than before. The books are piled high, there are clothes draping. Incense smoke still lingers in the air. Days go by. As I arrange the tray on my found iron plant stand and clear my dusty alter, I come to acceptance that this is my home because it won’t always be. My life, like A.’s, is rearranging itself and the time to leave is getting closer. My tiny lair will become a broad studio, my wood floor covered in a Moroccan rug, perfectly suitable to sprawl on when I am pulling cards or extracting story from my veins. It will be a museum of my own travels and the work of my dear friends. It will be a place of gathering, of conspiring, of sharing, of teaching. Sometimes it will be all red, sometimes dripping only in candle light, sometimes bright with the Sun.

More premonitions come as I clear the space and light another stick of incense; letters and spontaneous discovery, opportunities from love. Other things I cannot explain. All I know, the world is special today, New York is special today. It is Jupiter’s day, after all.

ii. THE PASSION IN SLEEP

His breathing is steady and warm in my neck, my lullaby back to sleep as I avoid the continuing of morning. I can feel the structure of my thoughts melt into unconsciousness; they do not dissipate completely. Behind my eyelids, I sense his perfect beauty gently existing in this dimension and the other. I sense the gold he protects himself with, just as gentle, resting on his chest as it moves up and down with every movement of breath. Though plentiful, is becomes just decorum now, for he is here and he is also far away, extended deep into dream world, in another body, in another realm. The body I rest on is employed as an anchor and a conduit, holding his place as he travels while also being the vessel he will bear the fruits of his findings from when he returns. He is his both the King and the knight that guards him. One eye here and one deep inward. My intrigue in his Mercurial phenomenon keeps me on the verge of drifting..

*

Eventually, we find each other on the same plane. No words are exchanged, just the response of one body to the other, both ravenous for what is to be discovered on each other’s skin from the night. In his eyes, I go deeper into the passion that we hold, that we feed. There is like a secret cenote, ancient, iridescent, glinting with love’s wisdom. I swim forever in the perfect illumination. He holds me so carefully and sweetly, echoing to me unbreakable messages into my own eyes. They trickle down my pupils through my sinuses and into the cavern of my body. The next time I bite my tongue, he will ooze out. The next time I breathe deep, I will taste everything he has said to me. I will look out at the trees sweeping in the hot summer wind and the poetry of our telepathic exchange will flush my cheeks red. My heart will beat faster and I will fall into momentary fear. In love, you will never know it all. Desire will compound and compound. Even in closeness, there will always be distance. I am so close now.. and I move closer toward the burning hearth of passion. I no longer fear getting burned.. I fear that if I don’t get close enough, I’ll be left shivering in cold darkness once again.

iii. DAY BY DAY // interior motives

I am trying my best to care for my body but some days she is foreign and some days she is me and I am her. I can never tell. July was a whirlwind of what being in a body was; from the dance of love to linking arms to getting sick and being tired. A small voice in my stomach seems to know all the answers already, but with those answers comes a lot of time and slowness I do not have right now. I think what is holding me down is my devotion to beauty. Most Saturday evenings, I close down thoughts and obligations with a long shower, a scalp massage, and Egyptian oil on my body. I make the room red and I light incense and remove myself from the world around me. The entire room becomes my thoughts, the entire town, my visions. The church bell strikes and I imagine night flowers perfuming the streets, a river lapping at the edge of a maritime village. I drift off into the confines of my corner lair, forgetting the physical demands of being, what costs uphold such life. Forgetting the systems in place to keep a body tame. I become everything around me. I become a world away, I become another life. I endow myself with the honouring of the feminine body to my ownself, that I can just be, day by day..

day by day.. what if we just believed it to be so? did you know it takes a mass amount of trust to live day by day? To not have to prepare too much for what’s to come? As a traveler, there is no choice but to live like this. It’s really beautiful, when intentions on the chest serve as a guiding compass. There is such certainty in the temporary that there is nothing to worry about. Such trust has brought me into serendipitous moments of connection, of discovery. One moment you are dizzy in a Florentine heatwave and next thing you know you are having a love affair with the man who made you the drink you sought to cool you down. You are dancing on a roof over an ancient city. You are getting dinner made for you by a hot new chef and are saluting with a Brazilian and a Spaniard and a Dutchman. You are getting a text with a photo from Barcelona of your name painted on a wall with a caption that says, you are everywhere. Day by day, and now somewhere across the world, someone may breathe the taste of you in. Day by day, a man gives you $10,000 for just living, by by day.

I pray to my own memories now to grant me such trust with the vessel my soul has chosen to inhabit. The Vedic said this may be my last life, so how have I not harboured centuries of trust yet? I am a woman whose blood comes from the gates of the Mediterranean, whose ancestors’ hands were active in the fertile Earth that was once the center of the western world. And yet, I face the challenge of my own cowardice, day by day..

I sleep ten hours, dreaming of the underground and a mythical city a white-haired angel brought me to to find relief. In the tunnels of the underground, I seem to be confronted by everyone I know. There was also the smell of rain, and perhaps a brief moment at the corner fruit stand at the intersection near Ponte Santa Maria. In all these places, save for the mythical city, there is a desire to be elsewhere. I can’t tell if it’s my impatience that pulls at my strings or if a part of me clings to falsehood I used to stand behind.

To break the stream of questions, I dress and go to the anonymous café. On the way, I pass the fig tree whose buds are almost fruit. It is late summer now, and the space is changing.. people come and go through the big wooden door, some soon to be married, others in last night’s clothes. I mind my own, drinking the fresh coffee and fresh juice. The history of yesterday and all of time before is separate from me now. Even my body, I pay no mind to. The Sun will be my only conspirator today.

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is it in the body or is it in the mind? it might be in the mind first, then going to the body.. or maybe it’s the body and the mind is trying to make sense of it. i still don’t know..

thursday at the painter’s house: he mentions the spectacular way we share silence, and suddenly i am back in the room we shared in the south just over a month ago now. our week there was wholesome and simple; we let the noise of our city lives unravel from us, leaving only our pure forms left to each other. time was aqueous and unimporant. there were days where i hardly spoke until the late afternoon, where i spent most of the day cushioned in the beautiful silence of a place that just is, hands in a book or on the notepad, body every so often shifting between leather chair, floor, and outside in the humid Georgia air. it was a glorious sea of silence in which i could watch and listen to how my body spoke to its real wants and real desires, under no pressure. sometimes i’d lay on the floor and simply listen to the way i can exist in space free of any expectation. i’d watch my chest rise and fall with peaceful breath, i’d listen to the blood in my veins pump through my body at a new velocity induced by the inspiration of love.

impassioned moments also often sailed in silence, long, and sumptuously, as we devoted every part of ourselves to the other.

i’ve been thinking of this marathon of pure existence for days now, sketching it in words i am not yet happy with. it may be because it is a memory so slight and so simple, yet one that is so potent, that, even conjured with the slightest recall, i get dizzy.

*
my body last week was not great. i had to take antibiotics for a mysterious cough. the pills scraped at me and i ended up zombied for a weekend. in my stubbornness, i mustered up the strength to go to the Met.

all i could really handle were the marble sculptures gleaned from remanents of ancient kingdoms: bodies, powerful and perfect, symbols of strength, beauty, war, justice. some bodies had no heads, some had no limbs. some were perfect and some were unfinished, emerging from the raw stone with tireless fight. i sat amongst them in the main atrium, making small sketches and thinking about the hands that spent the entirety of their lives devoted to making these figures appear. i thought about the body of the artist, how it must’ve lived in certain devotion in order to bring such work to manifest, and remain ripe evidence for hundreds of years. how the body of an artist must be in motion t some extent; the blood needs to be pumping, the heart rate needs to rise. the body of an artist is a conduit for the transmissions in which it will bring forth, even if it is in the shape of another body.

*
i’m no longer on the antibiotics, and i am now hyper-attentive to what my body is doing. i’m trying to be good; eating breakfast and working out, breathing, exfoliating, hydrating. sleeping, not so much. i’ve also been under a new spell of anxiety i can’t quiet attribute to one specific thing, but it sure has to do with the umbrella of change ensuing. i feel as if a magnet is pulling me down a tunnel, into a new life. as much as i try to resist, i keep sliding down that other path, that one toward the unknown. it is my heart that leads the way, being coaxed out of it’s ice cage and toward a palace of safety and love. adoration. trust? i have no choice now. every ion in my body is engineered to follow this lead..

2. MIND

the anxiety comes from the mind, actually. i'm trying to convince myself out of my needs, out of succumbing to such force. on the train i realise it’s not even the change that i am resistant to, but the perception others may inflict on me after noticing i have changed. who will be hurt? who will tell me i’m better for it? and why can’t i be better, why can’t i be unencumbered? i lived a life of being the stable one, the rock, the anchor holding it all together. i’ve held a lot on my shoulders, but i don’t think i can bare anymore. i fear letting myself be held, but the body says differently. it is nice not to sleep alone. it’s nice to have shoulders to cry on, it’s nice to ask for help. it’s nice to wear silk dresses and walk slow and lightly on this earth for no reason.

*
in dissecting our charts over wine, i discover that my Piscean 12th house is the culprit for unintentional quietness. I have all the words in my mind; sometimes i forget i need to speak them outloud. just this mere fact shifts my entire perspective of my own way of being.

other realisations;

my young Capricorn Mercury still doesn’t realise the weight of its words

being needed and being loved are not the same thing

my emotions are bigger than i let on ;; hiding them can often be more harmful than not

i do my best thinking through the body

am i impatient to articulate what i want?

**

my mind feels a lot lesser than how my mind used to be. it too, is sliding in some new direction. writing has gotten especially difficult. for some reason there is a lot more at stake. i miss when i could glide through writing, when i could wrap around and through ideas like a ribbon in a corset.

i’m trying to be consistent again, even if it’s bad. that’s why i’m here in no caps writing everything as if doodling in my sketchbook. these are all just sketches anyway; sketches for greater paintings, i hope, ones of passion and love and nonlinear time. because the thing is, i have so much to say. so much. i haven’t been writing but i’m getting a lot more honest, and all of a sudden i have thoughts to share. like how evolution has brought me to great love and that could be what fate really is. that every fear i’ve ever had has floated to the surface. that i understand how to time travel, that i understand alchemy, that i know how these things can help, and they can be revolutionary, and that i know my purpose and embracing it is a lot simpler than i ever thought it was.

3. SYMBOLS

on my large, imaginary, to-do list hanging on the ceiling of my mind is to update my lexicon of symbols. in 2021, i curated my own lexicon of symbols and used them fervently in drawings, paintings, and writing. most of those outcomes never made it to the outside world, but the work i put into them helped me reclaim my understanding of artistry i had been down and out on for a while. symbols are a great point of concentration for the artist, providing limitations necessary to channel a message forward. i;ve been spread so thin, without container or direction in my creative work, that i need to go back to the basics. and much of my symbols have changed; it’s been five more years of life, it’s been a maturation of being and of understanding. i talk a lot of shit and have a lot of thoughts but i do know i am an artist, always and forever, as i always have been. i don’t have time to be precious right now. as i said, i’m in the mood for brutal honesty, especially between myself and myself.

**

symbols are showing, not telling. they re gestures just understood. this is why they re effective. they can be used to direct energy, to cast spells, to manifest. i brought love into my life through using a symbol in writing, i am not kidding. the more we pay attention to, and interact with our personal talismans, the stronger our powers are. say it’s witchcraft, say it’s placebo, say whatever you want. it is also the age old practice of art we’ve evolved to engage in, and i don’t think anyone can argue with that.

**

some of my current symbols : eyes, hands, deer, pale yellow, nine of hearts, Gold, trees, angels, a reversed s made of two spirals, the letter S in general, red

what can I let go of that is no longer serving me and/or the community?

what gifts of mine can I embrace as an offering to the collective?

what foundation have I built for myself in the last 6 months?

where can I be more confident?

what cycle is ending?

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This video is free for everyone because this Rx was insane!! But typically these transmissions are for paid subs only. So if you like what you hear, go on with it :)

Book a reading with me here or email me if you would like a birth chart write up that includes custom rituals and journal prompts.

Xx talk soon and good luck

Here are scenes form my most recent sketchbook. What’s not pictured is a lot more writing that will remain in the privacy of the bound pages. Looking back at all that I’ve collected always reinspires me and keeps the fire of my own artistry lit. I hope in sharing, I can provide that for you as well.

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questions to reflect on this week:

where in my life do i need refining, redefining, or curating?

how can i nourish myself in the process?

what can i communicate to myself or others to make this change happen?

for inquiries about birth chart rea…

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book a reading with me :)

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Memories from last summer linger in the morning air. A time when everything was bare; skin, rooms, bank account, intentions. Nothing pointed. Simple blank canvases. Soundboards for the now-present.

There is something about June that holds it all so tightly; the before and the after, the middle parts of change. Last June, I was working as a gardener on a mountain in Tuscany. My days were simple;; work in the morning before the sun got too high, lunch and sosta, a solo afternoon hike or dip in the river, dinner, wine, an evening of writing and reading. I took time slowly, moment for moment. When you’re living in nature, it’s easy to do so. I had handfuls of unanswered questions that I’d take right up into the mountains, often talking them through to myself, switching between Italian and English to find in which language I could answer more honestly with. My answers always brought me back to the present, to feeling, to trusting in myself to keep moving on.

Now another June has passed, one where I sifted through handfuls of questions again and again, ones that I feel slightly suffocated by. July beckons softness and immediacy, attention. It beckons that trust I so easily harness when I am in a foreign place, attached to nothing but the clothes on my back and my purest intentions. This is my challenge. I knew I was committing to it last year when I decided to bring myself home. My body is used to fleeing. I am antsy to get lost again, to outsource my problem solving to learning a new routine in a new place, to learning a new language, to making myself known to myself in a completely new way without the stakes of what others have invested in me. But in depths of my heart, it is not what I truly desire.

It’s silly to run through all these thoughts out here in the open. Its silly to still struggle with letting go the ways in which I’m immature and selfish. These intimate details about by shadow that are coming to the surface feel like the gnats you’d never suspect in the clear , mystical pasture. But this is life, and despite all I am still trying to understand, it is clear to me that I must continue to share. To be open about these shadows that disfigure an otherwise beautiful, rich life, to become friends with them, to remember many things can be true at once.

Yesterday evening, I lay naked on my bed, hands on my stomach, eyes fixed on the sky as it faded to pink. My stomach gurgled with a craving for purity. Not for the type of purity associated with perfection, but the kind that is not tainted by the unnecessary. The purity of directness, of honesty. It craved myself to be pure and honest with myself, completely embodied and unashamed. It craved to let time be unfinished and simple, just as it felt last summer when I moved back to Brooklyn with two suitcases and a few dollars to my name.

July feels like this purity; it is too hot for what is not essential, to provoked, to be fooled by empty conjecture. I walk toward this purity, trying to remember all the trust and courage I’ve carried across the globe, reminding myself that not too much else matters beside what the heart calls to and not what the ego is tempted by. I feel myself curious in anything that requires me to leave the perfect image of myself behind. I am replacing the urge to escape with the challenge of curating sustained action, to continue building. I am letting fear and uncertainty sit in my chest next to all the love my heart is conjuring. At every obstacle, I see how overcoming it is not a skill but a belief, and I’m choosing to believe.

Many people came to me for readings this weekend, ultimately seeking permission for one thing or another; to be confident, to set boundaries, to have higher standards. Like children, we seek permission to be trusted. To trust ourselves. In my own life, I often seek the simple permission to be seen and alive. It’s a complex I’ve had to do a lot of work around and continue to do so.

We live in a heady society. Our attention is consumed with what isn’t, or what’s later, or what we’re missing. Lest we forget, though, that the living happens in the body. We are already whole and alive because we are breathing. And because we are breathing, we are granted permission.

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we keep talking. He’s 19 and goes to John Jay. One day, he will be an anesthesiologist. He asks me what I do with my life, I tell him, a lot of things. He asks me what do I want to do, like, for the long run. It’s not performative or transactional. The question comes from a place of genuine curiosity and care. i will always write, for the rest of my life, I tell him, i want to write. i am a writer. The words are bigger than my mouth. It’s hard to claim for some reason, though it’s been my only constant for quite some time. He senses my insecurity but encourages me anyway; What are your motifs? I stare out at the bustling, grey third avenue in front of us. time.. and nature.. but time..

After a few more minutes of banter about New York and Other Places, I have to go back to work. We shake hands and part ways. I wish him luck. On my way back, I can’t help but think how he pulled out all the answers to the questions I’d been asking myself. I want to write for the rest of my life, I said. It’s really that simple, so why can’t I let it be so? And then Rilke’s words came to mind:

“Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must”, then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse..

go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to, the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it.”

2. The sun lays perfect gold rays across the city. We walk from Times Square to downtown, then West to East. When we finally sit down under a fading solstice sky, he asks me what’s on my mind. The lump in my throat swells, my eyes fall away. I try not to be seen in my moments of weakness and I never succeed. Slow and steady, I parse through the insecurities, fears, and self-criticisms I can’t seem to pry myself away from. Saturnian things; the big questions of whether or not this is the self I want to commit to, of why I’m not already better. Why I keep landing here, frustrated and unfaithful to my own life.

   His eyes are soft and patient, his hand holding mine in efforts to keep me together. It makes it harder to hold it all in, because I know he sees right through me. I’m not used to be loved like this; in kindness and attentiveness, without expectation. I’m not used to showing someone the weight I’m carrying, let alone accepting when they offer to help. I’m used to lacing myself up with independence and ice, moving through the air sharply and quietly until the feeling goes away. But I let him hold me, shaken in my own vulnerability. I let myself come undone, finally choosing to surrender because I remember that what is before me is everything I ever wanted; to be seen and to be loved in honesty and wholeness.

3. As I sort the room for the next meditation class, I begin to think of the daughter I will have one day. I think of the stories I will tell her, the lessons I hope to teach her and the ones she will inevitably learn just by getting older. It dawns on me that one day she will have to make a choice as to whether she should settle for something or not. That one day, she will be out in the world and will have to know her own worth in order to carry her further. That she will look to me as an example of how to be a woman. That if I don’t be a woman for anyone else in the world I must do it for her. That my world and my priorities are expanding past myself now, that my actions and my choices I make are not just for me but for those I love. Who love me. That my purpose is to live and to learn and to create and to inspire, so that the girl I bring into this world believes in hope, believes in good. That I, too, believe in those things, like I always have; that the little girl in me deserves to not be let down. That every heartbreak, every pain point, every lesson, every mistake, every laugh, every cry, I live not just for me, but for the child I will one day hold in my arms as she breathes for the very first time.

4. It is just light enough to see his eyes. Emerging from them, peace. A serene meadow, a clearing, grass tall and lush. A beauty that illicits happiness immediately. Awe. What do you see? he whispers. My breath cuts short. What? The place I see in his eyes is some place I’ve seen before, many times. Air clear and fresh, nature in its purest dance drinking the Sun. A river near by, trees lush and full. It’s a place I go to when I meditate, often, a place I’ve always promised myself I’d find one day. And there it was.. in the eyes of the man that I love. Eyes that I never thought I’d have a breath’s distance away deep in the night. Eyes that every time I meet, I melt just a little more into the softness of my being.

5. Other thoughts passing by: Parts sticky. Parts unknown. The silly boy is still lost, and I’m ugly for being satisfied by that fact. What’s meant to be is not for me to know, only to feel. Family is has no one shape, no one meaning. I’m thinking of every little thing. The next day she tells me she’s thinking of every little thing, and I tell her she doesn’t have to. Life isn’t meant to be lived alone. R. told me that once and twice and again and again for years on end, and now I know what she means. Life is meant for having coffee with your love on the fire escape when the sky is a crisp blue and the church bells can be heard in the distance. It’s for letting your friend cry on the stoop even though it breaks your heart to watch. It’s for midnight pinball, for live band kareoke, for a string of voice notes sent out to another time zone. It’s for dancing in the streets when your city marks itself in history again, and its your city and his city and her city and everyone else’s and all of ours. Life is for being surprised, for being tickled, for dressing up, for giving a fake name sometimes. It’s for drive thru ice cream and rare books, it’s for falling asleep on the other’s shoulder. E. just told me that you aren’t changing, you are just letting yourself out. Maybe if there’s a rule to live by, it’s this one. Maybe you can just let yourself out into the shape of the moment, to be a seismic force with no goal or purpose, but just to be as everything else is, because what other fact of the matter can we rely on?

   

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the last month and a half, i’ve been stewing in a creative turmoil; where and how and what will bring me safety. i lost complete faith in myself and never once take a moment to remember, the safety is in the practice. it is not in the organising and planning, it is not in the packaging for the presentation. it is in the devotion to the work, and nothing else.

i cried a lot into my naked mattress and into my phone and at the laundromat whilst pulling a month’s worth of laundry from the jumbo dryer. i let my head fill up until it overflowed, cleansing my palette with tears of hormonal shift and creative frustration. then i wrote some and packed a bag and flew to the south where i’ve done not too much but read and write and spend present time. now I am back where I started.

‘sometimes you have to try a million options to bring you back where you started,’ M, a new artist friend, tells me over a voice note. so here i am, back where i said i wouldn’t be, because after exhausting every other option, what feels right over everything else is to maintain consistency in my mission; which has, and always will be, to sculpt what i glean from my lived experience into something to ignite at least another beating heart.

my understanding of an artist from the beginning has never been to just be a painter or musician or writer. nor has my understanding of an artist ever been someone who crafts themself into something palatable for others to graze on. my understanding of an artist has always been someone who lives fervently and independently of one way of being or one line of thought. and yet, the part of myself that still feels abandonment in the unknown seeks safety in the certainty of these declaratives. i often forget that i am an artist and i have always been one, despite the countless affirmations life gives me when i actually believe in what i do.

i have a mission now; to do the work and to live. to sit and listen. to let the form follow. most importantly, to allow myself to depart from scarcity as a center to make decisions from and move toward a belief in the abundance and vitality that inspires my work. Henry Miller said work according to the program and not according to the mood. as my Saturn return peaks in my Aries first house (also the house of my Moon), i believe this is something i am challenged with. i want to continue to have faith in what i do regardless of how i feel, rather than be swayed by the question if it’s ever enough..

i’m making a small, yet sturdy amount of promises to myself. i will not share them with you. what comes of them will breathe through my art as its meant to.

trust in the self is quiet and simple. intuition is not dramatic or chaotic, it is not dire. it’s the gentle guiding hand that leads your gaze to catching the butterfly in a rare moment of respite right nearby.

a lot of good dreams, a lot of hardships too. a tired body, even after sleeping. confusing sleeps where there is no control and i am in pain. a lot of pain. when i have a hard time believing i am young and able any longer. pain from lost hope, from failure to recognise, from moving too fast.

i quit and i start again. i sleep and i wake up, and now i am here writing to you after saying i wouldn’t. a habit i need to break is the way i siphon myself off from a way of being just because i am not perfect. how inelegant. to be not perfect and to say it, to try to be perfect and crumble at it. how inelegant. i am laying on my satin sheets and my room is a mess and i just had take out sushi and a cry at the river. but my nails are shiny and im wearing a long beautiful skirt and my summer skin is settling in. how inelegant. i haven’t written in a while, so i’m writing now. it’s gross and it eats at me, both the not writing and the writing, my lack of discipline and my lack of commitment to what i claim as my craft. Saturn strikes me now and god i promise i’ll listen. I’m half way to twenty nine. I’m Awake—

I’m awake. Today, I spoke with a certainty that made a man over six feet tall quiver. Today, I threw the flower at the Sun. Today, I am writing because my body is telling me to, instead of my mind not letting me because it said it wouldn’t. Today, I bleed and it makes everything feel like its falling apart and I’m trying to be okay with that.

I’m awake, I said. I won’t claim anything anymore unless it’s done. I’m awake, believing in my power. I’m awake, witnessing my mind bend into a new perspective that may beget some loss and some dislike, but bring me back to my integrity. It will keep me honest.

I’m awake to follow through and to love passionately and to laugh and to be held. I’ve tasted those things enough to not be selfless enough to let them go. I said I’ll be honest. So I’ll be honest. I like to write and I like to feel beautiful. I like being held and feeling seen and I like when people listen. I like to listen too, and to hold and to encourage. I like to dance and I like to drink red drinks at red tables in a red dress for the sake of a cohesiveness, even if its for that and for that only. I’m awake and I’m alive and I am half way through my twenty ninth year, in the middle of another beginning. A beginning where I ask myself what I need and I trust those needs. A beginning where I do not punish myself for not fitting an image or hitting a number, a beginning where my voice is strong. I am in the middle of a beginning, a pursuit I will not hold then end accountable. Don’t ask me what I’m doing because outside of living, I couldn’t really tell you, so let that be enough

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To declare time; to save time. To hold it and understand it and make it all meaningful—

it has been days since I’ve made reports of how I’ve passed time— I’ve been flying through it, I’ve been on fire, shapeshifting. Day in and day out. Nights asleep, nights awake. Others in ecstasy, others hand in hand with my best friend, committing to dreams of the waking and the unconscious. Time in and time out, I’m on fire. Folks in passing tell me I look more golden than yesterday; the rays of the Sun have ignited me.

I’m learning to embrace my astral accordance; the shadow, and the highest part of my sky that is royal blue, dotted with smiles of ancient legacy. My negatives, I hand over with with a paper note. My Memory, I bask in on the sidewalk of my old neighbourhood. I wear a necklace with my mother’s name on it, waltzing anonymously in the netting of where I call home. My gaze aims for the farthest part it can see up the Bowery, to a place of unknown. I can feel others tracking the tails of my coats with their glances. The trees are singing. I am at peace.

I make myself breakfast this morning: two eggs bulls-eyed (like I never do), left over rice, espresso, orange juice. I pull the curtains back to let in the grey light. I fall in love with myself again. Nearing something more, driven by love, driven by the glimmering green of your Sun, driven by the eternal me. I fall in love with myself again. How perfect is this breakfast I consume, with my legs crossed and hair all twisted up. How perfect is it to sleep wrapped in stripes, how perfect is it to know where the train lines meet like an innate song. Products of my days, the ones my heart beats through, the ones my lungs breathe through. My faith in the world, too, continues, for its destruction is only a lesson we need to learn from.

It is 7:07pm at the laundromat and I have not spoken to anyone yet today.

What I have done is morning asana and meditate and walk across town and back. I changed my outfit twice, but maintained the same variation of black, white, and red, because I felt the need for protection. I moved some money, I bought sardines, red candles, and fancy cheese. I sat by the water and drew the skin of my neck peeling open to reveal the deepest part of my oesophagus— to release all the pent up energy from not speaking, to remind myself to go home and sing, chant. to breathe a breath of fire in a steaming eucalyptus shower, rattling the mansion of my being.

I fall in love with myself again. I am the only one on Earth in the best way. It rains, the church bells ring. I crack open the window for nature’s finest air to find its way to me. To inhale. To inspire.. to be breathed into by every molecule of all time. All Time; here now and forever. Energy cannot be created nor destroyed. What was here six months ago is here now, as it was a millennia before. I breathe in and I digest it all into me, with all the words that I have not said, with all the oil my skin has absorbed, with all the love that sparkles over my veins like wood floors in the morning Sun.

Ten shy of eleven now; the last hour of the day. Writing feels nice and good. Writing is the room downstairs where I sit in velvet quietude, with one candle lit. Even in the fluorescent light of the laundromat, even before the Sun rising over Key West, it is here where I write. I am the most quiet and the most ferocious I can be. I am untouched by Time. This room is eternal. Encapsulated by the ancient Earth; the floor is warm due to the proximity of the molten core. It is like a womb.

I am not here as often as I’d like to be. I’m spending Time. I’m in intercourse with the demands and the splendours of living. Taking reins of my humanhood. I think this is my last life on Earth. I think the flowers get more beautiful every day. I think I will move slower and slower, like sweet amber honey on berries in the morning. Inspire. Expire. Moment passing moment, all of the moments that have ever lived. I’m here again, untouched by Time. There is one candle lit and velvet quietude. The floor is warm due to the proximity of the the molten core. I have not spoken today; I am writing. I fall in love with myself again.

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Up, trailblazing. Asana just how I like it. Incense burning, hair all wrapped up. Sticky notes for every thought pulsing out of me; what it boils down to is be up and trailblazing, pushing out until it all falls into some form. Its always a lot simpler than I seem to make it.

is there some method? is there a place to put all of it?

am I asking for permission?

If I had a spot by the sea, maybe the ideas I’d want would find me. Maybe my mouth would make the shape needed to gurgle things of this world, of this time. spit out into my hands to be passed up a couple of centuries as a forwarning, passed down a few back as an assurance. If I close my eyes, I can be by the sea, I can be anywhere. I can be at the edge of the world in my poets respite, I can be in your arms, I can be,

Be, and unconfined.

Unconfined, though and always. Confinement is an agreement of the mind. Eight of Swords. I always warn people of this when the card is turned over; your arms and eyes can be all tied up and you’ll forget your feet are free for the Earth. You’ll forget how to listen to which parts of the ground are sturdy enough to support you, and which are faulty. When the mind is all tied up, it is the body that is the savior. Living is a hands on experience.

Outside. Inside is not enough. I must move my body to deal with the tender tissue of my heart, raw like the Spring ground. Living is a hands on experience, anyway. I need it to grow tough and strong and so I need to be outside, Living. I need to look straight up into the Sun, I need to read to you what I found. I need to indulge in my future right now. I want to be strong and shiny and overwith with the grief of growing.

Margurite Youcenar writes that when you love someone, you arealready growing away from them. You are already, and always, going forth into the future. Clarice said something similar, and demanded that her feet remain planted underneath her hipjoints until the next moment commences.

I love you right now and I will love you forever because I already have.

Finally the Sun again, on all parts of the body. The fog burns and the blue is revealed, the blue I keep mentioning. The fog burns and those thoughts from yesterday no longer congest my relationship to the present; I can breathe.

I forget to tell the school I’m not going to attend. Instead, I’m by the shore gleaning pieces of millenia; emptied shells that seemed to house some mollusks, and then some small perfect ones with a hole fit for a necklace. I’ll thread one and give it to her to stop her tears from coming. I’ll thread another one for him as a token of a present glowing in the memory of being.

It is summer today, in April. The window is wide open and the curtains are drawn and the birdsong is perfect. I didn’t rinse the sea from my scalp yet because I long to be in the fabric of it’s vastness. The Sublime impossbile to stomach, though glorious to attempt. My first try:

I was wide-eyed and young, looking out over the curvture of Tortola. It was the richest green, it was blue, it was almost lavender. Despite my nausea from all the driving on the graceless island road, I remained fixed on the whispers from the sea. Crystal particles hung above the bay like a chandelier. The source of my nausea shifted from carickness to the overwhelm of being, of insignifance, of Time. From that moment on, I decided on believing in ghosts, on believing in buried treasure, on believing in the legacy of a well-kept secret.

I don’t mind my North facing window. I get the scape of the backyards. A phone rings, a dog barks, voices exhange. There are always birds and church bells. If I wake early enough, I can hear my upstairs neighbour’s kettle at the boil. From the rusted red stairs of the fire escape, I can see the garden next door find it’s rhythm as Winter fades away.

These sounds and sights play on the tabs of memory from every room I ever lived in. Sometimes, I forget where I am ; sometimes I am in Florence, waiting for R. to wake so we can look out of my window together as we plan the day. Sometimes in Florida, Nagchampa not coming from my room, but from the kitchen, where my mother prepares a bag for the beach. And sometimes, I’m somewhere I’ve never been, where only dawn and the encasing of your arms are my only familiarities. All else, new, now, waiting to be met.

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Between here and there, the Sun on my horizon now, six planets to follow now. Unprecedented luck. I go with very tired eyes and a neutral heart from the morning. I return with a giddy laughter and one less layer coating my freckled skin. Even the three trains were easy. I don’t flinch when he says I’m trouble; I giggle to myself, and fill my room with red light soothingly, bright like the sacral blood spilling from my body.

Between here and there; new bourgeoning across the base of my jaw, tingling. I’m trying to give myself permission to know what I feel, to express what I know, and to live along the lines of pure expression. Before-thought-movement has always brought me there, that bliss place where there’s no explaining, no talking really; that place where all has been said and we can just walk side by side, in the Sun, two corners of the same smile, Time fallen away to someone whose thinking about it.

I’m still not there yet, though. I’m still here. Inching closer, I suppose; the body talking in ways insurmountable to the naive mind.

And yet, I am there. I am there already, I am somewhere there where long ago I longed to be; collected and colourful and lustful and erotic. Body talking, heart wandering, soul baring. Tears in my eyes any given day from the glory of how perfectly my love cradles me, to the terrors ensuing across this globe, discouraging a necessary faith in our own kind. I am there, gifted and eloquent, pulling clothes from underneath my bed to wear to the gala, stretching on free luxury and kissing on government money. I am there and I am here, I am running across, I am waiting for the push. I sense what answers we’re all searching in the sand for, and yet I can’t get them to my oesophagus. I can’t get them into your hands, I can’t get them out, not even on unclaimed ground. To extract the answer is like trying to sift glitter from water; it will never sieve easy, but will surely end up all over your skin if you decide to take a dip.

Between. The unknown palpitates, I try to keep up. Between, I try not to think of here, I try not to think of there. Between; but aren’t we always? Between here and there, never committed or confined. Even in the still moments, we are between life and death. How close are we from one end to another? An answer that keeps our hearts beating, that keeps man climbing mountains, that keeps bodies on the dance floor, that keeps trust in desire and yearning on dial.

Here, still. I make my commitments to there. I make up experiments that could sail me from one end to another, that could shock the others when they come up for air after their own scheming. My ego will smirk, but where will I be? Here or there,

and who decides?

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As always, thank you for listening. You can find more of me here. <3

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the sun is starting over, another wheel turn 
my body escapes me
mint tears
etched into 
pumiced breath

drunken mind,
sutures harsh
and forgetten
like the oxidized doors

my body escapes me


in the antechamber of sleep
an indigo guitar
and the tendrils of heart
are the
pressure on my temples.

in the antechamber of sleep,
I confess
I confess
I confess ,

emerald and velvet
neon and red
I confess,
on the center-of-the-room cloud
I melt into
I confess,

my body escapes me

*

one kiss left in the morning,
citrus signature, white and pure
I quench her thirst with 
the blood of 
ancient city pipes

one kiss left in the morning, 
I place all my bets on you

a promise 
a promise 
a light duty on the heart
that holds 
the four corners 
of the world

my body escapes me
the sun is starting over, another wheel turn 
I confess
I confess 
I confess
white and pure
another kiss in the morning
I place all my bets on you