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[bogseed]

Empowered Surrender

CW brief mention of &u*c!d3

2023 august 18

When I came back from the trail, it smelled like summer had passed. Not that I hadn't seen it coming; the leaves of the trees on trail were blushing with Autumn. And it feels like all season people have been summoning its end. Visiting a friend in Madison in sweet sacred late July, bodies swaying anxiously in an arena for a folk rock apparition to appear before the opener, I was high on summertime sadness, she told me summer was practically over. What kind of timeline is that? Drastic bombastic apocalyptastic fractal reactive. Isn't that the tone of this epoch? I no longer claim the Anthropocene.

In July I was inflamed; my body flaring in divinatory signs of burnout. A threshold. My teeth were rotting from bulimic tendencies to betray my own bo[un]d[ar]y[s]. Surges of &ui**d@l tendencies simmered in my somatics. I felt fear, I felt fury. I was walking in the underworld. Not believing in waste, I laid with these emotions like I would a lover. Everything has value, with truths to teach. I figured this new spring of self-destruction desire was an acute yearning for one of those transitional deaths life requires -- a molting -- renewal of rot -- turning over the compost heap -- XIII. Upon accepting this, I flew myself to the coldest stream I could find, peeled away my clothes and stepped in. Floating on my back, staring up at the sky, the sun met the water with an ecstatic refraction that made luminary fractals--ilinca's 'light angels'--onto the limestone that floated above my gaze as the river delivered me downstream. Not long enough later for fear of riverworms I submerged, listening, then climbed out of the water like a mudbaby clay-man promethean dream.

New

For the next month, for longer than I can remember ever before, I forgot my own magick. Ornery, teary, bleary, and beaten, I would heave and weep and busy myself with caffeine, regret, and rage. Picking at my family members, the dynamics like a chronic allergic reaction. Seeding distrust in my skin like the tales of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's dirtgirl. Darkness. I was a maggot, an Earthworm wriggling in mystery that affected me like the wildfire smoke in the air--totally, subliminally. Summer haze. After that aforementioned concert in Madison I got heat stroke and for 20 long minutes lost my ability to talk nearly completely and couldn't think without struggle. I was without a name, and so were the friends I was with. This oblivion was beautiful somehow, I felt more amusement than fear, and a little familiar flirtation from an acid trip I had when I was nineteen and lost language and self. When I lost language, something tore open within me, like when a swimming animal softly unstitches the surfacefabric of a starry sky waterbody on a summer night.

On the first of August the full moon came to reclaim her place in the sky, almost eclipsing the solid orange circlesun made two dimensional from Alberta burning. That is when I saw Noah again.. For the first time in a year. I could access neither joy, rage, sorrow, or even anxiety upon seeing them. Until I watched them cry, and they unraveled bravely in my backyard, I began to considered the fringes of my own too, brushing my fingers against their softness. Acceptance. We spoke in honesty for the first time in years. And as if I had gone seasons without seeing the ocean, I remembered what it is to speak the same language with another person, to share Knowing and exchange cosmic truths with energy alone. They pulled a couple cards for me--Judgement and the two of cups, and one more I don't remember. They pulled the four of cups reversed. I don't think they pulled The Hermit, but the presence was certainly there. For them, the Fool leapt out of the deck. We spoke of dreams and our families, manifestation and abundance, the jungle, revolution, university, and what it might feel like to never forget one's magic, to never doubt Earth mother goddess universe.

This reunion rocked me in a way that could only be steadied with several night's sleep in a place as unsteadied to the fixed ground as I was. I went to visit my dear friend who lives on a houseboat. Together we grilled peaches and they taught me how to strip a carburetor. (Grease monkey archetype--everyone's gotta step in to it from time to time!) They told me I am wide open--I let everything in. To my stubborn surprise her silver witchmother (with Braids and sparkling eyes like Freya) promised me I wasn't cursed--I was blessed she said. My friend pulled the Chariot for me, and I remembered I don't need to understand. I can just let go. Not all movement is escape.

Empowered surrender.

A couple weeks have passed. I stayed with an old friend in her little metropolitan cottage. She is one of my favorite people on Earth, and I hadn't seen her in many years. She is nearing seventy. We drank wine and laughed about lovers lost. She deserves paeans and poems, and I intend to honor her in full in time in writing. I schemed to leave work and leave the city, perhaps to join a floating circus who was making their way down the Mississippi. I thought I would offer them my newfound skill of carb stripping engine revving boat business in exchange for a few nights on the raft bearing witness to their motley crue, but upon seeing their act I either lost interest, chickened out, or got rejected. I didn't try so hard to convince them to let me on board, and when I didn't feel the same gust of the universe's will, I left, and two days later headed North to spend a week hiking in the woods instead. Before leaving, I killed my streaming services. Years of beloved playlists evaporated into code. Like a haircut, I felt the fresh rush of threshold, the dare to trust--instead of regretting and denying--myself. Surrender is a crucial dimension of abundance. Now, I dance on radio waves.

Seven days on that trail, yet I was time traveling. I watched emotions, stories, memories, yearnings, dreams, come and go. I turned my attention to the beings around me. Paper Birch, Nookomis Giizhik (Grandmother Cedar), Dragonfly, Purple Pitcher Plant, Sphagnum Moss, Sugar Maple, Pine Marten, Quail, Igneous, Granite, and the true source, the big mama, my greatest love, Gitche Gummee. And of course so many others. My soul is a river, my body the bed. The love of the Earth is the silt that travels through my current and etches songlines into my skin.

When I left the trail, Autumn had come, I was restored, and the world's Holocenic cacophony played on. Lāhainā burns. As does British Columbia, and an island off the coast of Spain. Today again the air hangs hazy and heavy in the city. O, the trouble we are in.

I lean in to the surrender. To the loss. To the communal vibrations of college radio. I challenge the moral stances I perched on even a few weeks ago. The magic within me stays with the trouble and sings somehow beyond melody and harmony. The world burns, time spirals, I am older than I have ever been, and yet molting I am new.

So, after the better part of a summer taking a less than pleasurable hiatus from storytelling, I decided I might as well start a blog. We'll see if I end up committing and continuing this, though right now I'd like to. Documentation is beautiful, and I may as well lean in to the cyborgian tools within my reach and use them to document the magic and rot of being alive. And to bear witness to my being. The life that dances through me, the thoughts that think through me. I am a puppet. I'm standing on my intuition like a balance beam. I've never had a tumblr before and right now doing new things feels good.

Speaking of which, there's one last little splintery bit of story I thought I'd slide in here. In fact, I meant to write about this in the first place but largely the words seemed to grow and organize themselves a little differently, and there's no stopping a story once it's made up its mind to be told. Tonight will be my first night bearing witness within the shadow realm of gentlemen's clubs, and my first night as. a stripper. My intentions are to embody an archetype of femininity that has long intrigued me, to bear witness into this new world--into which I am admittedly following my friend Noah (like it or not, I would follow them anywhere; it's a mythic, fated relationship & I simply don't make the rules)---and naturally, to see if I can make a little bit of money. Just enough to break even the investments I've made to get through the door (buying a corset and lingerie, getting my legs smoothed after literally years of not shaving, pedicuring these gremlin forest feet, etc.), and if I have some extra I'll maybe buy a thick silver thumb ring, and give the rest to mutual aid.

So be with me, if you'd like. Bear witness with me. In an act of empowered surrender, I am leaving the paper pages of the diary behind. I am here. As alive as a bogseed.

love and abundance,

Blue