untangling

I woke up this morning with a knot the size of a silver dollar on the back of my head (thanks for the heads up, Jennye). Winter is come. Beanie weather yields matted hair and chilly mornings. I stood in the dark kitchen of our new home and teased it apart, sometimes gingerly, sometimes brutish, wincing for a solid seven minutes.

But I did manage to extract it. And I got out of bed some 2 hours early. I know I am tired but I am not as tired as I was the last week of December. Two days ago I could not imagine stringing together a single sentence. But today I let the dogs out in the dark, coaxed them back with freeze dried lamb, and set to work.

I drank warm lemon water and sketched out a built in shelf while the sun rose, and our new neighbors started their commute to the labs an hour south west of here. I brewed coffee and prepped for Aquarius season horoscopes, and listened back to some demos I’ve been working on.

If it’s not clear, we have fully moved. Away from the mountain valley and the backyard waterfall and the big portal with a perfect sunset view. Away from the last vestiges of a family that’s lived with that land for close to 300 years. A clan that carries all the violence and trauma that those hills have seen. Rocks unmoving, towering ponderosa pines slowly inching their way toward the crisp blue sky. The willows and their slender yellow-orange fingers, once bushes skirting the creek and now mature trees in their own right. All of them witnessing in their own way.

They’ve watched the cows come and graze and die in pasture, or be carted off to be killed somewhere else. The coyotes and hawks picking off prairie dog pups that were brought to the fields by a careless rancher on a load of hay up from Albuquerque, or so the story goes.

They’ve watched a family try to carve out a life with little help or oversight. Trying to reconcile with the labor pains that brought them here. Doing their best to live off of the land. Siblings dying off or being carted away one by one, until just four of eleven remained. Now three. Soon two.

Here, we are closer to the road, closer to neighbors. Jennye and I (and Echo and Pluto) live in a canyon near the Rio Grande now. A land of fruit trees and modest farmers, eerily verdant and rich in water compared to much of the drought stricken state. We are lucky and it’s bitter sweet; hard to hold the contrast of the last 6 months and the last ten days, harder still to reconcile building a new life, planting hope in every muscle twitch, while witnessing the slow collapse around us.

I’m watching Los Angeles burn and families lose generational homes***—the first foothold for some—while I build door jambs and assemble side tables. I’m choosing paint colors and placing precious items on altars and in alcoves while bird flu looms. While I mind my business and try to smooth the mess of moving, I’m receiving threatening certified letters from my former landlord, chaotic heavily editorialized forwards of the writer’s almanac from my father, and ai-written offers to boost my SEO and it is all knotting up at my temples.

The deluge of unsolicited demands for my attention is matting at the back of my sleepy head. Everything is swirling and swimming together and I am trying to untangle and prioritize everything that needs tending in this burning world. How many more shelves and doors and latches and locks and brackets to build and hang and install? How many horoscopes to write and charts to prep? How many outstretched hands, searching?

How much to sleep and when to wake and when to try to rest and when to push through?

Reader I do not know, but I am slowly creaking to life. Nothing is fully finished but each room now holds a sketch; a gesture of it’s final form. And I am getting the other parts and pieces moving, too. Stiff from the posture of survival, I am stretching into this new space, the next phase.

I am standing in the early hours in a kitchen that’s nearly finished, and I am tender headed and tired but I know that the work doesn’t stop, so I am trying to tease it out. One strand at a time, until I lose patience and pull the whole clump out and realize that yes it really is all connected, and yes, this is what happens when you let things go for a while, and no, that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying to fix it.

I guess this is my way of saying that I’m still here, still untangling. Slowly feeling into who I might be on the other side of this portal. I think I am still goo, and so this space might be a little gooey, too.

There’s no forecast this week (but you can listen to your Capricorn season horoscopes to catch up on the planetary movements) and I will be back next week with Aquarius Season horoscopes—probably a couple of days late, as I’m still figuring out my new recording set up.

***If you’re flush and looking to help, here is a comprehensive list of fundraisers for Black families impacted by the Eaton Fire

wanting some support?

If you’re looking to dig a little deeper, if you’re in some cocoon, too, I’d love to sit in the dark with you in a session. You can see my availability and book one here.

And if you want a larger container to write through whatever you’re wrestling with, I do hope you’ll check out this class with my love, Jennifer Patterson.

this week’s playlist

If you’re still moving, punch it. If you’re feeling stuck, maybe this will help rock you out of the rut?