Hello, thank you for subscribing! If you’re new here, know that these Friday notes are a bit more casual than the Monday essays, which have a little more heft to them. That said, Friday notes get you lists of recommended reading, watching, listening, as well as some notes on things from the week that I’m paying attention to (because what you pay attention to grows). If you’re seeing a preview of this, you can subscribe below to get full access, or email me if you don’t have the financial means right now but want access. Finally, sharing the newsletter is also a great way to support my work. Thank you!! <3
Dear ones,
A couple weeks ago, Vanessa Friedman (one of my favorite writers and an all around lovely human) wrote that she wanted to start using her newsletter as a blog. “I don’t want to write you a hot take or a well thought out essay or an inspirational missive about the beginning of the year. I just want to tell you some things about my life,” she says. I felt such warm relief in reading that, even though I admittedly love a take, love a well thought out essay. The irony of my essay from Monday is that I wrote all about the value of personal narrative with only one paragraph that was actually personal; everything else was proving why it mattered through theory and other people’s writing. I assume most Monday essays will still kinda be like that, but these Friday notes, is it chill if sometimes they’re more like blogs?
Here are some things from my week and last weekend: there was a ritual grief ceremony in the woods; there was a movie at the little indie theater around the corner that is always only five bucks on Monday; there was a sweet and typical family dinner; there was a day that I should have done more writing; there was a day with an appointment that cut right in the middle of my best working hours, and there was acceptance around that; there was a lovely poetry open mic night at the anarchist space, and a jail letter writing night, too; there were zoom meetings and there were annoying phone calls and emails with an insurance company; there was love and a long talk with a dear friend and lots of kitten cuddles. There was news from Atlanta that a forest defender was murdered by the cops, and there was the collective heartbreak that followed that news.
In tarot cosmology (if I may; and I may, because this is my blog now), this is a Chariot year. An interpretation of the chariot that I love is one I learned from Lindsay Mack; she describes the Chariot as going somewhere but never a great distance, probably not very fast nor to the finish line.
“The chariot, while really beautiful, is not really going to take us very far. It probably will not be very good on anything but really smooth paved roads. It's kind of got concrete wheels. It’s not even being pulled by horses, they're sphinxes. So I don't know how well sphinxes will do with, you know, pulling a chariot.
It doesn't look…all that supportive. When things get, as they always will because this is life, a little bumpy, a little rocky, that chariot is also a protective mechanism. We have to grapple in this card, it's not called the charioteer, it doesn't focus on the person. It focuses on the container that holds them. And when we move into a Chariot time, a Chariot season, a Chariot year, that is the question that we have to grapple with: What containers are holding me appropriately and what containers are constricting me? What identities? What, you know, ways of identifying myself and defining myself are really serving me and what ones are now choking me, are actually taking me out of the places that I'd really like to go? ”
I’m thinking about that as I send you the update of my January so far, after my medical stuff the first two weeks, and now this week full of simple and good and boring and frustrating things, and one truly terrible thing. I’m asking these questions about what’s working and what isn’t—individually and collectively— and practicing patience with whatever answers reveal themselves.
Thank you for reading my Livejournal 2.0. Have a beautiful weekend and see lists below. I love you. (!)
love & solidarity,
raechel
Reading
Muffy Davis on gender shifts. Niko Stratis, writing beautifully as always, on Mazzy Star and sobriety. Grief and the limits of language from Mele Girma. Mary Oliver’s death anniversary was on Tuesday, so in her honor, read some of her poetry; and then read Jeanna Kadlec’s essay on her overlooked eroticism.
Watching
Welp, I saw The Whale. I have a million thoughts and they are going to make it into a massive Oscar-adjacent pop culture edition of the newsletter, so this is all I’ll say for now!
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