It’s Monday, Moon-day. You can hear it in the romance languages: Lundi, Lunes. This morning I remembered to go to the circle of earth in my front yard and scatter the birdseed in the shape of a crescent moon. I like to do this, each day, making the glyph for the day’s planet, and also to walk around my little pond and offer a bit of seed in each of the four directions to welcome the elements. It helps me to remember the different parts of myself, and to lift me out of the banging drums of the to-do list. Also, the birds like it. I have a regular flock now, the black and white Towhees with their crazy orange eyes, the chickadees, the goldfinches, which are just now beginning to be yellow in spots, like Spring is painting them slowly. But it’s been a week or so since I honored the day this way. Bad witch!
But no! I am full of self-compassion now. I even woke up this morning with a song in my head, “Make a little birdhouse in your soul" by They Might Be Giants.
What a wonderful idea to wake up to! I think it was all that arm stroking last night, I really do. Also, I fell asleep watching Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries on Netflix, which is the opposite of evil women’s magazines, and whispering to myself sweet nothings: that I am enough, that I am just where I’m supposed to be, etc. I imagined that as I am rebuilding my mutifidus and transverse abdominus muscles, I am also building within myself a little refuge, a hut of compassion and self-love. (Stroking and stroking, if you will:)
Then it seemed like the whole day was conspiring to keep the mood going. I mean, okay, I woke up with a head cold, but I made myself a little orange juice, raw garlic, honey and cayenne concoction and it was so bad-good.
Also, it was sunny. Again. Which reliably makes me happy, although it also reminds me of the joke: what do climate change and sleeping with your best friend’s sweetie have in common? Answer: You know it’s wrong but it feels so right. Then I heard three – three! – hope-inducing stories on NPR:
· Oregon is about to have the first openly bisexual governor ever in the history of America. Bummer losing Kitzhaber, But yay Kate Brown!
· Ladies, our Viagra is coming! First ever drug to increase women’s libido is in development. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t, maybe we don’t need a drug, we need some fucking me time every day, but still…
· A scientist found people unresponsive to his climate PowerPoint, so he created a performance piece instead, working with a string quartet, and painters and he even found love in the process!
Hooray!! Birds singing in birdhouses in my soul. I really, really want more of the art as the road to a better world stuff, so I was happy to hear that last. I used to feel a little shy about this, because it gets put down as a privileged approach by purer-than-though-ists, but I don’t feel shy anymore. It goes back to the fight/flight vs. feed/breed stuff… we will get to the better world through love, not war, because that once that tiny little fight/flight reptilian brainstem is in charge, it only chooses more war.
So, yes to marches, to non-violent ways that we say no and to campaigns to change the short term… blah blah blah, I am boring even myself. I’m sick of campaigns! And heartsick for the frontline activists who I worked with for the past 17 years, who live on the fight/flight edge all the time, and for the too-small-to-make-change-audiences that shit appeals to. Johanny Macy says that edge leads to burnout. Also, I think suffering sucks ass as a recruitment strategy. More stories, more magic, more fun, or no more change, if you ask me.
This feels so personal to me. Wait! It’s my dolly speaking!! Feed the dolly, feed the dolly! No, I’m not channeling a B horror movie, we are back with Baba Yaga now...Okay, in the myth, Vassalisa has this magic doll that her dead mom gave her, and at the crossroads, in the dark forest, she feeds the doll a bit of bread and the doll tells her which way to go, and it represents her reclaiming her intuition.
(I swear, if I were planning this ahead of time instead of doing my best to live it day-by-day, I’d make the themes more well-ordered. I would.)
Estés says that the feeding of the intuition is a vital part of any woman becoming her wildest, truest, strongest self. She says,
“I’ve heard women say it, if not a hundred times, then a thousand times: ‘I knew I should have listened to my intuition. I sensed that I should/ should not have done such and such, but I didn’t listen.’”
She also says this, which I find a bit more directive, and therefore helpful:
“What does one feed intuition so that it is consistently nourished and responsive to our requests to scan our environs? One feeds it life –one feeds it life by listening to it.”
Does this mean I should… make little birdhouses?