Category: musings
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The Tyranny of Shame
A few weeks ago, I spent about 9 hours in an emergency room trying to figure out whether or not I was having a heart attack. There are a lot of reasons why I thought it was unlikely I was having a heart attack—I’m only 37, my cholesterol ratio is good, I had a full…
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When The Sun Breaks
The sun is out today. It’s 33 degrees Fahrenheit in Buffalo, New York, with a wind chill that would make you think it’s the dead of winter. It is winter, still…but only for two more weeks. Tonight we change the clocks again–spring forward, as it were–losing an hour of sleep but suddenly gaining an hour…
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The Moonlit Path
So you’ve found yourself on a moonlit, earth-based, goddess loving, soul-searching, self-empowering path. Now what?
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My Chariot Year
If you’re unfamiliar with what this means, think: numerology and tarot had a baby. Then Google “what’s my tarot card personal year.”
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Beginnings, Endings, All the Same
I love this time of year. Not just Autumn, which is definitely THE most magical time of the year (sorry xmass), but September specifically. There’s something utterly transcendant about the end of summer meeting the beginning of fall: the heat making way for wind and rain; the sunflowers yielding to the deep purples and gold…
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September Vibes
Every September I go through some kind of deep rejuvination. Instead of winding down with the summer and the sun, my energy and productivity all seem to ramp up, nearly effortlessly. These days my thoughts are clearer, my intentions purer, my moods more balanced. Part of this might be because I’ve been acutely focused on…
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Gratias Ago
It’s that time of year again! American folklore aside (there are other people who have written about the history of Thanksgiving in America that know a lot more and have said everything much more eloquently than I can), the idea of a holiday for giving thanks is as old as any of the harvest festivals…
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She Who Controls the Spice Controls the Universe
AS MANY OF YOU PROBABLY ALREADY KNOW, Dune by Frank Herbert (and the three sequels) is one of my favorite books of all time. It has a lot of stuff going on that’s worth loving (and a few problematic things but that’s for another conversation), but one of the main things that drew me to it was…
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The Pie of Life
So, I graduated on July 18th, and immediately followed up with two weeks of non-stop family visiting from out of state/country. Once things were finally back to “normal,” I realized I have no idea what my new “normal” looks like. I’ve made a pact with my classmates to finish a solid first draft of my thesis…
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Burning Bright in a Garbage Fire World
I recently attended and returned from my second residency at VCFA (and my first winter residency). It was in many ways even better than the first residency, and in some ways it was less, but it was incredible to be surrounded by so many creative, insightful, inspiring people, especially after the year we’ve all had.…
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Thoughts from the Inside of an Egg
(Yeah yeah I haven’t updated in ages. 2016 sucked, end of story.) Of all the slang to come about in the last decade, “no chill” has bee the best phrase to apply to my general state of existence. I’ve always been an excitable, overly anxious person, over-thinking, over-processing, to the point of wild emotional instability.…
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I’m floating in a most peculiar way.
(This is not a memorial post or an obituary. There are hundreds, thousands of those published by now. This is a personal reflection on what David Bowie meant to me, individually. Your mileage may have varied.) It took me a while to get my thoughts around David Bowie’s passing. See, he was an unusual important…
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Happy New Year
It’s still the beginning of the academic year for lots of people. It’s the beginning of Persephone’s descent into the Underworld. It is the end of the Days of Awe–the stretch of days between Rosh Hashannah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur. To me, it feels like new beginnings. Maybe it’s because these past…
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2015: The Empress (Part 2)
(For Part I, click here) All my life I’ve been enchanted by the mystical, mythical world. I love, even if I do not wholeheartedly believe in, the idea of fortune-telling and psychics and second-sight. (You may have gathered that from my tarot-based book series.) I’ve even joked with my friends that I collect psychic readings,…
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Secrets! Or: I Got Fired From My Day Job and I Liked It
I’m going to tell you a secret: I think I’m actually a fucking AMAZING writer. Did that make you feel uncomfortable? Did you just think, “wow, someone’s full of herself”? I wouldn’t blame you if you did. We’ve all been programmed to think that if a person is proud of their ability, then they don’t…
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Spring, Sprang, Sprung
It’s officially SPRING! No, don’t look at the snow outside. Or the thermometer. Or the clouds obscuring the precious, golden, lemony sunlight… it is officially spring! JUST GO WITH IT. Spring, like many things in our calendar and in our world, is rife with symbolism and meanings that have been liberally applied by human beings since…
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The Art of Giving Up
Have you ever tried, and tried, and tried, until you were blue in the face, and all the world felt stale and useless and without-purpose all for the fact that you could not succeed and it was making you miserable? And have you ever, actually, given up? Because I did. And as it turns out,…
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Abusing the Use of Sexual Assult in YA
If you haven’t seen this article on The Victimization of Lara Croft, read it. It brings to mind an issue I have, specifically about YA novels, that has been bugging the hell out of me lately: there is too much god damn sexual assault. Before you get upset and say “it’s a real thing and YA…
