Hi. I'm so glad you're here.

I write this note to you looking backward; sitting outside at a cafe in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which has been both home and a gathering place for indigenous peoples for thousands of years. By the time I send this, I'll be somewhere else. All this movement, tracing and un-tracing our travels last year, has me thinking about time, and timing,

1. A maple seed that blew in the front door with me. I studied and wrote about maple seeds last year when we lived by the river (you can read that here) I have found in these last few years, that the things I write, learn, repeat, layer over each other as I learn and grow and change, a kind of forest humus building up in me, and a kind of body time-keeping outside of capitalism.

2. A god's eye that I made while staying at my beloved's house this past month. I remember making these somewhere in my childhood - I don't know where, but my hands remember. I read this article about gods eyes recently, and while my connection to this practice feels/is both tenuous and created by colonialism, I love the persistence of symbols from a culture that was never colonized, that escaped by finding the places capitalism had no use for, and that if you trace back, was part of several older cultures across the planet. (And too, I love the wisdom in finding a tiny place to meet and learn from the vastness of the earth, and of the wisdom within it. I wonder, where are the tiny places you meet whatever word you use for all this mystery?)

3. A tulip poplar seed (that I'm not totally sure is a tulip poplar seed). When we lived by the river, there were these twin tulip poplars that towered over the house, and who felt very much like house-trees. That house was old before its time, molding, leaking, decaying; the trees were young, as far as tulip poplars go; and the relationship between the two of them felt comforting; a kind of witnessing, rootedness, holding, as one aged, and the other grew. I like remembering/recalling those trees, with their intertangled roots; but the seed is not quite the same as I remember. Things are different now; I'm different now. The trees and the house are still there, for now; if the neighbors ever manage to buy the house, they'll cut down the trees. I feel grief, an ache, writing that (and also a relief at no longer being there, because nothing is ever simple). (Late summer is the time for a particular kind of grief for me - and I made this playlist to accompany it.)

4. A mother of wands tarot card with an image of a snake curled around a nest of eggs and a branch. I don't have a guidebook for this deck; I pulled it from my friend's basket of cards. But/and I like the idea of snake mothering - protection, watchfulness, and regulation. Most snakes don't stay with their eggs (that we know of), but pythons will remain curled around their eggs until they hatch, to help regulate their temperature + protect them, at which point most mothers will head off. Some viper parents will stay with their young ones until they shed for the first time. I think often about how we determine when someone is ready to face the world; what they need, how we know. And, too, how we know when we've received what we needed. I studied snakes, or rather was encountered by snakes over and over again at the river - on bridges, in the yard, in the water, and I was struck over and over again by their presence, their watchfulness, how something so vulnerable can be labeled so threatening, when really, all snakes do is strike back when themselves threatened with violence or invasion. And too, what I know is, we had to leave that place sooner than we were ready to; and it was necessary, and perhaps the right time; and it broke my heart open in a way I wasn't expecting and am not at at all surprised by.

I wonder, what experiences have you had of being pushed out into the world, before you thought you were ready? How did it feel? What did you learn? What do you still grieve?

Kali

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