Even though the word makes me feel like a new age freak, I have written before about having a small personal altar, but the previous incarnation used to be a little smattering of objects on my side of the headboard. Now that we have a giant fucking house for 2 people & a dog, I have my own office, which has become my less-little bigger-smattering of objects, full of tiny altars to different things, including this one:
altar? i hardly know'ar!
It looks like I know anything about crystals; I don’t, I mostly just like rocks. I know they have meaning & I’ll sometimes pick up a specific one if I’m looking to stay mindful of that specific thing, but largely to me they are pretty & sparkly & impress upon me that nature is crazy. Actually most of this is nature & how awesome I think it is: turkey feathers & birch shavings & tiny bones & tiny pinecones & butterfly wings. The skull is solid stone, a present from M for some gift-giving opportunity, or just because. I also have a card about Blanca, patron saint of comfy sweaters who personally knitted one of the coziest ones in my closet, & my favorite photo of M & me.
I decided to dive back into a small thing I started doing when I first set this up. I pull a card from three different decks—Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies (digital version), a holographic Rider–Waite tarot set + Jessica Dore’s Tarot for Change, & Dirt Gems—& usually marvel at the way they seem to coincide with each other.
I spent the week thinking about this spread.
REPETITION IS A FORM OF CHANGE
This one struck me as I pulled it. Oh, I immediately thought, of course it is. Repetition is a path to change. Repetition is a form of change. Change becomes itself through repetition, & through repetition change changes into stasis, & then the cycle starts all over again.
card from Oblique Strategies, drawing mine
Staying the same while everything changes around you is a form of change. We experience time as linear. Not changing is like driving in a straight line & stopping for nothing: you’ll technically be doing the same thing, but the view out the window is sure as shit going to change. So’s the feel of the ride & your suspension & other car words I can’t fake knowing how to use in a sentence (I’m not a car person). I don’t think you can say you stayed the same if everything around you is different——you can’t separate yourself from all that context all around you.
I think I’ve always been afraid of changing [too much/not at all]. I guess it might seem silly to be afraid of both, but that’s me. I look back on past versions of myself like damn, who were they??? How did they get here??? Where did they go??? & yet I look at myself sometimes & think, still the same old me, even after all these years. Earlier Kirins got me to here, I understand they’re all connected, I just feel like I don’t have access to them anymore, like cocoon layers I thought I was shedding for good it turns out are more like onion layers mostly-but not entirely-disconnected. I realize as I write this that, while I think I’ve eaten this thing exactly one (1) time in my whole ass life, I am talking about a Blooming Onion of the self: a thing split open & laid out & fried, but still ultimately stuck together, time continuing to pull it apart. Well, I tried, but it turns out it doesn’t quite work to use Outback Steakhouse as a vessel of poignancy.
THE CHARIOT
my hand holding the chariot
Yoked to the riddle
were the words I finally landed on to synthesize what I’d read about this card, & what it made me think about. This card is also about change, about moving forward, & about wrangling the mysteries of life into something like balance, hence all the dichotomies in the imagery, yin & yang, civilization & nature, sun & stars, control & submission, power & impotence.
Most guides will talk to you about ambition, willpower, & success. Dore has a bit of a reactionary take, but one I appreciate, writing about how Americans can’t conceive of the failure of willpower. What happens when we can’t wrangle the mysteries? What happens if we can’t muscle our way out of this one just by yanking on the reins? What happens when we’re stuck on this ride, like, literally our legs have disappeared and we’re just a torso smushed onto the platform of a weird chariot being drawn by two tittied sphinxes?
Yoked to the riddle would be a good way to articulate how I feel about life. Here I am, yoked to this thing I often find hard to understand. I’m trying my best to keep this bizarre vessel in driving shape, and to enjoy the ride. (Another car metaphor, too. Coincidence? Or just a staggering lack of imagination on my part?)
GINGER
First, the Latin name of ginger, zingiber officinale, is fun & also weird. Zingiber stemming from the old Tamil iñcivēr, which means ginger root. Officinale from the Latin officina, meaning a workshop or manufactory, used to denote plants often used in herbal medicines that would have been sold by an apothecary.
Ginger is an unobstructor, an herb to release blockages. It cleanses & reduces inflammation & improves circulation & combats nausea & pain. Ginger is a chariot of change. A phrase from Dirt Gems re: ginger was fire for the oceany tissues, which I fucking love. Ginger is a controlled burn that is coming for the dams you’ve built within yourself. Let it go. Spice it up. Release what is holding you back. Let your oceany tissues flow.
On a mundane note, we love ginger in this house, we’re ginger stans. Slap some ginger on/in something & it’s guaranteed to taste better. A dish is hard pressed to have too much ginger for us.
beginner’s animation by me
LASTLY, LATELIES
📖 Middlemarch, by George Eliot (a reread for me, still 5⭐️)
📽️ “Hausu” (1977)
🎶 Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
📺 “Detroiters”
🎮 Okami (guys I’m obsessed with this game)
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I actually really enjoyed setting out to write about this over a week. The disparate elements made it easier for my brain to think laterally, and I especially appreciated that the exercise gave me fun ideas for visuals. Was this interesting to you at all? What’s up in your world? Write me back, if you wanna.