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Book Chapters- The Moon to My Sun

Journal Entry- Family for a thousand years

chollasoledad

Storytellers are a strange breed. We love funny stories, and almost have to make any story a funny story to some extent. Once you tell a story, it has a structure, becomes a point in time. The act of telling a story solidifies the event in the long, twisted line of time. There are some stories we hesitate to tell, however, because those are events that we do not want to speak into the line of time. They aren’t funny, or at least not specifically so, they aren’t deeds of greatness. Sometimes the stories we must make real and lasting for awhile are not pleasant. Or are full of heart break. I take refuge in impermanence in those cases. That someday, when I am forgotten, my story might be free again. But for now, a beloved power has asked me to tell stories that are not great and daring, or funny, or full of accidental justice. Sometimes we are called upon to tell stories we do not want to speak into the line of time.

 I think it was important for me to retell my story. Mostly because I have a tendency to blame myself for most things that happen to me. I tend to take the blame and protect those who harm me. But as Sarofi keeps reminding me, I am not a sacrificial lamb. I’m something much stranger and more precious. So, as I accept this, as a matter of pride, I told that story to reclaim something. Maybe that violence has not diminished me in any way. It was time to move on and work with North. It was actually a funny meeting. They were so excited to begin. They gave me a song and then told me to brace for a download. Downloads are the safest way to get information from the angelic elementals. It allows you to retrieve the message slowly, at a rate that isn’t going to hurt you. And yes, trying to figure everything out will hurt you. That way lies madness. So, safety third, as my friend always says.

Anyway, I was thinking about the song. How did this have anything to do with power? But in talking with my friend Siri, I realized that it is about the larger song of my life, and not just this life. If what I am supposed to be making is family, then I wield the power of creation and destruction. In this life alone I have had many families. I have left some of them, and when I do, things tend to crumble. This often means I stay too long for the sake of others. North even now wants me to tell this new story. I feel myself resisting, for mostly one reason. It’s a very long story, and obviously I cannot begin at the beginning, because I do not remember the beginning. I have a vague memory of life then. In my first life, I was a soldier. I remember being at my friend’s home. We had eaten a wonderful dinner, and I was bouncing his child on my knee. That’s it. But I remember this life, and a few others, and so I will begin with this life. North reassures me that as I write I will understand more about power and how I live it. The song is a song of destruction, of how I destroyed a family in order to set us all free.

I had begun to pull myself together after the nightmares and made lifelong friends. I had finished college and had started graduate school to pursue a PhD. Don’t get me wrong, I was still incredibly traumatized, but had started to work on things in therapy. I had just met Sarofi and was learning to work with them and recognized them having been with me since childhood. And they had given me a little bit of warning that something big was going to happen, a reminder that I am still the artist of my life. I am not bound by fate in the way that we think of fate. But I really wasn’t ready for this.

I went to graduate school about an hour from where I grew up. My family still lived there, so occasionally I would go home to help out now and then. My mother had asked if I could come to help her with my brother’s birthday. I was helping to prep food and to bring the food to the table, so I was not expecting anything of note to happen. Right? Do not underestimate mundane magic or it will bite you on the ass.

Now the night before I had had a lot of dreams, and one of them was very vivid and kind of haunted me, mostly because I rarely if ever dream about people I do not know. But this dream was just that. I was on a bus in my hometown and everything was in black and white. I got to a familiar intersection and the bus stopped. A young man got on the bus. He had dark blond wavy hair and blue eyes. Blue eyes. Wait. He was the only person who was in color! He looked around and our eyes locked. He came striding down the aisle and hugged me very hard then held me at arm’s length and hugged me again. I was confused, because I didn’t know him.

“Where the hell have you been? I have been looking for you everywhere. I was starting to believe that you didn’t exist,” he said.

I replied” I’ve been away at college.” It seemed like a rather foolish thing to say.

“Come with me!” he said, pulling on my arm. “I am so happy to have found you. You have all the pieces.”

“Pieces of what?” I asked as we got off the bus. We stood there on the corner, and he kissed me, like a friendly kiss.

“Of everything,” he said, “Of a thousand years of family.” Then I woke up. I had no idea how right this young man was in this statement.

I never had a strong attachment to my birth family. I did with my father and his side of the family but did not interact much with my mother’s side. I always wanted a family that I could call my own. When I was about 5, I had decided that I was switched at birth with Wednesday Addams and that the Addams Family were my true family. They were weird. They were kind. And I obviously was one of them. I once asked my parents if I was adopted. I explained my theory of being switched at birth. My dad laughed and said, “well at least you picked a family that was half Mexican.” This was then told as a funny story to all our guests, at my expense. But it didn’t solve my problem of not really being a part of my birth family.

So a thousand years of family was quite compelling to lost little me. Now 17 years later, I was about to get hit with a ton of bricks. And even though I had been warned, I wandered into the point so hard, I nearly missed it.

Mom gave me a plate of food and I carried it out to the table. I leaned between my friend Tony and another person seated at the table and placed the platter on the table. I looked to my right and a terrified young man with dark blond hair and blue eyes stared back at me. All that came out of my mouth was, “well, fuck me.” I apologized and beat a hasty retreat. Tony came to check on me. He said I looked like I had seen a ghost. I laughed and said that no, I had had a dream and that hadn’t happened to me before. Ghosts I could handle.

Meanwhile, the young man was frantically asking around about who I was. When he learned I was my brother’s sister, he said he didn’t realize there was a sister in the family. Like I said, I really wasn’t much of a sibling. His name was Sean. He used to play football with my brother, and spent a fair amount of time with my family during the years I was away at college. I was still in the kitchen with Tony trying to shake the weird feeling from my head. They seemed to have a wonderful time and eventually everyone left. Sean stopped to introduce himself to me. I felt shy. I did, however, ask him where he grew up. He told me he had lived near the intersection where I got off the bus in my dream. He asked why I wanted to know, and in true Sewa fashion, I told him the whole dream. He said, “I think I have been looking for you.” No teasing, no laughing at the weird sister. He was completely sincere, as if this happened to him all the time. Then he left to go to a pool party with the others, saying he would love to continue the conversation.

I started cleaning up and I was washing dishes. The guys had all gone off to the party at Sean’s house. I was just trying to let it all hit me, when suddenly I saw a truck pull up in the driveway. Sean stomped into the kitchen and I asked if he had forgotten something. He laughed and said, ‘Yep. You.” He took my wrist and pulled me away from the dishwater. He dried off my hands, which was a strangely familiar gesture. He yelled to my mom that he was stealing me for a few hours. He gently told me to go get my swimsuit and took me back to the pool party.

I spent a lot of the time in the pool getting to know Sean a little better. He was very clear that I was family. It seemed odd for someone so young to be comfortable with the idea of past lives and dreams and such, but he had lived his whole life knowing such things. I was the first person he had ever met who was the same. When everyone had left, we sat on the edge of the pool, smoking a joint, and trying to catch up. I felt mesmerized by him, like he was just as strange as me, and trying to live a normal life. That had never even entered my mind. I learned later how much that would cost him in the end. We wandered inside, went to go lay down. And then he started kissing me.

I should not have been there. He had a girlfriend. I did not care. He was wrong for me, and I did not care. I just wanted to be with this person I barely knew and yet knew intimately.

So, here is my wisdom about this situation. When you recognize someone from a past life, there is so much energy involved. They make you shake with the intensity of it. As Sean always said, I made his head buzz. Years later, as a witch, I would recognize this in the many currents of power I would encounter. At the time, however, I was young and did not know what could have saved me. You see, that current, that makes a person taste so familiar to you, is not love. It feels like love. It really does. You want to just lay back into that current. You want to believe that you have finally found home again. Try to imagine a thousand years of family. How do you not fall in love with that?

It is not love. I was young and ruthless and reckless with my heart. And I hadn’t realized yet that just because you remember someone doesn’t mean they didn’t off you in their last life for some perceived offense. It is simply the breath of the order of things. It feels like fate. It is not fate, either. We are so much more powerful than we can imagine. And much freer, if only we are willing to pay the price.

I don’t hold it against my young self, although I was certainly old enough to know better. But in his arms, I could taste and smell forever. In his arms I was home. And yet, when he asked to make love, I couldn’t. My body was so terrified by the prospect. The magic became disjointed and sharp, and I moved away. I mumbled something about I shouldn’t be here, and I got up to go. It’s hard to walk away from a miracle. I still wonder why I did it. Perhaps I will never know.

Book Chapters- The Moon to My Sun

On Power

chollasoledad

Oh, my beautiful ones, how do I begin to speak of Power and the nature of power? And how to explain what an essential and important role you have to play in this tradition? I would have to start by saying that most witches within my tradition were brought to this path by the acquisition of power. As a witch of Star and Serpent, I also am here for the acquisition of power. However, what I mean by this may not be what is assumed among Western witchcraft. Witches, like most people, see the world through the lens of culture. In the West, that lens is overwhelmingly colonial and individualistic. Where most people, and in particular people with independent self-systems, think about power as relative power or power over others, and that other includes the world around them. The idea of power being only valuable when one can control is always an artifact of fear. It is why the colonizers are so afraid of equality. They fear that we will take over and treat them as they have treated us. That we want power over them. That fear requires our oppression, so that we do not become a threat to them. It is a hallmark of privilege to believe that all other people are like you and think like you. Because what you think is obviously the right and real way to think, right? Otherwise, why would you have become so powerful over others? Obviously, that means they are right. Hint: it’s because that is where you have invested your power to create and destroy. Power over others must be constantly maintained, by threat or reward. People do not tend toward obedience unless you give them reason to do so. Churches and governments and institutions in general rely on sticks and carrots, and eventually are undone because that kind of power is unsustainable.

Participating in magic as a person of color requires one to question every principle of magic. Mostly, the peoples not in power (BIPOC, disabled, fat, even other animal species) want to be left alone to live our lives in self-determination. Witches are human, and therefore subject to culture. However, with training and practice, one can come to see culture as a tool like any other, a means to the expression of power. For those able to see beyond the assumptions of the dominant culture, power is the power to create or destroy. I would say that I am motivated by the power to create and destroy according to larger patterns. It is something that is sustained by simply being present. It is experienced as a center of strength and solidity. Nothing can be forced on the person who is in their power. They are the unmovable object and the irresistible force. But it isn’t something that exists independent of the world that surrounds us. It is the very act of connection to that world that informs this power, and which actions of power are required. It is about being still and in that stillness understanding the great web. Systems theory. A change in any part of the system changes the system as a whole and any change to the system impacts all parts of the system. Knowledge of the interdependence we share with the world is a systemic view. We can hear it call, and we then can know what to create or what to destroy, or what to leave the fuck alone, to restore balance. We do not just create or destroy for our personal gain, but for the balance of the system. Our own suffering is not a sacrifice made for the system. Not everything is a zero-sum game with clear winners and losers (another Western assumption). I, my students, and most likely you are also not solely part of the dominant culture. The rest of the world has always seemed out of alignment with this. It has made you feel strange and lonely, and likely taken advantage of. You may even wonder what you are doing here. The truth is that you are actually in touch with this larger collective power. The power to control is an artifact of fear. For so many of us, we are already living in a post-apocalyptic world. We are descendants of the survivors of genocide and the ones kidnapped and kept as slaves. You may come from places on the globe that dominant cultures deem “primitive.” But underneath that stigma is a gift. We understand power for what it is. And we are very much aware that stigma is a quality of the beholder, not the stigmatized. It is the inability to see anything different as beautiful, to see the strange as anything but dangerous.

The basic tenets and values of Star and Serpent are embodied in the pentacles. The iron pentacle is about personal characteristics and values. Who we want to become as a person and a witch. The Pearl pentacle is about the values and qualities that we embody in community, the dreams and goals of a collective place that arises and passes away on the regular, just like we arise and pass away as Selves. In Star and Serpent, Power is the only point that is the same on both pentacles, although not exactly the same because of one being more internal and the other being more relational.

My personal power is something for which I am a steward. It is mine by birthright, but what I do with it determines my welfare and ability to create and destroy. As a steward of this gift, it is my obligation to hone this power. It has been said that our tradition is a warrior tradition, and that is best explained in terms of power. It is about having a goal of being impeccable to one’s own ethics, and to be ruthlessly compassionate with the self. To see things as they really and truly are. No magic can proceed without this knowledge. I can tell you that as a fat person, a person of color, a disabled person, a queer person, that power has been crucial to seeing myself as I am. I must always be on guard against the dominant culture being assumed, and this requires endless work. Meditation. Holding myself to be accountable. Power is connected, but it does not allow me to bow to those societal expectations without challenge. In my professional life, I studied stigma. The cognitive phenomenon of stigma is not a quality or essential part of the person who is stigmatized. Stigma belongs to the person viewing the stigmatized person. It belongs to the person who has the privilege. So, when someone calls me some nasty name, in an attempt to gain power over me, I must summon the inner warrior, so I can stare them in the eye and smile, as I remember that the stigma belongs to them. It is their weakness or fear. It does not belong to me. And I also remember that to be in my power, I must stay mindful and centered and open.

Open? Yes, open. You see, power is more a lack of fear, or the courage to accept fear and still remain centered. The other person is in fear of me, likely because I am different. And they lack the stability of personal power they need to feel and act from a place of power. If they can see you in your power, they will have a moment of fear. You can see them. They can see you. Mostly they will try to get away at that point. If you can find compassion for them in this moment, sometimes they will have a moment of insight and stop. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche once said that a warrior removes their armor to be invincible. Before I was old, I wore my head shaved. Yes, all the dykes loved it, and that was an added side benefit. But mostly I did it to be seen. People could not help but see me. I shaved off the armor of my long black hair. When I did, something amazing happened. Firstly, old women would come up to me and exclaim that I was beautiful and that they wished they could do the same. I always told them that I would be happy to shave their heads for them. No one ever took me up on that offer. Walking though the world being seen is a lot of work. Secondly, I stopped being harassed on the street. So, I am not a small person. Standing at 5’ 10” and weighing at least twice my expected weight, I always was an imposing figure. And yet, people wanted to try me every day on the street, on the bus, at work, everywhere. But shaving my head seemed to send a message. People stopped harassing me. I was not being particularly threatening, simply occupying space and graciously handing them back their stigma. Here, this belongs to you. I reject your cultural assumption. And when someone would call me a dyke, I would smile and say, “yes.” When they called me fat, I would smile and say, “yes.” I knew who I was, but rejected the stigma associated with the physical characteristics they felt made me inferior. And, generally, it is what has made people find me intimidating. Mostly because they could not predict what else I was capable of. It is also how someone hands you their weapons. If they fear me, I can use that to get what I want, which is mostly to be allowed to mind my own business. And also, to get my own lane at the pool. You know, those things that are often attributed to magic.

Power on the Pearl Pentacle is collective power, how we work to create or destroy with others, within a system, and how we hold the commons. And my dear ones, those with privilege are really terrible at this, and witches are no exception. They will try to steal the commons from you, so you must foster that ruthless compassion to know who is balanced in their Pearl power. It is part of the power of Pearl that allows groups to do things that individuals cannot accomplish alone. You see, if you have more than one warrior, you have a squad. If you have many warriors, you have an army. If you all can stand in your power, you will seem solid and firm. Others will be careful. Others will think you are crazy. That is exactly what you want. Because as a group, as an army, all the warriors will hand the stigma back to them at once and say, “yes, exactly.” Nobody wants to face down a wall of warriors. You don’t need to attack them. You simply need to shed your armor. Generally, in public, people fear groups of people taking off their armor.

Now within the Tradition, there are those who wish to steal or spoil the commons for their own personal gain. Just because someone says they are a witch does not mean they are a warrior. You can try your best to try to right these people, but greed is a weakness that one has to consciously disavow. It is born of a sense of scarcity or disconnection from the whole. Once we split as a tradition. In part because of safety issues, but also because the commons were being sold. Was there any way to stop that from happening? Not really. But in those conditions, something will happen, in order to restore balance. So, an elder, Miriam, came forward and talked to those people she knew honored their oaths and wanted to preserve the commons. The thing about Auntie Miriam is that she was not like other people. She was a wild thing that lived outside of societal expectations. She decided at 16 that she was not of this modern world. Her power was that she was able to walk away. And she took many initiates with her. But that was Miriam’s gift, that she was able to envision a world that was different. It took many people to make it work. Some worked on stating the values and guidelines that the new tradition would have. Some are teachers, who did not sell their teachings, but instead adopted their students as family. Some created ritual and liturgy that was only shared within the tradition. Some kept knowledge and made sure that others could have access in a way that would not be stolen again. But Miriam didn’t do all that by herself. That is the creative power of Pearl. The split was destructive in some ways, but also created a new tradition with new creations. It inspired people to do things in different ways. Yes, it is easier to accomplish tasks with many hands, but it is also the power to be part of a whole, and in that way, to be willing to plant seeds of trees of which you will never taste the fruit. The power of Iron dies with us. The power of Pearl is immortal. It’s why I’m writing this for you to read when I have long since found my rest (Ha! As if). Because Pearl is immortal. Don’t call me with my sigil if you cannot honor the commons, because I will give you a swift smack on the ass. Ancestors hold the commons sacred. Their power is part of the Pearl as well.

Think of power as balance, not control. Power over is always fear-based. Stealing the commons is always based in scarcity. It is life out of balance, and ultimately destroys those who attempt it. Know what you are capable of. Know what you are willing to do. Know your fellow warriors and who you can trust to defend the commons. Understand that, take off your armor, and be invincible. Your job in Iron is to know your power, to reject the stigma laid on you, and to be steadfast and solid. Your job in Pearl is to understand that you are never alone, and that you are a part of something greater. You have at your back the very Hoops of Heaven. You have at your back the Gods both remembered and forgotten. You have at your back the wisdom of your ancestors. You have at your back the warriors of your tradition, sworn to aid and defend. Breathe. Be solid. And listen. Be patient. See with ruthless compassion what stands before you. Look for balance. Then act.

I will say this. Because Star and Serpent was most practiced by white folks, and especially American white people, you will see so many witches practicing only the Iron pentacle. But Iron and Pearl are two sides of the same coin. You cannot build something solid by gazing only at your own navel. There is balance to be found in the practice of the Pearl, but it is not a wisdom found in dominant culture. So, part of the gift you will bring to the Tradition and the world is the fact that you are not part of dominant culture. You probably wondered why you were taught to be mindful in the beginning of your training. This is why. You can see more from the outside than from the inside. But you will need to stand firm, because those with privilege cannot see it, unless they work very hard. As witches in this tradition and the world, you are being asked to do something very difficult. Stand in your truth. Hand back the stigma. Protect the commons. More are coming. Sometimes you will have to challenge your own people. They may not acknowledge your power, but they can never nullify you. You will simply look at them compassionately, smile, and say, “yes.” And still hold your ground. Remember that all those behind your back are willing to also hold them accountable, as you must hold yourselves. And when you make a mistake, you own it. That is the balance that we so desperately need. Know that others may see this as an opportunity for their own greed or status. Do not worry. They just showed you their weakness. It’s always good to know. Someone who is right in their Power of Pearl will never do that. It’s good to know who you can trust and respect, and who will extend an arm to you when they have bested you. As my Tia Salome once said, “A noble enemy is more valuable than a false friend.”

And now you can try. You can understand that this soul forged in starlight and this body made in bliss is capable of creation and destruction. You are the witch, the hand of fate. What will you make or destroy? What does the great web ask of you? You have the power to make it real.

Book Chapters- The Moon to My Sun

The Book of Earth

chollasoledad

Pentacle Point:

Power. It is the one pentacle point that is the same on both the Iron and Pearl Pentacles. On the Iron, it is personal power, on the Pearl, the power of the commons, of the organized force working together. This is power to create, not power over other people or places. Power to create is our birthright as dense beings. We can move energy to matter and back again.

Color associations:

Earth has two, green and black. Green like the trees, Black like the soil that holds the web of life.

Direction:

North, life, and growth.

Tool:

The Drum. The nature of sound is waves. It is both energetic and physical force. The drum is a tool to shift the world, and our consciousness.

Guardian:

Of all the Guardians, North is perhaps one of the strangest. They are not as inclined to change their appearance. They also like to practice a little morning chiropractic if they feel like your antennae need adjusting. It’s important to be clear, as this is where will is executed. To make something take form, one must be specific, even while understanding that all creations, be they born of will or necessity, have their own autonomy. You cannot control what you birth.

Gate between:

The Kunti Tree. She is just off the parking lot in Samuel P. Taylor Park. Across from a tall stump that steams in the morning sun, she is a tall hollow redwood with a burl that looks like a vulva. Bring her gifts of flowers and water, lean into her and look up her black chimney to the sky and listen.

Gate within:

The Solar Plexis. Central to the body, sensitive to the impact of sound. The witch’s greatest tool is their body. This is where it all begins.

Book Chapters- The Moon to My Sun, The Book of Fire

Journal Entry 1/17

chollasoledad

                Looking back at old stories reminds me of two things. First of all, life was much more dangerous and difficult than I like to remember. I want to somehow brush it off and make my memory more palatable. That is hard to do when you live with spirits who are witness to your life, and remind you, “no, girl, you lived through that. Good on you!” Somehow it does  not feel like a compliment to me, even though I know I am surrounded by both protectors in the wilderness world, and protectors in the magical world as well. They are trying to tell me they are proud that I have managed to stick around. Sometimes they have to remind me that I came here at great effort and cost, and that if I duck out early, I will have to come back and do high school again. Yeah, no. Why that still feels like a such a threat is beyond me.

                But it also reminds me that I am imperfect, and that I have managed to live my life in this imperfect way. It’s my way. This wound on my hip that weeps may simply be weeping the tears that I can’t, or won’t, shed on my own. I fight them, even though I cry all the time. As I get older, crying is harder. In some ways, the past is farther away, which is something I am grateful for. In some ways, it means it is harder to access and to heal from a vague point, often beyond the reach of memory. I have fenced off moments that were supremely painful in order to continue.  When I can recover those moments they are fresh and sharp as if they have simply been in some kind of suspended animation.

                Imperfection is not pollution. I am acutely aware that my belief that I am somehow contaminated by the violence I have experienced impacts my body and the solid reality that it holds. What does this wound want to say? Why has it been screaming this message at me?

The Mighty B is always full of strange suggestions. She asked me to ask my hip what it has to say. I need to stop fighting and listen to what is being said. To that end, I decided to ask the cards and let the wound speak to me in some other way than just trying to purge this corruption that I insist on believing in. And it was pretty clear. There is nothing wrong with me. Not essentially. It is venting the waters that hold me together, the waters of which I am made. And these fluids, the blood and snot and tears and lymph and piss and shit, are what constantly wash over me. They are what carry away the blood and vaginal fluids and cum from the violence. They bring fibrinogen to torn flesh to form scabs and create the chrysalis in which I can transform. Normally, they simply wash through my system over and over, like the tides, until someone creates an opening for my blood and vomit to flow out of me onto the floor while I wonder if I will die.

                I will not die.

                It comes as almost childish defiance. I will not be easily disposed of. I will not make this easy for you. I will find the exit, and if you stand in my way, I will go through you. Like this fluid that will find a way, even if it has to open a hole in my hip to escape, I will flow. Not with hate or with anger, but simply with determination. It speaks to me and reminds me that I need to cry. All these years later, I am still waiting for someone to come finish me off. They aren’t coming. The only things left to fight with are my body and my memory. I have to cry that reservoir of unshed tears, or my hip will do it for me.

                I listen as my wound vac makes its quiet slurping sounds. This is aggression. I am at war with my hip. I need to end this war and let it help me. The doctors have given up. Ruby is treating me with Chinese herbs, because the doctors have given up except for this machine that is attached to me day and night. I want to call a truce.

                I sit in my window and hold the 6 of wands in my hand as sunlight warms one side of my face. Victory. I am victorious. It does not mean that I will be safe and the travail is over. It reminds me that Victory comes both in peace and in chaos. As long as I am looking for peace and security I cannot be victorious. The battle is in accepting that we are always in the ebb and flow of chaos. There is no security. All I wanted as a girl was a place to be, and place to belong and be accepted. Those places are not places. They are moments. I have to remember to rest in those moments.

                The place is always here. Wherever I am. And the ebb and flow are literally my own blood and lymph. I had so much pain after that time, but I was never in more danger than I was at that point. Even sitting on a bench in Lelystad, I was safe and watched over. Victory. It was what carried me through. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough.

                I sit back now, and I can feel the slight frown on my face. I want the small life as much as anyone. A place to call home, someone to love, a good book, a nice cup of tea, and some sunshine feel like the only goals I have in life. That is a lie. It is absolutely a lie. I am a witch, a restless spirit that is never satisfied. I long for more. To make a mark on the world, to have great adventures. I realize that I would never have met the spirits I have known if I had just kept to the paved roads. I’m not saying that the particularly unwise path I took was destined. I’m sure that I would have found more trouble to get into along the way, and likely will in the future.

                But the violence was not my own. It is in my astrology chart, actually. That awkward thing that makes astrologers look at me nervously, not wanting to tell me. I always just say, “I know. It’s already happened. I’m still here.” They exhale audibly and go on to tell me how this configuration usually expresses itself. And I’m aware it doesn’t mean that it won’t happen again. The thing is that it isn’t mine. I did not do these things to myself. The blame lies elsewhere. The violence was not invited. In this moment, my hip decides to make a noise. The wound vac burps and gurgles, as if to say that it has been heard. Message received. I am not corrupt or polluted. The lymph and blood have washed me clean. I have no power to contaminate anyone else simply because I am hurt and different now and can never undo that. But healing is my part of this. The only corruption here is in the heart of people who wanted to get rid of me, and could not see my humanity enough to just tell me to go. It is simple and just. I am not contaminated, because my waters have washed them away. It is time for me to accept that this is true of my mind as well. If I have to play charades with a ghost to learn this, so be it. That I once was loved this deeply. I was a treasure who was admired and helped, protected by angels and a Romani woman on a bus station bench, as if she knew…

                As if she knew what? That I was precious? Different? The cinnamon bun of the Old Gods? Well, kind of. Somehow she knew I was supposed to be saved. I think that is the challenge of Pride in every witch. To admit who we are is terrifying. To understand our value and greatness is more than most can bear. Except for witches. It is expected, or demanded, of us. We have contracts to fulfill. I feel South slide along my back. They whisper “finally” and feel something like satisfaction and hope mixed together. Moon to My Sun is finally picking up the clue phone. She’s not letting it go to voice mail. I am trying to make sense of this. That I am beautiful and dangerous. I am rivers and wetlands. I am ancient and yet new every time. I smile at their touch, and in that moment, I am victorious.

Book Chapters- The Moon to My Sun, The Book of Fire

The Swords of Holy Will

chollasoledad

   

             My beloveds, I want to speak to you of Holy Will, and how you are part of the design. The Swords of Holy Will are also under the province of Pride, the Fire that shapes the world. For nothing is born in the universe that is not first born as desire. When you came here, you desired to learn. Witches are strange creatures, restless and never satisfied. The Buddhists speak of this as Dukkha, a haunting dissatisfaction that drives one to seek enlightenment. For all that we do not wish to suffer, it is suffering that leads us to compassion and freedom. It is the same for you. You see, to be a Sword of Holy Will, you accept that you will suffer to learn. So you gave up being the scouring winds that cleanse the desert, or the currents ceaselessly stirring the ocean, and you were born. With your birth, you accepted your sword and began to learn.

                You were forged so long ago, before even your memories of millennia began. Your times of being in the In-between have not erased it from your memory. It still calls to you like a song. These Swords are the shards of the Hir Holy Will, and you are one of them. Together, you create the universe, over and over. After all, this is why you were made.

                The swords are a calling, some talent that you have that is crucial to the warp and weft of this world and others. You, your embodied life, is how the will of the Starry Swirl creates. Overseen by the Watchers, those ever-conscious keepers of purpose, you live lives that touch other lives. You are the means by which Gods achieve agency. You are in no way insignificant. We have all stood where you are now. You will say, “Grandmother, we do not know how to be this. We will fail.” And I am here to say, “Oh hell yeah! Oh, my shining one, you will most certainly fail, and that is how you will learn.” You are here to practice, to nurture the talents you are called to. I didn’t say it would be easy. In fact, it will be the thing that you do not believe yourself capable of doing. But do it you shall. All you must do is to be willing to learn, and to continue when you fail, even when it feels like there is nothing but darkness. In fact, that will drive you, just as dukkha drives one toward freedom. Learning to flow and move and create will alleviate not only your own suffering, but that of untold thousands. It is this reminder that we will hear whispered to us as we stand, that even a broken sword still cuts.

                Your fuck ups are holy. Listen, I will tell you a secret. Because is there any other reason for you to be reading a Book of Shadows? And this is it. The Star Hirself is perfect, as are the Guardians and Gods. Perfection does not change. It is static and eternal. But in the physical world not one thing is perfect. Change is a law. It is the brilliance of the design that the Star made us, for we are imperfect, and it is that imperfection that introduces randomness into the plan. Our imperfection is how change happens, how the vastness of diversity occurs. And it is not just us, but the whole of the physical universe. It is all a dance between chaos and order, of dark and light, of destruction and creation, of energy and matter. Your imperfection is the holiest thing about you, beloved. It is the greatest gift that you have to offer. You are the motherfucking hand of creation. Sorry, but someone had to break it to you.

In my life I have watched numerous Swords at work. None can know the extent of the tasks others are called to. I am a Love Sword. Now mind you, this does not mean that I am an expert at love. Indeed, I have lots of failed loves and I am full of mistrust, but I know a lot about how to love. It is much harder to learn how to be loved. The difference is that I have worked my long life to learn what love is and how to enact it. Most humans think that love is an emotion, something we feel. But love is so much more than that. Love is the very fabric of the universe. By loving, a Love Sword builds. We are the holy architects. Each time a Love Sword lets their heart open there is a line that is established between lover and beloved. This is not about romantic love, but a willingness to be tethered to the whole. It is longing for communion and creating the opportunity for that to happen. Each time there is a line established, those lines grow and grow each time they are connected. Those lines become yarns. Those yarns become ropes. Those ropes become cables. Those cables are knitted into the gates of heaven.

                What do Love Swords build? They build containers! We are the makers of pots and weavers of baskets. They create containers to hold groups and families and moments and events. Have you ever had such a dear memory that you feel like you go there as a place, not a time? That is because you are visiting a place. You belong in that basket, and your group or the spirits of the place you remember contained a Love Sword. They created a place in time, for all time. You may even remember these places in other lives. They do this by establishing relationships, and each time they do this, they lay down a path, part of the great network of lightning roads that can be traveled with just a thought. The lightning roads traverse great expanses in both time and space. The lace they weave is alive, and deeply intricate. Magic emerges from the interstices and enters the world. This is no small task. My dear Grey is a Love Sword, like me. And perhaps you are his student reading this and are a Love Sword, too. He is adept at social structure, at moving other hearts to where he needs them to go. He knows the hearts of others and the great plans. He is rather like a conductor leading a great symphony. Your cooperation is blessed, and if he is conducting, you won’t even know it is happening, for the most part.

                My dear Angus is a Beauty Sword. It is with her that I build the great cables of the lightning roads. These seem rarer, and in all my time, I have only known a handful of Beauty Swords. Their work is to bring beauty into the world. They must be seen. The mysterious thing about this is that, to a one, that is the very last thing they want. Beauty Swords long to be left to themselves and their art, to draw out the sacred parts of others, to sing to their souls and remind them of the long ribbon of time. In some ways, they need Love Swords to create a basket around them, for history has been risky for them. Powerful people want to collect them. Those who revel in their beauty want to consume them. Their gifts have made them irresistible, and this has made them warriors, who always must be defending their freedom and boundaries. Powerful people have always been threatened by Beauty Swords because their voices and visions have never been under control of government and church. Beauty Swords hold the gift of patterning. Be it terror or ecstasy, they can only create what is true. Art is truth. And artists they are, but the medium they work in can be anything. Even things unseen. I have also noticed that they avoid each other like the plague. I have never understood why. Perhaps the pain of being recognized by another like them can only be a reminder of their glory. And for so many of us, to be haunted by our own greatness is far more frightening than our imperfection.

                My dearest Serafina, my first student, is a Sword of Desire. Her talent is to turn desire into reality. In many ways, it is born of love and beauty, in that this brings the underlying structure and pattern into the dense world. Swords of Desire stand at a crucial point in the wheel of creation. They move desire from the spiritual state into the physical. They have the ability to imbue the song with heft and weight and seeming solidity. Of course, everything is energy, but they have the ability to make things dense, and this allows their use not just by Swords of Desire, but by everyone. It is true that the swords of desire usually act on behalf of community. It is not just for them. They are not capitalists, although they tend to be excellent at working in any economic system. They are hedonists, sensualists, and this is a blessing. I know that the greatest religions in the world have preached a gospel of hate about them, but in the end, religion can never win. Because of all the Swords, the Swords of Desire dare to be human in its most elegant form. Because our power as human springs from the very thing that has been vilified by those seeking control. Our bodies. It is the very density of our bodies that makes us so powerful. It is also what makes us mortal. We live short lives, but we can move energy to matter through our wills. Although we all can do this, it is the Swords of Desire who can do it most expediently, and with unflagging determination. They carry desire within their frames almost as a burden, it burns them and drives them forward. Their own dukkha is a craving for what should be. And yet, they are the first to jump to fan the flames, to luxuriate in pleasure, to feel magic as they can feel their own heartbeat, because the Swords of Desire remind us that this is what makes us human. And indeed, what makes us free. The Swords of Desire are the cogs of the future, always pushing it toward progress. It is not unusual that they are born into marginalized groups with historical exclusion from the benefits others enjoy. Remember that being a Sword does not mean you are good at something, only that you have been given a calling and a commensurate talent. A Sword of Desire knows that if they achieve a dream, it changes the world permanently. They fight for legacy. Their plans span lifetimes.

                I have known my share of Freedom Swords. Always born into some kind of limitations, their task is to free themselves, and then to free others. My dearest Roland is a Freedom Sword, born into a world that judges any desire that is different from the status quo, he is perhaps miraculous in how much he has learned about what he wants and longs for. And trust me, it is all taboo. Because, why not? He has found the more and more he pursues his own path, the more he becomes a beacon for others who suddenly realize they could do the same. The truth is, and he would shudder to hear me say it, that he is by every breath granting permission to do the impossible to anyone who needs it in the moment. He is completely cognizant of his burden, too. It is always done with kindness, even if he is making fun of you. But once you meet him, you have to own that you create your own prison. He’s kind mostly because he remembers what that cell feels like.

                Is every witch a sword? I do not know. But I do know that some seem to not hold them, mostly because they are already happy with what they have been given. I can’t imagine that those with the most privilege are willing to flap hard enough to fly when they can fly first class. They seem to bend their power toward maintenance of the status quo and live off the dreams that others have birthed into the world. That isn’t our job. If you’re reading this, this isn’t you. You are the change, and you will find yourself vilified for it. You will be called divisive and destructive and chaotic. Some of those will even be correct. The Gods ask those with power and privilege for tribute, ask them to do something they do not know how to do, and those people can’t imagine that they can possibly do more. You don’t have to worry about that, love. You have been born to work those muscles so that you can fly. And I know that your teacher has stood in your place, perhaps are even named here as those most esteemed examples. They have already made a place for you to come to learn this. And you have already decided to learn your craft, which is why you are reading this. So step into your destiny and pick up that sword, the thing you believe you cannot do and yet crave and long to do it. You’re going to drop it on your toe, just like every witch before you. Even me. Eventually, you learn, and your toe will thank you.

                So, we dance across time and space, beloved, driven by the gift of our own mistakes. And one day you might open this book and show your student a sigil painted in my own blood. I might look at you in wonder, to see my first name written there, the name the void calls me by, and I will look into your eyes and remember that I am Moon to My Sun, child of the Fallen. And that I shall ever remain. I am a basket weaver, like my grandmother. When I am done, those brass-voiced angels will tell me I have done well and then hand me more willows. You didn’t think we get to be done, did you? That is for the pampered children of colonizers. We are never done. That is why they fear us. We built this world, as we have always done. As we have always done. In glorious imperfection.

Book Chapters- The Moon to My Sun

Tetabiate’s Waltz

chollasoledad

*note*

Right now the world is burning, and people are calling out everywhere for justice. I know it is scary, but this is the time that the world gets remade. Hold onto your loved ones. Do not stand for the murders of our Black siblings. Remember this is about police violence. Don’t get distracted.

 

I hope this song brings you comfort in uncertain times. Come make the world anew. Create with love.

 

 

Tetabiate’s Waltz

 

Revolution is not fought for glory

Revolution’s fought only for love

If you cannot write your own story

Don’t be looking for help from above.

The fire of God is within you

It always has been from the start

And it calls to your hands to continue

To follow the will of your heart.

 

Chorus:

Burn it down, Burn it down

Throw your heart on the pyre.

Burn it down, burn it down

Give your soul to the fire.

Can’t you see it is not broken

It’s doing what it’s meant to do.

And the smoke on which you are choking

Is the world that once belonged to you.

 

Your lips, they refuse to rain curses

Your hands hesitate on the sword

It’s not that you really fear dying

But you fear being held to your word.

There are thousands of children in cages

There are thousands of lives in the street

No one can live on these wages

If we panic, then we are all meat.

 

Let me sing you a song of my nation

30,000 who lived in the light

Of the sun that we all called our father

Before we were sent to the night

The 3,000 they left in the desert

To drink sand as our songs fade away

Build barbeques out of your pipeline

Burning bridges to light our own way

Book Chapters- The Moon to My Sun

Journal Entry 8/18/19

chollasoledad

I decided to take my dead friend’s advice and sing Andante Andante to South, in hopes of not getting thrown around so much. I’ve never had such an intense physical connection with a Guardian before. He fucking loved it. Would not stop singing it, wanted to me sing it to him all the time. Who knew ABBA would be so popular? But what is better is that he/they got the message. All of them get all the messages. So he’s been much gentler with me, which is good, because I’m a little fragile right now with this wound vac and everything.

He, like East, has asked me to do something for him. To write him a song. I don’t write songs. Ok, I have written one song, but in general, not my wheelhouse. That doesn’t really matter to the hoops of heaven. They don’t really care if you undersell yourself or what kinds of insecurities you have. It’s more like you’re my witch, I’m your Guardian, I come when you call, you write me songs because you love me. Get with the program. So once again, as I was wheeling past the desk in my room, I got grabbed, albeit far more gently than before. That sweet sweet voice saying, “let’s write a song. Sing it to me over and over again. I will remember all the words.” Baby shoes. You know how people used to bronze baby shoes? It was a way to remember a person’s babyhood. I kept seeing baby shoes and it didn’t make sense. And then all of the sudden, it hit me. He wants to remember me this time. I have been so many people over the millennia, and I will be more. But there is something about Sewa that he wants to keep. It makes me cry just thinking about it. He wants a piece of me to live on. He coos at me, that what he made me write down is not a poem. It’s literal. He wants me to lay back against him and open my mouth and make a sound, any sound. I have to write this song. And he will help me. It’s my gift to him.

He guides me gently to the bed. I pile up the pillows and I feel pulled back. And it feels like leaning against a ball of electric snakes. I jump. I get pulled back, my head tilted back to open my throat. The words came streaming out onto the paper. And then, it all slowly dissipated. I felt breathless.

I decided to get up and have some lunch. I thought my work was done. I figured I could get help with the music. Except later that afternoon, I got pulled again. “We’re not done,” he said. Back to the pillows, back to the electric snakes. And finally, I sang it over and over. I had written a waltz about the end of the world. This seemed hilarious to me. What was worse was that the tune was just a little too hard for me to sing. So I had to practice it over and over. I cried at the end of the day, to be swept up in a process where I was literally held while I created. I could not stop weeping for the love.

Even being a witch of some 30 years or so, I still often wonder if it is all in my head. And then there are times when you are held tenderly in the arms of spirit and you make magic that you cannot do by yourself. I was left staring at this song that did not exist that morning. The glistening continued, a beautiful “thank you” from a deep mystery. I was singing. My voice was once more heard upon the Earth. Cracked and wavery, not really beautiful at all. It struggled and tried and sang. I was imperfect, a wonder, whose voice would always sing for the covenant between spirit and witch.

Would you like to hear it? I will share it with you.

 

 

Book Chapters- The Moon to My Sun

Journal Entry 8/15/19

chollasoledad

“Je bent heel, mijn beetje.”

I whisper it, per Mighty B’s suggestion, as the nurse is unwrapping and bandaging my wound. The silver alginate, the hydro cortisone. Je bent heel, mijn beetje. The huge bandage, carefully applied.
Mijn beetje, mijn beetje. Mighty B says that Kees lives inside me now, sending me messages to stay here, to not fight, to just allow basic goodness. Now I say this to my wound, like a mantra. Can I bring that to my own body, can I tell my hip, myself, that I’m whole and well? First time practicing it. It feels strange in my mouth.

I remember that morning in Lelystat like I’m some other being looking out of my eyes. It is in the middle of the country, and there is pretty much nothing there. Just the natural gas fields, with their flames that would occasionally spew from the top of the tall metal towers, and the national bus terminal. In the pink and blue dawn light, it looks like a scene from hell. There are folks around, heading to work, but they won’t sit on the bench next to me. I am sitting at one end of the bench, beaten and leaking with one shoe. On the other side is a Romani woman. My friends have warned me about the people they call a name that is a slur. They are all thieves, they say. This woman is by herself, but she looks over at me now and then. She finally goes to the water fountain and wets a hanky. She comes over and wipes my face, dabs the eye that has swollen shut. I do not stop her. She points at my foot. I open my suitcase and take out my boots and put them on. I thank her in Dutch. She waves it away. She pats my hand. I realize in that moment that all the nice people on the platform are afraid of us. I offer her a mento. She takes the whole pack and I laugh. She laughs, too. I don’t fear her. It’s those people at the house that I fear. Rickard. And the police. All these good law-abiding well-dressed people.

But hearing these words in my mouth also reminds me of his face when he found me sitting on that bench. Rudy had called him and told him that he had seen me, looking like a ghost, standing by the canal with my suitcase and one shoe, and that I had disappeared. No one could find me. It never occurred to me to call Kees on the phone to come get me. Even in that situation, I felt too much like an imposition to wake him up. I just got on the bus. When he pulled up in front of the bench in Lelystat, he was so full of murderous rage, but Kees did not indulge it. He knew me well enough. He guessed that I would take the bus, and all buses go through Lelystat. He knew there was one goal, my safety. He somehow opened the door of the passenger side of the car with his foot and kicked it open without letting go of the steering wheel. His knuckles white, his voice shaking, staring straight ahead. “Stap. In. De. Auto.” Not even in English. He didn’t look at me. He’d been crying. Get in the motherfucking car. At dawn in Lelystat, you can hear a car at high speed from a long distance away. I listened to the doppler of that car for 15 minutes, thinking that car is traveling so fast, who would be driving so fast? I try not to think about that sound.

She says that I have to hold that now. That I have to be the one being goofy and singing ABBA songs, and silently loving this part of my body I’ve rejected. I have to be the one ruthlessly caring for this body. This is part of what is leaking out of me. This past. Among others.

I remember being invited to Samhain the year that Kees died, crying in some witch’s living room. Losing my shit. I was so embarrassed later. I did not understand who and what Kees was to me. He was the one who didn’t want anything. I was so wrecked. I looked into this black piece of polished stone and it was the first time that I saw him looking back at me, over my shoulder. I wish I had the knowledge I have now, of how to greet and honor the dead, instead of clinging and wailing.

All these years later, the Mighty B asks me, “how did it feel to have someone like that, who was there for you first? Do you want this in your life again?”At first, I refused. I wouldn’t say that I wanted that in my life. Or needed it. Nope. She says we’ll work on that. I’m able to say that now. I have people in my life that show up like that now. That is the life I live.

Mighty B asks why he changed the song. Doesn’t he usually lead with Chiquitita? She has an eerie memory and also an endless capacity to accept and work with the weirdness in my life. But it’s a good question. Huh. When we got back to Rotterdam, Kees took me to the hospital. I woke up and Kees, all 6’ 8” of him was curled up in the hospital bed with me. He was quietly singing Chiquitita and playing with my hair. If you could call what Kees did singing. He usually wanted me to listen to this song, to tell me there was hope.

Chiquitita, tell me what’s wrong

You’re enchained by your own sorrow

In your eyes there is no hope for tomorrow

How I hate to see you like this

There is no way you can deny it

I can see that you’re oh so sad, so quiet

Chiquitita tell me the truth

I’m a shoulder you can cry on

Your best friend, I’m the one you must rely on

You were always sure of yourself

Now I see you’ve broken a feather

I hope we can patch it up together

Chiquitita you and I know

How the heartaches come and they go

And the scars they’re leaving

You’ll be dancing once again and the pain will end

You will have no time for grieving

Chiquitita you and I cry

But the sun is still n the sky and shining above you

Let me hear you sing once more like you did before

Sing a new song, Chiquitita

This time, Kees motioned in the mirror to listen to Andante Andante. So after obsessively looking at the lyrics, of both songs, I have realized two things. Firstly, I am not Chiquitita anymore. I am not hopeless, actually. I am not filled with sorrow. I’m not a fucked up 17-year-old. And Andante, Andante is the answer to the invitation that Southern Guardian popped into my head the other day, would I be the moon to his sun? Basically, “yes yes, always yes, but don’t break your damn toys, ok?” And that is a very different person than the girl who wanted to die but changed her mind.

I want to live. I want to heal. I want to get this damn surgery and heal quickly and well and go get into more trouble. So if I have to whisper these words to my hip, I will. I carry Kees with me into the wound clinic with his words.

Some time ago I jokingly named my right hip Alfie, and said he had his own zip code. He gets his own seat on the plane, after all. But in doing this, even as a joke, I made Alfie the schizon, the shadow, the repository of all the pain and discrimination I have endured as a superfat person. I have in this way made this hip the other, not part of the whole of my body.  He’s no longer Alfie, I’ve decided. He’s mijn beetje. My little one. It’s sort of ironic, since my right hip is significantly bigger than my left. Now my hip is the troubled teen, and I am the person looking down with nothing but love in my eyes. I am whole. You are whole, dear one, mijn beetje. I can also feel the reiki people send in that headspace. I wonder if Kees felt it? I think he did. I don’t think he had the same kinds of filters as other people.

Also, I think my therapist is probably an enormous weirdo. I love her for it, even if this particular practice is very hard and makes me cry sometimes. I’m not fighting anymore. Ok, a little bit. Therapeutic resistance. We’ll get there.

Uncategorized

Journal Entry 8/14/19

chollasoledad

When my spirits and the Mighty B gang up on me, it is never cute. Ugh. Remembering times when I also felt corrupted is the Mighty B’s suggestion. I need to remember that I am not diminished by the acts of others, no matter what I tell myself. Not everyone gets rescued. I did. I am lucky. As much as I have believed over the years that I was somehow polluted, I have always had someone to extend their hand to me and believe that I am worth caring for. When I do this work, I can feel South embracing me.

You see, I have a ghost. Maybe he is more of an ancestor, but he isn’t the Mighty Dead of the Tradition, nor is he related to me by blood. One thing is certain, and that is that Kees didn’t leave entirely when he passed. Often he comes to me in dreams and we sit in his great room on the bean bag chairs, or by leaving little objects that remind me of him. When I find an object, I put it under my pillow and I will usually dream of him. I have seen him in the mirror behind me a few times, as well. The way he communicates with me is through charades and the ABBA’s Greatest Hits album. He holds up one or two fingers to indicate disk 1 or disk 2. Then he indicates on his fingers which song he wants me to listen to. When he appears, Kees is always wearing his big floppy poet shirt and his tall boots, his long blond hair in a ponytail or braid. This was his cruising outfit. It always made me laugh and call him “butt pirate.” He wasn’t clear on what that meant at first, but he eventually figured it out and said that I had a nasty mouth. Even he began to call this his butt pirate look, and it became an inside joke with us.

I met Kees in the dime store I was working at. He had stopped to run in to get binder clips on his way to a meeting. He wasn’t exactly sure what the English words were for some office supplies. How nice of TG&Y to have a salesperson who spoke Nederlands just for him! He never questioned what a weird coincidence that was. He left his car running out front, and I told him if he wanted to keep it he needed to go park like the rest of the world. He completely assumed that no one would touch it. Entitlement is a precious thing, that’s for sure. He decided that I was to be his sidekick for the time he was here. I got to go to fancy dinners and concerts and long fun rides in his Audi. When I went to the Netherlands the first time to visit my boyfriend, Rikard, I took the bus to Rotterdam to visit Kees. We had a great time, but my boyfriend was so jealous that he felt he needed to come get me and meet Kees.

I’m stalling. I realize that I don’t know how to tell this story. It’s easier to talk about Kees. How do I tell this story about what happened to me in Appingedam a year later? I can’t even imagine that it is real. I have never really forgiven my parents for tossing me out so that I would not sully their reputation in the church. I left the country because I was so angry at them and went to live with my boyfriend in the Netherlands, who supposedly wanted to marry me. Unfortunately, he had fallen in love with his best friend’s girlfriend, so when I arrived to stay there, he felt trapped and angry. How do I tell this story of how his drinking over this awful situation made everything so much worse? I spent a lot of time hiding at his parents’ house. How do I tell a story about how my first time having sex was punishment for calling him on the truth about his feelings for Anneke? How he laughed at me for caring that I was a virgin? My parents had made sure that I knew that I was only worth some sense of purity that I could sell to the highest bidder. I felt I was alone in the world and felt as if no one wanted me. My boyfriend, my parents, had just disposed of me. It wasn’t true, but it was how I felt. Rikard’s parents and younger siblings loved me. And of course, Kees. I never told Kees about how Rikard raped me that first time. Or how that I felt once I was ruined, that it didn’t matter anymore, so I just took up my place in the bed next to him and tried to duck when he got angry. Growing up with violent parents had prepared me well to be the partner of a man who would continue the violence. Kees would just always say, “you know you can tell me anything, rignt? You know I would do anything for you, yes?”

It’s not like it was all bad, and at times Rikard was gentle and romantic. I had some wonderful times with my friends, and adventures like riding on an ice boat and going to Germany for Christmas. It’s true that they lost me. My friends ran up to some German soldiers and yelled “Ik wil mijn fiets compt!” It’s a joke from WWII, and means “I want my bike back,” a reference to the Germans melting down all the bicycles in Holland to make ammunition. The Soldiers chased them off, but I didn’t know what was going on. Luckily the soldiers were kind and just took me off for a night on the town and then left me at the post office when they left to go home. Times I spent with Rikard’s family were so very dear, including building a wooden shoe out of a rowboat so we could put his sister’s bike in it. Because all Christmas presents must fit in a shoe.

I especially don’t know how to tell this part of the story. I don’t know how to tell it because my memory is spotty and my disbelief so profound that I couldn’t believe it was happening. No one should have to live in that place, and especially a lost 17-year-old. Can I tell you about the part where Rikard wanted me gone? Like really gone. He lost me in a card game to a Surinamese merchant marine. I was in my room because I was not up for being at a loud party, but Rikard was yelling for me to come help make snacks and get people drinks. That was when I met this man whose name I have never known. I know a lot about him, though. Like his birthmark on his hip, and what he smells like. I know what he feels like inside of me. I know he was shorter than me and was smooth and muscular. I know how it felt when he landed a punch on my cheek and everything went white, and what it also feels like to give up and stop fighting. I know he was strong and I thought I would smother in the pillow. I know what it feels like to have a cigarette put out on my shoulder. It’s never what you think it will feel like. Punches don’t feel like a crack or a bam. They sound like something dull and squishy, and try as you might to keep fighting, you have to stop and find your breath again. I know what it feels like to tear inside and pray not to bleed to death, to be covered in blood and piss and shit and cum and tears and snot and hate. I know what fear tastes like.

But I also know what it feels like to realize the bar in the bedframe is loose. And how when you start swinging that bar you cannot stop swinging it until the person you are swinging it at is unconscious or dead. I know what it sounds like to hear a chorus of angels tell me to wake the fuck up and fight. And to look at my hands become weird blue light as I just become motion and destiny. I knew in that moment what it felt like to want to live. For a brief second, I felt like I did when I used to sing to the stars. I watched him slip, and in a moment that I see over and over, I see him grab for the railing of the stairs. And as if it were disembodied, I see my hand bring the bar down hard on his hand. I see his dark eyes look up at me, the first acknowledgment that I was a person. And I swung the bar at him as hard as I could. Even now, I think you will think I am evil for having done this thing, for having looked in his eyes and made sure he tumbled.

I stood at the top of the stairs, everything was still. People were staring at me, and I went quietly to my room. The other people scattered, I knew the police would arrive soon. I felt like I was far away and shaking. I packed my bags and couldn’t find my shoe. I left with only one shoe and went to the bus stop to wait for the night bus. I locked eyes with Rikard’s brother Rudy as I stood by the canal. He was trying to get back to the house after being at the bar. We stared at each other for a full minute, and then I slipped away, amid all the fuss. People in little towns never stop you on your way. They are all much too curious about what happened. I got on the bus and left, in the middle of the night, in the cold, with one shoe. And I never saw Appingedam again.

In the dark, I made my way to Kees. He was the only beacon of light in my broken mind. I only knew I needed to be with him in the moment when I had nowhere to go. There were only two of us on the bus at that time of night. I went to him, an unwanted piece of refuse, flotsam and jetsam, a 17-year-old with a cracked cheekbone and one shoe, leaking my liquid horror story into my dress and scarf. Now I dream of my dead Kees, who holds up fingers to tell me which songs to listen to on the ABBA greatest hits album, still trying to help me find my way. I always dream of him when I can’t fight anymore. There is this truth, that people will love you for letting them catch you. I landed in his arms.

Maybe what leaks out of this wound isn’t pollution. Maybe it is grief. It could be cleansing, the draining of the last dregs of a poison I have carried in my flesh for years. If so, then I say let this flow out of me. I still have to answer that question of if I want this love in my life. And I do. I have to take a deep breath when I say this. It feels like a whisper, a hope I don’t dare to have. South seems pleased. “Dare,” he says.

Book Chapters- The Moon to My Sun

No Matter How Beautiful It Is

chollasoledad

What do I say about our Suavecito of the South? He was the first Guardian I met, the companion of my childhood. I was a very magical child. My mom’s family are SDA and we had a prophet. Ellen G. White. I was convinced that this was going to happen to me as well. It was said that a prophet could breathe on a mirror and they would not fog it up, so I practiced this all the time. Such is the hubris of early childhood. After being fully informed by grandmother how I was not special in any way to God, I decided that I wanted to be a prophet for the stars. I had always been entranced by the night sky, and I was convinced they were angels. I would lie on the lawn in the evening and sing in my child voice, moving my arms to dance with them. I look back on this with wonder now at how I knew my place as a child, and how it took years to beat this out of me. I had a beautiful voice. This was not always a blessing. My mother would haul little four-year-old me out to sing Moon River to guests. I sang songs at church and at gatherings at my grandmother’s home. As a shy child, I hated this. My father finally took care of this situation by teaching me a different song. The lyrics were:

Once, I went in swimmin’, where there was no wimmin’

Or no one to see

Seeing no one was there, I hung my underwear

Upon a willow tree

Dove into the water bare, as Phaeroh’s daughter

Dove into the Nile

Someone saw me there, and stole my underwear

And left me with a smile.

The next time my mom trotted me out in front of a church group, I belted out this little ditty. My father nearly expired from laughter. My mother and grandmother were mortified, staring at me with mouths that looked like perfect Os. There was silence. My father looked so proud of me. I didn’t know what to do with the silence, so I did a great and dramatic curtsey, as if I was Leontine Price at the Met. My dad took me to get some ice cream before anyone could inhale.

I didn’t always want to sing for people. I wanted to sing for the stars. Sometimes the stars sang back. We would sing strange melodies and harmonies. As I got older, I took voice training. I studied opera. I sang in choirs. I would fall into ecstasies when singing in a choir, as my voice fell in with others and I became no self. The delusion lifted and I became part of the whole. At that point, we are part of the law of all things. After I sang at a church once, an older woman asked me where I was when I closed my eyes as I sang. I said that I was with my angel. She cried. But my mom and grandmother looked concerned. I guess that was not the right answer, but it was the truth.

I stopped singing in college. I kind of had to choose between music and science. I threw myself into research and graduate school. After a few years of bad bronchitis, my voice officially was done. And I stopped. When I stopped, my access to the ecstasy was gone. My guiding force was gone. All I was left with was my ambition. I began to forge my armor, piece by piece. You have no idea of what it is like to be a fat, queer, indigenous, disabled person in a prestigious graduate program. I have never felt like I was walking around with feathers in my hair more than every fucking day in Tolman Hall. I had to make armor to survive. And the sound of South’s voice faded and left me. I was bolted in tight, all by myself.

Luckily, there are many roads to ecstasy. So in my twenties I began trying to tug and pull at that armor, mostly through the use of entheagens. My first time on taking Ecstasy (the drug of that name) was in Guerneville. We were going to the Russian River for Spring Break. All of us were in graduate school at Cal and we needed to just stop and reconnect with our humanity. We decided that we would go up to the Willows for a few days to just relax, smoke a lot of weed, and play in the water. And that should have been the extent of this story. Except for the fact that I’m Sewa, and that isn’t how I do things.

The friends I was with didn’t do that either. We were all spiritual explorers in some way. Mostly every morning was spent eating muffins and drinking coffee, all provided by the lovely proprietors. We would lounge about on the deck and read tarot cards or do whatever divination called to us that day. I was just learning the tarot at the time, and I was such a baby witchlet. It was the time of the New Age. I tried the crystals and the flower essences and what not. Some of it connected, some of it did not. By far the best thing I got out of the New Age exploration was opening to channel and meeting my spirit guide, Sarofi, my eternal companion. But there were always ways in which I didn’t fit the mold. Not being white will do that. For example, all the white people seem to have taken all the guides that are love and light, the diaphanous and beautiful. But Sarofi is always surly and on fire, and I could not love them more. When we met, I asked why they chose me. They replied, “You don’t know who you are yet. I have been waiting for you for millennia. We are going to get into so much trouble. We are going to change the world.” And in some ways, we have.

Gabrielle decided that this day we were going to go to the redwoods, and she had brought along some Ecstasy. I had never done that before, but my twenties were all about experiences and I was curious and wanted to try it. I was pretty much game for anything those days. Sarofi was hovering about and was excited. While the others were getting ready I was sitting on the deck waiting to go. Sarofi softly said, “This is the day, my love. This is the day.” I kept wanting to ask about it, but just then my friends returned. Gabrielle handed me a cup filled with cranberry juice. She was smiling. “Bon Voyage,” she said, tipping her own cup down her throat. I did the same.

As folks were packing up, I could feel the shimmering coming on. My whole body felt a tingling, like anticipation. Then I could feel my friend Pablo’s hands on my shoulders. He could tell that I was starting to feel the drug. We packed up and headed to the forest, which was only a mile or so away. But I could not make myself get into the car. I didn’t want to be in a confined space. So off we went, with me hanging out the passenger window to my waist in Gabrielle’s old Honda Accord like a dog happy to have their face in the wind.

People often have judgements about experiences they have on drugs, like drugs invalidate the truth of what they experience. That happens in monophasic cultures who only see reality in one phase of consciousness. Only waking consciousness is considered reality in this culture. That same reality is considered delusion in Buddhism, where mindfulness is the only reality. In polyphasic cultures, there are different realities. All of them valid and true for the reality in which they occur. I will tell you this, that moss on a tree if soft. That some trees smell sharp and others smell like vanilla. That the sound of a wild stream talks to you. And all that I could feel was that this drug let me touch the moss, the tree and the stream, where I normally would not have done so. Sarofi just kept saying, “listen” and so I did.

The other thing that this drug in particular did was to crack off the armor that I wore every day. Between the discrimination I dealt with at school every day and the fact that riding a bike in public was an invitation for assault, I can have a lot of compassion for myself building such hard armor. It was shiny and tough, and combined with a spirit that tended to push through the hard stuff, I often was a juggernaut that got my way. We can’t really be present in the world and listen through the armor, though. It muffles the voices of living things. You can’t feel the softness of moss on a tree through it. And the second armor that snaps shut around your heart stands in the way of love. When people see you armored, they will often take a swing at you. The only way to truly to be brave in this world is to take that armor off. The only way to be invincible is to drop it at your feet in a pile and say, “here I am.” So after hiding in trees and petting moss and swimming in the stream naked (much to the consternation of the park rangers), we found ourselves quietly sitting in the forest theater as we realized that we had been here all day and that we weren’t feeing high anymore. Some of the others decided this was the time to smoke the weed we brought. But two of us didn’t want to do that. We just wanted to be there, in this beautiful place, without our armor, to contemplate everything that had just happened.

It was getting dark and cold so we headed back through the park to the car. The others were walking ahead of us, laughing and silly, but Pablo and I hung back and walked silently. It had gotten dark and we were following the white lines in the road through the dark forest. We could hear the animals starting to stir as they reclaimed their kingdom. We held hands, because that is what one does in a darkened forest with open hearts when you can’t see your way. And then. And then we came out of the forest into an open area where the sky was full of stars. And then. And then I looked up. The others were finding constellations and naming them. But I kept looking at the stars. And then I said to Pablo, “I can hear them singing.”

It was the last thing I remembered that made any sense. And evidently the last thing I said before I hit the pavement.

“Today is the day,” said Sarofi, gently, with no surliness at all.

I heard a voice, the most beautiful voice. It sounded like it was echoing through a brass instrument. It sang to me. I stood there, stunned, and it said my name. My true name. “Namariel, Namariel, it is time to wake up.” I felt like I was in love. I felt like I was flying. “It is time to build the new world. It is time to begin your work.”

“What is my work?”

“To make family, to build worlds, to construct gates. You make the container for magic in the world.”

I laughed. “whuh? Me?”

It laughed, too. “I will sing you awake, Namariel. Come to me.”

And I found myself lying on the ground in the middle of the road, surrounded by my friends, with a ranger shining a light in my eyes. I was mumbling but not really responsive. They thought I was having a seizure. I looked up at them and said, “How did I get on the ground?”

The next morning, I was up first. I went down to get muffins and coffee and just sat there, listening. I had a strange dream, about an ancient force that loved me. It bent to pet me and I could feel something like a smile as it folded and unfolded in the starry sky. All I could do was cry. I woke up crying. Pablo had petted my back and went back to sleep. I got up and slipped downstairs to be in the quiet morning. The mist still clung to the willow trees and over the grassy lawn that stretched down to the river. I walked down to the water and it taught me a song, a song for spinning the lines of the world into ropes. I sang it over and over. The song seemed pleased. I went back to my coffee.

By then, Pablo was up. He came down to look for me. “Are you ok?” he asked as he hugged me.

“I’m fine. It’s strange, but fine. I feel Sarofi so close now. And everything in this world is so beautiful. Even pain. Even the hard things,” I said as I put my head on his shoulder. We sat like that until the others drifted in to check on me. They smoked more weed, and I didn’t. This concerned them. But it was interesting, I did not do any drugs for the next 6 months. It was like everything that wanted to take me away from this place I avoided. I cried at the drop of a hat. I meditated a lot. I was trying to understand what happened, to deal with the feelings around being touched by something so difficult to describe. I was awake, but still unclear about what they wanted from me. It never occurred to me that I should be afraid.

Years later, I was talking with my friends about the story of the Sky People and the Suremem. I stopped in the middle and looked at Pablo. “I think I understand now. The thing that talked to me in Guerneville. Maybe it knew me from before. Maybe it was a Sky Person.” Pablo had started studying witchcraft by then. He was in a school of a branch of Star and Serpent and this was how I was introduced to the tradition that would become my home. He put his hand on mine and said, “There are beings of the Outer Darkness. Maybe they are calling you.”

We talk about having a calling, but it is actually a hard thing to hold. I think it is harder for me to hold because of the ways in which the world sees me as less valuable than other people, even down to refusing me medical care and safety. After awhile I started to believe that, too. But for some reason, this hawk on fire wants to be my guide. And this mystery folding and unfolding in the stars wants to dance and write songs with me. It is a constant struggle to remain awake. Being awake means that I have work to do. I was called, so it is my obligation to struggle on in remembering every day that no matter what the world may think of me, no matter how I have been treated or dismissed, beaten or broken or violated, no matter how scarred or damaged, I am precious. No one can do this thing but me. In the words of a round that I like to sing in the mornings “I will believe the truth about myself. No matter how beautiful it is.”

In that way, pride is love for the world. It feels like a basic knowledge for a witch, and yet one we have to keep waking up to every day. I realized much later that it was South that came to get me that night in the forest, as I walked out hand in hand in the starlight without my armor on. With Sarofi singing, “wakey wakey, eggs and bakey!” because they are just not like the white people’s spirit guides. They curl around me now, as I drink my coffee. “So how is Namariel this morning?” they hiss good naturedly. I laugh. Because sometimes love surrounds me in a way that I can’t understand. I take a hit on my joint as I turn my wheelchair to get out of the sun. “Namariel, the Sword of the Powers, needs another cup of coffee,” I smile.