On Cycles (Not Bicycles)
For those of you questioning why you signed up for this crazy blog in the first place let me remind you, you’re here to imbibe in the magick. Not magick like casting a spell on the entirely too nosey neighbor who won’t stay out of your begonia bushes. (This has to happen somewhere I’d imagine.) Magick like I was reading a book about sea diving women who drink rice wine on Jeju Island and the next weekend I am around people I do not know who bring up Jeju and rice wine on two separate and unrelated occasions. It’s the magick of wishing consistently that what you want will present itself as you work cautiously in its direction and then it does. It’s the magick of being invited over for dinner so you can cry in your cousin’s kitchen even though you were the one who was supposed to be supporting her.
Magick, in my experience, has not ever nor will ever be something to conquer and use for your benefit like some power hungry mage. Magick is to be experienced and wielded with care. Magick is a wild thing and wild things can’t be had, but they can be companions.
On Cycles:
I’ve been thinking recently of cycles and their meaning. Not bicycles mind you, though I did purchase one recently and he’s a sprightly fellow. I’ll probably call him Bob or Murphy or something stupid I’ll inevitably forget because who the hell names a bicycle anyway? (It will shorten to Bubs, I just know it will. “Come on, Lil Bubs.” I’ll say as I lift him out of the trunk of my No Name Car and we pop off to coffee somewhere.)
No I mean the cycles of life and how a New Year doesn’t always fit that cycle for me. At the beginning of the year there’s so much yelling going on. So many calls to be better and do better NOW. It’s this illusion in our culture that if we can just get the right habits, nail down our process, and do it perfectly every time, we’ll magically “make it” and everything will be fine.
That, to me, is a little silly. You can’t conquer life in that way for two reasons
Life is never going to do exactly what you want it too.
Once you “conquer” one thing, there is always another. You will never really and truly get it right to the point of winning everything. There will always be more.
Bunny Trail:
True to form, this year I’ve selected books that all circle each other. Like color palettes when I’m shopping, I somehow manage to find books that have similar themes. Right now it’s a book on the craft of writing and another that is a cozy fantasy. In the book on Craft, the author mentions that Western ways of fiction are obsessed with the beginning and the end (quite true) but that other cultural ways of storytelling can be cyclical. In the cozy fantasy two characters discuss their religions. One adheres to a more structured religion while the other speaks of spirituality like water in the earth, how it has many reiterations from lake to evaporation towards the sky to rain. It’s all a part of each other, it’s all in a cycle.
And We’re Back:
January, to me, doesn’t feel like the start of something new. It just feels obligatory. You’re telling me in the middle of the winter I’m supposed to come at life with gusto and vigor? When it’s 30 degrees outside? No thank you. I will leave my plotting and planning for the wee hours and devote my action plans to the spring. When the earth comes alive, so will I. (And so will Bubs, god bless ‘em.)
The New Year is simply a continuation of what already is and in my life cycle right now, I don’t feel especially new. I feel I am preparing. It’s not a exploration of new goals it is a tightening up of current ones.
The obsession with starting anew is a love affair I’m familiar with. It’s the joy of having “closed a chapter” and “started a new one” as if we will always have a fresh slate and by god, we will get it RIGHT this time. But in terms of mastery, of leaning in and really experiencing life, finally getting it “right” is not the point. The point is going deeper and really engaging with the act of living.
Think about how many times we’ve been taught systems that make us seem bright, bold, and beautiful, like people who are on top of things. People who keep it together. We’re led to believe that if we just do things the right way it will all fall into place. But this is absurd. Why? Because life is magick and you can’t control magick. In a world preaching to you that all you need to do is get control of a thing and it will right itself, think of the ocean. You can no more control life than you can the sea. What you can do with that great body of water, is decide how you want to interact with it and prepare accordingly.
In life I’m a surfer. (Not really, but I want to be and if you’re in LA, please teach me when I come back.) I want to ride waves and be IN things. So much of this in my past life has been dreaming as a substitute for real preparation and then frustration when my mad dash to the waves with the first board I can find ends in heartache. Why didn’t that work? I think to myself as I spit sand back onto the beach and inspect my bruises. It didn’t work because in my mind, my sheer determination, my desire seemed to be the only thing I needed. I thought if I could just sit on the shore and figure out the ocean then my attack on it would make more sense. It would succumb to my will because I had finally figured it out. You can guess how that went.
Sometimes people ask me if I cast spells, legit ones. I think they want to hear that I sit around candles, pour blood in a chalice and call to some weird god who’s probably sleeping and doesn’t want to be bothered with human nonsense. I don’t. The more I interact with magick and the more I interact with life in a transactional matter the more I am appalled by my sheer audacity. As if I or anyone could walk up with a list of demands and expect life to deliver simply because we’ve been very good. I’ve never heard of a surfer who approached the ocean and said, “Hey buddy, listen, I’ve really tried hard here and I think the least you could do is not storm today.” If they have, it certainly hasn’t worked.
The art of creating something out of thing air is as volatile as the weather. Magick is real and it works but it is unpredictable and zany. You don’t control magick, you just learn how and more importantly when to ride its wave.
Back to Cycles:
I went to an estate sale on new year’s day and I stood on top of a mountain, looking down at the way the sun was pouring in streams of light through the clouds and I just thought, “My god, I’m missing it.” I’m missing this incredible experience because I am preparing to be somewhere else. I’d like to rethink that in this year.
I’d like to be kinder to the ways in which I interact with the world while I am training to be elsewhere. This is a cycle of life I will not get back. There will be other cycles of preparation, certainly, but this one, the one where I am in the mountains learning how to be a person again, how to love my family again, how to be a writer again, this one is just as important as the ones I dream about.
So in January of 2025, I am sitting with dreams in my bones, cautiously plotting and planning while I indulge in casual estate sales, really good books, and connecting with people I admire. I would imagine that there are some rough waves ahead of us and I want to be ready to handle that when it comes. For now I trust myself to continue the slow and steady work we’ve always done, of making ourselves the kind of person who may not be able to stop a storm in the ocean from happening, but the kind of person who knows how to handle herself when it does.
I deeply believe in the magick of everyday living. It is the thing that reminds me I am human and we’re all just having a strange, physical experience. It feels especially important for me, in dark times, to ground myself in what is true and joyful.
Join me for our first list of Little Magick Things of the new year!
The Weekly List of Little Magick Things That Make Me Feel Like A Person (I will not be shortening that name):
I saw a hurried woman fairly run down the stairs of a parking deck, tiny box of envelopes in hand, racing against the clock of 8:54 a.m. on a Monday morning. I was rooting for her and her kitten heels as she dashed into an alley of colorful umbrellas.
Sitting at a little breakfast bar in downtown Chattanooga while the tiniest woman I ever did see served my coffee in the largest mug I’ve seen for awhile, I listened to “I’ve Got A Brand New Pair of Roller skates” on the radio.
I fell asleep in the forest on Sunday two weeks ago. I went out, the brook babbled, the light was perfect and I’d actually dressed warmly enough for the thirty degree weather (quite a feat for a Cali girl.) It was so lovely I sat down next to a tree and it’s weirdly shaped brother and took a nap.
On New Year’s Eve I celebrated early with my cousins and their family friends. The memory of a bunch of little six year old boys and girls belting “Pink Pony Club” is going to sustain me for awhile.
Every Friday before the weekend Evelyn, the woman who greets new visitors at our office building, wishes me a happy weekend and tells me to “get some rest.” It’s always accompanied by a stern look and the brief but benevolent mothering makes me feel cared for.
Additional Fun Fact From The Research: There is a bike shop in Leadville, Colorado called Cycles of Life. Google felt compelled to share this with me so I am sharing it with you.
