Happy morning, everyone.
How was your full moon yesterday? Did you read, write, complete a deadline, or get something important checked off your to-do list? Usually, I take it pretty easy on full moons — I’m more energized by new moons, personally — but everyone is different and is charged at different points in the lunar cycle. (Googling the lunar phase you were born under can help you pinpoint this!)
As we head into the weekend, a few questions to come together and reflect on the week — and the end of the month. Feel free to answer them in the comment section below, or privately in your own journal.
Here at the end of January, what has felt restorative for you, creatively, and what has felt draining, or like it’s no longer working?
What projects are exciting you? What feels challenging?
Conversely, have any projects hit a plateau? Do they feel stuck in that way of just needing time on the back burner to simmer — or is there something deeper going on?
What books, essays, poems, or other work are you reading that is reminding you of what is possible when you let yourself stretch and be unrestrained by expectations, by the “shoulds” and “oughts”?
this is the first time i've had the opportunity to participate in the open thread and i'm so excited to be here! thanks Jeanna for fostering the community :) this week, i finally decided on the first book-length project i'm going to be working & writing towards this year, and i feel really, really energized by it! it's the first long-term project that i've committed to that feels wholly authentic and true to me/my writing. i just finished reading emma copley eisenberg's "the third rainbow girl" and charles yu's "interior chinatown" and both were super healing and restorative (in very different ways) and reminded me what writing can do. a few months ago, i moved to chicago, and as of this week, i'm finally starting to meet people (albeit virtually) within the local literary community, which has felt like such an important step!
This full moon I was pretty focused. I feel like I've been sitting at my kitchen table for 48 hours. Writing, Studying, Streaming, Reading, Eating, Drinking, Being. I was writing a full moon post for my insta (@nappysnatch) and almost immediately I was in 1960's Alabama during the Civil Rights Struggle. Specifically, the Children's March. I like to name things and I was looking for a title for the full moon in leo. Jupiter conjunct. Go Big or Go Home? Shine. Worthiness. Big and Beautiful no Matter what They try to get you to believe. Suddenly, I was a little black girl in Alabama staring White Supremacy in the Face. That's why I love a free-write. You never know where you're gonna end up. I ended up watching American Masters on PBS. The latest episode is about 6 of the greatest Black entertainers of all time. All Women. It was a beautiufl way to spend the Full Moon in Leo.
I also got four teeth pulled this week and have a new frontal bridge. It's the worst. It's the temporary one that I have to wear while my gums heal. I can barely look in the mirror because all I notice are old lady teeth. Transiting Saturn Square Saturn? Almost. I just turned 49. I am a dark-skinned black woman so I can pass for 36. I don't but I can. I've never felt my age because I've always been strong. And now, i suddenly feel like an aging actress in Hollywood. My face was swollen and it looked like I had bad plastic surgery. Humbling and Hilarious. Thank God for Face Masks.
Re-Reading "Sister Outsider" for my book club. We started reading togehter during the June Uprising. Black Lives Matter 2.0 or is 3.0. 4.0? I can't keep up. All my white people were getting woke. Yawn. I'm kidding. Am I? There are two kinds of White People. The ones who really want to do the work for themselves and those that want to perform doing the work so they don't look like assholes. Ok, there are probably other kinds, I just don't know them. I worked in a small theater in the Lower East Side and the ED was/is the worst kind of liberal white woman. You know the one who thinks that because she's queer and downtown, she has nothing to learn despite being the whitest white woman of all white women. Staff meetings were very awkward. Everybody was reading all the right things and I was right there with them. So, I started a book club. It's very queer and multi culty. We have millenials, Gen X-ers and baby boomers. Super Cute. My mom is the only non queer in it and she is getting quite the education.
So Audre Lorde is exploding my brain. Again. How does she keep doing that? When I think about Black Badassery that existed in the 80's, I see these warrior women, machetes in hand, clearing a path for me through a dense and dangerous forest filled with false notions of what it is to be black, dark, queer, not feminine and smart. I know that had to have sucked on so many levels. And yet she still was able to write for us. For me. I feel grateful today.
Grateful for the time to sit and daydream and read and re-read and write and think about the stars and watch documentaries and to babble into the comments of an amazing astrology blog that I recently discovered. Astrology for writers. What?! Yes. I never comment. I typically stay out of the comments. dont' crazy people live down here? I feel a little bit crazy because it is 3:00 AM and I just ran a bath. Sometimes I fall asleep at the wrong time.
There is something different about your astrology page. It feels grown up. Thank you. Good night, Moon.