'Til Next Time
I have been doing this practice of writing one or more essays a week here for over two years now. I have opened myself up for receiving compensation for this practice for over a year. It’s been really special to see people being willing to pay me to write what I want. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you to those that have supported me with their hard earned doll hairs. You are the true GOATS. I think in my heart of hearts I was hoping my writing would catch on with more people and I would be able to support my family with what I wanted to write. I already support my family with writing, but that is just writing what other people tell me to write at my wage labor job. Alas, this platform was not the venue for that to happen, nor was it the right time. Maybe it will one day.
Yesterday, I paused billing for this project, so it will go back to being free. I will still post writing here, but I am going to go quiet for a while in this dark season. Given all that we are up against societally and the need for people to be directing their money towards other incredibly important, it seems like a little gift that I can give everyone to carry on writing about my little handcrafts, posting my polaroid photos, and sharing my musings without paywalling anything. If you do subscribe to me, go take those dollars and give it to a mutual aid group. As Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America Dana O’Driscoll recently wrote in her essay “Kindness as a Radical Act,”
“In an age where everyone and everything is for sale, being kind is a radical act.”
I just really can’t think of any of this stuff as a business anymore, because everything and everyone is for sale. It’s exhausting. I am exhausted as a father, a husband, an artist, and a wage laborer. I have been mulling this pause for some time. Today, it finally felt right. I just want to ride my bike, weave some gifts for buds, and take care of my kin while we travel through the year’s darkest phase. I will give all my weavings and thoughts to wind, so that they may find their true homes without any of the baggage that capitalism may heep onto it. As my good buddy Glenn recently noted, “I am divesting from the dollar.” Yes, me too, buddy. May we find purposeful and nourishing trades between all our wares, so that we may find ways to not be for sale.
“And this just feels like spinning plates”
I think I finally came to this point to be done with this decision that I have been thinking about for months during my weekly Voices of Celtic Wisdom class which featured a class from Jen Murphy of The Celtic Creatives this past week. As per usual, Murphy’s offering was richly layered in poetry, myth, and wisdom. The layers slowly drew me out of this incredible knot I was tied up into with my daughter home sick from school, plumbers barging into our house without warning to tell us to step draining water, and me trying to carry on with a meeting for my wage labor in the basement. By the time Murphy said that she thinks of the wheel of the year as a journey of the soul, I was locked right back into my own little hermit’s journey, listening from the hedge for little bits I can draw into my own bit of wisdom I hope to pass on to my kin. Gone was the difficulty of the morning and keeping 437 plates spinning. No, I was back firmly rooted in the mytho-poetic realm of my ancestors—one of the only places I feel truly at home aside for the time I spend with Lily, Winston, and J.
It’s so interesting to me how one decision to honor my ancestry, like finally taking the Traditional Irish Handcrafts class a few weeks back, has created this inertia that brought me back into focus. I must say that I have gone far afield from these foci for a year or so, so it feels good to be back on this path. Honestly, I feel like I have been spiraling back to this point since I crashed my bike in May and got some sense knocked into me. I mean, I could have done without the drama of the crash and the associated worries that I might drop dead at any time that accompanied all the heart tests they put me through. Turns out that if you walk or ride your bike most days, eat like a tiny woodland shrew, and don’t drink or smoke that you really don’t have to worry about your heart. Regardless of how my guides got me back on track, I am glad I am here. Regardless of any fears that we might have about being able to return to any one point in time, we learn through the wisdom of the spiral that we are endlessly spiraling back to versions of ourselves that we thought were lost to the sands of time.
Me? I certainly feel like I am walking through a portal into a new life right now. As Murphy noted during her talk, “Life begins in the darkness.” Yes, hear! hear! I feel how nourishing and restorative this darkness is in this cocoon of late samhain on the brink of the winter solstice. I mean, as we are writing here, I am passing through this portal, letting this part of my story go to rest and opening up new possibilities for the future. We can take more of Murphy’s excellent advice in this dark season of surrender:
“If we allow ourselves to surrender what we need to surrender, then new life will spring forth.”
I cannot tell you how true these words resonate through my experience right now as I let go of this wish to earn money through my weaving and writing. I want to surrender this wish to the darkness of this season and move forward into the new possibilities that can emerge from just being some random guy on the internet writing about his experiences for his friends to read. Yes, I do not need to be anybody. I can just be anyone’s crazy grandpa jimblers plying his magical crafts on the hedge for people to enjoy. I can just be one of any number of people in my local community, devoted to taking care of the people around me and making things with my hands. I can just be like the long line of my ancestors who found deep meaning in learning the myths and stories of my people.
I also really just want to write my book about how weaving saved my life. Like, I started this substack to focus my efforts toward writing that book. What I want to do is direct some of my saturday morning writing sessions toward telling my story of how learning to weave helped me heal and cope with my grief, OCD, and generalized anxiety. I want to tell the story of how I found my magic in weaving, spinning, and dyeing. I don’t want to get drunk on the power of my keyboard over here, spinning tales towards whatever it is that I fancy that morning. No, I have to give back to the crafts that have buoyed me and sustained me through this dark night of my soul and brought me back to a place where magic was real, to a place where my mom’s influence on my life could never be forgotten. Honestly, I don’t care if I have to eat rice and beans for a year to get the flocking thing printed and bound. I will sacrifice a lot to see this dream through. You see, that’s what writing is to me, and I am getting emotional over here typing this. This would never be just a job to me. This is my soul craft, and I am crying with goosebumps while writing this. I need to step through this portal to make this dream of writing the book about how weaving saved my life come true. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.
Yes, again, I reveal myself to be this incredibly emotional, passionate man from the middle of the rustbelt (Toledo), whose only dream is to tell my story on paper. Gone are all the illusory, empty dreams of American hypercapitalism. All that has glittered bright on the boulevard, the billboard, or the television has long lost its lustre. I have lost people to pills, my mom to that distinctive American-Style Bureaucratic form of murder that comes with being poor and having no health insurance, and my best friend to the delusional mindsets sold for cheap in our culture. I have lost all affinity for any of the empty goals offered to me by our patriarchal culture. I don’t seek renown. I don’t seek fortunes. I don’t seek power. No, I just want to tell my flockin’ story. Here is where the tears come hard and heavy while Jimmy Eat World’s “A Praise Chorus” plays on my head phones. I am just a dude, living in the center of a dying imperialist empire, that just wants everyone to be provided for and free to live how they see fit. I just want to flocking belong somewhere in this individualist hellscape where we have to make everything into a business and my mom is dead. I just want to tell my story. I don’t want to be forgotten. I just want people around the world to know that we aren’t all heartless jerks here, some of us just want matriarchy to return, indigneous folx to be given their land back, and Black folx to receive reparations for the transatlantic slave trade.
Photo Essay
Given that I am going quiet for the dark season, I went out on a bike ride with the sun retreating fast over the western horizon. I snapped my little photos and felt all the pangs of grief over closing the book on this chapter of my creative life. I think I cried like three times today working through this essay. I haven’t cried in a long time. I snapped photos of things that reminded me of the darkness of this season: felled trees and ice on ponds. Taking them with the polaroid camera allowed me to let go of any control of the results. You, me, all of us aren’t in control of any of this. May we flow with the changing of the wheel. May you all be embraced in safety during this darkest season, with harm to none.
“This is the end, beautiful friend. This is the end, my only friend, the end.”
Until next time dear reader,
James
Thank you for this reminder that all the natural world around us is quiet this time of year. "What would a field mouse do?" is a question my sister often asks me. I will be quiet, and peacefully awaiting your next words.
Sending hugs, James.