What better time to move on, to start anew, than with the waxing of the newest moon of a new year? It fits my recent theme of wilding—in this case, with Neocities: reteaching myself HTML, hearkening back to a Wilder World Web, unraveling threads of recent endeavors to take back the reins, my reign, sovereignty over my story—and weaving it, to whatever extent we want, with yours.
Our most fulfilling personal relationships may come in ways we weren’t looking for. Our most fulfilling work may happen in arenas we never planned to reach.
. . . Embrace that the best things can also be the ones we weren’t looking for, and the greatest satisfaction can come from being surprised.
—Jason Feifer, “A Better Way to Get What You Need”
I never thought I’d live in cities again, but then I never thought of cities as more than brick and mortar, concete and steel . . . until now, when it occurs to me that there are neocities in my dreams—cities that are both new and very old: metropolises of trees, of other wild creatures, of spirits in windswept reaches.
city
a thing, event, or situation that is strongly characterized by a specified quintessential feature or quality
The movie was shoot-out city.
Getting lost in the maze was panic city.
—Merriam-Webster.com, “city” definition #4
Superball’s sagas are serendipity city. They’re like riding a purple unicorn into the Ice Palace—crystal city!—and being tricked by an evil leprechaun . . . and then getting wise to the leprechaun’s ways and looping back around to the Ice Palace to uncover what’s hidden there.
Residents believe this Palace of Ice will lift spirits and bring back prosperity. . . .
Darkness all around made the Palace shine like a star leading them forward. Gas lamps illuminated ramparts, and archways glowed with such blue lights that June thought for a moment that the ice vision was floating off the earth into air.
—Barbara L. Baer, The Ice Palace Waltz
My latest pullback from humanity began in November, when, done with the drama, I broke up with my favorite café of four and a half years.
When he finished serving and returned to Westville, Wilde gave up the pretense of trying to assimilate into “normal” society.
—Harlan Coben, The Boy from the Woods
December, ever revolutionary, saw me freed from a social engagement on solstice night without enough time to get home before the exact moment of the solstice to do a ritual as usual.
I poked my head into a beloved bar one last time before its permanent closure, but it was noisy, stuffy, and crowded, so I poked right back out.
Time to set myself a new stage. But where?
At such a distance, with so little time together, she often felt overcome by doubts, as if the night at the Ice Palace and his declaration were a dream.
—Barbara L. Baer, The Ice Palace Waltz
With minutes to spare, I came to it: a favorite stump.
There I could breathe.
Nature was just this hugely, perpetually safe place. I am someone with a lot of feelings, and therefore, the human world can sometimes be this minefield of, “Oops, I made someone mad,” or “I feel guilty.”
. . . And throughout my childhood and then just throughout my whole life, it just is this realm where I feel safe, I feel rejuvenated, and I feel it’s easier to access my wonder and my questions.
—Lulu Miller, in Shannon Henry Kleiber’s “A Sense of Wonder through the Eyes—and Ears—of a Child”
The Moon, silvery, whispered of green and growing things.
I took the photo of the hiding, hiding peeking sun with my iPhone and made some saturation adjustments. Simple and to the point. Holiday vibes. Dark. Fitting. May we come to light.
—Amanda Palmer, “Madonna’s ‘Live to Tell,’ for Patrons”
When I asked when, the Moon said soonish.
When I run after what I think I want, my days are a furnace of stress and anxiety; if I sit in my own place of patience, what I need flows to me, and without pain. From this I understand that what I want also wants me, is looking for me and attracting me. There is a great secret here for anyone who can grasp it.
—Jalal al-Din Rumi
I didn’t drink it all in yet. I wanted to get home, though I wasn’t looking forward to juggling my stuff and my phone’s flashlight up the steep trail, especially after having been housesitting for two and a half weeks. Anything can happen in a 10 x 17 tent open to the elementals.
I needn’t have worried. The Tenterraces are protected.
On the road home, Fox crossed my path.
As I pulled into my parking spot, the Moon, though not yet full, illuminated the steep slope above. Leaving my phone light off, I gathered the few things I needed from Arlin, my car, and started up.
The whole five-minute trek, through the occasional strand of glimmering spider silk, required no electric light. The plants and leaves lining the way seemed to glow as they brushed up against me like loved ones welcoming me home, chanting a benevolent spell.
The clarinet player swayed like a snake charmer until he seemed to float up above her on the high ceilings. She listened with closed eyes, feeling only the tears that moistened her cheeks.
“Why are you crying, Miss?” The clarinetist had returned and was kneeling before her. “Come to the window and breathe fresh air. Snow is falling.”
“What is your name?” she asked.
—Barbara L. Baer, The Ice Palace Waltz
Where trees cast the path in moonshadow, I knew it well enough, after almost five years, that I could sense my way, even through the thick vegetation between the well-lit Upper Terrace and the Lower, where the tent, Der Wilderbunker, nestles in its own little hollow. I lit my two solstice candles, one for the past year and one for the coming, by feel and by moonlight.
Once settled for the night, I wrote “World-weariness” on one piece of paper and “A joyous, easy expression of my gifts, as I am” on another. These I burned in their respective candles, releasing the former to the past and welcoming the latter for the Sun to come.
The future is bright.
The inspiration for this piece came from my Grandma Faye, who, after leaving her body, told me she is more here than she ever was before.
LOVE LETTER FROM THE AFTERLIFE
. . . One day you will understand. One day you will know why I read the poetry of your grief to those waiting to be born, and they are all the more excited. . . . I wish you could see the beauty your spirit is right now making of your pain, your deep-seated fears playing musical chairs, laughing at how real they are not. My love, I want to sing it through the rafters of your bones, Dying is the opposite of leaving. . . . It was me who was up all night gathering sunflowers into your chest the last day you feared you would never again wake up feeling lighthearted. . . . I promise one day you will feel it too—I can’t believe I ever thought I could lose you.
—Andrea Gibson, “Love Letter from the Afterlife”
Here it comes.
The Blue Bird of Happiness beckons.
. . . As I was working on my laptop outside, I absentmindedly brushed something off the laptop and sent the little blue crystal, which I prop up under the monitor, flying—right through a gap in the planks of the deck. I’ve had it for many years and had kept it with my laptop as a wise, ancient friend from when I first started Daniel Foor’s Practical Animism course. I wondered if the crystal wanted to live here now—if it would be lost among the rubble and vegetation under the house. But . . . it was positioned perfectly on a little stump, partly held by peeling bark, shining in a ray of sunlight.
—Me, in a text to my friend Facet 44
The portal is opened.
There’s no going back now.
Who would want to?
Everything we need is here.
The Blue Bird of Happiness is always glad at a chance for expression.
Every time I give something away, what comes back to me is freedom.
—Byron Katie
Once we see why, we see why everywhere.
Here we go!
I got you this flower.
We do not need this thneed.
Now I think we’re getting somewhere.
This is why we do what we do.
