In Praise of What is Not Built | Weeknotes 02/07
London bookstores, Welsh saints, foraging recipes, ancient shamanism, Sumo, and werewolves.
Comrades—
Amidst the melancholy of the past few cold, dark, prickly weeks, we genuinely had a lot to celebrate.
B took a trip to London to read his poems at Watkins Books. The staff was incredibly kind and generous and it was great to get the poems in the air. But the true highlights were the London rambles he got to take with Jay and Angharad, two Rune Soup internet friends. Jay took B to see London’s occult bookstores, while they also attempted to help each other resist the temptations of the “everything under £2” boxes. There’s a real satisfaction, a true deep pleasure that the world is right, to meet with someone in person that you have corresponded with for years and find that the conversation is both exactly as you hoped and so much more. And to talk for hours straight without stopping. And the next day, Angharad and B walked 10 miles of London, covering the British Museum, Penhaligons, and Chinatown for amazing cold duck, talking poems, angels, and what it means to know a city.
That kind of terroir is always a pleasure. For our joint birthday celebration (yes, we’re both Aquariuses), J and B went to Wine Cellar 1915 in Poughkeepsie to drink an amazing Cabernet Franc from Anjou. Sweet honey, grass, deep red berries all flowing with the joy of getting to be together.
There was also St. Dwynwen’s Day, this year covered in ice and snow storms, and Imbolc, which we celebrated with North Wyldewood Coven on Lookout Hill in Prospect Park. Standing together, surrounded by sacred art, singing in the cold clear day and welcoming the spirits to join us in celebration, in what it means to live and hold each other close, to eat and stay warm was exactly what these long winter nights needed.
(Also, it was Rooster’s birthday… Happy birthday Rooster!)
Jessie & Brian.
Earth
I got a new cookbook just in time to get excited for spring foraging: Forage, Harvest, Feast by Marie Viljoen. Viljoen is a popular New York forager who famously hosts foraging walks and picnics in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. I’ll do a fuller review once I’m able to make some of the recipes, however, suffice to say I am hype: fir-cured gravlax, hot-and-sour soup with daylily and chicken-of-the-woods, savory pork pie with elderberry and mugwort. (Plus: foraged cocktails🤤) -J
Is prepping over? I’ve been a Josh Centers subscriber for a while, and am excited to see his publication shifting from being a prepping-focused to what he’s calling building-focused. I’m more of an optimist than he is in general, but I can get on board with prepping as the cornerstone of the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. -J
Just girlie things: the deep emotions of seeing the reconstruction of the Bad Dürrenberg shaman, a woman buried in full regalia 9,000 years ago in Germany. -J
Sea
I became a fan of Sumo, really, through the work of a YouTuber, Jason Harris (an American teaching in Japan) who is a truly gentle soul. He introduced many people (he had 70,000 subscribers) to the beauty of Sumo and Japanese culture through that traditional art. He lost his channel due to copyright violations, which was always a possibility. But I wanted to celebrate a decade of sharing his passion: his tears when Hakuho won his final tournament were one of the true moments of beauty in sports. You can find his archived matches here. -B
Over Imbolc, we watched Wolfwalkers, the final installment of Tomm Moore’s Irish Folklore Trilogy. It’s a beautiful film, 10/10, cannot recommend enough. -B
Sky
This past weekend, windchill hit -108 degrees F on Mt. Washington, close to my home. Colder than the surface of Mars. -J
I finished Queens of the Wild: Pagan Goddesses in Christian Europe: An Investigation by Ronald Hutton this week. It’s something of a frustrating book, in that I feel like it is on the edge of going just a bit further and sharing something deeper; however, it’s an interesting work supporting the idea of apotheosis, and shakes off the idea that to be real a goddess must have an officially signed Greek pedigree. Worth a read: I’d love to chat with you about it if you’ve given it a go! - B
Rune Rasmussen laying out some truth on Christianization. -B
In Praise of What is Not Built
by Kirpal Gordon
Somewhere, there is a garden in my mind
A labyrinth of flower & tree
& though I scale no wall to find it
It finds me, root to water
Water to stream.
& sometimes, there is a woman in the garden
A labyrinth of beauty & power
& though I have nothing to give her
She seeks out my bower, flame to candle
candle to the dark hour.
& somehow, I dwell within this garden
A labyrinth of symbols & forms
& though I am exhausted with meanings
Their meanings adorn me, spirit to image
Image to be born.
Do not ask, What woman? / Where garden? / Whose
Shovel? / Why do I sit alone in an empty room
Hiding from a city of activity for I shall say
Gentle landlord, that I’m no gardener nor owner
But a seed blown from that arbor to this world.
I shall say, lend me your patience that I might wander
Unmolested amidst your skyscrapers, to hasten
The defeat of desires that keep me detained from that
Which is not built, that which requires me.