Small Comfort | Weeknotes 11/18/22

Female Mystics | House Names | Makerspace Art | Magic Mike 3 | 18th Century Necromancers

Comrades—

There is something about crisp air and fallen leaves that makes us grateful for our homes, for those spirits of place that live with us and build their stories along side ours, like the house sparrows in the eaves of B's apartment—house sparrows prefer to live with humans, and like our tidy buildings for their nests. B had his first snow this week, and there is nothing like coming in to a warm place for building gratitude. But our homes are not just places where we keep our things and cook our suppers: they are persons. They have stories. They have names. 

One of the advantages of living in the truth of animism is that you're never alone¹. The graveyards in J's hometown have their gossip to share as you walk through. The river says hello, and wants to lap up against the shore for a while and share the news. There's always business to see to. A convocation of crows woke up B's son to inform him they needed a helper. The gray squirrels have started resting on windows, showing off their soft breathing bodies and quill pen tails. 

But in all this, it's the deer that define B's home, which is Watching Deer Go By house. Out his window you can see a small graveyard, and the deer walk across the edge of it, sleeping there in the cool of the mornings. It's a house that is invested in family, in providing for each other, in acknowledging neighbors, and in slowing down enough to remember every second is brimming with beauty. 

J's home is known as Listening to Water house. The name has just as many layers of meaning, but at its simplest: the house is on a hill above the river. You can hear the water going over the dam, but only when you listen. J's husband Andy thinks it should be called Listening to Andy house. :-)

What are your house names? If you don't know yours yet, you can ask for it to tell you in a dream, or do some automatic writing to find out. Or you can just sit with your home, quietly, and listen to what it has to say. It is waiting for you to ask. 

Jessie & Brian

Earth

I did my second volunteer shift at my local makerspace this week, where I co-manage the sewing shop. I made San Simon a new winter serape out of scraps while testing one of the machines. I think he looks quite princely. -J

​One of the things I loved most from this Sophie Strand essay on Pigweed was its circularity. The way pigweed travels to Europe, the way the Irish ballads become Appalachian and then find their way home again. -B

Sea

The trailer for Magic Mike 3: The Last Dance dropped this week. I am unironically excited about it as I unironiically Magic Mike 2: XXL (In the words of Wilde: 'I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.') The original Magic Mike suffers, plotwise, from the fact that it is a movie about male strippers where the core plot is that male stripping is bad and evil. Magic Mike XXL is pure camp: "the Odyssey, but with butts." Fingers crossed The Last Dance continues the trend. - J

Apparently, someone posted a walk through my town on YouTube, but you still have to come visit if you want the full effect. I am enticing you, come visit, I promise I’ll take you to the good pizza place. -B

Sky

Dr. Justin Sledge's channel Esoterica is a treasure trove: excellent history with sources and EDITED VIDEOS. Get started with this one on western occult practices in colonial era America, including where to get the best necromancers in the 18th c. (Virginia, of course). -B

Special Announcement!

J & Marissa of Decorating Time are starting a women-only journeying group with the ecstatic female saints. It kicks off tomorrow, Saturday, November 19th, at 12PM PST / 3PM EST / 7PM GMT. We'll be journeying with Mechtild of Magdeburg for her feast day. We are lovingly making this a women-only group. If you identify as a woman of any kind, you are welcome. Just reply to this email or leave a comment if you'd like to get in touch and find out more.

Ah, Lord, love me passionately, love me often, and love me long. For the more passionately you love me, the purer I shall become. The more often you love me, the more beautiful I shall become. The longer you love me, the holier I shall become on earth.

– St. Mechtild of Magdeburg

Small Comfort

Coffee and cigarettes in a clean cafe,
forsythia lit like a damp match against
a thundery sky drunk on its own ozone,

the laundry cool and crisp and folded away
again in the lavender closet–too late to find
comfort enough in such small daily moments

of beauty, renewal, calm, too late to imagine
people would rather be happy than suffering
and inflicting suffering. We’re near the end,

but O before the end, as the sparrows wing
each night to their secret nests in the elm’s green dome
O let the last bus bring

love to lover, let the starveling
dog turn the corner and lope suddenly
miraculously, down its own street, home.

-Katha Pollitt

​

1. The problem with listening to audiobooks is sometimes the quote slips away, so this is B remembering something Ronald Hutton quoted an 19th c. writer saying in Triumph of the Moon. Which is good, you should read it.