The Land of Fog | Weeknotes 12/9
Leonora Carrington, gospel music, 80s erotic thrillers, magical timing, Anubis, a renter-friendly kitchen remodel, and angelic heresy.
Comrades—
Nothing makes clock time feel more ridiculous than the fading light of December. J has a longstanding complaint that people don't hate winter, they hate that their schedules don’t change with the winter. They hate getting up in the pitch black cold to scrape the frost from their cars and get to the office by 9:00AM, just as they did in summer.
Leonora Carrington makes a good case in her 1972 novel The Hearing Trumpet for winter as the time of sleep and dreams, of magic, of incubation, of reading and resting, of gathering-together and slow foods cooked for hours. She makes the case for winter as resistance to imperial clock time, when the dawn of a new Ice Age allows for the return of magic and the healing of the earth—“the long winter where morning and night could no longer be distinguished by even the most expensive kind of clock.”
For B this week, the pressure of imperial time began to boil over. His switch to contract work involves juggling hours in a way that feels completely disconnected from his life. He fell into the story that these hours were purchased from him, were “due.” This is, of course, propaganda, which is to say a spell, wrapping around us all the time. And it’s hard to walk away from. This is one thing (among many!) Andor gets right: the Empire is a system of beliefs. It is planned obsolescence and the rejection of repair. It is safety rooted in fear. It is time turned into a prison of labor, where your only value is your production. And it is a belief that can be changed.
In B's case, this week, he pivoted to use the freedom of his job to set his own time and go the fuck outside. J is making big moves about how she’s going to spend her time over the next, say, six-months-to-five-years.
May the deep winter bring the same ability to slow down, think, and choose to you, our friends.
Jessie & Brian.
Earth
One of my favorite gospel choir performances of all time. Watch for the operatic yodeling towards the end. -J
Finding a podcast that has a thoughtful modern take on the erotic thriller and the place of sex in film is a joy. Very much loving this run from You Must Remember This. -B
Our friends at Ignota have started an exploration of aural art with The Mountain, and B is in the most recent edition reading a decan poem. -B
Two videos from the Haudenosaunee, pointing out the power of matristic and matrilineal governance. When we want to create worlds outside of patriarchy, it's important to look at models that have not only thrived but survived under incredible pressure: on the role of women and the start of a testimonial history. -B
Sea
I fell head over heels for this lute cover of "Unholy" which is maybe too revealing about my sexuality on a Friday morning. -B
Our incomparable friend Ivy Bromius now has a Substack for free magical timing and planning posts. You can also check out her blog for a whole archive of amazing evergreen magical content, and her membership for a monthly planner and other exclusive goodies. -J
Enchanted this week by artist Joanna Karpowicz's lovely and liminal paintings of Anubis. Her full artbook of this series if forthcoming. -J
Sky
I have been watching many of these renter-friendly, small-space renovation videos this week, and am super inspired by many of the very creative solutions. (This is the best one for making a small rental kitchen less hateful.) -J
Where have I been that Hayloft hasn't been running on repeat in my life constantly. -B
Enoch, Metatron, and angel heresies from Esoterica. -B
The Land of Fog
by Ingeborg Bachmann, trans. Paul Archer
In Winter my beloved is among
the animals in the forest.
I must return before morning,
the vixen knows this and laughs.
How the clouds shiver! And onto
my snowy collar falls
another layer of brittle ice.
In Winter my beloved is
a tree among trees and she invites
down-on-their-luck crows
into her lovely branches. She knows
when light breaks, the wind
lifts her crisp frost-filled
evening gown and chases me home.
In Winter my beloved
is among the fish and silent.
Slave to the waters, the line
of their fins inwardly moves,
I stay on the shore and watch
how she dives and turns
until the ice-floes force me away.
And hit again by the hunting cry
Of a bird whose wings stiffen
Over me, I fall
On the open field: she rips
The feathers from hens and throws me
A white collarbone. I place it round my neck
And go onward through the acrid feathers.
I know my beloved
is unfaithful. Sometimes she floats
towards the city on high-heeled shoes.
In bars she kisses glasses deep
in the mouth with drinking straws,
and she comes out with words for everyone.
But this language I don’t understand.
I have seen the land of fog.
I have eaten the heart of fog.