Digesting grief

Notes on collecting and rejecting things.

The last tarot offering for Inner Demons: The Stories We Tell Ourselves series is now up (cries in Tagalog). I talk about the psychological significance of the crucifixion, cheese, Symbolist painter Fernand Knopff, style icon Carmella from the Sopranos and more.

Two years ago, when I started Inner Demons, I wanted for the first time, in my writing, to somewhat, coherently, explore isolation, love, relationships, sexual identity, success, failure, gratitude, nature, the seasons, and the joys and struggles of a creative life.

This month, I cleave into loneliness, shame and meaning.

I fall

into the mythical waters once inhabited by the Greek Goddess Circe. Her voyage to claim and feel her body plunged me from the rabid waters of immortality into the unpredictable, visceral, but ultimately life granting currents of mortality. Circe’s tale is one of bitter jealousy, loneliness and growth

This month I visit an old grave, the site where this personal, but collectively shared exploration through tarot, philosophy, psychology and art began. I excavate repressive patterns rooted in insecurity, denial and outdated coping skills. I talk about obsession, ghosting and being haunted. I also examine the Twilight sagas relation to power, love and the slippery fish that we are determined to hook to our rods, control.

In between reading somewhat basic bitch books, that feel so satisfying, a pending funeral, a bloody long trip in Barcelona and ripping up half my garden, I managed to write July's Tarot Offering. It's on the negativity schema. It's a bunch of fragments, loose ends and whatever else was knocking about in my head in such a weird but morbidly hopeful passage of time.

The cover art is from @jondix, who is a real live puppeteer of alternate universes. And was gifted to me years ago with a pack of gothic tarot cards at a tattoo convention. It was a moment of kindess that struck me by surprise and I love that kind of shit, stuff happening to you that you didn't plan or expect.

Ottessa Moshfegh has written that 'pain is not the only touchstone to growth.'

This month’s Offering approaches themes of rejection, compulsion, love and self-sacrifice. There’s an unfathomable amount of the latter going on in the world right now…

So I’ll be swimming in the waters of meaning and beauty too.

I tunnel into what creators give up to pursue their art, and what many of us can give up for love, work and grief.

I also briefly go into the artists meaning behind March’s cover art, @jenowt… Who is very rad and beautiful. Thank you Jenzie.