I was born at night. Though the Moon wasn’t out that day, it’s not hard to understand that night always belongs to her, where she, alone, can illuminate softly enough to look her in the eye. The Sun, as the star from which our Moon gathers its light, rules the day.
Intuitively, this is easy to understand. In astrology, this translates as day and night sect. When you are born between sunrise and sunset, the Sun is your more important “Luminary”. Born during the night, and you are more attuned to your Moon. Austin Coppock likens it to shifts at a job: your Sun may still be active and present but it doesn’t know the rules of the night shift, which the Moon moves through with alertness and ease.
I love my identity sometimes. I love watching it shift, which night births may especially understand. The Moon identifies with what is us but changing: our moods, appetites, point of view. I feel the need to catalog all these traces develop a taxonomy of all the different Chloes.
One way is through keeping track of things: favorite foods, what I’m watching and listening to; current obsessions and vivid symbols.
Like how I love listening to Drake’s album Scorpion in late October, early Scorpio season, when the nights are longest and the sky in Portland in pure grey.
Alice Coltrane on vinyl when I’m in the mood to cook and all the work’s been done and the kitchen is mine to languish about
Mac Demarco’s “2” for summer days, outdoor porch, the desire for no cares and a drink with ice.
While his album, Another One, for when I had to hide my smoking and would find woods on the edges of my suburbs to hang with my friend and a creek.
And now, on a grey January day, the cusp of Venus in Pisces, the Alice in Chains unplugged album, where each band walks out and joins the song one by one, and Layne Stayley’s hair is bubblegum pink. I am lost a bit, stuck and unwilling to move, but there is still music.
…
2023 Trend Report: Cozy
I recently looked up the etymology for the word “cozy” and learned it most likely originated from the Scottish colsie, of similar meaning. I was also reminded that cozy is a word for a “padded covering for a teapot to keep the heat in”.1
We want hot water, but are afraid we will burn our fingers. So we put something soft, and usually colorful, to protect our hands and give the kettle a place to rest. This combination of softness, temperateness, and stylistic flair seems to be at the heart of “cozy,” which, to me, is a bit different than comfortable. Comfortable is the bare minium, a sort of baseline contentent. Cozy is free to relax, to be you and more. You can be comfortable in a doctor’s office or a stranger’s living room; you are cozy in your best outfit, at your favorite bar, or in the arms of your lover.
I would be remiss to mention this word in the year 2023 without also mentioning Beyonce, and the second track off Renaissance, her latest album, also called “Cozy”. The album is a testament to a fierce self-love, primarily an ode to black trans femmes, as evidenced by the sample from trans actress and activist TS Madison.
It features peak scenes of cozy like:
Dancin' in the mirror, kiss my scars
Because I love what they made
…
Black like love too deep
Dance to the soles of my feet
Green eyes envy me
Paint the world pussy pink
…
Blue like the soul I crowned
Purple drank and couture gowns
Gold fangs, a shade God made
Blue, black, white, and brown
…
Rainbow gelato in the streets
Renaissance, yachtin' in Capri
Cozy is a feeling, an armor you wear that’s vivified, I believe, by believing you deserve a custom-fit world.
I first portended cozy as a 2023 theme the hazy week between Christmas and New Year’s last year. This newsletter below was one of the first that solidified its importance for me, especially in the upcoming year.
The first thing author Andrea Grimes discusses is her experience going to a doctor while fat. While explaining her medical issues, her doctor’s only advice is to exercise more and cut out flour. Grimes assures her she will think about what she said:
And I will. I will think about it while I find another new doctor, one who takes my concerns seriously.
She goes on to explain that when she first developed this medical issue, she was thin, but taking much worse care of her health than she currently is.
She would immediately distrust a doctor who would treat her concerns so dimissively because, in truth, her health improved greatly when she “became fat and decided to remain fat — when I stopped hoping to discover a thin person looking back at me in the mirror or a photograph — that I finally gave myself permission to ask a life-changing question: Am I comfortable?”
For her, comfort in her body corresponds to a certain size, larger than what we have been taught is ok. For each person it will be different. But this is where the crux of Grimes’s point lies: that, if she has the resources to make her life custom-fit her needs as much as possible, it is always worth it do so. For her, that meant LASIK surgery, automatic watering for her tomato plants, switching to lower-intensity workouts and giving herself permission to put down books she didn’t like.
But before these adjustments can make us comfortable, we may have to reacquaint ourselves with ourselves and accept when our needs don’t fit our visions. “Accepting that I will always take this body and this brain with me wherever I go, whoever I am, whatever I do,” Grimes explains,
“has enabled me to surrender the fat fight. Which means I get to experience the joy of moving for movement’s sake, and the satisfaction of becoming better at dancing or curling or cycling and having it “count,” even if it doesn’t make me smaller. I can eat for nourishment and pleasure. I can rid myself of irritants both large and small, protect my time and emotional health, and do something about suffering besides believe I am obligated to endure it” (emphasis mine).
Coziness isn’t anesthetizing yourself against the horrors of the world. It isn’t only cute or fluffy or easy. It isn’t the “beauty as self care” racket that skin care companies are selling us. It’s doing the hard work of accepting all of yourself and then asking: now what?
This, to me, seems to be the starting point for Jupiter’s upcoming ingress into Taurus. In May, the Greater Benefic will move into the fixed earth sign. Taurus season (when the Sun enters this sign), corresponds with the middle of spring when the raininess and intensity of new blooms budding has subsided and we are left to sit with all the flowers that have come to life. Venus rules Taurus because the slowness, sensuality and focus what is of real quality and value bodes well with the planet of beauty and pleasure.
Jupiter, who is the high priest of the planetary court, determines the codes and values we live by. When spending a year in a Venus-ruled sign, Jupiter asks that your body’s needs, your sense of coziness, be integrated into how you order your life.
We get a different, more oceanic taste of Venus-Jupiter goodness this month as Venus enters Pisces, a Jupiter-ruled sign.
My books are currently open for February! Book now to read all about what these planets, and more, have in store for you. Work with the flow, your own, this 2023
Until next week,
Love,
Chloe
https://www.etymonline.com/word/cozy