“Poetry often enters through the window of irrelevance”
-M.C. Richards
When I was younger, parsing over my ambitions, I didn’t feel content to confine them to one or two specific roles or occupations. Instead, I sought a certain process to embody, to be able to shape my life around. Rather than be beholden to the 40 hour 9-5 week, confined to certain spaces at certain time, I aspired to have the sort of career that allowed me the space and time to follow my creative cycles in all their weird shapes.
Reading about the lives of artists, I observed how non-linear the process from inception to completion was for any project. It required time away, revisions, long walks, time with friends, romance. A full life, in other words, through which creativity could find inspiration and a wayward, unexected path through which to flow.
I was inspired by the schedules of artists, which always included things other than the work itself, like author Ursula' Leguin’s below:
Beyond defying the 40-hour workweek, the creative life is also one where you’re never really clocking in and out; inspiration finds you in mysterious ways and involves distracting yourself from what you think you’re actually trying to do.
Like the spiritual life, a creative one requires you be open to the irrelevant, the frivolous, the coincidental. Once you start entertaining that the details of your life have meaning, are even trying to tell you something— whether that be for a creative project or to provide insight into your life— then anything in your life can yield fruit or whatever your puzzling over or creating.
This is what I wrote about for my last newsletter— how our lives and direct experiences are sources of knowledge that go beyond what we find in the mind or books.
Here are some omens and meaningful details I’ve experienced in the past few weeks:
driving home at night on the night of the Capricorn full Moon, and seeing the fat, glowing moon emerge from the trees just as the song I was playing, “Wishes,” by Beach House, begins to swell: One in your life/ It happens once and maybe twice
I made Erykah Badu cry in a dream last night because I said the first song off her first album (not “Rim Shot,” but a secret dream song) so perfectly described who she was.
Every day, I wear a Venus in Cancer talisman that my friends and I made during a ritual in the woods. Experientially, wearing it feels like sitting in a shimmer tide pool— I a sitting in cool water surrounded by pearls, shells, coral. The gem sits on a chain with a few other baubles but the other night I noticed it had gotten stuck on the clasp. No matter how much I jiggled, it wouldn’t unbudge and I was afraid being too aggressive would break the chain. So I left it alone. After a night of sleep, I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and notice it had freed itself, no agency or effort on my part.
Then there’s the vervain growing beautifully in my parents’ backyard, an herb of my heart, that I greet each day like a friend.
The conversation and syncs with friends, like we came to the same realizations at the same time.
Some Places I am Finding Signs:
The drive home: While heading toward an outside place— work, coffee with a friend, ceramics class—often comes with a time constraint and a goal, the drive home can be more aimless. Usually, I drive home at the end of the day, when the sky starts getting a dark purple undertone and the streets are close to deserted. Home is the place I retreat to; what rush is in getting back to that? I can play my favorite songs, take in the familiar route and let my mind wander a bit.
Sitting outside with my dog: My parents’ new puppy cannot be left alone yet. When they are away for the day, it’s my job to monitor her eating, peeing, energy and thirst. Often, that means taking her outside when she seems antsy so she can do her business (eating dirt, roots and my mother’s hostas, then laying in them). I am already being productive by watching out for her, so I just watch the sky, the shadows shifts, the vervain sway in the breeze.
My room at night: I often find myself staying up late because I crave the time of night when most people are asleep. I can dress up for no reason and no one else’s eyes. I can lay on the floor and play records. Sometimes I’ll just lay in bed and look within, examining the visions that are compelling me: my friends eating peaches at a picnic; driving along the coastal highway to New Mexico. But the point of this time is that it’s beyond productivity— it exists merely to be experienced, should you happen to be up that late.
I notice all of these places offer me quiet, space to think, or not, and an invitation to move slow enough to let the world reach me.
That is where, if not omens, then intimacy resides.
What are some pockets of your life where omens tend to find you?
Maybe during walks, bus rides, picnic dates, grocery shopping, early in the morning, as you’re falling asleep. Notice where the space already lives.
If you want help tuning into the sacredness, the omens n your life, my astrology books are open.
Until next week,
Love,
Chloe
Omens find me in the space between dreams and waking up.