Wow, Nia, I had no idea of the incidents from 2016, thanks for sharing. I hope these times now won't turn into something akin to that again. I love Gandalf's words, they will stick with me, thank you.
It wasn't great. But I take heart from how well my community coped with it. I hope those skills and resilience for every community while hoping they won't need them!
Yes for sure! Your last comment reminds me of this Zen 'teaching':
A student said to his master: “You teach me fighting, but you talk about peace. How do you reconcile the two?” The master replied: “It is better to be a warrior in a garden, than to be a gardener in a war”.
Tarot readers on Youtube. I could definitely go down that whole. Thank you for your words here. "We are all unique, brilliant beings with our own purposes, full of hope and doubt and hidden shadows most of us don’t like to acknowledge." So true, and also, the understanding (and acceptance) that we can only be us. I can only be me. You, you.
I suspect it haunts a lot of people, a wishing to be other than we are. I've certainly been prone to it. A fool's errand, but the temptation is very understandable.
“My fears and heartbreaks can only be faced with as much strength and compassion as I can muster in between the fallings apart.” Much wisdom, there. Thank you, Nia. (Also, I *too* have a newfound obsession with YouTube tarot…?! What does this mean…?!) 🔮
Also -- WHAT?! That's wild. What *does* it mean? There are a number of reasons I started watching so many, one of them being that these people are amazing storytellers. I'm so impressed how they pull out cards and link it all together, even if some of them are likely scripted. And they're all so different, it's fascinating. There's Clive from somewhere in England (I love it when he shows up in a cardigan), Andi with the owl statue on her wall, and some pretty fun Australians ...
That Arkady Martine quote has been a real tonic btw, thank you for that 💜 And yes! It feels as though sometimes you can almost see the spidersweb of their tarot minds lighting up as they make pathways of connection, it’s masterful with some of them. I’m becoming more and more interested in my relationship with the imaginal realm and tarot is a really interesting link in, with all the archetypes. I love Clive (how could you not) and I really like White Feather Tarot (not just because the name, I promise). I find her very soothing. What decks do you have..?! I have The Wild Unknown and Pagan Otherworlds...
I want to have wings and booze and watch tarot YouTube with you! 😆
The phrase that I have been holding close these last several weeks is - the world is always ending and always being remade. This is a comfort when I feel my most doomsday.
I don’t know why I suddenly started watching YouTube tarot, but I’m sure your newsletter planted a seed at some point! I’d honestly never been into it before and now it’s like I can’t get enough (hm, Devil card in that somewhere?). And that’s well said, the world is always ending and always being remade. One of the books I got says that about the major arcana, too. There’s a cycle, a journey, and then the wheel turns and it all starts again …
I’m so glad! You give tonic to so many people, it’s nice to know something comes back your direction. 💚 That’s beautifully put, the spidersweb of their tarot minds, so true! The sign-specific readings really draw me in.
And wow, yes, that’s my feeling — tarot is pulling me further into a lot of areas I was already exploring, especially shadow work and internal alignment, and then all these synchronicities started happening more and more. Eerie. Fascinating. It tickles me that you watch Clive, too! He’s delightful. And White Feather! I like 13 Moons (Andi), and Scorched Earth, and sometimes Witch & Scythe.
Oh, I adore the Anima Mundi deck, thank you so much for sharing. An appropriate equinox gift from me to me, I feel. I'll keep an Eagle-eye out for a Raven one 💜
I’m so glad! It’s one of the lovelier decks I’ve seen, that beauty and pathos so gently illustrated. And yes please, tell me if you ever see a Raven one! The crow ones are nice, but Raven has been calling.
A year ago I'd never done anything with tarot and now own two decks 😂 I have to dig sometimes to get past the love readings (the most popular, understandably, but not what I'm interested in), and veer away when led down "you're an alien lightworker" pipelines, but there's a lot of loveliness and strength of heart in the in-between spaces.
So true. I’ve only been at it for four-ish years and find I learn much about what I am really feeling/ thinking when I see my responses to the cards I pull. I had no idea how helpful this would prove to be
I wish I’d known before! Though maybe it found me when I needed it. I’m always amazed by the gentle guidance and nudges I get, which simply strengthen my intuition (which is what most of those tarot readers advise anyway). Would love to sit down together among some threads and do a reading together!
Time is not dress but skin… this says it all. Oh Nia all this is so weirdly heartbreaking and yet hopeful. Heartbreaking because it’s happening all over again and hopeful because our ancestors have already shown us how to fight and love through it all. The selfishness of people emerging when times are tough really seems to be the zeitgeist of this age. I see it everywhere from senile politicians to influencers to random strangers on internet.
Trust is tough on the bough and yet we have to harvest it sooner rather than later. The only way forward is to build a protective fence of community strengthened by love and compassion. There has not been any other way and there shall never be.
I really can't say more but to agree with this: "Trust is tough on the bough and yet we have to harvest it sooner rather than later. The only way forward is to build a protective fence of community strengthened by love and compassion. There has not been any other way and there shall never be." Always with the core truths, Swarna! 🫶🏻🕯️
Thank you (and your father) for articulating what many of us are feeling right now. There is safety in decentralization; small tightly-knit groups. Make your circle, and protect and help one another.
Wonderful as always. And have been thinking a lot lately about the “guru mentality” right now - both people who embody it but also people are drawn to it. And how poorly that can work out for everyone involved.
Oh my gosh, me too! The people drawn to it even more than those embodying it. What in myself nudges me that direction? What does it take for someone to start questioning someone's motivations if not what they're saying and how they say it?
If we could answer this we'd solve all the world's problems 😂
Thanks for sharing this trauma to you and your community, Nia. Gosh, I never knew. And for the perspective and resilience expressed by you and your father, I'm most grateful. So often our search for meaning comes not only from those lofty thinkers, but from the great minds seated with us around the supper table.
That's well put, Bryan! In the end, those are the people we spend the time with, especially for all those moments of our lives -- most of them -- that seem inconsequential. That whole "how we spend our days is how we spend our lives," and with whom.
In the afterglow of that image of your grandmother, I am thinking of heading back around for another pass through Nadia Mandelstam's Hope against Hope. No same-same yet but the slant rhymes of now to then are starting to sound out closer and closer to chiming.
I keep running my mind over that Landauer quote: “The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently toward one another…" Even moreso maybe when the state's mode of behaviour begins to emulate more and more the vacuous and hollowed to the point that no semblance of relationship remains save the relationship of the self-possesed dybbuk leaning over his(their) reflection. Any kind of right relationship now becomes a counterword.
Dark times do seem to be a catalyst for molecular change in the "influencer " element. In the presence of that type of Night you get a chemical reaction that accentuates either the pigment of Mensch or Kapo.
I think I have said beneath by breath to more than one person keeping company together this last bit "Its good to be here with you, Sam, here at the end of the world." Not all of them have been human.
Well, that just cracks my heart open. I'll carry that line out into the more-than-human encounters, too. Thank you for sharing that. Because it is true. I went through my box of seeds yesterday to see what I needed to order, and it felt so friendly, like these were companions I would look forward to spending time with next summer no matter what else has been wrought.
I don't think I've seen that Landauer quote, very thought-provoking. It reminds me of many of the lines about the State in Abdullah Ocallan's "The Sociology of Freedom," though I'd have to look up exact ones. He has similar ideas, I think, about the ways in which the State disrupts relationship and right relationship disrupts the State.
"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
And here I am, like many, trying to figure out what that is on a given day! So far, I have be kind, and keep a record. Tonight it's chili and beer with friends. It won't erase the fears, but it will strengthen our resolve.
Same here, John! I guess starting with gratitude for friends and chili is never a bad thing, and being kind no matter what we face. Glad to have you on this journey, wherever it takes us.
It has been so long but I am easing my way back into Substack. You continue to be a great reason to be here Antonia. Great writing as always.
When I started this reading and saw your reference to -17F I knew that we shared some history in Minnesota. We are also familiar with such seasonal temperatures. I remember a colleague in a St. Paul office who was apt to repeat himself. Whenever we would get a cold snap and the usual banter ensued about "how cold it was" he would always retreat to his shopworn expression "I don't mind the cold, it keeps the riff raff out". I think the expression applies for your wannabe neo-nazis.
I am sorry about your experience of being tagged and harassed. In a current developing story, DOGE has apparently printed the name and address of one of the Judge's daughter's who has ruled against our imperious President and doofus sidekick. I have found the return to daily bedlam out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I decided to return to writing, at least occasionally.
I've been saving up your posts, Mark! Really delighted to see them in my inbox again. (I'm very behind on everything, partly due to a little too much work but even more due to a wretched fever+cough thing that's making its way through town.) I'm looking for a day to myself when I can sink in with a few of my favorite newsletters. :)
My first winter in St. Paul, January 1995, it got to -60F! People kept saying to me, "You're from Montana, aren't you used to this?" And I had to tell them, no, it didn't generally get that cold in the part of the mountains I lived. Last few winters we've had quite a few -40F days. Wind chill but still. Brrr.
A lawyer friend of mine told me about that story, too, the judge's daughter. Horrific. Absolutely no reason for anyone to do that except cruelty and control.
Realizing that you get to choose what to do (in such times) is such an empowering thing. Even if what you do feels small, placing one foot just in front of the next is still a step and you never know just where a few of those steps will take you.
Even if it's literally just to breathe, or hold someone who needs you. Sometimes that's all we have, and in that moment, that's our age, that's our time. 💞
And in response to your wings and booze line, I literally texted a friend yesterday "in lieu of sanity, burritos and margaritas?" so we are all dying in the way that we see fit (to channel our friend JRR).
I didn't think of this earlier, but to complete the circle here...Tolkein liked to play with balance in his world, and I've always looked as Denethor (bound to duty but despairs) and Aragorn (seeks his duty and keeps hope) as two counterweights. Tolkein clearly thought of Denethor as a great man, despite his flaws. But, at the end, Denethor embraced despair and it ruined him. In these days it seems easy to do that, but it's your titular quote that comes in to play at that exact inflection point.
That is so well-described. And I hadn't thought about Denethor in quite that depth (or maybe it's been too long since I read the books), but you're absolutely right. A great man who was ruined by embracing despair. That's a good lesson for me, at least, to remember. That darkness can trick many of us into thinking it's a friend. 🫶🏻
Wow, Nia, I had no idea of the incidents from 2016, thanks for sharing. I hope these times now won't turn into something akin to that again. I love Gandalf's words, they will stick with me, thank you.
It wasn't great. But I take heart from how well my community coped with it. I hope those skills and resilience for every community while hoping they won't need them!
Yes for sure! Your last comment reminds me of this Zen 'teaching':
A student said to his master: “You teach me fighting, but you talk about peace. How do you reconcile the two?” The master replied: “It is better to be a warrior in a garden, than to be a gardener in a war”.
WOW. I’ve never heard that before and how deeply it strikes home. Thank you!
Extraordinarily moving and so encouraging as always, Antonia. Thank you for these real worlds that still compel us to act.
Thank you, Noha. Thank you. 💚 I hope authentic connections can stop us each from fraying, though it’s a struggle, I know.
Simply beautiful. I'm tired or I would say more.
Peace
Peace, Ken. And heart 💚
Tarot readers on Youtube. I could definitely go down that whole. Thank you for your words here. "We are all unique, brilliant beings with our own purposes, full of hope and doubt and hidden shadows most of us don’t like to acknowledge." So true, and also, the understanding (and acceptance) that we can only be us. I can only be me. You, you.
I suspect it haunts a lot of people, a wishing to be other than we are. I've certainly been prone to it. A fool's errand, but the temptation is very understandable.
I find the tarot readers very soothing! 😂
“My fears and heartbreaks can only be faced with as much strength and compassion as I can muster in between the fallings apart.” Much wisdom, there. Thank you, Nia. (Also, I *too* have a newfound obsession with YouTube tarot…?! What does this mean…?!) 🔮
All our worlds are ending all the time ... 💚💖
Also -- WHAT?! That's wild. What *does* it mean? There are a number of reasons I started watching so many, one of them being that these people are amazing storytellers. I'm so impressed how they pull out cards and link it all together, even if some of them are likely scripted. And they're all so different, it's fascinating. There's Clive from somewhere in England (I love it when he shows up in a cardigan), Andi with the owl statue on her wall, and some pretty fun Australians ...
That Arkady Martine quote has been a real tonic btw, thank you for that 💜 And yes! It feels as though sometimes you can almost see the spidersweb of their tarot minds lighting up as they make pathways of connection, it’s masterful with some of them. I’m becoming more and more interested in my relationship with the imaginal realm and tarot is a really interesting link in, with all the archetypes. I love Clive (how could you not) and I really like White Feather Tarot (not just because the name, I promise). I find her very soothing. What decks do you have..?! I have The Wild Unknown and Pagan Otherworlds...
I want to have wings and booze and watch tarot YouTube with you! 😆
The phrase that I have been holding close these last several weeks is - the world is always ending and always being remade. This is a comfort when I feel my most doomsday.
I don’t know why I suddenly started watching YouTube tarot, but I’m sure your newsletter planted a seed at some point! I’d honestly never been into it before and now it’s like I can’t get enough (hm, Devil card in that somewhere?). And that’s well said, the world is always ending and always being remade. One of the books I got says that about the major arcana, too. There’s a cycle, a journey, and then the wheel turns and it all starts again …
Mmm yes, the wheel keeps turning. I’m going to look up that anima mundi deck - my recent favorite has been the liberation tarot!
I’m so glad! You give tonic to so many people, it’s nice to know something comes back your direction. 💚 That’s beautifully put, the spidersweb of their tarot minds, so true! The sign-specific readings really draw me in.
And wow, yes, that’s my feeling — tarot is pulling me further into a lot of areas I was already exploring, especially shadow work and internal alignment, and then all these synchronicities started happening more and more. Eerie. Fascinating. It tickles me that you watch Clive, too! He’s delightful. And White Feather! I like 13 Moons (Andi), and Scorched Earth, and sometimes Witch & Scythe.
Decks, the first I bought was the Rider Waite classic deck. I’ve only bought one other, an Anima Mundi deck from Etsy that you might like (https://www.etsy.com/listing/1865579219/anima-mundi-tarot-nature-inspired?click_key=321c3d0a5e4538bf71ee5259fab7708aa1161c6c%3A1865579219&click_sum=13fd7cc5&ref=items-pagination-1&frs=1), beautiful art, all animals, but could see getting hooked into buying all kinds. I’ve been looking for a Raven one.
Oh, I adore the Anima Mundi deck, thank you so much for sharing. An appropriate equinox gift from me to me, I feel. I'll keep an Eagle-eye out for a Raven one 💜
I’m so glad! It’s one of the lovelier decks I’ve seen, that beauty and pathos so gently illustrated. And yes please, tell me if you ever see a Raven one! The crow ones are nice, but Raven has been calling.
Oh golly. I’m going to have to check this out! I love Tarot, but this sounds like a whole new comforting rabbit hole…
And oh my, your words and that poem…
A year ago I'd never done anything with tarot and now own two decks 😂 I have to dig sometimes to get past the love readings (the most popular, understandably, but not what I'm interested in), and veer away when led down "you're an alien lightworker" pipelines, but there's a lot of loveliness and strength of heart in the in-between spaces.
It’s that in-between sweet spot 🩵
“alien light worker” had me giggling 😆
So true. I’ve only been at it for four-ish years and find I learn much about what I am really feeling/ thinking when I see my responses to the cards I pull. I had no idea how helpful this would prove to be
I wish I’d known before! Though maybe it found me when I needed it. I’m always amazed by the gentle guidance and nudges I get, which simply strengthen my intuition (which is what most of those tarot readers advise anyway). Would love to sit down together among some threads and do a reading together!
That would be marvelous. Whitefish isn’t that far from Sandpoint!
Time is not dress but skin… this says it all. Oh Nia all this is so weirdly heartbreaking and yet hopeful. Heartbreaking because it’s happening all over again and hopeful because our ancestors have already shown us how to fight and love through it all. The selfishness of people emerging when times are tough really seems to be the zeitgeist of this age. I see it everywhere from senile politicians to influencers to random strangers on internet.
Trust is tough on the bough and yet we have to harvest it sooner rather than later. The only way forward is to build a protective fence of community strengthened by love and compassion. There has not been any other way and there shall never be.
I really can't say more but to agree with this: "Trust is tough on the bough and yet we have to harvest it sooner rather than later. The only way forward is to build a protective fence of community strengthened by love and compassion. There has not been any other way and there shall never be." Always with the core truths, Swarna! 🫶🏻🕯️
Nia 💜🤗
Thank you (and your father) for articulating what many of us are feeling right now. There is safety in decentralization; small tightly-knit groups. Make your circle, and protect and help one another.
Build trust with people however we can 💚
And now having read the "professional" translation, I prefer your father's.
Thank you, I do, too! The professional version feels stripped of steel — or iron, I suppose.
Wonderful as always. And have been thinking a lot lately about the “guru mentality” right now - both people who embody it but also people are drawn to it. And how poorly that can work out for everyone involved.
Oh my gosh, me too! The people drawn to it even more than those embodying it. What in myself nudges me that direction? What does it take for someone to start questioning someone's motivations if not what they're saying and how they say it?
If we could answer this we'd solve all the world's problems 😂
Thanks for sharing this trauma to you and your community, Nia. Gosh, I never knew. And for the perspective and resilience expressed by you and your father, I'm most grateful. So often our search for meaning comes not only from those lofty thinkers, but from the great minds seated with us around the supper table.
That's well put, Bryan! In the end, those are the people we spend the time with, especially for all those moments of our lives -- most of them -- that seem inconsequential. That whole "how we spend our days is how we spend our lives," and with whom.
Thank you, Nia. It seems so hard to just pause and breathe a bit these days; thank you for being here.
It is hard, Greg. Very hard. Sometimes breathing is all we've got, and sharing time with those we love. 🫶🏻
Thanks for this.
In the afterglow of that image of your grandmother, I am thinking of heading back around for another pass through Nadia Mandelstam's Hope against Hope. No same-same yet but the slant rhymes of now to then are starting to sound out closer and closer to chiming.
I keep running my mind over that Landauer quote: “The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently toward one another…" Even moreso maybe when the state's mode of behaviour begins to emulate more and more the vacuous and hollowed to the point that no semblance of relationship remains save the relationship of the self-possesed dybbuk leaning over his(their) reflection. Any kind of right relationship now becomes a counterword.
Dark times do seem to be a catalyst for molecular change in the "influencer " element. In the presence of that type of Night you get a chemical reaction that accentuates either the pigment of Mensch or Kapo.
I think I have said beneath by breath to more than one person keeping company together this last bit "Its good to be here with you, Sam, here at the end of the world." Not all of them have been human.
Well, that just cracks my heart open. I'll carry that line out into the more-than-human encounters, too. Thank you for sharing that. Because it is true. I went through my box of seeds yesterday to see what I needed to order, and it felt so friendly, like these were companions I would look forward to spending time with next summer no matter what else has been wrought.
I don't think I've seen that Landauer quote, very thought-provoking. It reminds me of many of the lines about the State in Abdullah Ocallan's "The Sociology of Freedom," though I'd have to look up exact ones. He has similar ideas, I think, about the ways in which the State disrupts relationship and right relationship disrupts the State.
Mandelstam(s) 🧡
"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
And here I am, like many, trying to figure out what that is on a given day! So far, I have be kind, and keep a record. Tonight it's chili and beer with friends. It won't erase the fears, but it will strengthen our resolve.
Thank you for these timely thoughts.
Same here, John! I guess starting with gratitude for friends and chili is never a bad thing, and being kind no matter what we face. Glad to have you on this journey, wherever it takes us.
It has been so long but I am easing my way back into Substack. You continue to be a great reason to be here Antonia. Great writing as always.
When I started this reading and saw your reference to -17F I knew that we shared some history in Minnesota. We are also familiar with such seasonal temperatures. I remember a colleague in a St. Paul office who was apt to repeat himself. Whenever we would get a cold snap and the usual banter ensued about "how cold it was" he would always retreat to his shopworn expression "I don't mind the cold, it keeps the riff raff out". I think the expression applies for your wannabe neo-nazis.
I am sorry about your experience of being tagged and harassed. In a current developing story, DOGE has apparently printed the name and address of one of the Judge's daughter's who has ruled against our imperious President and doofus sidekick. I have found the return to daily bedlam out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I decided to return to writing, at least occasionally.
I think you might enjoy this one https://markdolan.substack.com/meh
I've been saving up your posts, Mark! Really delighted to see them in my inbox again. (I'm very behind on everything, partly due to a little too much work but even more due to a wretched fever+cough thing that's making its way through town.) I'm looking for a day to myself when I can sink in with a few of my favorite newsletters. :)
My first winter in St. Paul, January 1995, it got to -60F! People kept saying to me, "You're from Montana, aren't you used to this?" And I had to tell them, no, it didn't generally get that cold in the part of the mountains I lived. Last few winters we've had quite a few -40F days. Wind chill but still. Brrr.
A lawyer friend of mine told me about that story, too, the judge's daughter. Horrific. Absolutely no reason for anyone to do that except cruelty and control.
Looking forward to reading!
Nice to hear from you. Your writing remains top-notch. We have a spot of cold weather right now but nothing too serious.
Beautiful. Thank you.
Thank you, Rhonda. 💚
I'm so grateful for your writing and the heart and mind that fuels it.
🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻
Realizing that you get to choose what to do (in such times) is such an empowering thing. Even if what you do feels small, placing one foot just in front of the next is still a step and you never know just where a few of those steps will take you.
Even if it's literally just to breathe, or hold someone who needs you. Sometimes that's all we have, and in that moment, that's our age, that's our time. 💞
And in response to your wings and booze line, I literally texted a friend yesterday "in lieu of sanity, burritos and margaritas?" so we are all dying in the way that we see fit (to channel our friend JRR).
Ha! I should have thought of that one. Thanks, Denethor!
I didn't think of this earlier, but to complete the circle here...Tolkein liked to play with balance in his world, and I've always looked as Denethor (bound to duty but despairs) and Aragorn (seeks his duty and keeps hope) as two counterweights. Tolkein clearly thought of Denethor as a great man, despite his flaws. But, at the end, Denethor embraced despair and it ruined him. In these days it seems easy to do that, but it's your titular quote that comes in to play at that exact inflection point.
That is so well-described. And I hadn't thought about Denethor in quite that depth (or maybe it's been too long since I read the books), but you're absolutely right. A great man who was ruined by embracing despair. That's a good lesson for me, at least, to remember. That darkness can trick many of us into thinking it's a friend. 🫶🏻