In a blink, June has morphed into January. The winter soulstice has passed and another year has arrived, as if unexpected. It’s usually around this frenzied time of transition that I’m avoiding the task of looking back, of reviewing old journals from months past and selecting excerpts of my writing to transcribe from long-hand to type. The process is tedious. But when I finally finish going through all the pages I’ve amassed, I’m grateful for the days spent applying pen to paper, thought to emotion, inquiry to imaginings. What follows are highlights from the four notebooks that compromised 2023. (Paid subscribers, keep scrolling for exclusive content.)
January:
Kabalarian numerology marks 2023 as the fourth year of my current nine-year cycle. Year four signifies a test year.
TEST (n. / v.)
the means by which quality is determined
(via dictionary.com)
February:
A burning question—What do we do when the world is on fire?
March:
“Where attention goes, energy flows.” - Adriene (via Yoga With Adriene)
April:
How am I today? / Am I in a liquid / or solid / or gaseous state? / All I feel / is this simmering / under the surfaceMay:
Thinking about the difference between meaning and intention, intention and outcome. A distinction in definitions that may be minuscule yet massive.
June:
she felt like a tuning fork / the way tones could make her vibrate / and buzz / with feeling
July:
The silver-haired woman needed a plan. Discovering none in her toolkit, she decided to write through it. The point of her pen became a lightning rod, piercing through her gray clouds of thought, gathering now like an imminent storm.
August:
this human computer / is still processing / insides humming / ideas spinning / whirring away / blowing / tiny particles / of emotion and thought / full of memory
September:
look at the day / and slice it like a pie / triangles of time and filling / you may consume too slowly / some days / other days / barely savoring the taste / you waste / and waste / and waste
October:
“Writing is discovery; it’s talking deep within myself.“ - Toni Morrison
November:
I’m made of liquid doubts / a pondering pool of questions
December:
The lost seeds are sprouting somewhere. Scattered about the continents and buried in scorched earth far from their origins. Some did not make it, unable or unwilling to thrive on borrowed terrain, hostile and frigid as it became. Yet, others are just now piercing the ground and greeting the sun, emerging as a hybrid of their new and old homes, these estranged and seeking descendents, reaching for new growth, insistent on their very existence.
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