5. Comets Section.
I’ve been trying to finish this collage for months. The piles of paper, wood, glue, glitter, bins of markers, x-acto knives, and magazines have been cluttering my desk, the thing half done. This morning I finally finished it, cut it up, rearranged it, shoved the art supplies back in the closet, declared it complete: perfect is the enemy of good. Collage, like tarot, like walking, is a practice I turn to when I have no words.
“There are no words,” we say when we are overwhelmed with sadness, or afraid to say the wrong thing. “I have no words,” we type when we know that our words are impotent, and only cut an endless rut ever deeper into the muck. No words when another Black life is taken, no words when the courts sign a death warrant for survivors of abuse.
In 2020, I stopped having words on the internet because the comments section was a den of vipers, and I stopped having words with my family, because I was overwhelmed with sadness, because I was afraid of saying the wrong thing, because I knew my words were impotent, and only cut an endless rut ever deeper in the muck. I needed time to think. I kept my words to myself. I walked. I did a great deal of reading. I read books about estrangement, about sobriety. I also read articles: I googled “family estrangement” routinely and read voraciously. I needed the stories of other people who had gone through what I was going through.
One article in particular I returned to again and again: this one about estrangement in the New York Times. I returned to it, I still return to it, not for the article itself (as I remember it, a review of a new book about estrangement by somewhat of an apologist for all the bewildered boomers whose children finally and reluctantly cut them off after years of pleading with them for any modicum of relational repair), but for the comments section: hundreds upon hundreds of people typing out the specifics of how their unhappy family was unhappy in its own way, and what they did about it.
On September 13, 2020, “somebody, somewhere” wrote:
Abusers play only a zero-sum game, there is no middle ground, no neutral zone, no place to just be in a separate peace with that individual. The victim must remain dependent, insecure, groveling. I always knew any possibility of reconciliation was wholly dependent on my returning only in a state of the most abject failure. Instead, I earned a prestigious degree, traveled the world, generated a decent level of wealth, nurtured a transformative marriage. Sometimes, it’s the bridges we burn that light our way.
I pictured this person an elder, looking back on their life, satisfied. I desperately needed this reassurance that I could survive- could perhaps grow from- this severance that, at times, felt like a mortal wound. I needed their words; I had no words of my own. Sometimes, the comments section is not a den of vipers but a support group, a church basement where you sit on a metal folding chair, styrofoam cup of warm black coffee in your hand. Sometimes the burning bridge is a lantern.
My friend Sarahbeth, author of Hand Full of Stars and owner of Unabashed Apparel (please follow her on IG and Substack for all the gorgeous Southern rural gay handmade bespoke heirloom Moravian content you didn’t know you needed), is mourning a Great Blue Heron that was shot and killed in her valley this week. And as devastating as it was for her to process that loss, to literally process the body of this old friend, it also became a burden to her to process everyone’s reactions, their words. Sometimes, the comments section is your own country neighbors, a valley of cantankerous mountain folk and city retirees, squawking.
The Hale-Bopp comet was visible to the naked eye for all of 1997, remember? That summer, the summer I turned 21, I worked at Ghost Ranch, the home place of Georgia O’Keeffe, and every night the comet with its two giant tails (a blue gas tail and a yellow dust tail) filled the whole sky over the mesas. I was so small. Before I left for New Mexico, I worked delivering pizza for Mellow Mushroom. I drove around Athens, GA in my old burgundy stickshift Honda Accord, listening to tapes of Allen Ginsberg reading Howl and America on repeat, pounding Coca-Colas and chain-smoking Marlboro Reds, a Clarke County gazetteer spread out on the passenger seat beside me (no cell phones, no google maps, just vibes).
I made it my mission to show the Hale-Bopp comet to everybody that I delivered pizzas to, to make them step outside their door and onto the porch with me and look up at the sky. This was a beautiful astronomical ministry which yielded many big tips in the form of dank nugs, but the best part was standing in the night air with a stranger, feeling very small together.
There’s a comet in the sky now, C/2022 E3 (ZTF), aka “The Green Comet.” I haven’t seen it yet, but it might be visible tomorrow just before dawn, after the full moon sets in the morning, close to the bright star Capella. C/2022 E3 (ZTF) last passed by Earth 50,000 years ago, when neanderthals walked the earth. Perhaps those neanderthals grieved, and made pictures when they had no words. Perhaps they walked away from their squawking neighbors, their pit of vipers, their support groups, and looked up at the sky.
Sometimes, you are overwhelmed with sadness, or afraid to say the wrong thing, or your words are impotent, and only cut an endless rut ever deeper in the muck. But if you’re lucky, you get to step outside with a stranger and feel very small together. Sometimes you see a bright streak, an ancient green smudge, the moon. Sometimes, you can feel the earth’s core change directions. Sometimes, the bridges you burn light your way.
Home + The World is an occasional newsletter from Jodi Rhoden featuring personal essay, recipes, links and recommendations. Home + the World explores the ways we become exiled: through trauma, addiction, oppression, grief, loss, and family estrangement; and the ways we create belonging: through food and cooking, through community care and recovery and harm reduction, through therapy and witchcraft and making art and telling stories and taking pictures and houseplants and unconditional love and nervous system co-regulation and cake. I’ve included a paid subscription option, but for now, there will be no paywalled content. The paid subscription option is a tip jar. Thank you for being here and thank you for being you.
Home
Thank you to Sari Botton for this wonderful discussion full of really useful information about menopause.
Home, yesterday morning:
The World
Thank you to Saeed Jones for these words about Tyre Nichols:
I didn’t watch the video. I haven’t watched “the videos” in years. These days, a particular location, a stray detail, the look on a loved one’s face in a photograph of a press conference is enough to do it.
A rip at the mind’s seam. A wrinkle in the blood.
Because my body is mine, and I understand that possession’s worth, there is always the tension of America’s tug on it. An undeserving leash, really. Insulting as it sounds.
One does what one can to assert one’s body. To remind one’s body and one’s country of one’s worth. But then, one reads an arrangement of words like “in around 13 minutes, the cops had issued at least 71 demands before radioing that Tyre Nichols was in custody” and the tug threatens to become a strangle.
Nothing I write here will give Tyre Nichols back his body. Nothing you comment under these words or whisper to yourself while reading them will help his loved ones sleep better tonight. Our utterances won’t save the next Black person who, perhaps even at this very moment, sees red and blue lights poisoning the air around them.
But I write and you read, as I hope and you consider. Or vice versa. This way or that way. If not this time, then the next. We won’t have to wait long for another opportunity. Of that, I’m sure. And maybe this loop — knowledge to grief to outrage to exhaustion and back to knowledge — is the real leash.
The Moon
Today, the moon is full in Leo. Because my spiritual practice includes setting intentions around the new moon, now is the time that I reflect back on the seeds that were planted 6 months ago and give thanks for the fruit that has come to bear. This lunar cycle began on July 27th of last year, when the new moon aligned with the sun in Leo, the day before my birthday. It was a short summer season since I had finished grad school, and my beloved 2012 MacBook Pro had just given up the ghost. Leo occupies my 6th house of work, service and routines. I wrote in my journal:
New moon in Leo = creative work. My writing. It’s time to begin writing again, in earnest. 5am bitches. The struggles are part of the journey and the pain is part of the practice. I will invest in a new computer and I will commit to my writing practice.
I’d long since forgotten about writing that particular journal entry. And though it took me 6 months to get here (long enough to forget; long enough to think I had failed), here I am, getting up at 5am, with a new computer, committed to a writing practice. I’m never surprised by magic, not anymore, but neither am I ever less in awe. I give thanks for this practice and to you for being a part of it.
The Sun
Leo is ruled by the Sun, and the 19th major arcana of the tarot celebrates that radiance. The Sun is the heart, the flame, the inner child, warmth, the creative spark, the delight of play; generativity, generosity, and the joyful expression of the Self.
May we all find that invincible summer within us. Be well and have a beautiful week. Thanks again for being here. ⚔️❤️ Jodi
This one hit me on many levels. Grateful for your words, even when you don’t have them- it’s comforting to read these posts so full of humanity, vulnerability, love and hope. Glad you’re in the world my friend.
Thank you Jodi. As someone who is mostly estranged from one whole side of my family, siblings and all, this one really resonated.