Hello, lucky number 8. I was in New York City for a week visiting my best friend. New York is that strange mix of enclosure and freedom. At times feeling unbearably suffocating, pressing up against you, breathing its hot breath on your face. In other moments, it feels so wide open, so many multiverses to explore that it feels like you couldn’t possibly expand as much as it demands of you. With so many worlds, in many ways, you get to choose the experience you have in relation to it: so many symbols to pick a part, so much meaning or, if you decide, lack thereof. I learned a lot more than I thought I would this short week here. When I arrived, reality felt dense in a scary strange way. I felt cursed as I have been feeling for many weeks now, and when I left I didn’t. I felt blessed in the most delightful way (in the blessed vs cursed binary via @sighswoon). The world all of a sudden felt beautiful once more, filled with mystery and magic and possibility for encounter. Things became signs because I wanted them to be. Wind chimes are good omens I told myself, and so good omens they became.
I’ve been considering the power of omens>>good, bad and neutral. It reminds me of reading The Alchemist when I was sixteen and thinking to myself there couldn’t be any book more profound than this. (I was always a hoe for a good allegory). Quests require omens, and New York felt like one big quest (finally, this trip I unlocked the one dark spot on the New York City map….Staten Island).
Quests provide a sense of adventure, excitement, playfulness and even wonder at the way that life can unfold. Last winter, in a particularly dull period, I would quest often. Going to school was a quest, going to the grocery store was a quest, coming home from a night out was a quest. In naming it so I would encounter all the usual quest experiences and features: obstacles, friendly side characters that would offer assistance, lows, highs, reroutes, encounters, and of course, omens. Signs that yes, yes you are on the right path. Because here is a secret. Right and wrong are just subjective experiences—you can feel very right and you can also feel horribly wrong. And what I’m finding more and more is that although we should all trust our inner knowing, allowing the world to reflect the experience of “right” back to me is so extremely helpful.
Things can become omens when you imbue them with meaning. A series of 1s can be just numbers to some, but to the spiritual girlies they are angel numbers (and on and on). When I need a good omen I’ll say: okay, okay, show me angel numbers if I’m on the right path. And there they are. Sometimes any omen, no matter how basic, can be helpful.
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Small, Sweet Moments
I think what scares me the most is moments passing me by without me acknowledging their beauty. It isn’t so much about the worry of me forgetting something, but the fear that I might take it for granted. I need to love life, and when I’m not, I’m more often than not choosing not to. Which I let myself feel, until I’m done with it. Life is so magical, and wild, at least to me, and choosing to see that becomes part of the mirror. Perhaps, this is just my glorified version of romanticizing your life—identifying beauty, and narrative and stories.
So here are small, sweet moments worth noting:
- Mooncakes, carefully individually wrapped in cellophane, more than we could carry between the two of us from the Daoist temple a few floors down.
- The same temple I received the Dao from last year. And an uncle asking if I had the time to check out the temple just outside of Toronto—no, no I haven’t…
- Lying in a hotel room with my mom, with crispy sheets, thinking about how good it feels to be loved that much.
- Feeling cursed again, then, after some thought, deciding not to be.
- A Staten Island book store, with a dreamy garden in the back where I felt things couldn’t be more perfect until I got twenty mosquito bites.
- A pilgrimage to Taylor Swift’s house on Cornelia street (kind of embarrassing, but I am a Taylor Swift fan canonically, so it had to happen)
- Accepting an invitation to a karaoke party at the back of a sushi restaurant, flowers and coconut birthday cake, white theatre gays singing heavy metal and Frank Sinatra. Considering the power and healing of collective singing in whatever context as the bartender comes out from behind the counter to perform Just the Two of Us so earnestly it makes my heart hurt a little.
- Chinatown market, where Faye Wong is echoing in the back as I sip sugarcane juice and witness the most beautiful people under dimly lit lanterns.
- Sitting at riverside, getting high and speaking fears into the water with someone you deeply trust.
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Interlude: Ask and you shall receive
Intention: a beautiful, magical place to write. Reality: a fairy garden in the middle of the city (windchimes, flowers, headless statues).
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Allowing Reality to be Lighter (again and again and again)
A lesson I keep being returned to again and again is the art of allowing reality to be lighter. Latest epiphany (though I think I probably had it before but somehow it hits different now): what if things that you wanted to change about your reality/experience weren’t problems you needed to fix.
I started off in New York experiencing a weird health thing. I was feeling really anxious because I was travelling, and it was uncomfortable, and most of all I was really nervous about it being a serious problem. Like a trip ending problem. Health and my body is the area in my life that I struggle the most with soothing my anxiety around. Something about how unruly bodies can be, and how so much of its functions are a total mystery to me. I remember being young and wishing that one of my parents were a doctor, so that I could ask questions about my health and things that were going on with it at all times. I wanted to be reassured that yes everything is fine and that weird burning I have in my chest is just heartburn and not a heart attack. Whenever my body did something out of the ordinary <THIS IS A PROBLEM> I would think. I would spiral all the way down. I got a few checkups mostly for reassurance and peace of mind. After finding that nothing was out of the ordinary, except my weird symptoms I felt this sinking feeling of helplessness.
It was far too much of a jump to get my brain to actually believe that this wasn’t a problem because it did feel like one. Instead, I reasoned with myself: “okay, maybe this can be a problem, but what if it wasn’t a BIG problem.” And I just stuck with that. Okay, this isn’t a big problem I would remind myself. The next day I started feeling way better. I kept allowing my brain to understand a lighter version of reality and my symptoms started going away till I was able to believe that it wasn’t a problem at all. (it truly was so wild). Things felt magic again, playful, fun as I felt the tension ease.
(PSA (because I feel like it does need to be said): okay this is so not medical advice whatsoever, and I did get professional advice while also practicing some of this magic—use your discretion etc. etc.)
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Thinking about liminal spaces
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Prompts Babe xx
What are your good omens?
What allows you to feel right/ or even sure in yourself?
Is there something in your life that doesn’t need to be a BIG problem? Could it be just a small one?
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That is all. I know I said I would have a sweet little newsletter for you every Thursday but August said yaaaaa no. But now, doing every week feels fun and fitting right now. I can’t say it will be every Thursday because I’m traveling and Thursday is subjective. But, Thursday (ish).
Sending you much love and lots of good omens.
-ThaiHJ xoxo
"I was always a hoe for a good allegory" too funny.
"I think what scares me the most is moments passing me by without me acknowledging their beauty. It isn’t so much about the worry of me forgetting something, but the fear that I might take it for granted."
For me, appreciating the small moments makes life and time feel like a slow gentle breeze that you can bask yourself in. Its utterly euphoric to be enveloped in this feeling. And it can be difficult to get to this state of mind, or practice this form of appreciation, when life feels oppressive and bleak.
There are of course other factors to why its struggle to value the little timey whimies (yes I'm coining this). However, maybe its being able to acknowledge current hardships of oneself and the calamities of the world, but still being able to sit on a bench on a cloudy day, seeing the droplets of rain slowly climb down the pockets of leaves, and to smile to it all is what I found to be the best way to practice appreciating the small moments. Its the way I found to move pass the fear of taking things for granted.
I can ramble on and on lol. Its uncanny how you're capturing these emotions and experiences and how much I can relate to them.