This is a true story that took place one evening by the river in Mullumbimby, NSW, Australia. 

In Christianity, Mary Magdalene has been portrayed as a devout follower of Jesus and was misidentified as a prostitute by a pope in 591AD, he conflated her with a "sinful woman" described in Luke's gospel. In Gnostic texts, she is depicted as Jesus' confidante who received more in depth esoteric knowledge from him than his other disciples did. She played an important role as a transmitter of esoteric knowledge and embodied the divine feminine archetype, which of course challenged the patriarchal structure of Christianity. 

I believe this new age is the resurrection of the divine feminine energy. I am doing my best to unearth information on previously undervalued women in history, to tap into witchcraft and learn from Indigenous peoples, and to continue developing my own power and confidence. 

I had read part of “The Feminine Mystique” by Betty Friedan, admittedly not the whole thing because it was quite long, and decided that I did not care what people thought of me anymore. I do not care if people think my art, opinions, or ideas are eccentric or strange or “concerning.” Everything in this world is made up anyway. 

A cowboy friend of mine spoke of a cafe/bookstore in Woodburn, NSW, Australia called Hemlocks. He used to work there and said the locals would come in to commune with each other and philosophize with the baristas. I’m in the interest of taking on any side quest these days so I made the trek down to Hemlocks. I ended up chatting with a Woodburn local named Darin who had lost his home to the floods. He told me of the town’s experience with fires, covid, and flooding in that order. I told him that where I was living in California experienced that same string of hardships during the same time. We talked for 2 hours or so and he ended up inviting me to a poetry gathering at his friend’s house.

I had the day off work so I decided to visit my favorite cemetery in Santa Cruz, Evergreen Cemetery, with the intention of doing some writing. I noticed a homeless person’s tent set up in the northernmost part of the cemetery. All was silent for an hour or so, but then I heard a man’s voice coming from the tent, he was yelling “Day one! Call the police, it's only day one! Day one! Day one!” He kept repeating “Day one” over and over and I thought, I need to incorporate this into my poem. 

I saw a bee drowning in the river right in front of me.

A note for clarity: dowsing rods which are most widely used in the practice of locating underground water, can also be used as tools for contacting spirits. One can use them to communicate with spirits by holding rods in both hands and asking yes or no questions. The rods will turn inwards toward each other or outwards away from each other to answer the seeker’s questions. 

This is a true experience I had when I was volunteering and living at the Krishna Village in Murwillumbah, NSW, Australia. At the Village, I was attending a yoga class every day and wanted to return in time for restorative yoga. For some reason, the time on my phone's clock was glitching and only reset once I left the river area. It was a lovely, strange experience. When I returned to the river again after leaving for yoga, Ticker was no longer there. I began to cry and started frantically walking up a dirt road looking for her. I didn't find her but did find a peacock. 

I was volunteering at the Krishna Village in Murwillumbah, NSW, Australia. I learned so much there and attended a yoga class every day. For once in my life, I could just exist without feeling the pressure to be working towards something. For the first few weeks this was great, my body and nervous system needed the rest. Then I began to feel as though I had no passions in life. I knew I loved writing but I had gotten into the habit of only writing when I was inspired and no inspiration was coming. I had just seen a video of a Lana Del Rey poem and one of the lines said something about writing at the same time every day so inspiration knows where to find you. I realized that as a writer, I didn't do enough of the "writing just to write" practice. One day, I was working on building a bamboo shed with Runnadeer, one of the Krishna devotees, and we were discussing spirituality in the garden when we realized that soul and soil were similar words!

This poem references the Hanged Man tarot card. In the Rider tarot deck, this card depicts a man dangling head down from a wooden post, tied up by one leg while the other leg is bent behind, forming a figure 4. He has a halo of golden light around his head. I wrote this poem on the day that I decided to clean out my car. I had been living in my car in Australia and my back seats had become so piled up with my belongings, I could barely sleep on my makeshift mattress pad bed. My car also had mold on the seats. I was doing my laundry after taking a shower so my hair was wrapped in a towel turban and I was standing in tree pose knocking the sand out of my boot into a trash can. I was struck by how much I resembled the Hanged Man. For me, it's a constant balancing act between being a spiritual being living in my own world of signs and synchronicities and being a human living in physical reality.

This song concatenates a few of my major life events. In 2023, I was living in California working as a wildlife biologist. At the end of the year, I decided to quit my job, move back to my parent’s house in Maryland, and then borrow my dad’s car to road trip out to Utah to see the national parks. A few months later I moved to Australia to again live in a car and travel up and down the east coast. I developed a routine of exploring the cute towns in Australia, going thrift shopping, and journaling at cafes. I bought a guitar on Facebook marketplace that truly did just take up space in my backseat bed because I played so infrequently.

A poem about my early life.