Hello dearest inbox intimates—
January is, by all measures, the longest month of the year. An endless slog of slow composting. It is not new year, new me. It is, new year, hello darkness and all of the most terrifying parts of every version of me to exist on any timeline.
January is named after Janus, god of gates, doors, and locks. A fact that had been buried deep within my subconscious, excavated recently when I came across this brilliant poem by Hoa Nguyen.
JANUARY
January long light
Janus I see you
God of locks and doorways
two-faced looking in Capricorn
Capricious like the snowy owl
irruption
We fear heavy body collisions
January time of doors
time looking back on itself
God of gates
spelt and salt
They say when you
walk through a door
you can forget what
you came for
I feel like this whole month I have been palming the walls of a pitch dark room and just finally, I´d say within the past week or so, found a doorknob.
The name of this door is clarity. The light it lets through is immense. It is a re-membering that does not cast a shadow. I have been on an ugly underworld journey since October. Dark days and darker nights.
Janus, god of locks.
I lock myself away. I have been abstaining, cloistering myself. For the first time in my adult life, I am in a period of intentional celibacy. No dating. No substances. Barely any drinking. A cigarette or a puff of a vape here and there.
I´m not doing this because I think it will make me better in any way. I think the most accurate reason is that I am avoiding anything that might take me further away from myself.
There are things that happened this year that I won’t be able to write about for a very long time. What I will say is that I was left feeling shaken, unsafe, mistrustful of both myself and the world.
Janus, two-faced god of doors.
In this sobriety, my focus has been home and hearth. I have moved my furniture around several times. Manically scrubbed my shower with a toothbrush. Washed dishes. Fixed my espresso machine. And still, the contents of my refrigerator grow putrid. I am confronted, constantly, by stagnant things. By the passage of time.
Janus, god of doorways, god of portals.
At the beginning of this month, I felt so god awful I was sure people could smell it on me. At night I howled into my pillow, my cat curled in the crook of my legs. I cried for myself, I cried for the collective. For humanity’s ugly face.
In the violence of imminent fissures. Every crack can become a door.
I have been trying to trust myself again. Unpeeling layers of stories to find something that feels true. How could I ever trust myself again?
In pole class, I climb and secure my right leg behind the knee and grab onto my right foot. I let my left leg slide down the pole into stargazer. Then, sitting up, I unwind my left leg from the pole and let it float skywards, lowering myself into a layback. I grab my left leg with my right hand. I arch my back. I let one hand go and find the pole below my head. I experiment with letting my other hand go, and my body´s signals are clear. No, not yet. I spin. Helical and winding.
If I can trust myself with my own body weight, upside down and spinning, maybe I can trust myself in other ways too. I can heed my own signals, my slipping weight, my head and heart together in tandem. How could I ever trust myself again? How could I possibly not.
~
Creative Updates:
I am absolutely tickled to share that I will be participating in UCR Writers Week 2024!!! This festival is stacked with amazing writers. On February 15th, I am doing a virtual panel reading and Q&A with the awe-inspiring Katherine Vaz, author of Above the Salt and countless other stories that are canonical in an evolving body of Luso American lit. Katherine is also an incredible person and teacher. The event is free and online. Join us! You can register for our session here!
Thanks to our successful Kickstarter for The Holy Hour: An Anthology of Sex Work, Magic, and the Divine (thank you all so so much!!!), we are doing a larger first print run of the anthology. If you would like to pre-order the book, you can do so here.
I finally updated my website!!! Websites are stressful…hard to strike a balance of the right amount of stuff. But anyway, it exists, it is a work in progress. Feedback welcomed.
I will leave you with a song. This whole Kali Uchis album is great, and I love the floaty, hypnotic vibes in this one. <3
~
Thank you for spending a slice of your day with me. I am so grateful to you for your time and attention! As always, this newsletter is a free monthly offering. If you would like to support my writing practice further, you can subscribe to this newsletters paid tier for additional treats (poems, excerpts, photos, etc.). Until next month xx.