freedom – Crow Violets

January

I took the tree down. It absolutely kills me to do that; I’ve had the house decorated since Halloween, and a lot of the decorations get transferred over, so for a whole quarter of the year, this place has had the symbols of the season all over it. And then one hits January and the act of removing all this becomes a symbol in itself. I suppose a part of me feels like I’m taking down memories; this has been one of the most dramatically transforming quarters that I’ve ever experienced.

October seems so long ago, but this is the time when things start to shift and change more than we expect. Midwinter is a celebration of everything we’ve reached, and my god, the changes in my life have been extreme, and frankly, they’re going to become more extreme yet, ideally in a positive way.

Even in occult traditions, this is rather a sparse time of year, yet I refuse to see this as anything other than to be grateful for. This is the space that we need, the silence that lets us speak. It’s the lead in to Imbolc or Candlemas on the first of February, the night of remaking vows. Oh, vows and promises; sometimes I think that the only vows and promises that one can make under the Candlemas night are the vows we make to ourselves, but there are others. I don’t mean vows of eternal love or fidelity, perhaps. Certainly not fidelity as it’s traditionally as I’m fiercely non-monogamous (and of course, there is fidelity of a different kind there) and as for love, who can promise to love forever? But what I can swear to is to defend those I love with my heart’s blood if it’s needed. To be the very spirit of the lioness herself when those I care for need me.

These are the days that let us build our futures. Silence is the thing I am most afraid of in the world, the loss of adventure, to be imprisoned in the cage of day-to-day, trapped in linear existence on the escalator to the little retirement party, the increasingly empty days. But now, I’m finally learning that the silence is full of a song, a savage and wonderful melody, right on the edge of the senses. Or perhaps a story, a story about other stories.

The little reminder that the fear is just a game our society made up to help a particular system operate, but we all got stuck in it and forgot that we were the ones who made up the rules. Magic, myth, art, love, sexuality; these things allow us to rewrite that text and make it something better, something stronger, something that belongs to the cold spaces and the wild January nights just as much as it does the glory of midsummer, or Christmas Eve, or Halloween. This is the time when we have to run wild in our own skins, when the decorations are in our eyes. When our memories and our love will make light and song in the dark places.

I asked who can promise to love forever – I can. I do. For all this world, my love, “all that will survive of us.”

(And if you think you’re one of the people I’m talking about, you’re very much correct)

Rain expected 8PM Sheffield

For a bunch of witches

…so normal and everyday, just a piece of the world that’s always happening, a mundane magic that calls through me like the song of a wineglass, and the roads shine in the last of the sun, and it’ll be full of an enchantment too big for any one heart to hold alone. So hold hands with me, my loves, and we’ll go walking, shiny second skins reflecting the stars as they come out one by one.

And then there’s the other side of it, the dragging silence of late Sunday. Full of school ghosts. It’s full of longing, if we’re fortunate, and regret if we are not. This is what it costs – the Sunday night trains that haunt me, the empty last bus, the traffic lights that change themselves over and over, remembering the crowds.

Do you know what it is to be yourself, to wear yourself in all your colours? How precious that is? Oh you do, you do, and you know it well, and it was dearly bought with pain and starlight. And still, it’s such a simple beautiful secret, so simple and so radiant that I want to rush up to each and every high street stranger, to see what light’s in them, to ask with a desperation that borders on mania, is this you? Look at us, look at this, you can shine, please, if what’s in you is the need to shine, then be radiant, because Sunday night is always coming and the best of times are just little splinters, tiny and bright sharp things, that get swept away before you even feel the scratch.

I want to put all the shards together again and build something new, something that holds the light

The absolute perfect silence of a Sunday morning and the cold that accompanies it, right through to the bones. The light that diffuses through strange clouds, taking forms of things never seen. This city becomes alien, but perhaps we start to reflect a little of that ourselves, maybe that fractured sunrise reflects in our eyes. Oh, and it’s a hard road back from the shores of night, we all know that, and it’s a steep harsh climb back to the oppressions of Sunday late dark; the empty house, the unmade silent bed, and more wineglasses than you’ll need till next time. But once I’d come to the beach and looked at the ocean, I never doubted the worth of throwing my heart into it.