Past Life Pair of Jeans

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Time is not linear. The past, present and future are happening simultaneously, non-linear, in a loop or maybe a spiral- continuously bringing us back to things we haven’t understood. Sometimes trauma, or relationships, where the characters change, but the stories remain the same.

When we talk about past lives, I forget that they are not actually behind us, the same way time is not a straight line. Past lives are really happening simultaneously with each present moment, and the decisions we make have ramifications and ripples on those lives too..and vice versa. Sometimes, in distinct moments I can feel those ripples, like whispers. I can feel the relationships between events folding in and out of space and time with perfect impossible geometry. In stillness, I can have flashes of lucidity and feel resonances of other timelines.

I can be retracing footsteps in old locations and feel like I must be running into old ghosts of myself, trapping translucent memories with breathless wonder. I could be driving down a highway and think, this car could be a horse, or even a spaceship- and maybe in another timeline, it is.

Why do some decades or objects, cultures, or ancient texts hold a sense of familiarity? Why are we drawn to the things we are? Are they pathways to past lives or merely avenues for expressing individuality?

I have been told my various mystics that I was a dolphin in a past life, and an Queen of an intergalactic race known as the Pleiadians, and a witch who was burned at the stake. Also, that it’s my first incarnation as a human? It’s very easy for me to get wrapped up in these stories, or assign egoic meaning to them- but no one ever seems to get told they were a garbage man in a past life, or worked at a 7/11, or anything like that. Those possibilities are more likely. Everyone I’ve spoken to about past lives were grandiose things, like Cleopatra, or Jesus, or Abraham Lincoln.. Seems a bit strange and presumptuous, but my generation isn't known for it’s humility. This is like some new, twisted form of plagiarism. Soul plagiarism.

I cannot explain why some people seem to arrive in this world with a sense of knowing and belonging, and why others seem to gasp, grapple and sputter until the very end. Why some elderly retain the appearance of a child and why some children seem to have come in with shrouds of age. Regardless, we are all comprised of the same energy, the same luminous source material- just compartmentalized in the form of human individuality. If you are going to take credit for the lifetime of someone else, you may as well decide on just about everyone- as separation in and of itself, is an illusion.

Nevertheless, my life seems to have reoccuring themes and patterns, images that circle around until I can understand them. I am intoxicated by the fictitious draw of the past and future. Time hangs above our shoulders, atom-thin, like an inescapable net that compels us to be anywhere but in the present. We are all obsessed with the past, peering into our phones, drawing inspiration from old decades and romanticising simpler times. Predicting our demise.

I’ll admit I find comfort in old things.The future is uncertain, branching out in front of us at the speed of light, into trillions of fragmented possibilities. There is fixed stability in old books, stone sculptures, antique slip dresses, and latin script. Memories are fragile, and life is brief, but these objects that have outlived us all, retain a quality of magic.

Sometimes, I can sense chains of events before they occur, purely based on the  paranormal phenomenon of pattern that existence follows. Relationship dynamics that seem to play out on a loop, with different characters but sometimes even the same setting...The daunting familiarity in new people who always end up being impactful. I feel more secure when domestic trivia doesn’t distract from tarot or astrology, when I can decide on a timeline and ground myself in a predictable future. Otherwise it feels like the endless array of possible outcomes is overwhelming, so many apocalyptic potentials looming over our heads in the form of pixelated predictions. All of this is so silly, because realistically, quantum physically, the past present and future are happening simultaneously.

Before I realized that time was a construct, I lived in a sickly and confined version of reality. It is a real miracle, that in this blip of time, this miniscule thread on the tapestry of life, I have had the chance to exist in a time of such flux and change. Now when I enter room, it seems like atoms and astral dust race to keep up with my perception, quivering, glimmering and not quite certain. I sometimes wonder if anything really exists, or if reality is just a malleable substance to be toyed with, subject to our beliefs and expectations.

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In Rosy Memory

He looked like he was raised by the forest, or maybe by a mountain. His skin was sunkissed and warm, freckled with dirt and hair, long tarzan locks and thick, calloused hands.

He had a love affair with plants and soil, an insatiable appetite for all that was untamed and unexplored. Forever humble to the intelligence and wisdom of nature.

It began with shifting glances in quiet moments, never quite still, our eyes fluttering like butterflies searching for a place to land. Silently reaching for each other, and never quite touching.

We danced around like this for a week, ebbing and flowing out of each others bubble, in a shy, flirtatious routine. I crouched down next to him  on the couch, and asked to read to lines on his hand. Rivers and indents of flesh, pulsing blood and worn skin that told tales of heartache and a mind  stretched too thin- where his heart and intellect were in a silent war. I traced the lines on his palm with my fingertips, the same way I wanted to trace the rest of his body. Slow, soft, recording every inch of him, till I could recite it by memory. I think that was the moment it became real.

I liked sleeping with him-just sleeping, more than anything else we did. Enveloped in his limbs, heat and steady breath. Drowning in tendrils of hair, tangled toes and fingers, breast to breast, woven eyelashes and open mouths. Entering our respective dreamworlds as one, wild thing.

This was a new kind of love, aware of it’s timely limitations. A place of recovery. I think we had both been wounded by previous variations of crazy- lovers who had needed caretakers, who had then just taken and taken and taken..until we were left empty. That adrenalizing intensity of being with someone who was unsafe, was missing. That feeling of constant imbalance, of teetering on the verge of madness and heartbreak- was gone. Instead, there was gentle care, playful possibility, tender and unpossessive.

We walked to the ruins of a castle by a seaside village. There was a rare kind of golden sunlight that day, the kind neither one of us expected to stick around- but it did, and cast a dewy glow on the road ahead. Treading lightly on trails leading to infinity, on emerald cliffs that just about hovered above a gentle sea. There was no distinction to where sky met sea, just never-ending pools of etheric blues, drawing us closer and closer to the old ruin. We agreed that we could be in Ireland, or on our way to Hogwarts. Then we lay on the beach, half asleep, in each others arms.

Naturally, we both wanted to stay longer. In that pocket of time, it was so perfect, pure and untainted by reality. To extend it would be cruel. Maybe he would have been unprepared for my wounds, or I would have grown resentful of him. This way, our love has a fighting chance, in imagined realms, in rosy memory.

Nothing has Perished

I  spent two weeks before we met singing love songs and giggling, almost like my soul knew he was coming before I did.  When we met, a warm resonance went through my body, like an etheric chime, reminding me that he was a man i must have met before, in my dreams.  I swear for a moment, it felt like my soul pirouetted out of my body, meeting his mid-air.

He had eyes that stole secrets from the sea, with curling waves of hair and a mind like a library. Sometimes he spoke  in poetry and fairy tales, or legends. Other times he spoke like joke books or esoteric archives. We enjoyed each other’s minds as much as our bodies, which is the only way it could be, as I always fall in love with my ears before my eyes. There is an inherent playfulness, and even when we were exhausted we behaved like children or puppies, rolling around in each others dirt. He was the first man I have met who isn’t threatened by my boldness, who hasn’t wanted to cage me, or own me.  He was just as enthralled by my wild as I am.

There was an urgency to getting to know one another. As if we got high off of telling each other what was shocking to tell, we exchanged abbreviated stories of our respective realities..darting back and forth like the silloques of bumble bees.

The morning light sprayed through a prism in the window of my  room, and cast a veil of color on the ceiling. Emerald, magenta and orange. The moist sheets stuck to our skin as we wrathed and basked in each others warmth. I felt the currents of energy between us opening up portals beneath my skin. He clasped his hand around the small of my waist and he complimented me, compliments interspersed by a steady rhythm of kisses. He  told me I taste of strawberry ice cream. His voice sounded out from the depth of his core, almost as if it hurt to speak, but like he had been yearning to for a hundred years. It reminded me that sometimes there is rage in pleasure, the same way there is immense pleasure in rage.

Every word he mouthed touched the strings in my soul, sending a deep echo to the subterranean chambers of my body.

I nestled deeper into his armpit, and he whispered to me. He said I have doe eyes that speak of innocence, but my mouth, my mouth speaks of sex.

Transmuting Teenage Trauma into Superpower

When I was sixteen, I wore heavy kohl eyeliner, brushstrokes of fury, rimming my eyes and sunken skin. My aphrodisiacs contained in fluorescent orange bottles, pills for imagined pains, which I handed out like candy. My friends and I hung out in parks, or Melrose, or Venice Beach, inhaling fumes of smog and sweet pot under the beating Californian sun. I stole things compulsively, fueled by the belief that the world owed me something. This concrete and technological dystopia that I had inherited without wanting, needed to be punished and fought against. I was also funny, in a feral, untamed way. Perfumed with rage and angst. Caught between keeping up with unrealistic ideals of beauty, and cursing them. I  clumsily threw myself into danger, rolling under the stars in cars with boys, running away from everything, running into nothing. Suffocated by my parents, and simultaneously needing more love. Only consoled by open moonlight, by inebriated emotional intimacy, by reckless expeditions at two a.m. Yearning to live how animals live, purely by impulse and desire. This boldness is not a trait admired in young women.

Femininity had been bestowed upon me  like a delicate, linen dress. An heirloom of expectation.Not to be discussed, or too noticeable, but slipped into with an invisible grace. I found it itchy and too small so I tore at it with my teeth and fingernails, until I could fashion it into a mangled diaper or a witches hat.

In the height of adolescence, I was both uncomfortably hypersexualized and shamed by my peers.. Subject to the toxins of gossip and envy, because I seemed to invite them with my clumsy rage, and outfits that hugged my body, still new, sometimes forgetful of it's womanly curvature. Like any teenage girl you know, I procured trauma and heartache rapidly. Running too quickly to notice my bruises, summoning provocative reactions to serve a bottomless void.. Assuming with violent naivety that I was unfuckwithable.   Charging around in a stoned bubble, a child stretched too thin for an ill-fitting vessel.

Every immense high had an inevitable come down. As I sought out trouble, consequences eventually caught up to me. I became intoxicated by my own darkness, sometimes incapable of separating myself with the identity of being troubled. Locked bathrooms became sanctuaries. When I was heartbroken for the first time, I wanted to die. I sometimes slept with my arms crossed over my chest and prayed for death like a mummified corpse.  On a few occasions, I took a more literal approach.

This shadowy caricature of me seems light years away, but sometimes I send her my present day strength, parcels from the reserve of worth it took me years to find. I tell her she is beautiful, but she is more than the vessel of beauty that people seem to think they can comment on and criticize. I tell her that some of the pain she internalizes and then performs, doesn’t belong to her. I tell her that some of her pain is the heavy badge of being intuitive, and if she can deal with the insufferable vulnerability of feeling her feelings, she will notice that she sometimes lets things out so others don’t have to. I tell her that her life ahead will be embroidered by her most golden dreams.  I tell her she is magic, and that she will learn more about that later on.

In retrospect, I see that I have always been sensitive, a neptunian soul. Comprised of the stuff of water, music and dreams. A half foot in each dimension, giving the impression of being in several places at once. Even now, I feel sometimes so close to the veil, so psychically malleable  that I swear I am about to get sucked in to a alternate realm. I can see energy constantly dancing around me, and I now understand why I felt the need to be numb, or to be running, in constant movement away from myself. Sometimes, to be intuitive is to hurt.

My affinity for darkness is now cured by candle lit baths and black clothing, staying up till three amidst clouds of sage and dancing with spirits in my bedroom. I am sometimes scared that if I don’t do these things, the darkness will take its own path. Maybe explode, maybe swallow everyone in my sphere of influence whole. Luckily, I am too hopeful about the opulence in pregnant tomorrows, to flirt with death. There are better lovers and brand new fragrances,cobbled alleyways, glittering adventures, and dreams on foreign pillows awaiting ahead.

Had it not been for my various traumas, rebellions and heartache, perhaps I would have lived within the cornered confines of mundanity. Stayed in the toneless safety of my childhood bedroom.  I may have never heard the call from within, to seek. The need to seek magical dimensions beyond the visage of this dense, tangible reality. To find evidence of the web that connects everything that exists..  to possess the ability to see this world as a fabricated , shared hallucination..a veil before the infinite realms that call out behind inner silences.

Your wounds are not as important as what you did with them. How many traumas have you turned into strength? How many times have you transmuted pain, like alchemy, and emerged at the other end, gleaming brilliantly with the sweat of a brand new superpower? Those are the only traumas that count. They are the fertile soil from which we sprout, like plants from outer space. If you can persist without repeating your pain at the mercy of others, if you can triumph above the rage and the noise, you are indestructible.

Father John Misty is Not Your Twin Flame

Why it’s important to not assign magical qualities to unsavory people.

*** No offense FJM

I have had a bumpy history of only being attracted to men who look and behave like pirates. They are pretty striking, sometimes they wear a singular earring that they expose behind a tendril of greasy hair and combat boots that smell like burning man. Tattoo clad, well travelled. They talk romantically about the sea (seriously), roam aimlessly, only committed to their own unfixed ‘journey’, disappear randomly, and are often found drunk or high.

During my spiritual awakening, or as I like to refer to it as, ‘the melodramatic unfurling of every fucking thing I thought I knew’, the amount of synchronicities occuring in my life were almost excessive. I would think something, or say something, and it would play out on the world stage instantaneously. Sometimes beautiful, other times terrifying.  It felt like I was in a video game of my own making. It is enough to make anyone feel insane, particularly if you are ‘waking up’, without ‘growing up’. Think chain smoking Malboro lights at 2 A.M, without a spiritual context to refer back to, only the myriad of mixed New Age trash on the internet. In these moments, it is natural to find people to share a journey with. Perhaps you have a particular person, or several, whom extraordinary circumstances seem to follow when you are both together. I was incredibly lucky to have Naomi.

Naomi, with her ferocious intelligence, always had the attitude of being divinely protected. She consistently did things that would terrify people, and seemed to be immune to a lot of the consequences of regular folk.  She knew what she wanted, got what she wanted, and did so with a measure of ease that made you realize that she operated on another level. We had eerily similar life paths, and our mutual unfurling occured organically. We were there to fire one another up, to validate the mystical nature of our respective realities and keep each other sane. Naomi is my prime example of a soul connection without unhealthy attachment, our joint objective was always to support and encourage one another, to reflect on our own development and delve into esoterica with a fearless, chic, grace.

During one of our late night talks, huddled in her lush bungalow, we came across the phenomenon known as “Twin Flames” This concept that seemed reserved to fairy tales, but our lives, increasingly magical, were nothing short of the stuff of myths at this point, so it was not far out. If you haven’t heard of the Twin Flame concept, it is understood as another human being serving as the other half of your soul. A Twin Flame is your divine counterpart, the person who represents everything you are lacking and everything you are, in totality. They are the divine masculine to your divine feminine, or vice versa. You supposedly reincarnate with your Twin Flame, repeatedly seeking to conjoin with one another, and usually met by obstacles, until you get it right.   When you meet your Twin Flame, there is a sense of deep recognition, a series of otherworldly occurrences and coincidences, and a runner-chaser dynamic. This means that one person, afraid of their own psyche, runs away from you. Or perhaps, you run away from them. This cycle repeats endlessly until both parties have reached a pinnacle of spiritual development, and voila, you are finally complete because you can be together. 

There are countless Astrologers, Life Coaches and New Age Guru’s who digress on and subscribe to the Twin Flame narrative. It is a cybercult like no other. 

Naturally, as my previous limiting belief systems were dismantling, and because I was ‘waking up’, my life was a seamless compilation of meaningful coincidences and otherworldly circumstance. This wasn’t limited to my experiences with other people, Naomi included. It followed our RESPECTIVE realities, and was only enhanced when we were together. But being the romantic I am, I was all over the Twin Flame rhetoric, particularly when it followed the intrusion of a Piratey man.

I naturally clung on to several of these pirate characters, and assigned meaning to every interaction. There were three (yes, three) men I thought must be my Twin Flame.  It was incredibly easy to pick apart details and assign meaning to them, to interpret the synchronicity following me, through the narrow lens of codependency. I would assign elaborate stories to these unsavory individuals, and project them onto grandiose, disproportionate pedestals that contradicted their behavior.  Yes, the sex was tantric and bizzare, there were moments of bliss and sometimes even U.F.O sightings. There were songs that seemed to tell our stories, coincidences, repeating family dynamics, hummingbirds that followed our coat tails and evenings glittering with possibilities, colored and enhanced by red wine. These pirate-men became my angels and effectively my damnation. In their presence I was enlightened, alive in euphoric ecstasy. In their absence I would follow a quick descent to hell. It made me apocalyptically volatile, seething and tortured. The “Twin Flame” phenomenon excused their shitty, moderately abusive behavior. It was away for me to seperate myself from the divine circumstances that ebbed out from life, not people. When they left, they had the power to take those meaningful moments with them, so I forgot the undefined, luminous material that lay within me.

If you look for the symbolism in things, it will always be there, because our world is comprised of symbols and metaphors. At each level of spiritual development we reel back, understanding more and more of these truths and their symbolic relevance. In hindsight, I see that the ‘other-half’, has always been me. Twin flame belief is disempowering, another symptom of the dualistic matrix we live in. We love to separate and compartmentalize things, but our soul does not do that. It is self-contained, sovereign and not lurking behind the Adderall eyes of a Pirate man-child in Silverlake.

I do not dispute the significance of karmic relationships. There have been countless individuals who have helped me evolve, who have shaped and shook me (Naomi, being a perfect example) and who have felt familiar from the moment I met them. However, when we analyze rather than experience, we rob ourselves of the serendipitous authenticity of these connections. Everyone we meet is a reflection of our own souls, our collective subconscious, so if you see yourself in someone, that’s beautiful. It’s a gift to be able to perceive this, but to label and amplify the stakes is a mistake. The Twin Flame archetype is inherently dysfunctional, and encourages feeble, desperation for love directed outwards, rather than inwards. I have seen it turn myself and countless others into deluded wrecks.

In conclusion, I leave you with this: seek your own divinity, love and healing emanating from within. The only union you need to look for is the one with yourself. And if he looks like Father John Misty, a Pirate, or a depleted extra from a Harmony Korine film, run.

What is Magic?

I hate to break it to you, but even if you don’t know it, you do magic. Every time you think, every time you do an action with an intention, every time you speak, you are doing magic. Yes, we are energy, moving at the speed of light, recalibrating with our environments and surroundings. But we are also language, mechanical waves of thoughts and words shimmering and recasting themselves. The world is composed of description filtered through individual perception. How we imagine our reality is how it becomes, and the way we describe our reality, our life, is the way it is.

The hebrew translation of “Abracadabra”, literally translates to “What speak I create.” When you write, or you pronounce anything, you are “spell-ing” Everything that has happened to you, or has been brought into your field, is a result of this. What if nothing actually existed until it was described and spoken into existence? What if that coworker you called a bitch, only became a bitch once you started describing her as such?

If you have heard of the “Law of Attraction”, or “Manifestation”, then you are aware that if you focus on something enough, you can bring it into your reality. Now, I want to clear things up, because you have only been told part of this truth- and the reality is, everything in your existing world exists because it has been given energy, either through sound, though imagery or through imagination..that includes Trump, war, misogyny..  Collectively we have, on some level, given it permission to exist. Life is a shared hallucination and manifestation of our collective subconscious. 

    Your thoughts, words, and emotions, shape your reality.

Magic, for me, is just an awareness of this personal creative force, reclaimed and redirected. It has taken me a few years to mourn the loss of being lied to about my creative capacity, to harness and direct it through ritual and controlled thought. Magic is a craft, requiring delicate detail and care. It is the art of causing change, using consciousness and in accordance with the will.

You do not need to do a blood sacrifice, or rip off your clothes and have sex with a goat, in order to consciously bring your will into existence. You do it already. The hysterics around magic are there for good reason, the first to separate yourself from your power and the second because yes, with great power comes great responsibility. Spiritual ramifications come from any practice of magic, and they return threefold. Magic isn’t good or evil, the same way a knife isn’t good or evil- the wielder is.  After understanding this, you have to take some spiritual responsibility for your thoughts and emotions, because not only do they affect the sphere of influence in your own life, but additionally they add to our collective subconscious. These can be difficult, uncomfortable truths to swallow- and there will be those who refuse to be honest with themselves and want to remain separate from this power. That is ok too.

When we allow ourselves to just be docile and entertained, we repeat and manifest the things we are entertained by. We repeat others dreams instead of reaching inside of ourselves and deciding upon our own visions. What sort of things lie beneath our repetition of cultural memes and indoctrination? What would evolve organically from our ornate psyches, each individually intricate and distinct? Everything changes when you start emitting your own frequency, words and intentions towards the universe, rather than receiving and repeating that of those around you.      

If you feel the need to take these principles into practice, or even to disprove my theory, I advise you to write about how you want your life to look, as if it is already happening, in present tense. This practice is known as ‘scripting’. Empower it with emotion and trust that it will come to fruition with glistening ease. Voice your own eternal whispers, let them flow out of your soul like glittering blood. Reconnect with your higher self, as you are an inherent creator, capable of using this physical realm as a stage set for your vast inner worlds. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Hex for an Ex

I have to be careful about what I create or write, because often times, it materializes. As a writer, as an artist, I fall in love madly, easily. The flip side to this coin is an apocalyptic vengeance that has to be released through art. If it isn’t,  it will cling to my body like clotted sweat, contaminating me, night and day. I never sent the following letter, and in all honesty, I don’t want it to materialize. So it won't. But sometimes you have to own your shadowy shit, or it will own you.

Dear _____,

I hope the weight of your guilt hangs heavy, like a stone belly on a bird

That just when you have found sleep you are disrupted by the notion that you made a mistake.

I hope you jolt up in bed and replay memories in your head, memories that are sweeter and more passionate than anything in your present life.
I hope you can’t get it up, I hope your sex life becomes monotone and empty, that you are never satisfied and always hungry.

I hope the next girl has limp hair, an annoying laugh and no sense of humor. I hope she is stupid, that she doesn’t teach you things,  and her opinions and thoughts are reflections of things she’s been conditioned to believe. 

I hope her voice taunts you, I hope her body bores you and I hope she is the same as the girl after that and the girl after that and so on.

I hope you compare her to me and know that she will always, always, fall short.
I hope you realize, too late, the magnitude of my impact, that the emotions and the anger were a result of the passion. I hope you love me and watch me from afar, i hope you long for me and it pulls at your heartstrings with painful repetition. I hope it grows like a lump in your belly, cancerous, poisonous, deadly.

I hope you see me in street signs and songs on the radio and passing conversations and license plates and feelings that seem to come from nowhere and hit you hard in the dark. I hope your life follows a path of mundanity, that you never do anything extraordinary, anything as extraordinary as me.

I hope the memory of me follows you till your last breath, and that it sticks out like a brilliant knife.

Evolving

I am afraid of the unknown and yet I have a compulsion towards it. I cannot help but yearn for what waits behind the veil of death, even though the fear of it all spreads up through my skeleton like lightning. I like to go into the woods at night, and call forth spirit, despite my aversion for the cold and the dark. It is almost like I have an overbearing, mystic mother, who prods me in the back until I do the things that ignite and terrify me.

I reinvent myself in order to stay alive, watching my previous identities ferment with intoxicating relief. I have lived nine lives in one. Each new one begins with a bold step into the abyss, sometimes almost certain that I will plummet into destruction. And yet, I emerge, usually wearing a color I didn’t know existed.

My latest transmutation is my favourite.

I have often invoked strong reactions from others, sometimes madly falling in love with strangers, other times collecting enemies quicker than running through  feathers covered in superglue. Part of this is because I have the irresistible tendency to voice truth and opinions no one wants to hear.

A year and a half ago I was living as a model in a bungalow in Los Angeles. My community was a rotating circus of club-goers, social media moguls, artists and actors. A city where everyone wants to be famous- and I think by famous, they want to be loved. There are enough people who want to be famous and not enough that want to heal, or fix anything.

When you are the girl in the magazine, you know that no one actually looks like the girl in the magazine. Including you. It’s all a show, all smoke and mirrors. How lucky I am to have lived behind the curtain. I think if I hadn’t, I might still be trying to emulate an ideal of something that doesn’t actually exist. Aspiring towards the glamor that has been dangled in front of me since birth.

I lived a predominantly nocturnal lifestyle, usually fuelled by some strange combination of kale salad from the whole foods bar, cocaine and self hatred. My friends and I travelled in packs, like coyotes, adorned in vintage and dangling charms. We embarked on violent rampages in midnight ubers down Sunset blvd, frequenting clubs and after parties just to  stare at one another, dance and engage in empty conversations. The rush to find the after party, to ingest more of everything. Only to then to wait for the sun to come up, and in the harsh light of day-even poets in cowboy hats and models in glitter and glossy eyeshadow lose their allure. Empty eyed.

My evenings were intermittently interrupted by castings, where my outsides determined how I could pay my rent. I was the ultimate armchair activist, very articulate when it came to discussing and pin pointing the world’s many problems- but completely immobile in my personal life.  I was suffering from an inner loneliness and dread, a longing for purpose. The only thing that made me feel alive was synchronicity, or doing magic. I longed for evidence that I wasn’t so separate from my surrounding world, even when it seemed to fold in on me. I can’t distinguish whether I was internalizing the woes of the world, or if the world became woeful because I was. What a strange time to be alive, always moving, changing, evolving in nanoseconds. Merging with technology and chemicals, without any real gauge of it's effects. And yet, still moving.  My inability to change anything in my immediate sphere of influence made me feel stagnant and unimportant, and as the political climate brew to a boiling point- so did I.

My rage became palpable, and I converted it into the fuel I needed to get the fuck out of America.

Now I am living in an spiritual ecovillage called Findhorn, in rural Scotland. Findhorn was developed in the 60’s, after a trio of friends began growing miracle sized cabbages through a combination of psychic channelings and communicating with nature spirits. 55 years later, it has blossomed into a village of over 600. It has become a hub for eccentrics, ecodesign, sustainability projects, and inner and outer workshops.It is surrounded by grossly picturesque landscapes and bears an uncanny resemblance Middle Earth.

My favourite thing about living here, is that it feels like a fairy tale. Almost like I am sitting on top of a dimension where everyone is a hobbit, a gnome or a fairy. Sometimes I play with my perception, and look for evidence that they indeed, are. My world view has changed so drastically, I realize that what I was missing can be simplified to three vital things: community, connection to nature, and connection to myself.

I am learning to love myself, and not any of that ‘accept your body, embrace your flaws’ hallmark bullshit- properly love. An undying love, not contingent on anything external. Loving myself enough to find unsuspected reserves of strength in frantic moments, loving myself by gazing into my own eyes and feeling shivers of deep recognition and gratitude. I begin to understand that there is no divide between where god ends and I begin, I am my own passage to the divine, and how ridiculous it is that at this fractal of time, I get to be such a beautifully tangible expression of consciousness. I am my own fairy godmother, my own guru and my own goddess. How sad it is that I ever thought otherwise.

How can I shape the dimensions of my imagined reality, that seems to spill out of me like glossy blood, through the rigid, grey template of our society? Like anyone I want  abundance, splendor, opulence- but in what form? And at what cost? I get bored of things, but never of people. I sometimes wonder how many of my worldly desires have just been regurgitated dreams from television. Tell-a-vision.

It has only just occurred to me that so many of my dreams have been spoon fed to me, that my real dreams do not have to revolve around the accumulation of stuff, but can take an entirely new course, can involve alternative living, falling in love with a group of people, and maybe even fairies.