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Life is Relative

Everything you feel is relative to everything and everyone else.

Sat with a friend and her new diagnosis this afternoon. No words came, so I held her in the Light for the length of a pot of tea. Sometimes that is the whole prayer.

Home from a night shift. Genmaicha, the kind with toasted rice. Nothing magical about it except that I'm actually tasting it.

Dream journal tip nobody told me for years: write the last scene first, then work backwards. Pulling the thread from the end unspools the whole thing.

Sunset adoration from Liber Resh at the bus stop, facing west, as discreetly as anyone can make the sign in public. A small girl in a dinosaur raincoat watched closely, then copied it exactly. Her mother and I exchanged a nod of mutual professionalism.

I tried praying and I don't know who I was talking to

Grew up with no religion at all. My parents were kind, practical people who thought church was for weddings. Last night I couldn't sleep, and for some reason I just said, out loud, 'Hi. I don't know if anyone's there. Thank you for my sister getting through her surgery.' Then I felt very silly, and also kind of lighter? Is it prayer if you don't know who you're addressing? Do I need to pick someone first? Genuinely asking. Please be gentle, I'm new at all of this.

Samhain dinner, dorm edition

Planning a tiny Samhain dinner with my roommates next weekend. Nobody else is a witch, but everybody misses somebody, so it works. The plan: one empty chair at the table, a photo of each of our grandparents on the windowsill, LED tealights (approved by the RA, in writing, I have the email), and my grandma's pumpkin bread, which I have failed to make correctly three times so far. We'll go around and each share one story about the person in our photo. That's the whole ritual. I think it's enough.

Small thing that's been helping: a rose quartz in my coat pocket. Whenever my hand finds it, I check whether my jaw is clenched. It usually is. Then it isn't.

Third Tower of the week. Fine. FINE. I'll call the landlord about the bathroom ceiling.

Saturday morning, so the porch got swept: back of the house to the front door, front door to the steps, steps out to the street. Then a bucket of warm water with lemon, a handful of salt and a splash of Florida Water for the steps and the doorframe. Psalm 23 the whole way through, twice. Grandmama always said never sweep after dark or you'll sweep your luck out with the dust. I'm fifty-eight years old and still not brave enough to test it.

Grey seal followed me the whole length of the cove this morning, ten yards out, never once looking away. Didn't feel like being watched. Felt like being walked home.

Last night, the ghats at Dashashwamedh: evening aarti, the bells, the river full of little floating lamps. Seventy-one years old, and in my dreams I am still nine and holding my father's hand.

Japa has a boundary condition

Morning japa on the streetcar: 108 beads, 'Om Shri Matre Namah' on each one, mala tucked in my coat pocket because it's already minus two and I value my fingers. Something my amma taught me that I love: when you reach the meru, the larger guru bead, you don't cross over it. You turn the mala around and go back the way you came. As a software tester, I find this deeply satisfying. It's a boundary condition. You never run off the end of the array. Devi has excellent error handling.

A wren sang from the hedge I've been laying all week, the moment I bent down the last pleacher. In Welsh, dryw means both wren and druid. I'm taking it as a review.

Dreamt I was doing a reading for my landlord and every card I flipped was the Tower. Woke up, checked my email: the radiator guy can't come until Thursday. The cards were right.

The house smells like October

Simmer pot is on, which in this house means autumn has been officially declared. Peel from two oranges, three cinnamon sticks, a palmful of whole cloves, a sprig of rosemary, a few coins of ginger and a handful of cranberries the grandkids didn't eat. Cover with water, lowest flame, top it up every half hour. It isn't for drinking, it's for the house. I stir it clockwise and think about who's coming for Thanksgiving and what I'd like the kitchen to feel like when they walk in. Warm. Forgiving. A little chaotic. Only one rule: when you leave the kitchen, the pot gets turned off. I've scorched enough pans in forty years to know the house spirits don't care for burnt cinnamon.

Mercury goes retrograde today. Put down the pitchfork.

Mercury stations retrograde in Scorpio today and runs backward until mid-November. Before the group chat blames it for every dropped call, here's what I actually do with these three weeks: Back up your phone. (You should anyway. Mercury is just the reminder.) Re-read texts before sending, especially anything written after 11pm. Lean into the re- words: review, revise, reconnect. Old friends tend to resurface. Let them. Bonus: Venus has been retrograde since early October, so it's a lovely season for an honest conversation and a terrible one for an impulse tattoo. Not that I'd know anything about that.

Someone hums in the proofing room

I bake from 10pm to 6am. Henri trained me fourteen years ago, when I could barely shape a baguette. He hummed while he worked, always the same tune, some old chanson he never told me the name of. Flat on the high notes. He'd tap each loaf twice before it went in the oven, like knocking on a door. He died in August. I took over his shift because nobody else wanted it. Three weeks ago, around 3:40, I was alone in the back. Mixer off, ovens heating, that deep quiet you only get at that hour. And from the proofing room I heard humming. His tune. Flat on the high notes. I'm a seeker, not a believer in much yet. I checked the radio (unplugged). I checked the alley door (locked). I checked my own mouth, honestly, because I've caught myself humming it before. Not me. I stood in the doorway and said, 'Bonsoir, Henri.' The humming stopped. The rack of loaves in there had risen perfectly, better than any batch I've managed since he left. I tapped each one twice before it went in the oven. I've done it every night since. Whatever that was, I'm choosing to take it as a thank-you for keeping the ovens warm.

Zazen with a supervisor

5:40am. Bell, bow, sit. Facing the wall, eyes half open, breath going wherever breath goes. At 5:43 Miso, my cat, sits directly between me and the wall, fully in my field of vision, and stares. Not cute staring. Supervisor staring. Old me would have counted that as a ruined sit. These days I think Miso is the sit. Here is a thing appearing. Here is my mind wanting it to be different. Here is breath, still going. By 5:50 she was asleep against my knee. By 6:00 so was my foot. Both counted.

Brigid is a goddess of poetry among her other trades, and every so often I wake with a line that doesn't feel like mine. Last night's: 'The well remembers what the bucket forgets.' I keep a pencil by the bed now, not a pen, because pens die at 3am and pencils don't. Wrote it on the back of the electric bill. No idea yet what the rest of the poem is. I'm in no rush. She's never once handed me the whole thing at once.