balance & sacred spaces // 02-05-2025

Well, January was absolutely wild. From starting out the New Year with two mass death events in the US, to LA-on-fire & snowstorms in the southeast, to the inauguration and the confirmation hearings, where masks are continuing to fly right off, to the sweeping presidential pardons and executive actions, to Indonesia joining the BRICS, to the bird flu outbreak, to a brokered ceasefire agreement in Gaza (which is dicey, and much too little too late, but hostage deals and a reprieve from the total annihilation campaign are underway), to the plane crash in DC (which apparently was carrying mostly children), to weather so warm in Fairbanks that the studio flooded four times. The friend I’ve been grieving the disappearance of tailed my car for 6 miles through back roads while I was moving last Tuesday. It would have been less unsettling if they just stopped by my house. Or picked up the phone. At least there would be some resolve. Being followed and watched from a distance is ubiquitously unnerving. I guess unsettling-unresolve and silent surveillance has always been their violence of choice. It’s moving faster and getting ~weirder~ out there.

We made a snap decision to break the lease at the studio and move everything out last week, before the 1st of February. If it is flooding in January, it will likely flood at erratic intervals, every time it warms up, until May. All of my art and music supplies are currently in the living room and basement of a friend’s house (bless them). We have a new location scouted. It’s smaller, but it’s more private, and not terribly far from the old place. We pushed back recording the album by about a month to make room for some of the chaos to settle. I went to a sweet little bonfire at the new studio location on the New Moon/Chinese New Year, and played a card game with friends for 12 hours straight this Sunday. Trying to hold the people close and disentangle all notions that time=money.

Speaking of which, I got a wild hare this morning to get a different job, again. One of the most unsettling feelings in all of existence is the feeling of waiting for time to pass. It’s dissociating, always wishing you were somewhere else, doing something else, feeling unable to leave. I’ve watched more television in the past year than I have since I lived with my mom, over 20 years ago. It’s most of what I’ve been doing for 16 months. That and weeping. I miss daylight. I miss growing strange and beautiful flowers. I miss waking up early to write. I miss having friends who drop by for dinner. I miss playing music once a week. I am not easily defeated, but if any period of my life was going to send me there, the past year and a half has been it. I used to be exceptional at re-framing my perspective and making joy out of the mundane and art out of the difficult. I still try, and I even succeed much of the time. There is no light without darkness. But lately, everyone has been a little wacky. When I recede into myself for wisdom and peace, that sacred space I’ve always carried and have learned to protect fiercely, it seems like somebody or something is always clawing at the door, demanding that I come out to deal with a crisis. I have space for much of it, but it is impossible to maintain that space when you forgo your restful states. These are the places within ourselves that are in the most dire need of our protection and presence.

For this next era, my most palpable goals are to clean and organize my home, dote on my houseplants, and reestablish a space for artmaking, wherever or however that becomes. I’ve got brushing my teeth every day, drinking enough water, feeding myself regularly, showing up for my community, and keeping up with my dishes down, but the space for real restorative rest, both internally and externally, have been woefully disorganized for far too long.

I hope you all are doing well, protecting your peace, and alchemizing your grief into power. What a wild January, once again. Here’s to a February of balance.

Much love,

~amelia