Imbolc and the Moon of Tides
Friday gratefuls: Rich on Wall Street, the national anthem. Wild Flower. Downtown Evergreen. Dr. O’Leary. No skin cancer.
Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Breakfast with Rich
Week Kavannah: Bitachon. Confidence. I need to focus on confidence this week. Important decisions for cancer treatment, how to stay confident when physical weakness challenges me.
Tarot: #6, The Forest Lovers
In my writing I’m learning to balance animus and anima, listening to both, especially as I link my work to the natural world.
One brief shining: Wall Street. More wicked than I knew. Built by slaves of Dutch owners, the first Wall Street. A stockade. In 1711 a slave market there, a city slave market. Rich taking his honors class from Colorado School of Mines. The Body Politic. Politics of the body.
Early breakfast with Rich Levine. The Wildflower’s door was open, so I went inside, sat down. Noticed on the menu: 7:30-2:00. It was 7:20. Oops. Owner came out of the bathroom, started. “You scared the shit out of me. Want a cup of coffee?” I did.
When Rich showed up, laundered and starched white shirt, blue Patagonia vest in 12 degree weather, I greeted him as a Minnesotan. Cold weather proof.
He ordered the Athena, a vegetarian omelet. A Mountain Skillet for me, eggs and chicken-fried steak, wild potatoes, and pancakes.
Over coffee, while we waited for our food, Rich told me of his pending trip with his class, the Body Politic, to New York City. Most interesting to me? Wall Street. Built by the enslaved. Later a city slave market.
The owner of Wild Flower delivered Rich’s omelet, my Mountain skillet. “Ready for a refill?”
We ate.
Plantation cotton fed Wall Street’s growth. Eerily, I also discovered mortgage backed securities sold to foreign investors. The collateral? Enslaved people. Aetna insured the enslaved as property.
Rich also pointed me to later stanzas of the national anthem which include these verses:
“No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave”
The British armed the enslaved. We sang, “Sweet land of liberty.”
A couple more cups of coffee later Rich told me his Ob/Gyn daughter was pregnant. His second grandchild, a sister for one and a half year old Felix.
Bodies feeding. Bodies about to be born. Bodies aging.
We parted ways. Love you, Rich. Love you, Charles.
Started up a begrimed Ruby. Drove away smiling. Energized.
Rich wants to collaborate on Even the Gods Must Die, my first novel. Vulnerable. My first. Not confident it shows skill. He says that doesn’t matter. It matters. To me.
Admission. I plan as many revisions to Superior Wolf as necessary to make it sing. Then. I’ll use ChatGPT to help me find an agent. A place I got stuck a while back.