Collections 3: what we know and can't say
Hi! I'm so glad you're here. This week's collection is things I can't seem to talk about directly, that live in the gap between knowing and saying.
1. This sliver of blue candle. I've been sitting here trying to figure out what I want to say about it. I love that it contains a reminder of time - there's a few minutes of light left in it, but not many. It feels like a small visual reminder that time is precious, even as it is vast and infinite. It sits on my windowsill, reminding me: nothing lasts forever, not the stump of the candle, not the idea, not the oak tree. There are parts of me that find that terrifying, and other parts that find it really comforting. And, what we do while we're here, with the light we have left, I think it matters.
2. The Emperor card from Rust Belt Arcana, a gift from tarot reader and poet Kira Preneta. Bowfins, the fish on the card, are one of the oldest fish species on the planet. Unlike most fish, male bowfins will stay with the eggs and little fish, protecting them, until they're old enough to go live off on their own. I love knowing that for more time than we can remember, these fish have been caring for their little ones. I love the tarot because it's a way of illuminating deep questions; and I have a special love for tarot decks that queer capitalist & patriarchal notions of gender and care. What practices help you hold your deep questions? Who has given you fierce nurturing?
3. I love this quote from Ursula K. Le Guin's Words Are My Matter, in an essay about the house she grew up in: "I keep talking about comfort, practicality and impracticality, stairs, smells, and so on, when what I want to talk about is beauty; but I don't know how to. It seems you can only describe beauty by describing something else, the way you can only see the earliest star after sunset by not looking directly at it." I love Ursula K. Le Guin for many reasons, some of which I wrote about here. And I wonder, what are the things these days that you can't talk about directly, but know, deep in your bones, from experience, from noticing, from living?
Sending you love from the river,
Kali
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Kali Boehle-Silva
Writing, questions, and meaning-making for late-stage capitalism + collapse.
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