Saturn Says... write a book

or the magic of doing something that makes you want to puke

It’s been two moons since my last post. I am a bear awakening from hibernation. Months are but blinks of an eye. This season is all music without words, feet without shoes, and red wine stains on my lips. I announced aloud that I would start writing a book, and a world opened before me, characters slipping through the spaces between spruce boughs and salmonberry. Not only this story, but others too, begin to pour into my consciousness. How had I not heard them before? Or perhaps they were always there, lingering like static in the background, a frequency I did not attune to. Now that the door is open it spills out like milk across the table. 

If you asked me about writing fiction, I would have told you a resounding, “yes - but not right now”. Turns out, “not right now” or “it isn’t the right time” is just code for I don’t have the guts to give myself over to that right now. It also turns out that Saturn had other plans for me. Plans that included doing things that make me want to barf and squirm. 

I’m in that place of creativity spiraling and daydreaming so integral in world building. I am beginning to taste this novel, feel the rhythm with which it moves through me. I am speaking less, cocooned in what still feels like the fragility of a new world, still cautious as to not break the spell, to keep the portal open.

I’m beginning to think this book will unravel me. I wonder how much of myself do I write into this story? Or am I myself impossibly interwoven?

This revelation occurred as Saturn stationed over my own natal Saturn at 11 Pisces. I have been grappling with the growing pains of my Saturn return since last March. 

I think about all the people I thought I would be and all the things those people would do, and with all the seriousness of Saturn's weight, wonder if I ever will.  From childish daydreams to the buoyant fantasies of my early twenties, I am aware that not all will survive this flood. This is the place where dreams die. Yes, it sounds dark, but in giving up those dreams I welcome others. I commit more deeply to what truly matters. 

What survives will persist. 

I am more aware of time than ever before. More aware that we are always choosing, even when we are not making a choice, and that I am responsible for the life before me. Another word for Saturn is Accountability. I feel like the Hanged One, waiting, lingering, in this limbo of choice, the chrysalis not yet broken open. It is hard to not feel the weight of urgency. My friend reminds me that urgency is a construct of our culture, of capitalism, and I breathe into that, albeit shallowly. 

What does it mean to meet God halfway? I tell my ancestors to speak louder. I say I’m sorry I’m so thickheaded, but I can’t decipher these messages. Talk to me like I’m five years old again. Tell me everything is going to be okay. I make an arrangement. Okay, I will meet you halfway. I will put myself in spaces and places, across state lines and the facade of borders. I will sing to new rivers and walk down crowded streets in search of whatever it is I’m meant to find. I will write new worlds and build in the wreckage of this one. I will make room inside this body for Possibility. 

Perhaps the meaning is, in times when there is no sense making and the fog rests upon the shore so thick and heavy it wraps around you like a woolen cloak, all we have to turn to is our Practice. The discipline to continue despite not knowing the outcome. The strength to come back to the simple things, the humble moments, and let them be enough, for now. 

So here we are. Bare feet crunching through last autumn's sun kissed musked maple leaves, cupping into the hollow hoof tracks of an Elk. Notebook in hand I walk to the river, ground myself on a large lichen covered stone, and practice.

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