The year of fire, clarity, closeness, and co-creation

Happy Lunar New Year and happy Fat Tuesday! Through watching the Winter Olympics and reading about the ongoing horrors of the world– from ongoing genocide in Gaza to revolution in Iran to ICE terrorizing and killing Americans and our guests here and making everyone far less safe to zero accountability in the U.S. for Epstein Island pedophiles and their coverup shills to new concentration camps springing up all over the country– my newsfeed has somehow also been pushing me to read about what the Year of the Fire Horse means. It's been fun to learn that the prone-to-action energy of this year is even more universal than I'd imagined, and I can imagine quite a bit. ;-) And. It's tempting to lean on the work and words of distant others when times are hard, isn't it? But that's not what this year is about. Not for me, anyway. I think this is a year of fire, clarity, increasing closeness, and co-creation. No matter what calendar we happen to follow.

Fire

There's not a single woman, nonbinary person, or trans person I know– the world over– who isn't holding chronic rage and grief like a pro now. That is, leaning on others and holding horrifying experiences and difficult emotions collectively somehow. Like the best of our best ancestors did. Like this ability is in our very bones. Most of the men around here still seem to be in a bit of a daze: still following the stock market and watching sports and paying taxes and still investing in oil or surveillance tech or AI and often talking about an old-world order that's rapidly dying before all of our eyes as if little to nothing has changed. To me, most straight men feel like frightened deer trapped in unescapable headlights these days.

I love you, gentlemen, but you need to wake up enough to understand something. The old-world order is ending. The tipping point has already come and gone: there are far more of us up for setting fire to the abusive, horrifying, life-draining, and stale old-world order than there are people still clinging to it and hoping their vast wealth or someone else somewhere is going to save them. But that's not us anymore. We don't want reform. We're done with false promises and Band Aids and performative prayers and other cruel nonsense masking intentionally caused suffering and death on a massive scale generation after generation. We're done with genocide and pedophilia and rape culture and slavery and governments slaughtering their own people and/or their neighbors and all the other oozing violences spewing forth from the chronically disconnected and isolated. From those trapped in cycles of abuse and turning to abusers thinking they'll have a way out. This crumbling old-world order? We want it to crumble now. We write music and poems and cast spells and votes for its demise. We're working and playing together to turn it to ash and dance on its grave together. That's why most women are tired now. That's why women aren't showing up happy to be unpaid servants, punching bags, slaves, sex toys, punchlines, and blamed-and-disbelieved victims anymore. We have a new world to birth: and we know it. Your choices now are help or get out of the way. We also know that some of us won't make it. That it will be our children and their children dancing in those ashes, not necessarily us. And we're fine with that, too. Wherever we are, we know that we will feel the dancing.

I've come to learn so much about myself and the world across the past few years. I know that the fire of change– planned change, unexpected change, welcome change, hard change, even horrifyingly violent change– doesn't burn me anymore like it once did. Because I'm connected to everyone now. Connected to everyone, we are the flame.

We are the flame.

We're the soft-hearted, gentle, loving, and fluid-steel beings that remain when all the stale old nonsense has finally burned away, and we can feel the earth between our toes again and know that we are home.

We don't want to go back. We can't.

We want better. Far better. We want the world that's coming next. The world we feel emerging from within. A world in which we play and work together– across old boundaries– to bring forth all that's been stifled, hidden, ignored, neglected, disbelieved, driven underground, mocked, appropriated, bullied, and stolen.

Fear is here, and fear is real. But fear is nowhere near as real as we are on our feet, together, in the streets of our world.

In these bodies, in this place, on this land and with trees we love as kin, we now do whatever it takes to understand fear together. To lean on each other and to lean on all our emotions, perspectives, and experiences as the superpowers they are. To hold different perspectives and difficult emotions and experiences collectively, in community. And to not allow our experiences and emotions to remain hidden-from-even-ourselves mysteries, fester, and get the best of us– like too many isolated men and a dwindling final few women still do. Here, we value, trust, and move with all our emotions and experiences. Here, we value, trust, and move within community, too. We stay curious. Keep asking questions– preferring the fluidity of life to staying stuck, isolated, and stagnating most days. Here, we're not graceful as collective beings yet. But we all watch forests, murmurations of birds, schools of fish, sparkling-eyed elders at community gatherings, and children playing and dancing across old boundaries– and we keep learning.

Friends, like the kids say, we're fire.

Clarity

One thing I've already learned this year is that playing small doesn't work anymore. When I play small and attempt small changes, like I often did in the past, I tend to fail now. It feels like the earth or the universe herself or maybe just women as a whole are done with us playing small like so many of us were taught to do.

When I join others who are collectively reimagining their neighborhoods and worlds for the better– and putting most of their energy toward that– I'm filled with energy and joy. And I know I'm in the right place. With the right people. People of my heart, spirit, and a wild and reverent revolutionary collective imagination. Most of whom look and sound remarkably different from me. I don't even have to be in the same room– I can feel it in a Zoom meeting– though I prefer to show up in person these days. I know us when I feel us now, which is no small thing. Never let anyone make you believe that your innate sensitivity isn't a superpower. We are remarkable, beautiful, strong, and strange beings on a planet entirely populated with remarkable, beautiful, strong, and strange beings. We're so lucky to be here.

If you don't feel extraordinarily grateful and lucky to be present, move. Take action. Ask for and receive help far more often. Offer help when it's asked for. This year, action is preferable to rumination. Even when you take individual actions that fail– like I did this month– action moves you toward feeling lucky and grateful to be present far better than individual rumination does. My sweetie said to me today "I'm sorry. I know you must be disappointed." My response: "Nope. The disappointment lasted just a few minutes. This clarity is what I needed. I can feel where I should be. I know who I should be with now. I can follow that energy. This is a good thing."

This is a year for choosing clarity, even when it stings. A year that clarity is coming for us whether we like it or not. So, I've decided to like it. In fact, I celebrate clarity this year. Openness. Honesty. Realness. Being more present. Seeing a more-full picture. Admitting what is. Accepting what is. Letting go of what its time to let go of. Resting when you need to rest. Making space for everything that you were taught to ignore– from your own needs and body to speaking up about abuse. I haven't always loved clarity in the moment, in the past, but I always love clarity in hindsight. So, ok, I'm here to help this generation be far more present, open, wonder-filled, and fluid together, in the moment. Because I'm so fucking done being part of a self-sabotaging society that follows the meanspirited, can only learn the hard way and only at the expense of women and children around the entire globe, and that seems designed to produce humans that forget who they are and everything that matters most. I'm done with obfuscation and hiding and distraction and playing nice and being convinced we have no power and working for the wealthy on things that cause only harm in the long run. I am so very done with all that bullshit. We're done with lying and lies.

Closeness

Here's what I most like about clarity right now: greater clarity leads to greater closeness. It's already happening. Can you feel it yet?

Greater clarity can lead to seeing and admitting horrible things out loud, letting go of people and places and stale ways of being, leaving jobs, and changing your behavior and beliefs or city or life path. Greater clarity can mean sorrow and loss and flailing and blame and anger, especially at first.

And. After all that.

What remains is closeness. What other choice to we have?

We accept greater closeness with people who've chosen to stay with us through it all or to live nearby. Greater closeness with the new friends, neighbors, and communities we need to survive our losses. Greater closeness to ancestors. To land and water and plants and trees. Greater closeness to those who speak different languages or who communicate in ways we don't. Increasing closeness is the exact opposite of what the current U.S. regime wants for us. But we're out here listening better, growing closer, and getting stronger together by the day now. I love this for us. And for them.

Co-Creation

People the world over are fighting cruel, fascist-like regimes now as unspeakably wealthy men, the political class, and a few frightened hangers-on cling to the old-world order. The climate change brought forth by that old world's greed is causing extreme weather, floods, and fires too. Most of us now have friends somewhere who are suffering or dying in the wake or in the midst of this. Last year, my partner also struggled with scary new health challenges, and then I sold my part of our business last summer though I wasn't entirely sure why, then Mom went into hospice in September, and she passed away in December. We're making more collective plans with my Dad this year to help him adjust to the loss of the love of his life– which feels harder than all the rest combined. So, this would be a big transition year for me/us even if the old-world order wasn't crumbling all around us. We're in mourning for a lot right now. The difference now is– we're never alone in our grief anymore. Everyone we know is grieving all the time now. I got sick twice in the past two months– a rarity for my once-strong immune system and me. Our bodies are so wise. It was a good reminder that taking the time that we need to rest and grieve is no longer optional. For these bodies, for our relationships, or for our world.

Co-creation feels possible whenever collective grieving and laughter are possible. Cats and goats and comedians on YouTube and social media appear to have the collective laughter covered. Collective grieving needs to happen in person. We're still trying to hold a planet full of grief alone. And it shows.

It seems clear that we're losing a lot these days. People are being terrorized by weather and disappeared, tortured, and murdered by governments– their own and others'– at an unbelievable rate. Here in the U.S., we seem to be losing everything from affordable housing and healthcare to any sense of safety and security to a functioning democracy to believing that our federal government has/ever had any moral high ground whatsoever on the world stage. We have a president who screams and attacks like a long-neglected and exhausted toddler and who calls everyone on earth now "losers," IN ALL CAPS, on a regular basis. This month, that includes U.S. athletes in the winter Olympics. It feels like the country elected the pus of a massive, long-festering wound to try to lead us. Blind, oozing, smelly, oddly orange pus. If feels like our best ancestors lied to us– that cracks aren't where the light comes in but where the pus emerges. So. Much. Pus.

And. Many of us are a bit surprised to find that now more than ever it somehow also feels like the time for creation. Co-creation. Big and small co-creation. Collective creation. Like murmuration. A turtle island nation. Looking a bit different in Los Angeles than in Tehran or Portland or Gaza City or Minneapolis or Mumbai or Caracas or New Orleans or Shanghai. And yet beautiful, and remarkably useful, to each other– to loving people, on the ground, beside one another, wanting real freedom for each other. People tired of all the outdated above and below billionaire-backed nonsense and even their own in-fighting bullshit. People full of humor and generosity, despite everything. Co-creation unlike the individual-centered creation that so many of us have done in the past. Co-creation that might be you with millions or thousands of people, or hundreds, or you with three people, or you with a heart that holds a whole region or planet within it but a body at peace and content to create primarily in the presence of trees and sky and wind and dogs and cats. Co-creation: loved by locals, beautiful to many, useful to everyone who wants for freedom for all.

This will be a year of remarkable co-creation. Loss will happen, yes, but the time for worrying about and expecting loss is over. Expect, instead, fire, clarity, and growing closeness in relationships old and new. All fire, all clarity, and all closeness are preparing us for co-creation unlike many of us have never known. Yet somehow, we all still know it when we feel it. Co-creation is in the soil here on earth. It's in the oceans and forests, in birdsong, and in our poetry, music, dance, children, bodies, and bones. It's time to trust the kids on this one: we are fire. And it's time to trust all playful elders and ancestors on this one: we are co-creators...

I pledge allegiance
to earth's kids
who know we are
the flame.

And to all playful elders and ancestors
one planet of co-creators
with wonder, gratitude, and wildly different ways of being and knowing.
Yet, somehow, remarkably
one,
and
the same.