I have the time.

What if I don't make something of it?

Hi. I’m Katie. This newsletter is a place for the woo curious to explore spirituality, culture, and humanity in an intersectional way. Here’s what I’m thinking about this week…

When I was a child, summers were measured by everything but time.

The months of June and July in Mid-Missouri were spineless, any semblance of structure softened by the humidity that hung low over the fields surrounding my home. Each day was a cube of watermelon flesh placed on my tongue, juices coursing down my cheeks and pooling under my chin. I could eat it as slowly as I wished.

Summers were for decadence, for ice cream sandwiches in the shade and pirouettes through sprinklers. Summers were for idleness, for hours swinging softly on the porch with a well-loved book in hand. Summers were for nothingness: no plans, no particular goals, no purpose other than to wake up and ask, “what should we do today?”

I’m the one with the sassy heel pop on the left.

And the answer was always different. Today, I will climb up into my treehouse and count the leaves on the oak above me. Today, I will walk parallel to the thin stream in the woods and peer under the shelves of limestone to see if toads are hiding in the cool darkness. Today, I will spin in circles under the darkening sky and watch the damselflies swarm above me, a chaotic cacophony of gossamer wings and slender bodies that zigzag wildly yet never collide.

When I was young, I did not wake up with a to-do list sitting on my chest or the soft whisper of productivity calling me to make something of myself. I was simply a girl in the summer. I did as I wished. I filled my pockets with interesting rocks and slept with my window open just so I could hear the mournful call of the whippoorwill who lived in the forest.

To not have a plan was the most natural thing in the world.

It is summer again. I am still in Missouri. It is still humid. But I am much older.

For the first time in years, I have the luxury to wake up and ask myself, “what should I do today?”

Yet I blink my eyes open and feel fear: it feels unwise to be able to ask myself this liberating question.

Shouldn’t I be searching for a job (I quit mine)? Shouldn’t I be organizing piles of things to donate (I’m moving away in a few months)? Shouldn’t I be making lists and vision boards and agendas and plans?

Each of these questions swarms above my head, one colliding into the next in an upsetting fireworks show that rains ash over my body. I wonder if I should just stay under the covers. I get up anyway.

I sit on the edge of my bed, my sleep shorts bunched around my thighs, and look over my shoulder at the miasma of productivity, the one that follows me around like a cartoonish thundercloud trailing behind my every step.

I glare at it. It crackles menacingly. I kick my heels against the bed frame, slump my shoulders and sigh.

I entered the workforce at 16. I spent the next 18 years being productive. I was raised to work and to work hard. I am no stranger to burning the candle at both ends.

I stood in front of a classroom for nine months out of each of the dozen years I taught. I responded to the blare of school bells that told me exactly what to do and how long to do it for. The silences in between were for work: watching the halls, grading the papers, clicking the mouse, putting the caps back on the whiteboard markers.

Even during the summers, the bell of productivity still rang, albeit more softly. There were always meetings to attend, ways to be developed and molded into a more respectable teacher, and bulletin boards to decorate. And in moments that weren’t planned, I was busy trying to fill them with the things I couldn’t do during the school year: vacations, lunch dates, the doctor’s appointments that I could never schedule.

During June and July, despite my efforts to slow it down, time seemed to grow impossibly long legs and take giant leaps across squares on the calendar until, suddenly, it was August.

But now, time is behaving as it did when I was a child. I close my eyes and let my mind drift away from the narrow walls of my bedroom.

Time sits idly in the middle of a field, a sprig of wheatgrass caught between its teeth. It pulls a hat over its eyes and leans back into the embrace of the summer wildflowers: black-eyed Susans, wild bergamot, prairie asters.

I feel the urge to grab Time by its shoulders and shake it violently. To ask it to tell me how to fill the planless days that stretch out in front of me before I leave Missouri for good. I want to bottle it up in an hourglass so that I can mark each grain of sand as it slips through the slender neck.

I go to reach for Time but stop. A dragonfly alights on the brim of its hat and runs its spindly legs over its eyes.

I stand still and watch the two of them, the very picture of repose. Eventually, I, too, lie back in the field and look up, hands behind my head, and watch the dragonflies dance overhead.

I eventually open my eyes, stand up and walk away from my bed. My cloud of productivity follows me, spewing unchecked boxes, unsent emails and job postings. Phantom bells ring, their ghostly sound an itch on a palm that no longer exists.

I ignore all of it, walk to my kitchen and pull my favorite knife from its sheath. I set the blade next to a watermelon, its striped sides like pale green tributaries etched on a faded map.

Viva la Vida, Watermelons | Frida Kahlo, 1954.

I pick up the knife and split the watermelon at its seam, savoring the pleasant crack of the rind as I use my hands to finish the job. Black and tan seeds wink up at me, an abundance of freckles on a ruby red face.

I work slowly, sliding my knife through the watermelon one direction and then the other, until I have created cubes that slide easily away from the rind and into the bowl I have prepared. I let the juice run down my hands and pool in the creases of my elbows. I eat as I work.

I wash my hands when I finish and carry my bowl of watermelon to the concrete steps in front of my house. I sit there, in the early morning heat of the summer, and eat my watermelon, piece by piece. I listen to the cardinals rustling in the tree next to me. I watch the neighbor’s calico cat pad softly up the sidewalk towards her home.

I look behind me and realize that the static of productivity has faded, whipped into wispy, dreamy cirrus clouds that float around me. The day spools out in front of me, ripe with possibility.

Time eases onto the step next to me, crosses its long legs and holds out a hand. I plop a piece of watermelon in its palm.

Have you ever had a time in your life where you didn’t have a plan for what was next? Is it easy for you to not have a plan? I want to hear all about it.

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✨Cards for Humanity: ✨ The Nine of Pentacles

Whether you’re into tarot or not, here’s a few things to consider about this weird thing called life.

In her essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,”¹ Audre Lorde describes the erotic as a kernel of yellow food coloring embedded in the center of a white, colorless pat of margarine. When we dare to break open the pellet and work the brilliant, yellow color between our fingers, what was once lifeless and bland becomes vibrant, energetic and pleasurable.

The Nine of Pentacles is a moment where we split open the kernel of pleasure and let it flood and filter into every facet of our lives. Though it’s tempting to read this card as an invitation to excess—the bacchanalian-esque grapes in the background urge this narrative along—the figure’s gaze is fixed not on the abundance that surrounds her. Rather, she chooses to look at the bird that has landed softly on her finger.

A simplistic interpretation of this card might be “enjoying the spoils of success.” And the Nine of Pentacles is certainly rife with creature comforts and the physical assets that make us feel content—nine pentacles stud the thicket behind the woman, symbolizing abundance and financial prosperity. As the penultimate card in the series of ten in the suit, a bountiful cycle is coming to an end.

But I prefer to see this card as a shift in perspective. The material items that we traditionally associate with success (the golden pentacles and the succulent grapes) are not as important as the pursuit of the sort of pleasure that money cannot buy—the sort that comes from a bird alighting on your hand unexpectedly, a wink from Mother Nature herself.

I often ask myself, when looking at a tarot card, what the next frame in the scene would be. I imagine that the woman, guided by the bird, walks away from the nest of pentacles that she has stored around her. She feels secure enough to leave behind what she’s always known and go off in search of the sort of sustainable, life-giving pleasure that she knows is out there. The sky above her is yellow, a nod to Lorde’s apt analogy that simply choosing daily to move towards pleasure is enough to break the dam and flood our lives with beauty.

When the Nine of Pentacles appears in a reading, evaluate where you are being asked to invite pleasure into your life. You might find that your guides are nudging you away from tangibility and guiding you towards sensuality. And this act isn’t merely self-serving: as Lorde notes, “recognizing the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world, rather than merely settling for a shift of characters in the same, weary drama.”

If we followed the protagonist in the Nine of Pentacles for just a little longer, I’d like to think that she, fueled by her pursuit of pleasure, put those pentacles to use and worked to change the status quo in some way: by writing an essay, painting a picture, running for office, leading a protest.

Pleasure paves the way for change, but we don’t have to rush straight to the work. In fact, pleasure is part of the work. The Nine of Pentacles reminds us to stand there, for a beat or two, and let the bird rest on our fingers—to watch it and breathe deeply.

This is essential to the work.

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✨Prompts | The Nine of Pentacles✨

Meditate. Journal. Pull some cards.

☀️ What in my life brings me pleasure? What does not?

☀️ What becomes accessible when I am still and “unproductive”?

☀️ Where in my life do I need to stop asking permission?

☀️ What am I being called to appreciate and to study closely in life?

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✨Weekly Mantra✨

Write it down. Say it out loud. Share it with a friend.

I seek to feel pleasure fully and firsthand.

1. I read this essay in the book “Pleasure Activism” by adrienne maree brown. Much of brown’s work is informed by Lorde.