Taking a Break

on death cycles

This newsletter is entering an official Death Cycle. This week seemed an appropriate time to announce it. If you aren’t familiar with Tarot, a Death Cycle - at least in the way I was taught it - is both the ending and beginning of something. It is the time when we walk away from something that is no longer serving us (no longer medicine or beauty for us) and open space for whatever new thing is on its way. Or here. Or percolating. Or whatever.

Often, in my experience, Death Cycles are pronounced by Threshold periods - those times when we sit in between two things (paths, worlds, roles, jobs, lovers) and aren’t able to move from one to the next yet (for whatever reason. I often think of Threshold times as a bridge and encourage my clients and friends to try to focus on the bridge vs. focusing on what waits for us/them on the other side of the bridge.

And, in that sense, I am definitely in a Threshold as I have no choice but to focus on the very immediate here and now. In some ways, my life is very small. We are in St. Louis; we are DoorDashing to keep from sleeping in our truck; and we do almost nothing else.

From other views, my life is a big trash heap. We both struggle with our mental and physical health. We long for connection - to each other and to the world - and can’t seem to find it. Honestly we have 3 goals each day, make enough money to keep staying in our super-shitty hotel, eat at least one meal¹, and be awake enough to be skin-to-skin before we fall asleep.

OH - and to look for work.

A search that is just one of many things made more complicated by being unhoused. My partner can’t drive right now. If I get a job that requires me to go to a place, he is without a way to get anywhere the whole time I’m working - annoying if we’ve cobbled together the money to be in a shitty motel, not doable if we are sleeping in the truck. So the best case scenario is for him to get work, which means we’ve put all of our eggs in that basket, and we focus all of our energy on DoorDashing enough to stay in shitty motels (so we at least have a bed) and applying for jobs he can do.

The result? A lot of hanging our hopes on things that don’t happen (though this would likely be true if we were focusing on my job search as well) and my own website is about to be turned off because I couldn’t pay the renewal fee. I mean, I might have been able to, but it doesn’t seem like the best use of $250² when you are living in your truck.

In fact, most things look really different when you are living in your truck - or trying to avoid it at all costs.

Over the past 3 months I’ve thought of tons of posts to write about community - in a broad sense, like how people strive for it regardless of circumstance, and in a more micro sense, like how community shows up in fascinating ways when you are living on the street/in a vehicle and eating/showering at churches. Between finding the time to sit down and write and having the brain energy to even figure out what I want to say, I don’t write them.

Maybe I’m just following the advice I heard from Alexander Chee³ and waiting until I’m further away from the situation to be able to write the situation.

Or maybe I was never gonna be a writer and I’m just out of things to say about the shitty way we’ve set our country up to treat our most vulnerable citizens.

Myself included.

1. Wanna know who is affected by all this government shut-down stuff? And this administration’s b.s. hold-outs? That would be me. From the state of Missouri, “Due to the ongoing federal shutdown, Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) has informed all state agencies to temporarily suspend the issuance of SNAP benefits as they are 100% federally funded. As a result, DSS will not be able to distribute SNAP benefits until further notice from FNS.”

2. Or even $35 if I switch to monthly, but multiply $35 x 12 and you’ll see why I really don’t want to do that…

3. The one time, when I still had dreams, and I was fortunate enough to be in a writing seminar with him. Thank you Shipman.