Cowboys are my weakness

“Life gives us what we need when we need it; receiving what it gives us is a whole other thing.”

Hello, it is Tuesday, and I am listening to this song on repeat, with an entire hot pink cake in the fridge.

Saturn moves into Pisces today, which if you believe in astrology, means my Saturn return is beginning. If you don’t believe in astrology, know that I’ll be turning 28 next week, and it feels like staring up at a big mountain, an important mountain, a loving stern mountain. I know I have to climb it, in fact, am excited to climb it, and still— I am trembling. With fear? Perhaps with fear. Perhaps excitement.

My birthday coincides with a grief anniversary, one of the hardest things I’ve ever lived through, and I’ve spent some time this week sad that these two things will always live side by side. I love birthdays, mine and others— the whole thing of it, waking up remembering a little extra that I’m alive, that the whole day stretches out in shimmering magic. Perhaps I will always grieve while I celebrate, and that is a hard pill to swallow, but also: of course. Makes sense these two things go together so acutely.

Mary Gauthier sings, “And your mind is reeling as the sky is changing / All you're feeling and you're re-arranging / the rest of your life like lines on an old sailors chart.” Birthdays are for reeling and re-arranging. I’m going to spend the day in New Mexico, under big sky and stars. I want to drive in circles, scream on a bridge, eat cake somewhere strange.

Big sky brings me to the book I read this week— Cowboys are My Weakness, by Pam Houston. I think in another life I was a cowgirl, which is funny because every time I’ve ever ridden a horse, I’ve been afraid of how much they know about me without either of us saying a word. A horse knows you’re scared no matter how confident you pretend to me. They know when you’re excited. They can tell where your eyes are looking without seeing your face.

There’s no lying there.

This book, finishing it, is significant because I bought it one year exactly and never read it, interrupted by the thing I am grieving. To finally open it, to find it resonating with a kind of truth that made me immediately want to read it a second time— feels like a circuit is completed.

I love this book because of open sky and ruthless wild women and heartbreak and a kind of electric current humming underneath everything.

Grief is the mountain. So are the stars and the dry arroyos and the hot pink cake.

xox

Raisa

PS— “I’ve decided, thanks to some wonderful encouragement, that I will now give you the option to have a paid subscription to my zine. For many reasons, mostly involving a desire for folks without the income to access it, I will still offer it for free. But this way, if you do have the means, you can actively & financially support my labor, gifts & time - which goes a long way for a working artist. I will always keep sledding (AKA making & sharing art). Your support pulls the sled so I can do so with more ease. Thank you so much for considering participating in this way.”

Shira Erlichman wrote these words and I couldn’t have said it better myself. You can upgrade your subscription anytime.

Here are some things I’ve been appreciating this week—

This photo of David Bowie:

Terry O’Neill, David Bowe, 1974

Fire of Love Documentary

The energy of this photo from Pinterest—

Buying new pajamas

Sunlight and the days getting longer and longer

You.