Blog o' Gnosis

I am proud to be a citizen of the United States, a country that is a beacon of liberty and religious tolerance for the rest of the world. I am all for freedom of religion too, yet there are some religions that I have a very big problem with. Specifically, religions that hold truck with locked briefcases.

I became aware of this fact while reading a recent article about Scientology. At one point the article describes some secret documents at the core of Scientology—maybe the ones about hydrogen bombs being dropped by aliens into Earth’s volcanoes 75,000,000 years ago, I’m not sure. When you reach an exalted level of Scientology, you bring your own locked briefcase to a desk, someone puts a few sheets of paper into it, you go to a secure room, unlock the briefcase, and then you can read these documents—once—before returning them the same way.

I read this and was repulsed. What deluded SciFi fan club would actually believe that reading a short story could cause physical harm to non-believers? And what group of people would be so daft as to accept anything transported by locked briefcase as God’s revealed truth—or even God’s working draft?

My repulsion lasted all of 30 seconds, however, before I realized that the incident was ringing a bell. Yes, I too was once involved with a briefcase-carrying sect, and lived to tell the tale. And not to be outdone by any two-bit space aliens, my story has handcuffs as well. Let me explain.

This particular group is still active, so let’s fictionalize it a little bit: it is hereby the Dairy tradition. In the Dairy tradition, you always leave little saucers of milk outside for the nature spirits and feral cats in your neighborhood. Dairy people are big on leaving offerings, which came naturally to me with so many teenagers in my house at the time. Communing with the spirits was just like doing a huge Costco shop one day, only to find that everything had mysteriously disappeared by the next morning. Practical spirituality like this suited my lifestyle, and I felt I had found my place among kindred souls.

One of the first things I noticed about Dairy lore it was its six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon-esque ability to be secretly connected to everyone else’s mythology. Celtic legends, it turns out, were suffused with ancient Dairy secrets, as were Hawaiian, South African, and Tibetan shamanic practices. Those early Dairy masters really got around!

Dairy people also felt very connected to the stars, and had elaborate means of contacting entities in the Milky Way and beyond, though as SciFi-inspired spirituality goes we were much more influenced by Lovecraft than Hubbard or even Heinlein. The smaller the sect, the more important these distinctions are.

Anyway, at one point my friends and I reached an exalted level of Dairydom, and were given copies of some short fiction, poetry, and arcane instruction written by early Dairy adherents. We dutifully studied the documents looking for something profound and earth-shattering, but came away scratching our heads wondering what if anything it all meant.

I privately dismissed most of it as the mumblings of drug-enhanced hippies who would never win a writing contest, but my friends were generally more tolerant. Then we got embroiled in an inter-Dairy feud about who should be allowed to read what, and soon we were visited by a Very Important Person who could either vouch for us, or banish us to the outer Dairy darkness.

He entered through the kitchen door and greeted us haltingly, with barely a smile. He couldn’t even shake our hands, because his right hand was still holding a briefcase that was not only locked but shackled to his wrist with handcuffs. All we could do was stare at the briefcase, stare at his graven face, and wonder what either held.

After sweeping his gaze around the room to be sure we were alone, he solemnly produced a key to the handcuffs, released his wrist, laid the case on the kitchen table, turned the combination locks, and opened it. Before us lay a stack of copies from Kinkos, the same papers we had been poring over for weeks. But they were revealed to us now in their proper context: as documents so dangerous and sacred they could harm the uninitiated viewer. Documents that at least one person would die to protect.

I knew right then that I could not be that person. I was prepared to be convinced by Mr. Serious of the value of these pages, but realized instead that this religion relied on a giant game of chicken to keep proving its own importance. Not impressed with the handcuffs? Maybe next time the briefcase would be attached to someone with a giant piercing, just like they did in ancient Sumer.

Our group soon split up, and I quietly backed away from any deeper involvement with Dairy. By all accounts their game of chicken is still going strong, but I have no desire to hear any details. I can be tolerant of other religions, just like our Constitution says we’re supposed to be, but sometimes that is best accomplished through blissful ignorance. Meanwhile, if anyone comes around here proselytizing with a locked briefcase in hand, I do have a home piercing kit right by the front door.

I have two poems to offer this year: an invocation by Leonard Cohen, and an elegy by Rumi. Both of these I read at my nephew’s funeral last Fall. Both I think deserve wider reading. So here they are, in honor of Brigid, the poet’s muse. May the light return to us all.

-

Holy is your name, holy is your work, holy are the days that return to you. Holy are the years that you uncover. Holy are the hands that are raised to you, and the weeping that is wept to you. Holy is the fire between your will and ours, in which we are refined. Holy is that which is unredeemed, covered with your patience. Holy are the souls lost in your unnaming. Holy, and shining with a great light, is every living thing, established in this world and covered with time, until your name is praised forever.

Leonard Cohen
Book of Mercy

-

Autumn Rose Elegy

You’ve gone to the secret world.
Which way is it? You broke the cage

and flew. You heard the drum that
calls you home. You left this hu-

miliating shelf, this disorienting
desert where we’re given wrong

directions. What use now a crown?
You’ve become the sun. No need for

a belt: you’ve slipped out of your
waist! I have heard that near the

end you were eyes looking at soul.
No looking now. You live inside

the soul. You’re the strange autumn
rose that led the winter wind in

by withering. You’re rain soaking
everywhere from cloud to ground. No

bother of talking. Flowing silence
and sweet sleep beside the Friend.

Rumi
The Glance

My favorite books growing up, the ones I happily read over and over, were Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series, a five-part mythological mystery adventure series set in post-war Britain and Wales, where a small troupe of plucky kids overcomes an ancient evil with the help of their Merlin-like great uncle. These books no doubt spurred my early interest in genealogy, as I kept secretly wishing I had such a man of mystery in my own family tree.

I would read all five books in order, savoring each one, then after spending a bit of time reading other books (to see if they were anywhere near as great), I would go back and read them again. I also loved Joan Aiken’s Wolves Chronicles, among many others, but they did not stand the test of time for me like Susan Cooper’s novels did.

Having favorite books as children is important as we develop adult relationships, too. In college, one of the standard questions I asked new acquaintances was what their favorite books were growing up. If their eyes lit up and they started jabbering wildly about their most beloved books, I knew that we could possibly be friends—though maybe not best friends if they thought My Friend Flicka was the best book they’d ever read. Yet friendship was still possible between us because we shared an essential type of imagination, whereas with those who didn’t love fiction as a child it was not.

Which is why I was mystified by the answer my first love, let’s call him Chester, gave to my all-important reading question. Chester was an imaginative, adventurous fellow, but he said that he didn’t have a favorite book or author growing up.

“Well, I mean, what were some of the titles that you read the most?” I asked on more than one occasion.

“I read the Horatio Hornblower books several times, those were good. I read the Swiss Family Robinson, Treasure Island—I read lots of books,” Chester replied almost defensively, “but I wouldn’t say I had a favorite.” He was certainly well-read, no doubt about it, but where was the gleam in his eyes, the sharp intake of breath as he described a book that had truly inspired him as a boy? I thought it odd, but took him at his word and chalked it up to It Takes All Kinds.

Eventually Chester and I got married and had children, and I thrilled to watch each of them fall in love with their own favorite books once they started reading. I figured that as long as they were arguing passionately about which was the better series, the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, they would probably turn out just fine.

As our children became teenagers, though, things between Chester and me grew more difficult. What had started for me as a vive la différence kind of marriage was degenerating into a “this strange guy and his intolerable habits” scenario. I started reading fiction again, which I’d had no time for while raising young children. Not just any fiction, either—I took up the lengthy, ambitious James Clavell novels set in the Far East. I began with Shōgun and worked my way forward chronologically from the 17th century to the present.

Then a funny thing happened. I was reading King Rat, Clavell’s novel about prisoners in a Japanese POW camp during World War II, when Chester’s eyes lit up. “Oh, I loved that book as a kid. I must have read it over a dozen times, and never got tired of it. King Rat, what a brilliant book!”

I was stunned. “Really?” I asked cautiously. “What did you like about it?”

“Well, the main character is just so smart! He outwits all the officers, has a hand in every black market deal on the island, keeps his men alive by being daring and clever, and basically thrives in an intolerable situation.” Chester face was glowing, his hands effortlessly animating his speech. My heart sank.

“But Chester, this book is about a sociopath! It’s like Hogan’s Heroes on steroids, true, but the guy is only out for himself and doesn’t care about anyone or anything. He cruelly manipulates his fellow prisoners, is uniformly hated by everyone, and ends up a lonely, ostracized pariah. Really, that’s the book you loved as a kid?”

I tried not to let my disappointment show, but I’m afraid it was evident. Here, finally, was the answer to a question I had been asking Chester all the years I’d known him. I had never given up searching for that clue to his early psyche, and now that he had revealed it, I was more troubled than ever.

Chester must have realized that he’d said too much, because he shrugged and walked away with a look that said that I would never understand. Later on he tried to backtrack, saying that King Rat was just another of the many books he had read and been influenced by as a kid. I pretended to believe him and let it go, but I never forgot the gleam in his eye I had glimpsed that day.

Inevitably, I guess, our marriage unravelled a few years later. Its demise is a long story—but entertaining!—that I will write about some other time. One of the things it taught me, though, is how right I’d been about what we read as kids. At first I believed Chester when he said he still cared about me even though we were breaking up, but I was deluding myself. I still imagined us as part of the same plucky group of kids who were working together to combat evil, whereas he was involved in a complex psychological thriller where only he would emerge the winner. Too bad he never stopped to consider how his story ends.

At the end of The Dark Is Rising books, the kids prevail in their quest—that is the good news at the end of this particular story. I never would have guessed that children’s fiction would be a lifeline during a long, drawn-out divorce, but it absolutely has been. So here are two essential pieces of relationship advice: first, read a lot of great fiction while you’re growing up. Second, look for partners who shared those early delights and inspirations, but only get involved if you’ve been on the same team from the start.

It is that time of year again, when bloggers around the world post a favorite poem in honor of Brigid, the Irish goddess and patron saint of smithcraft, poetry, and healing. Brigid’s feast day is February 1st, so between now and then is the perfect time to publish a poem to celebrate.

Last year many great poems were published all over the web. This year, I have set up a Community Facebook Page to help people easily view each other’s poems and to share them around as much as possible. If you post a poem on your blog, please share the link on the community page so we can all go there and read it. If you don’t have a blog or website of your own, go ahead and post your poem in its entirety to the community page.

I haven’t quite decided which poem to post, so I have a week ahead of me to wander through books of poetry. May you enjoy the same pursuit, and by February 1st may the web be overflowing with poetic offerings!

My ruination at the hands of Nora Ephron began in 1978, when as a high school senior in Oakland I was able to take classes at UC Berkeley. This was a tremendous boon not just educationally but recreationally, as there were security guards constantly patrolling our high school parking lot, looking out for rebellious teens such as myself who might try to cut class and leave school early. Now, thanks to my special UCB privilege, I could leave anytime I wanted and they just waved me on. That was a huge improvement in my life thus far, and not anything Ms. Ephron should be faulted for.

I decided to take English 1A first, to get a required class out of the way, and strode into Wheeler Hall one afternoon to look at the print-out of all the TA’s who would be teaching different sections. I chose a cheerful-sounding woman who didn’t list any Shakespeare in her required reading list, because how bad could that be?

Beth, my TA, turned out to be 24 and cute as a button. She was like a 5’2″ Barbie doll, with gorgeous flouncy hair, a great smile, and sparkling blue eyes beneath very long lashes. She held her piece of chalk like it was a cigarette, which I thought tremendously sophisticated, and kept the class jocks in line by sassing them back. Beth was a bonafide liberated woman, as well as being a talented teacher, and she wasn’t going to teach from a standard-issue English text—she assigned us Nora Ephron’s recent book of essays, Crazy Salad.

Suddenly I entered a world in which women could not only sass back in person, but also in print. Ephron wrote about everything from Watergate to breasts, and even dared to title a chapter “Vaginal Politics.” Each week I sat in class, amazed that we were talking about Linda Lovelace and Martha Mitchell in the same breath. Each paper I wrote was a little gutsier, a little more humorous, than the last. Beth was very encouraging.

Of course it was not meant to last—anyone at the registrar’s office could have told me that—but the damage had been done. I had caught a glimpse of a world that didn’t actually exist, except for Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:30–4:30 pm. In this world Nora Ephron’s writing was something to admire and emulate, which left me completely unprepared for what came next: Robin, the bitter TA who taught English 1B.

Robin’s pathway to a PhD was littered with the trampled dreams of every young woman in her classes who dared imagine that they could write. She threw us into the viper pit of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets and stomped on our fingers, laughing, as we tried to climb our way out. I learned two things in that class: one, that I would never be a serious writer, and two, that I couldn’t read worth a darn, either. It took me ten years after that to finally give creative writing another try.

I blame it all on Nora and the way she breezed across the cultural battlefields of the day, tossing jokes out of her bag like some irreverent, feminist, female, neurotic Johnny Appleseed. She made it seem easy, even fun, to be a successful woman writer, at a time when such a thing barely existed outside of small enclaves like New York City.

But that is not the only wrong I have suffered at the hands of Ms. Ephron. Just last week I was reading I Feel Bad About My Neck, and this line jumped right out at me: ”Never marry a man you wouldn’t want to be divorced from.” Damn you, Nora Ephron! Why didn’t you tell me that years ago? Couldn’t you have said that back when it might have done me some good, like before I married the guy who was a difficult boyfriend, an even more difficult spouse, and now that we are divorced is completely insufferable?

In Nora’s defense, I was probably too young at the time to have believed her even if she’d said it to my face. That’s just how it is sometimes with young love. Still, even though I was probably not going to take that bit of advice, it wouldn’t have hurt to hear it a few times before marrying someone I now have to be divorced from for the rest of my life.

Ironically, though, reading the divorce comment was also what convinced me to finally let go of my hurt and resentment towards Nora Ephron. She didn’t mean it personally, for one. Second, I figure that if Nora can still manage to be a funny, irreverent, feminist and neurotic writer all these many years later, she must be doing something right. Which means that Beth had it right after all, and Robin merely deserves our pity for ending up as a technical writer instead of poet laureate. She had so much potential, I am sure.

And third, maybe I should write my own relationship advice sooner rather than later, since I now have so very much of it to share. It might help the next woman unable to see clearly due to all the love-bugs squashed on her windshield. It could also prevent me from being attacked for not sharing soon enough. So you will notice a brand new “Relationships” category assigned to this blog post, along with the new “Leaving Hotel California” free-for-all memoir category. I will leave you with my first piece of advice: “Never marry anyone (updated!) you wouldn’t want to be divorced from.” I hope you find it just as useful as I did, and even more timely.

One of the themes of this blog over the last couple years has been California Cosmology, a term coined by Alston Chase to describe the curious mixture of Eastern and Western philosophies, speculative science and experimental psychology that has been California’s unique contribution to many modern social, spiritual and literary movements.

I have also coined the term “Hotel California Cosmology” here, meaning how good ideas can become something more worthy of a Christopher Guest parody than anything progressive, relevant or even helpful. One of the striking things about Hotel California Cosmology is how much sense it seems to make when you are in it, but then how jaw-droppingly awful it reveals itself to be once you are well away. In my article, I wrote about how the entry works:

But when you are searching for transformation, you can’t stay safe all the time. Sooner or later you will be sucked in by something and lose your bearings, because that’s the only way to undergo a powerful change. Finding yourself again is the tricky part, of course, but that’s kind of like waking up from a dream. First you have to fall asleep.

Now that we are in a completely new decade I want to approach this topic from a fresh perspective: how we wake up. For that, I have started a whole new category of blog posts here, called Leaving Hotel California. Those of you who are offended by satire should never, ever read these posts. For the rest of you, my people, let it be known that the gauntlet has been thrown. Not only will I talk about social and spiritual movements, but I’ll also veer into the land of relationships, negotiation, and what passes for love.

Of course, I will take pains to fictionalize some of this, because my intention is not really to skewer any person, place or thing. It is to highlight the delusions that pass for truth, and the truth that gets passed over as fiction, so that others do not have to make the same mistakes that I made. Maybe they will wake up more quickly than I did, and that will be good for them. But the one virtue of staying in the fray for as long as I did is this: I have ever so much material to draw from. It’s going to be a fun year.

I was explaining to my teenage daughter yesterday what a tough year 2010 was for most people, by way of an example from our own life. Here we were, driving on the freeway in my old Honda, heading down to San Francisco. On the back window of my car was a big white “11″ on a pink piece of paper, a temporary registration tag from the DMV. Consequently, the entire way down I was being extra good on the road and keeping an eye out for the CHP, who could reasonably pull me over at any time asking why my registration was out of date.

“You remember that fender-bender you had in my car last January, Jojo?” I asked her. Yes, she replied sheepishly. “Remember how I thought I’d taken care of all the paperwork and repairs and spending a new fortune on your insurance, by the end of May?” Yes, she remembered that too. “And then how in August I found out they were not letting me re-register my car until I had all kinds of other inspections done? And then I paid for all those and sent them their paperwork in September, but here it is the end of December and I am still waiting for the actual registration tags?” Oh yes, she knew all too well about the incredible tide of incompetence that her accident had unleashed.

“Well, that is exactly what 2010 has been like for almost everyone I know. You have setbacks that you expect to move through fairly easily, but instead they take 84 times longer than they normally should, and no matter how hard you try they just grind on, getting worse and worse, until either they are good and ready to be over or you die of exhaustion, whichever comes first. That, my dear, was 2010.” She understood perfectly.

On the radio today I inevitably wound up talking about dreams and predictions, because it was my last show of the year. If I’d had a guest or callers I would have asked for their new year’s predictions, but since it was just me I started talking about what I thought 2011 was really going to be like.

The first thing I thought about was last night, driving home by myself from the City, and coming across the blinking yellow “Flooded” signs blocking the road, because of all the recent rain. I thought that the road was probably passable since it had been clear all day, but wasn’t sure—and it was pitch black and freezing cold out, so I didn’t want to make any tragic mistakes.

There was a car pulled over by the side of the road, and I sidled up to it and lowered my window. Inside were two or three kids, probably Alex’s age, either stoned or just young and stupid. I asked whether they’d tried the road yet, and they said no. Then the guy driving says, “I just saw a shooting star. Do you think that’s a good omen?”

Without even thinking, I said, “Definitely. I’m going to give it a shot.” “I’m following you!” he called as I pulled away from them, squeezed past the signs, and started down the road. Of course, that meant he tailgated me the entire mile-long, slow journey down the road because he didn’t know any better, but that is a minor side point.

The real point of the story is that I didn’t even hesitate before declaring the shooting star a good omen. That is new this year, the unquestioned assumption that all omens are essentially good. It ties into a dream I had 6 years ago that maybe I’ll talk about someday, but was basically about interpreting an omen positively when privately I thought it might go either way and probably involved lots of bad news regardless.

This very difficult year has been full of good omens, and great things have happened, or have started to happen, to lots of people, myself included. The thing I have become most aware of, as I struggled through this year’s challenges, is that everything can change in a second. Luck is basically random, which means that if you’re having lots of what you consider bad luck, the longer you keep going the more likely it is that your luck will change for the better.

It’s not like I knew anything about the shooting star that kid saw, it’s just that I believe our best move is always to accept the omen as a gift. If nothing else, it means we are paying attention, we recognize an omen when we see one, and have the presence of mind to ask what its impact will be in our own lives. Especially in 2011, I think that kind of behavior is the absolute key to success.

The hardships of 2010 will not evaporate on January 1, and the dreadfully slow processes of change will still be with us in 2011, but there will be real opportunities opening up, doors suddenly swinging wide that we have been banging on for months if not years. The ones who will notice, and be able to act, are the ones who keep going because they know it’s just a matter of time before the tide turns. So pay attention, don’t let the bastards (or the DMV) get you down, and remember that the omen is always a gift.

It has been a very difficult month, and my inner and outer dialogues have circled around questions that are essentially unanswerable. Why do some kids make it and others don’t? Some people do stupid stuff for years and survive, others don’t have that kind of luck. It seems entirely random who lives and who dies.

There is no formula to follow: points off for emotional volatility and early hardship, extra credit for talent and having opportunities. That’s an old model of social betterment, from back when there was funding for things like after-school programs, financial aid and the CCC, but it’s not the world we live in today. I grew up believing that with a hand-up anyone could succeed. Right now I think it’s a miracle that anyone survives.

A few nights ago I had a dream about talking with some disadvantaged kids from Alex’s old high school, asking how many had actually gone on to college as they’d planned. Not one of them had, and one was a homeless addict who defended himself by saying, “I’m a really good thinker!” Last night I had a long dream in which my family talks and talks about what to do with his body, meanwhile Alex is lying there waiting to be put to rest. After waking from dreams like these I can’t get back to sleep, and am mired in a swamp of grief all day.

A good friend argues that you can’t separate out the elements, that each person is a complex mixture of family dynamics, psychology, brain chemistry, early parenting, learning styles, education, etc, and there’s not one thing to point to and say, “that’s what went wrong.” I think character has something to do with it too, though I couldn’t say how much and don’t even know what it is.

Very quickly, all these discussions start to feel like less ingenious spin-offs of what was said perfectly by Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein in “Officer Krupke.” Is society at fault? The family? Or is it the individual? In the end, you just hope that kids survive long enough to gain the maturity they will need to lead a good life. Often, that effort seems to hinge on random moments of grace, that come out of nowhere and carry us safely to higher ground. I am so sorry my nephew missed that last moment of grace, and that we will never see what his version of “leading a good life” looks like. That would have been such a great show.

The hardest thing I have ever done ended today with the most difficult phone call I have ever made: telling my niece that her brother, my nephew Alex, died last night of an accidental overdose, at age 27.

Alex’s life was never easy. As an infant, he had a cry that was already raging at the world. I had never heard that kind of cry from a newborn before, and it made a lasting impression on me. So much so, that when he started getting in trouble as a 12-year-old, my partner and I decided to take him into our family to see if we could get him through adolescence in one piece.

Bringing him into our family was hard on everyone. For the entire first year he lived with us, I could not leave him in a room alone with any of my kids for more than five minutes. If I did, someone would be crying, something would be broken, Alex would have hurt someone or completely disrupted the scene. It was like having an infant in distress—a 13-year-old, raging infant in great pain who couldn’t see past himself to think about anyone else. My children suffered a lot so that Alex could have a stable home life for those years.

Raising Alex was where I discovered the greatest coping mantra ever. Much of the time living with him was simply unbearable, and I could not have done it if I’d thought in terms of there being five more years to go, or four more years. Instead I told myself, “It’s only three more months.” Three months was a length of time I could endure, and repeating that every day got me through all six years of his stay with us.

Alex was very bright and could be quite charming—especially if he was the center of attention. He was hyperactive, and we thought about whether to get him tested for ADD. In the end, we thought that with a history of addiction in his family, he would be better off not taking Ritalin as a teenager. Maybe that was the right call, maybe not, but in the end it was the prescription drugs that really kicked him down the stairs.

His middle school principal once told me, “It’s the smart kids that figure it out eventually. The ones who aren’t smart usually don’t make it.” That consoled me for several years, thinking that because Alex was so smart he’d get it together. It turns out that intelligence has very little to do with it, nor does morality. Alex had a very strong sense of right and wrong, but his self-destructive streak was simply stronger, and he didn’t learn to control it in time to really live.

As I finish writing this, it dawns on me that I never sang Alex the song I wrote for him, back when he was 17. In spite of all our struggles, there were times when I felt a deep connection between us, and those moments were like gold. One evening as I returned home late from something or other, the lines of this song came to me in an easy flow. I’d always meant to sing it to Alex when we had a good moment alone together, after he was out of the woods and doing fine. I never did, and now I never will. Here is a recording I made of “Take Wing” four years ago.

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Last night’s may have been the last 2 am call from the Sheriff that I will ever get—may it be so. But this is only the beginning of all the days when I will think I see Alex in town, then realize it’s someone else. Every time I see a bright, handsome kid bouncing down the street like he’s got the world in his pocket, it will always look like Alex to me. There is no good reason that he should be dead today. It’s a damn tragedy, and I don’t know how you live through tragedy like this. Maybe by thinking, “It’s only three more months,” then he’ll be back. Yes, that’s the ticket.

There we stood in a park in San Francisco, about fifteen of us circled around a large ceramic bowl on the ground in which we had written the things we wanted to see increase: more money for this, more power to that, healing for her, a better job for him. Interspersed among the slips of paper was a collection of seeds, representing the power of growth. Once we had raised energy for our intentions, we took some seeds home with us, to keep focused on the vision we were growing.

Rituals like this one can be inspiring and affirming, and most importantly, show no signs of going away. But at one point it dawned on me: every altar, bookshelf and windowsill in my house was now littered with sacred seeds and pebbles, fragrant bits of greenery, beads, pieces of yarn (cut from webs we’d constructed), half-burned candles signifying something, and other ceremonial souvenirs I had brought home. The thought formed unbidden in my mind: was all that growing and visioning still taking place, if I could no longer remember the point of each stone and leaf as I dusted it?

I kept quiet about my troubling thought, but like all seeds planted in the darkness it just kept growing, eventually making it hard to see what we thought we were doing. Then some unfortunate person posted a comment to an email list, suggesting that in response to the latest egregious corporate land-grab we should all imagine planting a forest of trees so thick it would trap the evildoers and prevent them from carrying out their scheme. It would be like in Macbeth, only with high-speed internet and better candles.

At that point I felt like the Lorax, speaking for all of the trees, seeds, junk and jewels I had collected in my house, none of which I knew what to do with after charging them with hallowed intentions and bringing them home. I spoke up: “I can’t believe you are suggesting planting another damn tree in the collective unconscious. How will we find a clear place to plant, with all the rubbish we’ve left there over the years? Isn’t it about time we found another metaphor for making things happen the way we want—like, for instance, pruning and weeding?”

Unfortunately my reasoning was lost on its intended audience, due to my strong, practically violent language. But thus began my own transformation from a ritual accrualist to someone with a tidier home and a different sensibility about magic altogether. I started thinking that perhaps the best way to get help from the spirits was not to construct a grand, visionary edifice for them à la Field of Dreams, but instead to clean the place up, invite them over, and see what they choose to build.

I didn’t throw out everything all at once. These were ceremonial artifacts after all, and shouldn’t just be swept into the dustbin without any thought at all. And while several items did find their way into the compost and trash, most were eventually set out under bushes and trees in my yard, residing there until they were carted off by activist squirrels in the neighborhood.

With the clutter gone, what remained in my home were things that did have special significance, and that I actually used. It took a while to get used to this new ritual aesthetic, but over time I feel it has streamlined my access to all sorts of worlds, and made my place a destination spot for helpful spirits year-round.

Now there is a comfortable clutter of personalities on my mantle for Samhain. That seems right—this is the ancestral mixer holiday, after all. Day of the Dead figures cavort with pictures of my beloved dead, the recently deceased get the chance to meet my grandparents, and there is plenty of food, music and candles for all.

There is a place for jumble and clutter, especially while everyone is getting along. But sometime in November there will come a day when it feels like the party is over, and it is time for everyone to go away until next time. I will relish emptying the mantle then, and will live comfortably in the silence until the Solstice spirits start knocking on my door and I let them in, one by one, slowly painting my house with colors and lights for a new year.