A love letter to Gemini season

Incantations to claim the magic of the month ahead ~

May 20-June 20, 2024

Seasons change hands like clockwork, and still, I stand in awe as the baby ferns unfurl in the backyard, air damp with the sweet homecoming of petrichor and stubborn moss. I’m supposed to be hacking back the growth, manipulating its borders for a new variety of garden vegetables. Instead I’m overcome with the urge to know every medicinal property of each weed competing for light and moisture in the overgrown brush. I want to know how far each seed traveled, just to take root below my windowsill; to know her name in her mother tongue, how to tincture her leaves and find the remedy of her salve.

I watch these curiosities breeze through like an unattached lover appreciating the morning before the day arrives fully and decants its demands upon us.

For one zodiacal season every calendar year, a part of us is awoken again to the springtime of curiosity; a rushing gorge of words itching to be spoken, poems breaking through the surface — Gemini season arrives every year to ask, what song do you dance in deeper devotion to? What rhythm do you sway to in frenzy, what could you be drenched by but never drown in?

There is a story only you can tell; embrace the season of putting it to words.

A few incantations from my heart to yours:

May we trust our minds enough, not to overthink them.

May we soften into our curiosities, rather than strangle them with expectations of output and polish.

May we share a drink over a dying flame with no fear of impending darkness, with voices whose tone and timbre we’d recognize even in a room drenched in midnight. 

Let us not forgo playfulness! Bitter gatekeepers regard her as the unkempt stepsister of wisdom — fuck that; she’s the harbinger of the knowledge we seek!

In these pockets of sweetness and rumination, may we return to the drawing board which awaits us with gleeful uncertainty, and receive the blessing offered: to never forget the privilege of changing one’s mind. 

May we embrace the gift of shifting temperament. To be fickle is to be alive!

As you seek out the kitchen scissors, midnight bangs, redesign your website at three in the morning, or leave your best friend a six minute and twenty seven second voice memo that she will wake up to with a smile and consume as diligently as the crossword like the murmurs of a goddess alongside a sunrise coffee…

Let it be enough to have loved every moment for what it was.

Let it be enough to find peace in uncertainty.

Let it be enough to find a new book you can’t put down, to find a version of yourself in an old journal who would be so proud of where you’ve arrived now.

Permission to make up your mind, and change it again.

Call your friends and tell them how much you love them, to the point of doting redundancy.

Talk on the phone like you’re fifteen again and unlimited minute plans don’t exist yet, with the intent of giving your mother heart palpitations upon receiving the phone bill.

And most importantly, perhaps of all… Take special care of the areas your curiosity has waned. Greet those avenues of lost interest with compassion and kindness. Imagine what could grow in its place. Maybe it’s as simple as letting a breeze pass through the house.

Open the damn windows.

Is it hot in here, or are you not letting the old you see herself out? Is the air growing stale, or have you forgotten to exhale the noxious air of old expectations and faded interests?

If you must seek out certainty, find it in the breath; four seconds in, four second hold, four seconds out. And when you’re ready, I’d love to know; what’s grabbed ahold of your mind and won’t let go?

To the moon and back (pun intended),
Ocean Pleasant