Traveling Without Moving

When you leave nouns behind, and get super fucking witchy.

Oct 18, 2024

The last time we went to the Goodwill Outlet I forgot to bring gloves.

Amidst the detritus of a society hell-bent on consuming and discarding, I pushed my hands deep into a pyramidal drift of clothing, an enticing pattern on a piece of well-worn cotton prompting my dive. When I finally pulled the piece free, I realized my folly. It was an old pair of men’s boxers, the accordion of tired elastic waistband singing a tune of too many washes and wears. My entire body contracted, like a giant ick that I couldn’t shake.

There’s always that one piece that puts me over the edge at the “bins.” Sometimes it’s when the tinge of excitement and possibility crashes into the reality of all that is human grossness. Or sometimes it's a particularly forlorn and broken piece of plastic that gets me, its uselessness intersecting with its poisonous environmental legacy. That’s when I know it’s time to leave.

You might ask: Why do you do this to yourself? My answer: This is where I bond with Cleo.

A few weeks ago she begged me to take her to the mall by the airport so she could go to Ulta to buy makeup. I’ve never really worn makeup, so stores like Ulta or Sephora have never been that enticing. But, I was trying to be a good sport, so I agreed to the outing. The first thing she did when we parked was inform me that I would not be coming into the store with her — she wanted to shop completely free of my judgment. Respecting her boundary, I walked into Nordstrom Rack, amusing myself by trying on the weirdest shoes I could find.

When I finally ran out of possibilities and scared enough elderly ladies, I wandered into Ulta, where I found her with a bag-load of products. I did my best to assume a neutral facial expression– eyes soft, mouth frozen in a half smile–nodding approvingly at the hair masks, body masks, face masks, toners, lip glosses, lotions, eyeliners, and mascara she’d amassed. But she could tell I was full of shit. She sighed loudly, and stomped away from me, barking at me to “Stop making that face!” I weakly countered that I couldn’t. That it was my face. I hovered awkwardly next to a display of sunscreen that smelled like the inside of a Toyota Camry owned by someone named Braylynn, as she plopped down in a corner and sorted her potential purchases on the floor, her back aggressively shielding me from a good view.

By the time we made it to the register, she’d winnowed down her haul to a few “essential” purchases. She paid, and we walked silently out to the car. As I prepared to pull out of the parking space, an “impatient” driver gesticulated wildly for me to hurry up, making little aggressive moves like they were going to ram into me as I backed up. Exasperated, I muttered under my breath, “Relaaaaax, buddy.” And that’s when she lost it. She told me that all she wanted was for me to have a great time at the mall, and she couldn’t understand why I disliked it so much.

As we drove away, I apologized for my shitty behavior, explaining how in addition to the way that a particularly aggressive driving encounter can shift the tone of a day, strip malls and box stores sharpen my existential despair to a devastatingly fine point.

At the bins there is potential: I might find useful art supplies, yarn, cashmere sweaters, books, or a vintage treasure. I will feel as though I’ve rescued these items from a landfill, so the thrill of the hunt will be met with a fixit, do-gooding instinct I cannot repress. I’ll shop without guilt. I will feel lucky and a bit flush with self-righteousness when I depart. I will also need a very hot shower.

Some people consider Target their temple, but those people are decidedly not me. Inside that red-centric hellhole, I am suddenly beset with eye-crossing headaches. I wither, I drag, and I want to melt into a puddle of nothingness. The sheer volume of all that useless stuff, destined to end up in the Pacific Gyre, or on top of a mountain of trash in the Atacama Desert makes me hate humanity, and I don’t need more reasons for that. I am my worst self in these places, a witch-out-of-water, if you will.

And, as we all know, it is the season of the witch. So fuck you, Target, give me back my daughter.

A miraculous autumnal sunset in one of my favorite places in Portland.

When I was around 8 years old, I had a fantasy of early adulthood that looked a little something like this:

My day began in the sprawling Neoclassical mansion I shared with my 4 best friends. Sun spilled through the bay windows (what was it with bay windows in the 80’s?) as we laughed and ate sesame bagels in our silky pajama sets. Of course, each of us had a bedroom and bathroom of our own, but we took turns lounging on each others’ beds, listening to Toni Braxton while doling out helpful advice and witty asides. Together we chose our outfits, brushed huge swaths of turquoise eyeshadow across our eyelids, and prepared for our busy days.

Where we went afterwards, and how we made our money did not figure into this fantasy. I never once built my future world with a career in mind. But, I did know that at some point during the day, I’d need to transition from daytime to evening, and I placed this sartorial challenge at the forefront of my planning. In a large monogrammed bag I’d stashed away the fabulous outfit I’d require for a night on the town.

I enter the nightclub in a slithery gold lamé dress. My black patent leather high heels click in perfect rhythm as I descend a set of glass stairs, arriving in a mirrored room I imagine looks a little like the love child of the Soul Train set and Studio 54. Everyone is smiling, glowing, and most importantly, dancing. I join them, my long shiny hair swinging as I whip around. From my reverie, I notice that all 4 of my best friends are there as well! Once we exhaust ourselves on the dance floor, we leave arm in arm, returning to the cozy sanctuary of our mansion.

And that was adulthood.

While we were living in Venice I attended an art opening inside an old decommissioned church in the Castello neighborhood. Andy was in Milan for a design show, so I brought Cleo as my date. It took a lot of convincing to get her to go, but I promised her pizza and a visit to the drag show being held at the antifascist clubhouse/bar afterward, so eventually she acquiesced.

As we walked up to the church, a huge crowd had formed in the piazza. Hundreds of beautiful people, dressed in every possible iteration of gorgeous shoes, statement glasses, and thoughtfully considered tailoring, milled around, bathed in the fading pinkish-orange Italian light, awaiting the arrival of a procession; a performance that would culminate in a show inside the church.

The place oozed the kind of sex appeal I’d imagined permeated the world that adults occupied. I was overcome by a feeling of nostalgia. Something about this scene, the electricity of this particular crowd, the elegance and the grace of the people moving around me, tapped into that childhood fantasy of glamour. Less a participant than a voyeur, I drank it all in, letting the particulate of that long discarded fantasy wash over me. Here was a glimpse into the world of adults I’d imagined, but I was only a tourist.

I’m currently writing all of this dressed in a t-shirt that says “Alice Coltrane for President” and a pair of cut-off sweatpants that my best friend once described as my “signature look.” My graying hair is wild and untamed. I’ve consumed one too many cups of coffee and have yet to brush my teeth. The blue nail polish on my toenails is chipped, my legs are unshaven.

I never became a glamorous woman, but I became something much more fun…

…an actually insightful witch. Sometimes the internet really provides.

I’ve heard this period of perimenopause described as a “nounless” time, and I am embracing that descriptor as a way to allay my fears that I am either in the early stages of dementia or all the joints I’ve smoked in my life are coming home to roost where my short term memory used to live. I forget nouns and proper nouns on the regular, replacing them with streams of adjectives that allow me to arrive at the thing I need to reference, albeit in a semi-absurd way.

A few weeks ago I was listening to Stan Grof talking about his work in transpersonal psychology. At one point in the talk, he quoted the physicist David Bohm’s idea that because nothing is fixed in the universe, including the atoms that make up our body, and that everything is a process, we too are processes. Thus, the idea of a noun is moot. There is no such thing as a noun. So, instead of being Belle Chesler, a fixed state of me-ness, I am always Belle Cheslering, in the process of being a me who is constantly changing and evolving.

Stardust is made of atoms created by exploding supernovas (supernovas are the death of a star). The elements released by the supernova contain the elements that make up the building blocks of all life. When enough of this dust accumulates, it forms new planets. Our own planet is believed to be a third-generation star, meaning that it was born from the ashes of previous stars. Earth is made from the dust that surrounded the sun when it was young.

Every atom in our bodies was once inside a star. And as we know, stars emit light. I imagine all of us as light-filled beings, each atom inside of us containing all the processes of the universe. We are not fixed, we are beings made of stardust, and we are light.

So, none of us are nouns; we are verbs. As we go through the process of awakening, of our own personal enlightenment (I mean this in the original, pre 17th century meaning of the word: of the light, or into the light), we remember that we are part of a continuous, eternal, and constantly evolving process, and that process will continue until long after the stardust we are made up of is composted back into the earth.

Hand drawn packets of seeds I’ve been collecting

The season of seed collection is here. My pockets are full of little sticky, pokey reminders of the exuberance of spring and summer, each one a miracle. This is also the sacred season of death, renewal, and remembrance. The veil is thin, the grief is thick, and our bodies register the slowing, even if capitalism does not.

For my 46th birthday my dear friend, Jessica, took me to camp for adults conceived and organized by our friend, Vail. We spent 24 hours cold plunging in the Clatskanie river, eating delicious food, getting our tarot read by a witch, learning natural skin care, weaving baskets out of invasive English Ivy, talking and singing fireside, freezing our asses off, and getting vulnerable with a bunch of people we’d never met before. It was not glamorous, but it was a glorious experiment in radical togetherness and lightning-fast community building—and it was also fun as hell.

When the witch did our tarot reading, she included an extra “life reading” for me because it was my birthday. She pulled my tarot birth card, which is also referred to as a “life card,” determining one’s path in life. I’ve had a few professional tarot readings and I’ll admit that none of them has particularly resonated. But, this time, it was almost laughably on the nose. When it was time for her to share it with me, she asked me to take a deep breath. She then presented me with the “death” card. The death card, the 13th of the major arcana, represents rebirth, transformation, and renewal. It is a card that reminds us of the power of slow change. It calls us to face our fears and return them to the soil. Or, as my mantra of the past months has been: Transmute and compost.

My fears are often front and center. I’ve come to understand that I address these fears by making changes in my life slowly and incrementally, like a sailboat tacking to move in a different direction. At the risk of piling on another metaphor, I think of myself as spider-like, each silky tendril released from my spinneret a new fragile yet essential piece of the larger web I am weaving.

Life looks different for me now than it did even a few months ago. I’ve started working with my first clients in end-of-life support and I’ve become part of a collective of end-of-life doulas called the Peaceful Presence Project (my bio goes live soon). I’m also a few months into a graduate degree in transpersonal psychology, indigenous death practices, and cultural evolution. At the end of the three years, I’ll have spent 1,400 hours immersed in the study and practice of diving into the capital M mystery, learning about consciousness, plants, ritual, and community. This is the first time in my life that doing “school” has closely aligned with my curiosities, and I get really excited to go to class.

A woodcut made in 1491 from the Ortis Sanitatis

And so, as the light fades, the leaves fall, and we seek warmth and comfort in these cold months, I wish you peace and connection. The world is spicy and devastating and confusing, but we have the capacity to tack into the wind, changing our course, together.

xoxo,

Belle

Notes from the Lagoon

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