Welcome to the Second Season of the Witches Muse!
Being with Erin and Sanyu was like being in my quaratine dream living room with tea, lots of crushed velvet, and lots of sunlight.
We talked of so many things, laughed a lot, and connected on intimacy in context.
In honor of Venus Rx in Gemini, the Lovers Card felt like a perfect intro to Season II: The Major Arcana of the Craft.
Both Sanyu and Erin identify as writers!
We are offering folx, a love letter writing workshop coming up May 21st at 6 PM-7 PM PST.
Patreons get the workshop for free.
EPISODE TOPICS +
BOUNDARIES
LIVING CURIOUSLY
HOW INTIMACY IS EXPLORED
LET’S TALK RELATIONS (TO SELF, TO OTHER, TO LOVER)
SHOW NOTES+
6:03 Sexicon Explained
9:26 Ancestral Visits from Sanyu Papa
12:58 Lets talk Boundaries
25:00 Erin tends why curiosity DOES NOT suck
29:29 Sanyu speaks to interdimensional relations
33:00 Say hello the asexuality folx
41:46 Being not disabled is not better
46:16 Erin express sovereignty without public spaces
51:13 Sanyus relationship to boredom
53:57 Erin busts productivity myth
LINKS +
Welcome to the Second Season of the Witches Muse!
Being with Erin and Sanyu was like being in my quaratine dream living room with tea, lots of crushed velvet, and lots of sunlight.
We talked of so many things, laughed a lot, and connected on intimacy in context.
In honor of Venus Rx in Gemini, the Lovers Card felt like a perfect intro to Season II: The Major Arcana of the Craft.
Both Sanyu and Erin identify as writers!
We are offering folx, a love letter writing workshop coming up May 21st at 6 PM-7 PM PST.
Patreons get the workshop for free.
EPISODE TOPICS +
BOUNDARIES
LIVING CURIOUSLY
HOW INTIMACY IS EXPLORED
LET’S TALK RELATIONS (TO SELF, TO OTHER, TO LOVER)
SHOW NOTES+
6:03 Sexicon Explained
9:26 Ancestral Visits from Sanyu Papa
12:58 Lets talk Boundaries
25:00 Erin tends why curiosity DOES NOT suck
29:29 Sanyu speaks to interdimensional relations
33:00 Say hello the asexuality folx
41:46 Being not disabled is not better
46:16 Erin express sovereignty without public spaces
51:13 Sanyus relationship to boredom
53:57 Erin busts productivity myth
LINKS +
Timestamps:
Intro :15
Conversation begins 7:33
Intimacy 12:16
Boundaries 19:14
Asexuality 40:05
Coronavirus, binaries, and ableism 44:12 Outro 01:11:10
:00
[Melodic, upbeat music]
:15 Intro
Tara Burke: Hey everyone, it’s Tara, and welcome back to season two of the witches muse! We are so stoked to do another season and just for us this season is really about our relationship to craft and however the word craft comes through to you, we look at craft and our relationship to craft as a way of making or producing; creating something with care, skill, and ingenuity. So that unique part of ourselves and those gifts that we offer that we find so intrinsically important to our souls’ calling and to our gifts in the world is our craft. It’s the way and the art form that doesn’t necessarily have to take place with an object or an end material outcome, but a feeling. A feeling and a connection to ourselves calling us home again. Again this podcast is really designed to be conversational at heart and to infuse the magic of tarot, of dreamwork, and our capacity of tending to ourselves through the lens of intersectional magic. I feel such gratitude and privilege to be a host of this space and create these containers and invitations of curiosity and I want to thank all the guests that have come before and the ones that are coming through for season two as I’m so excited to see what comes through and the magic that y’all get to experience by listening to these conversations. So we are stories beneath the surface and we explore the many facets of being human or other than and I am excited for this first episode as we introduce the Lovers. In each
week as we explore episodes throughout the season, we are going to talk about the descriptions and the unfoldings of the Lovers among tarot readers and tarot deck creators in the community. So each week I’m going to take a passage from either a tarot deck, a book that I have in my current plethora of tarot decks, or we are going to read from some really amazing tarot readers that have beautifully written words and inspirational knowings and musings on the card. This description and perspective on the lover comes from the numinous tarot and that’s by Noel Arthur Heimpel and I am a really big fan of this book and I’m a really big fan of this deck. It’s this beautiful deck, it has amazing colors and textures and is also very representational so it has multi different types of bodies, shapes, and colors, and just ways of being - the way they’re seated and the way they’re representative is really different than the traditional or I would say the colonial representation of the whiter whitesmith. So the Lovers. Love. Love is the word, the, guide, the reason, the seed, the bloom. To care for another being and be cared for in return is a very powerful thing in our universe. This card represents not just romantic or sexual love, but the love between family members, between friends, between mentor and mentee. The love we have for our planet, our pets, our favorite foods, our hometowns. Our heart homes; every caring connection that lights us up from the inside and encourages us to be our best selves is included in the Lovers. When this card appears it’s drawing your attention to the relationships to the people places and things that nurture everyone involved. Love can be difficult and is full of choices. When we make those choices out of the fullness of our hearts, even if that means separation or goodbyes, we are aligning ourselves with the path of growth healing and happiness. Consent is essential to loving relationships between individuals. Make sure you are striving to create and live in environments where consent can be expressed freely without fear. Love is not an obligation. I am excited to introduce the Lovers card with - and Sanyu Estelle and Erin Clark and I hope this conversation finds you deep in your own expressions around intimacy in your expressions around boundaries, in your expressions of interdimensional relationships. If you like what you hear please subscribe, rate, and review to the podcast so we can continue seeding and fusing this word all across the interwebs. And also if you want we are doing some really amazing offerings through our Patreon but it will also be open to folks via social media and links
and invitations will be there to explore the love letter. The love letter is something that Sanyu Estelle offers on their Patreon and it’s really the love letter - the who, the what, the where, the when, and possibly even the how. It’s an in-depth conversation between the different approaches, motivations, inspirations, and preferences we have when it comes to writing and writing about love and with love in mind. Both Sanyu and Erin are deeply crafted as writers and so they’re going to discuss feelings as muse and share one love letter with each other that they can provide ahead of time to those that are going to be interested in attending this live zoom session. The session is going to be a discussion and a Q & A but there’s also going to be writing prompts within the discussion that the viewer can be left with. If you are a Patreon member you will get this recorded as well as a special set of prompts and some fun opportunities to dive deeper into the conversation by getting to view it again and again in the live as we did in the recorded version. I’m really excited to offer that to our patrons and our tiers begin at just three dollars to support the work of the podcast for us paying our podcast guests for us paying our audio engineer, and for us providing and deepening the opportunity to make this podcast as accessible as possible. We’re really dedicated and wanting to prioritize putting transcriptions for season two. So all of your Patreon support goes directly back into supporting the podcast and we’re really excited to see all of the gifts and offerings that guests will have with season two. So I hope you enjoy season two episode one - the Lovers.
Conversation begins 7:35
TB: As we arrive the seat of the Lovers, in the seat of the throne of ourselves. I am so honored to welcome Erin and Sanyu to this episode
Sanyu Estelle: Good to be here Erin Clarke: Yeah
TB: It feels like magic because you both are just a beautiful representation of magic on my screen and my way of community a lot of times is through that and so I just feel honored, not only as a host but to be the little bird or the butterfly or the bee that buzzes around the windows of your conversations, so I’m just excited for that
Erin Clarke: What I think is really beautiful about it is I think that you are the reason that Sanyu and I are friends
Sanyu Estelle: Yeah that is possible actually EC: I think that’s how we met
TB: Wow
EC: Yeah
TB: Wow. I feel all types of fuzzy already [laughter]
SE: Yeah, that’s true, I hadn’t thought about that. Some people I’m just like I met them through Instagram and then I leave it at that but I forget exactly who and when. [Crosstalk] Maybe I saw you through [Corey?] or something. That’s very possible actually because I definitely saw you through somebody else’s -
EC: I was published in one of the - SE: Oh, life as ceremony?
EC: Yeah
TB: Oh shout out to Alice
ALL: Alice!
TB: I want to spiral in on bios. Do y’all want to say a little bit about yourselves because I
have the time to say it? Or should I just say something about you? EC: I would rather you do it, I never -
[Crosstalk]
TB: I don’t look up bios so I’m going to basically look them up and wordsmith based off of just the knowingness of how I see you and not actually words that I've read [laughter] Sanyu. Word witch, entomology slayer in many ways, and I say that with the deepest sense of gratitude, as their ability to go down and in in describing words and the crevices of words helps me expand my reality. Spirit coach, my existence ally in so many ways has helped me redefine what existence looks like in my life. And Erin -
EC: That was so good [laughter]
SE: Thank you, I’m going to run this back
TB: For me, Erin is the voice of our time of the deep erotic, for me to be able to feel the sensations of eros, which for me is the desire of all things and the animus viewing of life. Many of you all know that I’m definitely a witch that likes the animus cosmology of who we are. And so to witness the deep erotic, the writing of the sensual, and even know as we are speaking there are sunbeams on Erin [laughter]
EC: And the gold heart on my boobs [laughter]
SE: Golden heart upon her breast [laughter]
EC: It’s also glistening in the sunlight and my skin is slick under it
SE: Yo it’s so appropriate that the Lovers’ card would also have a little erotica put into it
TB: Yeah, just bringing the sexy, and for me, I’ve had to reclaim sensuality for myself for just my own traumas and my own childhood sexual things - trigger warning pre, I should have posted that before but it’s happening now in real-time - and so to find and be fitness and be seen and be liberated through someone else’s words as well as what you do for disability justice and awareness is fucking amazing. A sexicon, a sexcon? Am I even saying that right?
EC: My favorite thing about this, I love this so much, is its is own word, like lexicon, people hear it in their head, but literally you have to put the words together for a hashtag, it’s sex icon, but for some reason, people blended it and now it’s its own thing.
SE: Yeah, I call it sexicon
EC: It's sexicon. Sounds like a transformer robot of eroticism TB: Yes, ooh [laughter]. I’m looking like, woah
Intimacy 12:16
TB: There’s this awesome little blurb that you posted a few days ago that I love that could lead us in so beautiful, and its connection and context and intimacy is what gives things meaning, so connection and context and intimacy is what gives things meaning, and we get to archetype meaning and cultivate intimacy with our partners and ourselves. And especially in these times, I’m so curious for y’all as we go in, what intimacy feels like for you in this moment, and that could be in this moment happening right now, this can be in this moment, we are now, captain’s log, April 1st 2020. I’m making sure to put notes and dates of this to have this as an archival. And we’re here,
at the seat of the Lovers card. So I’m curious - what does intimacy look like, feel like, taste like for you right now?
SE: Do you want to go first Erin?
EC: Sure [laughter]
SE: You don't have to [laughter]
EC: I'm just feeling the question
SE: Yeah because it was your quote because it was really beautiful, that language that Tara just read
EC: Well as I said before we were recording, it isn't that different from me now than it has been all along. My ability to access other people physically or the outside is kind of just a continuation of the same. it's often difficult and so I have been relying on digital forms of communication and connection for always, so in that sense, it's like familiar to me and I feel like I'm in my element and what’s cool is that now everyone else has the time to focus on the things that I ave already prioritized [laughter]. So what’s important to me is now important to these people that I wanted to have access to and now I do so it’s very...there are moments of it has been really fulfilling for me where things that would have been socially weird before like group video chats to do nothing is now completely socially acceptable and I find that rewarding. But I also think that, because in the quote it talks about the context, the context before of me having these barriers and these limits was personal. It was me experiencing these things and therefore framing it for my own situation, my own life. And now that context is universal. The entire globe is experiencing some form of this and that, I feel the effect of that shift in context very much. For me before there wasn’t grief about it and it wasn’t tragic and it wasn’t scary. It was the nature of things. And now there's a potent grief and fear and manifesting in all kinds of ways, so intimacy for me right now feels like making space for more of that - in
dialogue, in interactions, in my alone time in a way that I wasn't necessarily aware of or experiencing as heavily as before.
SE: Yes, that was perfect EC: [Laughter]
SE: Well there’s definitely grief and fear and the word that came to me too was mourning. People are mourning which is fine. Change happens and you think about how things were before. And there's a very natural, I mean, whatever, socially conditioned/natural harkening back or referencing what took place before. I think that in a lot of ways, I have used intimacy or have exercised my intimacy through technology too, like Erin. My dad was ahead of his time, so - ooh, there was a butterfly that flew behind you, Erin, or a moth or something which is amazing, which is funny because it's representative of my dad, as well.
ALL: Hey dad!
SE: Hey dad, who transitioned into spirit on January 23rd. But he was always really ahead of his time with tech. I’ve had the same phone number since I was 13. No one had a cellphone at that time but he was like, this is going to be a thing. And we had computers in our house from a really early age so I acclimated to technology really early. Having a family that was being first-generation and having parents not prom this particular landmass meant that we were always communicating abroad. And for them a lot of the time that was through the phone obviously because that was what was available. Through the phone and flying because my mother used to work for PanAm but Black girls didn’t fly so she was one of the ticketers but they all got the same discounts so we flew a lot. So that was never not a part of my life, communicating with people from afar and finding a way to see them, connect with them, whether that was a year apart or five years apart or whatever. So in that sense, my intimacy hasn't changed, except, I think this an observation/judgment that I think in the previously
normally constructed world that the way that I was intimate wasn't considered in-depth or there was like that I was doing a lot of it and now in this environment, I’m not even in comparison to the people who are reaching out more and more because they just haven’t had that built into their lives. So I feel like I’m under-socializing for what is taking place right now
EC: Yeah
SE: Just because I’ve always socialized at a particular level
EC: And that hasn’t changed so you’re not really in distress and needing to feel that SE: Yeah
Boundaries 19:14
TB: Yeah, that resonates with me. the reality of the depth of intimacy and being able to check-in, and at this point people are checking in because they want to say they care and they also want to know that they’re cared for. It’s this combo and this relationship of both. And I feel grateful to have community to be able to see that reflection mirrored in me. The gathering and the way we gather has changed in some ways just based on the physical construct, but at the same time, all the emotions and those feelings and those sensations are still alive. And I feel really grateful for that so I agree, I don’t feel as much as in distress. Although I will say there’s moments going outside of my physical realm of comfort, i.e. my home, where all of the sudden the distress is this palpable feeling that I'm needing to navigate, whether I have a rock or some type of entity supporting me. Maybe Sanyu’s dad can hang out, like a butterfly or a field. Something like that. That’s the thing that I’ve noticed that changes. The conversation around boundaries, which I guess will be another thing that I have. What are your relationships around what boundaries are? For me, boundaries can be social, they can obviously be emotional. Right now we are talking about, and I’m wanting to reclaim - we’re talking about
physically distancing a lot in the world over social distancing. Although we’ve made this big sweep like it seems the language of social distancing is alive though it’s really just the way we relate with distance. So I’m curious about boundaries. We’ve even, Sanyu and I have even gone down and spiraled many layers around my own sense of boundaries. But I’m curious about energetic boundaries you hold whether that’s in relationship to magickal shit and divination or protective boundaries that you give yourself when you know you’ve reached your limit. Using that question on boundaries, whatever feels alive
SE: I think that’s a really appropriate question for the Lovers card TB: Go for it
SE: Oh, ok great [laughter]. I think that again, I’ve always known how to take my own space. I got to say that. And I think maybe that’s the advantage of being the third and a surprise child that happened to be naturally spaced at the same - I’m six years younger than my sister and my sister is six years younger than my brother but I was a surprise so I just came in on time at the last minute. But because of that, I didn’t share a school with them. When I was six my brother was 18
ALL: [laughter]
SE: So our relating didn't happen until I was much older because there was nothing to talk about obviously at certain points. So I had to entertain myself a lot as a child so the idea of how to take space is not something I really struggle with. I was just speaking with my friend Jen about this. Who defines what is considered essential and not in this new world order. What is an essential business? Whether artists are allowed to go to their studios or whether, if your studio is not in your house but if your studio is a public studio and it’s locked and you’re not permitted to go there because it’s not considered an essential business. So it’s interesting because this response is unnecessary. The physical distancing is obviously a necessary response since there’s not enough
accountability process in the social world that actually allows for people to interact in a way that’s not harmful to them. But at some point, we will cross a threshold of what is reasonable and what is unreasonable for each individual obviously as in that conversation with themselves and each household however that might be made up whether that’s you and your dog or you and five vie other people and ultimately what it means for the culture. So I think that will be interesting. Those are the boundaries. Those are the preconceived notions that are now having a restructuring and I’m trying to maintain...I try to do the work of the world I want to be on. Because I think that a lot of people prepare for worlds that they don’t want to be on
EC: [laughs]
SE: And I’m just like well you’re agreeing. You can know the worst is possible and not come to expect it and that’s the realm of life I’m trying to exist in and that’s what I can say about boundaries
TB: Love it. Any spirals of thought, anything coming through? EC: No, actually [laughter]
TB: Yeah. I have curiosity around...what are your boundaries with intimacy? When you find intimacy - for me, intimacy can be with all things, I’m not just saying with an individual but if we want to take it there based on love...what is a boundary that you declare right off the bat. For me, one thing is, I’m very much very open to not standing when people say I’m too much and I’ve had partners that have said that and it’s a pretty fierce boundary that I draw right away because I’ve been told that I’ve been too much for so long and I’ve had to un-fucking-ravel this, ‘you’re too intense or too much’ thing. So if a partner all of a sudden is projecting that or saying that, I draw a really fierce boundary that that’s non-negotiable. I'm more than too much. I'm overflowing of much. And knowing that that enoughness feels full and satisfying for me in my own terms of
my own intimacy. So I'm curious what boundaries are for y’all when you experience intimacy. And these could be about safe words. I'm all about good safe words [laughter]
EC: I think what's challenging to me is the word boundaries because I don't have a conscious ‘these are my boundaries and this is what I do when they’re crossed.’ it's a very instinctive process for me. So I'd say my boundaries are very good but they’re also closely tied to what is also my defenses and they’re kind of automatic so when I’m consciously interacting with my boundaries it’s not to enforce them, it's to question them [laughter]. It's like, hmm, that’s interesting. I've decided you’re dead to me [laughter]. What’s this about? [laughter]. And so I tend to think of it more in terms of understanding my mechanisms of when I perceive threat and why that seems threatening to me and is it true, is it real? So I’m very very well defended [laughter] and I think part of that is I know myself very well. Both naturally and as a result of a lot of work to know myself. So it's really difficult to penetrate that sense of myself and implant a contrary idea to make me think something about myself that’s not true. But, when I feel like that’s being tried, that will definitely rile me up and I will feel really agitated. Depending on how close the person to me is at that point, right? If I’m already vulnerable, if I’m already connected, if I’ve already made some kinds of agreements and that starts happening, I’ll find that very upsetting [laughter]. And this is something Sanyu and I have shared is going through a process of revising what I’m keeping out because - and this ties into the Lovers’ card because in some traditional depictions of it there’s a person in the center with two options. And it’s not a card of, ‘I want you, harmony bliss,’ its a card of, ‘I don’t know what the fuck to do.’ And I’m torn between these competing impulses that charge each other on the one hand and cancel each other out on the other and I’m praying for some sort of divine intervention to sort this out for me because I’m stuck and I don’t like this feeling of being stuck. And I think that happens to me frequently in intimacy and in love. Where the more arousal there is the potential for being, the more intimacy there is on the table, the more fear I’m going to feel in direct proportion to this thing that I clearly also want and it can fuck with your instincts. It makes it hard to make what would otherwise be a clear decision. And often in those cases the thing that I'm fighting with is me, not the person [laughter]. So my boundaries are fine because they can't get at me
but internally I'm trying to figure out what my boundaries are with myself and why I've set this set of rules or decided why it must happen in this way. That's what I thought.
SE: Yeah, that's lots of great thoughts
EC: [Laughter]
SE: Yeah, I’m in a curious place with that. I would say that in general, I have had a more or less interdimensional experience and what I mean by that is I’m not a very linear person and so I have always had multiple perspectives on circumstances
EC: Simultaneously
SE: Yeah, simultaneously. So in that sense, why I say is that is because I have experienced a great deal of what I have discovered to be for other people the transgression or the passing of or even In my case sometimes the not being applied to boundaries. People will tell me what their boundaries are and I’ll just have a conversation with them and I’ll be beyond the boundaries through the conversation. It’s not often done through any sort of actual intention other than being curious
EC: Curious, yeah
SE: And I think that’s the resounding key that opens all the doors. Talking with someone out of actual interest as opposed to trying to get something out of them in particular, like just interested in how they are and why [laughter]. Yeah
EC: You’re making me think of this recent thing. Sometimes I find arousal to be very threatening and it really triggers a lot of grief and fear for me and then I just want nothing to do with it. And what I noticed around that when that happens...I call it my sex offseason. A couple of months ago friends sent me a link to this porn video that was so up my alley. It was all abstract shapes and artistic political context and I just sobbed. I
watched a preview of the video and cried myself to sleep. I was like, ‘I hate you, sex, we’re not friends!’ And what I noticed in those times is the thing that I lose is my curiosity. I don’t feel safe being curious. What I want is to not have any openness to information I can’t predict or feelings that I can’t control. I think it’s part of a cycle, particularly if you can experience intense pleasure or intensely sensual experiences, it’s very inundating. And so it’s a natural reset. And when I don't freak out about it and just let it be there, eventually my curiosity renews and then suddenly I’m super confident and trusting in this intensity other people can't hold for themselves. They seem like very contradictory things but they actually really need each other. When you were talking about that curiosity I was like, yeah. It does very much hinge for me - openness and the erotic is an exercise through curiosity
SE: Yeah, Which is also why I call being a heterosexual person who is also cis and [laughter] and dating people is, you know, we’ll get to that
EC: I’m so sorry [laughter]
SE: Yeah, we’re in the ghetto. Because of the lack of curiosity on the heteronormative man side is so large that it’s extremely discouraging simply because you can not make someone curious for them
EC: I know, you can’t do it for someone
SE: I know I'm interested but if you don't know that I can’t make you know that, so EC: Know that, exactly, yeah yeah yeah
TB: Not your job
EC: And the template for what you are supposed to want and do in relation to their lack of curiosity is just already broken for you. It’s not even like you can do a little bit of it. The first conversation...it’s a very immediately dysfunctional dynamic.
SE: Yeah, it’s very fascinating. What I’ll say on the other side is, so one, I have a life of people telling me, ‘you can’t do that,’ but that’s a response to something someone has already done so you can't say that to me, I’m like but,
EC: I just did! I literally can!
SE: And I was a kid that got in trouble with adults a lot because they didn’t like that I
spoke to them the way that I spoke to them ALL: [Laughs]
SE: And I got banned from a lot of houses and was considered rude and things like that because I asked questions, I was very curious. So that’s one side of the boundary
EC: Which tells you how powerful it is
SE: Yes, and also how scary it is to people, I guess
EC: Well, that’s why it’s scary because it’s powerful. It’s the same with sex. Sex is a form of power but we’re taught to distrust it and definitely to not inhabit our own amount of it. It’s ok if the marketing industry uses it to manipulate, that’s fine, but we can not embody our own amount of that power in our own ways. And I don’t know that there’s anyone in charge of this, I don’t mean this in a conspiracy way, but I think instinctively, we sense power and attempt to like... I don’t want it, I don’t want to have to use it, I don’t want to be responsible for it. But also, I’m going to use my boundaries to make sure that you don’t use it against me instead of just opening up to the power, and we all kind of like collectively...
SE: Well yeah, that adheres back to what you were saying about, I’m going to butcher your language but you were saying something to the effect of, the more intimate it is or the more involved I am, or the more in love I am, the more fear I have, right. And that’s because that is actual power. You’re like, oh, I’m here [crosstalk]
EC: Yes, I’m present
SE: I care about this and I’ve thought of nothing else while I’m doing it because I’m actually completely...but when it's another person, it’s a trickier...because when it's an activity, that’s also an interdimensional relationship, right? When you are of the same density and you are not in control of your practice with that thing, suddenly it’s a different situation
EC: Suddenly it doesn't feel like you’re in power anymore even though it still is, but it becomes interpreted as a form of powerlessness or helplessness, that somehow in the way we frame particularly romance but definitely intimacy, if you feel powerless, then that means the other person has it even though that’s actually bullshit [laughter]. It’s not true at all!
SE: Right, that’s so true and you see that so often in how people take breakups, right? I saw a hilarious quote. It made me laugh because of how offensive it is in a way but let me read it to you so that you can decide for yourself. It's just one of those things for Twitter. And I'm going to use the word m*gga with an m because that's my personal word for men who are just doing fuckshit. Sos he says something about a m*gga being able to still breathe when we are on bad terms just don't sit well with my spirit [laughter]. I was like, that’s ruthless, but a very honest thing to say
EC: It's so honest
SE: Because you think, what do you have to feel good about when we are in this power conversation where I don’t feel good so you have all the feeling goodness and you’re like, actually that person can also feel like shit [laughter]
TB: And doesn't sit well with spirit, they’re not even talking about physicality. They’re talking about the
EC: Like the auric
TB: Exactly. The higher feeling and that’s what’s not sitting. And it's interesting, we bring in the Lovers’ card a little bit but I want to connect on it because of the binary of the image of the card. We talk a little bit about it. I’m like why don’t we just fuckshit a little bit of the actual traditional looking. Because when they say the card, they talk about the snake and the tree and the card. Having this idea around sensation and pleasure and the fuckshit for me is that the sensation and pleasure are what takes us away from the focus of divinity, the focus of the spirit. That somehow, pleasure and sensation can’t be connected to the divine, which just makes me be like...
EC: That makes no sense
TB: It makes me have this convulsion, like, what the fuck? It’s interesting. The way they’re placed, the way that they’re placed at a distance. One being the path of the conscious and the subconscious and then this superconscious but it can't be rooted in physical desire and that’s why I’m picking both of you for this card. It feels so relevant because you both look ain physicality and the beauty of pleasures but also rooted in higher levels of consciousness. There’s intersections in these things and not separation. Which again, the fuckshit is so of the righter way is so into this binary
EC: Binary, yeah [crosstalk]
Asexuality 40:05
SE: I’m laughing because I think Erin and I are two of the more practicing asexual people [laughter], right?
EC: Right?! It just happens to me all the time -
TB: For the audience, what asexual is, would you want to break that down for folks in
your words what asexual is?
EC: Jesus, no! [Laughter]
TB: Good boundaries!
EC: Could you fucking break it down for me? [Laughter] [Crosstalk]
SE: What I will say is it's like, I would describe it as self-intimacy. It does not necessarily require physical erotic stimulation. That's how I would describe it. Because I can spend a great deal of time being intimate with myself, which doesn't mean masturbation, it means I am with myself. That's how I would describe it.
EC: Sure, that works for me [laughter]
SE: Well you were going to say something about - great - you were going to say
something about the traditional card
EC: Ok yeah, I will remember that. I am definitely often unsure of how to present the aspect of my intimacy that is asexual, so I don’t [laughter]. Yeah, you're right - that is a boundary for me and it's just because in a way that feels like you’re saying intimacy with yourself, it does feel like it's for me. That's sort of the point of it, there isn’t another person involved and I don't have a need being unmet. When I'm feeling lust and
generally that happens only in the context of a specific person, it doesn't come first, and then I have to go and find someone. Somebody inspires it in me
SE: Yeah, it's not ambiguous. It’s specific
EC: It's very specific and that's that. My experience with that person is defined by the way that we can meet that need mutually and that doesn’t always look like sex either laughter so yeah I would say that for me that experience with sexuality is about being with myself but not having an unmet need that I’m waiting for someone to come and meet for me. But what I wanted to say about the ride or wait is that one of the reasons that the binary is so strong in those images is because, from my understanding, it was based very much on the concept of alchemy which are all about the -
SE: Equal opposites
EC: Harmonizing those elements through transmutation that requires some sort of...and I think what Sanyu and I reject that in a sense partly I think it's our mutual zen/Taoist nondual tendencies [laughter] but there isn't anything to transmute necessarily, there isn't anywhere to go that isn't what is
SE: Yeah. it's not an incomplete life. It's completed, it’s just not always harmonious [laughter]
EC: Yeah. And that is not necessarily something to resolve SE: Especially with another person
EC: Right
SE: If anything, it's something to resolve with yourself before you get involved with another person
EC: Yes [crosstalk], that’s true, yes
TB: You say it so much more poetically. I was just thinking that right away it was like that because it was an old white dude. Like, the context of the cards even though the drawings weren’t, I was like, oh man. You say it so much more poetically than me
Coronavirus, binaries, and ableism 44:12
SE: But you know what's funny about that? I've been thinking about this recently. Because the binary is a very entrenched...like dualism and the binary are very entrenched, and I've been thinking about this in the wake of coronavirus for instance because, and this is a superficial example but it's great for the example of how entrenched the binary is. The meme that's like ‘tell me people who don't believe in social distancing aren’t the people who would hide a zombie bite,’ or something like this.
EC: Okay. I’m curious
SE: It’s like, convince me that the kind of people who will not, maybe it's not about social distancing, but don't believe in the virus aren't the same people that if they were bitten by a zombie wouldn’t hide it, right? You know that meme where someone’s at a table and they're like, convince me, and there's a sign on the table and they’re sitting at the table. And I've seen this meme in many people’s stories and I’m like this is a very interesting capitulation to the binary. Because you’re saying its one-dimensional why anybody would not believe what you believe and that means its what you believe or they’re fucking stupid terrible zombie makers and I find that very fascinating because all through coronavirus I’ve been thinking, and we’ve just left March, but I’ve just been thinking, ‘the mob is fickle, the mob is fickle, the mob is fickle.’ Because when people think, and I was having a conversation about how this is ableist and let me know what you think, but it's very ableist to suggest that because you think something is for the good of all that that is all that it is
EC: Say that more
SE: Ok so like for example, if you're not social distancing or not staying inside, you’re doing this and that and the other. But it's like there's no other thing you could be doing that for because the reason that they’re doing it is right. I’m trying to describe it well. I can actually find it because I actually said this to a person in a better way. But it’s the sense that when you're doing something for a scientific reason or for a health reason or for a moral reason or for a natural reason, that the opposition to that is -
EC: Is automatically the opp -, okay
SE: Yeah, it’s completely bogus because you are the abled one
EC: You’re the frame of reference
SE: Yes and your understanding is what is and the opposition of that understanding is not knowing what is
TB: Like working from home. I’m making it in a contemporary context. All of the sudden, working from home is this completely normalized, this is what we’re doing now, it’s fine
SE: Or even like it's some sort of heroic fucking cause. Now that you're on board doesn't mean this shit is the truth. It can be true and also not be true and if you don't believe that then you are an adherer of the binary because it has to be that people get to choose for themselves. And that may inconvenience you in your relation to that thing, but that is the experience of most people who are not privileged which is the constant inconveniencing [crosstalk]
EC: And I was going to say that might inconvenience you and it also might kill you but that is also the experience of the marginalized. People who are not sharing your reality
or your experience can very casually take actions and make decisions that threaten your life and you just have to deal with that. Because one of the things that is not an option is somehow compelling or convincing them to see your reality and your existence really in its own weight, its own density
SE: And the wild thing, because we’re talking about the alchemy and the Lovers card, like that power that we’re talking about, that coveted thing is being okay with whatever it is. But knowing what your position is, too. Knowing what you are, knowing your actual chemical makeup, then understanding the alchemical process of involving yourself with other things
EC: This is what I always say, in my experience, being not disabled is one of the dumbest privileges [laughter] I have ever seen because it's basically the privilege of not having to know yourself very well, not being very resilient, not understanding what adaptation is and how its functions, let alone appreciating the process of it, and not being able to experience or tolerate intimacy and interdependence. I’m like, great. Congratulations. I don't see how that’s better. You know it’s faster, it’s got an efficiency to it, there's certainly a streamlined trajectory of linearity to it, but how is it better? Yes it's a privilege in the way our world is structured, but in any of the metrics that are meaningful to me, it never strikes me as better, it's never been a goal of mine to hit the level of privilege that people who live without disabilities have. I’m like, I don't like that! I think that you should do what I have! And now they are! [laughter]. This is fantastic! I don’t want people to be suffering but I can't help but appreciate to some extent how everything is restructuring almost perfectly along lines that people with disabilities have been asking for for years
SE: Oh, wait. Yeah
EC: Like the parallel between what we have been saying society should do to include us is now exactly what society is doing to save itself.
SE: [Laughter] No, that’s so true
EC: That’s what it feels like
SE: And it just goes back to the fact that in an oppressive limited cultural society, the actual public spaces are not necessarily intended to keep you safe, to protect you, or make your life, I don't want to use the word easier, but account for your life. Like public space is not actually intended to account for all lives. It never has been
EC: It never was
SE: And people recognize that for whatever levels of non-privileges that they have or whatever point that is enacted upon them because there are limitations for all of us and for some people that limitation might only be death. But that like, Epstein, that was a real ass, he might have, I doubt he killed himself but that exit was the true trump, that's the trump card. We’re all going to die. But when that becomes a more immediate reality for you because the way that you have to navigate through space that isn't intended for your life, is an imposition for your life, you know what people deny who society is actually functioning for, which is, this shit is fucked up. The way that this works doesn't actually work
EC: It doesn't actually work, yeah. I think for me what’s been interesting about that is I don't know if I’d ever really grieved that, that public space wasn't meant for me. Which has been interesting in terms of how disability activism works...and I don't consider myself an activist. When people typically call me that, its because that's what they’re comfortable with disabled people in public, they’re comfortable with it if they’re activists but not if they're just people [laughter]
SE: Living their life
EC: Yeah or being artists or having any other agenda other than a specific form of change. And I feel like one of the reasons activism doesn't apply as a title to me is because I've never had an agenda of change in which I would then be more welcome in public spaces. I always wanted my own space. My whole thing has always been like, you do what you do with your public space. It's not my realm. I'm in charge of my realm. If you want to come in here, these are the rules as I've established them. So it has always been a process of sovereignty for me from the day I was born and never was all that interested in what people were doing in public spaces. It always seemed kind of dumb to me [laughter]. It’s like that popularity contest, very typical in high schools, like why are you vying to be the top of a pyramid of nothing. Where does it go after that?
TB?: And advocacy without intention. People thinking they know what they want from you
EC: Well I also think that there's a lack of self-awareness in it. There's a difference between working through your personal pain and your personal history and your personal history and political change, but that's a very blurry line. And sometimes the question that occurs to me, is, do you know that if there was no ableism in society you would still be disabled? Curing ableism will not change your physical reality. That's a very blurry line as well. We try to make it very binary: there's my body with this disability and these limits and over there is society and its attitudes about me, and if I could make those attitudes good, this experience would be fundamentally different but in fact, they're not that separate, and it would change maybe your own internal context but you could do that anyway. You don't need to change society first [laughter]
SE: In fact, it would take much much longer. Maybe forever
EC: And I'm not saying that there isn't activism in which schools need to have physical accessibility. When it's very concrete I think that's an incredibly valuable process but that is very direct and very local and very not conceptual. It's a very mechanical process in which I identify a need, I identify a solution, and now I lobby for the solution to be put
in place and then test to see whether or not it solved the problem. When we’re talking about concepts, the spiritual energy and identity around our personal experiences -
TB: It's ominous, right? Even the motions that you're making [crosstalk]
SE: I appreciate you doing that Tara because when you're talking about the linearity of it, or maybe that's not the word that you used but that's what I thought when you were talking about the privilege of ableism, it's the same sort of thing with the privilege of maleness of whiteness or skinniness or age or money or whatever. The thing is it creates a bubble reality. I won’t say the bubble reality is false because the experience of it is real. But what it does is create a bubble reality within the greater reality that separates you from the bigger picture. It's like the forest for the trees. And so it creates an arbitrary imperative or necessity that then becomes privilege that's actually largely irrelevant. My body is my body and that's what it is and there are a lot of different bodies and they're all able to do what different bodies are able to do.
On boredom 57:24
SE: So the idea that one should want that linear experience, it’s destination-based
EC: Right, where are you going?
SE: Because it's not experientially based. Because it's this idea that I need to arrive at
this place of eternal comfort
EC: It’s stays focused on the payoff instead of the intimacy SE: Yeah. It’s ejaculatory living where, yeah
EC: [Laughter]
SE: Where you speed ahead but then you're done [crosstalk]. And then people wonder why they’re mind-numbingly bored when the status quo of society is taken away from them and they're not able to perform or function within the social dynamic that then rewards them from that behavior. It's like who are you when you're alone in the house? Who are you when you’re fearful for your fucking life?
EC: Yeah, it's boredom. I'm sitting here like, what is that? [crosstalk]
SE: Well according to my mom, it’s funny because I've been grappling with this actually, and when I was young because I spent a lot of time on my own because I didn't have siblings around to play with and I didn’t have a lot of kids in my building initially. I was like, I get bored and my mom told me at a very young age - only boring people get bored. And that was a very solid concept for me. But now that I have more time in the house than I've ever had than I need personally, I'm like oh I’m getting a lot of stuff done and then there's a part of the day too to be bored
EC: I love it
SE: And in that part of the day, I learn what that's like for me and how I can alleviate
that for myself
EC: It's funny for me because I remember a while ago a woman; whenever I travel I get a lot of, ‘oh my god, I would be so afraid to do that,’ and I get it because I'm going alone to very remote places and I don't really know what I'm going to do while I'm there. But this time it was sent to me by a friend who was my age and a therapist and she's got a job and resources and education. And I was going to Norway which is the safest place on the planet with the highest gender equality of anywhere and I said what would you be afraid of, boredom? And she said, ‘Yeah. What would I do with myself the whole time?’ And I was like, wow. Her choices about what would she experience are defined by avoiding boredom and that has never occurred to me to be afraid of it
SE: And assuming you would know what it is or how to find it
EC: Then I went to Norway and spent 21 hours on a train looking out a window and the landscape there is, aaahhh. One of the elements of my personal experience with asexuality is that my Lovers tend to be places I go or experiences I have and I experience it very parallel to what it would be like if it was a lover who was a person. So maybe that's a thing. I’ve just replaced the presence of a person with the presence of a place so I’m not bored either. I think boredom is the space in which I find out pleases me and what my desires even are, and they need room to percolate. It's easy to identify oh, I'm hungry or I like the sun or whatever. But the kind of desires that compel you forward more to risk of some kind or into an open state to have an experience requires a lot of space so I’m not more productive than I've ever been. People's perceptions of my productivity are very interesting to me because people think I'm very busy because I produce so much I’m doing so much stuff. I've accomplished so many things, but the actual amount of time I spend engaged in an activity I would say percentage-wise is very low. I'd write for an hour a day and be like what I’m doing for the rest of the time? Nothing. And that's been true my whole life. My shame around it has changed and fluctuated but the amount of stuff I do is pretty low activity-wise. But I'm constantly experiencing a lot of things. It does require activity to generate experience. They're not actually linked. Even though I'm in my house and I can't leave it and I don't have any goals or objectives to reach, things are still happening to me, life is still occurring and I'm experiencing that occurrence so I find boredom to be a strange thing to fear. I get it being unpleasant. Sometimes there's restlessness or agitation for sure, but you're basically saying you're afraid of life at that point
SE: When they're like, they're so close but they haven't gotten it
TB: You need to send me all these memes, I need to include them in the show notes SE: Oh my god I should, okay, I'm going to try and remember all those that I thought of
TB: You have to, I'll make sure to email you [crosstalk]
SE: You know we’re in times of coronavirus because I keep referring to memes
EC: The memes are pretty good though. I have to say that I’m really loving the corona memes
TB: My curiosity is, I roll through, because I could talk for hours. Oh yeah, that nonlinear timeline of time where I talk for hours and probably do very little editing
EC: I have a question around that because I don't really listen to a lot of podcasts. Do people just listen to long conversations that they can't say things in?
TB: It's interesting. This is funny because I’m going to put this out into the world - yes. Because I don't actually listen to a lot of podcasts and the ones that I do love are the ones that linger into my consciousness. The ones that I can put on and they just absorb. I love that type of conversation because it makes me feel like I'm part of the conversation and living into it. I'm not that much of an information gatherer in terms of podcasting and sometimes I've noticed podcasts I actually avert away from are the ones like - three ways to...[laughter]
EC: Get that off my skin!
TB: Even some that are very rooted in research and science which I love, I actually tend to read more of that and that feels different than hearing it. I do have a curiosity around tarot as a practice for both of yall and curious if it's been a part of your practice through all of this. Have you been doing readings? Oh yes, look at this
SE: Oh lovely
EC: Is it possible to turn the camera around?
SE: It should be, there we go, cool
EC: The tarot spread that was like what is
SE: Look at your girl in the middle
EC: What were your questions though? This is your spread. Where is your body at? Where are your feelings?
TB: This is my spread?
EC: Yeah. I wanted to show this to you
TB: [squeals]
EC: Because this is hilarious. What is the theme right now? [crosstalk] What were the questions? Do you have them?
TB: That's great
EC: Pull them up and I'll tell you. Sex on a throne [aughter]. Where is my body at? Love and also sex. Where are your feelings? They're very naked in the star. What I loved about this is the massive presentation of major arcana and the humblest of all cards. Where does this..[crosstalk]
TB: What is possible for you in this time?
EC: That makes the most sense to you. Humility...it’s so gorgeous.
TB: You're right next to this pink velvet...what's the close up of that? Yummy
EC: I know, this is my -. It's a blanket. And then I've got the reading I did today for the day is two cups, nine of pentacles, ten of pentacles. Use your words. This is not how the story ends and then a fucking bold heart
SE: Ooh I love this is not how the story ends.
TB: That's a good portion. I’m noticing too for this podcast, now foregoing in the linear order of the arcana - that's not serving anymore so y’all will probably be in the beginning [laughter]
EC: This is the Lovers journey now not the fool's journey
TB: Yeah, it occurred to me again around the nonlinearity of what we’re existing now. Now even more were not living in this is the next step, this is the next step because we’re having to choose our willingness to lean in, our willingness to listen more, our willingness to deconstruct what we thought reality to look like and what is possible. And again, this is not how the story ends. I think all of us thought that maybe we had the end of the story figured out. Some being not us, some being over culture. So it’s interesting to know that plot twists are fucking awesome
EC: I will say that as a writer my relationship to narrative twists is a little...it’s hilarious to me. I saw this quote so Glennon Doyle has a book out called untanked and I haven't read it but there was this person who quote from it who had written a memoir about her marriage and then discovered that he had been cheating on her the whole time and she writes about how sitting in the car after she learned about it she wasn’t feeling the rage of a cheated woman she was feeling the rage of a writer whose narrative had just been fucked with and I was like, I know that feeling! You know I had the perfect ending and...there is as much as we don't have control over, as much as I say boss the narrative and be in control of that, the stories that you're telling, those plot twists are
what make it and you can't by design can’t control them. Otherwise, they're not plot twists
SE: Otherwise you're the narrator and not the character. Or it depends on what person you're story is written in I guess actually [crosstalk] [laughter]
EC: And I've played with them all
TB: So I’m curious. I want to wind in and down and stop the recording because I want to
just keep talking. What do you love right now?
SE: What do I love right now? Well yeah that's always and forever in different ways for me. Always myself
EC: I'm really in love with myself right now SE: Yes. that's a good place to be
EC: Yeah it's awesome
SE: I think I’m really in love with existence. That’s a constant for me but it comes in and out of focus depending on the urgency of life down here. That's a very Piscean thing to say because I've always thought of one fish on the earth and one fish in space is how I think of Pisces. But what would say is I’m really appreciative of the inherent dignity that existence has because it allows for all these seeming contradictions. And it brings in what I was talking about for people who are caught up in a really binary state of mind right now, which the Lovers can definitely describe someone as because it can deal with the manifestation of love. But to be really in love with existence is to appreciate that it created everybody and everything and every idea, so everything is already taken care of in that sense. I don't have to get caught up or over-concerned with someone else's
anxiety about the world because existence doesn't require that of me. I can do it and I certainly can be socially conditioned and I can have good quote-unquote reasons because logic is the art of reason which just means you decide anyway [laughter]. Yes, engage in higher reason. That's where somebody else is and the fact that they’re experiencing existence in that way in this time does not necessitate that you do.
Outro 01:11:10
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