Update, & upcoming Creativity workshop Oct 19

Hi all,

It’s fall, and we are preparing to leave California. Our studio is a chaos of boxes, lists, and Post-It notes. These last weeks have been frenzied and full of serendipities. J & I have sussed out a general itinerary for our return to Europe, scrambling to make sure we see friends and family (in northern and southern California, on both coasts, and in the Midwest) before we take off for Vienna, and then [redacted].

Davvers

Like the cat, my dissertation sits patiently/impatiently, watching all this. I do not need to write about not writing, how not writing makes me feel, how the energies of packing, storing, moving, and saying goodbye to California must all be in service of the more abstracted project of the book on Ashbery and mysticism (“must be” is my hopefulness showing).

Packing my 600-book library to put into the deep freeze was expected to be the most difficult part of this transition, and so I could not do anything else until that was done. I inventoried and organized my shelves while J foraged for sturdy recycled boxes. I compiled the Must-Have-With-Me dozen (okay, two dozen), and the rest are now wrapped in paper and Sharpie-numbered cardboard, soon to be tucked away in an attic in New Hampshire for the next few years while we travel and seek greener, less gridlocked pastures.

I am too excited for our travel plans to be able to say much here, but I anticipate wanting to use this newsletter as a sort of travelogue, complete with anecdotes and lots of photographs, while we walk our self-stylized Camino through 2024. Til then, please accept a slowed trickle of posting. My brain is offline these days while my body moves me toward The Next Thing and my heart, it seems, swells and bursts with the familiar upwell of love and gratitude I get whenever I’m about to leave a place and its people.

At the risk of being maudlin, and again, mostly thanks to the cat, I’ve been up watching the sun rise lately. The exhausting heat of summer has relinquished its grip, and I wake early naturally in the fresh chill, and go over to stand by the window near my desk that looks east and shows the sunshine burning the mist off the hills.

Yesterday, in a deep flow abetted by long tracts of psytrance, I pulled everything out of my closet, decluttered, organized it, and began to pack. Clothes ended up in regional and seasonal categories — though what I wear in Vermont in November does differ from what I wear in Vienna in January, it doesn’t differ much — and it gave me great pleasure to return to my cold-weather wardrobe and imagine cozying up and hunkering down. Stashing away ecru linens and airing out bloodred, navy, and pure black wool felt like strong ritual.

I have never “liked” Libra season. The cardinal signs are the cruxes, the shifty ones — that is, they shift the seasons. No wonder I have a bias against their placements in charts: I have always experienced fretful discomfort with transitions. Capricorn brings on winter; Aries ejaculates the spring. Cancer tugs us into summer; Libra drops us into fall. In my own chart, the houses for all of these signs but one (the winter, deep-freeze time) are completely empty: change is hard. But the present is unchanging, and so, we linger here, flowing quickly along.

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fall colors, Pigeon Point (Highway 1)

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Cultivating Creativity is back! Our first installment of this generative workshop went wonderfully last month, and before we forsake the Bay Area, I’ll be hosting two more at the Alembic in West Berkeley. That means TWO MORE CHANCES to access my energy in aura before you’ll have to resort to Zoom conferencing at edgy hours or getting on a plane to Europe/northern Africa. Details below; Eventbrite page for reserving your spot forthcoming. Please share widely with your CA circles!

You can read the full description of the workshop on the previous Eventbrite page here (click “see details” to expand).

Thursday, October 19

Cultivating Creativity:

A Workshop for Personal Transformation

This monthly workshop is designed to help you meet the version of your Self who is a satisfied creative being. Together, we’ll use updated medieval mystical practices to draw out more conscious awareness from within, making deep contact with a well of insight that reconnects you with “the flow” of creative process.

Expect a combination of reading, writing, contemplative spiritual exercises, and discussion. Group ritual practices may include guided visualization, Tarot, and other imagination-based modes of understanding and expression, plus light movement and energy play to integrate and ground the evening’s transformations.

In honor of Samhain, this month's theme is "writing through the veil." We will study, contemplate, and ritualize the darker transformative energies of death and decay present ahead of Samhain (Halloween) and Scorpio season. Bring a notebook, a pen, and a sense of humor. Wearing black is encouraged for optimal gathering of personal power.

Kayla Krut (@strength.reversed), MFA/PhD, has guided over 1500 people to and through poetry, in classroom settings and as an individual mentor, over the last fifteen years.

“Keep Santa Cruz Salty”