Our Circle is our Cauldron. Bring all that is True.
Risa: Hey, girl. Weird days. Mm
Amy: hmm. I'm here. I'm listening.
Risa: Oh, I posted about it maybe, but in circle, but you know, my bestie, of course, she has a baby brother who I've known his whole life.
Risa: He's the same age as Brianna. Just, just one morning clump of cells. They didn't know we're in his brain burst. Girlfriend found him seizing. He was in brain surgery for eight hours. Then their family, like, flew out there and, like, waited to find out if he was going to be totally brain dead or paralyzed.
Risa: Those were the options. And then I heard from her two days ago that he had moved his hands. Um, and she hasn't answered a text since. So I don't know what the fuck is going on.
Amy: Yeah, that's one of those, I don't even know if knowing or not knowing is the worst fate there. Oh, man. You know, one of the best people I ever knew died of a brain hemorrhage. Really? Like, everything was fine, and then suddenly she fucking died, you know? Yeah.
Risa: Just how quickly, like, someone you love could just not wake up, like.
Amy: Well, I have nothing but thoughts and prayers, unfortunately, for that one. But, uh.
Risa: I've just been. Yeah. I had this line in my head, um, all day when I found out I was driving around, it was like that heavy snow day, because it's like Sunday. And um. It was hard driving. I was like driving with all the kids and it was really thick everywhere.
Risa: And I had this line in my head. I was sure it was from like a T. S. Eliot poem, Oh, the many paths of the way. And I just kept thinking it over and over again. Like our brains can find paths like they can, we can rebuild. There's many paths to the way of consciousness. Like he can do this. He has a young, strong mind.
Risa: Like he can survive this. Oh, the many paths of the way. And I got home, looked it up for sure. It was going to be, you can't fucking find it. Anywhere.
Amy: Well, because it was the Muse that sent it to you and you made it up, but you didn't because it was the Muse's.
Risa: It's probably Taoist, but I'm just going to put it out into the world and I don't mind if this ends up in the Rx, all of this, but just, I'm holding onto that a lot right now.
Risa: This idea that there are many ways and we don't know them, you know, around collapse. around violence, around cruelty, like around catastrophe. There are many, many, many ways.
Amy: Not just like the cruelty of humanity, but the cruelty of fate.
Risa: Of fate. Yeah. Yeah. Of cells, just cell death, like the, not even cruelty, just randomness and, you know, uncertainty.
Amy: You know, I, I look to nature all the time, like just this morning I was like looking at my bird feeder and there's like four different breeds of birds all sort of just like, you know, sharing the space. And it's tempting to be like, well, you know, nature has it all figured out but like nature is fucking cruel too.
Amy: Nature is violent and. terrifying and a snowstorm will take you out or a cluster of cells will take you out and all of that is like part of that like random cruelty of life. Yeah.
Risa: Yeah, that essentialism is dangerous anywhere. Be like, Oh, Mother Nature has all our answers. I mean, yeah, she also has all our questions, all our problems, you know, all, it's not, you know, it's not just because patriarchy had a lot of shitty men in it doesn't mean there aren't a lot of fucking shitty women, you know, like, let's beware essentialism everywhere.
Amy: Absolutely right. I, I think about Phyllis Schlafly all the time, who like, was like famous for, for working against the Equal Rights Amendment. I think her thinking was that she was like a very happy, rich housewife, and if, you know, the Equal Rights Amendment came through, that she would have to go and get a job, and she didn't want to do that, so she figured the best course of action would be to just slam those rights for everybody who might actually want to do that or have to do that.
Amy: Yeah. What, what will women do in the protection of their privilege? That's what, what we call white feminism, right? It's like, it aligns itself with the power in, in, in self protection, and then ignores everything that doesn't go along with that.
Risa: This brings me to my song, although I didn't expect it to. Do you want a prescription?
Risa: Yeah.
Amy: You
Risa: ready? You ready? My, my sick one? How are you? First of all, are you okay?
Amy: I'm okay. Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm, I'm sick. I, the COVID finally got me and, uh, Um, thank you, listeners, for your patience last week. There was no Rx because I was asleep. And, uh, I texted Risa, like, I don't know how little Wayne does it.
Amy: Like, I don't know how you can go into a studio on half a bottle of NyQuil and, like, spit some shit because it was not happening for me. There was no way I was gonna, I was gonna go and record. But, I mean, again, like, I could complain, but at the same time, it feels a bit like that interview that Paris Hilton did where she was like, every bad thing that's ever happened has happened to me, you know, like, yeah, I was sick, but, um.
Amy: You know, my spouse was off work and did everything for me. My dog literally wouldn't leave my side. Like, Andrew was like, you want a treat? You want to go for a walk? He physically, at one point, tried to pull her away from me and she was like, no, no, no. Like, I'm not leaving her. I'm not leaving her. So. Yeah.
Amy: Um, I'm good. I mean, I'm like rotted and gutted and mucousy and shitty, but like, I'm so good. So good. I'm so lucky and, you know, what's, what's a little, what's a little virus. Yeah. In the grand scheme of things,
Risa: well I'm glad for that.
Amy: Mm-Hmm. . And I
Risa: mean also I'm sending a little love to Paris Hilton too.
Risa: 'cause I, I heard she just sort of was open about being in one of those like scare 'em straight camps when she was a kid where they come and take you from your home and like force smart you in places and she was sexually assaulted there and stuff. And those places are a fucking nightmare. And I'm sorry, anybody had to go through that.
Amy: Yeah. And I, I remember seeing another, there was something, I mean, I, we didn't mean to talk about Paris Hilton today, but here we are, where she was talking about like how her, her followers, like, you know, her social media followers, her fans, basically, that she like felt sometimes closer to them than the people in her own life.
Amy: Because, and at first I was like, You know, that's kind of weird and sad and gross, but then, I get it now. You know, like, these are the people who actually give a shit about what you're doing and the work that you're doing, and sometimes the people in your life just, like, don't care about what you're doing and the work that you're doing.
Amy: And so I get it. We get you, Paris. We feel you. We're not going to put you down, mama. We're not going to put you down. No,
Risa: I don't have the energy to put people down. I'm in this, uh, I'm in this like local Facebook group and this lovely woman posted in English, willing to like invite people to a circle with traditional Colombian singing.
Risa: She's from a shamanic tradition. I was like, how beautiful and generous. And somebody replied in French, the equivalent of like, go play in traffic if you can't be bothered to communicate in French here. There's, there's like very French. Racism here in Quebec and, uh, she and I were chatting afterwards, we were in messages and she was so lovely.
Risa: She's like, you know, I just that you have to have such a, so much sadness in your heart to say something like that. And so I just wish them the best. I was like, oh yeah, totally me too. Of course, I fucking reported them for hate speech on every platform. She's like, oh, me too. I'm like, okay, good.
Amy: Yes, we can, we can report them, but we don't have to, like, carry their hatred in
Risa: our hearts.
Risa: I can send them love and also be, like, unacceptable. Anyway. You said
Amy: you had a prescription.
Risa: Yeah, I was thinking about
Risa: I was thinking about, you know, the kind, well, you know, originally when I was thinking about this song or when it hit me, it was this idea of like a sort of a warrior like faith that things will be okay someday. Um, I stumbled on this song, one of our common mates made this. Ridiculously awesome playlist on Spotify, which I'll link to called Brouhaha.
Risa: Thanks, Sarah. It's really good. Um, and I was listening to it, and this song that I wasn't familiar with called Motherfighter by Nadine Shah came on. I don't know. I was not familiar, and I was not ready. You know, I think she wrote this song during Sort of the peak of the, um, war in Syria, and it was in response to a real woman in a documentary film, a mother, and the song is Motherfighter, and the lyrics are just, I mean, for this time we're in.
Risa: Watching children in Palestine, you know, legally the definition of genocide is being enacted in Palestine. Hamas is a fucking nightmare. You know, there, there's these ideologies based on murder and rape that are terrifying. Like, just to live in a place like that, and to know that your family has tended all of trees, and will one day again.
Risa: Like, that is the heart of this song, and there is such A resilient faith in that, like, I can't promise you it'll be okay, but you will come back to this place, you know. She says these streets are yours and they're mine. I can't promise all will be fine. When you're grown you no longer have to ask why, just come back home, when the land is as calm as the sky.
Risa: And so I'm putting it on the altar, I'm putting it in the prescription. It goes hard, not crazy hard, this song, but it goes hard too, so dance it out, feel in your body, call it in. There will be peace again. Kids will go home. I fucking insist upon it.
Amy: I insist upon it.
Risa: We all insist upon it together.
Amy: My, um, my song that I brought this week is like Uh, a similar vein, um, you know, I've been wallowing my, my sad girl, sad girl times and, uh, and I have a reading I'm going to do in a little bit too that kind of speaks to this, but like, you know, like we were talking about nature, like there's beauty, there's magic, there's love, um, there's also, you know, Um, birds that will kick other birds eggs and steal the nest, and, you know, it's not all, it's not all beautiful, um, and one of my favorite sad girls has always been, of course, Janice Joplin, um, she's great, if you need a minute to wallow and just, like, embrace that, the blues, for lack of a better term, the blues, then, then Janice is somebody that I go to to do that, and I brought Get It While You Can, um, I mean, it starts out like, in this world, if you read the papers, darling, you know everybody's fighting with each other.
Amy: And there's no one you can count on, dear, not even your own brother. So, if someone comes along who's gonna give you some love and affection, I say get it while you can. Get it while you can. And then she sings that line over and over and over. Get it while you can. Don't turn your back on love. Don't turn your back on love.
Amy: It's tempting, when you read the papers, darling, to feel like turning your back on love and just, like, embracing this Facebook. Fucker who was like, I'm angry and I feel bad, so I want you to feel bad too. But the option is, if someone comes along who wants to give you some love and affection, Like, this Colombian woman who wanted to share this beautiful circle.
Amy: I say get it while you can. And one of the other lyrics in the song is like, um, Don't you know when you love somebody, you're taking a gamble on a little sorrow. And we've talked about this before, that grief comes from love. We wouldn't grieve if we didn't love. Um, you're taking a gamble on a little sorrow, but who cares?
Amy: Because we may not be here tomorrow. Because we may not be here tomorrow, so if someone comes along who's gonna give you some love and affection, I say get it while you can. Get it while you can. So that's my prescription, like, get it however, however, wherever, from whomever, when you feel like you want to hate.
Amy: Find
Amy: someone who's going to give you some love and affection and get it while you can because we may not be here tomorrow and we definitely won't be here a hundred years from now, you know, so get it while you can is my prescription, whether you listen to the Janis Joplin song or not, just get it while you can, whatever it is, get it while you can.
Amy: I love that. And don't, don't you turn your back on love.
Risa: No, no. That's what's so important to insist upon. And it's so funny 'cause in the past I've been like, well, the message can't just, you know, like the core. It can't just be that simple. Like, it's just love, like that , you know, the, the message at the heart of every movement, every peace movement, every religion that I was, I've, I've really had in my head a lot lately.
Risa: I did an episode on Lucille Clifton a little while back, this incredible poet. And, um, Marina Maguiar went, who is this great researcher, went through this period of Lucille Clipton's life that was sort of lesser known where she was Um, channeling she started with a Ouija board and then she progressed with automatic writing and stuff.
Risa: And the one message that kind of comes through over and over again, and that McGloire cites is, is her sort of voices who would return to her over and over again, being like, the time is short, like you have, you know, your children's generation and their children's generation to insist and remind the world that love is that truth is.
Risa: And if we can. Then we will have a thousand years of love and peace on earth and if we can't, then there will be a really long dark period and I don't know I just keep, I don't know about the, the prophecy element of that or the way that our own fears can manifest in voices or how deeply accurate. I, I think she was as a poet, as a listener, you know, but, uh, it does ground me to think like it is enough and more than enough and kind of everything to insist that love exists, that we love.
Risa: I truly, you know, that like love is, we don't skip it. We don't just skip over it and like, forget how fucking miraculous and astounding it is. The people fall in love, even with the love with a place that we imbue so much life into things, so much love to our relationships with like animals and tools and like, I don't know, staying there, not letting that.
Risa: Magic slipped through our fingers in those moments, but like really staying in what love is,
Risa: is all that I have for the prescription.
Amy: Because it is, you know, um, post enlightenment and we want to be logical and people say feelings are not facts and all of these things. And yeah. Totally. Um, but at the same time, like, love is a great mystery. We don't understand it. We don't know. We've had, you know, biologists tell us that, like, you know, certain pheromones will attract you because of immunity differences.
Amy: And then your body, like, wants to make a child with this person because you have, like, different immunity and, and all of that stuff. But, like, falling in love, loving, has no logic. It is magic. It is unknowable. And yet, like, it's all we know. So that, that is magic. That, that great unknown that is the most beautiful thing that we can conjure in
Risa: our minds.
Risa: And it is the magic of this time of year, right? Like, it's, if you live in the North, like we, it's dark and darker every day. And so we are drawn inward. We're drawn Into our small homes, we're drawn towards small lights, you know, we, we see the hope of the sun and just like these, it's so precious, you know, so it, we have to like, aim ourselves at the joy of the solstice and like the crazy painful mother's night rebirthness of the whole world that is the solstice and like, just lean into like, some, somehow the fact that it is dwindling away makes it all the more clear and all the more like everything.
Amy: All the more everything. All the more everything y. Um, I brought, uh, I brought one of my old women's spirit magazines. Listeners, if you don't know what I'm talking about, I did a zine post about Women's Spirit Magazine, so we'll link that in the Rx. But they, this group of women, feminist witches, they put out this magazine four times a year on the solstices and on the equinoxes.
Amy: And this is from the Winter Solstice. I can't find the year here, but it was in the 70s. This is number 14. And I found this piece. It's called Our Circle, Our Cauldron. And I really feel like, you know, we talk metaphorically about the cauldron and I, and to extend that metaphor, like, I feel like our circle is the cauldron into which we put And this is like a four page long kind of play.
Amy: So obviously I'm not going to read the whole thing here. But, um, this just really struck me. So I'm going to read a bit of it.
Amy: One of the older women rises to her knees and looks soberly around the circle. She holds an ornamented stick with a rattle on the end. She speaks, Let us all breathe deep, sisters, and focus. Let us center our hearts and minds here, on this empty space between us. This is a receptive space. It is our cauldron.
Amy: Whatever we put in it will be transformed. It can nourish us all. What do we need today? A woman answers, We have each come to this circle hungry. Our bodies, our minds, our hearts, our very souls are lean. And restless. Is there any food that will fill us? Another woman says, we have only the fragments of our lives, some bits of insight, and pieces of our dreams.
Amy: But we can pour in the salty water of our tears. We have so many tears. Our tears of pain, of hopelessness, of fear. The first woman replies, Here, stir the cauldron as the rattle comes to you. Throw in whatever you bring. Empty your pockets. Shake out your secrets. Turn the dark corners of your past to our sight.
Amy: We need all that we can bring that is true. Whether it tastes of honey, or vinegar, salt, or spice. Whether it is herb, flower, root, or rind. Surely, there is nourishment in all the scraps of our lives. The second woman adds, We have brought fire to transform them with our hot tempers, our burning passions, our desire and the warmth of our love, the white heat of our resentment, and the searing blaze of our rage.
Amy: All three speak together, Come, together we will make a rich stew, and we will feed each other, we will all be filled. A nourishing broth, a healing potion, a magic brew. There is a soft drumming which fades into silence.
Risa: We need all that we bring that
Amy: is true. All of it. If you got spice, if you got sugar, all is welcome in the circle of our cauldron. Because our circle is our cauldron. So, if you're sick, if you're mourning, if you're happy and in love, All of these are the ingredients, the scraps of our lives, that form this stew that will nourish us together.
Risa: Here's to the fighter moms, and the warrior moms, and the sick, and the loving, and the getting better, and the kids rebuilding their brains. And get it while you can. Get it while you fucking can. And blessed
Amy: fucking be.