I hope you all are having a most blessed summer. Here we have a full Moon offering from our friend, Lindsey Higo.
​Blessed be. 
~Noah D. C.

Hello fellow moonbaskers and stargazers, 
Summer heat is arriving fast, and my garden flourishes after the toils of spring planting. The Strawberry Moon, known also as the Honey or Mead moon, will arrive on June 14th, just one week ahead of the solstice.  In many regions, June is the time that fruiting plants, like strawberries and their relatives, are gathered and fill our baskets to bursting.  I often draw on these two words, abundance and gathering, when I welcome people into my social circle or space, especially around the Summer Solstice, as it is a day much anticipated in our home.  
An added level of excitement nudges at my thoughts as this will also be one of the supermoons of 2022.  There is something so breathtaking as the moon crests over the horizon, appearing to swell and fill the sky.  I’ve been known to stop what I’m doing, dash outside and take a few deep breaths as my skin tingles under its bright glow. The Strawberry Moon will be 222,238.4 miles (357,658km) from us, which in Earth miles is so far, yet in space might as well be next door. Regardless, you may be tempted to reach out… just to see if you can touch it after all.
My days around the solstice used to be bustling with activity (moon basking aside). I made a point to seek out friends and welcome them into my home or garden.  The bonds of these relationships grow a little differently on a summer evening. When the sun’s light turns soft, and the moon begins its ascent, the warm air mixes with the soft chorus of nature, urging us to slow down and recover from the heat of the day. It’s this perfect combination that invites people to linger at a gathering.  In light of the changing world, the pace of my solstice celebrations has slowed and the gathering has grown smaller and more intimate, making the time I spend with others so precious. 
Even without the crowd of years past, I am still determined to prepare an appropriate offering to toast the season.  This determination is not only rooted in being a good host but also as a cocktail enthusiast. While my journey with spirited beverages started as many of ours do, in the rowdy yards and packed homes of university students it was the years afterward, spent carefully reading, experimenting and tasting my way around the world that has given me an appreciation for the craft that I can’t help but share. Making and offering a flavorful balanced drink is an experience.  You aren’t just combining liquids: there is a thoughtfulness for the occasion and an understanding of what flavors and palate suits your guest- especially during festive times of the year. I love the chance to give my guests something unique! There's a thrilling challenge to finding the right flavors to associate with celebrations and keep my guests' tastes a top priority. I hope with that inspiration and spirit in mind you will take time and join me in preparing a libation fit for toasting the light of the summer moon, solstice and in appreciation for those close to you.
Strawberry Gin Punch
Ingredients:
3oz gin of your choice: I recommend one with floral botanicals. Consider Empress 1908, The Botanist or Hendricks Midsummer Solstice. This spirit will be the heart of your drink so if the urge compels you, charge it under the full moon with the intention to share the abundance you have with those you are imbibing with.
1.5oz strawberry syrup: Create with the intention of sharing the bounty in your life whether it’s food, friends or family. Easily crafted with 5-6 large strawberries (sliced), 1 cup water and ½ cup honey, bring to a simmer for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until strawberries are very soft. Set aside until cool. Strain off the syrup into an airtight container. You can save the berry bits for later, for a simple jam for toast or for your compost or garden.
 .75oz fresh lemon juice: Draw in happiness and friendship. Embrace the lemon’s tartness to balance the sweetness of your other ingredients.
Fresh rosemary sprigs: Gather from your garden or wherever you find herbs to encourage love for the self and those around you. Rosemary will also help lure out the botanical flavors present in the gin you have chosen.
1.5-2oz sweet sparkling wine or mead: A nod to European nicknames for this moon, you will top your cocktail with happiness and love. June is a traditional month for marriages but feel free to expand that energy into relationships both romantic and platonic, love abounds.
Preparation:
Combine all liquids, except for wine/mead, and several rosemary needles into a cocktail shaker.  Add ice and shake about 15-30 seconds until the shaker is frosted over in your hand.  Pour into your favorite stemmed glassware pre-chilled, until ¾ full. Top with wine or mead and garnish with a fresh sprig of rosemary.
This recipe will yield two cocktails*, so invite someone into your garden or onto the porch for a sip and ask them to stay awhile. 
*You can also scale this recipe up for a communal punch bowl or pitcher to pass around, chill all ingredients in advance, combine, stir well in your container and top with your wine or mead just before guests arrive. Add an ice block or ice ring to keep it cool while you entertain.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Lindsey Higo is a spirited hostess living in Denver, Colorado, who spends time puttering around her patio garden, reading on a dark and stormy night (or any night for that matter) and entertaining.  Her cocktail crafting skills have been honed through years of trial and error and “here take a sip of this” is a key step in her creative process. When inspiration strikes you can find recipes and her favorite haunts on her Instagram @cocktail_curious.  She is also an active member of the Japanese Tea community in Colorado where she practices the spirit of boundless guest hospitality and mindfulness in the principle of “ichi-go, ichi-e”/“one time, one meeting” taking it beyond the contemplative Tea space and into her home and community.
 

​

May Flower Moon

It is a season of emergencies, of emergence. Daily these words circle my mind, an oscillating dance between danger and prosperity. They are somewhat dissonant yet insist upon pairing. They are inseparable, fitting, in an uncanny sort of way. I hold them closely, considering my own recent hospital stay that enlightened me to an underlying health condition. Before that, I had claimed to my friends that this year was my year, 2022 adding up to my lucky number six. The cosmos was on my side. Now I contemplate the coexistence of emergency and emergence. Curious, I look up their shared origin, Latin emergere, meaning to ‘become known, come to light.’
We are emerging from our state of emergency now, gently. For the first time in two years I can see the faces of strangers as I pass them on the street or we frequent the same coffee shop. I feel a lightness, almost a flutter, that I can see the subtle expressions of their face. We can breathe again, a cautious sigh. It feels tender, a soft vulnerability now sans mask. We’ve made it to this moment. We made it through the lock downs, the uncertainties, the vaccinations, the frustrations. The past two years were a long winter. I was slowed, dormant, kinetic potential growing more restless with each passing day. Now there is an opening, a light. This spring the world feels especially new.
Every day I walk the same route through my neighborhood in the city. Early spring small bursts of green, pink, purple, and white began to line my walk as flowers awake from their dormancy in hardened earth. I noticed them emerging on my first walk after I was discharged from the hospital. Now they are in full bloom, bright, brilliant. I crave the natural among the urban, those delicate explosions along cracked concrete. Their change is slow, persistent. As I pass the same flowers, I observe their change. I feel the rising energy within myself to grow, expand, to take up more space. All the creative potential within me is boiling with elongated sunlight and warming air.

​
The Flower Moon


The Floor Moon reflects our associations with the symbolism of flowers. This is our time to experience new growth and vibrancy. It is a season of renewal and rejuvenation. We can feel these sensations course through our bodies as we step into the spring air and see the season’s new growth excelling. We feel lighter, buoyant, more energized. All that we have been storing and holding for the winter now has the space to release into something brilliant and new.
To celebrate the Flower Moon, I invite you to create a Flower Book Folding, which I will detail below. Use your flower book to set poetic reflections and intentions. What within you is emerging? Where does this energy come from? Where will it go? Feel welcome to incorporate all what is inspiring you, all that is beautiful and exhilarating. Return to it frequently to see all that is giving you life.


Flower Book Folding


Materials: Paper (any paper–white, decorative, recycled, etc.), Glue, Scissors or X-Acto Knife and Ruler (optional) and/or Triangle (optional), Decorative Materials (pens, pencils, markers, stamps, paints, etc.)

Step 1: If your paper isn’t already a square, you’ll need to turn it into one. Fold one corner across the paper and match the two edges. Fold it diagonally. If already a square, fold diagonally and skip to step 3.

Step 2: You’ll have a strip of excess paper. With scissors or an X-Acto Knife with a Ruler and/or Triangle, depending on what you have available, remove the excess strip. You’ll now have your square with a diagonal fold.

Step 3: Now fold your paper in half.

Step 4: Fold your paper in half in the opposite direction. You should now have two perpendicular lines and a diagonal.

Step 5: Two of the square sections have the diagonal crease. Bring their two corners together without folding. I find this assembly easier if I lift the paper off the table.

Step 6: Holding those two corners, coax the diagonal creases to fold inward. Simultaneously, begin to close the two outer flat squares together.

Step 7: Your paper should now be folded in the proper form, which I’ll call a petal. You’ll need to create four of them to complete your flower book binding. Repeat steps 1-7.

Step 8: Once you have your four petals ready, you can join them for your flower. Line your petals up so they are facing the same direction.

​Step 9: Glue one flat side of a petal.

Step 10: Press another petal onto the petal with glue by lining up either corners and edges; their openings should be in the same direction.

Step 11: Repeat with each petal. You will have two outer squares with no glue or attachment. Now your flower book is ready! You can keep it pressed closed, relaxed on its side, or open on a flat surface so it looks like a lotus.

Decorate or write in your flower book! You can visit the prompts I provided above or unleash your imagination. You can also experiment with different types of paper, using thread instead of glue, tearing edges for a more organic effect, etc. Once you know the fold, the creative possibilities are endless!​

About the Author

C. M. Chady holds her BA in Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis and her MFA Creative Writing and Poetics from Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School where she was the Anne Waldman Fellow. Her anthology Embodied Unconscious: the feminine space of sexuality, surrealism, and experimentation in literature is forthcoming with Spuyten Duyvil in 2022.
​She is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the experimental literary magazine Tiny Spoon, in addition to serving as a member of Wisdom Body Collective, who recently published More Revolutionary Letters: A Tribute to Diane di Prima. Formerly, she was the Editor-in-Chief of *apo-press, Editor-in-Chief of Bombay Gin, and Managing Editor of River Styx.

Her work spans multiple genres, including poetry, fiction, and hybrid forms. She has been published nationally and internationally in literary journals. More of her publications and work can be found on her website cmchady.com.

Howdy, Knights of Aporia. We find ourselves this week on the cusp of April's Full Moon this week. The moon should be about at its fullest around 1-2PM EST Sat. This moon is most often called the Pink Moon. Many attribute the title Pink Moon to the abundance of pink flowers that bloom this time of year. This is also the Libra Moon, symbolizing balance in all things. Perhaps you celebrated the Sabbat of Ostara earlier this month or are planning to celebrate the high Christian holiday of Easter. Maybe you plan to engage your body in the spirit of spring. The common theme for this time is rebirth. The trials and changes we have all been through are becoming fertilizer from which life can spring. You are the bud transforming muck to beauty.


This is a good time to enjoy:

• Delicious treats
• Sensual delights
• A warm bath/shower before bed
• An electronic free meditation/prayer
• Rediscovering patience with others

A Mantra:
​No foul menace can escape the grasp of my story.


Blessed be,
Your friend in the dark,
Noah Christie

Merry meets everyone! It would seem we have made it through another winter. It is often believed that this Moon is called the Worm Moon because the soil is soft and warming and the worms start to pop from the earth and birds get their tasty little treat and life comes springing back! 

I drew a card with all of you in mind and found the Queen of Swords. She advises us to begin fostering practical wisdom and bring our winter fancies to life. So, wake up those muscles and rub the dream dust from your eyes. It's a brand new day. ​

​Dear ones,

This is the time of year when I start looking for magic. The time when I start digging into drawers or boxes. During the long winter it is easy to forget about the light, forget that things can bloom vibrant. It is easy to forget the feeling of finding a small flower growing alone at the base of a tree trunk, or a small treasure finding its way into your palm.  The smell of solid perfume trapped inside my great grandma’s locket lost to me inside a jewelry box. The fuzzy buds of apple trees. I think this is the reason Spring cleaning makes sense. Not just as a clearing out, making space for new growth. In garden beds as well as in your garage shelves or nightstand drawers.

There are tiny sprouts in the front bed of my house underneath the low windows. This will be my first spring in a new home. All of the sprouts hold the magic of the unknown. What will they become? What has grown here, ready to come again. How will we inhabit this space together, the sprouts and I? 

One of the ways I find magic in the restlessness of this shifting season, has become a ritual. Every year around this time, I watch 리틀 포레스트 (Little Forest). This movie is full of small magic. The joy of small sprouts and slow cooked food eaten with company. Every year this movie reminds me to look for the small remnants left in the cupboards, to remember my ability to create from scant stores and deep hunger. 


“If I stay till the spring’s spirits break through the winter, will I find my answers?”

긴 겨울을 뚫고 봄에 작은 정령들이 올라오는 그때까지 있으면 해답을 찾을 수 있을까

—Hye-won (리틀 포레스트)

:::::::

The Worm moon marks the true stirring of spring, the little critters deep under the earth beginning to shimmy their way up toward the light again, feeding birds and tilling the earth from within. There is an energy humming within us, a waking and a shimmying outwards after a season of deep work. As your internal thawing and stretching begins, how can you bring your attention to the small joys, awaken to delight and life again as if wiggling your fingers at the end of a long meditation? The following is a bibliomancy offering from Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude. Ross Gay’s work is a space where I can always find the power of small joys, and I hope this helps activate your delight muscles.

excerpt from “Patience”

and yes, it is spring, if you can’t tell
from the words my mind makes
of the world, and everything
makes me mildly or more
hungry— the worm turning
in the leaf mold; the pear blooms
howling forth their pungency
like a choir of wet-dreamed boys
hiking up their skirts; even
the neighbor cat’s shimmy
through the grin in the fence,
and the way this bee
before me after whispering
in my ear dips her head
into those dainty lips
not exactly like entering a chapel
and friends
as if that wasn’t enough
blooms forth with her forehead dusted pink
like she has been licked
and so blessed
by the kind of God
to whom this poem is prayer.


As the moon ripens to its full silver glow on the 18th, on the precipice of the Spring Equinox, I want to draw you back to ritual, to small joy and its ability to sustain. What fills you up when you feel emptied out in the pursuit of answers?

:::::::

To welcome you into the collective shifting of warmth and energy in our world, I give you another bibliomantic offering. This one from Monty Don’s Down to Earth, which has become another ritual space for me in this season. 

“I don’t think that anything makes me happier than an April evening spent preparing the ground and sowing veg seeds for a summer harvest while the garden settles gradually around me. All winter, the ground lies cold and wet, but when that clammy chill in the hand is replaced by warmth, and as the soil responds to the caress of a rake preparing a tilth, it is as though I am returned to the rightful earth.”

How can you build small patterns into your day to fill yourself up? What generosity is already in front of you, waiting to be accepted? What seeds can you plant now, under the light of the full moon that will allow you to feed yourself and others? 

These seeds and rituals are small things, repetitive and vivid. How can you keep your hands dug into their soil to feel their warmth on your skin? How do you wait for them to germinate, to sprout? 


“Potatoes are planted first in the spring. 
봄에 처음 심는 것 중에 감자가 있다

Though it is cold, the ground’s warmth pushes the potato sprouts out. 
아직 춥지만 땅 속 옮기는 감자 싹을 품어 밖으로 튀어 낸다

The sprouts, the flowers, and bearing crop… 
싹이 나오고 꽃이 피고 열매를 맺는

it all takes time. 
타이밍이다

You have to wait. 
기다린다

You must wait. 
기다린다

Wait. 
기다려

You have to wait to taste the best food. 
기다릴 줄 알아야 최고로 맛있는 음식 맛 볼 수 있어

You can get spring greens for free, but potatoes take hard work.”
봄나물은 빵이나 나무에서 공을 얻지만 잠자는 노동과 땀이 필요하다

​—Hye-won (리틀 포레스트)

We have ways to distract ourselves from our destinies. I don’t know how, we just play it by instinct. We manage to take our attention away, into outer space, into a history book, into our own imaginations, or just a post-card, but we do, we go. (Shifting the Silence, 66)

Do you remember a time, maybe years ago, maybe this morning, when the panic set in? The relentless question we play on repeat: what am I going to do with my life?

I had a conversation with my brother the other day about the pressure we put on ourselves to somehow choose one thing that is supposed to fulfill us AND meet the expectations of our capitalist society for our entire lives. How this narrative is fed to children from the moment they start school, and how the weight of that expectation begins to grow fangs the older we get.

I wash my hands, I dust off the dresser, I turn off the light, I open the windows to air out the room, and everything is right, is adequate. Then I stop. I try to ask myself who I am, what I am good for, into what kind of an order I fit, for what purpose I act, what road I must take, what this difference is between, say, you and me, and I am thrown again, for my loss, into some inconsequential activity, or, if it comes quickly, into sleep. (Of Cities & Women, 53).

The result of this unreachable milestone often takes shape as a deep sense of worthlessness, a mastery of distraction, or both. Don’t get me wrong, distraction is necessary—the world is a lot, and sometimes we have to escape it. But when it begins to drag us away from our destinies, when it becomes unhealthy or even dangerous, distractions are more than distractions, they're addictions.

There, in this anxiety, I see the pallor of discarded manuscripts, and there’s this glass of water you didn’t drink, it’s going to help some tropical growth in your sister’s lungs and I will feel sorry, it would be useless, then will follow the celebration of the moon’s darkest hour. (There In the Light and the Darkness of the Self and of the Other, 31)

But sometimes there are moments, beautiful and terrifying moments, when we look around our rooms, ourselves, and notice the things we’ve allowed to clutter there. The wounds, the compromises, the big and small ways we punish ourselves for not living up to someone else’s idea of success. The water we didn’t drink, the berating inner monologue. We lift our heads out of the fog and finally see all the ways we've permitted (or even expected) lack.

Today’s Full Moon and Lunar eclipse is the first in a set of eclipses that occur along the Taurus-Scorpio axis, with the last eclipse in this sign happening October 2023. And the incredibly powerful, creative, and crisis-inducing energy this moon is giving us is focused on one thing: relationships.

This isn’t just relationships with others, though it could be. No, this moon is about the relationship between the physical and the manifested, between form and dream, between lack and love. Because to lack something, for something to be absent from our lives, creates a deep and painful longing—but one that can spring us into action. 

Heed my word, if you can, do deny your fate. I’m not asking for fullness, completeness, the fullness of resurrection, sit once more on your bed’s edge, let’s bring back the smells, the velvet, the bench, your breathing’s regularity, my heart’s pounding, the sweetest faring of the moment. (There, 63)
 
This moon/eclipse asks us to remember that longing is an important and never-ending process towards our evolution; the etymology of to long being "‘to yearn after, grieve for,’ literally ‘to grow long, lengthen.’" We must expand and grow ourselves out of lack and into acceptance. But, just like losing a loved one or your poetry hero (Rest in Power, Etel) this process has many steps. Here are some ways we can make this moon and the next set of eclipses transform us:

• We can expand ourselves out of lack by accepting the pain, and by noticing all the ways we are fulfilled.
• We can name what we long for, not as punishment, but as an intention-setting ritual.
• We can create actions towards the manifestation of those intentions.
• We can share our accomplishments with our community.
• We can stop, in this very moment, in this physical space and body, and know that we already have everything we need.
• We can do this with an open heart and mind, endlessly.
• We can overcome.

To live with defeats, to share one’s room with them, to chase away gas fumes with one’s hands, to eat things that are swimming in oil, to remain standing for hours before news racks, these are the elements with which we counter the things which devour us. How can we attain whomever or whatever with such tools? We need to drink and vomit, to vomit an overused soul to make room for the possibility of a new one. (Of Cities & Women, 55)

As Café Astrology writes of today’s lunar eclipse:

“The Full Moon illuminates this conflict between form (Taurus) and transformation (Scorpio), and between collecting (Taurus) and sharing (Scorpio). Neglecting either end of the axis will surely backfire on us. Ideally, we should find a balance between the two energies, and this is what this Lunar Eclipse invites us (or pushes us) to do. This eclipse is about awakening to the need to enjoy the fruits of our labors and to connect with our desire to take care of ourselves and our needs.”

I have this tranquil belief that we’re going nowhere, there is here, always here. I’m going to the kitchen, or to California. Strangely, it’s the same. Trees don’t go anywhere, and still, they do, they grow branches which move, leaves, which fall, they get fat, they wither, they even die. They move. (Paris, When It’s Naked, 71)

Dear ones, remember that today is about both the small, creature comforts and about unearthing the dreams you’ve long buried. Remember that grief and joy can exist in tandem. Remember that nothing is permanent and that you’re infinite. And remember that the process you commence today is just that: the beginning. You don’t have to have it all figured out—none of us do or will.

All we can know is this: we are enough; we are love.
​
We have experienced ecstasy in the dark (the one with the other), mostly in the night, in the here and now of cities of heat and sweat. We also did die many times, didn’t we, of love and separation, so that when the end will come it will be a comfortable, though perverse, homecoming. We did reach the absolute, didn’t we, for a handful of hours, somewhere in between, in between, ‘you’ and ‘I’. (There, 67-68)

[Image credit: "Kyoto Red" by Trey Ratcliff is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]

In the SoundCloud recording below, collective.aporia founder Shawnie Hamer gives a reading of today's Aquarius full moon in Leo, a tarot reading, and reads from CA Conrad's While Standing in Line for Death (Wave Books).

Recording Script: 

Other references: 
Chani Nicholas
Sarah Vrba 
Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollack 
Rider-Waite Tarot
Mary El Tarot 

Shawnie Hamer (she/her) was born in the heat & dust of Bakersfield, CA. Her first book, the stove is off at home (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018) is an experimental art & poetry book curated through a community ritual that focused on the identification & exorcism of trauma. Hamer is the founder of collective.aporia, & a co-conspirator of the off.collective. She proudly received her MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University where she was able to befriend the most inspiring group of artists she's ever met. Her writing can most recently be found in publications such as More Revolutionary Letters: A Tribute to Diane de Prima, Entropy Mag, South Broadway Ghost Society & Tiny Spoon Lit Mag.