An ending is a beginning is an ending is a beginning

A goodbye, for now

Image description: A photo of a late-afternoon sky with high clouds making wave patterns in the blue sky above dark silhouettes of trees. Photo credit: Patti Lynn

Story 

I believe nothing truly ends and nothing truly begins anew. There is always history, precedent, and new manifestation. The generations behind us and before us.

And also, I believe in the power of ceremonies to mark milestones. I appreciate rituals that help us look back on where we have come from and look forward to where we are going. 

This is such a ritual, co-created with you. This is a reflection on endings and beginnings to mark this last issue of Starlight & Strategy. At least for now. At least in this manifestation.

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March for Palestine, Philadelphia, October 2023. Photo credit: Joby Gelbspan Image description: A photo taken looking up into the night sky in a city. Behind a thin cloud, the full moon shines. Below, someone holds a sign reading “NOT in my name.”

I love this photo of the full moon above a march in Philadelphia. It’s from my colleague Joby Gelbspan, who writes over at Outgrained. She sent it to me with this reflection: 

“As we filled the streets surrounding Rittenhouse Square, we paused to hear from a few speakers, with a sound system in the bed of a pickup truck draped in Palestinian flags. At the moment I noticed the moon, the speaker was talking about the end of the U.S. empire, and the endurance of resistance. Looking up, I felt really intensely how much that moon has looked down and witnessed on this planet—so much brutality, so much destruction, and such determined life and resistance.”

I love how Joby’s words remind me of the vastness of human history—the length & depth of it. And not just human history. I think of the history of this planet, and this universe. A vastness of time that I can’t comprehend. But I feel it, somehow, in my molecules and atoms that are the stuff of stars created at the very, very beginning of the universe.

It brings me closer to knowing that this present moment is simply the tiniest speck, an eye-blink. 

Empires fall, cultures collapse, people die, relationships end, projects come to a close.

The moon rises and sets, waxes and wanes, eclipses, and keeps traveling around the Earth. As we keep traveling around the sun.

Someday, the sun will die, and all life on this planet will end. But we are stardust, and stardust will remain. And maybe it will become life again, somewhere else. In another time, in another dimension.

In the meantime, we struggle on, in the bodies and lives we have been given in this time. Many of us doing our very best to move from a place of love and compassion under daily injustices and entrenched, harmful systems.

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As the poet Destiny Hemphill reminds us, the end of one world makes space for the birth of a different kind of world.

I often pull the World card in my Tarot spreads. Last month, when it came up, I wrote: 

“All things come to completion. Completion is not the same as perfection. The World card makes space for mistakes, flaws, contradictions, difficulties. I hold all the beautiful and hard things I have learned on the journey. I accept all that I have not done, or not done in a way that I would have liked. Resolution comes from accepting all of this as part of the bigger picture, part of the lesson, part of what has brought me here and will take me to the next phase of the journey.”

In her book Tarot for Change, Jessica Dore writes this about the World card;

“The Fool’s journey to the World is not choosing between the edge or the center, civilization or the wild, male or female, above or below. Rather, it has more to do with a sacred liminality… [I]t is walking between worlds with as much grace as is possible.” 

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I had no idea what to expect when I started this newsletter in March, 2019, with 153 people on the list. 

Since then, I’ve published 62 issues and this one is going out to 557 people. 

I know that in the universe of “successful” newsletters, these numbers are very small. But that doesn’t really matter to me. 

What matters is that it has been a true honor to be in dialogue with you about the world, the systems we live within, and the forces—seen and unseen—that we contend with. What it means to be human and alive and caring in this moment in human history. And to read some of your own thoughts and reflections on these topics.

My partner and friends remind me, too, that I can’t know the ripple effects of what I write. How perhaps some of you may have carried with you an idea or turn of phrase that you found here, which might have shaped a conversation you had or action you took—and how that moment might have affected others, and so on. That is a beautiful thing to contemplate.

And, together, we’ve made a material difference. Since I turned on paid subscriptions in April 2020, I’ve funneled the money from these subscriptions to organizations working toward the liberation and thriving of BIPOC and transgender folks—about $3,500 in total.

I’ll be turning off paid subscriptions after November 28. I invite you to continue to support the organizations I’ve been sending funds to (Families for Justice As Healing, Soul Fire Farm, Transgender Law Center).

You may be hearing from me again, periodically or maybe regularly, at some point. I’m feeling called to create material things that you can touch and feel. Perhaps there will be an old-school zine delivered to your mailbox? But, at least for now, you can also find me on Instagram (@tamiko83).

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the attention and support you’ve given this project. Many thanks to those of you who responded to my invitation to add to this final issue. And a HUGE thank you to those who volunteered their time and energy to proofread and edit these issues: Ari, Gabriel, Charlotte, and Patti.

I feel so lucky to be connected with each of you in this way. I wish each of you well in your journeys. In your writing and spirit.

Until we meet again.

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Starlight

Three prompts 

Meeting The World

Wonderfully wise Cecily Sailer at Typewriter Tarot offers this spread on the World card. (If you like this prompt and want more opportunities to work with Cecily, sign up for her newsletter and receive a 21-Day Creativity Reset journaling experience.)

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Times of change

On reflecting on beginnings and endings, writer and therapist Vanessa Rosage offers this reflection and Tarot spread:

“Some of the most healing I’ve experienced has happened from admitting I have no idea what to do next. I don’t know how to solve a problem. I can’t seem to make this thing work. I am lost. 

Somehow admitting this often increases the closeness I feel with others. It allows me to grieve whatever I expected of myself. 

Most importantly, I no longer feel alone. This allows me to feel as though whatever I encounter, I have a whole community of people to help shoulder the weight. This gives me hope and I think it surges through each of us as a reminder that we are holding it all together.”

Tarot spread for times of change:

1. What transformation is coming for me?

2. What will support me in this transformation?

3. What do I need to move away from?

4. What will I move towards?

5. What will I leave behind?

6. What will will I embrace?

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Freeing your creativity

If letting go of perfection and expectations is part of your endings and beginnings right now, I recommend this offering from insightful poet and creativity coach Sarah Cook: 

“Relaxing into an easeful position, close your eyes and envision your creativity as a pet whose leash you’re holding onto. You might take a moment to notice anything familiar or mythical, common or imaginary, about this creature. Do you know what this animal is called? Could you draw it?

Now: take your creativity off of its leash. What is the first thing it does?”

Sarah shared with me her experience of doing this prompt herself. I wanted to include it here because the questions she raises resonates with me, around how we judge or have preconceived notions of what our creative process or outcomes should look like. She wrote:

“I was surprised to see that my creativity didn't immediately run amok or even move away from where it had already been standing, which I thought was how it would assert its freedom. What changed was that it no longer moved in a line—the line of a leash, the line of a paved trail; the line of predictability and expectation. It zigged and zagged, sometimes moving according to (as far as I could tell) scent. It was slow, and intentional, and unanticipatable. 

It was, I suppose, like a dog following a trail that’s obvious to them but not me. I can either tug on its leash and say, no, the path's here, or I can let its movements create the path. So I guess the question I’m sitting with is: when am I forcing a straight line when there's something to be discovered via another shape? When might I be jumping to certain words of assessment—aimless, drifting; even the word ‘unsuccessful’ is coming to mind here—at the expense of recognizing a different kind of path?”

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Stargaze

Other newsletters to subscribe to

If you’re looking to subscribe to some new newsletters, now that Starlight & Strategy won’t be coming to you on a semi-regular basis, here are a few more that I find myself eager to open when they arrive:

• Anti Racism Daily. Currently a great source on Palestine, always smart and informative.

• The Audacity. Roxane Gay’s roundups are truly the best.

• Cmoon. Reflections of a badass zen priest.

• You Are Here by poet Kate Schapira. So wise, so necessary, so needed.

• Comic artist Madeleine Jubilee Saito’s monthly quiet breath of calm.

• The Radical Copyeditor. If you want to nerd out on language and justice, this is the place.

• Things That Don’t Suck. I always appreciate the reminder that there are, in fact, many things that don’t suck. 

• Seven Best Things. By fellow poet Jay Thompson; incredibly intelligent deep-dives into seven things each time.

• Ann Friedman’s newsletter. One of the OG newsletters. She is going on parental leave for the next few months, and offering a serialized essay during that time. How cool is that?

• The Unpublishable. Helping me break up with beauty culture.

Also, please keep calling Congress, showing up on the streets, signing letters, and writing and sharing poems for Gaza, for Palestinians, for life, for peace, for justice. And taking good care of yourself and each other. 

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Starshine

Announcements from the Starlight & Strategy community

A reminder that for every copy of Poetry as Spellcasting sold between now and December 31, 2023, up to 108 copies, North Atlantic Books will make a matching donation to the Women's Prison Book Project. Just reply to this email to let me know you’ve bought a copy, so it can be matched.

I’m happy that Poetry as Spellcasting is part of the 2023 Brew & Forge Book Fair. For $20, you can get a signed copy (by all three editors!) and support the Palestinian Feminist Collective.

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Thank you for reading to the end of this last-for-now issue! I don’t know when I’ll be in your inbox again. Until then, sending much love and wishes for ease, joy, and peace to you.