interruptions

As its name implies, this newsletter seeks to act as an interruption—a slowing down, a thinking through—blending creative writing with criticism, theory with the tarot,literature with occult insights. I publish one free essay a week. Paid subscribers get full access to the newsletter, including subscriber-only essays on tarot and astrology, personalized monthly horoscopes, archives, and the ability to submit questions for the tarot to be answered as part of the paid newsletter offerings.

My three-year-old contains future and past, hope and dream, in a single phrase. “One day,” Theo says, sometimes meaning later tonight, sometimes meaning last week. “I fly on an airplane one day!” he shrieks when the sound of an overhead jet fills the park where we’ve been knock-kneed in the mulch, sharing chocolate-covered sunflower seeds. My heart beats with the mystery of it.

Welcome to the Saturday newsletter for paid subscribers, which offers literary and esoteric guidance for the week ahead. I’m taking next week off to focus on my kid, who is on Spring Break. You can expect the next essay for free subscribers to appear on Wednesday, April 12. If you’d like to write in with a question for the tarot, you can respond to this email, and I’ll answer it as part of the next Saturday newsletter. Thanks for being here! One card glows with patience.

I don’t know when I started calling myself a “bad cook,” I only know that it was—it is—a lie. Both of my parents enjoyed food, enjoyed family meals, the preparation. When there was camaraderie in the house, it happened in the kitchen. My sisters and I grew up hip-to-hip at the countertop with my mom, rolling out dough for sausage rolls, shoving forks into tuber skins for baked and twice-baked potatoes, shredding cheese and mashing up Ritz crackers for broccoli casserole.

Welcome to the Saturday newsletter for paid subscribers, with esoteric and literary guidance for the week ahead. Today we’re talking about books and offering reading suggestions for the astrological signatures this week. Have a question for the tarot? Send it my way, and I’ll answer it as part of a two-card tarot draw for the next Saturday offering. I began reading Phil Christman’s How to Be Normalat golden hour on a very normal, mostly bad day back in ye-olden-days of 2022.

Today’s free newsletter features an interview with Emily Rau, assistant professor in the digital humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, editor of the Willa Cather Archive, and (obviously most importantly) my grad-school bestie. We chat about the unlikely experience of going through breast cancer together, what we’ve learned, shared, gained, and lost.

Welcome to the Saturday newsletter for paid subscribers, with esoteric and literary guidance for the week ahead. Today we’re talking about Pluto and offering reading suggestions for its upcoming transit through Aquarius, for the first of two New Moons in Aries this month, and more. Have a question for the tarot? Send it my way, and I’ll answer it as part of two-card tarot draw for the next Saturday offering.

Unless I am writing poetry, I am bad at writing brief, with lift and lightness, with grin and jubilance to be alive amidst the vortex of early mornings and menopause, hot flashes and soggy sheets lining my way into each new dawn. If I want to read brief, I read Peter Schjeldahl. I keep his bright yellow book close to me always. At night, it rests on top of the Marseilles-deck Moon card that signals where my bedside table ends and my Saturn-in-Pisces altar begins.

Welcome to the Saturday newsletter for paid subscribers, which offers literary and esoteric guidance for the week ahead. I’m taking next week off to focus on grading midterm essays. You can expect the next essay for free subscribers to appear on Wednesday, March 15. Thanks for being here! In truth, I was a little surprised by the drawing for March.

Welcome to the Wednesday newsletter—today’s free essay explores themes of trauma, femininity, and theory through personal narrative. The March tarot reading for paid subscribers, complete with tarotscopes for each sign, will be out Saturday. Thanks for being here! “I can’t spy the center of inception or the core of my being. I only know the timing.” –Caren Beilin What do I know about structure? Or, should I say, what do I know about form.