V. H. King's Ink

A week ago today was September 15th. (I’ll get to why that’s important in a minute.) The night before, and in the days leading up to it, I found myself contemplating the churning, surging, shifting energies—both within and around me. My experience of time has always felt half-outside the standardized norm. The world-building in one of my longest running projects is largely an attempt to put that experience into words, concepts, and observances.

These are neither more or less valid than the feeling, the embodiment, the lived reality of the experience itself. My brain just itched to grasp the meaning of it the best way I knew how—and in writing the story, I (re)connect to the embodied experience more deeply and nuanced than the time before. I’ve come to relish this process: the way it invites me back into my own body, and calls me to listen carefully to my spirit, and urges me to value my own experience.

Do I digress or do I know what I’m doing?

You tell me. 

In this project’s world-building, the Gregorian calendar becomes the Wheel of the Deep. The concept of the year as a wheel isn’t new. It is, however, often spoken of from Western European traditions. Nordic and Celtic folklore don’t offer me much in terms of representation, and I’m not looking to insert myself into a Tolkein-esque world anyway.

I drew instead on what I’ve felt in my body, as the seasons change. What lingers on the air, settles in the stomach, drips from the throat, cuts to the bone. In my living and coming and going and traveling and returning, what do I know of time?

What have I tasted?

What have I seen? 

I debated how I might share the rest of this post. On its own, I worried it was too niche. Consider the above a preface, an attempt at context. Entertaining mystery, for lack of a better word, is central to my writing, my painting, my story-telling. My being in and moving through the world is deeply connected to a resounding belief for which I have no name, but I’m learning to talk about it anyway. 

So: the calendar. This Wheel of the Deep.

August, on said calendar, is called Harvest. It has the usual end-of-summer connotations of bountiful abundance, hard-won and happily shared. After Harvest comes Dust, where September and October become a single month. The entirety of September through November is called “October Season”—one of preparation, contemplation, reflection, and resolve.

During September, the Dust leftover from Harvest lingers in the air, shimmering. You can still taste a bit of summer on your tongue, and you give thanks for it as you prepare your altars. 

October 1 marks the New Year, and asks you to kneel. Sit down. The dust isn’t going anywhere fast. You’re only on day 32 out of 61. Even in a storm, carried far from its origins, dust takes time to settle, to rebuild, to be gathered up again, to be shaped into something new with the same substance of what it has always been. 

So must it be, with you. 

Therefore—

Attend your altar and quietly observe these new beginnings: the waiting of winter and the slow start of spring. Welcome and ward yourself for new opportunities. Know the way forward requires navigating your hope and anxiety with uncomfortable honesty. 

October is the time of year where little things become magnificent, marvelous, miraculous. Tiny grain of sand, which mountain boasts your peak? Broken shell, across how many seas have you struggled and survived? Little rounded pebble, from whence have you been kicked and thrown and scraped and skipped over? 

Find yourself here, and ask how did you find yourself here. 

If September is settling in and October is intense reflection, November urges us to connect again, this time beyond ourselves. It’s the month of Host: where we invite and are invited in to warmth and levity. While in those spaces, likely we will experience bits of contrast and conflict—because we are not always refreshed from our midnight musings. Host asks us to have patience with, to make room for, ourselves and others, wherever we may be on our journeys. It asks us to be together, even when we don’t have the answers for why or how or what next.

It asks us to live, and love anyway.

Today, a week ago, was September 15th. In the world-building numerology of this un-named story setting, that’s 10 for completion and fullness and 5 for growth and forgiveness in the 9th month—where 9 is a narrow escape. You almost (didn’t) make it.

Summer is over. 

Let it be the dust at your feet. Let it smudge your knees. Let it stick in the creases of your palms. It will still taste sweet, for a while yet, but you will need to face forward and look deeply into your needs and desires. 

What do you want, for the coming year?

What has left you unfulfilled?

What has collected dust,

and what has returned to it?

What parts did not survive?

What no longer needs to? 

These are the questions coming to you, in October. They’re neither for the faint of heart nor are they to be rushed through, so set yourself to the task. Prepare your altars. Make room for yourself. See your life for what it is now, and where it might go. See yourself for what you already are, and who you can yet be.

You are not yet only a memory.

You are still among the living.