A Knife and God's Nectar
getting to the heart of the people
Happy new moon in Pisces, water babies
⭐️ This letter is a ~4 minute read ⭐️
I think it went like this:
Ok ya'll, the car has just pulled up to the Aquarian Age. The engine is still running, and we haven't gotten out of the car or crossed the threshold of the house, but we're fixin to, you feel me? And now that we're at the curb, shit's about to get very real.
This is how I remember Narinder Bazen starting one of her yoga classes circa early 2016. She was priming us for the trippy-dip-slip-and-slide magic roller coaster ride we were about to go on, both in the microcosm of her class and in the big picture of life as we know it.
She went on to speak of her prediction that the jenga towers of all our institutions would start to crumble in a big way over the next four to five years (ok low key 2020 meltdown intuition), and that it was time to turn our attention to lateral networks of power. To be like the mycelial webs underfoot, sharing information and resources horizontally, as we let go of vertical structures of power. These days that feels about as obvious as white on rice, but it was a radical rhyme to be spittin in a yoga class back in those Pre-Trump days.
This is how it goes with Narinder. A radical space holder for the people. A rogue prophet of love, with a knife in one hand and a chalice of God's nectar in the other. She cuts through the BS in any room to get to the heart of things, the heart of the people.
And now, in her full time life as a holistic death midwife and educator, she holds radical space for the grieving, the dying, and the departed.
I once hired her to help me ghostbust a spooky energy in my 1902-built house. She's taken me on midnight pilgrimages to a south Georgia secret spring, where we drank water from the ground and sang songs to the spirits that guard the well. She's the real dang deal, and I'm honored she'll be at the helm for one of our sessions of
We'll all be better for it.
She'll be posted up tomorrow (Thursday 3.3) in Piedmont Park, Atlanta slinging her particular recipe of heart medicine…
Free Grief Support in the Park
a social experiment
✴ what else ✴
In other news, I've been thinking so much about perfectionism the last few weeks.
Perennial ass-muncher.
It's been coming up a lot for folks around me too, it seems like.
I was working myself overtime, tryna get every little detail of this workshop offering *just right* before announcing it to the people. And the thing is, if we really want to give something of value to the world, it's our job to show up a little rough around the edges. The best gift we can give each other is our humanity, to paraphrase my friend Hez.
And to quote the great poet of our times Kendrick Lamar:
give me something natural like ass with some stretch marks.
Here's to the imperfect offering of ourselves. The imperfect workshop, the imperfect paella, the imperfect toast where your voice was all weird and wobbly at the wedding.
I think about all the gifts that might die inside people in the name of
*it's not quite right yet*
Like vegetables languishing in the bottom of the refrigerator. Truly one of my greatest fears.
Clutching, at the end of my life, a fistful of sad soft celery wishing I had maybe just put the imperfect version of the thing out there, and attempted the imperfect gesture, just to see what happens.
So here's a question: What would you do if you didn't need to be perfect first? What ten things would you do? Say, in the next three months? The next week? Tomorrow?
I'll go first.
If I didn't need to be perfect:
1. I'd start the podcast
2. I'd host more dinner parties
3. I'd invite friends over to my house that's in renovation mode
4. I would teach classes REGULARLY online and in-person
5. I would share my visual art more
6. I would perform voice and movement experiments REGULARLY
7. I would reach out to more people for art collaborations
8. I'd finish my website rebuild
9. I'd maybe finally invest in crypto
10. I'd have zero hangups being naked in front of my partner
dannnnng whoop there it is.
There's a lot to be said for ripe timing. And, sure, there are many practical reasons a lot of these things haven't happened, a pandemic for one. This list is not intended to create more pressure on what shoulda coulda oughta be done by now. It is not another flogging device with which to whap myself. Rather, it's a reminder of my north stars. It's a truth serum exercise, to determine the stuff that really matters to me and wants to live through me when the time is right.
Ok your turn.
What would you do if you didn't need to be perfect first?
But, like, really! I wanna know. Write me back.
❤️ Melissa
photo: Jamie Hopper