The Three of Swords, The Origins Of Heresy, & Writing The Erotic
This Is What I Know To Be For Me True Right Now (a journal of my real life—and all that I love).
i.
January It was the year of the unannounced arrival. The year my fingers felt made to drag tracks through your hair, to brush beneath your collar, gentle as an eyelash. The year I’d wait all night for your hands to trace the length of my shoulders as we hugged goodbye. The year of the dog walk, the milkshake, the long shower. The year I’d ride my bike all day going nowhere. It was the year of the broken seatbelt, the lock that just wouldn’t click. It was the year of the reckless passenger. The year you surprised me by opening my door. The year I found you waiting in the darkened frame of my door. The year you walked thru the open mouth of my door. It was the year you said, I remember. The year you said, I always remember when a girl says she likes something. It was the year I became that girl. Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
ii.
Do you know what I like?
When how and why and what of me is measured and noted. When the pace or positioning or process required to open me into surrender is gifted back to me on patient hands. When the quirks that make me so undeniably and uniquely myself are remembered and relished with joy. When the breadcrumbs of information dropped in text, the clues left on coffee tables or tucked into side notes of the main conversation are held as the small and sacred details that create a map worth following.
I drink an extra-large-hot-decaf-dirty-chai-latte-with-oat-milk-and-four-shots. You write it down and deliver.
You mention black licorice on road trips. I saw some in the bulk section at Sprouts and bought a bag. I tossed it to you in your kitchen. (You caught it. I was impressed).
I take my whiskey always neat. Noted, with respect.
You need laughter to survive. Cheesy memes and comedy specials on hard days it is.
My body responds best at first to the slowest and steadiest of intentions. I got you.
You appreciate honest words and soft walls. I remember and try harder.
Dark chocolate, please, not milk. Want this box my company gave me that I’ll never eat?
Here, take my leftovers, you know I won’t eat them. What’s your favorite 90’s rap song and why? I’ll pick you up at 630 and all the plans are set, you don’t need to worry about a thing. I’ll lock the door behind you so you don’t have to worry.
To be responsive is to confirm presence. To remember is to name important. To say that we matter to one another. That we don’t need to erect a billboard to claim attention, to be met, to be worthy of response. That just being is enough.
When we say that like/need/want/wish for/can’t stand something, and it is repeated, memorized, returned to us as an offering full of gentle hope—we are all ever so slightly undone.
Or we should be. We really all should be.
iii.
On the day the narrative irrevocably changed, I drew the Three Of Swords
//Painful separation, sorrow, heartbreak, grief and rejection, betrayal, and major setback or loss//
The Three of Swords is often referred to as The Breakup Card or Lord of Sorrows. In a traditional tarot deck, it generally features an image of a heart pierced by three swords. This could not be clearer in meaning or metaphor.
Three of swords is a card of foreshadowing and piercing injury.
But that morning during my daily ritual I drew only a single card, and there it was.
I texted the photo above lightly, without much thought. Sharing as we often did. I did not yet have the context to place this message in my understanding of reality.
I do not know if I was confused or simply not yet ready to know. That’s the way of things sometimes when we are faced with an unwanted but indelible shift in the through-line of the story we’ve been living.
We don’t always have all the information we need to make sense of the arc in the minute-to-minute of living. It is in retrospect, in gazing back, that the lines become clear.
Later we can let the full significance land fully, and only then do we admit what we did not wish to know.
And in that moment of surrender, the story shifts for real.
iv.
I meant to write the word inevitable in the line above, but indelible is what my fingers typed instead.
Sometimes writing is an act of its own volition.
v.
in·del·i·ble
/inˈdeləb(ə)l/
adjective
(of ink or a pen) making marks that cannot be removed."an indelible marker pen"
not able to be forgotten or removed.
Synonyms:
ineradicable, inerasable, ineffaceable, unexpungeable, indestructible, permanent, lasting, persisting, enduring,
stubborn, ingrained, unfading, imperishable, unforgettable, haunting, memorable
Etymology:
Middle English indelyble, from Medieval Latin indelibilis, alteration of Latin indelebilis, from in- + delēre to delete
vi.
There is very little in this life that is truly indelible, least of all a thing as fluid and subjective as story.
There is freedom there, to both the writer in us and the human in us, if we allow it.
vii.
File under: Favorite Instagram discoveries of 2022.
Anyone out there reclaiming and subverting religious language and using it to speak of sex, pleasure, and sovereignty has a special place in my heart, and Cristina Rombi is the best kinda heretic.
Those writers and art makers willing to push into the edges of our comfort zones and inch us out into the glorious freedom of what comes next are all soulmates of a sort.
And as Cristina says ‘god loves her sexually degenerate lambs the most.”
“It doesn’t matter who or what I am.
An ancient haunted place of workshop or someone’s clean pristine altar.
What matters is when I ask myself, ‘Where am I?’,
I can find me”
“Creativity is queer. As in ubiquitous, non-hierarchical, fluid.
Creativity is mad, As in, non-assimilated, Divergent. Paradigm Shifting.
Let’s put it this way. Creativity is thread-like. Thousands of archers long, greater fungal organisms beneath the forest floor. Art is the fruiting body. The mushroom.”
viii.
To queer a thing is to remove it from its bindings.
To queer is to release prescribed constriction.
To queer is to subvert the paradigm, to shatter the binary, to set the whole thing wild and free.
I can’t imagine much of anything more queer than creativity.
And of all the paths to queerness, creative heresy might be my favorite, the one in which I feel most at home.
ix.
Did you know that heresy is derived from the greek word haíresis which actually means choice?
To be heretical is to claim your right to sovereign choice.
To say that the religion of my childhood may no longer gatekeep the language of all my todays.
To speak the words of scripture as a reclamation instead of condemnation, bring them into your throat and swallow them whole, swirl the language of judgment and shame around in your belly, let them grow new roots.
To be heretical is to remake meaning to suit yourself.
Not so coincidentally, remaking meaning to suit is also inherently queer.
x.
Often what we were told was a sin was just a space they didn’t want us to know we could decide for ourselves.
xi,
“What can an eternity of damnation matter to someone who has felt, if only for a second, the infinity of delight?”
― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen
xii.
Damn me if you will,
I am the daughter of Eve and Lilith both.
I grow my own garden,
where everything tastes like delight,
and nothing is ever forbidden.
xiii.
Instructions for those who wish to know the whole of me:
Be less directed by the power of your desire to make contact with my skin, and more guided by the specific desire of my flesh for your connection.
Do not touch me when you want to touch me, lay your hands on me only when my body lets you know it is no longer willing to remain untouched.
Do not pace yourself by the measure of your own craving, mark your speed by learning to read the energy of my want, the cadence of my sigh, the pitch of my moan.
Do not assume the erogenous zones of my body are limited to the ones you’ve learned up till now, because the entirety of my skin is a source of certain bliss.
Do not ask for my surrender until it has been fully earned, for when it is it will be offered completely.
Forget what you think you know of a woman and her capacity for pleasure.
Become an eager student, a tireless detective, a humble devotee.
The rules are about to be rewritten.
And hear this, you'd best reach fluency before you attempt to read me aloud.
xiv.
I am preparing to offer a particularly powerful workshop on February 18th with my favorite kinky queer butch dominant, Sinclair Sexsmith.
Unbound: Write The Erotic
Shed Your Shame. Claim Your Desire. Write Your Way Free
To write what is erotic is to unshackle yourself. From religion. From culture. From family. From what holds you back from claiming the fullness of your holy, aching want. To write what is erotic is to write yourself free.
Join us.
Sliding scale pricing is available and future follow-up workshops are in the works.
xv.
“Somedays the only solution is to remember that you’re hot and queer, and that alone gives you the audacity to do whatever the fuck needs to be done.”
Audra Avery
xvi.
“I am a woman who carries a single, simple question in her pocket, pulls it out like a compass every time a crossroad spreads wide at my feet: which risk?”
As Jeanette Winterson says, what we risk reveals what we value. How then, to better hold ourselves as priceless than to risk it all, and risk it all, and risk it all again.
My beloved Stephanie (who once named me Queen of ravens. Sovereign of darkness. Goddess of hell realms, and who blasted 90’s country music with me all the way to sleep in a boat in Los Angeles) has left Instagram and started her own Substack. And you should definitely follow her).
xvii.
And I don't want the world to see me
'Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am.
Iris, The Goo Goo Dolls
We all, every last one of us, wish to be known in some way, by someone. We might not like this craving. We might think it inconvenient or terrifying or not worth the effort. But this wanting, to be fully known, is what drives us forward into connection. And so, I think, it is possibly the most important of all.
xviii.
And because I’m a sucker for a damn good cover.
xix.
“There will always be a person who looks like a poem the earth wrote to keep you alive.”
And when you get really solid, if you’re lucky, that person will be you.
Do you hear me, love?
That person can be you.
xx.
My January Playlist, | C H O I C E S
| An Ever Eclectic, Never Know What You’re Gonna Get, Depends On My Mood And the Whims Of the Universe Work In Continuous Progress.
xo.
jlb.
Tell me, what is true for you right now? What is alive? What is whole and holy? What is longing for answers and where have the questions ceased? Comment here or join me in the chat.
And this line lit me up: And of all the paths to queerness, heresy might be my favorite, the one in which I feel most at home.🔥🔥🔥🔥
Oooooh I love you, my forever queen of ravens ❤️🔥🤟🏽