Caught In My Web 🕸️
Things I am currently reading/watching/contemplating #12
Do it hard.
Do it fast.
Do it slow.
Do it easy.
Stumble.
Fall on your face.
Fall some more.
Get rough with it.
Get banged up.
Lay some tenderness down.
Start then stop.
Don’t finish.
Throw it all away.
Start again.
Finish this time.
If only just to see what you’re made of.
It’s crucial to find out what we’re made of.
To know if we have what it takes to heed the call of our heart’s aching desire.
Do you even know what that ache is?
Can you say it out loud or is it still a whisper inside your soul, too faint to make out what is being yearned for?
If you don’t yet know, start digging.
Plunge into your emotional garden, tear out the weeds that have entangled and covered your dreams into something that is unrecognizable.
Dig until your back is aching and your hands are blistered.
Allow the tears to fall.
Wail if you must.
Banshee cry into the ether from all of the covering you’ve had to do and all of the uncovering it will take to get yourself back to the surface.
Allow the snotty, dirty mess of your uncovering to exist without judgement.
Watch with curiosity and a bit of horror as you witness the metamorphosis.
The rearranging.
The liquifying.
Bones will feel broken, muscles will feel torn.
You’ll gasp for air as your heart struggles to keep pace with your life’s reckoning.
Good.
You’re paying attention now.
Life is asking you the question of all questions and demands an answer.
“Will you face me with cowardice or courage?”
I choose courage.
I choose the exhaustion of trying again and again,
the uncertainty of a possible dream come true,
the sting of vulnerability,
and the risk of true love.
You’ll never look into my eyes and see the regret of abandoned dreams and desires.
I don’t care how many times life beats me to a pulp or lifts me up to glory.
It has done both many times over and I’m still here, steadfast in my undying belief in the power of possibility.
And if that is all I ever have…
it will be enough.
Here is this week’s Caught In My Web 🕸️
🕸️ I’m looking forward to reading Naomi Klein’s Doppelgänger and loved this interview in The New Yorker.
🕸️ Kicking off spooky season by reading Stephen King’s Holly. It is creepy, eerie, and just what you want from Mr. King.
🕸️ A Literary History Of Witches
🕸️ Erykah Badu’s Mama’s Gun album helped me survive high school, she remains one of my brightest lights in life. I would see her in Dallas (she lives there) with her “SHE ILL” license plate on her Porsche, zipping through town, sauntering up to store fronts and it was like witnessing a unicorn cross your path. When the writer of this piece mentioned Badu’s license plate and car, I smiled. That simple detail is so completely Erykah Badu. Go inside this 4 hour phone call with PEAK BADU.
🕸️ Social Media Is Dead. It’s going down in the DMs! (This might be paywalled for some of you, my apologies. I recommend the NEWS app on Apple!) People are no longer commenting, they are lurking and chatting in DMs. With all of the marketing spam that is shoved in our faces, it doesn’t surprise me. Thank little baby Jesus for Substack.
🕸️ NYC’S new black market for short-term rentals. “The city’s new rules prevent Airbnb, Vrbo and other booking platforms from processing payments for stays of less than 30 days — unless a unit has been registered with the city’s Office of Special Enforcement. Short-term rentals for entire apartments are mostly illegal in New York City, rendering them ineligible for registration.” It will be interesting to see how/if this changes the NYC rental market.
🕸️ I loved this piece on Martin Scorsese’s The Age Of Innocence. I recently re-watched it and it made long for the days of elegance in film.
🕸️ And speaking of Scorsese, his new film, Killers Of The Flower Moon has a new trailer. The true story is soul crushing. Infuriating. Evil.
Don’t wait for it, I said. Create a world, your world. Alone. Stand alone. Create. And then the love will come to you, then it comes to you. It was only when I wrote my first book that the world I wanted to live in opened up to me.
-Anaïs Nin
What Has Been Caught In Your Web 🕸️This Week?
🕷️ Thank you for reading JENOVIA’S WEB. Restack on Notes, leave a comment, or hit the heart button if you enjoyed this post. I love hearing from you! 🕸️
Love always,
Jenovia
I got shivers down my spine at “Good. You’re paying attention now.” 🥶
Goddamnit, Jenovia, how do you write like that!? Sorry for the blasphemy, but it’s just so freaking beautiful.
I absolutely loved these two bits:
“It’s crucial to find out what we’re made of. To know if we have what it takes to heed the call of our heart’s aching desire.”
“You’ll never look into my eyes and see the regret of abandoned dreams and desires.”
Thoreau’s famous line — about ‘leading lives of quiet desperation’ — can eat its heart out after that second one.
Thanks Jenovia