August: Stay Close
In the Northern Hemisphere, August marks the first observable turn toward autumn’s changing. The quality of light shifts, and deciduous trees exchange their vivid greens for darker, deeper hues. As we transition away from the season of maximum daylight, we begin a time of careful planning and inward momentum. But this predictable seasonal shift is happening in a year that looks and feels so different—many aren’t going back to school, many remain without work, and major question marks still hang over our future. There is no end to the changes this year is bringing, just continual adaptation to what emerges.
Without our usual anchors, it may be helpful to remember you’re not alone. If you are exhausted, if you are spinning out into anxiety about the future, or sitting with highly contrasting emotions about how your life has changed, you are not alone. If you are feeling distance grow between you and what you long to feel close to, you are not alone. This is touching all of us.
Distance and disaster are twin cyclones right now, whipping through our sense of vibrant collectivity. Our bodies may be many miles away from the bodies of those we love—from births, deaths, celebrations, and convalescence. The roads of uncertainty carry our minds miles away from the present moment where our bodies and feelings are. This is a spell for staying close to what’s here with you now, especially sources of support and beauty, hidden as they may be.
About the Spell
In literary study, close reading is the act of reading a text with careful attention to its specifics: why this word instead of another? What is the rhythm of the language? What cultural beliefs does this text rely on or challenge? What subtler meanings are implied? What worlds open up when we stay close to what is observable, when we get small and specific and train our attention on the fullness of what we’re reading?
This month’s spell calls for a close reading of our lives right now. What is the truest truth about this moment, and how can it help us stay close to our bonds of love, our felt experience, and our hearts’ visions for a richer, more integrated future? Some forms of meditation ask us to stay close to the observable aspects of our breath: the inhale, the exhale, and the zones between. With time and openness, the breath becomes more than its constituent parts, it becomes an experience of wholeness. Polarized perspectives surround us these days, and they are a lot like inhales and exhales—they can tug our attention into places that feel powerful, anxious, emotional, righteous, hopeless. Staying close means observing these states, these tugs and swings, becoming aware of their cyclic changes, and practicing an openness to the wholeness that contains the entire cycle. Working with this spell, we heal distance—we connect, we brave, we love and listen and pay attention; we read in the fine details of our lives what it is here for us as nourishment, as engagement, as challenge to grow, and as invitation to rest.
Meditation on Stay Close
For this meditation, please find a very comfortable place to be. Let’s begin by attempting to do nothing at all, changing nothing about your posture or breath or attention. And then, let the simplest noticing emerge. Can you keep it small? Whatever it is you noticed first about your state of being right now, see if you can hold and rest your attention right there without it starting to balloon into greater awareness. Regardless of what has caught your attention—whether it’s something you see or feel—at some point you may start noticing the way your breath joins you here, hard to ignore. You are noticing something, and then your breath comes in and out, bringing you more to notice, or perhaps changing the quality of your noticing. If it feels okay to, let your attention open to include your breath. See if you can ride it; all the way up, all the way down. Out and in. What are the feelings it brings? What story does it sing? See how close you can stay to your breath, and how long you can tolerate such closeness. See if your honing in on the breath eventually opens up into an experience where your awareness blooms—or if your attention starts to float away into other things. Whatever happens, you can always get small and close again, and then see what the cycle will bring you next. Feelings of focus and wholeness are also fleeting, also just a part of the greater whole. Be gentle with yourself as you play with your attention, letting it get small and noticing it grow. Over time, you may cultivate a familiarity with the feeling of closeness—and that feeling may endure as your attention fluctuates, keeping you bonded to your experience, regardless of what it is.
About the painting
Corina: Sometimes an image comes together almost effortlessly, like a dream that you’re watching play out in your mind’s eye. This was one of those. The green and the gold together do something that fills me with a sense of rightness. And this painting also holds the main theme of this year—staying connected, even when it feels difficult.
Jocelyn: This was the first image we made for 2020; it came out of us so easily during an art retreat that was otherwise fraught with obstacles. I remember being captivated by its green and gold—like Corina said, it felt right. This image has always been for me the first messenger telling us about this strange year we are in—Feeling into the image and the spell in early 2019, I felt nervous about what we’d be enduring, but exhilarated at the same time. Whatever it was going to be, there would be closeness and richness and the possibility for experiencing the sublime in subtle ways.
This month:
The 2021 calendar is complete and ready to order! Since we are without craft fairs this year, we’re relying almost entirely on internet sales to distribute our calendars this year. Please consider purchasing one and spreading the word to others you think may enjoy our work!
As always, you can follow our shenanigans at @abacuscorvus on Instagram. And you can find out what each of us is up to by following @corinadross and @jocelyncorvus