The ties that bind ~

April's sensory almanac

April . 2025
The ties that bind ~

After all,
we are not the ones
with the threads,
we are not the weavers.
Some greater hand
brought us together
passed us through
the eye of that moon
its celestial needle.

𐙚

April: the ties that bind.

Look around you.

Who’s here?

Has anything changed?

Now that the party is over and the lights have been turned on: who and what remains?

Mid-way through the month: a good time to throw the window open wide and cry amen, amen, amen.

(And yes, I will be—throughout this—pulling Joanna Newsom lyrics out like loose threads to tie this all together).

𐙚

Here’s the thing: there is something about your connections right now. Your friendships, relationships. You choose the word.

It’s like they are the vines of the bindweed and the sun is landing on certain tendrils as they climb up the wall, up the tree stump, over the fence of you, your heart.

The connections with you right now are extremely important. They help you find your way back, your way back in.

And they are myriad and they are meteorite.

And they are showing you / supporting you / inviting you into / something special.

𐙚

April says, “I want you to be like the warm sun upon your connections right now. Grace them with your attention, be curious about what they stir in you, and can you—will you—rejoice in the fact that out of all the cards shuffled in the hands of the fates that these are the ones which, who, landed here at your lap?"

Friendship is the most precious stone.

And your friendships are teaching you things right now at a rapid rate and they are also a buoy, mica-spangled: maybe a lighthouse, maybe the cold compress upon the mess you’ve found yourself in.

And there are people in your life who show you how to be courageous, whom, when you see their bravery, you’re inspired to follow their steps, growing brighter and more clear and more bound to your own inner authority because of it.

And maybe it is you, can you? Be a meteroid? Can you be a beam of your sun that banishes someone else’s winter? Just a beam?

And as the talk in the town (the world) has become downright sickening, it is the vines of the bindweed (your connections) which net you in, which keep you going and going, so healthy, which leave you dumbstruck with the sweetness of being.

𐙚

All I am saying is this: take care of all your relationships right now. Shower them with your authentic self—

All I am saying is this: there’s a great need to take your relationships up into your hands like a giant bouquet and hold them close—

All I am saying is this: even butterflies and birds collide—

All I am saying is: look around you, look at who you are tied up with, shine the sun on the ties that bind you to them, let them at other times rest in the cool shadows, something is happening and you’re not alone.

𐙚

Okay, the almanac for April is friendly, thready, floral.

And it features a very special track that speaks to the energy of bindweed and April and all of it. It’s a collaboration between myself on the harp and the poet Jameela F. Dallis.

𐙚

On y va ~

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T A S T E

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

— from “The Wasteland” by T.S. Eliot

Lilac (Syringa vulgaris)