„Imagine if these walls could talk“, my mother once said to me on a day in summer, while we were sitting in front of our former home with all our things packed in boxes, and I had wondered what she had wanted to imply.
Was the story that had been leading up to us sitting here with our home in our back so much worse than all the things a building had seen in over a hundred years?
Or was it nothing special at all, compared to the history it had witnessed?
The one thing these walls had definitely watched us doing was falling apart, gathering the pieces and leaving, to start all over, once out of its reach.
„The lights in the distance are beautiful“, I tell my witch as we sit down on one of our fields and drink a hot chocolate.
„Too beautiful to get close“, she adds and my heart bleeds a little bit, because she is right.
Getting close is tough. It is so much easier to observe lights that shine in the dark from the distance and only ever imagine what it would feel like to be close, without ever truly belonging.
I had gotten used to be looking at houses from far away. I had liked their shapes and how they grew hidden behind trees and mountains, but solid in the ground. I had liked their lights shining in the darkness, without ever knowing how warm they would feel, but at least they were there, and whenever I had felt lost, it had made me dream.
Without ever truly belonging?
„Yes“, my witch would know to giggle as a response. „Because Daddy expelled us from reality.“
Only from the far distance?
„Oh yes“, my witch would know to remind me. „Because really getting in touch means to accept the things the way they are, and we don‘t do that.“
Looking at the lights in the distance without ever really getting in touch or truly belonging is allowing a witching dream to grow while imagining things to be better. Some of us were burned under the assumption of having the power to truly change this world into something new, because the most wonderful things are only ever possible within our heads.
This is the homelessness of witching.
All of these photos were taken on some of my endless pandemic walks. The quality is lower, since moste of the time I only had my phone with me, but they capture a feeling of being lost which I had always known, even before all of this, but only ever now begin to understand.
I wish I’d told you all my stories.
I want to tell you all my storiesIt’s not that they would changeIt’s just that I would likeTo see themFormA new expressionOn your face I need to tell you all my storiesI am not sureIf they makeSenseThe way I thoughtThey do. I will tell you all my storiesThey frighten meI’m sure you won’t endureI see…
Dealing with darkness in writing
This spring afternoon is glowing pink and tastes like strong tea. It feels much too familiar, and I begin to open up.I feel far away from myself as I start to talk, to babble on about my novel. About all the things I’ve been reading about in the past 5 years. About the 17th century,…
Radical witching novel rewrites at 4 AM!
I wore the same night dress my witch used to wear to get drunk on my windowsill, when I suddenly had an idea at 4 AM. Great ideas always happen at 4 AM, remember? This one however, kept me awake for at least a week, debating it back and forth. At some point my witch…
Mistress witch writes 