moon in review 🌓 july 2 2025

moon in review is the moonly newsletter from me, aloe. i send one out every first-quarter moon. it recounts the previous lunation, from one new moon to the next.

it's like the writing on my website, but a little different, composed within a certain period, delivered to the intimacy of your inbox. i'm figuring out the format as i go somewhat, but it's basically just, what i've been up to, working on, thinking about; wrapped in a bit more detail, worked a bit more into narrative. and then i'll do a little calendar for the next moon if i have gigs coming up, and maybe pull a tarot card for good measure. i think it could be nice. i hope you will join me on this ride :)

🌑 may 26

the moon's beginning to wax again and the weather's continuing to warm up. at home we're still planting the garden; one of my housemates has much more expertise than me, and has been going really hard on it, but i pitch in where i can. the two of us get a tour of native plants growing in our yard from a past member of the coöp. we have a beach rose and a massive elderberry. i'm hoping to make some teas and syrups this year

in the living room there's a big upright piano, and i've been banging on it incessantly all year. a couple days after this new moon i put some of it to tape for the first time, after spending some time writing it down. you can read and listen to it on my website !

speaking of website i really fixed up rhodochrosite in this timeframe, replacing the janky text-replacement functions i wrote a year ago with new, moderately less janky ones. i also made a little discord server for it! with the publishment of avoset.neocities.org there are now three whole websites online that were made with rhodo. thats pretty neat i think! so i made this server so the three of us webmistresses could hang out. but its not like, a secret, you can join it if youre cool ;p

i don't think i saw this moon for the first time until it was already waxing gibbous. i freely admit it was a bit of a rough one. there is some truly evil shit going on in my country's government, and it's hard not to fixate on all the needless pain and suffering befalling my community and my loved ones and myself. jb said something, and it reminded me of something fran said, but i dont remember what either one was anymore; something about balancing joy and sorrow, or hope and grief; pushed and pulled by a massive weight and a tremendous lightness, tumbling through the space between,

as the moon neared full the federal immigration police kept making more and more brazen abductions, and people kept trying to stop them, and this whole situation developed in los angeles that you can read about in the news. within 24 hours a rally and march was organized in my city, and a lot of people showed up, and demonstrated really passionately. you can read about that one in the local news

first harvest, a tupperware of small assorted greens you would look at and say, "wow, thats kind of a lot!" . balancing hope and despair ... i'm not equipped to venture any genuine political analysis or anything, but my mind keeps wandering back to this thread for using the word 'accelerationist' like that, and this post for too many reasons to count. to witness the collapse, the acceleration, the pedal-to-the-metal crescendo of extraction and brutality and fear .. and simultaneously witness just, humanity, our own, each others, flowing in everywhere to fill the gaps, returning where it had been restrained from, breaking every chain and wall and border

it's so much to hold. i can hardly do anything else. we have to hold on to each other .. !!!

🌕 june 11

the moon is full and the heat is building up. the days are funhouse-mirror long, hours of endless light crashing suddenly into bedtime, barely any rest before the next noisy dawn. basil, peas, some berries from the bushes. i set up the tape machine in yet another room and try to breathe some life into an unfinished track, recording guitar and bass over drums from the winter. it actually comes off alright and i'm pretty happy with the result; once the vocals are done, that'll be the next post.

i set up a flyer archive page for the band. i let the newsletter rest for a while, after writing the new moon part. too long actually, it turns out ! newslettering is a new thing for me, and it's gonna be a learning experience. i didn't want to overwork it, but i wound up leaving too much for the end of the process. next time i'll try to write in smaller chunks more consistently over the course of the moon.

it's good to do something new. it's good to learn ! i planted some beets, with my gardener housemate friend, and none of them grew, because probably the old seeds we found in the house were just duds. they got some more seeds and i planted those ones myself in the same spot .. and a few of those did start coming in. not all of them, and a couple died, and i planted them all bunched up weird which is so obvious now that i see the sprouts - so hey, i learned something. i'm obsessed ! growing things is going to fix me .

truth be told i haven't done a whole lot of it myself yet, as much as i'm writing about it; but it could be a start of something, if i pursue it. im trying to just hang out and ask questions and try things and watch what happens. it can be a vulnerable headspace for me; i have some persistent, garden-variety problems with shame and perfectionism and stuff . so i'm trying to loosen up a little. hey, thanks for bearing with me as i work out how to newsletter live on air :)

cause, it's all kicked up into high gear, right? it's not just me? the acceleration, the collapse; Everything you do right now is what you would have done if you were a Part of this or that Part of History, or whatever. with every move so loaded with significance, how could you just hang out, mess around, learn? yet,, in spite of all that, one day follows the next. again and again everything changes overnight, generating an endless mind-eraser beam of headline news; meanwhile nothing changes overnight, i wake up and feed my cat and cash my unemployment check. so far i've been so lucky. is it just, waiting for the other shoe to drop?

well, little shoes are dropping all the time. better to try and tackle one or two of those, i guess, than sit and fret about the big one. worrying is not contingency planning, and anyway modeling and prediction is only one part of preparation. another part, to press valiantly against the ceaseless tide of little shoes, together .. and by opposing them, build the relationships, skills and habits that will weather greater storms. "this will live or die on flexibility," i said to myself recently while i was redesigning my weekly planner system. the phrase stuck around my head and now it's about more than the planner.

meanwhile, each morning the survivor beets are a little bigger, and each morning the garden needs water unless if its raining, and there's always some clover to pull up. and once it's done that's it, until tomorrow when it needs water again. no amount of work will speed up time. that's what i'm so captivated with i think, the way all this proceeds so willfully at its own pace. there's no reading ahead, no catching up; only establishing the best conditions, watching, waiting, taking as it comes. hanging out and doing stuff, and growing ! full circle baby . that's newsletter ;)

🌑 june 25

your present lunation begins with the june 25 new moon, proceeds through the july 10 full moon, and ends with the july 24 new moon. today, june 2, is the first quarter moon of this lunation. this is where i would put a calendar, but i have no gigs or public appearances coming up this moon.

the major reason for this is, prior panic is recording an album !! so, prior panic is "the band" i mentioned earlier, that i've been playing guitar in for a couple years. it's also the singer/songwriter project of one jb fulbright, with a history spanning two cities and a whole other full-band lineup; which i only mention to give credit where it's due, and for context so i can point out what kind of a thing this recording is. cause there's material from six or seven years ago, and material from this year, and it's all kind of history-soaked and vital at the same time. plus, jb's just such an important person to me on so many levels, our relationship has become quite intimate and frankly beautiful .. so i have some inkling of the significance to them, and it's a multi-layered honor and joy to be a part of, musically, artistically and personally.

anyways .. we're doing that this moon, so that's why no gigs, so that's why no calendar section. all that leaves is the card .. i said i'd pull a tarot card, so i will. i just like it when periodic publications have things like this. think of it like a newspaper horoscope. your fortune told by mail; freely take it or leave it

your card is: the eight of pentacles. (pull your own cards at aloe.gay/tarot !)

An artist in stone at his work, which he exhibits in the form of trophies. Divinatory Meanings: Work, employment, commission, craftsmanship, skill in craft and business, perhaps in the preparatory stage.

- a.e. waite, the pictorial key to the tarot

feels appropriate to themes i'm carrying into this moon myself; art-work, diligence, gradual development in repetition. in her book Tarot Wisdom: Spiritual Teachings and Deeper Meanings, Rachel Pollack records a set of "rider themes," thematic groupings of the minor arcana based on interpretation of illustrations in the rider pack, and her theme for the eights is movement. this is maybe most easily seen in the eight of wands, where eight wands literally fly through the air. applying the theme here, i like to focus on the last little bit of waite's meanings, the almost-throwaway "perhaps in the preparatory stage." something in the rote mechanism of crafting many identical things feels almost essentially preparatory, building skills ahead of some great work (the stone arches in the 10? or the 3 as well.)

decades where nothing happens and then weeks where decades happen,1 right? time and movement interact in funny ways. winding a spring in a circle, and then letting it out with a bang .. static building before the thunderclap, potential energy, standing on the bike pedals pushing up a hill before flying down the other side. on either side, the movement is the same; the same ground covered, the potential equal to the kinetic. so although we're not flying through the air, we're still building movement --- lightning could strike at any time .

thank you so much for reading my newsletter! we're hosted by comradery, a cooperatively-owned platform for artist subscriptions (like patreon, if you're familiar.) please consider supporting me there if you're so inclined, or on ko-fi with a one-time tip. my website is aloe.gay, and you can write back to me at aloe (at) aloe (dot) gay. i hope you have a good moon. i'll see you on the next first quarter ~

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footnotes

1. i guess this is famously misattributed to vladimir lenin, but theres no actual clear precedent to credit, the sentiment just kind of also appears a few other places