Jessie Susannah has answered questions here for the Aries installment of these Existing Together Astrology Interviews and I couldn’t be happier about it because she is magic, her work is magic, her fashion is magic. For years I wondered if I needed to become an accountant because I needed her services and didn’t know of her - someone who could counsel me on the spiritual aspects of money but also knew taxes, like, could actually do my taxes. Super relieved I don’t have to become an accountant since I found her. She is also an astrologer so she explains a lot about her chart and how it shows up in different ways below. I so highly recommend working with her if you are needing healing around your finances and approach to money, history with money, etc. (And really I don’t know anyone who doesn’t need healing in that area!) And/or following her links below. Thank you thank you Jessie Susannah!
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Jessie Susannah Karnatz aka $ Money Witch $ helps people heal their finances through Intuitive Financial Coaching, tax preparation, money magic tools, and education. She believes transforming our relationship to money is possible and necessary, and that this transformation has healing impact on our lives, our families and our communities. Find her online at www.healyourfinances.com, on Instagram @money.witch, on Twitter @money_witch, and on YouTube at youtube.com/moneywitch
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1. What brings you the most joy?
Sex & being in love (scorpio rising), cash money, insanely delicious food, the ocean and the beach, my kid, a really truly good party, dancing, shopping & thrifting, fashion, colors- bright ones and jewel tones and metallics, music, reading for fun, getting to really just chill with my friends, fancy swimming pools, oysters, a stunning view, revelation, ecstatic mystical communion with G-d, meeting online friends irl, watermelon and cherries and passionfruit and guava, gardening, magical herbs, sunshine, sisterhood, cooking for people I love, and flan.
2. Do you identify with Aries qualities? Which ones and how do they show up in your life?
For sure. I have my sun, mars, and venus all in Aries, pretty close to conjunct. I’m a total hothead and will get in verbal fights with strangers. I love excitement and intensity, I get bored in social settings and relationships that feel superficial or understimulating. I get frustrated easily. My needs have to be filled fairly quickly upon presenting themselves or I kind of spiral out. I have a ton of energy and can do things like work or be in meetings or shop for looong time. Exertion often gives me more energy. I have a LOT of energy, I’m learning how to channel it well so it doesn’t eat me up.
3. What are you learning about right now in your life?
Oppression and privilege and liberation- every day I excavate more of my own attitudes and actions that are oppressive or systemically violent. Colonialism- I love to look at timelines and what was happening simultaneously globally. I think and study a lot about the spiritual gesture of whiteness and my theory that it is created from the Roman empire meets Christianity meets Western Europe.
I’m learning about my nervous system and attachment. I’m learning about how to regulate my nervous system while staying connected after I get disregulated.
I’m learning about time management, as it relates to emotions, and making choices about what emotional growth is a priority for me and what is for later. In order to be in relationships (including friendships) in integrity, I am looking at what emotional growth is needed in order for me to be successful in that relationship. Working an edge of emotional growth is destabilizing and energy consuming, so I need to make sure I have the space to do the growth needed, and that that particular piece of growth is a priority for me and that I have the time and space resources to do it responsibly.
I’m learning about letting go of stagnant attachments in order to create space for the void, because out of that void grows what is most potent and current.
4. Who inspires you the most lately?
Black women and femmes
5. When you feel stuck or blocked or stagnant, what do you do to get unstuck?
Get divorced. Lol.
I don’t feel like I get big picture stuck or stagnant that often. It tends to be more an energy that pops up in the day to day. So my solutions tend more that way.
Take action. Just move anything, one little piece of difference or change will make space for everything else to shift.
Go to the ocean and pray and ask for a message. This always gives me deep time perspective.
Try to find more solitude. I also have a lot of Aquarius in my chart, so solo time always allows me to get grounded.
Take a shower.
Smoke a little weed if I can, that usually shifts my vantage point.
And sometimes, just sometimes, acknowledge that I MIGHT NEED REST.
Thomas Page McBee Yall! So so happy to share his perspective for the HOW TO BE YOUR OWN NATURE Existing Together Astrology Interview series. Thomas writes about masculinity and all of its complexity, connecting places and people and things that don’t usually get connected, which is why I think his writing is for everyone right now, it’s SO IMPORTANT! He is so excellent at staying very close to what is really at stake, in all his creative work. His endeavors bear the beautiful unusual mark of all the compassion and tenderness of Pisces, with the critical, collective lens of Libra and Aquarius, among other things. Both of his books are excellent, and all of his online writing is relevant, thoughtful, productive and kind. This is such a rare combination for writing in what can be such sticky territory. Excited for you to discover his work if you haven’t already!
Read more of his work!
Follow him on the internet, if you do that kind of thing.
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Thomas Page McBee’s Lambda award-winning memoir, Man Alive, was named a best book of 2014 by NPR Books, BuzzFeed, Kirkus, and Publisher's Weekly. His “refreshing [and] radical” (The Guardian) second book, Amateur, a reported memoir about learning how to box in order to understand masculinity’s tie to violence, was published in August to wide acclaim and was shortlisted for the UK’s Baillie-Gifford nonfiction book prize. It was named a best book of 2018 by many publications, including the London Times, BuzzFeed, and Book Riot.
Thomas was the first transgender man to box in Madison Square Garden, a “masculinity expert” for VICE, and the author of the columns “Self-Made Man” for the Rumpus and “The American Man” for Pacific Standard. His current column, "Amateur," is for Condé Nast's Them. A former senior editor at Quartz, his essays and reportage have appeared in the New York Times, Playboy, Glamour, Out, The Cut, and more.
Thomas has taught courses at the City University of New York’s graduate school of journalism and worked as a television writer for the forthcoming Netflix show, Tales of the City. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and is currently at work on his next project, a modern reimagining of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.
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1. What brings you the most joy?
Asking big questions (What is evil? Can we integrate our shadows? What's a "real man"? How do the stories we tell define us, and where do they fail us?) with what they call a "beginner's mind" in Zen, and then getting the chance to investigate the answers and write about them. I love the questioning, the experimenting with answers, and the reporting back. I love words, I love connecting, and--for all of our faults--I love humanity. I am grateful to be alive and part of the human family, and I see it as my responsibility as an artist and a person to leave the world a little better than I found it.
2. Do you identify which Pisces characteristics? Which ones?
I understand that I'm an "upstream fish," which maybe has something to do with being born on the cusp of Aquarius (and having so many planets in Aquarius, as well). I'm also a Libra rising and moon, so I'm definitely diplomatic and aesthetic, but I'm not as go-with-the-flow and ethereal as other Pisces. I do connect deeply to the empathetic, old-soul aspects of my sign. It's said that Pisces have a little bit of all the signs within them, as we're the last in the Zodiac, and that feels right to me. I find that my empathy for others is often a way to empathize with myself, and seeing myself in others comes easily to me.
3. I see astrology as providing a language of categorization, which can be so healing. And yet it, like all categorization, it has its limitations. As someone whose work has a lot to do with investigating categories (specifically of gender), when do you find that can categorization be healing, and when is it damaging?
I'm also suspicious of a strict binary (male/female, for example), because binaries tend to create or reenforce power structures, and variation and nuance are much more common than reductive identities. Whenever I see black-and-white thinking, I wonder who benefits--and loses--from the lack of nuance. With astrology, there's a ton of nuance (I'm still learning so much about my birth chart), but people tend to get hung up on sun signs, and I find that most skeptics don't know a lot about astrology as a vast and ancient attempt by humans to understand the incredible mystery of life. I was raised by a physicist, and so I tend to see astrology and quantum physics and the world's religions all as different attempts to honor and explore the fundamentally unnameable. Holding the paradox: That we attempt to understand what we never truly will, but that in that attempt we get much closer to ourselves--that, to me, is the entire point of being a person. I respect all of the ways we've invented to hold life's mysteries. The damage of categorization is seeing oneself as a didactic identity ("I'm a Pisces") without understanding the context and spirit of what these incredible, ancient endeavors are really about.
4. Where do you find personal healing on the daily, and how much or how little does this overlap with your sense of what is needed for collective healing?
I meditate every day and work out most days. Lifting weights keeps me grounded and in my body, and meditation connects me to myself spiritually. I also pull a Tarot card daily, which connects me to what I cannot see and my faith in things larger than myself. I spend a lot of intentional time with my wife and our pets. I also structure my days so that I both set and review goals regularly, allowing for room to change and to practice gratitude. I do all of this so that I can do my work, which is fundamentally about connection. Being an out trans man writing about masculinity puts me in a. vulnerable position, and I find that if I'm centered, I have good boundaries for myself and empathy for others, even those who are frightened by what I have to say. I really try to be thoughtful and intentional about what I put out into the world, whether it's in my books, or journalism, or on my Instagram feed. I welcome complexity and dialogue, and try to allow room for the messy art of being a person who is always in transition. I look for the universal. In order to have that kind of collective healing, I have to really know myself. Maybe it's my Leo North Node--I'm very mindful that I am the collective, and the collective is me. I have to be good at tolerating discomfort, grounding in the moment, and holding ambiguity. It's a constant practice, but when it's working, it really works.
5. Who are the people you're most inspired by lately / what keeps you fresh in your work?
I'm surrounded by people who inspire me, from my family to my friends to my colleagues and peers. I am a water sign but I grew up in a family of fire signs, and my wife is a Sagittarius (so was my mother), and I tend to be very drawn to truth-tellers and free-thinkers who remind me every day to stand up for what I believe in. In terms of public figures, I'm just blown away by Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, whose commitment to integrity is so powerful to witness. I feel the same way about the journalist Ronan Farrow, who has helped take down so many bad actors in the #MeToo era. I'm always inspired by people with the guts to face America's "shadows," and so I've been re-reading James Baldwin, who continues to be the premiere example of a genius writer willing to take on the world we live in out of a brave and defiant kind of love. I'm inspired by bell hooks's book on masculinity, "The Will to Change," which I return to often. And, lately, as I'm thinking about (as Jung put it), the "problem of evil," I'm inspired by people who've been willing to confront cultural narratives about monsters: Jordan Peele pops to mind, but also anyone of any medium doing the hard work of facing the "shadows" of our culture--sexism, racism, transphobia, classism, but also the shame that we've inherited from our ancestors, shame designed to maintain the status quo. I admire anyone trying to get free.
Yall! Michelle Tea is a hero and if you don’t already know her work go buy something she wrote right now and read it! Any of it will do although I especially love Against Memoir at the moment, one of her more recent books. She’s done so many beautiful things in so many realms - she is a rare artist who produces so much excellent writing herself and has also devoted SO MUCH TIME and has directed SO MANY RESOURCES toward supporting the work of countless other artists. So many heroes of mine (and probably yours) have been nurtured by her efforts! Her Aquarian spirit is to be celebrated, as are all her other spirits. Really happy to share her thoughts here with you today.
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Michelle Tea is the author of numerous books, including Modern Tarot. Her recent essay collection, Against Memoir, is shortlisted for an award from PEN/America, and she is awaiting publication of the first book in her new children's astrology series, Astro Baby.
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1. What brings you the most joy?
Reading books! In the morning I sit and drink coffee and read books on the couch with my son while he has his one hour of daily screen time. I live for it.
2. Do you identify with the Aquarian qualities of independence, rebellion, concerned with the collective, social, etc.? Do any of these feel challenging? If so how do you work with them?
I have always identified with classic Aquarian qualities because my point of view has always been a more radical one that challenges things. But what is strange is, having lived my life so long in more radical communities, I find myself wanting to rebel against a lot of radical dogma, because at the end of it all, dogma is just dogma and that Aquarian spirit is interested in freedom. Like, I went to bat defending bisexual-identified people on the internet the other day (because . . . okay, there is no good reason for fighting on the internet, actually) even though I agree that the 'bi' in 'bisexual' is problematic for enforcing the illusion of a gender binary. But I just felt like it was radical-cool people making bisexual people feel bad for not having the right lingo or something, and also being 47 and having seen a lot of bi-phobia it just reeked of that dressed up in more radical ideology. I am Aquarius in that I have always been drawn to radical points of view because they offer people the most freedom, but when those points of view become oppressive themselves it makes me feel reactionary. In general fighting on the internet is not the most effective and it leaves me feeling physically stressed out. I would rather let the work I do in the world reflect my larger, sometimes complicated values and leave it at that!
3. You have written a book on Tarot and so much of your work addresses social and political problems, even if at times through a personal lens. How much do you think of your writing as social or healing work? What responsibility do you think writing has toward healing?
If I am lucky, my writing has a social work component. I think it does, as it witnesses to certain experiences that have historically not been represented, or have a lot of myth and projection around it (queer stories, working class, sex work). I do think it can be healing to have your experience reflected back to you, and also can heal a persons misjudgements if their mind is open, so I love thinking that my work might have such capacity. It really depends on what the reader might need from it and bring to it. I don't think that writing has a responsibility to heal - I think that if you set out to have a specific effect on a readership you are setting yourself up. You have no control what people get from your work, and I also think that any artist's primary responsibility needs to be to their inspiration and ability. It can't be dictated by outside forces - that is propaganda. But artists are naturally sensitive and that quite often there is an authentic inspiration to speak to issues and scenarios that have the effect of healing or inspiring others. I mean that is the beauty and magic of art but I think that the effect has to be secondary to the inspiration.
4. How has becoming a parent changed your creative process and your relationship to your writing?
Well, I have far less time and I need a bit more money. So I say no to a lot of things because the COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS doesn't work, and I CANNOT BELIEVE I used that phrase, but it is true. My time is so scarce and I am working towards being the parent with the income and so there are lots of things I would have historically said yes to - I used to say yes to everything! - and I just can't anymore. And I believe in working for free - obviosly if there is money involved I want as much as I can have, but my experience has been that lots of really cool things happen without funding and it is important to me as an artist and person in the world to be involved with these things. I've never been a big ARTISTS NEED TO BE PAID person simply because I know the reality and often there is no money. I ask people to perform for free all the time! But I have to balance it out now, balance if it means missing a dinner and bedtime with my son, if it will take time away from paying projects or projects that mean more to me, stuff like that.
5. What and who currently offers you a sense of possibility for the future these days?
Well, I moved to Los Angeles to work in the film and television worlds, and I finally have managers and I swear they are offering me the biggest sense of possibility right now! It is so, so hard to break into this world and to have people who see you and believe in you working on your behalf is amazing. But this is just on a very self-focused and careerist front - my immediate personal future! But as for THE FUTURE? I am excited about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Beto O'Rourke, I am inspired by younger people who seem to have a very NBD/duh attitude toward gender and queerness. I am really scared about the literal fate of our literal one-and-only world and it makes me feel relief whenever I read an article about, like, scientists building city-sized air purifiers or designing packing material from mushrooms or creating machines to dredge the plastic from the ocean. These people, scientists and engineers who set out to tackle one of the issues that feed into climate disaster are my heroes.
THIS IS AN AD FOR MY WRITING, WHICH IS FOR SALE.
I’ve been writing horoscopes and publishing them here for the past year, and now I’m transitioning much of my writing to patreon, a platform that makes it easy for you to purchase a monthly subscription to receive my writing and support my work. This will help make it more sustainable for me to devote time to writing on astrology, suffering, joy, interconnectivity, and how to be as alive as possible, among other things.
Please visit my patreon page by clicking the button below, to learn more about what I’m offering there!
Feel free to look back through the past year of weekly horoscopes I’ve written, all on this page. The format of the writing I’ll do on patreon will be slightly different, but all of the content will be covering similar themes.
I’ll also still be publishing short pieces here from time to time, and of course the Existing Together Astrology Interviews with amazing humans each month (see below), so check back here for new stuff, or sign up for my free newsletter if you’re not already!
I’m really honored that the beautiful expression of a Capricorn that is Beth Pickens has answered these questions in this space. All of her advice is the most grounded, realest magic. She tells anyone who needs to be an artist to keep being an artist, no matter what! And then because she is such a Capricorn she outlines very concrete steps for how to do this. She is an antidote to despair. Follow her on instagram and sign up for her newsletter and buy her book because there is no one who doesn’t need her advice! And enjoy the beauty below.
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Beth Pickens is a Los Angeles-based consultant for artists and arts organizations. She is the author of Your Art Will Save Your Life (Feminist Press, 2018). Her pamphlets—Making Art During Fascism and On Artists and Hopelessness—were designed and distributed by The Women’s Center for Creative Work in Los Angeles.
Pickens earned her Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from the University of Missouri. Since 2010, she’s provided career consultation, grant writing, fundraising, and financial, project, and strategic planning services for artists and arts organizations throughout the U.S. She team-teaches an entrepreneurship course at the California Institute of the Arts School of Theater and teaches workshops at universities, companies, and art spaces throughout the U.S.
Before relocating to Los Angeles in 2014, she was based in San Francisco where she served as Senior Program Manager at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Managing Director of two queer, multidisciplinary arts non-profit organizations. She specializes in supporting queer and trans artists, women, and artists of color. She lives with her wife in LA.
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1. What brings you the most joy?
The moments when I have serenity because I'm using my many spiritual tools and practices, these moments are what bring me the most joy. I understand more as I grow older than joy is linked to serenity and surrender; I feel more joyful when I'm working for those. I can be doing the "most fun thing" with "my favorite people" in the an "idyllic environment" and not feel any joy if I'm not spiritually in tune. That's just how my brain is wired (maybe how all our brains are wired?) and it's up to me to do the work so that my interior is capable of feeling the joy of the conditions around me. The more I'm in serenity and connected with a power bigger than myself, the more I find joy in anything and everything and everybody. But, WHOA, when I'm not in that connected space there is really nothing that brings me joy! And this capacity to experience joy changes one day to the next; luckily I understand most of it is up to me.
Actually, I just remembered that gratitude is my pipeline to feeling joy. When I do the work it takes to be grateful (it's a practice, a muscle, a skill) then I have greater capacity for joy.
2. Do you relate to Capricorn characteristics? Which ones?
I really relate to everything Capricorn! Aside from being in the micro-generation Generation Catalano, being Capricorn is one of the group markers I most identify with. Even more these days than being queer, a feminist, Jewish, a Californian! What I relate to most in the Capricornian sphere: I am planted firmly on the earth; I have a lot discipline; I am concerned with financial well being for me, my loved ones, my communities, and my larger world; I have many goals and a plan to reach them; I am very reliable; I am probably a little boring; I understand and can build systems. I often say that where my heart would've been, the zodiac instead placed a very powerful data processing unit. (But I have a Leo moon so I was granted a lot of heart, too!)
3. I see your work as profoundly healing for the artist community, I know it has been for myself and many who I've shared your work with. Where and how do you find healing?
I am so fortunate to have spent most of my life gravitating more and more toward what and who can heal me. For some reason, I was born with an intrinsic desire to have a better life than what was modeled for me in my family of origin and a willingness to do just about anything to get to it. Since I was a teenager, I've understood the transformative power of chosen/logical family. (Nod to Armistead Maupin.) My years of accumulating and learning from/with my chosen family has been a central source of healing. Additional sources: lots of therapy, anxiety meds, 12-step programs, converting to Judaism, feminism, being in community with many lesbians and other queers, meditation, swimming/hiking/yoga, and a deep commitment to being death positive. (Nod to Caitlin Doughty.)
4. What are some things you learn from your clients?
My clients teach me how to be human, how hard it is to be human, and how profoundly human we humans are! I learn constantly that most people are having very similar experiences and kinds of suffering, which I find comforting because it means there is a path out of those suffering woods. They teach me what it is to be an artist, how hard but crucial it is for their lives and the world. I feel profoundly honored to have a job that is centered in supporting artists and building resources for their work.
5. How would you define your own creativity?
At my core, I do not feel like a creative person. Honestly. I never have. An outsider might meet me and hear about my experiences and interests and call me an artist or a creative person but truly I have never identified as an artist and don't find myself to be particularly creative. As a Cap, I'm good at most things I try so, in the end, I can effectively do things that seem creative/artistic on the outside: drawing, writing, creating radio shows, leading food clubs, teaching workshops, making clothes, playing instruments. But really I just like mastering things and reaching goals. Hopelessly Capricornian.
But here's what I am that drives me in a way creativity drives others: curious. (Gemini rising?) I am endlessly curious about the world and everybody in it - past, present, and future. I want to know everything! One of my biggest anxieties about mortality is that I can't read every book I want to read before I die. There's just not enough time. I love learning and want more and more information constantly. This is one reason I love art so much; I get so much information and insight in so many different forms.
NEW MOON IN CAPRICORN
What I offer this week is a short list of things I know to be helpful, perhaps they will be helpful to you. This New Moon in Capricorn week is a good time to attend to earth life things.
breathe in silence
breathe wherever you are
drink a glass of water
reach out to someone if you are feeling isolated
write to someone about how they have helped you / inspire you
take a walk outside
ask people in your life for their good news, instead of reading the news
read a poem out loud (maybe to someone else)
listen to music while lying down
remember gravity, let it hold you
look at your bank accounts instead of avoiding them
make something for someone else
cook food at home
clean out a drawer or small space that needs it
ask someone in your life some questions that you normally don’t ask them
go somewhere that you never go in your town
stretch
drink another glass of water
breathe in silence
find a way to laugh
pray
You’ll notice that the horoscopes are different today - I’m sharing the piece I wrote for the Solstice event we just had this past weekend at Black Bird Bookstore - some tender advice for Donald Trump. Perhaps some of the advice I’m offering to him could be applicable to you. Perhaps.
The exercise of this writing for me was about finding a way in to not reinforcing the opacity of the hatred of Trump, which feels very energetically similar to the opacity of his hatred and delusion. I’ve been thinking a lot about the satisfaction of ‘rightness’, being convinced of one’s own ‘rightness,’ and how intoxicating it can feel, like a hit of sugar, or booze, something we can use like a drug. And the separative qualities of rightness. The isolation of rightness. Where do you feel ‘right’? And when you’re feeling ‘right’, who are you feeling connected to? Who are you feeling separate from? How does your heart feel when you are feeling ‘right’? I’m not even suggesting you need to stop feeling right, I’m just wondering what we find when we really pay attention to the qualities that accompany that feeling. Perhaps it’s a good thing to contemplate while many of us are with family who we often politically disagree with right now.
Remember that no matter where you are, how triggered you might get, you can always count your breaths to slow them down and bring your attention back to them. You can remember you are in a body on planet Earth, breathing, like every other body on planet Earth. You can get a glass of water and drink it, and know you are drinking it while you do.
With love, and as little separation as possible on this day.
-Sarah
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Very Tender Advice for Donald Trump
Drink a glass of water.
Then have another.
Lie on the floor in the oval office.
Go outside and take off your shoes and socks.
Lie on the lawn of the white house.
Put your bare feet in the ocean, or a river, or a lake.
Get the secret service to drive you somewhere with trees and animals and soil, then take off your shoes and stand on the ground. Stand on grass and soil.
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Delete your twitter account.
Then turn off your phone.
Pay all your back taxes.
Stand naked in front of the mirror with no makeup on, alone.
Contemplate your internal organs.
Contemplate your pancreas.
Contemplate your lungs.
Contemplate your circulation.
Contemplate the years your body has lived.
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Sell your Rolls Royce Silver Cloud and give the money to me.
Sell your Lamborghini Diablo and give the money to anyone who has held a baby today.
Sell your Mercedes SLR McLaren and give the money to anyone who has put their feet in the ocean this week.
Sell your Cadillac Allante and give the money to anyone who has visited a prison.
Sell your Tesla Roadster and give the money to someone living in a prison.
Sell your 24 Karat Gold Chopper and give the money to someone who has made food for someone else.
Sell your Boing 757 and give the money to anyone who has served you food.
Sell your Mar-a-Lago Mansion with 33 bathrooms and give the money to anyone who has ironed your boxers.
Sell your 39,000 square foot Seven Springs mansion and give the money to anyone who has been a caretaker for the dying.
Sell your 23,000 square foot Virginia mansion and give the money to someone who has birthed.
Sell your Sikorsky S-76 remodeled helicopter and give the money to a scientist who has watched a species they have been studying for 30 years die off.
Sell Trump Tower and give the money to Bill Gates.
Sell your National Golf Club in Bedminster and give the money to a midwife.
Give the money to a piano player.
Give the money to someone you betrayed.
Give the money to anyone.
Give something away, to someone, today.
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Once you give the money away, observe the moon. Or maybe observe the moon before you give the money away, I’m not sure.
Also observe plants.
Water a plant.
Observe someone else.
Observe your own breath. (What does it feel like to breathe?)
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Join the caravan for a day. Walk next to a family. Hold a child while walking in the caravan, if someone will let you.
—
Ask someone a question.
Listen to their answer.
Then ask a follow up question.
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Get a scientist to take you to a place where a species you have never seen before exists. Get them to show you what is dying. And what is living.
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Find a newborn to hold for a day.
And a night.
Change the newborn’s diaper.
Give the newborn a bath.
Remember when you were a newborn.
Remember who gave you a bath.
Remember who gave you your first bites of food.
Remember your time in the womb.
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Convert your golf courses to nature preserves.
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Tell Melania you are sorry for saying that she had to lose the baby weight in a day. Tell her you are sorry for saying she had to lose it in two days. Tell her you are sorry for saying she had to lose it in a week.
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Ask someone who lives at sea for advice.
Ask someone who makes $15,000 a year for advice.
Ask someone who makes $80,000 for advice.
Ask a person in the caravan for advice.
Ask a child in detention for advice.
Ask an old woman for advice.
Ask the ocean for advice.
Ask a NICU nurse for advice.
Ask a SF General Hospital social worker for advice.
Ask a garbage collector for advice.
Ask a buddhist monk for advice.
Ask a teacher for advice.
Ask the earth for advice.
—
Peel a pomegranate, then eat it. Peel another one, give it to someone who works for you.
Put your dirty clothes in a washer. Once they are clean, put them in a dryer. Then take them out and fold them. Iron your shirts. Iron your boxers. Iron your pants.
Put someone else’s clothes in a washer. Once they are clean, put them in a dryer. Then take them out and fold them. Iron their shirts. Iron their boxers. Iron their pants.
Make a cup of coffee and bring it to someone.
Cut up a winter squash and cook it in an oven with olive oil and salt. Serve it to anyone. Serve it to Barron.
Feed a pet. Take a pet on a walk.
Lie on the lawn outside the white house. Stay there until you experience feelings of remorse. Once you do, drink another glass of water.