For the Birds: Bird + Bug Oracles for the new year!
Plus: A healthy creative process *is* an enchanting one
Thanks for reading For the Birds! These letters are born of my own artistic vision, but they carry the hope of encouraging you in yours.
Today’s letter is written for my paid readers, but I’m sharing a preview below. You can gain full access *and* support the labor of writing by upgrading your subscription:
Some thoughts on creativity + process + magic
If you’re new to my Bird + Bug Oracles, welcome!
The short version is this: I used to be afraid of bugs, and now I’m not. Now I love them. This change is the result of three things: choice, extreme patience, and devotion. When combined, these ingredients create palpable magic.
Now bugs show up in my dreams, in my house, in my tattoos (soon!), and in the writing—almost always with allusions to the good stuff that simmers below the bubbling surface of words and their obvious meanings. Bug wisdom is especially potent, I think, as a result of their traditional status as something to be feared, creeped out by, or reasonably avoided.
I’m here to advocate that it is not reasonable to avoid bugs! That it is in fact quite reasonable and valuable to have an active relationship with the things that we are afraid of or bothered by because we learned we were supposed to be. Plus, bugs are part of a strong and sustainable ecosystem; how could they not carry magical-emotional lessons, too?
Soon after I wrote my first series of oracular bug messages (←lol, this phrase) the birds started getting louder, asking to be included not only in the poems, where they already show up often, but in the more mystical stuff, too. Today, I’m including messages from both creaturely classes.
A note on what it means to write oracular messages
You can read the below entries as written just for you (you! yes, you), meant to be discovered in a moment when you especially need them, because this is in fact how I wrote them, and because it’s also how creativity functions. It’s all divination + timing + chance, things that can be accounted for, like craft, alongside things that cannot. It’s me making choices, and me letting creativity make choices through me.
Said differently, it’s you making choices, and you letting creativity make choices through you, too.
Said differently still: you can read the messages below as lyrical expressions of what happens when the surface of me bumps into the surface of things that aren’t me—creatures, ideas, images; phrases that arrived as if from elsewhere. Because I allow this revelatory bumping (←lol) and the friction it causes, I may then use that friction to make a series of artistic choices that are both mine and more than mine. This, too, is how creativity functions.
We conjure and we choose, conjure and choose, conjure and choose. Here’s what I see inside my head right now:
Creative equilibrium is that enchanted and enchanting state of inclusivity, when the self is both full and fully present, but not at the expense of the other, the everything else-ness, the weird, or the mysterious. It lets us be on both sides of the veil at once.
Bird + Bug Oracles
Here’s the collective invitation from today’s oracular group: channeling, conjuring, spellcasting…you can’t do any of these things without paying close, quiet attention, both to the world around you and your real, living body inside of it. For this particular set of oracular messages, I invite you to read them with a question in mind; you might even pause now and identify your question before continuing on. Almost certainly, your question will be about your creativity, or else about something that intersects with it in a significant way.
Once you’ve identified a question, skim the messages below, noting the range of creatures to be watching out for in the coming days. When you spot one, return to its message, knowing you have full artistic permission to engage with these oracles in whatever way proves fruitful or inspiring. Maybe you read them, determine something’s lacking, and write your own. If that’s what you do, what a wonderful consequence it will be.1
Northern Flicker, or any woodpecker
Your question, funnily enough, no longer needs to be answered. Your question needs to be released. I know you’ve already spent time asking it, inquiring and being deep in the middle of curiosity; that time wasn’t wasted. Sometimes we achieve clarity through perseverance and resolution, by asking the right questions again and again.
But sometimes—and this is one of them—we need the alchemy of sustained meditation followed immediately by surrender. Set your question down, not when/because you’ve answered it, but when/because you’re ready (be honest with yourself about this!) to be done interrogating.
Guiding words: surrender, release, the medicine of noticing
Ant
You are poised at the edge of a new day—literally: your attention is being called sharply to the next 24 hours. Think of this upcoming day, which begins the moment you lay eyes on your ant friend, as a warm bath you’re slipping into. You’re not just going through the motions; you’re soaking something in, slowly and with intention, steeping yourself in something new but familiar. The way every day is both new and familiar.
So what’s special about this day? Your question is growing warm and concentrated during the next 24 hours. There’s a specific need rising to the surface of its inquiry. You don’t necessarily have to do anything special or hard; you just have to pay close, sustained, heated attention as you keep moving. Let your attention be like water. Yes, it’s fluid and can be hard to gather. But it also seeps into the cracks and crevices of any surface, touching all the tiny details. Spill your attention into every corner of this new day.
Guiding words: attention/al, continuous, fluid/ity
Any blackbird, but especially a red-shouldered one
Your bird oracle is singing one melodic, mellifluous message to you, stretching out its call over many sustained beats. Or it’s singing a clear, sharp hook, on repeat. Whether you hear one long message or individual notes, this bird is singing because it wants you to hear something. Do you hear one big shape, or many small identical ones? Your bird wants you to pause here and really consider that question, please.
Now, when you find yourself asking questions of your own and getting caught up in the anxiety of seeking answers, this bird wants you to stop and listen for the music instead, listen for what’s already humming in the background of your inquiry. Your bird is asking you to assume that there’s something to hear, that there’s always already music playing somewhere.
In this way, your bird is suggesting that your question is less of a prompt and more of a compass. It doesn’t create, it points.
Guiding words: listen/ing (especially active, open-minded listening), chorus, tune + tuning up
Moth
“Needs” and “need-to-dos” are two separate categories, with the distinction being a largely emotional / energetic one. I need-to-do my taxes, sooner than later, but I also need to rest. I need-to-do another load of laundry, and I also need to clean the rocks and shells I collected from the ocean last week and decide what lives where now.
If you’re confused by the distinction, it’s okay; you’re probably trying to understand it with your brain instead of your body. Try again.
Regarding the question you’re asking, take note: is it rooted in needs, or need-to-dos? What do you notice about this supposed energetic distinction in the context of your query?
Now here’s the kicker: Pay close attention to the weather over the coming days. Notice it, describe it in your journal, be with how it makes you feel. Engage with the weather directly. It will help you frame an answer to your question. It will help you understand something about your real needs.
Guiding words: soma/tic, weather, neutral/ity
Seagull or vulture
Believe it or not, your question is pointing you in the direction of inspiration: something about where it comes from, or perhaps something about how you tend it. What a blessing!
Because inspiration organically comes and goes, part of your job, as a creative person, is to accept this rhythm, while the other part of your job is to do what you can to ensure its sustainability. In other words, there’s what you do to call on inspiration, and then there’s how you practice believing in its everlastingness.
The thing about all this ebbing and flowing is that we need to control the things we can control, and we need to explicitly not control the rest.
You can control: your devotion, your patience, your desires. When and how often you show up. And the rest? Let the whims of inspiration soften what you feel responsible for. An answer to your question will be found in the softening.
Guiding words: impulse, acceptance, season/ality, inspiration
Any beetle, but especially a boxelder
Look: People supposedly hate boxelders, because they’re often found in “hideous” piles, and because they seek warmth in our homes during winter, and because they apparently smell bad when you smash them, and because they poop.
So do birds! So do we all.
Where did all your distinctions come from, anyway? Your assumptions about what makes this this and what makes that that, these beliefs so obvious that you don’t notice their ferocity? When you’re distinguishing between one thing and another, what’s driving your divisions? Is there anything hideous about these habits?
There’s something deep in the middle of your thinking, something that’s been pestering you, and so you’ve been ignoring it & pushing it to the side, seeking relief. This makes sense. But: Give it some warmth now. Assume this thing is in some kind of dialogue with your question. Give it attention in the most obvious way, even if it feels redundant or unnecessary to do so; give it a slightly bigger space to roam around in inside your mind. Then, you’ll find your answer. It will feel like a delicacy, like an old thing you’re seeing for the first time.
Guiding words: delicacy, vulnerability, warmth, interconnectedness
I’ve always believed that the best thing in the world that anyone could say to me, as a writer, is not, I really liked your essay, or, your poems are beautiful, or, I love your writing, but: your words made me write, too. Creative writing that makes more creative writing experiences for more people…this is a huge part of what I value about reading and publishing. Not only for the good words, but for the experiences that bookend their making. It’s the living beneath and behind the writing; it’s the thing Mary Ruefle is talking about when she talks about Grandma Moses.