I live in a low-income housing neighborhood that is predominantly populated by people of color. No one has to explain to me the potential for a better life that is at stake in the discussions, grassroots movements, and socio-political actions that are, right now, centered on higher minimum wages, universal healthcare, free education, taxing the rich, universal basic income, and other de- and re-constructions of our overall socio-political infrastructure. Nor am I a stranger to the every day occurrences of racism, homophobia, gentrification, sexism, xenophobia, and other violences against humanity. Because of where and how I live, they are in my face all day every day. Magic, too, infuses my life at every moment.

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There’s a homeless man, Tony, who lives in the alley behind my projects. There’s a stray cat that lives under the corner of my building. Every night, when Tony comes around my building, the cat will come running down the driveway towards him. He’s the only one that she’ll approach. He pets her and talks to her. Then he walks to the area where she lives under the building, and he puts a heaping plate of cat food under there so she can eat in peace. Almost every night I cook a little more than I need for dinner. I put the remainder on a paper plate, wrap it in tin foil, and bring it downstairs for Tony. It isn’t much. I don’t live luxuriously. But it’s some meat, fish, burger, some rice or pasta, and if I’m doing alright, some vegetables. There’s no way I’d be able to pull this off for three meals a day. But, I have enough that I can share my dinners. I’ve given Tony pamphlets and material for the three homeless shelters in the area. They are easy to get to by bus. But he doesn’t go. Says he doesn’t want to. Says he doesn’t like being in ‘those places’ because, often, it means being around people that are using or violent, and he doesn’t like being around ‘those people.’ So, for now anyway, Tony feeds the cat, and I feed Tony. When I am preparing his plate, I infuse it with love and protection, so that when he eats the food, it–quite literally–becomes part of his body, and he feels cared for and has a hedge of protection about him as he lives on the street. At the moment that it all I can do.

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I do not have a car. I ride the bus. I hop on the bus to go grocery shopping, and say hello to the driver (I know them all by this point).

“Hey! How you DOIN’?!” I ask.

“You want me to lie, or you want the truth?” he says.

“You know I always want the truth!”

He tells me that he’s driving around like a zombie, in a state of shock. His friend was killed earlier in the day. Gun shot wound. He says he just found out and has three more hours to his shift before he can go home and deal with it.

“Did you tell your boss?” I ask. “Surely, your boss will let you leave work for a death.”

He tells me that he asked his boss to leave, but there is no one to cover for his buses, and his boss won’t let him go home for a death that isn’t family. But it is family. May not be blood; but, it sure as hell is family.

We ride to the grocery store in silence, him driving, and me standing at the front of the bus.

Once at the grocery store, I hug him and tell him that I’ll keep him in my prayers. He says “You pray for me real good, cuz I don’t know how I’m going to get through this one.”

I hop off the bus and enter the grocery store. I grab a cart and start making my way around the store picking up what I need. The whole time I’m shopping, I’m in-between; I’ve got a simple list i’m going down and my brain is working on that; at the same time, I’m really raising energy and sending it to my friend, that he make it through his shift, that he makes it home safely, that he be soothed in his time of mourning, that he has a strong circle of friends to mourn with him and offer support during his time of grief, that the family of the man killed be comforted in their profound grief. I send it off, quietly, incognito, in one of the grocery store isles, so that I just look like I’m comparing prices on a shelf. No one the wiser.

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While grocery shopping, I don’t have enough money to cover what I need, let alone what I want. I make some executive decisions. Ramen is always a decent go-to. One pack is $6.00, and if rationed correctly can make lunch for a solid week. No money for coffee creamer; I will use butter. Fancy people call it keto. I call it “I wish I had gottdamn coffee creamer.” No matter. I have always been able to live within my means, no matter what those means are. This is the amount of money I have, and that’s the limit. No overspending. And, I am not starving. I eat. Albeit sometimes sporadic and rationed. Despite living tight, I always have enough to share dinner with Tony. I won’t complain. In the grocery store, I watch as half of what I needed to get glides down the conveyor belt and is scanned by a very handsome gentleman cashier. I can feel the tears well up in my eyes as I have a moment where I feel sorry for myself, not having more money, not being able to buy more food. Anger. Frustration. Jealousy. Resentment.

I graduated from school two years ago. Currently, I am working part-time. It’s a tough field to get into; the jobs are few and far between. To make matters worse, there’s a new ‘system’ that seems to be popular where organizations are only offering part-time, no benefits. And, I don’t mean 32 hours a week part-time; I mean 10-15 hours a week part-time; un-livable part-time. To play the game is to take one of these positions, live in absolute poverty, and wait for a full time position to open up and go for it. For the time being, I’m playing the game. It is my choice. I could literally leave my field today, go grab a full time job with benefits at a tech company or advertising firm, and just start living well. But, I am choosing to stay in my field and hope that something will open up. I feel passionate about my career and I want to wake up every day and do it. So I stay. For now. And barely scrape by.

I make my peace, and face all these shadows, tanding right there at the cash register. Smiling at the handsome cashier, and even flirting a little, I release the hurt and frustration of my financial situation, and breath power into myself, soothing myself, integrating that hurt and transforming it into inspiration. I realize that I am actually very much in control of what’s happening. I am actively making decisions. I am not being dragged along against my will. I am in complete control of my life. I have the sovereignty to change it at any time.

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The phone rings. It’s a good friend. She isn’t doing very well. She lives with depression and struggles most days to just make it through. She always does, I remind her. We spend almost three hours talking. I’m not a phone person. But, this is my friend. I am fiercely loyal to my friends, and I stand by them in good times and low times. This is a low time for her, and I have enough great things going on my life that I can be a healthy support system for her. I realized how blessed I truly am: that, despite what I believe are hardships, I have enough extra that I can look after and give back to others. That’s extremely important to me.

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I sit down to write out my bills. I clearly do not have enough to just pay everything outright, so it’s time for a little “steal from Paul to pay Peter.” The phone bill can roll over one month and i’ll use the phone money on the electric. The rent isn’t due for one more week, so I’ll use a smidge of the rent for the internet. If I smoke just a bit less each day I can squeeze through to the get the full rent. And boom. All is covered. Nothing gets shut off. All of my needs are met. And I even have some go-out-for-coffee money to spare. I’m running pentacles the whole time I’m doing my bills. Breathing into it. Breathing into it. Breathing into it. I’m juiced. My creativity is throbbing. First I use it for strategy. Then, once all my bills are paid, I use it to draw.

I spend over an hour working on a meditative piece that I’ve been wanting to finish for awhile. The colors are vibrant and my fetch can’t get enough. The markers are scented magic markers. I find myself humming and smiling, completely blissed out as, where once a blank sheet of paper existed, a gorgeous scene-scape emerges, birthed, by me. I made that. I manifest.

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I go to work. I love my job. It is shitty what capitalism does to the work-force, with companies only hiring part-time, un-benefitted, employees. But, the actual work itself is amazing. I joke, saying that I have a GLAM lifestyle, because I work in Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums. Anthropologist is not a bad gig. I get to work with my hands. I get to be creative and problem-solve. I engage with the community (I left university teaching because it felt too ivory tower; I had no contact with non-academics). And, every day, when I leave work, I leave feeling like I’ve made a difference for the better, both for my local community and the world, large-scale.

A co-worker has started an entrepreneurial gig for herself to make extra money. I enjoy watching her grow her business. She asks my input and opinions and I give her honest feedback. She asks me to edit some of her marketing and posts. She’s doing some kind of raw-food / lifestyle / health business, and slowly picking up a solid client base. Providing encouragement for her feels important. As a new entrepreneur, she has a lot of doubts and is working through her own stuff around success, money, work, self-value, etc. I feel like my role is to be encouraging, and, when everyone else is being wishy-washy or negative towards her ideas, I say “Go for it!” (it’s amazing the pardox that, sometimes, when we love, worry, and care, about someone, we dump all our fears and negativity on their dreams for whatever reasons we are projected at the moment). She feels what I’m feeding her, and I can tell she appreciates it. It’s always nice to have a cheerleader! Who doesn’t love that?!

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I like to walk around my neighborhood in the evening. People say that I’m crazy to walk around my neighborhood at night, but I don’t care. This is my home, my community, and, gottdamnit, I’ll stroll through it whenever I fucking feel like it. What is that saying? Something about a witch not fearing the dark wood because she knows the most dangerous thing in there is her…? I’ve always loved that.

As I walk, I observe the neighborhood. I see the people bustling about their evening, too. I see the apartment buildings all lit up, people inside, doing whatever it is that they’re doing. Living their lives as best they can. I notice all the little bits of green, the trees here and there, the grasses, weeds, and wild flowers, spring up between cracks in the sidewalk, and in what little lawns we have here (maybe 4 feet by 4 feet). I notice the animals that are around, the birds, the squirrels, the frogs, dogs and cats. All of these separate entities woven together to create a tapestry, one picture, of sound and life and movement and energy. The Great Mother, the Star Goddess, unfolding and unfolding like a gorgeous flower in bloom, Hir spirit woven throughout, that spark of life within everything, the pulsating, vibrant, reality that is all matter. And I am a part of it. How glorious is that?! I am a part of this universe and this universe is a part of me. “From you all things emerge, and unto you all things return.”

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I am blessed to have a student. I seriously wanted to avoid teaching altogether. And yet, a student happened for me.

One of the first things I did with my student:

I went over to his house. I had him show me his altar spaces. He had one large one, in the living room. A big cabinet full and loaded with all sorts of beautiful things, incense burners, and a blade, and little figurines, and statues, and feathers, and talismans. I asked him if he would tell me the story and significance of each beautiful thing upon his altar, what they mean for him, and why he has them. I listened very carefully, for each thing he described was him sharing a bit of himself and his magic with me. I gave him my full attention.

When he was done, I asked if he had a large box around the house. He found a nice, big, cardboard box. I said “Excellent. Now that you have shown me your altar and all the beautiful things on it, I’d like you to pack the whole thing up, please.”

He stood there starting at me like I had just asked him to jump off the roof.

He hemmed and hawed and asked if I really meant to pack the whole thing up? And I confirmed that, yes, indeed, I mean pack the whole gottdamn thing up. All of it. And I left.

That was the assignment.

Pack it up!

The reason being because, the way I teach, we do our witchcraft walkin’! We don’t sit in front of the altar, anchored there, in some quiet meditative state, our bum parked perfectly comfy on a large throw pillow.

Nah, man! We do our witchcraft walkin’!

Francesca wrote that if magic couldn’t be done while washing the dishes, then what good was it?

I have a different take:

If you can’t do magic while washing the dishes, then you ain’t got ‘it.’

Magic and witchcraft are not the moments we steal out from the world. Magic is the world. It’s the dance of bodies moving in rhythm on the sidewalks; it’s the movement of cars, the noises and yells and conversations and horns honking; it’s the emotions and feelings and affects that arise as we move about our days; it’s the food we cook and share; it’s the animals that live under our apartment buildings; it’s the exchanges, verbal, visual, visceral, of love, sadness, fear, joy, between ourselves and those who share our world. Magic is everywhere, in everything, and isn’t something that we can separate out for quiet, meditative times of the day.

Witchcraft is embodied, moment-to-moment, on the fly.