Volcanic Love (The Only Lasting Truth is Change)
A mini-memoir featuring 2 types of eruptions
Hello, friends.
Welcome to my Substack, this humble little corner of the internet. I'm excited to be writing, to be sharing a little piece of my heart with you.
Today is the Lunar New Year, transitioning from the year of the Yang Water Tiger to the year of the Yin Water Rabbit. Yesterday was a new moon in Aquarius, transitioning us out of the of the season of the Sea Goat to the season of the weird and innovative water bearer. It’s also all-planets-direct-day, with Mars, Mercury, and Uranus finally all out of retrograde, moving forward along with the rest of the planets in our solar system. Yippee!
I’m sitting at the eruption site of Kilauea volcano, on the big island of Hawaii, watching new earth form from below the surface of the globe. Appropriately, I’ve been deep in meditation lately on the nature of change and transformation. So it seems like a timely moment to say hi to the world, to start something fresh. So… Hello World. Happy New New! Happy new newsletter! I’m so happy you’re here. Several of you friends have requested that I write a book, so here’s the first step… a sweet little Substack. Subscribe here to get my writings in your inbox.
Astrosomatics?
If you made it here, you might be wondering: Why Astrosomatics? What even is that?
This first newsletter/post aims to answer that question. It’s a bit personal, a bit aspirational, a bit unedited, a bit longwinded, a bit tangential... kinda like how most new beginnings tend to be. It’s the Fool in the Tarot deck, stumbling over a ledge toward the unknown, with all my earthly belongings slung in a sack over my shoulder. Aand.. here we go!
Volcanoes, Transformation and Octavia Butler
Yesterday was my first time having the pleasure to witness an active volcano, and let me tell you- it’s beyond powerful. It’s transformational. Witnessing new earth being created through the active lava erupting - brand new creation- hot, seductive, red creation - bubbling and squirting up through a fissure in the crust of the earth - it’s so profound. To know that even the seemingly stable foundation of the earth can shift and change so much hit me in my gut, hard, and it seduced me- I couldn’t look away.
It’s reminding me of the line that’s stuck with me consistently over the past several years, from Octavia Butler’s brilliant and prophetic novel The Parable of the Sower:
“All that you touch you Change. All that you Change, Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.”
-Octavia Butler
In January 2020, almost exactly 3 years ago, I was in the midst of massive, eruptive life change. A new mama of a 1 year old baby. Separating from my husband and partner of 10 years. Stepping out of working for the company I co-founded and had dedicated a decade of 70+ hour weeks to building. Deciding to move across the country back home to Santa Fe, where I hadn’t lived for 18 years, over half my life ago. Then, within less than a month from all that, Covid-19, social distancing, and the societal shift that would change us all was suddenly in full effect. The first day of lockdown marked the day that I set out with all my earthly belongings from Oakland and caravanned across the shut-down country to start a new chapter in the desert.
Marrying the Earth
Right before the big move, in early February 2020, when the first cases of Covid were just hitting the US (unbeknownst to most of us), my friends Autumn, Daniela and I visited New Mexico and went on a road trip to Taos. We were each on the heels of our own significant breakups, each of us processing definitive endings and seeds of new beginnings in our own way. Walking around the snowy pueblo town, we passed a tattoo shop, and spontaneously decided to get matching quickie tattoos. The alchemical symbol for earth, emblazoned on our forearms, was based on Autumn's longtime idea of getting married to the earth, to the solid ground that holds us in times of grief, pain, suffering, and change.
I was born and raised in the relatively seeming unchanging desert landscapes of Northern New Mexico, and the dry, colorful earth has always felt safe, persistent, calming, solid. As a Virgo sun, an Earth sign, I’ve always felt fairly grounded, despite the relatively large amount of transformation that has occurred in my life.
Now, being here gazing at molten rock as Kilauea erupts, is expanding for me that definition of what Earth is. This lava lake visualizes, in real human time, how our earth, like our lives, like our bodies, is always changing. It could feel scary. But right now, I’m loving it.
The Fire of Love, and the Beauty of More-Than-Human Relationality
On the flight over to Hawai’i, I watched the wonderful documentary The Fire Of Love. It’s the tale of an inspiring French volcanologist couple, Katia and Maurice Krafft, who traveled the world seeking, observing, filming, and building relationships with erupting volcanoes. Narrated by the lovely voice of Miranda July and compiled of sweet personal footage that the couple filmed themselves, the story follows the Kraffts on their lifelong journey, guided by a mutual volcano obsession from the 1960s to 1990s- until they were killed by the eruption of the last volcano they would ever love, Japan’s Mount Unzen, in 1991.
Over the years, they built these beautiful relationships with dozens of volcanoes- these powerful ‘more than human kin’, as author David Abram would call them. Volcanoes from Stromboli to Mount Saint Helens to Mauna Kea. During this time, many scientists began to classify the volcanoes into dozens of categories. To this effort, Maurice replied something like “all this categorization is bullshit, a way for egotistical scientists to reference their own name. Each volcano is unique- they each have their own personality.”
“Understanding”, narrates Miranda July, “is another definition for love”.
The relationship with the more than human world that this Krafts had, shown by their extensive footage, was beautiful to witness. When they started exploring, it was around the time of the Vietnam War in the late 60s. They attended protests and were good activists, but at one point turned away from the atrocities of the human world to pursue their love of volcanoes. At various points along their journey, they both asked the question- Are we doing enough with our one precious life?
As it turned out, their work and their lives, which deepened both our collective knowledge and our reverence for volcanoes, also ended up doing a lot to save human lives. The films that they created to show the power and potential destruction of some volcanoes led to governments adopting alert systems that have saved thousands, even millions of lives to date. By going deep into their passion, their real love for these mountains teeming with life, they made a tremendous impact on humanity as well.
Reds, Greys, and Resilience, and me: Slowing Down, Into the Cracks
Each volcano is an individual, that they Kraffts knew for certain. But there was one simple volcanic classification the Kraffts would allow for - a singular binary: Reds vs. Greys.
A Red Volcano, or effusive eruption, creates new earth by a crack, when 2 of the earth’s tectonic plates pull apart and create space for the magma beneath to emerge. The lava flows and bubbles and spurts out, creating a lake, then overflows and finds the path of least resistance, flowing with the force of gravity to lower elevation, to the sea. Kilauea is a Red.
By contrast, a Grey volcano, or explosive eruption, goes off like an atomic bomb when 2 of the plates grind together, causing friction, creating massive eruptions filled with ash that blow whole mountainsides away, sometimes destroying entire towns and cities. There are small warning signs, tiny perceptible tremors before these major eruptions, but it is still unpredictable and impossible to know when the trigger will be, or how long its fuse is. Mount St. Helens is a Grey.
Separating apart to reveal red hot magma, or rubbing tightly together to create an explosion. Reds and Greys. I feel like I can separate the transformative moments in my life into Reds and Greys, too.
The Reds have been changes that have happened via openings, opportunities, decisions- bubbling up, filling in the empty space, flowing outward from there. Mastering new skills, moving away to college, deciding to apply for a job, mutually agreed upon breakups- these all feel like Red transformations. Changes based on cracks, emotions and life stages bubbling below the surface that cause the current state of reality to pull apart and let the new in.
The Grey transformations, by contrast, have been the things that could not be anticipated. The explosions. The rug-pulled-out-from-under-me moments. The Valentine’s Day suicide of a dear childhood friend. Fleeing from New Orleans at midnight as the eye of hurricane Katrina approached, watching the levees break on TV from a Waffle House in Mississippi. Losing my home- and nearly my life, hanging by my arms out of a third story window- escaping from a 4-alarm house fire in San Francisco. The world’s government’s locking down due to a rapid-spreading virus. The events that come out of nowhere, take over, and make your heart sink into your gut.
Sometime after my near-death experience in the house fire, a psychologist friend interviewed me on a project she was doing about resilience. The interview brought up a lot, it triggered me deeply, because in thinking about resilience, I was forced to look closely at my patterns. For me, in the wake of a Grey, my pattern was to leave the scene. After my childhood friend took her life, I almost dropped out of college and moved home, but instead pushed ahead and within a couple of months moved to Brazil for a year. When the floods and destruction happened in the wake of Katrina, I gutted houses and helped with recovery efforts for a month or so, and then moved with my then partner to China for over a year. Soon after the big fire, I quit my job and moved into a van, leaving the Bay Area and traveling around the American West. We started our tech startup writing code and copy on picnic tables and coffee shops, and for a decade never looked back.
At the time, these responses to the eruptions never felt like running away. I was young, or I was untethered, or I was in love, or there was great opportunity for beautiful new life experience. I don’t regret this way of coping with Greys, with the trauma that enveloped my body after each explosion. I was adaptable, I seized the day. I learned new languages, met amazing people, experienced other cultures and motivations outside my comfort zone. I was resilient, in a way, but, like with the ash of Grey volcanoes, a lot of the learnings of the past got buried in the rubble of new experiences and busyness, preserved for an unknown future time.
In retrospect, now I feel like I have always been waiting for the time when things would slow down, so I could process what all had happened. I moved directly from explosive eruptions straight to new mountaintops, where there was so much to learn, so much to think about, to figure out in order to simply survive, that I never had time to feel the effects of massive change in my body, let alone to integrate it.
I think about my last breakup, my divorce, stepping away from the company I started, my move back home to New Mexico on the heels of Covid, and it feels like a Grey, too, sometimes. The compounding pressure of responsibilities and expectations can make any life changes more explosive. But looking at it now, I think it could have been a Red, an opening, an opportunity. There was already needed change bubbling below the surface for a while, a natural separation of tectonic plates to allow for more space, freedom, and new life. Containers of shared responsibilities kept pushing those plates together, so the fissure and the break was more sudden, more explosive, than perhaps it had to be.
The difference between fleeing from the aftermath of a Grey and working through the slow flow of a Red, is that the Red stays hot as it moves. It keeps flowing. Pele, the volcano goddess of Hawaii, is self-aware, aware of her changes and her impact. Once we accept change, and in doing so accept that life is change, that God is Change, the lava can ooze out, following gravity, flowing through the cracks with the path of least resistance, toward the constant breaths of the ocean floor. Toward wholeness.
Turning 40, Deep Curiosity, and Deeper Gratitude
Since I started writing this mini-memoir, I have left the fiery lake of Kilauea. I’m now sitting on an old lava rock on the beach in Kona, typing on the notes app of my iPhone. Feeling the waves recede out with the tide and slowly lap back onto the sand, onto my toes. I breathe in and out along with the inhale and exhale of the ocean, this alive blue planet. I’m still thinking about change, but with a new perspective. The melting earth, the lava, has filled me with reverence, with profound gratitude, for the vast scale of transformation.
I turn 40 this year. I am so grateful that by this time in my life, I have begun collecting the tools that can help me integrate my experiences- my past and future, my insides and outsides. The 2020-2022 pandemic years gave me the time and space- the homecoming to myself- that I had, deep down, been craving for a long time. To the silver linings of that devastating time, I am grateful. Having a child and being a mother, too, has made it impossible to distract myself from myself- from my desires, my shadows, and also my gifts. To my daughter, my greatest teacher, I am so grateful.
And strangely, having her with a person with whom I’ve gone through a great rupture, with someone challenges me, makes me incredibly grateful too. Having her makes it impossible to leave that part of my past, to push it down, run away, to selectively forget. Having a shared child is a perfect opportunity for true integration of the ways in which we are both responsible, and both ever-evolving. The ways in which different personalities and motivations can be reconciled with a common heart space, a common love. I too am eternally grateful for everyone who loves her, cares for her, and the growing village who is helping to raise her (especially my partner Jackson, who has stepped into step-parenthood with such grace and love).
Changing Ourselves to Change the World
In this time of global, paradigmatic transformation, the thing that has become most clear to me is this: we must understand and change our own selves as part of the process of changing the world around us.
The more belonging we feel within ourselves, the more we can feel belonging with the larger world. And the more we deeply feel like we truly belong to our own sovereign selves- our bodies, our unique and special place on this earth- the more we will invest in nurturing ourselves and this planet. And the more we will come together in community to nurture all that needs nurturing.
In the wake of my last Grey life eruption in the perfect hellstorm of the year 2020, I was tempted to dive right into something structured and filled with new information to digest and learn and find a sense of control within. Grad school, another tech design job, another cross country move. But instead, gratefully, thanks to everything I just mentioned, I have been called to sit with myself. I have been able to explore and digest my feelings, my body, my place on this earth, in a new way. I have been healing, yes, I suppose... I think that healing is simply the deepest form of learning. Receiving embodied lessons that emerge from the cracks, exactly when they’re supposed to.
Learning About Ourselves to Learn About the World
In that spirit of emergence, over the past 3 years I have welcomed into my life an incredible group of teachers and mentors. Brilliant minds and souls who are seeing the world with fresh yet ancient perspectives. Folks that are grounded in the wisdom of our collective consciousness, human wisdom and wisdom of our more-than-human kin. Folks that believe that we vote with our imaginations, that we have the power to restore the damage that exists in our world through re-story-ation: crafting new narratives, with entirely new vocabularies, for the better world we wish to see emerge.
I am insanely grateful to this group. Astrologers, world-builders, mythopoetic storytellers, herbalists, breathwork guides, voice coaches, martial artists, post-activists, dancers, somatic therapists, energy workers, entrepreneurs, artists. When I gather the names of my teachers over the past 3 years, I realize I have, in fact, gone to graduate school, after all! An emergent school whose curriculum came to me through following my intuition and listening to what was being offered. I am currently in extensive trainings for breathwork facilitation, vocal coaching, and astrology, adding more depth to my collection of learnings from the past few years. (If you’d like to see some of my curriculum/coursework, click here!) The resonance between all of these teachings is lighting me up, and I am so excited to share what I’m learning with you here.
After years of insight and in-put, this newsletter is a home for out-put that needs a place to live. We will see what it is, exactly, that emerges! I foresee elements of memoir, elements of re-story-ation and visioning of new futures, elements of astrological weather reporting and insights on cycles of life and time, and elements of somatic practice: song, breath, art, movement, art, creation. Videos and audio of somatic practices to align with the cosmic weather, perhaps. 😊
Belonging to Ourselves to Belong to the World (Why Astrosomatics)
At its essence, this newsletter is a space for musings and explorations on belonging.
Belonging within ourselves, through the timeless somatic wisdom of our bodies.
Belonging within our unique, special place on this earth, through the timeless wisdom of the cycles of stars and celestial bodies that surround us.
Belonging within our community, grounding and expanding to become the village that raises a new world with a shared heart at its center.
Thank you to all who have made it this far, who have digitally held me in this vulnerable share. I am grateful to meet you here, and look forward to practicing and playing with you more this year. Farewell to the year of the Tiger, farewell to a year of that yang Grey explosivity.
It’s time to burrow down into the wet depths with the bunnies. Time to let the lava flow, expanding and deepening into the cracks. Creating new earth, making space for new life, and new stories, to emerge.
With red hot molten love,
Alison