🌜 Scrolls and Streams: May 22, 2022
What we've been reading, watching and listening to in the world of tarot, work and economic justice at Five and Nine HQ.
Scrolls and Streams 📜 🌊 is Five and Nine’s monthly selection of insights and commentary that have caught our eyes and ears. All links are shared in the spirit of “this was interesting” and not necessarily “we fully endorse this.”
Published every 🌜 waning gibbous moon, also known as the disseminating moon.
Top Five
Five and Nine’s Dorothy R. Santos speaks with NPR’s Code Switch on the Filipino value of utang na loob, described as “the Filipino concept of an eternal debt to others, be it family or friends, who do a favor for you”:
“As someone who has identified - and I still do identify as a queer, gender-non-conforming Filipino person - utang na loob does not just factor in money. It's all about the other things that I feel that I owed my mom or I owed my parents - to be partnered, to have children, to have a good job with benefits.
In a set of interviews he did in 1994 with middle-aged Americans about their friendships, Rawlins wrote that “an almost tangible irony permeated these [adults’] discussions of close or ‘real’ friendship.” They defined friendship as “being there” for one another, but reported that they rarely had time to spend with their most valued friends, whether because of circumstances, or the age-old problem of good intentions and bad follow-through: “Friends who lived within striking distance of each other found that … scheduling opportunities to spend or share some time together was essential,” Rawlins writes. “Several mentioned, however, that these occasions often were talked about more than they were accomplished.”
Columbia Business School professor Adam Galinsky calls this iteration of the Great Resignation the “great midlife crisis.”
“At the midpoint of life, we become aware of our own mortality, and it allows us to reflect on what really matters to us,” said Galinsky. The pandemic has amplified that effect. “A global pandemic obviously makes people reflect on their own mortality in terms of being afraid of dying themselves or having a loved one or family and colleagues pass away.”
Importantly, the people who quit to hold out for the jobs they want or forgo work entirely are usually the ones with the financial means to do so.
Author Steph Jagger speaks with She Explores podcast about courage and surrender
“In a world that seems pretty hell bent on telling us that nothing’s going to be okay, like we’re not okay, nothing’s going to be okay. The pandemic, we’re not okay. The wars, we’re not okay. The climate, we’re not — nothing’s okay.
I don’t want to be lied to. I want to be told the truth. But I also — and I think this is where our own kind of vulnerability comes into play — I also want to be held and comforted a bit. And I want to be told that even if those things are true, even if the climate is in crisis and we will have to take some action, I also want to be told, it’s going to be okay.
Even if this dies or if I die or if this collapses or if this happens inside of a family or if, you know, we’re all going to be okay. And I think, even if we’re not, does that make sense? And I think the invitation is probably more so along the lines of, am I open to the reflection mirroring nurturing holding “feminine energy” that is available to me within chaos?
Concrete, asphalt,
cool steel pipes, it is my odd kin I taste
in the tea, brushing my lips
weaving the stories
of cities
into my body.
More Scrolls and Streams 📜 🌊
Build a Career Hype Doc early in your career, with a list of outcomes and accomplishments and what you’ve learned, says public speaking coach and meditation teacher Upsana Gautaum
Content capital is “the ability to create content about oneself online—is important because it opens doors to greater success, access, celebrity, and wealth.”
The Buddhist and Daoist philosophy underpinning Everything Everywhere All at Once (contains spoilers): “In Buddhist thought, it’s our compassion that grounds us – makes us human – and emptiness isn’t the mark of nihilism and despair but an opportunity to leave behind the bad and cherish the good.”
Everyone knows dogs are affectionate, but do they also feel love?
Benebell Wen reviews Chaweon Koo’s new book, Spellbound: A New Witch’s Guide to Crafting the Future: “History and thousand year old practices are blended with high tech and digital media.”
How Covid breaks the Western narrative traditions: “At this point we don’t need another rehash of our well-worn mythologies. Maybe instead, this moment will force us into a new paradigm for making sense of the world.”
Ada Limón’s new book of poetry: "I will not stop this reporting of attachments. / There is evidence everywhere."
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Five and Nine is a podcast newsletter at the intersection of magic, work and economic justice. We publish “moonthly” — a newsletter on new moons and half moon 🌛 🌚 🌜 and podcasts on full moons 🌝 — , and we provide an ongoing critical discussion through readings, reflections and debate. In this new world, we’re all rethinking the meaning of work and justice in our lives. Our lives and livelihoods are more essential than ever in identifying ways forward for society that can be grounded in care, compassion and sustainability.
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Directors of Magic. Dorothy R. Santos and Xiaowei R. Wang
Creative Director. Xiaowei R. Wang
Producer. Ana Mina (aka An Xiao)
Subscribe now to get our podcast, which comes out with the Full Moon 🌝 (June 14). As a podcast newsletter, Five and Nine brings the conversation to text and sound. All podcasts are fully transcribed to encourage accessibility.