May day, mayday, monday
“For here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.”
When the first day of the month falls on the first day of the week, I feel a kind of cosmic doubling-down on starting. And when said Monday is also the first day of my birthday month of May and the first day of Mercedonius, well, you kinda gotta change your life.
Or rather, in the spirit of leaving room magic, you kinda gotta open your life to being changed.
The passive voice of such a sentence makes me feel like I am waiting for the divine Door Dash driver to deliver the life I really ordered. The one without the soggy bread but with the spicy peppers. But leaving room for magic is not about sitting around with your feet up waiting for the doorbell to ring. Leaving room for magic requires you to leave containers, vessels, amphora (did someone say metaphors?) in your time and space and thoughts that allow magic in and keep you out of the way.
Just as I greet the first of March with rabbit, rabbit, rabbit for luck, I greet the first of Mercedonius with may day, may day, may day for help. It is an incantation of sorts—calling the first of May by its name three times—and it’s a signal that I have done everything I know how to do, and now I am asking for magic.
To mix my contemporary metaphors, “I’m here God, it’s me, Paula. I’m the problem, it’s me.”
