Youth used to dance around me like maidens around a maypole. Now I sit and wait for the inevitable “crone carriage” to pick me up and shuttle me to the tertiary phase of womanhood. Haight is a very strange place to wait for this carriage. In a place where every item and plant and human seems to be anointed with magic, to experience not only shifts in the world but shifts in oneself can sometimes be terrifying. Then, adding social structures and unspoken rules and societal concerns or complaints, I become exhausted.
Yet I return.
In my regular life, I do regular things, wear regular clothes, have regular conversations with regular business people. In my time off, I am “up on the block”. This is because I love people-watching, I love being around friends, and I love spending time outside when I don’t have to work. Moreover, the Haight is arguably one of the only places where I am able to be myself. It’s becoming difficult, however, to experience this without feeling the pressure of times changing, my body changing, and the social climate changing. I used to feel hip, like I was part of something. Before the pandemic I felt like I had jumped onto the counterculture train just before it was halted and the world shut down. As we cloistered ourselves, I began to pore over ways to express joy, love, light, art, spiritualism, and community. Having that cloud of sheltering lifted, I have stepped back into a completely different world. I feel vintage now. I feel each of the 48 years I have survived the Earth, and I have realized my relevance in the world is fading away.
Yet I return.
Visiting “the block” is similar to walking through church. Because magic lives here it is easier to openly worship anything you like, as long as it doesn’t stop someone else from worshiping what they like. Even this is becoming more difficult. What drives me to wait where I sit physically and metaphorically on Haight for that carriage to come scoop me up and take me to an elderly place, is the belief that I have a pink thread in a very large Haight Street tapestry, and it’s an important connection. It’s bigger than any of us are. What I am discovering as an “aging new-romantic pagan woman” is that the less I focus on my personal path or experience, the calmer I become. The less I lament that something hasn’t been done for me, or has been done to me, the more clear things seem to be. Even with the changing of times, hemlines, or beard styles, there’s still some part of me that belongs in this place. As I continue to grow and learn, I realize that being a crone, or approaching that life, causes the veil between the real world and the metaphysical world to thin.
Aging, and getting closer to the next iteration of spiritual existence, can draw one to the other side. What becomes exciting is in the season of autumn, when the world shifts from light to dark and the veil is thinnest anyhow, those who already walk in that world become highly aware of each side. Normality becomes completely subjective, and it can almost seem like you can see or feel or hear the echoes of those who have gone before more clearly. I return because it is almost a duty to walk between both worlds. There is a responsibility to share magic and metaphysical awareness and manifestation in the world in which we live. There is a duty that can feel like a burden, but it becomes so easy to spread energy and joy and light if you just tell people what you see. The future is terrifying, but with a crow on my shoulder and a rat at my feet, I proceed into the veil and let it canopy my face. I welcome the world, whatever it may become.
I will continue to return.
“Local Aging New Romantic” (aka Chelsea) on instagram: @sidhe_shells
