We’re a quarter of the way through 2022, but it feels like it’s merely been weeks since it began. Or does it? I will never stop being dumbfounded by time, never be able to distinguish if a day feels like a blink or a lifetime. What I do know is it’s melting here in Milwaukee, birds are singing of spring, green is slowly emerging. I can’t help but come back to seasonal shifts in yet another letter – don’t you feel it too? I deeply appreciate how the earth itself guides us. Re-emerge! Plant new roots! Grow! Blossom!
I’m trying to do all of those things. Trying to grasp every opportunity. Trying to seize every connection. Trying to create. Trying. I once changed my Instagram bio to “i’m trying” and my friends just snickered at me, but that’s all we can ever do! TRY. I think as long as we are always trying, we’re doing okay.
This spring I want to try new things: paint, draw, let my inner child be silly, cook new recipes, set more boundaries. The start of a new year brings resolutions and goals, but why not make them at the beginning of each season? Or even more frequently? As the cycles of spring growth begin, I challenge you to try one new thing. Could be fun!!
Though the transition outside and in the skies makes it easier to notice the transitions elsewhere, shifting is constant. More sun and green
or not, the heaviness is still in the air. As we try something new out, let’s also try to always carry compassion. One of the best parts of this Moody journey for me has been the out-of-the-blue messages or in-person introductions where folx compliment the work I’m doing and the joy it’s brought them. In a world full of koi, guarded hearts, let’s do this more often! Offer someone a kindness without any prelude – I bet it’ll mean more to them than you could imagine. Small acts of love plant trees that grow the longest branches, sheltering and nurturing entire communities.
Anyway, I’m getting a little ~sappy~ because as I write this it’s still Pisces season and (as I’ve told you many times) my Venus is in Pisces. If you know, you know!! But, I’m also a self-proclaimed reformed ice queen. My heart used to be set behind high walls, but I have worked long and hard to knock those down and ensure they don’t go back up. I’ve worked long and hard to be unashamed of softness and vulnerability, and, though life often can make me want to turn back, I refuse to. So this is a letter dedicated to openness and gratitude and sweetness as we venture out into the sun again. But aren’t they all?
Keep trying,
Melissa Mursch-Rodriguez / Founder of Moody / @mmurrod
Welcome Spring! Persephone rises, brown turns to green. The plants rise from the ground into bloom as do our spirits. We close our eyes and we feel the sun in our bones, radiating. This April and May brings us a very active sky. Mercury enters Gemini and Pluto goes retrograde in Capricorn on April 29th, a new moon in Taurus on the 30th prepares us for Beltane on May 1st. Shortly after we welcome Mercury retrograde on May 10th (and Jupiter enters Aries!). This is just some of the fun stuff happening above, but let’s take a moment to understand retrogrades for what they are.
When a planet goes retrograde, it appears to be going backwards from our perspective here on Earth. Astrologically, this is interpreted as the energies of that planet moving backwards. The reason why we have “The Big Bad Mercury Retrograde” is because we rely so heavily upon communication- especially digital communication– which Mercury rules over. When the global energy of communication starts to move backward, miscommunication runs amuck and the ways in which we are used to operating become skewed. We have to slow down, listen more, and take a second look before putting something out into the world. Mercury Retrograde can be a time of much needed reflection and patience, if only we let it! We can let this Beltane be
an opportunity to prepare ourselves for this merc rx in one of its rulers (Gemini). We solidify ourselves in the ground so our minds may roam freely, softly, yet surely into the heavens. In honor of the beauty of Beltane and the curiosity of Mercury, this issue of Moody has ~TAROTSCOPES~ for your rising (and/or sun) sign.
TAURUS RISING - THE HANGED ONE
Sometimes we need to look at our lives from the other side- upside down- to see what’s really going on. Be curious about what you can learn about yourself.
GEMINI RISING - THE CHARIOT
Your next transformation asks you what you have room for and what no longer serves you. Are there any ideas you have about how you embody yourself that can be left behind as you journey forth?
CANCER RISING - 7 OF WANDS
A miraculous act of dexterous thinking. What leaps of faith have you been holding out on? You can use this time to release that hesitancy and allow your instances of inspiration to expand.
LEO RISING - 4 OF CUPS
There may be a feeling you have been bottling up. A heavy weight, pulling you. This waxing period of the year encourages us to bloom up and out, so what’s holding you down?
VIRGO RISING - 10 OF PENTACLES
It’s time to R-E-L-A-X. Create a special moment to reflect on the spoils of all your hard work (not work more!).
LIBRA RISING - 6 OF PENTACLES
What have you been giving your energy to? If you’re feeling burned out, it’s time to ask for assistance. If you’re feeling like you have enough, is there anything you can give? You yourself know.
SCORPIO RISING - ACE OF WANDS
A spark of inspiration is trying to catch your eye. Can you give it space to grow? Feed it and see what happens.
SAGITTARIUS RISING - 8 OF PENTACLES
Let your innate desires wander. Look under every rock and in every
crevasse in your mind, be curious about what you find and where you feel this knowing in your body.
CAPRICORN RISING - 5 OF CUPS
Release. You may have spent too much time fixating on something that doesn’t feel like it’s working. If that’s the case, let it go. Focus on what is good.
AQUARIUS RISING - 4 OF WANDS
Magical things can happen when you trust the process. Know that what you’re working towards is holding together. Use that to push it further.
PISCES RISING - 7 OF PENTACLES
What we want usually doesn’t just present itself to us, but sometimes it does. How can you conjure that which is waiting to be?
ARIES RISING - 5 OF WANDS
Too many cooks in the kitchen. Too many irons in the fire. It can get confusing when you’re trying to succeed at everything all at once. Pick something that you find nourishing and devote your energy to that instead of spreading it thin and giving a little to a lot.
OPEN CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS OF ART + WRITING
Where We Get It From
When it ends, it won’t. Habits survive events that formed them. They saved their broken toasters for their parts, never threw away their Motor Trends, it was knowledge and they needed it. Farmers didn’t go to college during the Depression.
They got farm deferments and stayed home. Now we’re here, with their closets of pink toilet paper they bought on sale 40 or 50 years ago. They didn’t know this crisis would happen, but they knew there would be one.
They were April diamonds both. We not only come from them but are them, our cars inching into the garage until they hit the foam ball hanging from the rafter. We get out, we restock the garage fridge with our own gatorades.
Poem that repeats the line The Beaches Are Rodeos
After my egg cracked I wrote a poem that repeats the line The Beaches Are Rodeos. I don’t know what the line means. I only heard it in a dream I had the night I ate a mushroom sandwich and realized I was trans.
Upon waking I wrote that poem in my Notes app, like I’m writing this poem now, and in every stanza made sure to write the line The Beaches Are Rodeos at least once.
A few weeks later I was syncing my phone. The dorm building’s power went out. Everything on my phone from the prior two weeks, including the poem that repeated the line The Beaches Are Rodeos, lost.
I’m a self three years older, who has read Proust and (almost) knows how to do her eyeliner. Unless I have my own madeleine, the feelings specific to when I wrote the poem that repeats the line The Beaches Are Rodeos are, like the poem, away from me.
I’ve tried to rewrite it, tried to incorporate and repeat the line The Beaches Are Rodeos in other poems, but never successfully.
It is the poem of mine that I think the most about.
Plant Emotion
Your jade is stressed out! Look: its leaves’ve gone purple. All because you closed a window & turned on the AC, this plant emotes, visually.
But don’t worry, it’ll green again, eventually.
Like your pupil in a suddenly dark room, it’s just adjusting.
The Loss of Below
The loss of below, here the roots, what they held, released into nobody’s hands.
Exhumation and no reinterment.
Digging a bic into a fresh notebook; the same blue stain on every page.
ELLY HAZARD SHE/HER
MILWAUKEE, WI
@PEACH_BEAST
Elly Hazard is a Milwaukee based multidisciplinary artist. She specializes in colorful, edgy illustrations and product design. For the past few years she has been working under the name Peach Beast, her brand of unique jewelry and accessories. Her work is inspired by punk ideologies and colorful symbolism from the 90s and Y2K era.
BROOKE THOMPSON SHE/HER
MIAMI, FL
@BROOKE_ARRIVED
When making art I tend to really focus on storytelling and characters, always looking for different ways to show different sides of a personality through scenery and character design. A lot of my pieces are narrative driven some formatted as comics and more often acrylic paintings on canvas. I tend to pursue illustration in the near future making comics and really fleshing out some stories I’ve had planned for a while now.
I am a genderqueer multidisciplinary artist and designer from Milwaukee, WI. The majority of my creative work is derived from my own human experiences; acting as an invitation to discuss fat acceptance, mental illness, healing from trauma, gender identity, and finding the silver linings that keeps one going on the daily. I refuse to limit myself to one medium but find that quilting, use of fabric, and narrative zine story telling have been continuous creative threads that I’ve followed. My favorite things in the entire world are horror films, retro dystopian anime, tomatoes, and guinea pigs.
MAYA TIRUMURTI THEM/THEM DAVIS, CA @___M4YA
JULIA LÓPEZ DE LA CRUZ THEY/THEM MADISON, WI @ARTE_DELACRUZ
I am a queer, nonbinary, Latinx, child, sibling, first generation immigrant. I was born in Pachuca, Hidalgo but grew up in Milwaukee, WI. I use my life experiences and talents to create artwork in several different mediums. Some of the art mediums include but are not limited to gouache, acrylic, and water color paint as well as digital art work. With my pieces, I capture queer, BI-POC, and undocumented immigrant families in all their every day beauty as well as their daily struggles and the injustice they meet. I hope to highlight not only these people in their times of grief, but also them living and thriving none the less.
