Honey No. 36
Feat. a list of current faves and a best friend collab on a brand new tarot deck
Hi everyone! Hope you’re having a wonderful week. I don’t want to talk about the fact that our yard is increasingly, tremendously, infested with argentine ants who parade around in unreasonably wide streams, but it’s all I can think about so let’s just move on. After days of trying gentler forms of removal- cinnamon, diatomaceous earth, vinegar, boiling water- I have finally succumbed and gotten some stronger bait. Please pray for me. Ok, ok, moving on.
Bits and Bobs
LA pals, have you been to the consignment store Left Bank before? I had passed it a million times before Alison insisted I go in! It’s a small consignment store- mostly women’s clothes, with a few select vintage housewares and tchotchkes at the front- but it’s very well-curated and always fun to look around! A very nice way to find out how all of those designer clothes you’ve been seeing online would fit you in real life, which is an evergreen passion for moi.
Jesse and I recently threw away our old dish mat because it was, ahem, covered in mold. I had the stunning realization when I went to buy a new one that I could actually get….two? And swap them out regularly to clean? So that neither one? Succumbed to the mold gods? Such a simple realization but one of those aha adult moments where you’re like well well well, look who has their own freaking back. C’EST MOI!!
I saw some of artist Ashley Zipp’s paintings at a beautiful store in Maine, and immediately followed her online. I love the feeling of her paintings! A lovely follow.
A few months ago I got a facial at Heyday- I had signed up for a buy-one-get-one-free facial sale last fall and was cashing in on my freebie! The facial was lovely, simple and to the point, and the facialist suggested that my oilier, prone-to-congestion skin might benefit from a physical exfoliant aka a scrub. I was confused: hadn’t somebody, somewhere once told me that chemical exfoliants like this beloved one from Paula’s Choice the way to go? And my self-prescribed-via-avid-Into-The-Gloss-research dabble with Biologique Recherche had completely transformed my skin in 2018! But she assured me that an occasional, gentle physical scrub was just the thing my punim needed. She recommended a Josh Rosebrook mask/scrub that was conveniently on sale at the spa at the time, and though I was skeptical it really has made such a difference. I have been saving it for times when my skin is looking particularly congested aka bumpy and textured, but if I worked my way up to more regular use? Unrecognizably chic!
Loved this home tour of an LA ceramicist. She’s right around the corner in Mt. Washington! This could be me sooooo fast if I knew how to make a single thing with my hands I swear to god.
Ok, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but during a recent routine family session of updating each other on the latest health & wellness news (welcome to my sensitive family!), I learned that Banza’s chickpea pasta contains overwhelmingly high levels of the pesticide glyphosate. HORRIBLE NEWS! As a gluten-free gal, I’ve been pivoting to cassava pasta and am really enjoying myself, so I swear to freaking god if Big Cassava corruption is revealed…
I dropped off two dingy white dresses that had been in my trunk for TRULY TWO YEARS at Suay’s community dye bath the other day! With an extra 25% off deal this weekend for a heatwave special 😎. One peony pink dress and one black one coming right up, good as new. P.S. They accept shipped-in items!
Miden Wood and Ana Olson are best friends who are creating a tarot deck together- Miden taking on fabulous illustrations, Ana tackling gorgeous descriptions. They are launching a Kickstarter where you can learn more about their backstory, buy a deck, or receive another beautiful reward in exchange for your support. They are allowing us a special sneak preview on The Honeypot-how lucky are we!
Two Bugs Tarot
The shortest and sweetest intro we can muster, while interrupting each other in google docs YET AGAIN: (hahaha)
Ana: Several birthdays ago, Miden gave me a beautiful, handmade *drawn tarot deck full of whimsical illustrations that surprised and delighted me.
Miden: Then, Ana! Being as thoughtful and funny and wise as she is, HAR HAR wrote interpretations of each card over the course of several long years. We never talked again about what I’d meant by the drawings, and I think for that reason, the deck is made tangier, more meaningful and more fun thanks to the perspective of My Brilliant Friend.*copyright infringement
Ana: I think what makes it cool is the ideas become three dimensional because we approached them from multiple angles. The deck and booklet book!!! preserve our co-independent creative viewpoints that then blended together to form a third, wholly distinct thing.
Miden: Hot dog!
Ana: I feel like that’s suitably unhinged.
Below is a sample from the deck—the Chariot card—that we’re excited to share with The Honeypot. If you want to read more, you can pre-order a deck & guide book right here!
The Chariot
Coming right on the heels of the Lovers, a card about both fate and choice and how the two intertwine, we have the Chariot, a card that is all about taking matters into our own hands.
In its classical iteration, the Chariot depicts a youth in battle regalia, adorned by stars and moons. The youth commands an enormous and imposing war chariot, flanked by two sphinxes. Their eyes are firmly fixed on the horizon as they drive off from the walled city, just past the moat built for its protection. In our card here, a snake darts energetically out of its old skin, emerging into a solar halo.
I only recently learned how much effort goes into shedding. In the days before it loses its old skin, a snake's skin begins to harden and darken in color. Its eyes go cloudy as protective fluid fills the space between its old eye scales and the fresh, new eye tissue underneath. To begin, the snake has to find - while functionally blind, and deeply uncomfortable - something sharp to rub itself against, to create the first tear in its own skin and begin sloughing off its old self. This caught me by surprise. I'd always assumed that shedding was sort of mundane and inevitable, but in fact it requires some will. Shedding may be a snake's destiny, in other words, but it requires surprising determination to achieve.
This is, in short, a card about action. It says: act first, think later. It also says: do not spend too much time wondering how you will feel about this. Something deep in the body of a snake knows when to shed; can you imagine if it spent time dithering about whether or not it felt like doing so?
Not too long ago, I read Amy Bloom's book In Love, about securing a physician-accompanied suicide for her beloved husband after his diagnosis with early onset Alzheimer’s. Her husband was committed to ending his life peacefully, but getting approval to do so was a logistical nightmare, one she took on to spare him the hassle in his final days. The weight of this responsibility was almost unbearable, but she knew she had to push it forward. In the midst of everything - all the medical paperwork, the affidavits, the advice from well-meaning but often misinformed strangers - she went to have her cards read. She drew the Chariot. You have to drive this thing forward, she was told. Even if you're crushed under its wheel.
The Chariot is not always especially considerate of your feelings. It will not spare you the difficulty of the task ahead. Much like this snake shedding its own skin, the demands of the Chariot may leave you feeling a little raw and exposed. There will likely be obstacles. You may have to summon all your willpower to keep going. It might even be painful. But it is what you have to do. If you have drawn this card, something in your life right now is demanding that you take charge.
The Chariot is a part of the Major Arcana, meaning it deals with life's bigger plot points. It's also the rare card in the Tarot that is not asking you to pause and reflect, or to be tender rather than firm. It is insisting that you do, in fact, know what you need to do, and you need to make it happen. So, if you are getting all twisted up about something, the Chariot is telling you to drop the equivocation. If you're clinging to the edge of the pool of your life, resisting the thing you know you want or need to do, the Chariot is here to kick you into action. And if, and I dearly hope it's not the case, you are in the midst of something unimaginable, the Chariot is telling you that you will get through by sheer will. It's a positive card, in that way. You don't need to wait for someone else. You might not know how this thing ends, but you probably know what you can do now. Do it, with all of your might.
I take some comfort in the fact that "the Chariot" is not "the Charioteer." We don't really care about who's driving this thing right now. You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to be exactly who you wanted to be before starting, like the little snake with its new, unformed skin. You have only to take charge, and drive. You may even become who you need to be by starting.
The great news is that while it doesn't always make you feel good, the Chariot also won't waste your efforts. Whatever you are being asked to do, it is not a wild goose chase. This card is asking you to work, make tough choices, and drive the course of your own life. It's helping you leave something behind and ushering you into some new stage of being. In its own way, it does guarantee a victory. In the same way we don't always know what will make us happy, we don't always know the victory we need. But the Chariot does.
So, set your eyes on the horizon. Trust your forward momentum. Get out of your comfort zone. Your effort here is sacred—that's where the stars, the halos and the suns come in. The universe is anointing your determination. So, go. Go!
Have a wonderful rest of your weekend, my friends. LA, the heatwave should be breaking any minute now! Everyone else, I hope you’re watching You’ve Got Mail and/or Gilmore Girls and settling into Autumn! Ants, enjoy your last moments in our yard! Ta ta for now!
xx Olivia