Glow West.

Each morning I make a compass.

If I don’t know which way north is (or even if I do), I set north above me or right in front of me.

I assign a quality to each direction point, and I let them cycle around me, surrounding myself with the qualities and filling my space with them.

Every few months, or when I’m starting a new op, it’s time for a new compass, but for the past couple years, I have consistently put GLOW in the west.

One of the many lovely things about walking around inside of a compass is that street signs and highway signs become actual signs: they’re clues.

Each time a sign says WEST, I understand that to mean GLOW. So then I glow.

Glow west.

So west means west, but west really means glow. Glow, resonate, reverberate, expand, express, shine. Two meanings.

Most of my favorite W-words have two meanings.

There’s Well, like well-being and wellness, and also filling the (metaphorical) wells — well, yeah, all the wells…

And wells, like water, like well-springs, like the fountain.

There is Wind. That could be, depending on how you want to read it, winding up or the winding road. But it could also be wind, like the west wind that whooshes and whisks away, wind like the trade winds, the winds that make adventures easier.

There’s Whip, which is the way you give your jammer a burst of speed and trajectory on the roller derby track, and there is whip, the impossibly sexy smooth move in west coast swing. It takes the lindy swing-out and elegantly removes the bounce, turning it into the most luscious rubber band double rotation of perfection. A dance with someone who has a sweet whip, there is nothing like that feeling in the world.

Whisk is a marvelous word. There is whisking like whisking away, and a whisk like the tool you can use to whip cream, or to make the bubbles in your bubble bath infinitely more bubbly, an excellent trick I learned from Agent Rosie. The German word for whisk is Schneebesen: a snow broom, this baffled me for hours the first time someone asked if I wanted one.

There is Wash, like washing away, and also like in watercolor when you do a wash of color.

Oh, and there is Wax. Like wax and wane, with my friend the moon. Or like the wax from the beeswax candles my uncle Svevo used to make.

And Whiskey like the drink, but also like Tango Foxtrot secret code forever!

The Week of Why

When we got to W in the Alphabet Rallies, I did not expect it to become the Week of Why.

I’d figured Y would be the Week of Y. And therefore also the Week of Why. Silly me. Though actually Y turned out to be the week of Yes, so that worked out spectacularly well.

Well. Anyway.

We asked why. Over and over again. Ten times why. The good kind of why, not the wheel-grinding kind of why.

We were curious and we investigated. With wonder.

During the week of Why, I came up with the Very Partial List Of Things That Are Not My Job, which turned out to be Wisdom.

And we did things widdershins, and played Change Your Place, Change Your Luck.

It was also the week of Wishes.

And words.

Witchy wonderful words, whispered. Wow!

I love words, and I especially love whispered words.

Whispers are my favorite way to listen, and possibly also just the most wonderful word.

Oh, and waltzing. Waltzing words into the light, which is my secret metaphor for publishing.

And waltz like Waltz Brunch, my very favorite dance event in Portland and the only thing I currently miss about Portland, other than my housemate and Back to Eden bakery.

Wish. Upon A Star

Wishing is my favorite way to mix things up.

We hit three hundred weeks of wishes this week, and many of those wishes have changed how I live.

Ws I am letting go of:

When I let go of G, I also wanted to let go of W.

Now it is time to release some more Ws. Here we go:

• Worry
• Work
• Wistfulness
• Wockawocks (secret agent code for annoying problems)
• Wells Unfilled
• Weakness (in the sense of my perception of my sensitivities)
• Weight (as a concept)
• Whines

Whoosh! All of that can be let go and whooshed away, to the magical elevator shaft at the Playground, which still exist even though the Playground is gone.

Ws I am warmly welcoming in:

Mmmm, Welcoming.

• Wings
• Wealth
• Wisdom
• Wonder
• Wander. As in Wanderlust and exploring and All Who [W] Are Not Lost.
• Wells
• Willingness
• Wholeness
• Water
• Waves
• Winning: Won-ness and Oneness.
• Witchiness and being witchy. I recently learned that when I say witch, people do not understand what I mean, and that I need to say healer instead, so: okay.
• Warmth
• When (as in: if not now, when).

Wow. Also wise-cracking, like Barrington.

Wild.

When I was away on retreat at the Vicarage, I was looking for a name. I was playing with a proxy identity, getting to know wild me who wears a leather jacket and sunglasses and doesn’t care what anybody things, and I didn’t know what to call her.

Then they accidentally gave me the wrong room, and in that room, in a corner, high up above the doorway between the bedroom and the entryway, I noticed a sticker. It said EVE WILD.

Eve Wild became the secret agent name for Incoming Me, and we have spent a lot of time together ever since.

I even brought in a version of her to help me with my Rally Project during the week of W, here’s what I have in my notes:

I’m Agent Wild. I’m here to test shades of pink to find out which are the most Unrepentantly Disruptive. I am the Pink Witch! I am the Walrus! I take baths in olive oil.

Rally is fun. I miss Rally.

All the best words are W.

I mean, come on.

Whoa. Wicked. Whirl. Winding. Wabi-sabi!

Ohmygoodness, did you know that WEAR also means “to turn a ship’s stern to windward to alter its course”?! I feel so strongly about this, and also cannot believe I forgot wear like to adorn oneself in garments and costumes (clue: everything is a costume!).

Wear! I delight in dressing up, this is one of my very favorite things.

What else do I know about W?

W is two Vs. V + V. This means that W has all the superpowers of V, doubled. And it also means that W is a diamond, unpacked. W is an open diamond.

W is waves.

W is movement, repeated.

W is Writing, which is also Righting. The word writative means characterized by an inclination to write, and I have that pretty much all the time.

W is the reminder to glow, and keep on glowing ever westward.

May it be so! And come play with me.

This has been a meditation on words that begin with W.

If you want to whisper words or sound effects that start with W, go for it.

You are invited to add more W words, or peek over here for more W words. Like waldgrave, wayzgoose, williwaw, and wyrd (the personification of a fate or destiny).

And, as always, if you want to share in any of the qualities and magical words I named here, help yourself.

They work like the salves in the Friday Chicken: there is enough and there is always more.

Whispering loving spells that begin with W, for myself, and for anyone who wants…