The Tangerine Comet: My Work as a Way of Being

You’ve arrived at the Cosmic Laundromat. This altar space is akin to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. How? Well, they’re both invitations. 

The restaurant isn’t really about the end of the universe, like how the laundromat isn’t really for doing your laundry. It’s an exploration of how we relate to experiences.

All’s well that ends well. But even at the end, we’re just doing more of an ongoing relationship with everything and everyone across time and space, you know?

How’d you arrive here? Oh, yeah! You climbed in my Tangerine Comet! Zoom, zoom! IRL, she’s an unassuming orange hatchback, but in this mythic land, she takes form as a Heart Nebula vending machine. 

The tangerine comet zips and zooms by. So bright, you can’t help but watch. She’s waking up dragons along her path. Think of her like…

• the TARDIS — transportation in portal form
• Alice’s White Rabbit — initiating curiosity and descent
• and the Magic School Bus — diving directly into what’s being studied

Like much of the imagery in the altar spaces, there’s a back story, a rabbit hole to be deep dived… However, that’s not what this blog is for! The point of seeding the tangerine comet lore is two-fold:

1. Because I want to tell you about it, I’m here to perform, after all! And, 

2. to share the theme. 

We’re following curiosity and exploring unknown paths. By noticing our emotions. Emotions as energy in motion. By feeling, looking at, exploring and expressing them (in their totality) we are guided by the divine intelligence of our bodies. 

But also emphasis on no rush! Miss me with perceived urgency! The cosmic laundromat is both slow and fast. Sometimes we’re moving at the speed of light. The inherent gift in my natural processing says, no matter the speed, transformation deepens through continued attention. This is where bridges are built, between siloed, seemingly disparate ideas/happenings/stories/things/events/people.

My work in The 12th House is about a way of being, an ongoing practice of paying attention to life, documenting what I find, and creating containers for transformation. It’s not a specific medium. 

Fire As a Medium

For the past year, I’ve been working with fire. Both in my real, everyday life and as an elemental being. A symbol of loss, and as a source of creative power, ritual, and healing. I’ve been focused on rebuilding a relationship with fire slowly and intentionally.

I’ve been working heavily with paper as a medium, too! Since the laundromat attendant, Generous Justin (the restoration project manager who completed our debris removal), returned some items to us post-fire. iPad in hand, I began creating digital paper illustrations. This led to paper birthday celebrations, banners, paper gifts, and most recently, paper beads.

The easy connection? Fire destroys paper. Nearly instantaneously, reduced to ash, invariably changed, no longer what it once was. But creative fire is a lot like making a paper craft, too. A spark to create something beautiful which cannot be unmade, or reduced back to its original form.

Like paper, we are just that fragile; we know nothing, we’re along for the ride and what an adventure it is when we’re willing to detach, allow transformation to occur and let our energy rise.

On the Sagittarius Full Moon, our family did a release together. We’re choosing to see fire as a portal for processing and releasing both rage and creative energy. It is in the process of rebuilding our lives, home, and changed family culture, I understand in a new way: everything comes out clean in the wash because I’m pouring party on it. I celebrate it, champion it, lift it up, Love on it. Loving on it all makes it beautiful.

And so I’m glad you’re here! I invite you to step through this portal with me. Through reading Energy Rising by Dr. Julia DiGangi twice (once in book club) and playing a buttload of Minecraft with the kids, I have come to understand the Nether as spooky emotional dimension. 

It’s a fiery hellscape of new biomes and mobs that mirror some parts of the overworld but much of it is brand new, and fantastical, too. New levels, new devils! The goal of entering is to unearth ancient debris and access what will become your greatest strength in the game, Netherite tools and armour. A caveat: Not advocating for carpace-ing your soft-self up, iykyk. But a cool metaphor for getting to the root of it and the transmutation of our emotional pain into emotional power, perhaps? 

The point is: I am willing to be willing. I am willing to look in the cauldron. To cook in the soup. To stew. I am willing to express and then decode (read the alphabet soup). To see things differently. And most importantly, to see myself:

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A post shared by RuPaul (@rupaulofficial)

The laundromat is my process for holding up the mirror (caveat: LOVINGLY), sorting and ordering what’s between me and me. Because I’m interested in rooting out that old ass ancient debris, I am enthusiasm embodied, unconcerned by situational leaves.

Like the Page of Wands, I’m a student of passion. Open to learning, to jumping in, to be shown trying. I am not made to be contained in the ways the world has asked me to be. And so from my nether portal altar I bring you the initiation to explore, here:

To honour the solstice in December, I painted the portal’s center and set intentions to be free, to be wholly, fully, unabashedly my fullest expressed self. And adore it inside first. To bring to life the presently hidden and undone parts of my doll house. To welcome in visitors who want my words to drip down their chin or play dress up.

In April, I created the rainbow obsidian eye-ball bricks to ground the vision and spark the portal. It’s all play. Play is required to hear the black hole singing. 

The Process At Play

Play is a celebration. It is noticing and giving ourselves affirmation of our worthiness of pleasure across all time and space. Pleasure is play. Drag, weaving webs, crafting, mask making, and performing, telling tales, and making meaning, and of course, show and tell are some of my preferred forms of play!

The Cosmic Laundromat is inviting you to play in processing because keeping your side of the street clean is many things, but here at TOD, it does NOT mean hating yourself into a version you love. I don’t think that’s possible. 

The first time I felt like myself, post-fire, was when furniture began to arrive, we were housed, and I was relying on others as opposed to meeting my needs in isolation. I stumbled upon an IRL character to study, but like most rabbit holes, I quickly found that what was there for me was actually between me and me:

• I began to write more regularly again in my Digital Divination Milanote boards. 
• I wrote about Venusian emotions. 
• I grieved life before fire. 
• I grieved my dead friends. 
• I wrote horny stories. 
• I wrote about the new life I was envisioning. 
• I spoke and wrote love and joy and peace and happiness over myself and my children. 
• I engaged in surrealist art practice. 
• I missed my old cards and oriented to new ones. 
• I created paper art, both digital and otherwise.

I claimed my place of hermitage, up in the tower, as the all-seeing eye, leaning all the way in. Seeing life through mythic lenses, telling stories, getting lost in archetypal character study, and falling down rabbit holes is the epitome of fun in my world. It is the greatest celebration of who I am.

So I offer celebration to the part of me exploring life and making meaning, here, now.

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane… It’s Me! Taking Up Space

Here, self-allowing means not trying to control or dominate, repress or reject any part of me. I do not make meaning about what is showing up for me here, now. I notice tension, I welcome emotions, I soften when I’m ready, and then I make beautiful art and meaning from it.

Allowing all the feelings means:

• being unconcerned with how I “should” feel,
• knowing that after death, life returns, that new seed is faithful and roots most deeply where it is most empty,
• gentleness and acceptance are my default offering to myself at this time, and all times across time and space 
• trusting that my vantage point is unique, therefore my perspective should be shared. 

I have started a practice within digital divination called Self Gospel. It started as Self Gospel/Gossip. It is the act of jotting down bullet point notes on what is/has happened on that day. 

Throughout the year, as cycles and/or transits happen or come to a close, I do review. This looks like combing through Milanote, and visiting my calendar and notes app. Sometimes it’s unstructured and not time-bound, too. I review boards with the same icon image as the current day’s board, or I intuit a board to revisit. 

In doing so, I noticed I’m not always clear about the actual life that is happening day to day. So this practice is simply a thoughtful gift to future me, who might (she will) enjoy the extra, real-time context. 

In the present moment, it has also offered an extra lens for scrutinizing loaded-ass words I use and the emotions tied to them. Like errors, failures, and lateness. 

All shared to say: I’m working out in real-time, choosing to view myself and life through the lenses explored in the laundromat altar space as a process for processing. 

Here is how I notice.

Here is how I play.

Here is how I process.

Here is how I relate.

Maybe something here helps you notice yourself, too. Because Ru Paul ATE with, “ Bitch, you first”, as the answer to See me. Choose me. Notice me. Confirm me. 

So the laundromat is a winding rabbit hole of mirrors, asking us to reflect on: How do I notice me?

This is my offering to myself. And, it is my offering to you, here, now, too!

Because The Story Isn’t Mine Anymore

Welcome to the Cosmic Laundromat! 

RuPaul offering self-noticing as proof of existence to love yourself first is everything! And I think the trick is not to stop ourselves from engaging in the process of looking outward. Alice’s whole journey, the white rabbit, Wonderland, the Cheshire cat, the Mad Hatter, Queen of Hearts… all circle back to her waking up, having encountered aspects of herself. 

I love that on this World card, the last card in the Tarot’s Major Arcana, the culmination of a journey, features a white rabbit. The World is much more than an ending! It’s the completion of a cycle, integration, and return with understanding. 

As most adults know and loathe, completing one cycle doesn’t mean you’ll never do laundry again. But Energy Rising says it doesn’t have to feel painful, and Lady Gaga says we can make it art!

So please come in, wash what is soiled, keep what fits and leave the rest. There are rabbit holes here. There is process here. Art references are abundant to deep dive, too! I invite you to revisit this space whenever you need it. 

May you pore over and love on what’s showing up for you here now, and stay with it until it’s ready to move and become beautiful again.

This blog post is being written from the thick of fire anniversary and dead-friend-anniversary-summer. Do you hear that? It’s my head bouncing around in the spin cycle! 

I’m HERE with you, but the story isn’t mine anymore. Because I’m sharing the practice of: 

• sorting before spinning, 
• washing it clean, 
• choosing to see the divinity in you as indelible, through rose-coloured lenses 
• and self-allowing all your parts as the vehicle for freedom to have and explore the totality of your emotions and emotional world

Because you’re not an obsessive little freak! Or maybe we both are… But here, you’re in good company! We can process until it’s all squeaky clean with this webpage, as a system to move life forward. Cheers to living life beyond the looking glass!