it's my birthday, and I have big news

I'm leaving San Francisco! oh, yeah, and we can have nice things // 07

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Birthdays past

Hi friends,

It’s April, it’s my 32nd birthday, and I’ve finally made the decision to move out of San Francisco. (!!!) After the ultimatum I made in December, I really should have expected this. It’s as if ever since I put it out into the Universe, I’ve been supplied with all the reasons I should make the move, as opposed to what could possibly make me stay. I’m not ready to share what comes next for me yet, and coming soon is a more expansive write-up of my (extremely bittersweet) feelings on leaving the city, but that will be when plans are a little more fully defined.

It’s the Libra full moon, too, and a full moon on my birthday feels like an extra special blessing from the cosmos. Kisses from and to la luna, etc. Still might cry if I want to, but Libra says they will be tears of joy, damn it.

Hope you are all enjoying Aries season to the utmost. x

1. I’ve found, after almost 10 months of penning this lovely little newsletter, that I thoroughly enjoy surprising myself here. Not only does the vehicle of the newsletter feel easy to experiment with, funnily enough, but writing directly to all of you beautiful people week in and week out has carved out a new kind of space in my brain. I have written about surprising the Self and others on CK before, and I think it’s becoming a theme, both here and in my life. And that makes me want to invite more surprise into my day-to-day. Universe, ya listening? ✨ (Okay, okay, I already know it is!)

2. Spending time in Portland with my dear friends this past weekend was glorious. It really is my happy place, even when it’s coming at us live with sudden hail and thunderstorms.

Fabulous friends. And that faux fur-lined blue coat is everything to me... as it should be!

3. Loved this gorgeously wrought post from artist and writer

Morgan Harper Nichols

on the space between rest and resolve.

I Don't Want Rest. I Want Resolve.

4. This Electric Lit piece, We Need to Talk About Professional Jealousy, is important and eye-opening. I’m interested in the ways we approach—and avoid—discussion of jealousy on sociocultural levels. When will we be able to more fully open up to the fact that it’s natural, and doesn’t actually need to stop us from achieving the things we want, and instead can often point us to the possibility of manifesting the very things we desire? Pieces like this are a step in the right direction.

5. Jamie Ford’s The Many Daughters of Afong Moy was a wonderful read. I love historical fiction and magical realism, and I have been on an absolute tear on this style of generation-spanning novel (what next? MFAs through the years? Ha. Maybe this is a novel I should be writing).

6. Ted Lasso is back, and that makes me happy. This may or may not be because soccer/fútbol is essentially the only sport for which I actually understand the rules… but I also played defense up until high school, on a team called Pegasus, where my dad served as coach. Yes, it was just as great as it sounds.

7. Can’t stop, won’t stop listening to this Yeah Yeah Yeahs album. Hyperfixating on “Wolf” and “Fleez” especially.

8. Had my first solo essay published on the

Soaring Twenties

Social Club this week, and I’m very excited about it. Really pushed myself to be more vulnerable in this. Give it a read below:

Big Sur

9. Thanks to my sister, Kiana, for the reminder:

She also told me, “You’re not all horns!!” (As an Aries I remain unconvinced. I’m literally wearing them in one of the photos at the top of this letter.) But, that said, here’s to leaning into softness over steel however and whenever possible.

10. Speaking of being vulnerable on the internet, I enjoyed this piece on boundaries versus barriers, written by Charlene Storey for

Haver and Sparrow

. Sharing from such intensely vulnerable places in this public digital realm we’ve created for ourselves is difficult on a good day, and on a bad one can feel impossibly painful. It’s also where memorable writing comes from—the really good stuff, the stuff I personally want to read, at least.

Boundaries not walls

Charlene quotes from another newsletter, Sara Tasker’s

Entre Nous

, in her piece:

“The parts of yourself that you think are unloveable are the reasons people fall in love with you.”

It’s funny how sometimes you don’t realize how desperately you needed to read or hear something until you come across the words; that’s exactly how I felt with this quote, and the approach. Vulnerability hangovers may be very real, but they also remain worth it.

11. This beautifully illustrated prose-poetry piece, via

Soft Star Magazine

, is incredibly resonant. Highly recommend.

The City Knows You're Leaving

12. Our poem for this week is one from ancient Persian poet and mystic, Rumi, who incidentally had a daughter named Kimia.

Who gets up early
to discover the moment light begins?
Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?
Who comes to a spring thirsty
and sees the moon reflected in it?
Who, like Jacob blind with grief and age,
smells the shirt of his lost son
and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down and brings up
a flowing prophet?
Or like Moses goes for fire
and finds what burns inside the sunrise?

Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies,
and opens a door to the other world.
Solomon cuts open a fish, and there's a gold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the prophet
and leaves with blessings.
Chase a deer and end up everywhere!
An oyster opens his mouth to swallow on drop.
Now there's a pearl.
A vagrant wanders empty ruins.
Suddenly he's wealthy.

But don't be satisfied with stories, how things
have gone with others. Unfold
your own myth, without complicated explanation,
so everyone will understand the passage,
We have opened you.

Start walking toward Shams. Your legs will get heavy
and tired. Then comes a moment
of feeling the wings you've grown,
lifting.

—from The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

That line, “Unfold your own myth,” may very well be the tagline for Cosmic Kudos. Not to mention the reason I’m a writer, and a poet myself.

And that last stanza—the moment of feeling the wings you’ve grown, lifting. Ah! It just does things to me.

And lastly, your witch tip of the week:

13. Just like it’s a good idea to do regular energetic cleansing, it’s healthy spiritual practice to regularly call your power back. We don’t always realize when a person or thing is draining our energy (though at other times, we do. Energy vampires, anyone?). But it happens all the time, especially when we are in public spaces, and while scrolling on social media. Calling it back can be as complex as a multi-layered ritual or as simple as the following affirmation: “I call all of my energy and power back to me now. I call it back from every being, entity, company/corporation, [what have you], that’s ever taken it from me.”

This was a fun one—lots of Substack recommendations. Will be back to my regular Monday posting for nice things next week.

Til then!

xx Kimia