| THE EPISTOLARIAN |

It started one evening this week as a little soreness in my low back, but by the next morning, it felt nearly impossible to lift my hips. I quite literally rolled out of bed, and began scanning for remedies.

At the doctor’s office, she asked whether I had lifted anything heavy. I had not, not in the obvious sense. But I have been carrying more than my body prefers. There is exhilaration in this season of Kathryn Hastings. My first employee, Nick, has just begun working in the studio with me, organizing, packing, carrying and lifting boxes. My book is forthcoming. There are new designs for seals and pennies, retreats on the horizon, collaborations unfolding. It is a time of expansion. It is also a time of holding.

For several days, I've engaged in a different type of discipline. I lay still on our living room floor with heating pads and ice packs cycling in and out like a shift of diligent nurses. In that enforced pause, I found myself feeling the pain in my body and feeling it dance through my core like a flame. I imagined it clearing out stagnant energy and the space that is created to grow from rest.

This Tuesday, February 17th, the Fire Horse Penny becomes available, timed to the Lunar New Year and the arrival of the Year of the Fire Horse. In many cultures, fire has been imagined as animate. In Metamorphoses, it behaves almost as a character, devouring and transforming with intention. In Greek myth, Prometheus steals it from the gods, an act of rebellion that grants humanity both power and peril. Fire is never neutral. It initiates.

The horse, for me, has long signified freedom, intuition, and forward motion. A fire horse carries that symbolism further. It suggests ignition, passion, a spark that leaps from friction. Think of the match struck against the strip, the brief flare before the steady burn.

Fire also destroys, but it also makes space for something new.

In 1988, when vast swaths of Yellowstone National Park burned, the devastation appeared apocalyptic. Yet in the seasons that followed, wildflowers bloomed in profusion. Ecologists later observed that many species depended upon the very heat that seemed catastrophic. Wildfire gave way to wildflower.

Ecologists speak of controlled burns. Of intentional clearing. Fire, when governed, restores balance. Perhaps leisure is our controlled burn. A deliberate pause that prevents the catastrophic blaze.

The penny has two faces.

Heads: The Fire Horse. A fierce, quick-moving horse, its mane and tail rendered like flame. I was certain I had drawn it moving to the right, toward the future as I imagine it. After pressing, the composition faced left. The horse, like fire, insists on its own direction.

Tails: Fire itself, rising upward. Around it, the inscription: Vitae plenus et purus. Full of life and pure.

We are living in an era that often feels overheated, volatile, and unpredictable. It is tempting to answer that intensity with more intensity. Yet fire is not calmed by flame. It yields to cooling. To vacuums. To the deliberate withholding of fuel.

Lying still, I realized that my back had done what I would not. It set something down.

This week, consider protecting a small span of time for nothing. Guard it as you would an unmoveable meeting or a promise to a friend. When it arrives, let it remain open. Fill it, if you must fill it, with something that feels lovely and leisurely. Or leave it empty and allow the earth to rotate beneath you without your assistance.

Discipline is often mistaken for effort. Let it be subtraction.

Just Weeks Away! Meet me in NYC

The NYC Gathering will be MAGICAL.

We begin at noon on Friday with tea, easing into the afternoon through a hands-on workshop. Saturday unfolds as a full day of creative immersion. Pastries in the morning, a shared lunch, and thoughtful afternoon offerings are provided so that nothing pulls us away from the work or one another.

You will leave with refined technique, but more importantly, you'll leave with greater trust in your own creative instincts and a deeper sense of rituals of beauty in your daily life.

Enrollment is limited. When the circle is complete, registration will close. I would be honored to welcome you.

Leisure Inspiration from Art History

If no you need some inspiration for some scheduled leisure, you may enjoy these paintings...

To small rituals that ask little, and give much,

Kathryn