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travel far now

a sporadic archive of rants & revelations from life on the road

substack essays

On the mysteries of reciprocity and retrograde

2/13/2026

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Wow, what say the stars on connectivity today? I’ve been blocked out & locked out of chambers clanging in the reverb of my name and many passwords. some days are just like this, spent troubleshooting how to break back into your own life.

Luckily, my morning began early with rich descriptions of waves and the wonder of surfer science, followed by a fascinating conversation with a brilliant therapist on the alchemy of handwritten letters. Next, I spoke my truth into the camera, how we women walked to the woods in the middle of winter to celebrate the trees and the coming of the spring, greener days ahead. Then I kept on hacking through the haze of my own confusion when it comes to passwords, passkeys and keywords, past words, key pasts. 

Must be some kind of retrograde. I had to laugh and step away from the insanity and out into the sunshine. 

These moments make me think maybe I don’t want the life i’m trying so hard to crack into, and if restoration is this impossible, then why not just give me lines in an absurdist play and let me walk off stage left in a fit of rage! i do think some of this has to do with signals we can not see yet still channel. it’s Friday and i’m happy my ancestors taught me to remember to unplug.

I read Martin Buber's words about the “mystery of reciprocity," what happens when the "it" becomes an I or even better, a you. What happens when you and I realize that a part of us only exists in the presence of the other. I stay for stories of love—all kinds, failures, fantasies and futures reimagined from its sheer force! 

Long ago in Addis Ababa, I visited a contemporary art gallery and came across the work of artist Fikru Haile. This one is called "Breath," and plays with the visual symbol of a gauge, measuring how much energy one has to make it through the day, a year, a life. I can't make out the meaning of the words in Amharic, but the image alone speaks volumes (to me) today. 

​Transit Slips, #13


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    Essays by Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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    Bio:

    Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein is a writer, poet, editor and vintage collector based in Skokie, Illinois. 

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