Cowboy Clairvoyant is a new members-only newsletter and series by Autumn Fourkiller. If you’re already an AF member, you should have received the first issue of Cowboy Clairvoyant in your email inbox. To opt in to future (weekly!) missives from Cowboy Clairvoyant, use the Manage Preferences link in that email.

Dear AF Media and AF+ Members (aka, new friends),

Howdy, howdy!!! Welcome to the first ever edition of Cowboy Clairvoyant, a weekly newsletter by me, Cowboy Clairvoyant (Autumn Fourkiller)! Wow, is it good to say that. I’m really so excited to be here with you all. And I really do hope this space we cultivate together can run the gamut of silliness and seriousness, heartfelt and kooky — because isn’t it just so hard to live in the world right now? I know I’ve been exhausted and sad and scared, and yet, so full of joy at the same time for projects and communities like this one.

Also before I gush your proverbial ear off, some housekeeping: Cowboy Clairvoyant, as I mentioned, is our space together. Each week we’ll come together in a similar but hopefully never boring fashion. You’ll always have an intro by me, and then some mystical fun, usually mini dream interpretations (submitted by YOU) but sometimes tarot pulls and other little ventures into the Beyond. If you’re into that sort of thing, of course. Cowboy Clairvoyant is for the spiritualists and the skeptics and anyone in between. You don’t have to be a witch with a coven or a psychic to want to participate in something deeply human: looking for answers in a time where it feels like there are none.

Plus, I’ll try to keep things interesting with what I’m reading on the Internet that week, things to listen and watch, plus any full commentary from a Reader! (Shameless mentor plug: That section of Ann’s newsletter is so dear to me. I remember the first time I got mentioned. Literal dream come true).

So here you have it folks, the first issue of Cowboy Clairvoyant. Let’s get dreamy.

Yours in the Time of Ayo Edebiri,
Cowboy

P.S. If you want to learn more about my mystic chops check out this essay on our very own Autostraddle. Or this series in New York Mag’s The Cut.

I’ve been fired from my job and am back living with my parents in my childhood home until I can find a new one. (Absolutely not what would happen if I lost my job. No matter what.) I find out my dad is having an affair and I’m trying to decide whether to tell my mom. When I do, she says she already knows and doesn’t care. (Pretty sure my dad has never actually had an affair and 100% sure if he did my mom would care.) My sister comes by and tells me that she found me a job working with her at TMZ. (She doesn’t actually work at TMZ.) If I do this job, I can move out, so I say okay. My first assignment is a piece trashing the women who came forward to accuse Casey Affleck of sexual harassment. I decide I can’t do it and my sister says that means you’ll have to live with mom and dad forever and I say okay I guess I’ll have to live with them forever. It feels terrible.

– Drew Burnett Gregory 

Hi Drew,

First off, I LOVE a parenthetical, and these ones are so juicy. It makes sense, to me at least, that a number of my clients and friends have had the moving back in with their parents dream, though I have yet to come across one with both TMZ and Casey Affleck in the description. For many queer folk, and anyone who deviates, really, from the norm their parents have set, there’s always that deep rooted fear that everything you’ve done since leaving their nest could be, in an instant, taken away from you. Dissolved. Like it never happened at all. Let me lay it out for you: You dream that you are sent back to a place you never want to return, at least for the long haul and, once you arrive, nothing is as it should be. Your father, philandering. Your mother, chill??? Your sister, offering you a Faustian bargain. And you, willing to do anything to leave.

This speaks to me of an insecure feeling — I hesitate to call it an “insecurity,” but I suppose that is what I mean, though less harsh. You’re feeling insecure about your place in the world, professionally or personally, and your brain is torturing you with the worst case scenario of your “failure.” Plus, you’re feeling morally strange about a task you’ve been given or a way you’ve been ordered to live. And yes, it does feel terrible! But Drew, this is not forever, you will find your foothold, your way out. Know that being true to yourself will never bring ruin, even though it feels like it might.

Take it from me, your friendly neighborhood mystic.

See you on the Other Side,
CC

Ok so, there was an ambient tension — somewhere between a corporate retreat and The Handmaid’s Tale? — and I was packing to leave a room that looked suspiciously like my own but somehow wasn’t. I had to step around my girlfriend who was seated on the bathroom floor, maybe also packing, so I could check my reflection in the mirror above the sink. My makeup was sparse or nonexistent, and my hair (which is actually a pixie bowl cut dyed blonde) was shoulder length, dark brown, and wavy, parted in the center, with the texture/overall energy of a hairstyle from the early 70s — no styling products and seemingly no styling tools were used, beyond a comb. It surprised me, so I said, “Whoa” to my reflection and tried to study my face for a minute to figure out what had changed, because my nose also seemed smaller. I woke up thinking “Is that the length my hair should be if it’s brown?”

– Laneia 

Hi Laneia,

I’m loving this White Lotus vibe (real talk: I have not seen White Lotus but my mother didn’t like it so I probably will?). But seriously, lately real life has felt rife with ambient tension crossed between a corporate retreat and The Handmaid’s Tale!!!

Quick question though: How are you feeling about your self-image lately? Not to put you on the spot, but this slightly absurd slightly silly slightly creepy dream speaks to me of a feeling or urge inside of you, maybe not even on the surface, that feels unrecognizable. Are you feeling particularly creative? Are you feeling you need to shed your skin? Interrogate that. Follow it to its natural conclusion. This dream likely has nothing to do with your outward appearance, but instead has been brought to you so you won’t get complacent.

Maybe that is the length your hair should be if it is brown, but probably not. Our hair, from a variety of different perspectives, can quite literally be the seat of our power (spiritual or otherwise). So, in another sense, this dream could be a message to you that something that is going to shake you up (but in the end be worth it), is coming.

Either way, let me know how it goes.

See you on the Other Side,
CC

I’m going to cheat a bit by including multiple dreams, but they’re all remixes of the same dream and were all had in the same night!

I dreamed I was pregnant (that part is somewhat recurring across my whole life) but this was not a regular pregnancy dream. In this one, I gave birth to a bunch of marbles? I was walking down some sort of quaint street (I feel like it was somewhere in Europe based purely on vibes) and all of a sudden a bunch of marbles just spilled out of me. And not through the birth canal but straight out my stomach like my stomach just parted in the middle and unleashed a bunch of marbles. It sounds like body horror but in the context of the dream, it didn’t really read that way. No one seemed to think it was weird that a bunch of marbles had just spilled out of me. We were more concerned with trying to collect the marbles because they were rolling all over the place and very hard to contain/collect. It was stressful!

But then later, I had a dream where I was writing out the marble dream for you, Autumn. But in this dream, I was manufacturing the marble dream. I’d never had it. I was just making something up. And in my manufactured version of the marble dream, I added a detail where there was a doctor there and she looked like Cuddy from House MD and was wearing what I called a “flat top hat” but I definitely meant a flat BRIMMED hat. And I planned to photoshop a photo of Cuddy from House MD and give her a blue wool flat brimmed hat to include in my dream submission. This dream did make me second guess whether the marble dream ever happened but I’m sure that it did!!!

Then there was a THIRD dream where I was at an aquarium for some reason, telling a bunch of people the story of the marble dream. I think in this dream, the marble dream was real and not manufactured. But no one really understood the marble part. Some guy was like “oh wow so your little marble babies were like jumping around? and probably making weird noises?” And I was like no NO they were not marble BABIES they were just simply marbles. And they were not “jumping” because they were marbles. Inanimate marbles! So all they were doing was rolling, as marbles do. And the only sound they made was the sound rolling marbles make!

– Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya 

Hi Kayla,

DUDE THIS ABOUT THE NOVEL.

Ahem, let me explain. Pregnancy dreams, though sometimes about actual biological pregnancy, can also be interpreted as about the incubation of ideas, projects, and so forth. Because we are, well, blood brothers, it does give me an easier idea of what this dream is about, but even if we weren’t, I could tell you that the marbles are the threads of ideas, of ways that things might go, and are manifested in such a sense because of your fear that they might be impossible to wrangle together, to contain in the space of a creative project.

Your second iteration of the dream speaks to me, because of the hilarious manufacturing sequence, of a second worry: that you are wasting time not writing and so have to make that “wasted” time feel meaningful no matter what. You’re a confident, assured person. It is one of the things I love most about you, so perhaps “worry” and “fear” here are a bit overblown, but they are still present, at least subconsciously. Also, not to diagnose you as gay on main but the Cuddy detail is because she’s hot and the crafting element is because… you know…

HAHAHAHA, not “probably making weird noises.” This is actually a perfect end to this interpretation, your vehement explanation of the marbles as, well, unimportant. You are downplaying how vulnerable it felt to have them explode from you, out in the world. And isn’t that kind of what writing feels like? Especially when it comes to a book-length project. But the marbles, your marbles, are important. They are a part of you. Recognize them, the phases it took for you to get to them, and, well, keep collecting them.

My advice is to prepare for what you’ll do when they’re all in one basket. Soon!

See you on the Other Side,
CC

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!