Ask Otea
Life advice from realms real and imagined.
Click on the stars below to submit a question to the wise Otea!
The Otea Oracle Deck
The Otea Oracle Deck
COMING SOON
Dear Otea:
Spring has arrived. What can you share with us about renewal?
Cara Mia:
There is the rhythm of the seasons. And there is the rhythm of your seasons. Sometimes these duet and sometimes, like any good lover, nature releases the clasp on your hand and lets you go your own way.
Before you begin to strongarm any sense of spring renewal, find the center of your own season. It could be hailing outside and we’ll be longing to enter the icy fray, unbridled and unbundled. Or, in the fullest fatness of high summer, when it seems like everything and everyone is exposed, we’ll want nothing more than to hide ourselves from all this heat.
We are made from sun and shade. From the fiercest wind and the slightest breeze. Tiny weather systems live within us and we carry these climates out into the elements under the vault of a shared sky. The wonder of any cycle is born from both bowing to our own weather and the weather of the world without sacrificing the inevitability of either season.
So if the world’s springtime is your time for song, belt it in all its boldness and hold nothing back. And if you’re not yet ripe enough to arise, know that the birds and the bees and the petals will do it for you. They will carry your torch and unfurl into light until you’re ready to turn your light on.
The way of you is the way of all of life. You cannot help but come back to it, on your own sweet time.
Un abbraccio forte,
Otea
Dear Otea:
Spring has arrived. What can you share with us about renewal?
Cara Mia:
There is the rhythm of the seasons. And there is the rhythm of your seasons. Sometimes these duet and sometimes, like any good lover, nature releases the clasp on your hand and lets you go your own way.
Before you begin to strongarm any sense of spring renewal, find the center of your own season. It could be hailing outside and we’ll be longing to enter the icy fray, unbridled and unbundled. Or, in the fullest fatness of high summer, when it seems like everything and everyone is exposed, we’ll want nothing more than to hide ourselves from all this heat.
We are made from sun and shade. From the fiercest wind and the slightest breeze. Tiny weather systems live within us and we carry these climates out into the elements under the vault of a shared sky. The wonder of any cycle is born from both bowing to our own weather and the weather of the world without sacrificing the inevitability of either season.
So if the world’s springtime is your time for song, belt it in all its boldness and hold nothing back. And if you’re not yet ripe enough to arise, know that the birds and the bees and the petals will do it for you. They will carry your torch and unfurl into light until you’re ready to turn your light on.
The way of you is the way of all of life. You cannot help but come back to it, on your own sweet time.
Un abbraccio forte,
Otea
Dear Otea:
What's a combination of flavors on your table as wild and surprising as the combination of patterns you've shared with us?
Cara Mia:
You can stack all the careful cookbooks and lookbooks to high heaven on top of your table. And beside them, there will always be the craving creature who is you!
The perfect combinations exist at the cocktail hour where your body and the world’s body of work can clink coupes in a glorious “cin cin.” Balance is never a notion on a pedestal: It never rests, so long as your own beauty still breathes. Whether color or pattern or flavor, the secret is to let it remain touchable against your fingers and imbibeable against your tongue.
When I’m feasting, I invite my head, my heart, and my stomach to all come along. The fantasy of a candied violet that opens my mind to crystalized prettiness. The bitter chicory that brings my heart back to the rise and fall of my home’s hills. The pink prosciutto sheets that satisfy and satisfy, giving their life to give me more of it. What a delirious gift to bundle this triplet together in a sweet-bitter-silky bouquet!
Play freely with your proportions. If you’re so stuffed with life’s sugared puff pastry that you’ve lost your edges, try a drop of astringent orange aperitivo. Let its brightness create space for you to admire all that exists apart from you. If you’ve gone so deep into the salt of the earth with vine and root, mix your beets with the uncunctuousness of pignoli or aioli. Let the oil and wax relax you into a richness that cushions and coats.
The true art of fritto misto is found when you let the flavors of this world become you—fitting the feast to the skin of your desire, while still getting good and served by nature’s cornucopia of destiny.
Trust that what graces your table has always been invited. Whether by the strange bounty of nature or the strange bounty of your own nature. Reach for all of it with more of you.
Un abbraccio forte,
Otea
Dear Otea:
What is the most beautiful color?
Cara Mia:
The most beautiful color is the one that receives all of your rainbow. It is the pigment that is strong enough to envelope every last liquid drop of your love and your loss. Wrapped in the tent of its tint, the arcobaleno of your body bows towards more of all this sky.
For me, it is caramello and camel. The crema that coats the bottom of the cup. The silvered spuma that ices the crest of the wave. My bare feet meeting every microcosm of sabbia, in the buff. The honey and aranciata set of sun on the edge of the field where I let all my colors run.
Your most beautiful color always becomes you. Against it, you will become you in every light.
Un abbraccio forte,
Otea
Dear Otea:
I don't know how I'm feeling about the end of the year and beginning of the new! Anxiety, hope, fear, love. I know we don't know or can't know what will come, but it all feels so scary—almost chaotic—right now. What's a peaceful path forward through the raging unknowns?
Cara Mia:
Your peace through the raging unknown begins and ends with the only person you’ve always known: you, and you, alone. That you already awaits this you all the way on the other side of this scary, hopeful, chaotic year ahead. Conjure this self from spirit into solid, twelve whole months and so many lifetimes from right now, patiently awaiting your own arrival at their timeworn table. Their steady hands on the cloth that covers it, freckled from 365 more sunrises. The curve of their spine where they’ve borne whatever the weight. The lift of their chin where they’ve caught every light. A new map of lines carved in their still familiar face where they’ve laughed and cried with abandon over moments they’ve already made that you’ve not yet met. When you look this person in the eye, you will turn the fear of your fate into the inheritance of your fortune.
You will always be known to yourself. You will always prevail. Your love moves forward and forever onwards, onwards, onwards. There is no other way. So start on your way towards the you that is already rising to meet you.
Un abbraccio forte,
Otea
Dear Otea:
I have recently become very interested in my family history, but am realizing that there are so many questions I won't ever know the answers to! This pains me a little … how can I honor my ancestry and sit comfortably in the unknown?
Cara Mia:
The conversation has already begun! So live in the question and let it unfold. From the side of life, I know it can sometimes seem linear. A call and a response. An ask and an answer that leads you from here to there. And yes, certainly, your history has backbone. It has the people in their places and you, trying to trace their steps and track their scent. But from the other side, from all sides—where I sit—your history also has breath. It arrives through transmission. Through the moments when you’re caught in a movement that seems like more than just yours. A gesture that feels unconscious. An inexplicable craving. A choice without clear pros or cons. This is the conversation. In these moments of mystery, your family reaches for you. They are as present in the space that surrounds the photograph as they are bound within its frame. Scour the archive. Delight in the stories told and the letters written. But know that their lives, and yours, are made as much from what you allow to come undone as they are from what was said and done. You must let their lives live through your own longing. Otherwise, your ancestors have no way to reach for you and nowhere to go. And when you let them come out of nowhere, and be with you everywhere, you’ll both come closer to home.
Un abbraccio forte,
Otea