I can't be told

Drew my first cross in almost a month. Queen of Swords inverted.  Mmm, hurts so good.

A natural history of getting through the year

My family likes to tromp. Today, we went out on a few hours' long walk into the forest. My brother had hunted those woods before so he knew them mostly by dead reckoning in the half-light, and it was strange following him in that fashion. He didn't take a path but cut down ridges and deer trails and across creeks and old wagon roads and we ended up somehow where we started, although by no coherent, consistent route. We came across a two hundred year old ruin of a mill and I found some beautiful quartz crystals. The one is so perfect at first I thought it had a little clear water pooled in the center, and only saw it was solid rock when I tried to pour it out.


I want to say more about everything, but my brain feels pretty absent.

there's something

I categorize seasons and years. I used to find what I now recognize as an insipid quality in myself charming, and if nothing else, it has proved categorically useful---in the same kind of way that jerking off is also categorically useful.

Autumn has always been a significant time for me. I traditionally have fallen in love during autumns. I make big life choices during these months. The crushing apathy of winter hasn't set in, but I'm not dreamy and oblivious like I am during the summer. It's a time for growth and transition.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, for your edification and my own, I give you the last five year's worth: The autumn of cold geometry and the end of my childhood, the autumn of blind migraines, the autumn where all the colors seemed to get richer and more saturated, the autumn of bridges. Now this current autumn, most poetically put by yours truly, a real honest-to-golly trained poet: "the autumn where I fucked up everything forever and every single little thing I ever touched or loved or wanted to keep turned to pathetic ashes in my hands."

lay my head on the hood of your car; I take it too far

A teacher of mine in grad school asked us once to read Gertrude Stein, and I didn't. It's poetry at its most dense and incoherent and obscure and obtuse, and poetry, specifically mine, already has a problem sometimes with that so it might as well be avoided.

When my teacher, whom already I suspected of not liking me, went around the room asking if we'd read it, I had no choice but to tell her honestly that I hadn't, just skimmed. She picked on me about it a bit, but said if I really wanted to understand some certain aspect of poetry that I no longer remember, I should sometime. She said it was super hard--like learning another language--but worth it. And so, dutifully, I saved the handout and so, tonight I read--actually read--Gertrude Stein.

I still don't really like Gertrude Stein, and I still don't get it, but there's this bit:

Will you be pleased to have more
Which in a way is not even a question
Because after all they like it very much.
It is very often very strange
How hands smell of woods
And hair smells of tobacco
And leaves smell of tea and flowers
Also very strange that we are satisfied
Which may not be really more than generous
Or more than careful or more than most.
This always reminds me of will they win

 And so it's raining and a November night with everything under Scorpio and I'm sitting here reading those obtuse, obscure lines and my head is full of hate and ice and nonsense.

all of this can be broken

It's starting to smell more like winter than fall outside here. I've wanted to write all day about my stupid feelings---or anything, really, funny stories, poems about the trees or about the quality of the fucking light, but now it all seems very unimportant and even indulgent.

I talked to my mom for some time tonight. I kept thinking I had some big news to tell her, but I didn't really, although it felt like it had been a long time since we spoke and that a lot had changed in the time in between. Just as I was getting ready to hang up, she brought up something that sounded very serious. I think she might've phrased it like "I've got to talk to you about something important."

 I had this feeling like I was in big trouble, that little thrill of leftover horror I get when most people use my full name. I steeled myself for whatever it was, but in the end, she just very earnestly asked me about this set of nice pans she wanted to buy for herself that were on sale but oh how very terrible she felt about it, since she thought she shouldn't be spending the money, and certainly not on herself, and all of this and that. I assured her that she very much deserved all of the pans and of the things she could be agonizing over splurging on, that was a very practical thing. It was very charming and left me with that kind of keen affection for her that kind of hurts a little, and I don't know.

 I'm so tired but I keep staying up like I'm waiting on some important news, and maybe I am.

Ace of wands

Over the weekend, I somehow (I imagine an ember was involved) received a perfect little round burn just directly in the center of my chest, over my sternum, like somebody jabbed me with a hot poker. It hurts but in such a vague, internal, and not entirely unpleasant way. It's like having a tiny, persistent fire just at the very core of myself, which sounds really stupid and metaphoric, but which I mean quite literally.

In the meantime, I can about see my breath in the living room and it's getting dark almost immediately.