it brings on many changes

Today, my oldest friend literally told me "I'm giving up on you." I wanted to laugh at her. Yes, it's the thing to do. Anyone with any sense does eventually. And I give up too. I'm going to be twenty seven on Sunday. I'm so superstitious about wishes, and I've always wished for the same thing for the last two years: birthday candles, wishbones, stray eyelashes. I take them so seriously. I never tell, because then it won't come true, you know?  But I have nothing left, and there's nothing more dangerous than a girl with nothing to lose. I'm going to post it here because now I see it's so stupid, pathetic, and so, so childish, and I want to remember. Don't let it be the last time. Don't let it be the last time. Don't let it be the last time. 

About today

climb north, toward midnight

I walk through my life as though I were a bookmark, a holder of place,

An overnight interruption

                                          in somebody else's narrative.

What is it that causes this?

What is it that pulls my feet down, and keeps on keeping my eyes

       fixed to the ground?

Whatever the answer, it will start

                                                    the wolf pack down from the mountain,

The raven down from the tree.

from Nine-Panel Yaak River Screen

Charles Wright

About today

don't look at me, I'm only breathing

I've been meaning to post for a while. As it happens, I even have a couple dull pictures.

Woke the log balrog

Candle cleaning accident

Waynesboro

Keezletown

Hanging around.

an incomplete list of things I've done

In a little over 24 hours, I have roasted three pumpkins, baked two pumpkin pies, roasted a chicken with mashed potatoes, cooked homemade gravy, sauteed asparagus, spaghetti squash, brewed a giant stock, and made homemade chicken noodle soup with said stock. I vacuumed, swept, scrubbed the kitchen into unrecognizable shape, cleaned and organized the upstairs, cleaned the bathroom, did all the laundry and put it away, and cleaned the steps and wood floors with orange and clove oil so everything smells festive. I scrubbed the baseboards.

Now I'm out of things to aggressively domesticate. What will happen next?

I keep thinking I should post one of my dramatic, emotional status updates, but I don't have it in me, and I probably said everything my last post. I guess I'm a little spaced out these days.

full by your count

To be honest, lonely little blog, I could use some good news. I'd settle for even just one week this month that didn't feature a day that involved coming home to briefly sob on the floor of my kitchen. I know lately all I've poured into this empty portion of the internet of mine has been misery, vagueness, and whining, but you have to know when you're beat, and God, am I ever beat. Surrender makes for stale blog fodder.

I cleaned house. I lit some incense and took a shower. I shaved my legs. I resisted the urge to re-read the entirety of Star Wars Yoda: Dark Rendezvous (A Clone War Novel.) (Dooku has some great lines.) I listened to some shitty Bon Iver. I need to write, but everything comes up useless and clotted, fit for nothing except to be tucked away here.

now I understand on better terms since Burmingham

I'm home for the weekend. Last night I couldn't sleep in sort of the old fashioned sense--I tossed and turned and thought sad, furtive thoughts. At some point, I got up and looked out the window of my old room where I'm staying. The trees were all swallowed up in mist and darkness, but even sunk under so much cloudcover, the full moon gave everything an eerie blue cast. I don't have a picture, so I'm writing it here. When I was imagining this lunation in my mind days earlier, I thought it would be bright and shining, sort of absorbing negativity. It's in Taurus--a comfortable moon. Astrology is total bunk except when it's something bad or hurtful. I think I always sleep poorly on a full moon because of the extra light.

My dad told me this story this weekend about when he was about 8 or so. He was living on his grandmother's farm in Michigan. His father and uncle had gone off to war, and his grandfather had just died in an automobile accident, so it was him and his brothers and sisters and cousins all living under one big roof with both their mothers working to make ends meet in his grandmother's restaurant. One day, my dad's grandmother gave him a BB gun to drive off the rabbits that were getting into the garden. Being a little boy, he immediately wanted to hunt everything. He knew this place where this gigantic horned owl roosted, and so he got it in his mind that he would go and shoot the thing.

 He found the place, and the owl, which flew down very obligingly and let him creep up on it. He got very close--closer than he'd ever been to an owl. But right when he was about to shoot it, it flew off about a hundred yards deeper into the forest. He followed. It flew off again, and seemed to wait for him on a rotting stump. It went on like this--the owl "leading" him deeper and deeper into a frozen swamp in the middle of nowhere in small town Michigan. He realized soon he was miles from home and lost.

It seemed like the build-up for some backwoods fairytale, or a parable, but my dad just ended the story saying he didn't end up ever shooting the owl, and by the time he found his way home, it was long after dark, and he had frostbite starting on his toes. Maybe just a story of hunting for a Hunter's moon, but my mind keeps returning to it.

the best way to love the world is to think of leaving it

Well, shit. Bad things come in...threes? Fives? Somethings. The thing is, it's all starting to be funny again. It's all rolling back around to morbidly hilarious. Yeah. Okay.

nothing but pills and ashes

I had this dream that I was walking through familiar forests with some friends. I recognized them as the woods behind my parent's house, but deeper into winter than they probably are now: empty, brown stickwoods. I came out over the hill and found that the pond there had been recently drained. We walked down into the empty basin of it, passed the crumbling ruin of the little dock. There was all kinds of trash at the bottom--dead, scummed-over leaves, old miller bottles, tangles of fishing line and tackle. I walked to the far bank, away from my friends, and my eye caught on something pale white stuck under a tangle of large branches. It was my own dead body. All of the sudden in my dream-logic I remembered having previously drowned myself there, and forgotten, like my suicide was a project I'd started and then put down. But the weird thing is, I was so embarrassed. I tried to play it really casually and walk off the other way, hoping my friends wouldn't notice, change the subject, suggest another route. It was almost funny.

I've started so many posts here recently, so many vague, stupid little stunted things. Confessionals and distractions. I wrote pages about standing in line at the pharmacy at walmart only to find that they hadn't called in my desperate little prescription after all. I've been thinking a lot about what I say and don't say in this, and in my life. I'm vague, I half-say everything. But now it's too much. I feel like I pulled my ripcord and realized I wasn't wearing a parachute. I feel literal, nuclear.

chickens get a taste of your meat

Tonight, I've been writing up letters alone in my little cold house. I had this big idea, and then, all the sudden, I kept thinking of pumpkin pie: all the ones I've ever made, and the ones I thought I had wanted to make in the future.  The ones I was looking forward to making. I watched this show with my parents at home once about how pumpkin is the most desirable scent--they did some study. But I'll tell you the truth: it's not pumpkin. Talk about smells: after two washings, the sleeve of this my new nice shirt still smells like catfish from this weekend. I remember how confident I used to feel when I was a little girl fishing for catfish with my dad: unhooking them, touching their sides. How special and good and unbroken, enthusiastically in my element. I really want to remember how I feel right now this minute, too, though it's the opposite of all that. I really want to grind it in.

from Poem for the Blue Heron by Mary Oliver

I've posted this poem before, but it's in my head this weekend, especially the last bit. Simple repetition can be a powerful thing.

I gather wood, kindling, paper; I make fire
after fire after fire.

you want to hear about the deal I'm making?

So, Why Do You Have a Shitty, Emotionally-Triggered Endless Headache Today, Jessica?

Check all that apply.

_Didn't eat?
_Cold Front coming in?
_Pouty bitchiness?
_Too much to do?
_Dehydration?
_Over-identifying with Brienne's POV chapter descriptions of her own ugliness?
_Feeling, as my mother puts it, "like chopped liver?"
_Too much coffee?
_Not enough coffee?
_Work?
_Play?
_Feelings hurt?
_Deep-seated repressed anger/revenge issues?
_Tried Kombucha for the first time?
_Spent too long in Walmart?
_Hair up too long?
_Hair down too long?
_Hair too long?
_Futility?
_Inability to help?
_Haven't?
_Have? (Haven't.)
_Miley Cyrus?
_This great country version of Wrecking Ball: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7JgVqbh8nE ?
_Sudden realizations?
_Over tired?
_Full moon?
_Full moon lunar eclipse in Aries?
_Prehypertension?
_Copperheads?

Hah, no, but really.

I went running at the park yesterday and ran into the guy who harassed me last time. He was by the playground, sitting on the hood of his notorious car the way I used to do in high school.  He had a little baby two year old girl on his lap. She had the brightest blonde hair, like mine was at that age, and like any child I ever have's will certainly be. She was so cute I didn't even recognize the guy she was with until he waved at me. He looked embarrassed, and asked, "Did you change your mind?"

Objects are made by men and used for many purposes. But we never love objects.

The descent into apathy or vengeance-oriented living I mentioned last post has been going well. Despite my occasionally passing significant swathes of time glowering out of windows at the rain like a Disney villain today, I still managed to be pretty productive, of which I will tell you about not at all.

I've got a bit of a gourd thing. I really like pumpkins. A lot. Too much. I like the weird ones--the little squat fantasy cinderella, the green-blue spooky kind, the noble white ghost pumpkin. There is this giant white one on a porch downtown that I pass every morning on my way to work, and it's all I can do not to vault out of my car and snatch it. Then I wouldn't go to work, I'd just go home and spend time with the pumpkin. But even regular plain pumpkins: the orange patch kind. God, I just like them so much. Not even only this time of year--all the times. Now I just have an excuse. And I'm going to take advantage of the season and buy a bunch this very week.

I changed my hair. I know objectively I still look really blonde, but this is seriously as dark as my hair has been in four years. I'm sorry about the obnoxious, sad-seeming selfie--between not wearing makeup today and the humidity, I looked like a sleepy poof lion. And it's like I said. I've got to work on my villain face.

on chaotic evil

I couldn't get my mom on the phone, so I decided what I needed after today was a hard run (take a shot). I went to gypsy hill park. There's a paved driving loop that's a little over a mile and a half, so it's nice to run when I'm in a hurry and just want to stack miles. The driving loop means that there are always some cars going about 5 miles an hour over the speed bumps.

So I'm running, and this young redneck guy drove by really slowly in an old, beat-up white Cadillac, leaned out the window, and yelled "I think I love you!" as I ran by. I felt like today especially this was a particularly ironic thing for him to yell, like something out there had been listening to all the secret inane little things I hold in the smallest parts of my heart--listening so it could stomp them into the ground at an appropriate later time. I'd also thought I'd looked pretty today for the first time in ages, but felt like complete, worthless shit. So that also. I ignored him, he drove around the loop, yelled on his second pass, "I love you!" 

The third time he did this, I looked over at him in confusion, which I knew was a mistake. It seemed to encourage him. He drove the loop around again and again, escalating each time he passed me, while I blindly pretended to ignore him, "Can I have your number?" "Is that a yes?" "Is that a no?" Finally, he drove by so slowly by that the car is almost stopped, hanging out the window to wave a slip of paper at me, yelling "Just take my number!" 

All this time, I had been building slowly to a fever-pitch of cold rage. All I had wanted was this stupid run. It was the only thing. It was what I got. I hadn't wanted to have to stop, cut it short, and leave because some douche was harassing me.

So, I stopped. I lurched at his car in a suicidal haze and yelled in his face "Does that ever actually work?"

It was such a dumb thing to say. Of all the great stuff I could've yelled. All the good swear words I know, all the great right-things to say that I come up with hours after the fact.

He seemed genuinely confused too. He had blue eyes and he looked younger than me. He was wearing one of those dumb camo hats and his teeth were questionable in the meth kind of way. Of course. Of fucking course. My meaning sunk in, and he let the car roll on. He smiled his big dumb methtooth smile and offered, hopefully, sheepishly, boyishly, "..Uh...Maybe?"

I physically felt something shift in my head. It made a little click.

it's about that time

The weather is weirding me out a little. I have pulled out and sorted all of my winter clothes, put away my summer, but then all the sudden, summer some more. I don't mind warm, but I wish it would make up its mind. I also want to wear my new green wool sweater like a girl. Today, there's rain coming still far off, and the tree outside my bedroom window is making such much noise with the leaves. I'm feeling more like myself for this time of year, but I'm not sure if I'm riding this, or this is riding me.

from With a Ravenous Spike by Beckian Fritz Goldberg

Do you know, even if it is trying to make me kill myself with vitamin D deficiency, I love this time of year. I take what I get. I wanna wear my cutoffs one last time before it gets cold. I was looking through old posts in this blog and I think you could play a drinking game in which you take a shot for every instance wherein I mention cutoffs, running alone, doing laundry, being 26, or where I used a run-on sentence. And at the end you die.  This poem keeps coming to me in the early fall morning when I'm getting ready, making coffee in the kitchen. The day begins with what we've left behind.


...this hunter’s hour—a parity of coolness 
and hand, dream and ear. Coyote, I return 
to my only true subject in light 
of desert autumn; no amount of road or house 
or urban sprawling drives me out. Though long-winged 
memory pursues me: the chick responds to the shadow 
of a hawk even before it’s out of the shell. And in my bed 
the fever’s passing made me wonder if daily a secret combustible 
need makes a man quieter, more polite, more 
carefully correct, lest he flame— 
We are what eats us. Coyote. 
The dog-star’s fading, and the only woman-star 
I can name is a burning princess once 
fed to the jaws of a serpent. 
A story before you sleep. From that dark cave 
poked in the mountain the city is only haze, glint. 
The day begins with what 
we’ve left behind. Oh, slowly, I get to my eyes, 
face, mouth, shirt, stunned kitchen. 

We interrupt this series of increasingly-depressing posts to bring you a cool picture of my dragon henna.

With it being my right hand, and upside down, and the underside of my arm, this was actually a really difficult picture to take. But that gives you the extra added bonus of a great shot of my Norwegian calves.

I'm not actually that good at anything, least of all plans.

we could call this low tide

I felt so removed from myself and everything today. Nothing I want applies. I like how my hair smells and I ran hard and well tonight. It's cold, but I've got honey-baked apples and a plan for the week.

now it looks like this: you can swallow or you can spit, you can throw it up or choke on it

I read this trendy I'm-a-working-girl-in-my-20s piece in a funny, popular blog (see: opposite of this blog) about crying while exercising. That sounds weird, but the writer's position was like, sometimes it's just a bad day and because you're in your 20s and still basically an adultchild, you want to burst into unmanly tears, but there's not really a great time with work and corporate important job and you can feel it all welling up. But she said it's great because nobody can tell you're crying at the gym, maybe you're just really into the workout and sweating in a weird eye-face way. (I don't get funny working girl trend pieces.) 

 I did actually get to try this technique out this evening, though, during a particularly vulnerable-mooded run in the usually-deserted graveyard. I always run alone, so I mostly don't really think about how I look to other people. Tina Fey has this great quote in her career advice book. She says, "Some people say, “Never let them see you cry.” I say, if you’re so mad you could just cry, then cry. It terrifies everyone." But... it turns out it's really hard to cry and also breathe when you're running. I thought I was gonna die, and when I stopped to choke on the air not going through my paralyzed lungs, my elderly hermit neighbor appeared out of nowhere to walk calmly past me as I gasped and hyperventilated and audibly sobbed. It was not my greatest moment. I want to write a trendy I'm-a-working-girl-in-my-20s funny piece about that.

Today was stupid enough to listen to the Goo Goo Dolls un-ironically and then later (now) believe that all of U2's album Achtung Baby accurately represents all my jammy, earnest feelings. (Stickwytch says, Back in highschool? Signs point to yes. Except now I get all the oral sex references in said album.) But really fucking stupid. I always write in this blog when I'm in a bad mood.

I think it's going to rain tomorrow. It felt like rain. I had a weird conversation recently with somebody who doesn't know me very well and I was thinking about that when I was cry-running. I've been told before that I'm a hard person to get to know, which seems like a little bullshit. (For instance, I just wrote about how I cried today for no reason except feeling helpless, inept, and confused.) But anyway, so I was being polite to someone I knew vaguely who complained of me being a hard person to make plans with or get to know in any genuine capacity. "You're such a diplomat!" I wanted to say, no, idiot, I'm an explorer. And as my boy Charles Wright says, All explorers must die of heartbreak. Middle-aged poets too. 

This post has so many quotes in it so far--you'd think I was getting senior symposium credit for it. I don't care if I seem dramatic and overwrought. I am dramatic and overwrought. Did you know the poet whose bit I posted yesterday, she was a PhD student of Charles Wright at UVA. I know her work because she was friends with a teacher of mine who lived in C-ville concurrently. If I'm an explorer, though, I'm chewing over the same piece of ground obsessively and never making any progress, tonight and always. Back in high school, right? 

When I was running I noticed the dogwoods were starting to change their colors. The way the leaves folded unevenly up made them look like they were covered in stained, cracked leather. I had the thought that the dogwood will probably be extinct before the end of my lifetime, with the blight and all. And then I thought about what an arrogant, ignorant thought that was. I could die tomorrow, and the dogwoods don't need the likes of me to feel sorry for them. I should go re-read the Jedi Apprentice intermediate book series until I throw up of being too overwrought.

Dreaming Industry, by Melanie Almeder

who among us is not a little alone, a little afraid?
Go home. Trust the sanctity of silence.

To think I once slept so lightly
I snapped awake when I heard the murderer's thought

of the white necks of women

as he drove past on the interstate.
These days when I sleep, I drop deeply

and dream the dreams of industry:

like my mother's mother's mother did, civilian

A funny little night: odd, off, and domestic---drinking cold ginger tea and procrastinating. You know I must be procrastinating since I'm writing. But I'm also doing other bad procrastinating chores, the type that occur to me when I'm putting off something and casting about for an excuse. Oh, tonight is a great night to clean out the spice cabinet, I might think to myself, deliriously ignoring a more pressing task.* When was even the last time I ran cleaner through the coffee machine?

This isn't some backdoor brag, like the boy I knew in college who complained to me once how annoying it was, the charming quirk of his personality that caused him to spontaneously speak in flawless, fluent Japanese when he felt strong emotions. My procrastinating chores are compulsive and disruptive. For a great example, I just tenderly hand-washed all my bras, every single one, and hung them to dry. I felt pretty good until it occurred to me that I might like to wear a bra to work tomorrow. Mmm. Dry quickly, little ones.

Still, I kind of like being in moods like this. I'm up in my tower of a room sorting my little boxes and tidying. I brushed out my hair, which has gotten too long.












*I've got a more pressing task for your mom.

It's about 50 degrees right now, and as I look outside my open dining room window, there's golden light winding through the blackberries and dahlias. I say golden not to be excessively poetic, but because I mean there's a particular autumnal quality to the light that you don't see in summer--it's a little cleaner, a little brighter, a little more rich. All the colors seem like they get more saturated this time of year. I feel excited, but also a small degree of subconscious dread. I'm anticipating something.

lousy with your contempt, with what the majestic cannot find

I'll be honest, I'm not in a great place, neglected little blog, so I'm gonna try to write about it. Nothing like talking about yourself to cheer up on a shitty Tuesday. There is productive, spontaneous girl-crying, where you get it all out and feel silly and a little empty and then go make yourself some refried beans, and then there is the kind that leaves you simultaneously churning, bitter, confused, fuming, grieving and chewing on it all night. Maybe I'm getting my period.

I used to get told a lot at grad school when I wrote personal essays that when I'd get really close to something genuine, I'd dart off and try to say something funny, or lacquer over it with some pointless description of like, a muddy civil war battleside creek in the dead heat of August. That's why I always liked writing poetry about my dumb, actual emotions. I didn't self-censor, and I wasn't afraid of being that girl. I could just say it fucking outright: I'm so, so, so, angry. I wasn't a great poet, by the way. So, so. So.

Tonight, I was running in the graveyard. I had finished my little 5k and was doing a cool down walk back on the far end. There's this giant empty field, literally enough field for thousands of unsold grave plots for people who will be born after I die. I saw something stir up in a this little clutch of cedars, so I stopped. Standing at the edge of the field, closest to me, were two spike bucks. They were perfect twins, beautifully muscled, and red as clay--two-year-olds going by their antlers.

I immediately sat down. That sounds stupid, but deer--a lot of animals, actually--can't tell people for being people if they are crouched or on all fours. They think it's some mystery animal and they don't know what to do. You can get very close to them that way if you like. I wasn't looking to get very close, but they were so splendid, you know? They were gorgeous, and I had a bad day and a long weekend and gotten a lot of really bad news and always did everything wrong, so I wanted to just sit there and watch some fucking stupid eye-wateringly-gorgeous deer. One of them saw me and flagged his tail, but he didn't run, he just looked at me. Deer are quite stupid, actually. He didn't know what I was.

His brother was up by the cedars and he saw the flag, and looked my way. They were both staring me down, looking right into my eyes. I just held my knees and watched. I thought, you're an adolescent, you're going to lose interest before I do. I was covered in mosquitoes but see above paragraphs re: I don't give a fuck. Sure enough, after about five minutes, the closer one bent his head and started to graze.

But! The one by the cedars had started trotting toward me. Not like... meandering-deer-grazing and walking, but purposeful, head-lowered, intent walking toward me. His brother noticed, and started too. They were getting close. I started thinking about how close we are to rut, or deer-go-crazy season, and I imagined how bad it would look if I got hooved to death by these two gorgeous hormonal bucks. My parents would blame themselves for being so lackadaisical about wildlife. It would be a good, horrifying story for my friends, and maybe a little funny to my enemies, those who had always rooted for my downfall.

I don't know. I think they just wanted to see what I was. They stopped so close that I could see the specific variation in color in their fur. Then they cut sideways and started regular deer browsing/walking back west across the field. That was it. I went back to the house and sat down and started writing this.

It's time to up and die--set sail

Moments ago, I literally rubbed salt in a wound in the process of scrubbing a cutting board. Ergh.

Today, I sat out and wrote in my little cliche leather journal. The buckeye butterflies just hatched, and they were almost covering the biggest tree in the yard. I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been lying on my back. But stupid journal--I use it to write in aimlessly, which happens less and less often these days, so it's a good place to find little shitty things I'd forgotten about writing years ago, snips of this or that. (On the first page: the npc sign up list from Erin.)  Today, I found the following page, written in my self-shorthand. I have forgotten 100% of the context, but judging on the previous entries, I think it was sometime last summer.

Questions:
How often?
Recognition.
What did you think on the mountain?


I was so epic productive today. In nonproductive parts, I wrote some of a bullshit poem. In future productive parts, I go to bed early.

day after day I become of less use to myself

I have all these things I want to write about right now. Here's a list:

• Would my life have turned out differently if I'd watched Titanic as a preteen? In which ways? Discuss.
• My Mentor Southern Writer Casey Clabough and Why It's Been Impossible for Me to Write an Actual Essay about His Work and the Effect it has had on Me and My Life
• A time recently I encountered a magic cat that saved me from a ghost
• Thoughts had on Travis's Porch
• Things I want to do before summer is over
• I just checked out all four of my favorite Charles Wright books from the library. I had to actively resist rubbing them on my dragon stomach possessively and then placing them carefully among my hoard, never to be returned to the other unsuspecting fools in my town. What obnoxious posts will I make about this? What poems as posts to describe my moody little days?What vague but carefully over-wrought post titles? Golly, golly. Can you even stand it?

But I'm still goddamn sick, and I've given my word to behave myself and go to bed at a reasonable hour Therefore, I present to you a photopost of a bunch of out of context shots from the last week or so. With promises of all kinds of written feelings to come.

Keyhole.

Lost in the woods.

Hike face.

All ye who enter, none shall leave alive.

Into Moria.

Out the other way. 

Spicebrush swallowtail missing three legs. Stop staring at my rage lines.

I bought this nail polish exclusively because it reminded me of salamander bellies. My fingers look horrible and red, but I was just wearing a bright shirt.

Clear Night, by Charles Wright

Clear night, thumb-top of a moon, a back-lit sky.

Moon-fingers lay down their same routine

On the side deck and the threshold, the white keys and the black keys.

Bird hush and bird song. A cassia flower falls.

I want to be bruised by God.

I want to be strung up in a strong light and singled out.

I want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed.   

I want to be entered and picked clean.

And the wind says “What?” to me.

And the castor beans, with their little earrings of death, say “What?” to me.

And the stars start out on their cold slide through the dark.   

And the gears notch and the engines wheel.

Charles Wright, “Clear Night” from Country Music: Select

there was poison out

I'm listening to sad music, like an idiot, after the worst day in recent memory. The thing that keeps sticking in my throat is this feeling of anger. Inequity. I know it always comes back to that--that's what hooks on me.

I had a productive night, otherwise. More cleaning, more sorting, I need a new backdoor rug. I swept. I staked. I weeded. I moved the garish deer skull around my garden. The mosquitos bit me through my clothes. So it goes.

I don't care for the current stars or cards or my mood. Impossibly childish and hurtful. I just want to go someplace wild and do some hiking. "Suck my dick," I want to say to everything. Except not really. I want to burst into tears. Remember how I used to be funny?

I think I need to be calm for the next three weeks. I need to remember to be patient with myself and pay attention and run so I don't go crazy like I'm doing tonight. I know I'm not that interesting. I need to write my goddamn writing assignments and think about the rest of my life after this job I have now.

Do you know what I miss about Iceland? The fucking breakfast. I don't even eat breakfast now. But in Iceland, it was the only thing that wasn't terribly expensive, and in Reykjavik everything was so far away, each day was physically exhausting--5-10 miles of walking at least, just on a light day. An icelandic breakfast is like 5 different types of black bread with various fish or dried meat, or weird butters on it, this thick plain yogurt, a bunch of fruit, cheese, eggs, fish oil that you would take like a shot. It kinda sounds gross now, actually, but it was so good then, all desperate for carbs and protein, as far into my fond ancestral north as I've ever been. I'm not a very good at being norse for how much Scandinavian blood I have in my veins. I like the warm months and even now I can feel a little unsettledness as the days get shorter. At the other side, also, I feel a little feral. So, there's that.

Nope, let's get you to bed.

I just had to say this somewhere

This week, I had a dream set in the Victorian era, in the parlors of London. In it, I spitefully murdered the actor Hugh Laurie's favorite male prostitute over a dispute about opium trafficking in which I perceived that he (the actor Hugh Laurie) had cheated me out of certain money I was owed for the dope. I was exactly my modern self in the dream, but dark-haired, and prone to hissing, "You don't know who you're dealing with!" 

So: exactly like my normal self but with dark hair.

Cool Wednesday Thoughts or Since I Haven't Updated Much

My dad used to be very good at running--Olympic-time good, in high school. I always remember hearing about how once had food poisoning and threw up all over the track in front of everyone, but then raced anyway, and broke the school record. He opted for football instead of track when he went to college because there were full scholarships for that, but he still ran in training. My mom said that was the first time she noticed him: he was running the track above her lab. She said he looked so effortless running that he almost looked bored, that his feet didn't even seem to touch the ground at all.

I think about this sometimes when I run. I don't float, not even close, but every now and then I feel like I'm breaking into a place where I could. This is possibly over-optimistic.

*

I am wearing my Star Wars t-shirt like a cool girl.

*

It's starting to rain outside. I can tell even though I can't see it actually falling. It's making a very soft sound as it hits the honeysuckle leaves outside my kitchen window.

*

I love to cook. I get so much genuine satisfaction out of it. Different spices and herbs make me happy, and I like to understand the nuances of them, grow them, read cooking magazine and books about different uses, experiment. I enjoy trying new dishes, improving old ones. Grocery lists excite me. I especially enjoy picking out, planning, and executing well-paired meals--the right wine with the right meat with the right vegetable. The more I can sync, the more satisfaction. And I like the rituals. I like to eat by candlelight, or outside in a nice space. I think too much about matching plate sets for somebody under 40.

That said, when I'm alone, I shamelessly eat cold refried beans and tomatoes out of a Tupperware. In the dark. (That sounds a bit sadder than I mean it.)

*

I got a canary melon and soon I am going to butcher that. I also got a watermelon. I'm big into melon right now, I guess.

we can only hope that I'll be frozen

I'm sitting at my dining roomtable in the damp light of my garden. I should say that I moved my original dining room table outside and replaced it with a much nicer one of solid wood that could hold all my weight and then some. So now here I am, sitting in my garden, at my lesser of two tables. Everything outside has exploded with the rain and heat and my inattention. I have more basil than ever. My tomatoes are tangled in my sunflowers. I have a little fiddler fern I stole and I thought killed from Isaac's farm spouting again in the mossy top of a crumbling clay pot.

I know I haven't written in too long. I've felt calm, mostly composed, if a bit out to lunch. I haven't been sleeping very well or very much lately. Today I was a productivity monster, cleaning most of the house, my body twice, every laundry, and the garden and patio while still having time for a lot of exercise, cooking, and some gallivanting.

I had occasion to google Thornrose Cemetery, a extravagantly beautiful antebellum graveyard about a block from my house. I like to run it, but aside from the perimeter, I don't know the mileage of the interior paths, so I thought I might find out and incorporate it into my route. There's this big grassy hill in the center of it that I often deviate to run beside because of these lovely, giant beech trees that grow there, about three-of-me wide.

Anyway, there's a monument to the Confederate dead up on the hill. I always notice it. There aren't markers, or graves, so I always assumed it was a sort of general memorial. A few times I've wandered up to read the inscription or sprawl out on the cut grass. My googling, however, produced a horrifying fact: my friendly little beech-tree hill is actually a mass grave, a mound filled out with the bodies of over 2,000 soldiers from the Valley battlefields.

I grew up in Manassas; I've always had a bit of a Civil War thing. I try to explain this sometimes to people and usually I sound like a moron. It was just so real to me there growing up, finding bullets playing in my backyard or hearing about how the Bull Run river, where I'd wade and catch crawfish, had once turned red, clogged with bodies. It's always felt personal: always present, real, mine. It incorporated into my childhood imaginings. So, I don't know, I'm not trying to sound like a sentimental dip about something that happened a long time ago that a lot of people romanticize. I am often not trying to be stupid, but am anyways.

But fuck, 2,000 people? Tonight, I tried to imagine 2,000 teenagers and twenty-something-year-old men standing in that small space and I couldn't, they wouldn't fit. It was a gruesome thought. You think of mass graves being something that occur in worse-off "other" countries: iron-curtain Europe or the middle east. I'm not trying to be political; it's just weird to think: there is a mass grave less than half a mile from where I sleep.

I don't know if thinking these grim thoughts made me run faster or harder. I had a good run. I saw a swan on the pond in Gypsy Hill park and a guy almost ran my own very breathe-y twenty-something-self over when I was crossing the road. It was warm and the air has smelled so good lately. I'm hungry and awake.

Fiddler fern baby

wyrd is strongest

After a weekend that could boastfully and dramatically be described as a 24-hour physical and mental gauntlet in blinding heat and humidity wherein I observed challenges and then systematically destroyed them with my body, I'm the kind of exhausted where you see ghost-shapes moving out of the corner of your vision.  But it was good; I feel proud of myself and childishly want to be praised.  I have eaten little and slept less. I even drank a whole "extra strength"  Five Hour Energy potion on the drive home to stay awake.

If I ever have those things, I take them in little sips over the course of hours like a weirdo. My mother raised me to believe that any kind of energy drink might just spontaneously kill you at any second for any reason, like a 2.99 gas station russian roulette,  so I mistrust them intrinsically. I've never just drank a whole one before today. But. I did. So now I'm house-cleaning with the feral, crazed intensity of the desperately tired but unable to sleep. Did all the laundry, vacuumed the whole house, scrubbed all the things. The bleach is stinging my little fingercuts. Mm mm mm. I am starting to feel Quite Bad.

I have this weird feeling about my little house, which isn't really part of the aforementioned bad feeling but worth remarking on or at least, I don't know, I'm finishing this paragraph. I feel like it's going away. I guess that was a thing anyway because our lease is coming/ has come due, and we didn't know that we'd renew. But the landlord hasn't asked for a new contract, and he had some appraiser by last week. I've thought for a long time that they'd sell this house out from under us, especially since the neighbor's house is for sale now. Or I don't know, maybe I'm tripping on 8,333 % of my daily Vitamin B12 and it's making me suspicious of everything. (oh God why did I do this) Anyway, it's something I'm thinking about as I'm cleaning tonight.

I really like the sound of the laundry machines running. It's an oddly soothing noise.

miles of mountains and I'll ask for the sea

Back from the beach/farm trip with lots of stories and some good wounds. Surely I will post more tales of various things soon, but in the meantime all I want to do is to put up some dumb pictures.  Of various birds. That I spent time with.

 

Wild baby house wren didn't like my trimming the window boxes. Later, when I was weeding, I looked up to see him at eye-level on the stone wall before me. Then he flew into my shirt and hung on with his tiny claws. His parents were screaming at me, so I tried to put him back into another nest, but apparently that already had younger birds in it, I guess a second brood, and then they were even madder. So I held out my hand, and he fluttered down into the ivy. Sheesh.

Wounded hawk got taken to bird rehab, but not before breaking out of its' box during the night, dragging one of my favorite skirts out of my luggage, and nesting in it. It was quite a surprise when I was stumbling around in the early morning dim reaching blindly for my clothing. Oh, that's not a shirt. That's a hawk. In my dressing room. For some reason. Thanks, Dad.

Very bad fledging swallows above my window. Around dusk one night, their mom swooped down so close to me that I felt her wings brush my cheek.

 

Enough horrible birds. These tomatoes were so good, I ate a few like apples during hot afternoons. And I don't even really like tomatoes that much.

 

 

 

It's amazing how good-sore weeding all day makes a girl.

come on, pilgrim

Sometimes I feel like such a dumb-ass cliche. There are a slew of reasons why from this week, but ready, shining examples are thus: last night, doing that thing that girls do in movies where they stand in their bedrooms in their underwear and swear and say "I'm getting so fat and I have no clothes!" out loud while pawing wildly through previously-folded perfectly adequate clothing and making a big, dumb mess. Today, I cried a bit, first in Target, and then tearing up during an episode of Modern Family I had playing in the background at work, in addition to actively seeking out Taco Bell food. Then I thought---oh, wait. Aren't I supposed to have one of those period thingies like, today? Yeah. Oh.

I don't know if I should stay in and make up hours or go have fun. Tonight I'm headed to Manassas, then tomorrow up for the long drive to CT. I love to go to the farm--it's one of my most favorite places, and I like the hard work. That said, it's been a lot of shifting around these last few weeks. This morning I was so happy just piddling around my house, getting ready in the dark.

I feel all kinds of wistful. I wrote a long post last night on some notebook paper, but I don't remember it being very worth typing out. I'd agreed to meet some friends for a drink after work, but they'd each had unforseen crisis, and I got the text after I'd ordered my beer. It was weird to sit in a bar and drink alone--even a crummy little coffeeshop hipster bar--lonely, and it made me think lonely, dumb things.

Better post soon with real things or at least pictures. I love a good picture post. The moon is moving into Virgo; what a relief.

I am not that much at work

Obligatory indulgent at-the-beach shot:

 

Yeah, I was totally sucking in. On leaving this particular little slice of idyllic pie, it was learned that said beach was the site of a particularly gruesome massacre. Oh, how I love these creeks and peninsulas.

The way its been going

Snips today, because today.


*

One of my favorite things to do in the summer (when the water temperature's natural failing is more forgivable) is to take long showers. I know it's indulgent. For being a girl with very long legs to wash, I am pretty fast normally, which is one good thing about me. But in the summer, I lie on my back and stretch my legs up against the wall. Sometimes I stop the tub and let the water fill in around me: up over my stomach, loosing my hair, lapping at my throat. It's actually very hard to breathe like this. The water beads on my lips and I inhale a lot of it. I usually get tired of this before the tub fills, but not tonight.

*

I got some good wounds this weekend. Mostly burns. Burnt shoulders, burnt fingertips. I was gathering wood for a fire at the lake when I reached into a patch of stinging nettles, which I should've recognized. I haven't gotten into any since the first or second time I was at Travis's farm years ago. I had forgotten what it was like entirely. I looked down and suddenly had whip-lines of little welts wrapping around my arms and biceps. For a moment, I had no idea what was happening to me and I felt light-headed and heart-racy.

Naturally, they faded almost instantly after--I don't think I more than brushed against it. I looked, saw the plant, figured it out. But the thing was, I couldn't believe I had forgotten so fully the experience of encountering it. I felt dauntingly empty-headed, which is also how I feel right now.

*

I found these little adorable tiny flying saucer-shaped onions on sale at Kroger. They are cute and sweet, but way more trouble to cut up than is worth. Tonight I made them into watercress soup with lemon and ginger.

*

A bad thing to find out during the workweek: the nice new mascara you bought is not waterproof, no, not even a little bit.

*

I was thinking about my dumb showerbath description and it occurred to me how odd it is, the things I talk about in this blog and the things I don't. Lately, I've kept an uncensored log in my head and it's proven an interesting cache. What do I feel comfortable typing out? What do I self censor? Unsafe driving? Disappointment? Success?  Crushed expectations? Anger? I feel less comfortable admitting anger than I do almost anything, even embarrassing sexual stories from my youth.

*

Actually, that's not a really fair statement, because I don't have that many really good embarrassing sexual stories from my youth, being fairly sheltered and generally inexperienced.

I remember this one time when I was eleven or twelve, there was this boy from the neighborhood who I used to play with pretty regularly. He was a bit older. Then, all of the sudden, puberty! Tommy Maddox.. He responded to our changing bodies by generally getting really mean toward me. He'd shove me, or try to put me down in front of the other kids, or go out of his way to construct these elaborate, cruel pranks with me as the intended target. I was pretty nonchalant back then about it all--there were plenty of other kids to play with who weren't also bug-eyed psychos. I didn't really get it, and I didn't much care. Maybe you see where this is going.

Then, one day, we were enjoying a rare playing together in some pine trees, when suddenly, the punk cornered me. We wrestled briefly (I was pretty scrappy in those days) and in the fray, he tongue-kissed me. It was pretty terrible; I mean, he was twelve. Still, it cleared up a lot of mysteries about his recent behavior toward me. I eventually threw him off and exited the pines, ruffled, but steadfast, plotting revenge.

But the thing was, he'd chosen his moment poorly. His little sister had lain in wait nearby to witness the spectacle. She began circulating the tale widely.

His reaction was pretty unchill. He called me down for a secret pow-wow in his basement the next day. He explained to me that he had "spun" the scandal of the pinetree makeouts by telling everyone that he and I had not actually kissed, but rather engaged in a mouth-to-mouth pine needle transferring experiment, and this was the version of events  I should repeat to people if I was interrogated by other children of the neighborhood.

Even at 12, I was able to see how stupid this was. I told him no. Then he asked if I wanted to try more tongue-kissing, but this time, lying down on the sofa like they did in the movies instead of via brawl. I declined this also.

 I'm not trying to hate on my boy Tommy. I'm more being self-deprecating about my quality of good youthful makeout stories about which to be embarrassed. I admired his pluck then and now. It's hard to be a 12 year old kid and try to figure out kissing, and I'm sure he grew up into a nice young man who is very suave at it. (I lie! He is still a bug-eyed psycho.)

I don't know. I don't really know where I was going with that. I'm not in a great mood.

*

aiming and it sunk and we were drunk and we had fleshed it out

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picturespams of the last few days. My headache finally broke, my head weather cleared a little. I realize absolutely nothing, and learn little from the experiences. I like my braids and show them off. I'm nervous.

Right now

I am sitting at my kitchen table which is currently covered in a sage-green tablecloth. I have cold coffee in my blue dragon mug. Last night, I dreamt about walking through doorways to better rooms. Headache day a million. Don't care. Wanna get a tattoo. Like right now. Of a dragon. Something tacky. My shoulders smell warm, like the lavender I was picking last night, and like leftover bugspray.

Mercury Retrograde in Cancer

I tell you something that's good for increasing your run times: running in an Antebellum graveyard after the sun goes down. Talk about remembering to pick up your feet! It wasn't so bad except when the place wound up away from the road and I was deep in among the graves and giant trees. The fireflies were going crazy all around me, thousands of them, sort of disorienting with the reflective panes of the graves, and I kept thinking I have nothing to fear from the dead until I turned a corner and about ran over a little skunk who was so mad and probably thinking I have nothing to fear from the blonde girl as she raised her little tail up. Gentle reader, I booked it.

I hate feeling the way I've felt lately, like a little bit of a mess. Sometimes I read this thing and it sounds like such a small, irritating, low-grade high-pitched whine. I can't seem to get my head in the game this month. I don't want to be that girl who always has some problem. I must be needy, I must be a pest to loved ones.

The last week or so, one of the problems is that I can't seem to shake this mild, persistent headache that is with me almost all the time in varying levels. It starts off really low or nonexistent and I think "I've beaten it today!" and congratulate myself. Then just like a band closing around my head. It builds and builds until I feel drained and nearly incapacitated by the end of the night. I don't know if this is the cause of my emotional problems of late, or a side-effect of them.

Another thing I saw on my run tonight was a muskrat. Like, for serious. Just... on the sidewalk. I've only seen them in books before, but I got a really good look at it. It didn't seem to care for me anymore than the skunk did. 

So, yeah, Tuesday night post.

Stayed up too late, got up too early. Full Moon in Capricorn: cautious and guarded.

 I felt better after a small workout, but it's no running. I have done many domestic things. I have washed my cat and my curtains.

but something keeps turning you on

So, I'm sitting here listening to my pants with all the clunky pockets clatter in the washer and berating myself with a sort of internal litany of the day's failures in a style that repeats the term dumb bitch ad nauseum. As if I needed it, I just watched a horrible homevideo online of a fatal, fiery car crash and that has made me feel even worse, and very scared to be home alone like a child. (I have already called myself a dumb bitch for these additional things.)

I feel like I've been doing laundry all night, but it isn't done. I'm mad about work stuff and I am tired of all music that has ever existed and there's too much to do. Now that I've explained how vulnerable I feel, I want to tell you something real. I want to say something significant, or better yet, funny, but the only secrets I have tonight are that for a while I sat down on the floor and cried (like a child, or say, a dumb bitch) for absolutely no reason at all except that my stupid dumb ankle hurts and I felt needy. Then I felt stupid, so I got up and did more laundry.

Sometimes, it feels pretty good to nurse a bad mood or throw oneself a pity party. It's indulgent, like buying stupid white cheddar puffs or makeup I don't need, but probably just as empty. I should drink a beer and write more. This post would be more illuminating and less pathetic so far if you didn't know I was writing it stone cold sober.

One thing about today was that I bought some nice new incense from the silly hippiedippie store downtown. They got a new shipment in and it was very fresh, much darker and richer-smelling than the dried out old stock they've had in forever. I got "dragon's blood," although it's not the same brand I used to use for legends. I like incense, but I'm not very good at it. I mostly pick the scents based on the names. "Mystery Moon"--yeah, that sounds like a smell I like. Sometimes it goes out when I light it. I remember once watching a friend light some, and the way he was very careful to let it burn enough at the tip. Then he blew it out--but softly, really slowly, not all at once like a kid blowing out birthday candles the way I do it.

Okay, so, during the earlier fit of pathetic crying I mentioned, I smeared my eyeliner onto my nose pretty good. I just looked in the mirror and noticed it, and that made me laugh.

I also thought of something else--just remembered it suddenly out of the blue, so I'm gonna write about it because I guess that's what I'm doing tonight. When I was 16 or 17, I had an internet friend--not Roo, a less cool one--who was older than me and married. And a weirdo. And into writing sexy Star Wars (torture?) porn, but that's kinda related. Anyway, she mentioned to me once that she and her husband never, ever, ever had sex--that he'd bought her toys so he wouldn't have to fuck her. Even at the time, as a Super Virgin (like the super moon, but more frantic) I gawked at that. I remember very specifically her saying that to him, having sex with her was just like doing the dishes--another chore. He was heavy, and she couldn't have kids, and so this is what they had worked out. And it wasn't like...a thing, you know? She was perfectly happy to use her toys and he was perfectly happy in a sexless marriage. Allegedly--I mean, who really knows, but I'm still her friend on facebook, and they always post little jokes and quotes and stuff to each other. They seem pretty genuinely happy--or happy enough, I guess.

I frankly don't know why I'm thinking about this. Most writers have a point when they want to mention things, particularly bizarre, sexual anecdotes, but I don't. I guess I don't think I could live in a kind of arrangement like she had. I'd go crazy. I'm a physical person. I half think part of my issue tonight could be solved by a pretty good hug.

Still laundry. Still here.

permission to rough house?

Sometimes, I tell you what, I wish I was more descriptive in this blog. For example, the other weekend, I wish I had said:

This weekend, we went camping on a friend's farm. Friday night we set up along the bank of the Little Otter river and watched the moon rise silvery over the rapids. The smoke of our driftwood fire mingled with the fog creeping up the river and I stumbled around happily to find more. There was sand in my shoes, but I didn't mind. The rocks seemed very old. The following day I painted a porch white. Later, I followed a creek through to conclusion with good company and I saw mountain laurel blooming for the first time in my adult life, and there was more variety in their color, pale pink, white, soft purples, than I knew existed, and it was more beautiful than anything in the world, at least just then, just that day, at dusk.

--instead of just posting a picture of a picnic basket. I've been telling myself for years to be more explicit. So here's an explicit post:

Last night, I dreamed of an owl, which according to my various and sundry online dream dictionaries, could mean life change, wisdom, the unconscious desire, bad news, or financial doom. In the dream, which was otherwise bad, I loved and felt an odd connection to the random owl. He was huge, voluminous, brown, and had a head and beak that was oddly vulpine.  I saw him on a high pine branch and held out my arms, and he flew to me. He wasn't trying to hurt me, but he was so big and feathery, his wingtips brushed my face and neck when he landed. Even though he was perched on my wrists, I felt like my arms were full of him, an embrace of rustling softness and air and pure strength.

I got up and checked my email, breakfast, dishes, coffee. Things have been a little dire and I felt grim and in something of a mood. I decided to drive out for run at Augusta Springs. On my way, I finished my Augustan Burroughs audio book, Wolf at the Table, which is a memoir about how much his alcoholic father didn't love him. This is the third or fourth "memoir about alcoholic father" audiobook I've read since I started driving myself, (I sure know how to pick uplifting material, huh?) and I'm always startled to relate to them. There are certain behaviors that children of alcoholics exhibit, and it always makes me furious when I notice the one or two oddly specific ones I see in myself.. Fear of abandonment/worthlessness, deep anger issues? Okay, but fear of eating in front of another person? That just seems weirdly coincidental, and it bothers me, sticks in my mind.

The audiobook really went off the rails for me, when A.B himself, (it being read by the author) broke down at the end and began just sobbing into the recording. It would've been very moving if I had not been a great deal freaked out. There's something about driving out into the mountains alone to the sound of a grown man's uncontrollable weeping.*

Thus rattled, I ran. It started to rain. I thought about my life, my decisions, and my lack of spontaneous, symbolic owl hugs to make me feel better about all this. When I was done, I stripped down to my running bra and bare feet  and waded into the creek. The springwater was shockingly cold on my feet and legs--so cold that my skin actually steamed. I remembered being in Isaac's creek, down past the mountain laurel, and washing the moss and mud off my legs.

After that, I drove to town. Bought wine, tea tree oil, oyster mushrooms, avocados, and pickled okra. After a month of devil-may-care dietary tendencies, I'm suddenly famished. I go home, eat burgers, shower, and start to write. I'm working on this essay for an old professor of mine who got featured in a big literary magazine, and he wants me to do a little piece on him. When I get close with it, I'll post it here, because that somehow gives me a context for it and makes it seem easier.

I'm excited with what I'm making for dinner: tuna steak with lemon butter sauce, sauteed oyster mushrooms, and cous cous/vegetables. Yeah.





*Although to be fair, when I took my memoir class at Hollins, not a single class went by where there wasn't at least one girl who started crying. Cooky memoirists.

I was a tender age



 

New little blue apron. Broke it in on some pretty tasty burgers, and tomatoes with motz, chard and noodles and vegetables. 

 

 

Okay, now that I have posted gratuitous self-portraits...feelings.

Feelings right now are very damp. I had a good run today--not that I did well, but it was very enjoyable. The cat brier is sending out shoots, and they're very good to eat--they taste a bit tart and sprout-like.  I always want to collect them and use them in a stir fry, but as it is, I ate them along the trail. They're high in vitamin C, and I must be craving it.

I love cat brier. It's never as vicious as blackberry, and I like how the thorns start out soft and flexible. They harden into real thorns in July, but for now, they're green, and you can brush up against them with impunity. I like thorns. Some of the best scars I have are from thorns.

This sounds vaguely poetic or metaphorical, but I mean it plainly. I keep saying that I'm actually a very simple girl.

Oh, internet, I do not feel so good. I thought I had run too hot dehydrated and made myself sick, but now more and more I'm starting to have that feverish sheets-hurts-my-skin feeling. What if I'm actually stupid, and self-deluded, and good at nothing?All day I've felt weak, small, and not good enough, and now I am wondering if my body was not just also turning on me.

I really wanted to write a good post, but now maybe I will just lie very still and re-read old fanfics, like the coolest person alive.

let's go get this thing stuck

I'm the kind of tired that makes my thoughts feel like water, running down and then swirling back. That said, I have had the most amazing time.

you wouldn't like me if you met me

Home alone in a hot house? Time for baking a cake in a bra and cutoffs, listening to Tegan and Sara. I've become a parody of myself, and cut offs are my new black.

There is a stinkbug trapped, clicking against the stained glass tiffany lamp in the living room. I love the way my house smells when the sun has baked it all day: like sweet, warm old wood, and I've kept it dark tonight except for that one lamp. I'm in kind of a mood all the sudden. Not necessarily a bad mood; today was a pretty good day, but it's more like this kind of fuck this stupid shit I do what I want which probably directly correlates to listening to too much 90s lesbian rock and then writing long sentences about it.

Last night, when I was running, I thought about all the times in my life that I've truly believed I was about to die.* ** I don't mean, like, conceptually understood my mortality or the brevity of life, but I mean having that brilliant, thrilling, cold-flash of an instant like "Wow. Well, okay. This is it. I didn't expect this. Here it comes, I guess."

I'm 26, living in a first world country, so true moments such as these are fairly few--maybe three or four at best. Auto-related, tornado, or that time I fell off a cliff. Each time, the thing that startles me the most in thinking about it afterward was how calm and collected I was about it. Almost mundane-level acceptance, as if on trying to decide between two muffin flavors, I realize instead that the coffee shop is fresh out of muffins, and I will instead need to purchase a croissant.***

I don't actually think this is because I'm a badass. Rather, at times when I believe myself to be staring down the barrel of imminent doom, my brain is likely so pumped with adrenaline that I'm granted some chemical grace. Or maybe the fact that I haven't died is proof that I wasn't in as much danger as I thought, and I don't even know what that feels like to talk about. Sometimes I have this feeling like when I'm actually going to die, I probably won't see it coming at all or have time to feel anything about it at all. I'll just step off the curb and be gone.****

This is all seeming pretty morbid and I'm not really meaning to be. I guess what I really wanted to write about was storms. I always get a little funny during tornado season. All my life I've had this irrational fear that I'm some Jonah to storms. When I was running in the weather last night, I felt like lightning bait.

Ugh, I should go back to talking about my cake, which is going to be sublime, or any other thing. I should get up, and wash some clothes, and finish the dishes, and ice said cake.







*I fucking warned you.

**I was running in the thunderstorm, according to my meek animal brain is Big Noise Runaway Level Danger Threat 5.

***But what I will really want will be crepes.

****Anyone who has been on sidewalks with me knows how likely this is.