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.