the power of the gods to aid their favorites



I found this silly picture of me and my deer from over Christmas. I know I haven't been posting very entertaining stuff recently, (much better than continual dark muttering as featured in this autumn, right?) but I'm still here. This is hard, but I'm okay, and I'm getting better. Right now I have the ragged cough of a Charles Dickens orphan. This week has had difficult spots, but I feel more alive, raw, argumentative, and turned on than I have in some time, and that feels amazing.

God, I wish I could tell you something actually funny or interesting. The snow I walk through on the way to and from work makes a pasty noise when I move through it. Does that make sense? A noise like stirring thick paste. And the mountains were incredible tonight--a line of dark indigo under the electric blue of the sky, with just one or two first bright stars out. I feel like I've written about that exact thing in this blog before. A girl likes blue. If it snowed more, it would be okay, but it would also be okay if it got to be spring and the snow melted and turned that stream up on the Augusta highland trail to milkwater.

Work is going well. Next week I get to spend implementing a plan I wrote up. I'm proud of it. I'm ready for some winning.

A secret is: death has been creeping around in my life this week. A secret is: I just took off my bra. They just discovered bits of two new old Sappho poems; 99% of her work is lost, but some collector came forward with these scraps, and now, today, they're not lost: I can read them on the internet. The poem is referred to by scholars as "Brothers"--it's about Sappho's brother, Charaxus, a wayfarer who traveled to Egypt and spent a fortune to buy the freedom of a beautiful slave he had fallen in love with. Sappho was very exasperated, but I think fondly.

Just send me along, and command me
To offer many prayers to Queen Hera
That Charaxus should arrive here, with
His ship intact,

And find us safe. For the rest,
Let us turn it all over to higher powers;
For periods of calm quickly follow after
Great squalls.