james river blues I just heard the awful news

It feels like some years are harder than others, and I know this year will be one of those for me. I remember mid-2008/early 2009, seeing death looking out at me from under all the rocks, and trying to run from it. My dad gets in a mood and insists to me that I have his family's gift for clairvoyance, but it's never so dramatic or important as all that. This old feeling is common loss creeping around the borderlines: the blown-out boxwood scratching the house when the wind blows. I'm not trying to be morose, I'm just setting my expectations, I'm just calling it now.

*

I have a great mother. I think she genuinely believes I'm strong and mean and tough and don't give a shit, and sometimes, when I talk to her, I believe it. I think sometimes she needs me so much to be that person and to be strong. But I'm not as big as she thinks. It's hard for me to be vulnerable, and all girls need to be vulnerable sometimes. A girl wants to be little.

*

I went to the library to renew that stupid Andrew Jackson biography I hate reading and got a few more books full of that dumb poetry stuff I like so much. I don't have time to really read, but it was a charming idea.

From Charles Wright's most recent work:

Grace II

It's true, the aspirations of youth burn down to char strips with
  the years.
Tonight, only memories are my company and my grace.
How nice if they could outlive us.
                                   But they can't. Or won't.
No Indian summer for us. It's rough and it's growing dark,
The sunset pulling the full moon up by its long fingernails.
It's better this way.
              The unforgiven are pure, as are the unremembered.

grey ceiling on the earth, well, it's lasted for a while

Pretty ol' night out tonight. As I was driving home, night was just falling over the Valley. Up Harrisonburg way, an inch or so of snow gave everything that soft white glow as the moon came out. Down in Staunton, the hills were dark, but I could see bonfires still burning that I'd watched a farmer light this morning. They were so beautiful, distant red hot hearts in a sea of blue-black, that I wanted to stop and take a picture, but I am taking very good care of myself and that does not include stopping  in the cold on the side of the road to take pictures.

I've been sick all week--worse sick than I've been in a long while. I can tell I'm feeling better because tonight is the first night I haven't felt physically unable to move. Still, I'm being well behaved and nice. In a little bit, I'll fix some cinnamon rose tea and fall asleep.

With Mercury Retrograde, I was thinking about the past. Or maybe it was actually just driving home and listening to a lot of Sister Hazel like a teenage version of me.

I know I said I'd update last night, and then I didn't, but I was starting to get sick, and now I am sick, and I hate everything and feel gross, ugly, and awful so no writing.

Ice on top of the mountains. Real post later this afternoon.

what you share with the world is what it keeps of you

Arrowhead hunting is a thing I am liking to be into. It's almost entirely useless: a thing to collect knowledge about, waste hours staring at the ground, and then... what? Best case scenario: find a particular rock that was touched by a human hundreds or thousands of years ago and put it on your windowsill.

Still, like all my love, I beat on. At dinner on Saturday I made conversation about it until my friend Travis ran back into his room for a special box and showed off a perfect, five star Late Archaic period point the size of my palm. He'd plucked it out of future pond on his farm back in his childhood. "South Boston yard trash."

I have never even found a single arrowhead despite looking generally for them my whole life. This is the first time I've approached it like a hobby, but I always thought about them and checked conspicuous places. I've found fossils, civil war bullets, old marbles, fox skulls, boxturtles, cool shards of quartz. Well, maybe 2015 is my year.

No weekday drinking this week. It's supposed to be Blue Monday, but I feel pretty good. Folding and putting away laundry, which is what I spend the most of my life doing, it seems. New Moon in Aquarius, ice moon.

I've been trying to decide if I should do a year in review for 2014 here, and thus, flipping through the early entries of last year as recorded in this old battered piece of the internet. I keep thinking Blogger as a website will just up and be like "No!--No more, no more adjectives. You are out of space!" but I keep writing every week, every month.

They're nice to read, even though it all sounds a little overwrought from a distance: keen, earnest, and raw. It's not even true, but "I only write when I'm having a hard time." I guess that's just when I need this routine emotional-leeching more. It's so easy to write when you're sad. It just is. I know sometimes it reads aggrandizing or over-dramatic, but it really helps me to get my dumb feelings out to where I can look at them plainly for what they are.

Thinking about 2014 has been a good experience. All in all, it was a good year. A time of learning stuff and implementing some stopgap self-rescue. I took care of myself. I ran. I looked good, I felt good. I kept going. Something I thought a lot about was expectations--for myself, and those I was putting onto others. "I will feel ______ (happy, accepted, loved, smart, appreciated) when X happens."  (X usually being something totally out of my control, something small and stupid, or some nonsense marker justifying my own ability to myself.) I know it sounds ridiculous, but it was really ingrained. I like to think that I've made some small progress toward that this year.

I'm still feeling my way. I still have a lot of flaws. Fuck, there's stuff that pops up unexpectedly. Early this week, for example, I felt like a paranoid, flailing 2009 version of myself. It was this weird emotional hangover from a weekend of feeling like I'd been a shit friend and unlikable, unwanted person in general. But like... what's that about? It's so self-interested, at the core, self-pitying, and it goes back to the same old narrow bullshit. I never want to be afraid to say that I'm wrong, but wallowing in misery over perceptions that I've decided for myself after hours of worked up stewing is probably not a great way to do that.

So this is all to say, maybe I'll do a year in review? Last year, I didn't for the first time since I was fifteen. I didn't because I couldn't talk about what was going on with me toward the end--not the kind of stuff you tell anyone, let alone your anonymous corner of the web. I missed it, though. Reflection is a good exercise. It's why I have this dumb thing.

Good advice

Believe in yourself. Stay up all night. Work outside of your habits. Know when to speak up. Collaborate. Don't procrastinate. Get over yourself. Keep learning. Form follows function. A computer is a Lite-Brite for bad ideas. Find inspiration everywhere. Network. Educate your client. Trust your gut. Ask for help. Make it sustainable. Question everything. Have a concept. Learn to take some criticism. Make me care. Use spell check. Do your research. Sketch more ideas. The problem contains the solution. Think about all the possibilities. Fuck.

Dreamy

fuck me and make me a drink, I lost direction and I'm past my peak

The feel-better-you-dumb-bitch lipstick I bought today was appealingly appallingly named F-bomb, and so red. I think, today, I'm having a moment of clarity, and it's hard and shitty, but necessary. Even a little would-be conquistador like me has to at some point acknowledge reality.

leave the wood outside; all the girls here are freezing cold

Up-in-my-room-twelve-hour-makeup-put-on-chapstick-to-take-this-should-go-to-bed-wound-up-from-computer-games-selfie.

don't leave yourself alone for too many days

It's 7°  in the Valley tonight, and tomorrow's high will only be 24.

When I can't sleep sometimes, I have these scenarios I go to. It's sort of a silly habit, but I like it. Sometimes I imagine that I'm curled up by a big fire, camping in the summer, in a hay field. The fireflies are flickering in and out and everything smells like honeysuckle and hay. The fire is warm on my face and behind me is comfortable, flat darkness. There's a few variants of this camping scenario, one in which its autumn.

The other common one I'm a little embarrassed to talk about, but will, because this is my stupid blog. I imagine what it must feel like to be a fox curled up in the woods somewhere in a little ball with its tail tucked over its nose. I guess it's some daydream leftover from childhood. Being still and curled in the perfectly dark deep woods, but able to hear everything that was going on around me down to the insects grinding under the leaves and the deer stepping on creek stones far off.

don't wanna talk about it (I say why not?)

I really wish there was a way to gracefully end my limited recounting of my disastrous venture south, but right now, maybe, I'll leave it at that. All told, I'm a bit shaky right now.

some landscapes so far

NYE boots.

Paws up.

Pre-civil-war cabin in Young Harris, GA.

Roxboro skies (fire tornado? sunset?)

Thorns coming on.

Rainy evening in the dirty city.

"Travel" blog day 1

Today, and this year, began in Downtown Durham. It's a funny old city, excessively hip in parts, and terrifying in others, which is not a bad mix for a big city. The stroke of midnight itself was spent in the company of my brother and the bearded hipsters of a steam factory turned brewery. (Ugh so hip. So scary.) My brother's place is on the outskirts of the scary part, very nice though. He's part of an outreach program that pairs special needs but independent adults with people their age to help them incorporate into the social world. He and another roommate help take care of a guy named Jeff, although all of them were currently out of town. He had good stories about that though, and it was nice to get a chance to see some of his home turf.

Then mostly driving. The North Georgia mountains are beautiful, but most of the drive was quiet, through Carolina. I'm looking forward to going south through some of the passes tomorrow.