Stand up straight at the foot of your love, I lift my shirt up

got a big surprise

My inner dragon is counting the lances.

*

Positive skies
long hair
helping like
white teeth
white lips
compliments that fell flat
old names
new friends
family
stars
lights
old lakes
running hard
running in the fog
running better
pretty hair
memory pits

I started a post on what-I-think-about-feminism yesterday, but then got distracted and wrote something else. (Probably for the best; my buddy Travis has described me as "the most legitimately sexist person I know" and "a monster" but I think he meant all that in a playfully affectionate way. Plus that's poppycock, I disdain weakness equally.)

Spring has sprung here in the valley! The daffodils are up and I'm cleaning my house in a cool wrap skirt.

-bubble water
-flowers coming up from under the porch
-feeling like I've done a good job
-being in a good little mood
-putting away my winter clothes
-planting seeds
-yes please
-yes please
-yes please

Positive things

-smelling the weird lukewarm bagel stale carpet cut grass and mold bookpage old tree smell of my once-campus
-not thinking about people who don't deserve thinking about
-not getting something and deciding I didn't want it that bad anyway
-solar eclipses, equinox, and all my favorite kinds of chaos
-keeping it together generally
-no creepers thus far this week
-Aries rising
-a girl I like and know well enough to have traded clothes with is about to have a baby like tonight and she's been texting me through the contractions and I'm excited and terrified and jealous for her
-I bought myself a beer tonight in a bar as I worked the last hour of my day and tomorrow I'm gonna buy myself flowers (I'm a great boyfriend!)
-seeing old teachers and having them be glad to see me
-the coveted clean kitchen
-my favorite poet in the entire world reading tomorrow, and me, a little goon, getting to go see
-66 on Saturday
-I'm great at getting off
-I look good in wizard hats according to right now (see allowing yourself to be bummed for one hot second and then letting it go)
-sister hazel

Yes please

“It’s called Yes Please because it is the constant struggle and often the right answer. Can we figure out what we want, ask for it, and stop talking? Yes please. Is being vulnerable a power position? Yes please. (...) I love saying “yes” and I love saying “please.” Saying “yes” doesn’t mean I don’t know how to say no, and saying “please” doesn’t mean I am waiting for permission. “Yes please” sounds powerful and concise. It’s a response and a request. It is not about being a good girl; it is about being a real woman. It’s also a title I can tell my kids. I like when they say “Yes please” because most people are rude and nice manners are the secret keys to the universe.” 
-Amy Poehler

something positive

if I stay here, trouble will find me

It was good to be back in the Troll Fense this weekend. Though I was out with some of the core few, by the nature of the event, I spent a good deal of time alone in the deep woods. I always underestimate the restorative power of some time by myself like that.  I did a lot of thinking, and I feel centered and more like myself than I have recently.

give me a minute now to figure out my state ten days late

Are teabag fortunes hard to live up to, sometimes?

I got this one a day or two ago (although that's definitely not my picture.)

*

tea and other tranquilizers
wings
my inventories
the unacknowledged stuff
90s music

*

If I was Crazy Horse, and a god rose up out of the water of my favorite lake on horseback, and spoke prophesy to me, the advice would likely be something like

-Don't ask what this waiting means or why
-You can't pull off blue eyeliner so stop trying
-You sure spend a lot of time thinking about arrowheads for a girl who has never found one

*

My inner dragon is reasoning with the captors.

-good to see and help my friends
-good to feel the sun
-warm weather pjs or lack thereof
-new bra
-old news

I was unafraid I was a boy it was a tender age

 

 Serrano pepper martini from Lucky, a class act bar down in my own old stomping grounds of Roanoke. I just wanted a regular gin martini, but that was as close as we got, and I always wanted to try Hendricks gin. Being back in the New River valley under a snowfall reminded me of working at Hollins teaching a bunch of bored college girls, during what I'd come to remember as a very stressful, sad period of my life: a time I felt very lost and alone. These parallels and patterns. 

 

I feel like I need to realtalk with myself. This blog is getting too sad. Looking back over my entries for 2015, it seems a litany of helpless flailing. I have a hard time articulating things sometimes, and so it comes out a vague mess. My confessional runaway truck ramps are closed for maintenance. I was talking to a friend this week, and he mentioned how difficult it is to just say "I am having a hard time." let alone the darker and infinitely more pitiful "I need help" or say "uncle."  But what I really want to say is nothing on the topic. Vulnerability is such a drag.

 

I am really missing the positivity point, and this is shaping up to be an awful year. The last time I felt like this, I medicated myself into a robot. But last time, I was sick. A bad thing happened to me, and physically, I was dealing with it, in addition to whatever mental stuff. This time, I feel like I'm just paying attention, and I should figure my shit out. Some large part of it---like the grief about family stuff--I can't just wish away or forget. If this is my 2015, I should own it and make policies about getting through the week.

 

So tonight, as Sitting Bull's Lakota fightsong went:

Comrades, whoever runs away,
He is a woman, they say;
Therefore, through many trials,

My life is short!

happy, I'm happy, but that ain't good enough

I've been in a weird little funk all week. I keep trying to climb out of it and then just falling back in.

At least all these wonderfully-depressing picture of snow on the graveyard that is my yard. 

-it did snow
-my breasts are looking great
-my transcripts arrived and reminded me that at least I was once really smart and didn't fuck up grad school
-wearing my fatigues
-no horrible dreams last night for once
-talked to my grandma



So yeah, I don't know. My inner dragon is sitting at the table.

Gouge away

-the warmth was turning all the snow to mist during my drive in
-I got a free scone
-it might snow tomorrow


I'm not doing great on this positivity thing. I'm feeling a little lost.

let them bleed, let them wash away

This is one of those days where I felt like I should have a cartoon storm cloud over my head raining just on me. I could just use a lucky break--a little mercy, you know? I think sitting around wishing for such things is utterly foolish. I despise that quality in myself. I should trust to the consistency. The good work of destroying expectation where I find it, and planing.

I got to see my friends, though: a positive. On my way home, I saw a grey fox tipping over a trashcan on a snowbank. Little trashfox with green eyeshine and a black face. I'm chewing on my split lip and tasting the blood.

-I have peppermint tea
-I have one sharp knife

My inner dragon is sleeping in the deep places.