I've got your fire, I've got your fire

Windows 10 dropped and my day was scrambled, anxious shit. I feel stupid, and I won't talk too much.

One good thing is I went over to Joe and Laura's. Joe gave me another bottle key to replace the one I lost floundering in the woods late at night one camping trip. I played with Laura's new kitten, Rowan, and he was really cute. He looked at me like "what the fuck are you?" and then climbed very carefully and deliberately up my body until he had both paws on my chest. Then he put my whole mjoilnir in his little tiny kitten mouth.

Lit up

I try to untie

intrigues and their analogies

I pulled him out of the bones of a 3 million year old coral reef.

in my peach party dress

I like this picture of myself, so I post it to my blog.

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I am trying to get out of my comfort zone a little. I've tried to do new and bolder things. One of those is to try to become better friends with some of the people in my life that I know, but don't really... be genuine with, or be real friends to. I have this sort of... unfair designation for people. I either know them well enough to trust, and then I like them absolutely, or I consider them almost hostile strangers, even if they've been my acquaintance for a long time. I can be so defensive. I'm still such a recovering shy girl.

So, anyway, the last couple weeks I've tried to be more open and engaging. Out of that, I feel like I have made two 'new' friends, which is good. They are both women, which is also good. They are as different as two girls could be; one is a big nerd like me, and one is a hot rockstar. But I'm excited about it. I might go fossil-hunting with one of them next week. (Guess which one?)

*
Today has been insanely productive. I got up early, went for a run, drank coffee, wrote, cleaned the kitchen, unloaded the dishwasher, did a few loads of laundry, vacuumed downstairs, cleaned Bailey's box, swept the whole house, watered my flowers, ran errands, roasted a chicken and made a fancy dinner, cleaned the bathrooms, tidied up, cleaned the windows, and drank a couple beers because it's so goddamn hot I'm going to die my mascara is melting into my eyes.

*

well I was made of stone back when you were made of clay

Went out for a quick camping last night, then a quiet day today in town playing. Today I feel pretty matter-of-fact. There's only so much B.S. you can expect from yourself on a morning when you woke up in the misty woods and took your morning shower in a chilly, slick creek. If I am boiling down to the essentials, the things I want are more of that. Dissolve want; be a still mouth. I looked at an Io Moth: no hunger, no noise. I looked at a harvestman spider, a daddylonglegs: unobtrusive as a curl of smoke. 

So look at some pictures of my fucking Tigerlilys. I got these bulbs when I was 19.

Great white cherry tomatoes tangled up in the knightswounds, up against black knight butterfly bush.

The moon is an orange sickle in the west tonight. Sitting in Virgo, my heart sign, necking Venus there. Sweet old bunk.

I turn away from the window, anticipating a blow.I thought I’d find myself
an old woman by now, travelling so light in time.But I haven’t gotten far at all.
Strange not to be able to pick up the pace as I’d like;the past is so horribly fast.
-Brenda Shaughnessy, "I Have a Time Machine"

Healed up

I've been trying to get a good picture of my post-healing tattoo for ages, but it turns out it's really hard to get a photo of it. Since it's on my left shoulder, I have to bend around weirdly backward and sort of hang the shitty blurry camera phone over my shoulder. I really like the way the detail turned out. Also cameo by the hottest sports bra I own. 

I was trying to make a tough girl tattoo face, but I think I just kinda look sort of bitchy.

It's cool that it's healed! It was so gross and itchy for so long. It looks so much better and clearer than a week ago. Now it feels funny, the skin is a bit raised, but in kind of a pleasant textural way? I don't notice it when I touch it so much, but when somebody else touches it (or licks it, looking at you Laura :D) it feels very strange and interesting. I don't know how to quite describe it. Extra aware? 

Also look how honey/brown/ash my hair is up close.

*

Today was pretty good, despite how often rain literally poured on my head.

Ready, set, go. Monday almost. Here's the part where we do the false bravado thing, and try to pretend like I am too busy leaning against walls and thinking about different types of rocks to bother with any of my little garden variety griefs. Tomorrow at this time, we'll see where we are, how this week will shake out. But for now I'm drinking dumb tea and wearing my Yan pants. My inner dragon is weighing the options.

summer constellations

the only thing you are likely to break is everything because it is a dangerous venture

Since I've gotten a bit out of practice at both tarot and making sense, I've been drawing daily cards again for the last week or two. Yesterday was the second day in a row I'd drawn this card (same position) in a row. I'm obviously missing the point, and I don't know how to read it. Upright I would get: isolation, confusion, stagnation. But reversed is supposed to be breaking free, a release of tension. If this current energy is moving, I don't feel it. I can't seem to divorce myself from my own perspective right now.

*

This morning, of course? The devil card. That at least makes sense to me. I have a very clear association with that card.

Just showing off two of the veggie beds. I know it looks like a big jumble, and it is, but I'm doing some experimenting this year with companion planting and an eastern Algonquian Indian-style structure. I know it's probably dumb to be planting based on a people that notoriously shunned agriculture, but 1491 had some interesting things to say about it. It isn't that they weren't agricultural, it's that their gardens didn't look like English gardens, so they weren't recognizable. Plus they were nomadic often, so it made sense to plant certain things in certain areas that they would be in for part of the year, and other things other places. 

When my brother and I were cliffclimbing at Elkhorn, he pointed out to me a strange little ledge. It was about 10-15 foot of sheer rock wall, and then a "shelf", then more rock wall. A pretty easy climb for a human, but not something a deer would easily access. There almost seemed to be handholds in the wall. We climbed up and found the shelf covered in bush after bush of wild blue berries, the ground carpeted in native rattlesnake orchids. He said they had medicinal properties, particularly had been used to cure snakebites. (Elkhorn has a healthy population of rattlers, although as many times as I've been out there, I've only encountered one, and he was sweet and wanted nothing to do with my bare legs.) I don't know enough about it to say that it really had been some kind of antique wild garden once, but it was a pretty convenient little hidey-hole. Sitting up there with a view of the whole back valley, totally invisible from the ground, with medicine and sweets, you could see how someone once could have loved that spot.

jump

break my heart, don't leave it cold

I had just the worst day, and I feel so confused and sad about everything. But I got home from a late run, peeled off my top to do some pushups in my running bra, and startled myself by seeing my tattoo reflected in my bedroom mirror. And it looked cool as shit.

So, whatever, okay. I'm restocking my palisade.

"I don't know if this will be funny, flattering, or creepy..."

I'm going to stop you right there, Monday.

snake bit

Spending the morning of my first plain old unscheduled day off in recent memory picking a half-dozen chinese chestnut stickers out of my rage lines was just symbolic enough to make me want to throw up. Sometimes the tree you go to have a private breakdown under just happens to be a thorntree, and you wake up with your hands on fire. Sometimes it's not a metaphor, sometimes you're just plain dumb. 

Today, I'm used a "cleave" ribbon to tie my hair back and I cut myself a new pair of cutoffs from a pair of jeans. They turned out nice-looking. I found a note in the back pocket of them, and it was strange to recognize handwriting like that, even out of context. 

I'm tired. I'm sitting on my front porch, drinking a glass of bitter red wine, watching someone else's fireworks go off across Thornrose in sparkling arches. 

For a girl who is very susceptible to being hurt, I also feel extra sensitive to small acts of compassion. I like it when the older dog-walker neighbors of mine stop to tell me my flowers look pretty when I'm out there working, I liked that my favorite bar tender last night fussed at me over not using the right healing cream on my tattoo, and insisted I take hers. Small gestures of affection mean a lot to me. They make me grateful.

I don't know. Tomorrow I'll get up, run, go to the farmer's market. Hoping the weather will break.

Left me saying nothin'; nothin', like I always say

Lots of funny business in the park tonight on my run. Big old pink hay moon for a girl who's feeling a little everything tonight.

Milkshake, miniskirt, no cupholders