making me want to stop

...but the other option Longstreet obviously didn't consider was the "over-analyze these things, think about nothing else, cry your eyes out, then put on some makeup and go to Walmart to buy a trashcan" route. I think I'm all used up on the whole dignity high road.

On the other hand, if you'd like, I have a long scene I just finished. I thought about posting it up here, since maybe I'd like to go back and read my Nithavellir therapy story some day, like when I can look back and laugh at how stupid I was

.

"Don't think on these things. Keep an orderly mind. This stuff is like heresy."
-Longstreet, The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara

you were supposed to walk me home from the river, man, this is heartbreaking, heartbreaking, heartbreaking, heartbreaking, heartbreaking, heartbreaking

I had this big thoughtful tired post all planned about where I am with various losses and plans and calibrations, but the evening took an unexpected and classically grim turn. I think instead of ruminating on the endless parade of cynic revelation, I'll make a hard-working agreement with the day. I'll drink a dark beer, write some porn, and nurse my shoulder, which feels like it has had the heavy butt of a shotgun kick into it a hundred times today, which is exactly what happened.

small things

Love this guy.

A lot of greens: kale, spinach, butterleaf lettuce, and collard greens.

Christmas tulips.

Christmas hair with silly flowers. Sitting in the garage with the door open, listening to the hot rain, writing a little scene on my phone while I waited to depart.

My main character is asleep on the stones.

I feel much better, and better, and worse and then better

continual themes of 19th century and manhood and evolving perspectives

"What I'm fighting for is the right to prove I'm a better man than many... There's many a man worse than me, and some better, but I don't think race or country matters a damn. What matters is justice. 'Tis why I'm here. I'll be treated as I deserve...and I God damn all gentlemen....and YOU, Colonel laddie, are a member of it and don't even know it. You are damned good at everything I've seen you do, a lovely soldier, an honest man, and you got a good heart on you too, which is rare in clever men. Strange thing. I'm not a clever man meself, but I know it when I run across it. The strange and marvelous thing about you, Colonel darlin', is that you believe in mankind, even preachers, whereas when you've got my great experience of the world you will have learned that good men are rare, much rarer than you think.” 
-Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels

insistence, disregard

It's been a month of old specters and hard realizations. Gutchecks. Nothing I can or want to talk about, even here in this little empty corner of the internet that I doubt anybody reads.

On the other hand, I think the identity lessons are valuable. And all told, I have a lot to be thankful for. I haven't been spending my time quietly. I went skinny-dipping in natural hot springs with my lady friends. I've made new friends. I've exchanged letters with all kinds of people: a famous poet, a construction worker in central TN, an eight year old girl. One day on a run, I saved a Cooper's hawk with a fresh kill from a band of thieving crows, and then to make up for playing favorites with a bird that's basically just a little wyvern, I handfed my father's wingshot pet crow live mealworms. I've seen him tear into my dad hard enough to draw blood, but he was gentle with me, his beak like a pair of delicate scissors. Snip-snip. Small acts of karma. I've studied 19th century battlefield tactics. Work has been interesting in that dynamic way that everything seems to be right now. It reminds me of Fritz-Golberg's line "One woman is so long/ longing does not come out of her./But this time I have loved you /so long I become the boy you were. I must still/ be alive, for everything is changing and /incomplete." I've had a lot of vitamin D gummies that taste like "meyers lemon." I've built fire after fire after fire.

I get it. I'm not stupid. It wells up in my throat, occasionally, and those times, I think about wherever I am in my dumb little story and imagine the bit I'll write next, the dialogue or whatever. Right now my main character is up sulking in a sycamore tree, something I know a little about because there is a good sycamore tree in the back of my parent's land that I used to climb in high school, and so that's an easy thing to write. Half a moon, and cold blowing in. My main character is feeling sort of sad and dramatic and thinking about cruelty.

*

I stood in my kitchen this morning cooking sausage gravy and perfect eggs. I'm excellent at cooking eggs; it's one of the many great things about me. My friend was hanging out to keep me company, and we were talking about our natures and flaws. I said, "Meanness is one of my qualities. I'm inherently, instinctively mean in a petty way. But I don't have enough cruelty."

*

After Star Wars Thursday--or Friday morning, really, a different friend was drunktexting me at 3 AM. I couldn't sleep, wide awake in Charlottesville, so I was looking at my phone and watching her texts come in like little boats. I didn't really want to talk, so I didn't respond, I just lay there and read them. She told me some nice, drunk stuff, which is the kind of 3 am text to receive. She said I made her feel good about herself, That's high praise. I like to do that. It felt good to hear that kind of thing.

*

I think I look really pretty tonight, despite all my nonsense.

I'm not gonna lie, everything feels pretty shitty and confusing and hard right now. My birthday really bums me out.

God, my dreams this week are fucking killing me. When they aren't emotionally laden angst festivals about loss and the past, they are just plainly horrific. I never thought I'd be checking for "bald-faced hornet's nest miscarriage" in my dream dictionary. (Not that it matters, but apparently it means--wait for it--loss + loss.)

I just need a break from this sound cos it's killing me

Chiron is both a comet and a dwarf planet, with two rings and a wonky orbit. Hangs out between Uranus and Saturn. In astrology: the Wounded Healer, currently sitting in Pisces square the sun in my pretty little sign. Ow.

I feel bad today, and this week. I'm having a hard time pretending to still be smiling.

good year for hunters and christmas parties and I hate

Today, I am asking to be shown what I am usually blind to. I am asking for new questions. I am asking to be open, and for creative, divine intelligence to guide my thinking.

--And by that I mean tearing my fingertips apart with my nails like a psycho to get at the thorns in them and dreading my evening drive over the dark mountains.

If ever I can't see you any more, I hope you're more beautiful than before

So today I did this dumb thing to my hair. Look, just like Kirsten, the American Girl Doll!

I think I've ranted about this before on here. Kirsten was not the best American girl doll, but she was the one I had and associated with the most, because she was blonde and Nordic, although I think she was a Swedish immigrant. Sweden is basically the poor man's Norway. Kirsten did not have very good adventures on the frontier nor very good clothes for her doll. Her only cool thing was like getting caught in a snowstorm once. "Ohh I hope I don't die in this snowstorm." She was mostly lonely and poor and everyone she loved died or left her. I think once she ran away from a bear? So you can see how her plight is essentially a good narrative metaphor for my twenties.

But braids are super cute!

*

This has been an interesting week. A really interesting week. I'm paying attention. I've been thinking about change--the way people do, or don't. I've been noticing where I begin and end.

*

As if on some expected cue, an email from my mentor arrived tonight. The subject? "White Witch." As if to summon me.

PSA

Jessica.

Jessica, slow your roll.

Rabbit, rabbit.