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.