even when you've paid for those sins, even when you've paid

Pistol shot and birdpoint: two tiny implements of death from two generations of Virginians, separated by a couple thousand years. And of course, the tip of my left index finger, another tiny implement of death.

*

I have almost nothing worth saying out loud these days, just futile vacillations between fury, apathy, and ordinary despair. The way I've lived the last seven days have probably taken years off of the end of my life. At the same time, there's a measure of grace that comes too. It's like when you think you're going to die, like a tractor trailer swerving into your lane, and part of you is scared, but there's also a part also going "oh, oh well." I have such a hard, practical little heart.


*

This week is eating disorder awareness week, according to social media, which was strange timing. It's been interesting to read about other people's experiences. There is a kind of reckless euphoria about it for me during times in which I feel I have no control. Not eating isn't about body image for me or thinking I'm fat. But it can become easy to be addicted to that feeling of perfect emptiness and the way it tightens me into a cold, clear machine. It's not good behavior and I'm not self-indulgent enough to persist with it. I have a lot to do. But it's there.

*

Late last night, a ragged yellow moon finally rose up in the east over the graveyard. We were burning a banister out of an old house's once-grand staircase and it had a little round carved sphere on the top that looked strange and livid as the fire took it apart.

My people have been very good to me. There are friends, and then there are the kind of friends who ask to read one hundred pages of your top secret pulp fantasy novel and engage you about it all week because they know you are having a hard time.

*

My front porch feels like a ship's deck sometimes in the breeze. I'm sitting on it right now in the sunshine, thinking and drinking coffee. There was a crow picking on the road, and I went inside and got a little piece of leftover chicken for him. I tossed it to him, and he flew away, but then he came back and very carefully grabbed it. He didn't want to eat it in front of me, so he flew off up into the graveyard maples with it. This was all to make up for that time when I ran some crows off a hawk and her kill. You can't play favorites with predators. I'm supposed to be doing chores or at least going for a run. For the last week, I've run five of seven days. But what I want to do right now is sit on my front porch.

One day, I think I'll buy one of those Do Not Give Up the Ship! flags for it. Until then, everything else.

I mean you had me on my knees

I don't believe in heaven anymore, I think this one hard gut punch is all we get. But if I did, I'd hope it looked like my personal Vanaheim at the change of a season.

so relatively fucked

Self-deception is the cruelest trick of all, isn't it? I always sincerely believe in my own garbage methods of getting-by, even optimistically, until the cracks show. Also, I might have to buy a new car.

so don't teach me a lesson cause I already learned, yeah the sun will be shining and my children are burned

Cross

The heart of the issue: selfishness crossed with patience, self-control, waiting, balance.

My head: loss, disinterest

My feet: a real man or masculine aspect within myself that is weak, misusing resources, gambling "man that does not care about the outcome"

My immediate past: giving too much or too little, look before you leap.

My immediate future: balance, decision, denying true feelings

*

Stave

"Me"card, current perspective: Damned if you do, damned if you don't, angry, no way out, courage

That which surrounds: wild, risky hope, not following the rules, the unexpected

Advice of the tarot: relentless love and hope, compassion, true heart, Yan-shit

Outcome: "He who hesitates is lost". pushing advantage, holding your ground, regaining power

this scar is a fleck on my porcelain skin

I had a strange dream Thursday morning. It was one of those that felt very meaningful, even if it was just dream nonsense. In it, I watched a tornado hit a horse farm. Tornado dreams are recurring for me and they often follow a similar track. I find the storms beautiful and frightening, but in the dream, I know they won't ever actually hit me, swerving at the last moment, or sucking back up into the sky--just like my real-life twister did when I was a teen. This dream one was unusual. The storm took up all the horses out of the field, but then, just as it reached the top of a hill, it vanished back into the clouds, and they fell to earth again. They were unhurt but terrified, and they stampeded in a rush straight at me. All colors of horse: chestnut, blood, white, palomino, black. As they raced by, I kept trying to catch them.

*

I've had an odd but good last few days. I feel like my brain is doing a good job of reorganizing itself, dumping feelings I don't need. Especially in the desperate deep winter, I forget sometimes that I'm actually good at this: this kind of ruthless self processing, throwing switches. Mercury moved out of the shadow phase, fully free of retrograde, and now I see things clearly.

*

It's snowing in Virginia today, and even though it likely means rescheduling something I was looking forward to, I can't find it in myself to be disagreeable about such a pretty thing. I know up in Manassas, my mom is likely very happy, and there are so many bright birds on my feeder. Me, I'm just drinking coffee and thinking.

*

I can't wait to buy my fucking hatchet. Red and sharp like, you know, my heart.

Cocktails with Orpheus by Terrance Hayes

After dark, the bar full of women part of me loves—the part that stood

naked outside the window of Miss Geneva, recent divorcée who owned

a gun, O Miss Geneva where are you now—Orpheus says she did

not perish, she was not turned to ash in the brutal light, she found

a good job, she made good money, she had her own insurance and

a house, she was a decent wife. I know descent lives in the word

decent. The bar noise makes a kind of silence. When Orpheus hands

me his sunglasses, I see how fire changes everything. In the mind

I am behind a woman whose skirt is hiked above her hips, as bound

as touch permits, saying don't forget me when I become the liquid

out of which names are born, salt-milk, milk-sweet and animal-made.

I want to be a human above the body, uprooted and right, a fold

of pleas released, but I am a black wound, what's left of the deed.

Lewis Powell attacked the Secretary of State William Stewart on Good Friday, 1865, as part of the Lincoln assassination plot, conspiring with John Wilkes Booth. He snuck into the house under the guise of a messenger bringing medicine for Stewart, who was recovering from a carriage accident. He stabbed the elderly and bed-ridden Secretary several times, but was fought off by the man's teenage daughter and a companion. He fled. Stewart would survive.

He looks like what he is--a carelessly handsome 18 year old boy--but even at that age, he was already a Confederate veteran with four years experience, wounded, captured, and released at Gettysburg and one of Mosby's famous mounted rangers. He was shy and introverted. His sister called him "Doc" because when he was a young boy, he liked to take care of stray, injured animals he found. Another anecdote from his teenage years was when he also almost stomped a young black maid to death for "talking back" to him. In his Confederate days, he was known as Lewis the Terrible for his ruthlessness in battle. He's the only one of the conspirators who worked desperately to exonerate the old woman who was also looped into the assassination plot for reasons of owning the boarding house Booth met in.

When he was finally captured after the assassination attempt, wandering the streets of Washington, DC in his bloody sweater, he was sentenced to death by hanging with the other Booth conspirators. His neck didn't break when the rope caught, and so he strangled to death for ten minutes. Later, his body got lost by the government. In 1991, his skull was found in the Native American anthropological storage space in the bowels of the Smithsonian. Some supporters of his took it to Florida, where he was born, and buried his head there in a hatbox.

I'm not your identity crisis, this was planned

-Before bed every night, I have a cup of herbal tea like an old lady. I like peppermint, dandelion root for liver health (because I like to drink!), cinnamon, and licorice root.

-I don't believe in ghosts, but I've seen a couple. I don't think astrology is real, but it's very applicable and I track the stars every day. I read tarot, but I think it's just a way of organizing and articulating what a person is learning or going through. Human experience craves pattern. But I absolutely believe a palm can tell falling in and out of love.

-I like to touch my own breasts in a nonsexual way. They just feel good. I guess I waited so long wanting them to come in when I was a teen, now that I've got them, I love them. It's comforting.

-There's something in me that's uneasy about deep water. I dream often of drowning.

-When I was 11, our little beagle pup slipped her collar before school, ran to the end of the street, and got hit by an 18 wheeler in front of the school bus stop. Her name was Jager, like after the herb liquor with the pretend elkblood.

-I hang out in my kitchen sometimes when I'm alone in my house. I sit on the hardwood floors. I just like that space.

they're gonna eat me alive if I stumble

Listening to Metric and tooling around in my kitchen like a jerk. I have so much to do today but it's all kind of getting stuck in my brain. I'm not having very good mental weather.

I had a fun time yesterday going to Cville and taking some boys shopping. I felt like Richard Gere in Pretty Woman. Justin got a new job and needed some nice clothes and Curtis... just... didn't have any clothes. Like he only has a t-shirt. He reports to the guy who briefs the President. But just the one t-shirt.

It was pretty successful--they looked great and seemed to be happy about what we picked out.

*

I've been thinking a lot about identity lately, so here's a couple things about me:

-I sleep curled up because when I was little I used to pretend I was a fox sleeping in a thicket as a way to fall asleep when I couldn't.

-I categorize my life by which National song I can't stop listening to. Two years ago was "Mr. November"and then last year it was "Lit Up." I don't know what it is right now, maybe "Friend of Mine" because I'm always like I'm getting nervous!

-I like cops. I know there's systemic abuse of power that needs reform and that my feelings are definitely influenced by the treatment I receive as a privileged, young white woman. But when I was a little kid, twice I was afraid for my life and a cop stepped in and "saved the day." You don't forget that kind of association.

-I'm not a good friend. I take very particular care of a small handful of relationships and then sort of botch. I don't return emotional messages. I forget to call back. I don't initiate. I constantly need to remind myself to be a better listener. It's a bad thing about me that I'm aware of and try to fix. I'm not sure why I'm like that.

-I have a sweet tooth for shitty pop music.

-I do my best thinking in my car. My car is very messy.

-I have a bad shoulder but good tits.

-I love to cook but I'm not so much for baking sweets. A lot of girls casually like to bake, but I only bake if I really mean it. Another cooking thing: it makes me kind of uncomfortable when people cook "for" me. In my family, when we have dinners and stuff, everyone is in the kitchen together doing their part of it.

-I think confidence is the most important thing.

-I'm afraid of the dark but sometimes I forget.

-

I heard from someone you're still pretty

Vanaheim days, Nithavellir nights here as we move into February. Today at work was trying, but I feel okay and I'm moving forward. I've been drawing very motherly, earnest, harvest-based cards all week. Nurturing cards. I don't know what that's about. It's not really a season of plenty.

Bailey is sitting on my lap as I type this. I haven't changed out of my work clothes, and I should really shower.