and I did not fight it and it did not hurt

I see problems down the line; I know they're not mine (Don't let the darkness eat you up)

During last night's evening run, I came around a bend and saw the most powerful woman running up the same hill I was coming down. She was frowning hard with the kind of concentration a good runner has when they are distracted unraveling the physical puzzle of a steep slope, and her face was red. She wasn't wearing makeup. Her hair was blonde, but not my ash, more like honeybrown. She had big, pretty breasts and a super cut little stomach, and she was just eating up that hill like it was every part of a balanced breakfast. Even though she looked intimidating as hell, she gave me a little up-nod as we passed, and I smiled at her. A true bad bitch: a great inspiration. Every step after that, I ran harder and faster for seeing her.


*

I was going into the library last night with a book (returning Manassas to Appomattox ughh I can't stop and I won't stop) and I held the door for an old man. He laughed and told me "And here I thought chivalry was dead!" I just laughed, but I wanted to say back You have no idea!

General, I shall lead my division on.

*

Speaking on nostalgia and civil war, I had a peculiar scent memory the other day.

I don't really care for perfume, and I don't buy it. I like my coat to be glossy and soft like a bad little thoroughbred, so I put on body oil every time I get out of the shower. I usually pick straightforward, simple scents I like for that: lavender, lemon essential oils. I'm put off by the idea of spending a ton of money on something overpowering. It's not that my disdain for big perfumey scents is related to it being "girly"crap or that I'm snobbish about spending money for quality stuff. I'm not above spending on things that make me feel like a hot, confident piece of ass. I feel sexy with cute silk unders or my machete hanging off my hip. The seeming contradiction doesn't have meaning to me. I like nice makeup. I also like getting dirty.

Perfume though: so I do wear it occasionally, but rarely. I have two scents, both received as gifts, and I switch between them season by season whenever the feeling takes me to put on something extra. I wear them so rarely that this arrangement has lasted an embarrassingly long time.

Anyway: about a week or so ago, I was getting ready to go out, and I put on my "warm weather" scent for the first time this year: honeysuckle. Since I was getting dressed, I was wearing little enough that I could feel the creamy sort of just-warmed-up-to-bare-skin-temperature feeling of the air on my skin. Everything had that soft, gloamy dusk light. Pale new spring. I could smell the cold fragrance of daffodils blooming outside the open window, clean sweat, sex, and my old honeysuckle perfume.

It smelled so exactly like the end of college to me. I was that girl again, absolutely and completely, standing in her skin for just one single second. It gave me this hardchoke swallowy half-sob feeling in my throat: not good or bad, just potent, electric, significant.

So Tuesday night, I drank an old fashioned and impulse-bought some Le Labo samples.

Yesterdays' full moon eclipse was a years-long cycle just finished. But does anything in astrology ever truly finish, or does it just go looping off to the far end of the orbit for a pass in another generation?

*

Speaking a little on moons: the current moon is waning off: traditionally, into a cursing moon. It reminds me of a long talk I had with my friend Chris about curses. I respect Chris tremendously, and I'm always curious to hear his thoughts on these kinds of things. He's both very wise, and also proved willing to look into the blackholes in my personality and yell me back in line when I need it. His talents lie in the realm of finding and binding, and you have to admire that in a world of chaos, careless irresponsibility, and abandonment.

When we talked, he seemed to think the warnings against curses were metaphorical: holding onto hate only destroys the bearer. It's inherent that such things would rebound simply by their nature. He also questioned the level of true hatred needed to conjure that kind of thing, sort of like the logic of unforgivable spells in Harry Potter--needing to "mean it." How much fury does anyone really possess?

It made me smile, trying to imagine the weak-ass curses produced by garden-variety hate. I hope you forget the most important item on your grocery list! I hope your house gets fruit flies! I hope your hair looks bad today!

I got some feedback recently that talking about my writing process might be interesting to blog about, and so this is me doing that. Poems for me start like that: little tiny nubs of hypothetical ideas that I can try to spin out. Tame curses.

Yeats, from "Easter"

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?

Going out to the woods is like an oil change for my heart. Every time I go, I feel like the space has gifts for me if I'm willing to be alone, be open, and listen. What came home to me this trip was this sense of unlimited potential. Scale. Perspective. This world has capacity for such incredible optimism and wonder. In the old dead trees, baby buzzards are sleeping in eggs under their parents. Spring ephemeral flowers are poking up along the roadsides, doing the good, hard work of waking up the pollinators. They get up in the dark every year absolutely unnoticed, bloom and vanish, but without them, the insects who keep the world fruiting would have nothing to eat.

What is the sum of all my great dramatic disappointments compared to that kind of relentless generosity?

Silence is beauty; words only confuse the task

little too late, too late for this, isn't it a little too late for this

Lately, I know this blog hasn't been particularly positive. I've learned some hard lessons about myself and others, and I'm trying to feel that and embrace what this pain has to teach me. Amid bitterness and disappointment, there is also calm, peace, and letting go. 

Tomorrow afternoon, I'm really looking forward to going west to my favorite camping haunt and breaking my body on campcraft and firewood. I'll set up megatent with my buds, drink a keg of cider, and try to reset the way work and nature only can with me. Camping in the snow is the perfect meditation for my internal world right now. 

Tonight should be good. Premiering our first beer at brew club at Chappy's, then doing a little bar hopping.  I'm going to wear something hot. Like a sweater. 

do not look back, walk straight home. after that, be sensible.

Up in my bedroom listening to the first spring thundershower. Lovely, lovely weather & pink lipstick.

you were always pretty reckless with your love

This weekend, I felt a bit like Martha Stewart, but like with machine gun tits. Friday night I stayed up until four, then got up, made three frittatas (carmelized onion, goat cheese, mushroom, a spanakopita style one, and a southwest ham/habenero) and mimosas for 8 people, Then Josh and I threw down on the house in excellent style. Got so much spring cleaning done that everything is all glowy. All meals planned for the week, all groceries bought. As a reward for myself, I went on a five mile run to some good metal.

The party was really fun. I got to catch up with some people I'd really been missing, including Jr3, Laura, and Joe. I read a little tarot and met some interesting new friends. I overheard one of them talking about how cool he thought I was to his buddy, which was really flattering. I've been in such a bad cycle lately that I'd kinda forgot that new people could like me, too, that I've got good stuff about me, not just garbage to be thrown away. I needed a night like that.

It's so relaxing to have my house in good shape. The weather is perfect for the season. Last night, at dusk, the windows were open and there was just enough light that everything felt blue and soft.

I also made a nice fancy curry. I served it with sliced spring onions, basil, and cucumber as a garnish.

This morning, I got up and took my coffee out on the front porch. As if waiting on me, there was my crow from last week, looking right at me and sitting in my side yard as if to say "where is my snack?" I had saved the trimmings from the chicken I put in the curry last night, so I went in and got them, then tossed him a scrap.  He'd take a piece, fly off to eat it, and then fly right back and look at me expectantly until I tossed him another piece. He's a handsome boy (I think he's male because the males are supposed to be larger; he's absolutely huge.) If he'd like to be friends, I wouldn't mind him hanging around. It is the crow moon, after all.

And here's a cherry pomegranate mimosas I made this morning as well, so it's not all carrion crows.

People think self-worth is some kind of armor that you wear on the inside that strengthens you. It’s not. Self-worth is an active process. The reason it’s easier said than done is because it requires that you actually do something. Self-worth is the very act of demanding your needs, and it’s your willingness to walk the fuck away. 
-dearcoquette

I don't feel like I'm falling, I'm up against the sky

You ever have that moment where you sort of have no choice but to see everything as it actually is, without all the dippy, sweet-eyed filters, and you realize oh...  The whole last week has been like that. I might have been a blind fool, but I'm waking up. New moon, new cycle, and I'm looking ahead to bigger and better things. 

Whew! And I'm fucking starving. 

*

I have a lot that I'm looking forward to. Big house-warming party for my bud tomorrow, then not long until my big camping trip. It'll be nice to have some downtime with my people. There are some good new work/job things on the horizon--I think I might finally feel ready to move on my current thing, like I've got what I can from it. Talking to a recruiter. On a more personal/art side, I've got some writing going out. 

This is also a little bit of a small victory, but my clean kitchen has looked sort of amazing every morning when I've gotten up this week. 

There's a lot of spring cleaning still to do, but I'm a girl with a plan, and there's nothing so dangerous as that.

*

Oh man, do you know what feels great? Running a pretty slow/casual 3-4 times a week all winter and not really paying attention to your legs at all because you weren't really doing anything except mental health running. Then, going bare-legged for the first time in the warm weather and maybe you've got a lot of work before you're ready to be wearing any crop tops, but realizing that at least your leg lines can and will cut fucking glass, bitches.

I did write a stupid poem though. It's about a scene I've been thinking about for a while. Here's the second half, as I'm not quite done with the first:

...

lost and found.
But she will rot

down to hateful
bone and testimony

disassembled by tentative
strokes along the femur, skull

and she might say cannibal,

I'd kill you too if I could,

and she might say I would spit
death’s high road back in your face

she might say Here is someone
I thought that I knew,

but it is only spring,
that old traitor,

watered light, creeping

out among the pitch pines.

she doesn't need my help poisoning the well beneath the rue

The new moon eclipse tonight brings an emphasis on unlearning, on letting go: two processes I could probably stand to undergo. At the same time, all the bitter little changes in myself lately are slightly startling in themselves. I could stand to hold still for a moment in the person I was. But that's never the way of things.

we've all been pushed too far this year

we'll see how brave you are, we'll see how fast you'll be running

I felt a stark peace this morning when I got up into the cloudy snowlight. I've been getting up early these days. I had forgotten how much I love the hours between six and seven, when the world still feels like it's congealing out of fog and light, and everything is so possible, so mercifully quiet. It fills me with purpose. I rode to work looking out the window and thinking. The Valley is ruthless-pretty in snowcover; the sheer scale of everything makes even ordinary barns uncommon pieces of color in a changed landscape. 

*

I've been kind of just chucking bitter rocks all week, wanting to hurt and destroy and burn things down for the sake of burning, but I think I'm coming around to a kind of resignation. It just is what it is. People are just people. People--even ones you respected and admired tremendously--are going to disappoint you. It's never who you think, and it will always hurt. And again and again, you will find your pattern of protecting the ones who smash you up the most. Of all people, I should know that by now. I'm too old to be surprised. And I'm old enough that I should be taking better care of myself.

So what then? Adjust. Swallow hard, call it, go on a little smarter and stronger, a little colder. 

*

This weekend I'll be planting food and flower seeds and climbing a good hard mountain I've never climbed before. I'll run some more, clean, and get my shit in order. 

someday my pain will mark you

I'm sitting at my table, listening to some folk music, drinking a cider, and thinking absolutely black, despicable, and villainous thoughts. Or maybe finally thinking clearly. I'm not sure which.