Whew, a lot of changes in my life just right now.

I'm really developing a "no holds barred" relationship with my identity. I don't think it's a bad thing at all. In fact, it might be the best thing that's happened to me in a long time.

when you're done whining and taking things back, I'll be there as always (feet submerged and probably frozen)

Feeling....goddamn adorable and ridiculous?! Try posing with your fucking produce! I just learned about "Bralettes" which are basically cute lacy sportsbras you can wear with see-through or slouchy/low tops and not look like your cleavage is about to spill out. So I really like my outfit right now.

I pulled the 8 of wands inverted today. After all the busy fullmoon chaos of yesterday, wherein I got a ton done but which culminated in an 10:45 PM random session of exhausted floor-sobbing about the loss of an important person, (Poor sweet Josh has a great deal of patience for these occasional collapses on the subject) ...I'm okay with a little inaction. So I've mostly devoted this Sunday to writing trash, sucking cock, and drinking one of those shitty white wheat beers I like so much this time of year. I also ran five miles because I have some showing off planned for a little later in the week.

I got some people coming for dinner, so I got to eventually stop taking selfies and maligning Frey, but for right now, this feels pretty good.

leave me the way I was before (but you're already in there, I'll be wearing your tattoo)

I tell you a kinda silly idea I've been mulling over: starting like a.... lifestyle blog? For cooking and recipes and garden shit and fashion and crafts and I dunno, beer reviews? A lot of people have asked me about that stuff, and I like it, and I'm kinda good at it. I don't think I'm like a dragon version of Martha Steward or anything, but I sure spend a lot of time thinking about those subjects, and maybe they would be fun to write about. I'd still keep this very secret blog here for you know, my desperate emotional confessions/life stuff. But maybe this would be a more public thing. 

For example, these are my groceries for the week. We've been doing this deal where we buy only the groceries for the meals we're going to make for the week, use them all up, and then go the next weekend. I spent 118 dollars on them, which is more than usual, but I was out of a couple stables like paper towels, stain-cleaner, laundry detergent, and stuff. (Under the cart.) I'm making lamb gyros, chicken green curry, Buddha bowls (1 per week vegetarian), pork tenderloin with blue (!!!) mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy, and fancy edited up ramen. And some goddang wine. Some goddang blessedass Chardonnay that I'm going to keep cold in my fridge and drink after my runs on my pretty-ass front porch. 

I guess it'd be nice to also to have an excuse to write down some of those recipes. 

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I pulled the Devil today and yesterday for my daily draw. I liked what Jessa Crispin had to say about that card:

...there’s no avoidance, no shortcut to recovery. You were laid low by a force greater than yourself. So acknowledge it. Kneel to it. Praise love’s powers of destruction and powers of healing. Bowing before the force that undoes you, not the man, not the booze, not the money, but the force itself: that is a heroic gesture. 

All that said, I'm thrilled about Mercury turning back rightways on Sunday and my choice to end this nostalgic, reflective period right there on that neat stopping point.

Bought myself a sparkly blue gel pen today, just like I was thirteen, except I never had any good gel pens when I was that age. I was the kind of girl with sensible pens. I guess I'm in a little bit of a 7th grader headspace in that I also feel mean, excited, and I'm wearing star wars boyshort unders so that's how this Thursday is going.

I'm surprised how this fits together, I'm surprised how we fit together

I have some really, really good news, but its one of those things that by its nature, has to be a secret for right now. By the end of the month I can say. I really shouldn't even be posting this here, but for all this glow on I have about it, and this being my most secret place. So here I am, up in my library, quietly exultant.

I said last post I was feeling my retrogrades, dreaming of my voluntary ghosts. Over the weekend, out camping, I built a cairn. I think I needed something tangible. I like this picture I took of it, where the new growth is front and center.

been riding lots of trains--the same ones as you--how come you get to talk to everybody?--I'm just looking out my window, but I ain't you

Really feeling my retrogrades the last few days. Nostalgic to the point of idiocy and stuck in my head. It reminds me of at the beach with my mom. The beach was empty, so we walked backwards for as long as we could. Moving irresistibly forward, looking back all the while. Perfer et obdura, dolor hic tibi proderit olim.

...Or maybe I'm confusing emotion with physical feelings again. I'm a sore girl. Took up running with a younger-ass army boy. I'm hoping it pushes me to get fast again. My running club is great, and I'm running a ton, but getting kinda plateau-y on speed. I'd like to get back under 20 minute 5Ks.

I've got a domestic 24 hours ahead of me, which I'm looking forward to. Put in a couple plants. My house is clean, but it needs some final polishing. Run a bit. Cook some Southern comfort food. Drink a little red wine.

they said you were the crooked kind, that you would never have no worth, but you were always gold to me

Pulled this boy today. The magician in reverse: a man who could do or have anything, but instead does nothing and is left with empty things. Perhaps magic applied wrong, wasted sacrifice, or using gifts for ill. Being controlled by fear of change or self-doubt. A good cautionary card for this current life weather.

I'm still musing on the application. Otherwise, today was a very good day.

king of swords

The next ten days are going to be some of the busiest and strangest of the year.  I'm suddenly doing a lot of things that would have seemed very foreign to me three months ago, and utterly out of this world six months ago. That's not to say I have reservations. It's funny how self-doubt crumbles when you start actually moving forward. Even if I fail spectacularly, at least I'll have said yes to some things and be that tiny bit much more of an interesting person.

I'm bored; let's go.

I think whining about one's period is kinda lame. I mean, it's not a surprise: I've been having one since I was fourteen. I'd be a pretty shit woman if I didn't know what to do with that by now. And it's objectively not that bad. It's not an excuse to stop living my life or being productive or whatever.

But that said, keeping in mind those noble, holier-than-thou stated intentions: ohmygoshIamhavingtheworstPMSofmyLIFEthisweek. I am a brim-full glass of intense, weepy emotion. My heart is overflowing with an ocean of messy feeling and I'm really turned on.

Sometimes I find that I feel better if I tell myself the story of why I'm feeling the volatile way I'm feeling.

SO, why did your big, blue eyes fill with irrational tears at work TODAY, Jess?

- bought some dark chocolate to ease terrible pms symptoms but it fell onto my boobs on the way to my mouth and bounced onto the ground
-"The Trapeze Swinger" by Iron & Wine came on and it is like 10 minutes long and also contains the line "I heard from someone you're still pretty" which is a REALLY really sad thing to sing in a song
- miss Legends: oh all my pretty little swords I'll probably NEVER get to fight with again
- no actual reason; mascara malfunction
- the weather, clouds on the mountains
- found some chocolate smears on my chest after intense serious HR discussion with coworkers in which I needed them to take me really seriously
- commiserated with Chris about our ghosts and how getting close to people is such an excruciatingly painful risk but it's worth it oh god it's so worth it
- the NASA Dawn Mission's first person twitter account
- a picture I saw on facebook of a beautiful black woman protesting some neo-nazis
- a reunion
- my new moon horoscope saying that generousity is the best revenge
- a rush of sudden random affection for grocery store employees
- "Thank You" by Bombadil--I just want to say thank you for all the times that you stayed by my side oh boo hoo boo hoo why listen to any music when it's all so SAD
- composed this list, reminding myself of previous irrational feelings

On abundance

Today, I'm feeling grateful for all the trials and challenges in my life. For the chores, lessons, evolutions, and long runs. I wouldn't trade this bright, hard life I have for all the leisures of the lazy and dependent of my generation.

you gotta bring your own sun

So I get home early to mow the lawn before dinner and it starts raining. Okay, lawn's out. I'll go for a big run! Start to get changed and... oh! a crazy lightning storm! Hmm.

Writing pulp fantasy and drinking basic bitch wheat beer in my special cup on my sex swing it is!

lately, lately

Beach with mom and the girls this last weekend. It felt a little different than the last time I was there; I've been in a much different headspace lately. It was very fun though! The girls are all on big fitness kicks, so we did a ton of beach running (and skipping, and dashing, and sprinting, and CARTWHEELS and FLIPS if you're my ex-gymnist mom) and floor workouts in addition to the standard "dance and drink too much wine." I nearly danced my little ass right off.

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I rescued a loon that had gotten confused in the migration season and wound up getting battered in the big storm waves. It wasn't swimming temperatures, so I went in my clothes, and the poor thing was so exhausted and confused that it swam toward me instead of being afraid. I'd never seen a loon up close before. Red-eyed, all black with little white droplet marks on his feathers. He was huge. I had some trouble carrying him back to shore; it required wrapping both my arms around his body and holding him to my chest, hanging onto this big goose-sized ball of wet feathers in the pounding cold surf. A strange feeling, but good: alive, helpful.

I took him up on the dunes to dry off in the sunlight and he seemed much happier. He shook his head, lay down, and started preening his feathers. When we came back to check on him, he was gone. A little while later we saw him flying over dunes. I think maybe he'd just gotten waterlogged and needed a little quiet space---which is something that happens to everyone every now and then.

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I've been reading a great book on the Salem witches trials--The Witches by Stacy Schiff. It's excellent: eloquent, articulate, incredible sense of context, primary sources, manages to quote Dumbledore in the footnotes, and all while avoiding the kind of new age/wicca revisionist persecution complex and the patronizing tone some modern reads take on those events. 17th century Puritan women do not need the sympathy of their 21st century sisters.

One thing the book talked about was to suggest captivity narrative--one of my pet favorites--as a form of early memoir. It pointed out how relevant it is even still today in symbolic undertones: "Everyone has a captivity narrative."

It's true. It occurred to me that I've been writing them (in a much looser and more general form than the Mary Rowlandson kidnapped by naked savages archetype, of course) for years. I'd not really analyzed that before, but I do: I finish one in one form and I begin another. They are compelling. They are dangerous, with undertones of sexuality and wildness. It's another way of taking back control over the narrative of your own story, of making sense out of victimhood.