I've never been this far up the river and I don't want to go

I liked my birthday this year. I was born around 10:30 in the morning, and at that time this year, I was curling my awkward, tall body into a cave behind a waterfall, washing my face and hands in the ice cold water. I hope my whole year is like that: pressed to mossy rocks, my hands full of black loam and cold creek water. I don't know if I'm doing any good at all, but I'm going to keep trying. Be thankful and optimistic.

My horoscope for the week was, "Try not to jump to conclusions. Try to simply look."

My mom took this picture of me on a hike over the holiday, and I like it because I look very brave.

I wasn't a catch, I wasn't a keeper

I got up this morning and went downstairs. I was hopping-cold, wearing my dad's old college football t-shirt. It's too big in a way that slips off my shoulders, but it has his number on it, 86, the same number as the year I was born, which I like and think is lucky. It also has that sort of buttery soft feeling of shirts from 30-odd years ago, which makes it very nice to sleep in. I like to say hey to Sven first thing, who prances and slaps his paws in greeting in a way that Travis swears he learned from his own excited-to-see-you bounce. I got a cup of coffee. I looked at my card (the Hierophant: follow the rules) and checked the news and if I had any messages, of which, of course, I had none of either.

I dressed in an old flower skirt with a cardigan that would get too hot later, even though it's almost the winter solstice, and the boots I bought to wear the Chris's wedding. They are scraped up at the toe now because I drag my feet some and also like to wear them camping and use them to kick the ever-loving shit out of firewood.

On my way to work, I didn't want to listen to my stories, so I listened to crap Norwegian postrock I liked in grad school and thought about the light, whether it's changed as winter has deepened, or if I've just gotten used to the low quality of it. It wasn't a bad-looking morning, all told, very pink and rosy and misty the way a mountain dawn should be. I thought about my year and where I was this time last year, preparing for my excellent nose dive, and what was different or where I was. Beluga day is coming up, and I've been wondering what I'll even say. Last year I talked about what's leftover when everything's changed or gone away, what develops in your identity in the space, but I think the one true thing I said was that the only important thing is other people. I still think that.

My breath smoked so prettily when I walked into work and I smacked the small window of my badge picture against a series of access doors. I go in the IT way, because there's never anybody in those halls. I used to avoid them because my boss used them, but now he's gone, like most everybody, and I like the quiet. There's a big staircase on the far side and it's heated really well, so it's good to warm up in before going up onto my icy third floor.

*

I actually worked pretty hard today, of which a representative moment was not when my program operational manager came by to wish me well/pump me for information about the new job I'm taking and if it's one of our competitors, and I was in the middle of writing a really perfect scene that involved a lot of dialogue in italics, so you know that the characters definitely care a lot about what they are saying. I know I am garbage at writing fiction, but I love it, and will not stop, even when I should be writing some things I'm actually good at and selling them.

A friend messaged me to talk about a mutual friend who hasn't got the time of day for her, and what she should do. I felt badly, but thought her ideas to hassle him into it were misplaced; you can't trick somebody into wanting to talk to you if they don't. But everyone seems to be having a little bit of a hard time this month, in all corners of my life. I want to have hard time, too, but there's not really time or space for me as well. It's a hard time of year. Tomorrow will be 13 degrees colder than today and a little bit darker, but I guess not for much longer.


*

My spotify "top played songs of 2017" was pretty illuminating. The 2-10 spots were occupied solely by my running playlist, which felt good, since I listen to spotify every day otherwise, and it meant I ran a lot. But the top spot was Carin at the Liquor Store, naturally.

I listened to said running list tonight during my 5 miles. There was just a little light left, maybe for half a mile, and I didn't see of my deer at all. You always see them rushing around at full moon, but I think in the new moon they prefer to stand in big groups, lurk in my running paths and startle me.

hold me for the pops and clicks

Hiking today, it started sleeting. It's been a long time since I've heard the sound of sleet in the deep woods: the precise, tiny, musical sound of it striking the brown bed of oak leaves underfoot. It was beautiful in a very December way. I gathered up boughs of hemlock, pine, spruce, rhododendron and running cedar to make my mantles and wreath.

You think of the winter woods as silent, but they are louder now it seems than any other time of year, everything echoing and crunching and magnified. A few fridays ago, I went out and though I've been alone in this national forest literally hundreds of times over the years, I grew suddenly and strangely afraid, hearing rustles and breakings I could not match to sight of a grouse or deer, while the dog wheeled in wide circles around me, responding to my unexpected fear and broadcasting his own. I made myself stay out there another hour just to quit it, going deeper into the hemlocks and lying down on a mossy log until the bizarre wish for flight settled in me, and the sounds felt familiar again. I think it was that the days of the wind we had early in the month knocked all the leaves down for good, and the sound changes when the limbs are truly empty.

I miss my garden. I'm fixing a savory lamb pie for dinner and I was just thinking how nice it would be to have a little chopped kale in it, but the first snow killed everything except my resilient and frost-burned broccoli. I haven't cooked since Wednesday, and I'd missed it. There are few things I find more enjoyable than listening to a record, drinking a little glass of wine, and cooking.

It's my birthday Friday. I hate my dumb birthday. I don't know when that happened, or if it just always was like that. It seems brattish to complain about, especially after I had a very nice weekend. I just wish the week would go easy on me, if I could be wishing for things. 

who will love you? who will fight? who will fall far behind?

But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone in the bitter watches of the night

So I'll be honest, I did the counting: I've literally cried for 1/3rd of the last 24 hours and I would characterize my mental state as "crisis." But I understand the paths I'm walking intimately, and the distinctively-familiar loneliness of them. I don't know why I thought this year, these weeks would be different. But now I've medicated myself into a flat affect, if only because for once in my life, I actually have some pretty important shit to do. I don't want to go into it with puffy eyes. 

just say and I will go

Instead of the bullet point style I have been using so often, I thought about writing this post in a perfect chronological order, from the first moment of this full moon Gemini day, at 12:01 am when I was standing in my parent's garage, drinking miller lite with best Joe and talking about purpose on the cold concrete floor, to now, to the angle of the sun just past midday and the fog on the mountains, to 7:45 in the evening, writing this, a little tired or cynical, listening to El Vy and feeling such strange change. I would have to talk about the way that the path of the trees looked in the unconquerable moonlight, the cold, or about how later the woods resigned and deepened, turning gold and indigo the way they are this time of year: so gorgeous and all going so utterly and completely unremarked-on.

I don't know anything, but I feel bare and true in this season. I only am what I am.

I'll be the one in the lobby in the green come-and-fuck-me shirt

December, 2017: Back on My Bullshit just in Time for Mercury Retrograde*

*compulsively dreaming about arrowheads, moon cycle hangings, low key anxiety about everything that matters to me

funny how she always cried out daddy (talk back at the ocean)

Transitioned really nicely from rage-working-out to broody shit music I liked when I was a teenager to brooding to shit music I like now. Killin' it.

*

I've been in an evil mood today, the way my personality does when it folds up its neat, practical little wings and can go very still. I was talking to my friend this morning who has been going through a period of trial, and he was saying how intensely creative he feels in these low months. I don't know that this energy is especially generative, but I want to cut my teeth on something. I guess I want a little blood.


*

I might still like Third Eye Blind, but I can't really get into my favorite show, The Walking Dead, anymore. After barely watching last season, I haven't been able to convince myself to even start this current season. Back when I was into it, I kind of wanted to write about what people like about zombie shows, and now I wish I had. A couple years ago, everyone was into zombie things--they were the new vampires. I think the appeal was something about how almost everyone is a little scared of death itself at their core, but everyone likes to think they can do it better or are somehow going to face it differently. Like, they would be a survivor--you know? The leader that brings everyone together, the strategist, the tough nut that sticks it out and thrives in an unexpected way. It's such a nice fantasy, especially when confronting your mortality at the hands of something essentially immortal. But the whole thing about zombie genre is that the numbers don't super work for that; there has to be that all important mindless hoard of overwhelming monsters. 99% of people just died of whatever original event turned them into zombies, and there's no cleverness or sorting for that. Statistically, you're just way more likely to be a zombo from the get-go. Or I don't know, it was a smarter write-up when I cared about zombie media.

I'm only into cowboy shows now.

teach our bodies, haunt the cause (I was only trying to spell a loss)

Some days are just for picking out your favorite troll image.

I circled this map til it caught on fire

Tonight is the new moon in Scorpio. Scorpio season is almost to its end, and I can't be too sorry to see it go. I felt brittle under it, fragile and futile. But Sagittarius season is coming. If the only good thing about astrology is how the designation of phases allows you to accept a period of negativity and move forward into a fresh cycle, that's enough for me.

I make it sound like it was so bad; it wasn't, I'm just bummed about my job downturn, and I take so much of my self-worth from that, at a time in my life like right now, when I really want an extra heaping of self-worth to insulate.

But I am in love with this time of year's secret little half-seasons. It isn't quite winter, but it's not fall anymore, either. The woods are so special now, all sleepy. I think they're almost more beautiful now than they are all year, or maybe beautiful in some entirely new, transformed way. Every color seems to dilute into the air itself. I can't get enough of them. I remember this last year too, how every chance I got I'd try to get a little further out there.

I realize this is like, my third or something post where the only content is "I love the woods, yo" but it's my blog, so, what can you really expect?


*

Today in the store, an elderly man and his wife came up to me. I thought they were going to ask if I worked there, but instead, they asked, "Can you show us how to send us a picture on our phone to our son?" As I was teaching the man, I told him, "I actually used to write basic software guides." He said "Were you ever on a basketball team? You're very tall."

I am very tall.

*

I like this part of Falls hollow. The waterfall has cut up these two giant shoulders of rock so that there's almost a fortification. Maybe it's too much re-reading LotR, but it feels like sitting up on the wall of some crumbled fortress from a kingdom long gone.

this boy turned gold from blue

Sven really loves dancing in the kitchen with me, but his favorite is dancing to Crosby Stills Nash and Young's Deja Vu album, and he loves it most of all when I replace all the lyrics with his name. SVEN, CAN YOU TALK TO ME?

*

*me being interviewed by local media last night about my Happy Hour Club*

 "Huh, any controversies in the club? Oh you mean like my evil vizier, Andrew, trying to thwart consolidation of my power behind my baohgodareyouwriting that down? No, no, no, no, I'm just kidding, it's just a happy-"

*one my club members, coming in the door and not realizing I'm on record* "HEEEEEY DESPOTIC QUEEN!"


*

Even though I know in my head that it's just the relatively nominal change in light that I'm exposed to and not that I'm suddenly an unwanted, unlovable failure goblin, but I'm definitely feeling the seasonal change. I am trying to be good. I am not setting up weird expectations, I am not talking bad about myself, and I am keeping moving. Today I'm going to do all my chores, clean, decorate, maybe hike, and then I'm going to take my veterans roses and get drunk downtown with my friends.

*

in my best shoes

Election day last year, around this time, I came home alone. I left all the lights off, and cried on the floor with my confused dog.

The next morning, I got up and it was my turn to drive carpool. I have wanted to write about it for a long time. Isaac was curled sideways in my front seat. I'll never forget it--we were dressed like paramilitaries and both red-eyed. At a certain point, he started telling me that he was sorry, not for anything he had done, but for how he understood that something powerful had been taken from me. It was one of those strange, defining 2016 feelings that I am still finding the words to talk about.

Tonight, one year later, my old NoVA trash civil war junction hometown, home of all my hangups and shame and pitiless Christian conservative adders from ECS, elected the first transgender delegate in the country.

I know there's still so much to do, so far to go, but fuckfuckfuckfuckyesyesyesyesyesyes and also, guh, c'mon, rally behind the Virginians.

mood board

This picture I like

This is my favorite photo of Elkhorn ever, from the meadow site. I love it because it captures everything about that moment that I was there, walking in the woods alone (although I was there with some of my very best friends) and feeling the gloaming all around me like some kind of wild magic. The woods this time of year are incredible, especially at dusk, when everything turns such a strange shade of dark purple glowing, like you're looking at everything through some dream prism. I thought the yellow were fireflies for a moment before I realized it was leftover sassafras. There was a kind of mist in the woods, like the haze that sits over the mountains from a distance and makes them look blue. Everything smelled like leaves and woodsmoke and cabernet franc.

only love can dig you out of this

Yesterday, I had a good day, up until the end. I passed the Monday off in a kind of happy Jess buoyant productive activity, carried along on a good current of the things I love: hiking and doing. Early in the evening, I spent some time waiting to start on dinner, but prepping a little, just hanging out in my kitchen, picking greens and herbs, chopping mushrooms, and thinking.

Particularly, I thought about how right now, at the end of this summer, I am the most my good, best self. September and October are my harvest seasons. It occurred to me that I should plan for ways  to actively re-center on those qualities when the days start getting shorter. \ I've written about my winter depression before on this blog, and it probably doesn't bear repeating, but sometimes I lose track of myself in the winter months. Small setbacks or disappointments (or big ones, God, especially big ones) turn into these rock scrambles of identity crisis and self destruction.

I thought that it might be a good exercise to write down a couple reminders to myself, so I can maybe reference back to as the winter sets in. A few things I want to remember when my long night self comes walking.

-*-

-it's okay to like stuff, it's okay to say you like stuff and be excited about it, it's okay to wear your heart on your sleeve sometimes, and never let anyone make you feel like that's a stupid way to be

-you like tea: you're gonna forget that you like tea, but it'll still be good, especially when you inevitably get sick. Go to the co-op with Chris and pick out something ridiculous like Moon Cycle or Dragon Oath Purification.

-you don't have to write but you do have to exercise and writing would probably help

-talk to the people around you and be present: goddamn actually listen

-the more you give of yourself, the more you'll realize you have, whether it's time, generosity of spirit, or resources. Pick up trash and make people quiches.

-be optimistic and full of boundless, wild-eyed hope, like fucking Yan. You know how to at least pretend to be like this, you can do it for real.

-say yes to things, more often "yes, please" which is even better because it's more polite

-take care of your dumb feet, seriously, they have a lot longer to carry you

-surround yourself with quartz, which will make you fearless

-remember always: jealousy just makes people smaller

-go for a run, stupid. go for a hike, stupid.

-are you hungry, angry, lonely, or tired?

-reach out, be the first to apologize, don't be too proud to ask for help

-going to the woods is a cool trick for turning you back into a real breathing calm being again

-take pictures of things that make you happy, or that you've spent time making beautiful and put them on your fucking instagram, which will be very fun for you

-maybe don't put curses on people

-surround yourself with beautiful, powerful, mean, bright women, the best ones you can convince to associate with you, and worship them accordingly--they only make you better and stronger

-wear dresses; your ass looks so good in dresses and they are one of the best parts of being tall

-remember to live in a constant state of fucking gratitude

-eat your dumb vitamin D gummies, use your stupid dumb sunlamp, jerk off, drink water

-sometimes you read into things; ask yourself: are you reading into things, are you projecting your insecurities on a situation?

-love, or at least don't stalk the social media of, your enemies

-it's fine to clean house as an act of decisive mental health

-be a participating, effusive member of your community and build up the things and people around you. Be gracious and inclusive in everything you do. Make things bigger, don't cut people out

-remember that fire and light are your servants

-the only thing is other people

karen put me in a chair, fuck me and make me a drink; I've lost direction and I'm past my peak

Current tabs open: Recent google drive, Extra 4.12 doc story, stupid twitter, NY times article on suicide, this blog post, and the national weather service
Currently wearing: cutoffs, white button-up
Current favorite food: apples
Current drink: Grocery store Cab Sav
Current wish: To be very quiet and still, to be productive, soft affectionate talking, classic martinis
Last time I re-read my whole twitter feed to see if it was funny: tonight
Current favorite cole crop: heirloom lettuce (fuck me, that's what I said)
Current favorite apple: Arkansas Black
Song I can't stop listening to by Gregory Alan Isakov: Unwritable Girl
Current favorite song off current favorite album: Carin at the Liquor Store off Sleep Well Beast by the National. Carin: it's his wife's name, and on every other album, when he referenced her, he called her "Karen" to make it more oblique, but her real name is Carin.
Hours in the car today: Somewhere between 7-8?
Last book I read: Priestdaddy yesterday
Something weird I saw last night: A drunk 20-year-old's dick!
Favorite moon phase: balsamic, like in my tattoo
Current favorite type of pasta: Carbonara egg/parm sauce... it's so tricky..
Last google: what is that pasta that has egg and parm called name pasta
Current to-do list: everything, but especially wash the dog who rolled in a dead dolphin and somehow still smells three baths later.
Current favorite image: Dead smiling dolphin skeleton
Current mood: Temperate, stable, resigned
Today's card: Judgement

I'm exactly like you, valentine, just come outside and leave with me

This weekend, I read tarot on the street for about 50 or so people, mostly kids, before I started losing my voice and needed to take a break. I've never read for teenagers and children before. It was a strange balance of what they understood and didn't, how real you could be, how seriously they took it and the kind of questions and stories they told. 

One of the most interesting was a pair of blind thirteen-year-old girls. They were there with only each other's company, and each helped the other find the rug and sit down. They were beautiful and confident and giggly-sweet. I liked describing in words the visuals of the cards I know by heart. I was reading for free, but the one girl left a dollar on my rug, and the other caught my hand and pressed a perfect little stack of quarters into my palm. Teenagers even tip earnestly. 

Overall,  reading for the young people, I didn't have many goony teen love stories. They wanted to know about their friends who had been mean to them, and talk about their parents, and to hear that I understood correctly that their costumes were of the Bellatrix L'estrange variety. And it sounds corny, but when I told them they were clever and talented, and had everything they needed already inside them, they seemed to visibly glow.

*

I have a horrible cluster headache, so instead of running tonight, I locked myself in my room and did chores and upside down off the bed inversion sit-ups and thought about my many shortcomings. 

My new department exhibited all its worst tricks. I had a long meeting with a woman at work today who was giving me advice about a project she'd started but that I'm going to finish, one I'm not sure about. She's pretty, spoke with the softest, barest accent, by all appearances fairly shy and quiet. By the end of it, she had two spots of color on her cheeks and was telling me: Don't let any of them push you around, you're so smart, they're going to try to get to you, but it's not going to matter. 

Maybe it works for adults, too.

so blame it on me; I really don't care, it's a foregone conclusion

I was outside today, waiting, looking at my phone under a crabapple tree, and I realized the apples had finally turned candy red. Last year at this time, I was under the same tree, whipping them at Isaac as hard as I could.

*

I re-read some of this blog tonight, mostly stuff from last year, particularly last winter. Even in the midst of it, I left myself such funny little love notes.

But god, I'm so scared about this winter. Last year, I was a mess, and seeing it with the remove of this summer, I can see the ways it might set up like that again, and it makes me want to hibernate. I know that a lot of my circumstances are different now, and a lot of the things I was so upset about last winter have changed, it's just that lingering worry. Last year, I felt fine going in, and then it ran me down like a freight train. I don't know that overthinking and worrying about it before there's anything is really a better approach, but I guess it's what I'm already doing, and the equinox hasn't even happened.

I think the thing that saved me last year, that I have to keep in mind, is to keep my focus on the vast capacity that every person (even me) has for compassion and inclusion. To seek, propagate, and celebrate that in all the forms it takes in my life.

*

New moon in Virgo. Virgo is my moon sign, my heart sign, so I always feel a little touched during Virgo season. It's a good excuse to feel the part of myself that aggressively works and doesn't give up, and gets off on it. It's tenacious energy. So I like that, but I also feel like, mildly insane just now.
*

I have a little poetry reading at a bookshop in Staunton coming next month. I don't know if anyone will show up, or if anyone much cares--the response among my loved ones has been about the level you'd expect from proudly announcing my plans to re-heat an old burrito (One had forgotten I was a writer, and literally said "I hate poets" which made it awkward to follow up with news of a poetry reading)--but all I ever wanted from my writing was to read in a little local bookshop in my own beloved town.


*

At the wedding this weekend, the groom came up and explained how, despite it being a small wedding, the bride wanted to invite me in particular. I met her only once, years ago, when they had come to Legends, stayed for about thirty minutes once, had a bad time, and decided to go, so this was a surprising thing for her to think. (I barely remember it, to be honest, I was on my PC block and distracted.) But he said that she'd told him after they left the game that she'd admired me so much, that I was the kind of woman she dreamed of becoming. I was touched, but incredulous, and my next thought was, "oh no, girl, no, I'm so small and desperate and alone." But maybe it's like that--maybe I exist best as an idea, a template experience.

But anyway, here's a picture from said wedding where I love how I look.

*

And some cole crop dreaming. Tonight, in the furtive hours between dog walking and dinner, I bought kale, collards, and butter lettuce, and reader, oh pretty reader, tomorrow, I'll strip another bed of tomatoes for them.

don't do this, I don't do this to you, don't expect me to enjoy it

I'd played with the idea of writing all afternoon, but instead I'm virgo-ing around, tidying my rooms, fussing, furying, sticking my endings and beginnings. I have a pleasant coolness to my energy right now, and I'm painting my eyes "gunmetal." I'm getting dressed up to go to a fancy wedding on Ashlawn in horrible Charlottesville, and I'm in hematite and lace in the hope that their alleged properties of "staying grounded and calm" will work out for me. I'm looking forward to the night; I am, in spite of how tired and done I feel. I can't pretend it won't be nice, though, hours from now returning again to my soft mountain town in the September night, looking at a nearly-moonless sky.

I only take up a little of the collapsing space

...nah.

Too down to write any stupid garbage thing, too down to even feel sorry for myself and drink. I just don't have any spark today, I guess. I don't know if it's the weather, the temperature, or just feeling low and bad at everything. I'm sad and tired, and the house feels impossibly dark.

I should say three good things.

but this time I have loved you so long I become the boy you were

I stayed up until almost two last night writing a long post about the death of my grandmother, family, God, child abuse, and sex, but then I thought it may have been a little bit much for my only post in August, and that perhaps I should tone it down and say something cleaner.

And I will, but later. Some mercy was remembering this perfect poem that I know I say to myself at this time every year, and have probably posted here a few times, just before what happens to me every November since the November to end all Novembers, and I am swallowed up in my grief and depression. My old friend Being Pharaoh by Beckian Fritz Goldberg, which is my everything right now.

(...)

It is August. 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. Half a tree, half

drives its shadowy web near the shutters.
August has just turned September. The ancestors

want 4,000-year-old grain, hard as quartz,
in grain jars. All I have are cigarettes.

What a night this is. What a night.
I'll lie down and my pillow

will thrum like a machine. I'll go barefoot
to the window, see if any light is

still on in any house. Who else
is afraid of missing something. Who else

knows one thing God can't enter
is my memory: I, a minor

twentieth-century poet, the first
of September, 4 A.M., finish one thing.

we were all living proof

Tonight, my 3 year old neighbor, Bo, lost his shit.

I heard some screaming and crying as I was fixing dinner, and looked outside just in time to see his blonde trouble self making a break for the yard, clad only in his little boy tightie-whities. He toddled down the stairs of the deck, careened toward the side yard, and then stopped, seeming to have been carried by momentum a couple steps ahead of his plan. He stood there, stunned by his own escape, and waited for someone important to notice. Sure enough: a moment later, his dad, Michael, appeared on the deck, looking stoic, and a tense standoff began. Michael is a marathon runner and a teacher to boot, so Bo may have been a bit outmatched in terms of patience. Peace talks. Negotiation. More crying. I think the problem was likely related to bath/bedtime, and this is summer when the dusk comes late and there are fireflies. Eventually the deserter was reclaimed and even held his father's hand as he retreated back inside.

*

In May, camping, I was bitten by a brown recluse spider when I was sleeping. It must have been in my sleeping bag from it being stored in the basement. I didn't feel it when it happened, although I was dizzy and breathless when I woke up, and then there was a strange, big, swirling almost hurricane-shaped pattern from the site of the bite up my ankle and down my foot. In an hour or so, the skin around the bite started to just wipe off if I touched it. It hurt a lot, but it didn't hurt enough that I stopped doing anything. I wasn't sure it was a brown recluse at the time... I had never reacted strangely to a spider bite before, but I didn't feel that badly. I didn't think it was worth getting upset over.

Later, when I got home and researched it, it seemed pretty obvious that it was, but the places my skin had died weren't festering or growing, and the internet said some people had pretty mild reactions if any. So I never went to the doctor or anything. I'm going to have really bad scarring there, but it's healing up fine.

I don't know if I was being horribly careless with myself, the way I need to train myself out of, or if it was genuinely not a big deal. I keep waiting for my spider powers, though.

*

Tonight I did my first mile run with Sven, and then three more just for me. When I was running with Sven, we had to stop for a mother deer and her two twin fawns, which were picking so silently through the gravestones. It was so odd to see the movements of a deer among the hard gray shapes of the tombs: warm, redbrown liquid light moving against static stone. I've rarely seen anything so lovely.

As ever

Suddenly, I wasn't thinking of Daisy and Gatsby anymore, but of this clean, hard, limited person, who dealt in universal skepticism, and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm. A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: "There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired."

love it will not betray you, dismay or enslave you, it will set you free

Got home to a broken water main outside my house and my water shut off until 10 while they do emergency services. I was angry, because I had been looking forward to cooking tonight, and then I remembered that I--yes, me, this foolish, helpless girl--am the same girl who has made a white wine reduction and roasted butternut squash soup on a campfire, the same girl who has assembled and cooked kabobs in the pouring rain on a literal lake rising around. No running water is hardly a setback, and it won't kill me to have an unwashed dish in the sink for 4 hours.

I have been in a strange place the last two weeks or so. I had been living in the kind of delusional optimism that can only end in crash or let down. Optimism is my natural state; I had almost forgotten that over the last year. (Maybe that's why Josh always says I handle disappointment so catastrophically.)

I'm tired this week. I'm not sad, I'm not angry, I'm just so tired. At work today, a woman from another department was having her last day. She and I had been part of the big hiring push that came in last year all together and went through training together. While I was saying goodbye to her, one of her coworkers commented that he'd been watching the staff list, and now I was the last person of the 30 or so I was hired with to remain in my company. I'm always that person, aren't I? The one still hanging in, still caring about a thing, when everyone else has moved on.

I lay on a leafless poison ivy vine over the weekend, and now my back and sides are wrapped and lashed in strange designs. All told so far, I'm thinking my Elkhorn scars will be less impressive than last years, but perhaps more symmetrical.

but even in those days I knew I was no Lancelot

turn these diamonds straight back into coal

One of the first things my grandmother taught me to do was to separate egg yolks. When I was tragically young, she and I used to pick sour cherries off the tree in the back and bake pies together. She's a talented baker: a true artist, a professional. There are pictures of us: her beautiful, made-up, Jackie O babysitting effortlessly in high heels and me, the messy, artless little blonde child, three or four years old. I still remember watching her manicured fingernails as she broke the eggs and cradled the orange globes between the two halves of the shell, egg white sliding cleanly away. 

Now I'm making lemon curd in my kitchen, which smells like lemon and magnolia blossoms. Artless as ever. The moon is a sliver in the clean indigo after-sunset sky, a perfect mirror of the one I had tattooed on my back that particular day in January, although then it was going and now it's coming on, waxing.

I feel achingly sad and foolish. 

One of the things I get the most shit for among my friend group is my persistent, strong, yet deeply inaccurate belief in my own ability to forecast weather.

This is not any part of the charming pseudo magic bunk I subscribe to, but a real thing I think I can do by spending too much of my free time looking at weather sites and radar images and reading about atmospheric trends and patterns. When I was younger, I was very obsessed with/afraid of certain types of weather, especially after being caught briefly in a tornado, and it translated to a psycho-interest. I devoured everything I could find about it. I read text books. I tried to understand airflow charts. To this day, I read amateur meteorologist blogs on a recreational basis. I check the radar for myself--and people I like in different areas of the state--multiple times a day.

But I'm garbage at it.

Typical exchange:

Friend: Oh no, it's raining.
Me: Mm, yeah, but it's about to stop.
*it rains harder*
Me: I can smell that it's about to stop. Actually, any minute now.
*hours of rain*
Me: These summer thundershowers get blown out of the Valley in no time. They go around the mountains. Let me tell you about the topology and why that is.

It comes out a lot when planning camping trips, as I'm inclined to use my meteorological skills to help belittle the opinions of those who are concerned that perhaps the adverse weather will negatively impact the time we have. Eventually, now that we've got good enough at it that doesn't much matter what the weather is, it's just become a bit of a joke.

*

I haven't written in this blog very much in the month of June. This sounds silly, especially with all that's been going on in my head and life the last few weeks, but a large part of the reason I haven't been writing is because up until recent, I've been happy. Not easy happy, not all beach days, happy endings, and carefree times, but I guess the happiness that comes of doing the good, hard work in myself. Or maybe all that progress has just made me too tired to feel like unpacking stuff? Either way, it seemed positive. I love this blog, and I'm never going to stop writing in it, but having a break for that reason felt good. Back at it, now.

It's been weird and interesting and hard and sweet trying to figure out what to do with myself when the all-consuming festering bitterness and anger that I'd made my life is dissipating. What's under all that? Certainly not the person I was, but maybe some other, better thing. Maybe nothing, and I have to make up the difference. I don't know. I'm trusting the process, though. I may write more about that all later.

But now! I'm probably losing my shiny, wonderful job that made me feel so good about myself and that I was so proud of being successful at. It's entirely unrelated to my performance there, and out of my control, which makes it worse somehow. So, I don't know, I'm having a time about it all.

*

It's the summer solstice tonight. There's a silly line by the worst character in The Great Gatsby, a hateful book I can't help but love, that's something to the effect of "Do you ever wait all year for the summer solstice, and then miss it? I always wait all year for the summer solstice and miss it." Oh Daisy, I didn't miss it this year. (I used to think I was a real Daisy, then I thought I was a Jay, but now I think the main thing is to try to not be any of the terrible characters. Still, we beat on.)

The graveyard is full of fireflies. The black bloodstain from where I smashed my finger making a fire circle is moving up my ring fingernail slowly, a little further ever week. I keep dreaming this same recurring dream that I'm trying to juggle several social interactions, but also keep this random bird's egg from smashing, and then in the course of my fumbling and multi-tasking, I smash it accidentally anyway. I'm left alone, and so sad that it's broken.

I feel like I want something tonight, but I'm not sure what it is.

hope was a letter I never could send, love was a country we just couldn't defend

My orange mountain lilies are blooming. The Iroquois used them in spell for faithfulness, or maybe it was for something else.  

give me slanted looks when I'm lying, give me fingers when I'm crying

Having gotten up for an early morning hike, now I am tired and wish I were still hiking. I liked being in the forest at an early hour, when the slant of the light is striking and unusual. There was a lot of wildlife still out: rabbits, deer, even a fishing raccoon. Saw a very pretty, muscular snake the color of obsidian and then later, a big old cricket the same shade when I was mowing the lawn. I must be so lucky.  My janky horoscope suggested that I don't listen to the relentless ones saying no, fond, soft advice I will take, at least for a little while.

I ought to do a few chores, but right now, I'm just sitting on the front porch. The yard is looking good--I planted a few more tomatoes and jalapenos, and weeded all the beds. I have a little bit of a headache, but the breeze is soft, playing, and I'm drinking a glass of cold white wine. My sunscreen is making my eyes water.

About today

Female counterpart to the Magician, shadow, the unconscious, desire, all that is mystic and secret in women.

it's okay to be afraid

Today's, of course:

I went out after today and bought three bottles of wine, a block of gouda, and burgundy red fuck-me lipstick, then decided I wanted none of it and went out to plant sunflowers in my bare feet with my dog with a beer instead. I feel gentle, soft, but very prone to suddenly weeping in a strange way that is not entirely like me. I am not the kind of woman who has ever been prone to asking for much, even maybe when I should, but I did ask for some squash plants today, and I planted those too, in a nice spot. I'm sitting on my half rotted porch now, with my catalpa tree squat like an old man, and dirt under my fingernails, and trying to make something of all my thoughts.

for a little while, you'll be here, the only good part of me

The National's Alligator is the best album of all time.

I was recently trying to get my mom into the National, since I'd come home wearing a band t-shirt of theirs and she was curious. My mom is very literal about her music. She prefers songs to be about "dancing" or "very very deep, likely secretly about Jesus" (the first band I got her into was U2, so now she just expects it). But she always wants to know what a particular piece of music is about. Getting her into the National was difficult for that reason. "This song is about trying to convince your friend not to drive drunk, but, like, you're also kind of a mess and everything is about to go to shit?" "This song is about your friend leaving you, and you know it is because you are also a bad person!" "This song is sooorta about the Obama administration but also choosing to be okay as a person and mental illness!"

It went fine. Afterward, I was telling my friend who also loves that band how difficult it was to say what the album was "about." He said how he hated that idea of looking at music that way, that it was missing the point. So that naturally made me think, contrarily, "oh, wait, what is that album actually about?"

I think it's an album dealing with identity. It's about being a mess sometimes, being really down, but not in a sad love song way. It never slips into self pity or angst. The songs are unforgiving, relentless, real, and entirely optimistic. They are celebration of an authentic state. They are songs about being okay, even when stuff is hard and doesn't make sense.

Best Songs:
-Mr November
-Lit Up
-Friend of Mine

Best lyric:
baby, we'll be fine: all we've got to do is be brave and be kind 

Best good rock and roll guitar part:
Abel, or Mr November

but at this point of the last year, I am happy to be alive

Oof, what a Monday. I feel pathetic, laced with a kind of neediness and desperation: unflattering feelings. My boss texted me "It will be alright." earlier, and half of me wanted to cry with gratitude, and half of me wanted to challenge back. Promises, promises. 

I am cooking Indian food: red cream curry sauce with chicken and jasmine rice. Sorrowful food if I ever heard it. I worked hard to get the house into a good shape, but it feels like there's ever more to do: cups to wash, weeds to pull, grass to mow.

The air is cool and moving at least. Dinner finished, an evening run seems like the only thing for it. 31 miles from last Sunday to yesterday, but I still feel out of shape. I want pathetic little wants, and my cheeks are sunburnt.

do I look familiar (we were just larkspur and leaves, we were strung through the tethers)

Tonight, I finished up my main run with still some energy to burn, so I took Sven to an out-of-the-way path, pulled up some shitty trip hop on my phone, dropped the leash, and let him just fly with me. I'm a good runner, but I can't run as quickly as him even when I'm sprinting. It's incredible how fast he can go, and he has one setting he likes to run at: as fast as he possibly can. When he feels me pulling level, he pushes harder. I've seen him lose control of his speed and go cartwheeling, but he's utterly heedless, and he loves it like I do. When he's off leash, we can race without him having to slow up or measure his pace, and it's a fucking headlong rush.

We ended in a field, and I threw myself down in the grass. It was mostly dark, but not completely, dusk settling down from the trees. I thought I saw a firefly in the evergreens. Sven noticed I was down, and looped back in a zooming arc, slamming into my chest like he did the first day I met him, that first moment I knew we belonged together. We lay in the gloaming, watching the stars come out, and it was just right.

*

A few pictures from my home trip last weekend. Everything is going by so quickly, and I meant to tell stories about the visit here, but somehow I just didn't get to it. I'll have to put these in as placeholders.

I like walking through the woods in my hometown. There aren't much left, but I know what remains well. I spent a good deal of time picking my way through them: barefoot, silent, and alone. I'm never so silent in the woods out here, because I don't ever want to surprise a bear. But when I'm walking up in NoVa forest, I feel half a ghost.

The creek very up.

Mandy, my wicked-eyed old girl.

Me too, though.

*

I had kind of a weird moment earlier today, which has been a generally sort of emotional, wound-up day. In a situation, I started up one of my classic narratives of paranoid anxiety and dread, like happens sometimes in the warzone that is occasionally my head. And then I just thought "wait, that's not actually real. I just made that idea up and started believing it. It's not true." And I just ...didn't go down that road, like I normally do. It was really nice.

I guess that's probably what most people do, instead of concocting increasingly complex fictions about the greater web of failure and betrayal that has spun up a situation. But for me it felt good, more like the person I used to be rather than the suspicious, guarded thing I've become. I was thankful for it: a small gift for a Tuesday.

light my way, Virginia May (and I'm saving all my sleep for another life)

I'm sad today. I just am, in an ordinary way, and I keep trying to get myself out ahead of it, or swing off the other direction, but it's just here, and I might as well acknowledge it instead of trying to bolt. All I've wanted to do for the last few days was write (well, and be understood, and wanted around, and not always in last place, but that's the usual), but now that I have some alone time to do so, I'm doing poorly at it. Work is scarybad, there's been another death, and two of my best friends are going through something excruciatingly hard. I'm just a dumb, helpless girl for it all. I kept it together all week, and now I'm crying into the corners of my Saturday.

I guess after having this massive depression over the winter, I don't quite know how to be normal person sad, but I'm trying to be good. I want to like, talk about it instead of wanting to self-immolate, which is new. I caught myself writing and writing to a friend Friday, and then felt a bit foolish for my obvious need. That's so unlike me these days.


*

I want to write about the funeral church, because for whatever else, it was beautiful.

It was held at one of those old old churches, the kind that were attacked by Shawnee at some point in their histories. Building built in the 1800s, congregation older. The stained glass was luminous and the vaulted ceilings made it feel a bit like walking in the deep woods. After, we went down to the basement where they served homemade lemon ice cream on glass plates with silver spoons and tea cups. Sitting there on a discarded pew, in my long black dress, I felt like some cold Hessian church girl, and so small.


*

I hung out with Ali today--she and I picked out plants together, and then went down to the bar and had a few beers.

I got:

-purple peppers
-cayenne peppers
-french parsley
-yellow oxheart tomatoes
-snapdragons (little)
-eggplant
-marigolds
-geraniums
-lobelia
-one small fern

*

Now two more pictures.

Some mermaid hair, which is about the only good thing about this weather, and my farmer's market haul, which is mostly spring greens and at least twenty percent columbine.

I ran back to that hollow again; the moon was just a sliver back then

Tonight: kitchen, windows open, storms. Listening to my favorite record and swapping in some of the lyrics for my dog's name, which delights him to the point of near collapse. God, this dog of mine. At least he gets it honestly.

I'm not really in a silly mood, singing to dogs, but I'm earnest as a fool, which is almost the same.

Hiked tonight, way out for hours into the pouring storm. Everything smelled so raw: crushed hemlock needles, pine sap, rain, soil and spring, and night smells, creeping in on the low fog that started to fill the hollows as the light died. I felt strong, but skittery like a deer, even with my waterdog to chase out the shadows. I saw these curtain falls, white with overflow, down into a blue hole. I feel like I've been waiting whole lifetimes for the leaves to come out, and here they are. I am jumpy these days, but more myself than I've been for some time. I'm trying, and I believe in what I'm trying.

*

I thought "I should post an anecdote about the beach" but I don't really want to. It's not that it was bad--the sky and the water were both blue in a stunning kind of way you forget if you haven't been for a while. The company was fine. It was plenty fun. I drank wine and danced and carried on. I'm just a little blown out.

I'm looking forward most to Saturday, when I'll be alone in my little town, and I can spend the day working on my plants, running, and being the quiet-needing person I've turned into over the last year. I need to be writing more--not even anything important, writing on this, and my story, and all. I'm nostalgic. I want to talk to someone who knows me well, and go to places I've been a dozen times, and do things that are second nature to me, instead of being interested in any bright, new, startling ventures right now.

here I am with my hand

I wish this weekend would just be gentle with me for a little while. Kindly, you know? I think please be nice to me is the most pathetic thing in the world to think, and I find myself thinking it so often. I keep thinking I want a return to my confidence and original fire, but maybe I'm just actually like this.

It's hard to find a direction today. I didn't sleep well, and it makes me unfocused. I need to work around the house, but I think I would rather lie on the floor with the windows open and think about my many shortcomings. I'm wearing a sweatshirt and jeans that are too big for me and look bad. This morning my banana tree has unfurled one big leaf.

so it's storming out on the lake, little waves our bodies break

I woke up early this morning, before anyone else was up. The ashes of last night's fire were still warm enough to start pine needles and twigs, so I set the coffee on and slipped off down the creek for some dawn alone time. Taking the right hand turn out of the site, my favorite site, there's a little cut in the side of the White Oak creek and you can follow it up to a good log jam and trout hole, a place where I've drank champagne with my mom and watched ruby-throat hummingbirds feed on cardinal flowers last June. A secret, perfect place. This morning, there were no hummingbirds, but the little mountain ephemeral flowers were up as bright spots of color on the ground. I saw birdfoot violets, yellow and white, and silvery blood root blooms and their weird pawprint leaves unfolding in the weak sun. The hemlock needles had that kind of misty, smoky look to them that they get some times when the light is either coming or going.

I felt alone in the best, best way, although I wasn't, really, since Sven had gotten up with me. I let him sleep with me last night, something I don't usually allow, but he'd been so tired and sweet, and he'd gotten into my sleeping bag before I realized what he was up to. This morning, though, he was all business, since supervising any extracurricular camping excursions is something he takes extremely seriously. The Girl is going off by herself again and he'd better come along because who knows what kind of trouble she might get into without him along to chaperone, and also what if there is something to climb or bark at or smell or race around about?

I hadn't forgotten it was Easter Sunday, this being the first one I have spent away from my family, not going to church, not having any fucking ham, (although later in the morning I would cook farm sausages, along with eggs with ramps and shallots over the fire.) I wondered about if my mom and my brother were arguing about where they'd be going to church. I thought about my grandfather, whose fatigues I was wearing. His death feels so strange, like a hole I keep worrying at, forgetting it's there and then returning again to check on how it feels. I thought about my friend. When I am comfortably in solitude, I am sometimes my best self, or maybe my most authentic.

I could have kept the quiet for a long time, but there were things to be done, even just in the tiny microcosm of the wilderness, with my phone 30 minutes from relevant and my tools limited to elements: fire and water. Sven got antsy, anxious to get back to camp, to his boy, and Travis, whom he adores. He doesn't like people to be separated, this dog of mine, and nothing makes him more content than when everyone is just in their same good place, all together. As we walked back to camp, he grabbed one of the pieces of wood I was carrying and pranced ahead with it, as if the whole thing had been his idea.

tired and wired we ruin too easy, sleep in our clothes and wait for winter to leave

I bought some earrings in Winchester, and then tried for 24 hours to take a blurry picture of them. This early morning no-makeup last-night's-hair was the ticket.

*

Last night at the bar, I went out onto the roof to look at the moon. A scummy, too-drunk guy peeled off a group, to come bother me the way a scummy, too-drunk guy always will when he sees a woman even temporarily unaccompanied. Like most people with bad taste, he used the excuse of my having a visible tattoo to assume that I was willing, and even eager to be interrogated about "what is it even" and have my body touched and commented on by a total stranger.

That's something I never expected when I got my first tattoo, that people would do that. Now instead of explaining the backstory and meaning of my tattoo, I just say "it's the world serpent, like from Norse mythology. The one who swallows the Worldtree."

His immediate comment was "Why would a pretty girl like you want that on her body forever?"

Because I slew and ate the world serpent, you impotent milksop.

Later that same night, Travis said "Why do you smell amazing, like sawdust?!"

I told him it was my perfume. (Which it was indeed: Santal 33: woodshop, cedarwood, vanilla). Then he told me I was dressed like Yan. (I was indeed wearing a snake dress.)

*

Made duck tonight, something I love to cook:

Egg moon. View.

just say you will wait, like snow on the rail

I love early Saturday mornings in my little house. I'm wearing my favorite green leggings and drinking out of my special little mug and feeling very much in my lair. I have watered all my seedlings, and my dog is quickly losing control of his emotions because of my disinterest in his tennis ball situation. The weather on the front porch is perfect, with light running along the little dew drops under the iron rail.

I know I have to put on real clothes--running clothes--and go running, and make breakfast, and get ready for what promises to be a pretty busy day. I'm going to Winchester, then out dancing tonight, and that's about the opposite of homebody mood I'm in, although I'm sure I'll have fun when I go. I have to be social sometimes, and not just spend every weekend out with my dog. And I can do that tomorrow. Work in the yard, run my errands, and if there's time, check to make sure the woods are still there...

I am not in the mood to read any Charles Wright, so all my library books are overdue. Drew the page of cups, and propped him up on a little Brandywine tomato seedling here on the bar where I'm writing this.

just need a friend to guard the door, just need a couple minutes on the floor

I just cut the neck out of my blue dragon urban outfitters crop top, and I'm working on my "fancy ramen" post in my lifestyle blog, so that's how my night is going.*


*Great. Genuinely great.

don't be careless with me yet, no, not yet (I'm staying under spiderweb roads)

I keep thinking I should write a thing here. It's not that I don't want to write or lack the energy. It's just been a busy few days. I feel thoughtful and full of progress, but also barely articulate and I'm writing the worst structured sentences.

The weekend was not as restful as it might have been. I had an old friend staying with me, and while it was good to see her, she mostly wanted to talk about people who we knew who had died, and my friends Jill and Jaime, whom she wanted badly to discuss, having never got the full story on that measure, and her being still a mutual friend. I felt a little feverish by the end. I didn't really sleep Sunday night, and I'm still playing catch up.

I am trying so hard to be not a fuck up anymore.

Anemones from the farmer's market. I don't like how perfect they are; they look fake. But you know I like the purpley blue.

Yesterday was nice, with the rain. I went for a long run in it and then had a hot shower.

I do love the Piney river in the spring. Took Rach out this weekend. Ten miles of the trail runs along an old train line, so it's cut into a cliff at points, and Sven kept looking sideways at the rockface. Camping trip before last, I climbed up a cliff into a little cave in one of our favorite sites, and he came along. He must have thought it was pretty fun, because before long, on our hike he was racing up straight vertical walls, sliding down on the shale and slate wastes. It was so cool to see him putting the pieces together, remembering, figuring it out and applying what he'd learned. He's right at that age where he's gaining confidence and trying things out. He thinks he's pretty unstoppable, and I have to agree: I have seen his zoom butt.

I stayed up too late last night, too. I should really just go to bed now, or at least curl up and look at a book or something.

anecdote

When things started to happen in my family, I got close to many of my relatives I had known since I was little, and seen a lot of, but never gotten to know as a full adult. One of those was my aunt Lillian. She lived close to me when I was growing up, so I saw her almost every weekend, but I didn't know her very well. She was a little bit intimidating to me, and I don't know that kids were her style.

This year, I have grown to admire her so much. She's a CEO, an incredible business woman, and a world-class athlete. (One of the top climbers in the world.) She is energetic, and so positive, and silly, and cheerful too. I love this picture of her because it shows how she is so very slight, but amazingly strong, and I like how hard her shoulders are in it.

Over winter, she invited me to go climbing in one of the gyms she owns. Josh, Travis, and my brother (who were all up for Christmas with my folks) took her up on it as well. Since she and my uncle owned climbing gyms for years, I grew up climbing, but I hadn't done it probably since before college.

We had a good time. The walls are 40 foot up, and they are dizzying and terrifying and exhilarating. They make different paths of varying difficulty, and you can sort of choose your own adventure. The hardest one I did had a kind of overhang lip that I had to brute force slam my leg up over my chest, and then try to haul my weight up over myself while hanging on by a thigh. My knee was black for a week after, because I just used it to leverage my whole body up over the precipice, all skinned fingertips, strawberry burns, and chalkdust. My aunt and uncle told me I got the award for...well, not the prettiest, but the most relentless climb, since I fell down and off and slammed into the wall a handful of times before I scaled it. .

Midway through, I asked my aunt to climb something on the highest level difficulty, so we could see how it was done. She went to the highest rated wall. The handholds we were using were hand-shaped; the ones on her wall were slivers. The path was almost entirely flat.

You think you've looked at someone doing something--and I'd been watching a gym full of climbers climb all day--but there was no compare. What she did wasn't climbing as I knew it. It was all dancing and it was all spiders. There was none of my clumsy hard work, my sweating and dragging. She sort of swayed sideways up the wall, tip-toes just brushing a flat piece of wall, ignoring the holds, momentum carrying her. Her movements didn't look human. I remember watching her and thinking I want to remember this for the rest of my life. I didn't know her any longer. It was that alien, and that beautiful.

I don't know why I'm thinking about that--and her--tonight. I guess this year I have been aware of the limits of my own ability: the dull, tired, stupid places in myself, the death of my confidence, this abrupt arrival at a belief that I am worthless and unwanted. I have been disconnected with all the alien and beautiful. But I'm trying. I'm slamming my scarred-up knees against the wall. I'm climbing like a clumsy, tall girl.

one more for the stars and the eyes of the walls

Everything is greening up in the Valley, and I haven't done one of these in a long old while


-those bulbs Chris and Katie got me from Canada (? ...Mich...igan?) poking their little heads up in my front bed
-my actual bed with dumb dongpink sheets but so nice feeling
-ship flags
-Don't Give Up the Ship flag especially
-that feeling when you show up to a place and someone had been waiting, excited, for you to be there
- 2 for 1 motor oil
-tiny bottles of champagne just the right size for porch sitting alone
-I thought my neighbor worked for a three letter government agency but actually he's an english teacher who just dresses well and happens to look really superb in a suit, I mean honestly that's not a look a lot of guys can pull off, Good on You, Michael.
-Sven barks at Michael because of his weird bald head, Too Bad about That, Michael
-carpooling (I don't anymore, just miss it)
-cussing
-this trick I've learned of loudly and over-enthusiastically greeting my upper management while deploying a series of rapid-fire questions about their day like they used to terrify me by doing
-my big black dog tonight climbs entirely into my lap like he used to do the first day I met him, although he's about 25 lbs heavier now, and puts his head on my knee, and I can feel his big heart thumping so hard
-perfect little circle burn from fingerbangin' a shaky light fixture into place
-Travis's citation yellow perch
-Travis telling me he wouldn't have kept it except it was a bad gill hook, and this odd desire to tell him that I love him on hearing that
-my grandfather's war medals
-my uncle, half-heartbroken at the fact that my grandmother wanted my grandfather dressed for death as a warrior, and this odd desire to tell him I love him on hearing that
-tonight, fingerbangin the same light fixture as if it didn't burn the hell out of me last night
-this blue and white lace cloth bra I bought, this vanilla tobacco candle
-red onions
-elkhorn deer, black-brown, staring
-liking the person somebody is
-ice follies nasturtium
-tipping nice barista girls in the early morning when the sun is shining in like it does early

while you were sleeping, I was turning the dials

First storm of the season: grey new moon lightning light, clay wine cup, vice knight skirt.

while you were sleeping, you bet that I might walk this empty northern hemisphere wide

Mostly a picture post for right now, since I'm too scattered this weekend to give any account of myself. Just kind of thinky. Yesterday was the equinox party, and I am good at a party, but afterward, sometimes, I feel like avoiding a crowd. Today, all I want is to have a long conversation about nothing much with a confidant I don't have. I'll settle on leaf removal, groceries, and cooking. Maybe update my other stupid blog with a recipe thing. That's okay, though.

I think a sycamore tree is my favorite. I like the pale white branches, the way they seem to glow up out of nowhere when the world is still quiet and sleeping, if the frost got the spring blossoms. Back home, my parents know the place where the creek is good for crossing by a young straight sycamore marking the spot. They can see it even if they're far off across the field.


I'd make a better sycamore than a girl, but I think at least I make a hard sort of girl.

Elkhorn is beautiful this time of year, and when we go out just us and the dog, it's so silent. I slept better than I have in months on Friday, with nothing but the creek sounds.

*

I'm not doing anything at all right now because I'm waiting for my mom to call me back. I missed her yesterday, since I was out camping in the morning, but when I called earlier today, she was running to the store for a Sunday flank steak. She said, "I won't take long. I love you, okay?"

*

Dreamt too much last night, all about firestorms and flood. Always the same visitations, though sometimes they are kind and other times cruel.


*

I finally am coming around to my new tattoo. I sort of hated it at first. I like my shoulders, and my Norse fairy tale tattoos, and I feel strong and skinny just now, and my legs hold up good on hill runs with my black wolf. So there's that.

use it tonight

Cleaning up after the flood for most of yesterday and all of tonight. Pretty much everything down there is either destroyed or stained or needing washing. I threw out everything from my childhood bedroom without going through it; it's all just soggy paper anyway. My camping and fishing stuff made it mostly intact. Lost some seasonal stuff, all my summer clothes and the stupid little projects I'd kept from when I was working on Legends. Scraps of white scale leather and doeskin with silly trees embroidered onto them. Feel tired, a bit bleach burned, and just a little let down, in general.

It's just stuff. And I feel okay. But I want to go camping again, and I'd like a week where everyone talks softly to me, nothing is ruined, and nobody dies.

who leaves me for dead in my ghost town grey and returns like color tv

For it being a short week for me at work, it certainly was a long one. Win party and year review and also try to remember how to do this job after the most consecutive days off you've ever had. My one-on-one was positive though. My team lead said he thinks I'm team lead material, which is odd, since I don't even know how to scam my op manager out of extra drink tickets.

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It's weird. I felt so numb for days, like I wouldn't have any feeling ever again about anything. And then, yesterday, every single feeling in the world came rushing back at me. Grief, hurt, happiness, need, this vulnerability, sorrow, more vulnerability. I was the designated driver last night, but I feel emotionally hungover. Better, though, I think.

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I don't really have much to do today except run and eat salad. Might get my seeds started. Might do some spring cleaning while I have the house to myself. Might hike. (I am very boring.)

For now though, sitting at my kitchen table, looking at the paper cranes Todd's 13 year old left there when we had them over for dinner. Paying bills. Sven is bringing me all his toys and piling them on my boots.

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Lunch. (Okay, breakfast too.) Mary lured me into the bar last night saying she had eggs "at a special price for me--free!"and then gave me a grocery bag of three dozen eggs so I guess it's crepes and quiche and baking all weekend.

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Adding another bullet to this thrice-added-on post to report that my entire storage room is flooded. Something they said could happen when they fixed the furnace last time I almost died from a house mishap down there, but a potential problem they had allegedly fixed.

Standing in an inch and a half of water, realizing it must not be deep enough to hit the outlet yet, since I had not yet been electrocuted, the tremendous stupid weight of dealing with this on top of catching up on everything from freak tragic circumstances hit me. I thought to myself "I want to just lie down and cry," but then I thought, "Oh, no, I actually don't, it's sort of-kind of funny, and this is nothing I can't deal with." I also thought "I sure need some good news" but then I thought "well, that's not likely to happen, but okay."

I did run and get half my seeds potted before I went down to start some laundry and discovered Lake Placid. Oh my goodness, I would like a beer though.