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.