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