it came over me at a bad time

the best kiss I ever had is the flickering of the water

give me treeline, give me big sky, get me snowbound, give me rain clouds, give me a bedtime ...just sometimes

The more time I spent in the woods alone, the more I feel myself changing to it. I went storm walking alone with the dog Sunday, and it was hard to return, even as the freezing mist closed down into the hollow and the light started to fall. You start to see the picture of yourself more clearly out like that, or maybe it's everything else that sharpens, and you become soft, fuzzed, abstract in a way that matters less to yourself. You take yourself a little less seriously.  You don't see yourself as beautiful or desirable anymore, but at the same time, it would be foolish to characterize what pushes you forward as anything other than cold, perfect wanting. 

This first part of this week has been dominated with a migraine, and I can finally feel it exiting, almost like a weather pattern. It feels like tropical remnants, some Atlantic storm that traps low pressure and squalls in my head, and nothing works like it should: not my mouth, not my head, not my body. I'm always reaching for and finding the wrong thing. I didn't know that I would be upset that the shiny new medicine I got from my shiny new doctor to fix these would not work. I didn't know I would feel like such a lost cause, or so classically insane.

It's March - I want big, bland grocery store strawberries and lovely, black-green trees. I don't want to be touched. I'm still bringing things back online, walking through the rooms and turning on the lights.

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

This is how mad I am for spring: I bought myself a wild edible collecting bag (okay, a 3.99 cotton sack from the co-op) but just for thinking of all those times last summer that I crushed my lovely chanterelles into neon orange smears, or needing to take off my shirt and carry them through the back country so romantically cradled in the fabric. I miss them. I want everything right now; I feel so mighty expansive.

There's one reason: the signs. I'll present a list of them.

- clumps of salamander eggs floating in the deep ruts of a bright black trail, their bodies just pinpricks the size of irises, narrow with potential
- the way the birds have woken up and begun shrieking
- I wanna new tattoo
-  broadhead spears of green bulbs poking up around my yard and looking so frankly dangerous
- can't manage to wear the least bit of unders all of a sudden
- toads singing in the cold cold woods as evening burns on
- the smell of it all - crush and promise
- how I want strawberries again

it came over me at a bad time

It's Pisces season and worse, a full moon, so time to get saaaad. I actually felt pretty good remembering that today. If astrology is good for something, it's a great excuse to tell yourself why you've been crying in the shower so much lately. 

Yesterday, I went on the longest solo hike I've done in a while. I think I'm getting better at solo hiking than I felt when I went on my first one (on my 30th birthday!) although I'm still drinking the exact same cider while I do it. I've hiked the Falls Hollow network of trails literally scores of times, but never gone all the way up to the fire tower, so I thought yesterday was a good day to make the attempt. I thought the tower might be lonely up there. It's a treacherously steep, but otherwise accessible hike - about 10 miles round trip, though most of it is easy waterfall slopes and winding rhododendron trails.

It felt good to be in the woods alone, and I didn't feel the kind of nervous energy I get into sometimes. I can pretty much tell at the beginning if a hike is going to be a good hike for that. I realized that when I'm solohiking, I move much, much faster than I would in company - probably partially because the dog is half-dragging me, and partially because I'm not talking - but I got to the fire road in record time. On the other side, I also stop and sit more than I would if I had company, not to rest, but simply to enjoy the solitude of the woods and the spaces. I let myself explore more.

I don't know. This whole post is sort of stupid and I don't really want to finish it, so I won't. Lucky I already put the super cheerful pictures in place and maybe they can lend the whole thing a kind of upbeat quality I don't actually feel about anything right now.

don't ask me no questions, I've got to I've got to

I'm feeling slightly better today, as evidenced by the fact that I went out and bought my dog a very good toy and am now sitting on the couch with him rather than crying in the shower like I think I was doing this time last night. Praise snake jesus for small victories, no?

always the same, you're gonna be alone, you're gonna need someone

I feel so sad today, like no one wants me around or likes me at all, and being around me is some wretched chore. I feel so adrift right now and so unhappy. It felt like I was okay up until I wasn't.

mood board

are you mine, heart, mine anymore

I was supposed to go to Elkhorn tonight, but I had to stay in because of an accident of scheduling. Still, woods or no, there are few things like a truly warm night in the middle of February, the way the fog hugs the ridges and how the air changes temperature when you move up or down them. Fool's spring. So I'm sitting on my front porch thinking and writing.

I keep stumbling over all these things I want to write or talk about on here, and I know I have to, or they'll go away and I won't have guthooks for this last year. I got out of the knack of year-in-review posts when my life fell apart in 2016, but I do keep tabs of important things I'd like to write about from my year's past. My company was founded by a Chinese woman, so we celebrate Chinese new year as a corporation, and it has me thinking of fresh year things. In truth, I've always considered this time of a year as a better beginning than the traditional one on Jan 1, though I haven't jumped into any rivers since the ill-advised creek I forded week before last on a splashy solo hike with my half-otter dog. I've always loved these burnt end months here between February and April. If they had a taste, it would be raw, green, and electric, like an under-ripe apple or tang of cold sweet smoke smell in the air before a dry snow.

The thing I want to most write about from 2018 is the bear. I've had these recurring dreams about bears since I was in first grade. I remember keeping a diary (even then) and drawing a picture in crayon of the dream, of being charged by a bear in a field of honeysuckle. Then it happened exactly like that last year, right down to the field of honeysuckle. It changed something with me. It was a spiritual moment; I am a quantifiable amount more fearless from it. And really, even when I was very afraid in the moment, I loved the bear. She was a beautiful animal - as brown as sorghum honey with a lighter muzzle and pretty, bright dark black eyes. I've never seen a bear so close that I could look it in the eyes but in the moment, I thought of my aunt, my favorite cousin, my grandmother, my father who all have those black-brown eyes - "shark eyes" my aunt calls them. Bear eyes.

I want to write about my mental health. I feel like I've turned some kind of corner on it, in that I have more symptoms than I used to, but feel strangely in control of them. I can feel myself acting a way and step back to see it, like I'm looking at fractures of glass or a storm from a distance, and change my behavior accordingly. I started having panic attacks this year, and though they seemed focused at work at first, I ended up having them around family and friends. I don't know why, or why the whole experience feels somehow helpful.

I guess maybe the greater lesson has been that I can be having whatever mental reactions I'm having, but I don't stop being responsible for those reactions or because of them, change my responsibilities to the people around me and myself. If I'm acting in a self-harming way because of some symptom of depression, I'm not being responsible with myself. If I'm damaging my relationships with people I care about through my anxiety or stupid baggage, it doesn't matter if I'm doing it for real-to-me reasons, I still have to cut that shit out. On the other side, I feel that I'm able to step back more than I used to and say no when I need to. I have let go of some things.

Gosh... certainly I had a few more things from 2018 to talk about? I went to a perfect show to see my favorite band who played my favorite album. I camped more than ever. I ran a half marathon in 1 hour 50 minutes, which is good! I drank too much, or I drank a reasonable amount, but I took my anxiety meds much less than in years past. I exercised five days a week, and I drank water or I forgot to, or I drank bubble water, or bubble wine, mostly. I spent too much money on cut flowers for myself, or I didn't spend enough on vitamins, but I picked up a lot of trash and ticks and ate so so so much kale. I hiked twice a week more weeks than not. I did some trail clean up. I helped move my friends. I really wanted a few things. I didn't write anything I liked at all. I gave an adequate amount of road head. I didn't get a tattoo. I'm still very sensitive and prone to crying and masturbating.

Oh don't lean on me man, 'cause you can't afford the ticket, I'm back on Suffragette City

One of my goals this year is to post in this blog more regularly, but somehow, it's all of 8 days in and I'm already putting it off. It's not that I don't want to, or even that busy since I've been sick all season so far. I just keep thinking I'm going to come up with something really sharp and sparkily to get me going. But that's the kind of thinking that stalled me out posting in the first place. I have to just sit down and write something and whatever comes out, comes out. Long clunky sentences and all.

So tonight this is what I'm doing: I'm up on my bullshit, by which I mean listening to Bowie and drinking canned wine. When I was trying to jerk off in the shower, I noticed my kneecap had a splinter the width of my little finger in it, so I also dealt with that tonight. It's windy and strange and hot outside, though the storms are passing to our north.

Earlier, when I got done with my run, I went into the backyard and sat on the steps that don't lead anywhere. I had a nightmare last night that we had moved to some other house - and it was a real house that we had actually looked at 10 years ago when we first moved to Staunton - but it was tight and narrow and crowded against the neighbors. In the dream, I hated the new house and I was wildly upset, the irrational way you are sometimes in dreams, about leaving my garden. So in my waking life, I guess I wanted to go sit in the yard awhile. Also, I wanted to see about petting a cat I know back there.

It's that time of year where every little tiny warmer day makes me think of spring and camping. I know that's so stupid because winter has hardly started, and if I'm this irrational now, how bad will I be in two months? But sitting back there, smelling the grass and wet open stone, it felt not so far. I want to move again; I want to not be sick.