I don't really believe in God anymore, but if I did, it'd be easy to believe he existed just to put me in situations where I'm in the position to show grace, understanding, or kindness to a person who previously had completely and viciously thrown me entirely under the proverbial bus. It'd be a nice thing for me to feel superior or holier than thou about - you know, that "in a world where you can be anything, be kind" bullshit that I actually believe, but in this case, doing the right thing all makes me feel just kind of tired and sad. 

I'm thinking about this only because someone I thought was a friend - but who was horrific to me last winter - came over and was sad about his life and failed relationship. 

 I stayed up late scooping roasted pumpkin, seasoning pans, chilling champagne, and peeling potatoes to make my Thanksgiving meal prep a little smoother today. I even burned my hand! Still, I woke up to find that the peeled potatoes had unaccountably molded over night, even though my house is so so cold, and I don't know how that's even possible for that to happen so fast. I went to put cinnamon in my pie and discovered someone (me, certainly, I'm the person who buys loose bulk spices and puts them places) had put an unmarked bag of cumin in the little baking spice jar where I usually keep my cinnamon, ginger, cloves. Cumin in my pie! It's so perfect and funny. It's classic - so old-fashioned! Will my cream spoil next, or my soufflé fail to rise? Will I crack an egg and find a little bloody chicken fetus instead of a beautiful round yolk? If this is curse bullshit, I'm genuinely starting to like it. 

 Whew. One of those cleanin' in harem pants sort of days. I feel kinda cheerful and upbeat, mostly because I like to clean my house and feel like I have time to do a good job - make it glow, fill it with light and nice smelling things. I also like to cook and host and do those sorts of things, and having today off makes me feel like I have time to actually prepare for it. I washed the sheets, swept the steps and porch, vacuumed, dusted, tidied, and now I'm about to mop the wood floors with the nice wood polish stuff that makes the whole house smell like almond and vanilla. I still need to roast my pumpkin for pie. Later, I'll go out and buy flowers, wine, bread, and lights. I can be such a homebody when I like to be. It's like that line in the Fritz-Goldberg poem "I'm an unforgivably domestic mourner." Unforgivably domestic. That's me.

Speaking of that poem reminds me about seeing the asphodels in real life back in September. Spikey little tomb blooms. God, they were beautiful. That's the dumb flower I should have gotten a tattoo of. Also, if my blog were a drinking game, and one took a shot every time I mentioned that poem, one would probably die. 

Speaking of tattoos - fuck, ow! I took off the plastic bandage Elle put on it because it had been the requisite 3-4 days, but now the thing is all itchy and peely and hurting. I've never had a tattoo over this much skin and it's definitely a new experience waiting for it to heal. 

Tonight, I'm swinging by Ali's to play dogs and have a little fire. I guess this is a very classic thing to do in the cold months: to go over to your friends house and have a fire. She's funny about splitting wood - she's pretty good at it, but only if nobody is watching. 

Then I'll come home and make very bright spicy soy tuna and soba noodles with lots of wasabi for dinner, because tomorrow will have so many traditional flavors and heavy food. 

I don't know if I'll have time to run today or visit with my crows. Today is probably the day when I should most run because of aforementioned heavy food, but there's a lot to do. 

A coworker I don't know well or even like messaged me in a side chat today during our video call team meeting. She said "hey, are you ok? You look so sad today - sad in a very beautiful way, of course (to this part, she placed an angry and eye-rolling emoji) but so sad." 

It's true that I was - sad, not beautiful. Right before the meeting, I had found out a dog I really liked got killed in a nasty accident today, slipped under the wheel of a farm truck, and even though it wasn't my dog, and just the dog of a distant friend, I did feel sorrowful, and couldn't stop thinking about it. I don't know if that's really the reason why my colleague thought I looked so bad, but after the meeting, my boss texted and told me to just take tomorrow off without using any of my leave.

I did read this very good part during a Rooney book I'm enjoying to run to today that made me feel better about some of the disconnect with friends and hard things and recent world events and life that I was writing about last night. It's a bit of a passage, but I'm pasting it here so I remember exactly what I was talking about last night, and why it made me feel better today: 

“Maybe we're just born to love and worry about the people we know, and to go on loving and worrying even when there are more important things we should be doing. And if that means the human species is going to die out, isn't it in a way a nice reason to die out, the nicest reason you can imagine? Because when we should have been reorganizing the distribution of the world's resources and transitioning collectively to a sustainable economic model, we were worrying about sex and friendship instead. Because we loved each other too much and found each other too interesting. And I love that about humanity, and in fact it's the very reason I root for us to survive - because we are so stupid about each other.”

I love that. Because we found each other too interesting. Because we are so stupid about each other. Those are good lines. 

Anyway. Tonight I'm thinking of that beautiful little dog that used to run her cattle while I was running beside my friend's farm on Bell lane - the way she was so bright and fast and elegant at her job, perfect slipping between those huge animals that she could move around so effortlessly. And when the gate opened, when she was done, how she'd come over and dissolve into friendliness at the sight of me. 

Write something. You know it will make you feel better. The way that listening to sad music and drinking too much might not - but who are you to say what might help? You make yourself feel bad all of the time. You're a fucking expert at that. You perfect a love language out of it. You get so good at talking to yourself - and every time you know just what you'll say, what anyone else might say back - even if that part of it is fiction. You're your own confidant now. You always know just the point where you'll start to cry. 

You'll go running but it's so cold. The temperature seems to drop while you're doing it and you have to go back in and get your stupid windbreaker, to keep your tall, weak body from shivering. Crows, crows, crows. You want to say something about the sky, the mountains, the gaps within the trees, but actually it has come to be the time of year where that sky looks like nothing so much as a fuzzy florescent light full of the mute bodies of desiccated insects, the plastic turning the color into that of slightly turned milk. You hate milk.

So: maybe you make a nice dinner. Maybe it is Thanksgiving week and you are thinking about a lot of things you might cook or do, the herbs to be picked, the way you will perfect the house with light, scent, flowers, and heat. You try to remember to be thankful - which is something that comes on with all the subtlety of an avalanche sometimes, and other times feels impossible. 

The silly wine-drinking holiday you normally host seems like a great hit this year, and that is something you think about feeling grateful for - the sudden, hot flush of brightly-dressed people in the otherwise dark, dusty space. The way that the year and pandemic has created a bright bubble around those community connections like that, the way we are knit together in more complicated, beautiful ways. 

Then it will all feel sick and silly and you'll get unaccountably angry. Some of them have perfectly good reasons to suspect your year has not been perfect. Some of them have the particular details. Some of them have let you down in unspeakable ways. You can imagine just what they would say, or might have said. You can't talk to any of them, not really, or maybe you wouldn't want to, or maybe you did and it all felt like too much of a burden. You feel lonely.

Well, are you tired? Are you depressed? Was this a good exercise, or do you just feel raw and pathetic? 

 So much travel these days - I feel displaced, disoriented. I space out a bit and don't know how to ground myself in place - am I in Staunton? Am I at the last airbnb? Am I in Virginia? But I'm right here, on my porch, drinking red wine and feeling my toes go dumb in the cold.

My new sleeve is killing me. All my other work (last sleeve session aside) has been brief enough that the pain felt almost novel, a pleasant kind of buzzy hurt. Six hours in the chair and your body goes into a light form of shock - you get shaky, physically trembling, confused, and it's hard to speak. My skin was ice cold when I finished up. 

It's weird: objectively I know it's beautiful and she did an amazing job, but I have this kind of disassociation about it, like I haven't caught up my mental image of myself. It's so... flowery, it's so yellow. I think I'm going to get a little nasty, mean Elkhorn banded water snake under the flowers and that will make it feel more metal and balance the whole thing out. In the meantime, I like that you can see the flowers dripping with my blood. 

As ever, I like the woman who tattoos me. She's this little darling tiny creature with big eyes and rainbow hair and she has the character trait of "asks a lot of questions." I was really struggling a few times since those flowers wrap all the way inside my elbow and as I mentioned, it fucking hurt so I didn't really have a lot of considered answers for her. She asked me if I ever wanted to be famous, what I liked about history, and why I didn't want to publish my book. 

I'm tired. Another bad weekend in terms of my emotions. I left the airbnb around 1am and walked the swamp roads. This morning (was it only this morning?) there was a great blue heron hunting outside on the log sticking out of the lake. She was gorgeous with a big dark spot on her shoulder, and I could see her reflection in the black of the pond water. 

Pretty day, warm for November, like most all of the days have been in November so far. I can't believe how this month is flying by. This whole year, really, even though the passage of time is the most tedious and old person thing to complain about. I talked to my mom today; she said, "I don't know if I'm sick or just so winter depressed." 

I think it's helped me to be writing the daily shit in this blog again, and not in the way that I used to, like I was sending sad message bottles out into the oceanic nothing of my general depression. Once I found a real message in a bottle at Elkhorn with Travis and Josh. It was tied all up in that log jam you get to if you take that right hand path down at the trout hole site. A good place for cardinal flowers. I don't remember what it said, only that the message had been sealed into a Gallo brand chardonnay bottle and contained a kind of "let's see where this message goes" vibe. I thought I might could have made good friends with the person who wrote it. We scribbled something back about the day we found it and put it back in the water, although that was probably 5-6 years ago, and I'm sure we were just creating more litter. Litter at Elkhorn was a thing I thought a lot about, although I have maybe been to Elkhorn twice this whole year, the least since I discovered that place, and probably not picked up a single piece of trash I didn't bring in myself.

Big day for crow nonsense. There was a sparrow hawk of some kind hunting them, and even if I tried to get in the mix, it didn't give a shit about me. Six, maybe seven miles of running with them? 

There's one crow with a distinctive crooked feather that's bolder than some of them. He lands at my feet when I enter his murder's territory. I give him and his group their peanuts and dog food and any special treats I brought them. But this week, he's been gathering up the peanuts while I run on and then landing again and again right in front of my feet, like he wants more, even though I can see his beak is literally full of peanuts. I didn't understand for a while, then I realized he wanted me to wait next to him, crouched on the pavement, while he stashed the peanuts I'd just given him, then give him more - fresh, better peanuts! They're very clever birds, and they manipulate me with this wanton, loveless disregard that makes me adore them all the more. I want all of their carelessness. I have emotion enough for them.

My "back of the graveyard" murders - which have always been more wild than the murder that hangs out literally on top of my house - have been learning a kind of aerial routine. They are the ones that chase me or swoop the most when I'm running, and I'm figuring a way to toss them peanuts as they are mid-air alongside of me. It's very cool, but we need to work a little more on it. I love the way they changed direction and dogfight against the gusts of air around me. 

Me? I'm less of a flu symptom today. Fucked up a bit at work, read some stuff. This year I've only read Sally Rooney novels, historical biographies about the founding fathers, and Song of Ice and Fire shit, but I finally picked up a really good history of the Comanche people written by a woman who is writing them as an actual 18th century empire instead of the cartoonish villain version put forward by the historians of the last 300 years. It's good, but a little out of my depth. Well, we'll see.

Tomorrow I'll be back in the swampy lakes and mires of Virginia Beach with the big hot moon casting down a perfect mirror on the black bogs. Always how I love Virginia.

 I got my covid booster and flu shot yesterday afternoon, and today I'm all feverish and freezing and too hot and clammy and terrible. I wanted to just take the day off and blow around, but work was bad too, so I freaked out and got back online. Now I'm shivering in my dark house thinking about the things I should be cleaning but instead kind of wanting to curl up in bed and watch Game of Thrones. 

Sven seems better from his nail issue. I couldn't run today with my whole feverish nightmareland, but I wanted to do a few walks to feed the crows and get in a little exercise. I'd really slacked off over October with all the travel stuff, and I didn't want to miss a day. But it was pretty and warm, and Sven wanted to hang out.

I'm also thinking about how to talk about the next part of my tattoo. Trying to judge how much I want the yarrow to look like wild white yarrow as opposed to the gold or colorful stuff I have in the yard. I guess I'll talk to the little human fairychild who is my tattoo artist and see what she thinks. 

God, I'm exhausted. Maybe I'll just have a hot shower and lie on the floor of it for a while.

Cold and windy today with stripes of bright blue sky between dark dark clouds - mountains are more of a smoke color than the dark blue they were earlier. 

Coming off a bad weekend emotionally, I had a bad night's sleep. I dreamt of the dead. In the first one, I was living in my old childhood home and my mom was upset because Abby, our little dog, was missing. I was out in the dark looking for her, wandering around the odd ghostly turns and alleys in my old, remembered neighborhood. The specifics of that landscape feature so strongly in my sleeping mind; I'm not sure why. I was one of those kids that practically lived outside and prowled all around and got into everything: into the woods behind abandoned or for sale houses, up on the equipment in construction sites, into backyards that I probably wasn't supposed to be going into. Anyway, I wandered all around looking and it was starting to get light in the dream when I remembered that Abby was dead, and had been for years. Then it was a string of other nebulous, unhappy dreams about my grandfather (dead) a rabbit (wouldn't die) and some kind of wolf (wanted to kill me.) I just finally got up and "went" to work. 

This should be a short week. On Friday, I'm going back to get some more of my sleeve filled in Virginia Beach. I think I should finish up the flowers and maybe even start the snake, but colors take longer than I ever expected, so we'll see. 

 Yesterday: mountains very very dark blue. It spit blustery rain out of a black cloud for a minute, then grew brittle and sunny and very windy. The farmer's market felt like a little medieval village: meats roasting, folksy music, people milling about over turnips and beets and giant cabbages. There was some kind of dog festival going on; I brought Sven down in spite of his foot troubles and he seemed to like it. He met a red lab puppy named Hamilton and really wanted to hump him. Afterward, the day had a dark trajectory. 

 Pretty half moon tonight and a good evening for sitting on the porch, even if there's just scraps left of the light. I'm thinking I should be finishing up the poem I'm almost ready to send out, one of my only artifacts of this year, if you don't count tomatoes. (And I do count them, so I guess nevermind.) 

But it's nice to be sitting and watching the nuthatch on the suet. The one I put by the kitchen window fell in the storm last night, but I moved it up in porch-watching range and that's just as well. 

Sven has a cracked toenail from when he was zooming around the yard at Ali's last night. I felt bad because I was trying to futz with it, but clearly hurting him, and he was licking his lips a lot which a quick google tells me is dog for: "I'm confused and nervous, I'm trying to appease you." I know that feeling well, little dog. I felt so guilty that I gave him a giant treat bone and let him sit out with me, even though sometimes he behaves terribly on the porch.

I need to buy bigger curtains for the porch. I put up some this summer, but they just hit the top of the rail instead of artfully pooling on the floorboards. I guess they were just a bit of a prototype. It's nice having a little more privacy though, especially with the garden flowers all down. 

Another thing that happened today was that Jay sent me some Civil War grave stone pictures from the asylum grounds. I was able to find out that one man had been in the 49th of Virginia and had gone mad after the war, and was committed there at Western State where he died. The other one was a cavalry officer in the 1st, Company I division under JEB Stuart - another big Staunton Confederate hero. The cavalry man was really hard to find anything about, but I finally succeeded and it felt so good. I even found a picture of him. He was originally from Harrisonburg and survived the war, but afterward had to go into an "Old Soldiers home" in Richmond because there was no federal funding for Confederate soldiers in their twilight years. When he was one of the last few men living there, in 1916, he got turned over to the care of the state and ended up at Western State. He was a traitor and everything, but it seemed a bleak fate for a sick old man. 

Am I thinking about this because of Veteran's day? I took roses to my neighbor yesterday and he called me "my dear" which made me think of my grandfather. 

How will I know what I'm forgetting if I don't write? I'll surely remember the big pieces of this year, the literal volcanos and earthquakes and the metaphorical ones too, but what small things will I lose if I don’t hang onto them? Little things like the stupid blue delphinium that bloomed its little head off for the first time, or waking up in unfamiliar woods and finding that the night wind left me a walnut hull with a tiny white feather inside, or the feeling of the crows flying just over me, skimming my hair as I run, or being inside the cloud of yellow jackets, tangled in my hair, pouring into my boots and how each sting was a sweet little electric kiss. 

Today is the day I'm putting up my bird feeders. It’s already caused several brawls on my porch. I can see them out the window as I work, and sometimes it seems like the birds can see me in here working. I have three suet blocks, a small feeder in the catalpa, the big one down by the birdbath. I’m trying the suet in a few new places so I can see if they’ll come up to my kitchen window. I don’t know that it will actually work or that they’ll find it, but it would be nice to look at them out the window while I’m cooking. Because of the curse or whatever, it will probably just attract yellow jackets, but a girl can be optimistic - even this girl. 

The herbs and peppers are in for the season, but I’ve left my beds in terrible dismay. Both mowers are broken too, so the whole effect is pretty sloppy. But I made dangling bundles of herbs, garlic, and bunches of cayenne peppers so I feel like at least the kitchen looks nice, and I can reach everything I use easily. My hanging baskets are filled with onions and shallots from the farmer’s market, and lemons, which I feel like I’ve been cooking with absurdly often since getting all hooked on Alison Roman. My big blue bowl is filled with Arkansas black apples, although I’m running low on those and expect the season is done. 

When I went on my graveyard run today, the leaves were getting all blown down and swirling around me in big gouts of gold and orange, and I saw a massive buck walking just a few feet from where I was. I crouched down because the wind was going in my favor for him not smelling me, and it’s a thing that deer have a hard time puzzling out a human shape if you’re not standing upright. He passed right in front of me, stopped, and looked down at me like “what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”