Hard to keep up with all the hungry little folks that live in my neighborhood. Suet cages and both big bird feeders refilled (which has to be some kind of a record, I just filled those), birdbaths full of hot water, crow porridge put out along with peanuts, salmon scraps, and an entire meat tart that was burnt. 

Today it's downtown to meet up with friends who are getting married in the fall and are in town to meet with an officiant. I haven't seen them in a long while so it will be nice. Then later, I'll go up to Costco - a chore I like to save for if I have a break during my work week, but I don't see any breaks on the horizon with this release going out, and I'm out of wine and more importantly, sea bass. But what I'm really looking forward to is getting home and making a big pile of squid ink pasta with pancetta and cream and cheese and maybe something green. I'm hungry this weekend. Maybe it's the cold. 

Yesterday it was so cold, I swear, I feel like I was pre-hypothermic getting back from walking Bean and Sven. My hands were so cold where my stupid, useless fingerless gloves didn't cover. It was beautiful, though. Staunton got enough snow to where all the ugly patches of grass that were starting to show from where our ten inch storm had finally melted back enough are covered up again with light, pretty powder. It was a nice snowfall, and cozy to be cooking a big meal during. Cooking makes me happy in the same simple way that working on my dumb story or feeding and watching the birds do. Like it appeals to some basic, instinctive part of me - it's so relaxing and there's no happier way for me to end the day than pouring a glass of prosecco, pulling out all my ingredients, and putting together something nice. 

 

Weekend vibe. Band-Aids, daffodils, wine bottles made into candle holders.

 Things to do:

Take the recycling down to the center
Fill the bird feeders
Fucking run you lazy bitch (postponed til tomorrow on account of the snow's on again off again relationship with turning into miserable freezing drizzle, who says I don't occasionally take care of myself)
Stop by the store for wine and birdseed
If time, run out for more candles (haha, like I ever thought I'd really have time for this)
Put in the ribs at 3pm
Vacuum
Hang the new lights (decided to keep old lights up until February for arbitrary reasons)
Walk Sven in the snow flakes (shitting sleet)
Send out positive, bright little messages of energy
Be quiet in my brain (nope, weirdly creative and turned up and on today) 
Mop if there's time
Clean the fucking birdseed off the porch   (although actually it would be more efficient if I ripped out and replaced the entire porch, but still no word on the house deal) 
Make mashed potatoes (sometimes I am eating things like rice and beans but secretly I'm always thinking about mashed potatoes) (strikethrough)
Make gravy (strikethrough)

An embarrassing turn for Queen "I run in a mountain town in a route of only hills no problem what is this hill hard to you I didn't notice" me yesterday. I had to shift up my route around a funeral and kicked my own ass so bad on a steep two mile different route run that I'm actually sore today. Two miles. Sore. Ridiculous. I think I need to be doing that route more often if this is how much it tore me up. Also, I need this training at work to finish up so I can run my usual mileage again and not get fat. 

It's a pretty night though. The sky was all smoke and blue and pink and golden, and the lingering snow made it reflect and filter through the tall evergreens in the graveyard, like their very individual needles had little halos of light around them. Work is still hard and annoying, but I feel compartmentalized about it. I feel like my personality has returned a little bit from my difficulties last week; I feel funny again, at least, which is the only quality I ever valued in myself besides my fabulous tits. 

Here's another nice thing I actually did for myself: I bought myself a very pretty turquoise ring from some little artist who does work with stones and crystals and shit. I know turquoise is a little silly, but this one is the exact same color as pale, cool teal-green moss on dead hemlock wood, shot through with veins of darker brown. It reminds me of reindeer lichen and places I love to hike, and the design is banded with silver in such a way that it looks like a natural mate to the silver viking replica ring I've worn since I was sixteen. It makes me happy, and fits my natural inclination to fidget around with something. 

I told Ali about my dream and she sent me an NPR podcast about dreams, which is peak her: listening to me describe a complex, complicated emotion I believe to be mostly expressed through mystical signs, while also trying to make me listen to NPR when I don't want to. I've also had my head in Nithavellir a little bit, playing with my stupid story when I should be doing productive things. 

Speaking of productive things, a friend wants to hire me to write for his new brewery venture thing... beer descriptions, website content, the works. I had a zoom about it Tuesday night. On one hand, I'm not NOT seeing the writing on the wall at my current gig. It would be good for me to have some resume experience that isn't specific to Saas learning software if I ever wanted to freelance or do another type of writing. On the other hand, I don't know how relevant brewery copy is going to be for any future software writing job, I'm not a marketing person, and I don't really want to. I know all I do all day is sit at home and go for one run and think about crows and drink prosecco, but ehhhh. The friend is nice and I like him, but I don't really know him well enough to feel like I know if I could work with him on a project like this. Also, I'm an emotionally tender victorian level depressed person who spend a lot of time staring out of windows right now; maybe I should just stick to my lucrative day job. 

...On the other, other hand, with an extra 500 bucks, I could buy a fucking metal detector, and really complete my full transformation into middle aged dad.

What else was I gonna say? Oh yeah. More snow maybe, that's kind of cool. I hope it's making the people who love snow happy. A camp that I'm in too, but I'm lucky in that I get to stay home all the time and write about Motsognir towers and shit and never go out. It can be fun because I don't have to go out in it. But it will be beautiful. I like the time of year that it's developing into, where it's still seasonally cold, but there's more light and my brain doesn't so much feel like it's trying to jump out of my head. If it snows, on Saturday morning, I'll walk down in it to the little french bakery and buy croissants stuffed with ham and mustard and little rosemary needles on top.  

 Oh no, I thought I had outgrown the nonsense ability to be affected by a horoscope, but boy, did I just get called out on some dumb Mercury retrograde weekly garbage for my sign. It was all about sweetness, heaviness, and sadness, and the mixture of home with these concepts - people assuming you don't care so much and caring so much. The ability to keep heaviness at bay through ritual, or to turn a spell around.

The wording for turning spells around made me smile, because I even bought the quite expensive and rare components for curse breaking after the last really bad yellowjacket swarm this fall, but decided not to use them, to instead, stay curious and feel out that energy in my life. To engage with it, kind of the way I think I've played with spookiness in my own house in the past - maybe even won it over a little bit. I don't know. 

It reminded me of something I have in one of the poems I wrote in college: my breasts are just fistfuls of wasps. Heavy-handed, clumsy verse. But still.

If the next time I go out to the woods, I fall into a fucking grave of yellow jackets which finally sting me enough times to kill my allergic body, I'll be grateful for a few things - among them, heavy sweetness.

Grateful honorable mention to the day going to my crows (eyeroll, yes, this seems to be 1. a crow blog 2. an insane person's blog) who saw me out on my run and rose up all together out of a distant low place in the graveyard into a giant cloud of birds. They swooped made a wide arc, and then it was 15-20 birds all flying directly at me and landing all around me like falling stars. (Fat, feathered stars, who know I'm carrying trimmings off the roast for them. Who is the poet now?) 

 Nice little happy dream last night... full of fond conversations, my garden, and carrots. It actually made me remember that I actually do have carrots planted in one of my vegetable beds, it wasn't just one of those impossible dream things that feel so real when you wake up... I guess I should pull those at some point? I wonder if they'll be okay to just overwinter. They're sitting under several inches of snow still.

I don't mind having a couple weeks with real snow on the ground though. It makes my dog walks and runs very beautiful - although I am lucky to have such a beautiful running route anyway. Thornrose is lovely in any weather. I've really gotten into the habit of just doing laps there lately since some of the sidewalks on my larger route are still covered in iced-over snow. 

That said, I will be glad when it's time to start prepping the garden again. I wish I knew anything about the dumb house. I guess either way, I'll do the kitchen herb bed, tomatoes (oh, gosh, actually I wonder if it's time to start my seeds... maybe a little early... ) 

Sister stew turned out pretty good last night - more like a taco soup than anything, but pretty spicy and good for a cold night. It reminded me of a mexican version of a basic Italian minestrone with pork instead of sausage or chicken, pinto beans instead of white beans, squash instead of kale. I'm really craving just a stupid salad today though. Ha, probably still thinking about carrots. 

 Bought tickets to Redwings Roots festival today. It made me happy because I liked thinking about last year, one of the nicest memories for me this summer, and because it reminds me that at some point it will be beautiful and hot and summery. I had never been to a music festival before, and hadn't known that I would like it so much, which is a nice surprise at my age. It combined a lot of things I like: camping, live music, stupid hippie outfits, and good food and beer. 

Jay and I were the only part of our group that could get off early and the whole point is to try to show up a early as possible to get a good spot. We had tickets for Chimney Ridge, which was way up at the top of the park, far away from the actual music grounds and the "natural chimney" formation that the park gets its name from. It was definitely a haul to get down to everything, especially at night, but it was also nice because we could basically set up our little camp anywhere in the vast woods and fields. Part of festival stuff is to make your spot look cool and interesting with the idea that people come and stop by, hang out for a beer or to play some music, and it reminded me a bit of larping. At least, I had a ton of rugs and tapestries and candles and shit for it. 

We found this flat spot in the middle of a field with a small copse of trees and started setting up. It was incredibly hot and full sun, and we had to leave the truck running at the loading area, then carry all of our group's stuff out down the hill into the field and go back for more. (Ha, this also reminded me of larping in a less fond, nostalgic way.) We got everything set up, and I stepped into my tent to set up sleeping stuff... and noticed a yellow jacket flying around inside. And then another one. And then another one. I looked out and sure enough, we had set up right in the middle of a huge nest of them. (I was still getting used to my curse at this point; later, more violent yellow jacket encounters would be less of a surprise.) 

SO. Then it was scurry on out of there, wait for them to settle, and very, very carefully move every single item we had just set up over across the dry creekbed to another little copse of trees in the meadow. Our second site was actually much nicer in hindsight, but at the moment, I think we were a little dismayed. 

Anyway, everything after that was an absolute blast, though. It was really fun getting to go anywhere all around the park over the weekend, checking out the caves within the rock formations, listening to the bands and Jay play, and hanging out in the beer garden eating huge Jack Browns burgers. Because it was so hot and it was over a mile or so to walk to and from camp to the festival to the food trucks, plus dancing all night, plus never holding still, I felt like I was starving the whole weekend but in a fun, dirty, very alive way. 

Anyway, I'm making my weird three sister soup tonight and drinking a martini. I had a fun release surprise today at work - another week full of training that they somehow expect me to turn around a release the size of my whole team's month effort in a week. I feel kind of mas o menos about it though, to be honest. I'm not going to do that thing where I'm in 8 hours of training all day and then work into the night on this release. Not my job to work nights because nobody at this company knows what a process is. 

But for all that, I'm in a pretty good mood. I want to play with my story and think about happy things, good memories, and maybe good things to come. It's been good keeping up with this blog a little more, even if I was a mess last week and probably more candid than I needed to be, even in this untrod little corner of the internet. 

 It's a cold night, down to eighteen, so I'm fucking around with a chuck roast, gravy, and Yorkshire puddings - not exactly the healthiest, but you know, I have a Boudreaux that's going to rule with it. Trying to pull of Alison Roman's reverse sear, where you slow cook the roast and then sear it at the end instead of turning it up high in the first stage of cooking. 

File this post under meal planning, I guess. I was realizing yesterday that I have a bunch of stuff that I can use up in the next week without having to do a huge grocery list; I found a bunch of squid ink pasta that I bought a while back and forgot about. I'm also in the mood to make something kind of cajun - I was thinking like a deconstructed shrimp and grits with polenta instead of grits. I also have this really silly "three sisters stew" thing from the Times that I'm quietly suspecting is going to be a little gross. It's got pork loin cubes and then the typical three sisters - squash (yellow), beans (pinto and black), and corn (sliced off the cobb, but frozen or canned would work just as well. Faux Native one pot kind of meal. Hang on, I'm burning the shit out of my roux. 

Anyway, I think it's got some good potential, but right now the recipe looks a little bit like one of those ones where you just dump cans into water - which can be good, surely, but sometimes needs a little tweaking. Maybe with cumin and some good hot pepper of some sort. Well, I'll figure it out. 

Well, so far at least, that was a better weekend than the last one - no surprise hallucinogens and only the usual spirals of depression and vague senses of loss, foolishness, and disconnection. The hike was nice. It's been so long since I did any hiking in any amount of substantial snow; I was surprised by how hard it was!  (That is what she said?) It felt like every step required so much more work, but the woods were beautiful and completely frozen. I've often thought (and articulated here) that it's so worth while going out into the woods during odd weather - you get to see such a rare, secret side of the place. It was cold, but I also felt like my gear was good, and my waterproofing stayed on my boots for the most part. I think I need to re-oil them the next time I go over to Jay and Ali's. (And steal their boot oil.) 

I visited the graveyard and poured out some champagne for Not Dead But Sleeping. Because the gravestone is broken, I can't even tell if it's a man or a woman's grave, but the death date is 1884. I think that most of the national forest around Falls Hollow must have been a farm at some point. The cemetery is family-sized and on the other side of the river, parallel to the area with the graves, there are a series of low stone walls that seem to be made in the same fashion as the cemetery wall. They stretch out for a long while, so maybe they were for holding livestock or something. I wonder if there is a house foundation somewhere. Thinking about it reminds me of going back into the national forest in my professor's truck in college and him showing me the old home sites, drinking dark beers and digging up antebellum bulbs. I still have the orange mountain lilies in my side yard from those trips. 

Speaking of homesteads, I feel in a weird limbo with the house stuff. I asked the landlords about buying and they are considering it. They said they don't normally sell rental properties, but they would at least think about it because of the history with the house. (Perhaps, also, ah, the thousands of dollars of landscaping I've put in...) Waiting on a decision of this magnitude is such a new and fresh way to experience anxiety! I mean, I know even if they text right now and say "yes let's do it" there's still 10,000 ways this could all fall through or not come together. I know there's a ton that needs to be done on this place too, so even if they say no it might be a good thing... or at least, save trouble when an inevitable sinkhole opens up and destroys the place. But I love this little house. The ghosts like me. The light is so good. I failed to kill myself in this house, and failed to die when the house itself seemed to be conspiring to kill me. I love my stupid morning glory and the porch swing, remembering times I sat there and drank a brown ale, pushing on the railing with my socked foot to make it swing. 

It's also been hard not to daydream about stuff I've always wanted to do, like turning the cat brothel in the backyard into an actual greenhouse and hangout space, or re-building the porch, or so many other things that didn't seem to be worth the effort just renting. 

Oh well. Such sandcastles in the air. 

A cold, cold day here on Thornrose. All of the literal dozens of filthy wild animals that I have been feeding are in a frenzy around my house trying to get seed, suet, cat food, and peanuts. Cardinals, finch, bluejays and chickadees at the feeders. Squirrels everywhere. Idiot feral cats needing to be shushed off the porch. 

When I got up, all ten of my crows were sitting in the catalpa, seemingly staring into my kitchen window. Because I'm a tremendous sucker, I took them breakfast out to their little feeding spot instead of waiting until my run to feed them like I normally do. It took two trips because of how they are greedy feathered pigs who eat a ton of food. When I came down with their second helping, they literally would not move out of my way so I could put down their stuff and had to step over and around them. They've never let me get that close, but they did look beautiful against the bright white snow.

I tried to run, but it was around 17 degrees - fucking child's play I guess for people who run in real mountain conditions, but hard on me, a soft idiot who is recovering from a long haul respiratory virus. I managed 3 miles and I'm going to be happy about that. The sky was really beautiful. I like that I'm starting to be able to see streaks of light sometimes well after 5pm. Tonight, they were bright hot housefire red and pink and golden. Maybe sometime soon, I'll start feeling less like a lunatic. 

Sometimes it's conceivable that I can be so candid about everything I feel. I can just say things so easily. And other times, it's like there is such a wall between me and everyone, like I am fundamentally disconnected now - or have I always been, with that one particular exception? 

Last weekend made me realize that in such a bodily way. Sometimes I feel so out of myself and disconnected, even from my own internal monologue, or my ability to be creative - and that feeling has persisted. Like I could just make positive, listening sounds and most people I know (and like!!) would nod along, oblivious to my actual feelings or the facts of my life and past and needs and loves. 

I had a friend reach out to me today about the last weekend experience overall, in which we all got in way too deep in over our heads and are all trying to come back from. Hah, I wrote that in such a faux poetic, vague way. Actually, it's much uglier and more common, it goes: "We all got poisoned by a bunch of drugs we didn't know we were taking." But it was so strange. Afterward, everyone said how impervious and controlled I seemed, unaffected. That has seemed so objectively funny in retrospect, but in an incredibly depressing way, because that's exactly how I feel half the time - occasionally totally falling apart but needing to keep it together on the outside.

How boring and fundamentally disappointing these entries will seem to me when I read them back to myself, and probably delete them, later. It's okay. Actually, having written all that bit out, I feel a little bit more cheerful. I'll hike out the the graveyard at Falls Hollow tomorrow with a few friends and pour my bro "Not Dead but Sleeping" (yet no name on the gravestone?) a libation in the forested over cemetery. Maybe I'll have some nice dreams instead of terrible nightmares, and see a good bird or something. I want to get back to myself, and do some actual camping that doesn't involve terrible fucking disasters. I think pretty soon I could be running a lot better. 

 I was finally having a nice dream for once in my life, and had to wake up to go to my early weekly meeting for my new offshore team. At least it's beautiful with the sunrise catching on the snow and it's cute that Sven is still in bed like a complete lazybones. I like how completely still the house is early in the morning, a sense that feels even more amplified by being locked in on all sides by deep snow. And the dream at least put me in a good mood. It's also nice to drink nettle tea out of my little lightning cup.

I'm very groggily paying attention to this grooming, but also dabbling with my grocery list. It looks like more snow on the way for tomorrow, and yet more over the weekend, so I want to make sure I have enough fresh veggies and such to be stuck for a few more days. My dinner ideas are uninspired this week. I made some broth that I need to use for some stupid boring chicken noodle soup. I have a notepad open with my standup so I might be able to remember what I was even supposed to be doing at work today, plus a draft conversation with my landlady asking about buying the house. (Draft conversations are a big part of my life.) 

I also have an unrelated quote that's attributed to Kit Carson, a 19th century trapper/guide/explorer/mercenary I'm reading a book about: "Drop that, or by the splendor of God, I'll blow your heart out." This quote is not at all useful in my life, as I'm rarely threatening anyone, but it was so perfectly antique and ridiculously wonderful, I wanted to remember it. I'll put it in a poem sometime. 

I think the poem I've been working on this year is ready to send out. I feel a little vulnerable about sending it into the world, but if I don't, I'm going to keep writing and rewriting it, and it's really done. It was hard to write, but it's a decent poem. I just haven't sent anything out in so long. The last two I sent out both got accepted into a journal that I thought was kind of just a low key regional publication, but recently realized was more prestigious than I knew. Or at least they've published much more famous poets than I realized, and even my favorite poet Charles Wright. 

Ooh, bragging about myself to myself in my own blog! 

 Whew, I should probably pull up from all the angst, anxiety, and self-loathing a bit, huh? I know this is usually the peak of my winter blues anyway, plus everything else. Hell, I'll even blame mercury retrograde for my lingering on the past. I even have had a couple high school dreams. 

Nothing like almost a foot of snow to get the birds worked up. I feel like there's a cloud of them around my house this morning. The blue jays are most ridiculous - I feel them peanuts alongside the crows so they have no real reason to complain, but they try to eat at the feeder I have set up for the little birds. They're always almost tipping it over with their fat asses.

My boss recently reminded me of gratitude journals, and maybe that's something I should work on when I'm writing in this thing, instead of just gushing my bad feelings. (Which I guess is therapeutic, but still.) I do feel grateful for my little house, sitting warm in a snowfall, and the pretty birds that share my yard with me. 

 Ha, so, I have this document where I keep notes to myself that I don't want to forget - reminders not to do specific stupid things, grocery lists for specific places, packing lists, ideas, shows I want to watch or books I'd like to read. I was making a list in there and scrolled down to see something I've had on my "personal reminders" since this time last year, when I was incredibly bad emotional space:

You are a giant aquatic sleeping salamander, the only extant member of the genus Cryptobranchus, and you don’t need anything except the cold silence of a dormant creekbed.

Pretty good, right? I liked the meditation I guess, even if it's obviously a very depressed person thing to write. And it's true that there are salamanders all over the woods this time of year - sure, probably a few rare giant ones still left in remote hollows, deep in Appalachia. But more commonly, little efts as bright red as embers in the leaves, or those long, thick dark ones with blue dots that look like the night sky at Elkhorn. They're all still there, down in the black loam or under creek rocks, sleeping in dead logs. And when it snows, they'll go on dreaming. And so will I. 

But enough of that! Dreams are fine, but I wonder if I can get the front porch replaced before the garden season. It's getting to be that time of year that I can at least start thinking about it. 

I picked up scallops at Costco yesterday, so I think tonight I'm going to make this really good creamy pan-roasted scallop dish from my fancy New York Times cooking. (Note to self: cancel some of your fucking cooking subscriptions!) It reminds me kind of tikka masala sauce because it's bright and tomato-y but also creamy. And I do have some nice bread for it. I bundled up and went down to get my Reunion pickup this morning. It was nice and cold, and I stood under the little heater outside to wait for the loaves. I like doing things like that around my little town. 

Tomorrow will be out to Deerfield for an overnight. I'm going to make another batch of jerky over the fire with Jay, and it will be good to be cold and outside doing things with a small group of friends. I like to cook on the big, old fashion cast iron stove, and to walk down to the Little Calfpasture and look at the cold water. I should make myself take some pictures. I feel like I didn't take too many over the last year. It's Mercury Retrograde, so I'm thinking about the past and other times I've been out there. I hope it's a quiet, cold, refreshing kind of time. I know I need to reset a little bit. Get some good sleep in the cold woods.

 Wow, I really still am feeling energy-zoinked... from Covid, I guess? I've felt so weak while running, and this morning, I had to get up a little earlier than my normal time for a meeting. I feel completely exhausted from it, even though it was really just slightly earlier and I'm not usually a baby who can't get up. The mountains were pretty though. It was still dark in town, but I could see the red light of the sunrise hitting the peaks to the west, up by Elliot's knob and the fire tower. I should go up there again sometime. It's a hard hike and I'm increasingly a little put off by heights, but I guess I don't have to actually climb the fire tower to see the view. 

It's turned out to be a warm day by the standard of the last few cold ones. I'm drinking nettle tea, which is too hot and pleasantly bitter, and thinking about the Lancelot legend about nettles. Tonight, I'll go have a fire at Ali's and let the dogs play around. I've come to so love that little weirdo Bean as he's grown into his personality. He's the strangest dog - actually, a goblin, not a dog, but that makes him appealing to me. He's bigger than Sven now and growing out into a huge beast, but all he wants to do is play and then try to cuddle with Sven, which Sven hates. 

Then I guess I'm going to try to make a kale Caesar salad for dinner? I am looking at my meal list and feeling a bit uninspired. Chicken lo mein sounds good, but I made tuna with soba noodles last night and I don't know how many noodles a girl needs to eat in a row. 

I'll be your Friend

 Eh, I feel a little weepy tonight for a Tuesday, the least of all days.

I think I literally felt myself get fully over Covid today, and suddenly become hot again. (Aren't I still such a little fuckin' narcissist? I'm getting a bit old for it to be cute, huh?) At least, if not hot, I felt like I didn't look so extremely pale, with sick-looking eyes and a small, helpless, trembling kind of mouth, as I have been the last 12 or 13 days of being so objectively. It's funny because I had this observation when I was in a video call meeting and could see myself objectively in the small screen of my application. I looked okay for once, but my background and foreground colors were turning up and down - my background black behind me, then the sunlight in my hair up to an almost white blazing glare. This isn't me hallucinating because of my year of emotional turmoil and gradual descent into madness; I think there was something fucked up with my settings or contrast. I pinged my coworker and asked if she could see it too, she said "I did notice you were all dark a bit ago." 

But I am really a little weepy, and I did test negative finally. It's cold outside. I don't know why this week is being so hard. Are all things hard, and now this blog is just a tired, whiny chronical of them? I'm the least connected to the stars than I've ever been, but maybe a Mercury retrograde? Something closer to home, like a snowstorm churning up in the weather models for this weekend, the very weekend I had hoped to put myself into the mercy of those same elements? How bad would that be?

I'm probably just burned out and worn out. 

Sunday, I sliced up very thin pieces of a deer my dad killed with his bow a while ago and smoked them way up over a fire in the rain. I cut them too thin and the fire was too hot in the cold; they're more like venison chips than proper jerky. Still, the marinade was good. And the fire was good. Isn't fire always good?

Being a major league shitboy today. I'm finally feeling better, so after working all week with a fever, I called out of work for being "sick." Now I'm hanging out in my fatigues, eating Indian food for breakfast. I plan to spend the day cleaning up the house and playing outside, maybe making a little fire in the yard for myself, and cooking a lemon parsley chicken soup thing. 

Not much for deep thoughts today, I guess, or melancholy fuckery. The birds are starting fights at the feeder and the stray cats have left a network of prints across the fresh snow in the back. Maybe I'll write a little more in this later, or more likely, open up one of my stupid Yan stories and work on that. I'm in the mood, a bit. 

give it back to the shores of albion, give it back the will to live

 Coming into this week a little covid hot, a little dream-fucked, and disoriented. I really have so much I want to write out, but I'm also genuinely a little wrong-headed by the virus and having a hard time being articulate. Still alive though! Ha! How silly is that? Of all the people in the world who are still alive, it's me.

Even so, I went running today. I needed to or I was going to go insane. But don't worry, I was by myself in the deserted graveyard with not a single person to expose, aside from the crows, who all seem vax'd. A couple of squirrels who have yet to learn I don't give a shit about feeding them. (Or maybe I do. I do actually feed them.) There's a stray cat who has been perched sitting on top of my privet hedge bush in the side yard like a bird, every day, for now three or four days. 

My friend - my only real work friend, my pretty, cool, more mature than me Cville friend - had some kind of traumatic thing happen back in October. I don't know what. I got back from Greece and my boss was texting me on my personal number to ask about me reaching out to her on private channels because nobody could get ahold of her and she hadn't been to work in a week. HR was going to fire her for job abandonment. Eventually she made contact, but has been subsequently off on long term leave all winter until this week. 

Now that she's back, I'm trying to talk to her again and feeling my way along, having missed her a lot, but having no idea what is okay to say, you know? I remember her dog was really sick before she left. Is it shitty and hurtful to send her a picture of my dog, snuggling with his best friend Bean? Is it okay to talk about a dumb celery parsley lemon chicken soup I was going to make if it snows on Friday morning? Somehow, the feeling of walking on eggshells or not being sure if someone even wants to talk to me is familiar and therefore, I feel somewhat steadier for it. I want to help, but I don't want to be a dick, and I'm realizing now in my mid thirties that I'm actually kind of a dick. I make most situations like this about me instead of recognizing that a person might just need to be upset and weird. Well.

Here's another thing I'm going to write about instead of doing my year-end recap because it's upsetting me. Back in September, my high school cross country coach, literally the only adult in my entire high school education who had been appropriate, kind, funny, nice, and given me a life long appreciation of running - received a traumatic brain injury while out on a run. 

They don't know what happened - his injuries aren't consistent with just falling down, and they aren't exactly consistent with him being attacked either. Anyway, he's been in a coma all year, including now. I can't quite keep from obsessively checking up on his progress, or lack thereof. I was in the same grade as his son, knew and liked him well too. It fucking sucks, and it feels so unfair. Of everyone in my school, all the horrible, maliciously religious fundamentalist people I met, my goofy, thoroughly un-creepy, dedicated coach would be the one to be beaten into a kind of brain death into some idiot NoVA street. 

We weren't a good cross-country running team. In fact, we were always last in a kind of laughable last place. Like, the judges would have to stay on the field long after the last actual competitor ended, because our team included people who couldn't run at all and would just straight up walk the whole course. Mr. Stone didn't ever care. I remember once we were going to a finals meet where we were the absolute last place oddballs and we were late. He pulled the entire bus off onto the soccer fields and off-roaded us to the starting line, with all these actual good schools with their good teams looking on. It was so funny and so fun to a bunch of middle schoolers. 

Anyway, that's a sad story about how a guy I liked and considered a running mentor is now in a coma! Isn't this blog encouraging?!

Happy 2022! I almost certainly have Covid! Of course, there are no tests, and a matter of waiting for PCR. A fitting conclusion to the year and a fitting entrance into this next one and the rest of my somewhat tired, exhausting, and pointless life. 

As Charles Wright says: what's still alive puts its arms around me, amen from the evergreens that want my heart on their ribbed sleeves. 

I could have fed myself pretty well out hiking Falls Hollow today, at least. The winter mushrooms were effusive, like applause. I felt like I could find them everywhere, just by opening my eyes and looking around. I found brilliant garnet red jelly ears, the starts for lion's mane, and some of the most beautiful winter oysters that I've ever harvested. They were on a downed hardwood across a deep span of creek, and the rocks were slippery even just up on the allegedly dry trail. I lost a foot out from under me crossing to get them, but a wet shoe isn't anything on a 60-something winter day. I tried to think of it like Beluga Day, the sweat and the river dive that I now haven't done for two years. But it's hard to miss the spiritual significance of it all, or lacking the ceremonial shedding of it, the energy of the last two years coming along with me like cherished little shadows.

I'm sorry to talk so much about mushrooms, but after the hike, I did a couple walking laps of the graveyard. There were even more winter oysters there! Huge patches on old dying trees that I'd never seen before, and big bunches along some of the spots I've harvested from before. I supposed it's all this warm, damp weather, although apparently we're supposed to get real snow here overnight. I expect there are some cold-weather-loving people who are really excited about the prospect of it. I hope that they are and that if it comes, it makes them happy. For my part, I am just blearily trying to keep breathing. 

I've been making a lot of fires, which I enjoy. I'm sick enough that sleeping is a little bad, but seem okay enough to be outside and moving around, albeit if I stay away from other people. (Nothing better for winter depression than that! It's not like I feel so isolated that I'm constantly vaguely disassociating!) I keep trying to think that the days are getting incrementally lighter, though I have yet to see any real evidence of it. 

Still, the birds hang around and cheer me up - mostly the damn crows, who see me as a walking, sort of breathing vending machine. I'm starting to trim back some of the dead coneflowers and sunflowers I've left up as a food source for them; after all, there are about three or four other actual bird feeders in my yard now. Today, I gave the butterfly bush - the one moved from my old house on Beverly - a trim. It was cutting out the light to my front beds and is now higher than my front porch, a proper tree. It feels good to do those kinds of little chores, and of course my house is cleaner than ever.  

Okay. More tomorrow. 

the nice end of a new year poem by K. Addonizio while I think about writing a better post

 

(...) I don’t care

where those girls are now.
Whatever they’ve made of it

they can have. Today I want
to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk
a little longer in the cold

blessing of the rain,
and lift my face to it.