One day I'd like to go to bed without crying.

 

Sugar Hollow is looking very green. It felt good to cliff scramble along bloodroot, bleeding heart, and fiddleheads - the little ephemeral plants that cling to rocks like lichen. They look so delicate, but come out at such a violent, changeable time of year, and they're hardy and bright. A more optimistic woman could take a lesson from that. 

I had another one of those dreams last night that knocks me over with sentimentality and nostalgia. I like those, even if they leave me with a lingering feeling during the day. But otherwise, it's been hard to focus, and no good writing or reflecting. I haven't even really cooked anything that has given me any reason to feel excited. I have a migraine today - the first one in a long time. I hope it sweeps out some of the fog and trash in my brain when it finishes up.

Usually my crows are sleek, beautiful, gleaming, silent creatures that physically intimidate me when they suddenly, abruptly choose to enter my space. Their physical presence so near to my body gives me a kind of evolutionary startle response, the way my human brain tells me to jump back from an unexpected snake even though I like snakes and don't mind handling them. I'm saying all of this about their mystique and presence only to laugh about how utterly fucking ridiculous they all looked today in the rain. Big floof'd up scraggly drenched banditos, begging for a little chicken!

Tonight I'm cooking pasta e ceci, an ancient Roman dish that was actually mentioned by Horace, but has persisted into today's Italian cuisine. I'm going to melt an anchovy in it to be more authentically Roman, and add tomatoes and a little kale, which surely the Romans didn't have. I imagine Romans also did not drink Botanist martinis with bright green olives as they were cooking it either, but the closest any of my actual ancestors got to Rome was likely "barbarian slave sex novelty" so it's probably fine. 

My cheap-ass amazon plant lights came today, so I set up my tomato seeds in a violent purple corner of my "office" and now from the street, my house looks like it has a very sketchy grow operation running out of it. I read something I really liked, which is that I need to keep my lights on them 8-10 hours a day, but shouldn't do 24/7 because plants actually do "sleep." (Or at least they need a dark cycle, and it seems like the cycle nutrients or rest from growing during that period.) I really like that so much. 

 Well, I think one thing I need to do is some spring cleaning. I feel like everything is so cluttered and messy right now. Last night, I cleaned out my fridge and wiped everything down, threw out the old sauces that were hiding in the very back, and organized the shelves. I did the same thing for my dry pantry. I packed up all the food I keep buying for the food pantry and got it set up by the door so I'll actually remember to take it. I cleaned the kitchen, although that happens every night. I also got started on the bedroom, which is always a really hard place for me to keep tidy for some reason. I kind of think there's some kind of psychological aspect to that, but maybe I'm just a fucking slob with too many clothes. At any rate, I need to start moving my sweaters downstairs and bring up my warm weather stuff.

Another thing I need to do is to clean out my cabinets and replace all my little mismatched thrift store dishes with the fancy beautiful new clay set I recently spent too much money on. It's so funny, thinking of that makes me remember a time, years and years ago now, when I got lightly teased for having none of my stuff match - a completely silly comment that I got irrationally bent out of shape about. Thinking about it as I look at my hip new dishes, I want to take out my dumb brain and question it about what it hangs onto. Little gloomy depression brain, do you only remember behaving badly over a gentle ribbing, and not any of the nice things people have said to you over the years? But it's not true - I remember the good things too, every day. 

I'd hoped to run today, since I'm starting to feel like I'm seeing some progress in that regard, but of course the moment I get out of my grooming it starts to rain. I suppose a sleepy, rainy day isn't the worst thing. I'm cooking some sort of... pasta e ceci and chickpea stew thing for dinner, which fits pretty well with the general gloom of the day. I should take advantage of it all and finish up my cleaning. Although I probably will put on my windbreaker and try a few miles at least, so long as it isn't pouring. I have a few scraps of chicken to give to my crows if they're up and around.

I know I wrote about it a little yesterday, but I'm really thinking that if the filter color of light changes in the different seasons, and autumn is purple and winter is white/yellow, then I think spring in the valley must truly be blue. This is my early morning, and the light outside looked like such a strange shade of indigo before the sun came up. Or maybe I've looked too long at the blue jays standing on my porch railing under the feeder, just outside my window. 

 Blue old evening, and me most of all. There was smoke in the sky today and yesterday, some part of the Alleghany on fire like it often is this time of year, with me left to wonder if it's intentional or an accident. Everything pretty much sums up that way, doesn't it? Even so, hard to breathe, hard to see. 

But tonight feels like the most spring night I've felt in a long time. Everything is sky-lit even after sunset and there are bright yellow flowers lighting up in my yard. The birds are louder, and I can hear them even before I get up in the morning now. I feel cold, tired, and strange.

I'm sure I was going to write something about the weekend aside from the fact that every meaningful piece of my camping equipment failed and broke, from my entire almost-ten-year-old tent to something as small and expected as the sleeping bag I have been trying to replace for years. And I was so cold. 

If I were being cute in this blog, I might chalk it up to my little curse, but more and more it feels like a part of me, and not some kind of external assigned factor. Not magic. Just everything old, tired, and broken, and most of all me. I realized for much of the weekend, I was literally disassociating, a new symptom in all of this - completely absent in my body, staring blankly into the fire or the river. After, I thought I should get back into therapy to deal with this grief or depression or whatever it is, but I couldn't even get through the questionnaire. Maybe I'll try mindfulness exercises. That'll probably fix it, right?

 All my gear failed.

March is running away from me. The 18th already. I keep thinking that these days take so long, but the weeks are just flying by. 

Full moon dreams. Last night I had almost exactly the same dream of the night before, but it was in an expected place, a bar, instead of a plane, and the spirit of the dream was generous and gentle. No doomed fog. No circling. I know thinking too much of dreams is probably one of those things I should do less of, like crying at inappropriate times and overinvesting in the astrological turns, but it was curious.

Out to the villa for a couple nights to get a better look at that full moon. It's no Elkhorn, though the distant sound of 81 does sound a little bit like the constant roar of the water this time of year on the North river. I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever get back there, but it's too sad to think about. I'm looking forward to sleeping outside and maybe getting soaked if the expected rain moves through.

Gray, gray, gray, gray. It misted my whole run and even the crows didn't want to come down and visit like they normally do. I get it, crows. I don't want to hang out with me either.

Another night, another dream, and always about someone important from my past telling me how much they now, rightfully, loathe me. It's my most common recurring dream now, but this one had a funny twist: it was set on a plane, but the destination city was covered in this strange, cursed, persistent fog that evaporated people. So instead of landing, the plane just circled and circled. The whole dream I wanted to say this can't be real, you don't even like planes. 

But enough about my crippling depression. I'm making corned beef and cabbage because my grandmother made it every Saint Patrick's day, but surprise, surprise, I've already burned it! (Next, yellow jackets will probably come pouring out of the walls of my falling-down house and carry me off.) I should have looked at the comments section of the NYT cooking article I was using - all the real tips are in there. Well, no, first I should have been using my own recipe and not bothering with another version, but I guess I wanted to justify my subscription. This recipe uses Riesling instead of dark beer, and I thought oh, okay but no, it wasn't enough liquid and my dutch oven is cast iron - the temperature they suggested meant the wine scorched off. I'm trying to salvage it with some broth and stuff. Maybe it will just be a darker color this year. Fitting, kinda. 

 I don't know, little blog. I don't know what to do with myself. I'm just really hurting right now. I can't seem to keep my heart up on its legs. It should be spring, with things getting better, but I feel almost violently depressed. 

Just my yearly reminder that putting on my old running playlist and going out to run five miles, but this time, as hard and fast as I possibly can is sure a way to feel something. The blood starts flowing again. It hurts so bad, and I love pushing my body, feeling it pick up speed when I urge it forward. Emotionally, everything that I've been pushing down comes up with a roar in my ears. Sprinting feels like opening up to myself. When I'm finally done, I don't slow into a cool down, I just flop over in the grass of the graveyard, and my crows fall around me like applause. 

I get too tired after midday lately
I take it out on my good friends
But the worst stays in
Oh, where would I begin?

My office glows all night long
It's a nuclear show and the stars are gone
Elevator, elevator, take me home

 I'm tired. Third day in a row of terrible dreams. I can't really get excited about anything right now - I feel listless about what I'm cooking this week, and haven't been able to start any meaningful progress on the garden.

 The rain finally cleared out the smoky haze that's been hanging over the valley for the last few days from some fire or another. I wasn't able to see Elliot's knob out my back window for days, and the view up on Furnace hiking this weekend was quite blunted. On the hike, I overheard my friend's 14-year-old telling her dad "Jess is a trail runner" which was funny; I don't know where she got that from. I'm sure I didn't tell her anything like that.

I am having a hard time. I wondered what the point of writing in this thing was. I feel closed out; why should I put my feelings anywhere? Everything that felt so hopeful and open and earnest even two weeks ago feels shut up tight now. I feel like a fool for optimism, for the stupid little things I write about here, for my whole deal and personality. 

I had a dream last night that I was going through this ... tour? of a beautiful old ruined manor house in a crowd of people, and I saw some people I haven't seen in a long time. I sort of panicked because I realized I was dressed like shit, like I looked like a complete fucking mess and there's this general want for people you haven't seen in a long time to be at least a little favorably impressed with you, or at least, not think "wow, god, she's a wreck." I feel like the dream spiraled into some horror elements - my hair falling out, my teeth breaking, the things that happen in those kinds of anxiety dreams. My hair isn't falling out and my teeth aren't breaking (or at least, they are at a steady and expected rate) but that's how I feel inside: embarrassing, cringing and ugly. 

Well. The daffodils are blooming, how about that, huh? A man in the graveyard pulled up alongside me on my run and asked "am I going insane, or did I just watch you stop and hand feed a crow?" Welcome to it, buddy, I do lots of awful things.