I try to live the days and especially the night leading up to the turn of the year in a way that will give me good luck and foreshadowing for the year to come. So far, I won't call this a bust, but I am feeling so lethargic and having such a hard time finding productive work for my hands. It was hot and cloudy this morning, but now a cool rain has settled in over the Valley. I spent my morning finishing that book on death. 

This morning, I did have a funny comment on a very silly little Star Wars thing I wrote last week when I was in the depths of my time-wasting doldrums. It was from a friend I'd been close with online about 10-15 years ago when I was a big nerd and wrote a lot of that stuff. She left me a wonderful review on my recent piece and said "Welcome back?!! Unless improbably you are a stranger who happens to have almost the exact same user name and writes these characters in this particular exact way." I was touched she recognized me after so, so many years, and happy she reconnected, even if I am very different person now. She was so kind to me when I was a teenage weirdo; we even got together in person a couple times in college. It was also a very Mercury Retrograde moment. Talk about the past coming back to a person. I realized that I'm roughly the age now that she was when we first started writing together and chatting. Strange to think about. 

But I should be cleaning or getting dips ready or making shrimp étouffée for tomorrow, when surely I will be too exhausted by the sweat and jumping into an icy river to cook anything. Tonight will be a return to form: friend group party, then to the usual brewery bar (the one downtown, not the one that's closing) for another, different set of friends doing another different pair of shows. In a lot of ways, it will be like picking up with the New Year I had when 2019 was turning to 2020 before everything went off the rails for a few years. I don't know how much I care for that particular meditation, but at least these are familiar routes, and I admit, some part of me feels like it is still 2019 and the last years simply didn't happen. I reach for a picture, a particular memory, a camping trip, all thinking it was last year, and find out that it was several years ago now. I guess that's getting old. And I do feel old and a little ugly. 

Well, I won't be less glum by sitting here thinking about how quickly the time passes. In case I don't write another entry before midnight: happy new year, little blog, and kisses. I'm sure I'll have vast, wise, important things to say tomorrow after my freezing reunion with the Middle River. 

 Not the first or sadly, probably, the last bar closing night I've been to here in my little mountain town, which is so full of small bars closing down. The brewery between my favorite hike and my town is shutting down. It was one I went to often because of the hiking proximity (plus my friend was the bar manager and let my dog stand on the tables outside without fussing at me.) We all gather. We all try to send the place off with a smashy little flair that makes it less sad and all of us feel less old about how dimly we remember way back when they opened, when my friends played the first show. 

My friends are playing the final show. The crowd is drunk; I didn't realize it until the music started and everyone started looking too long at each other. I'm wearing skinny jeans and a shirt with the mouse, Stuart Little, doing a kickflip on a skateboard with the lyrics of Johnny Cash's song Hurt: a funny shirt, so a lot of people want to talk to me. A drunk old man that is familiar to me starts bumping up against my friend and I take the stool next to her to block him out with my tall body. Thank you, she whispers at me in a loud, not very discreet voice. Next, my beautiful friend, newly engaged, starts dancing with the same old man and she is so, so beautiful dancing, and he looks so happy, he is almost in tears. I realize suddenly why he is familiar: I have been to the funeral of his son after the son's unexpected, sudden death. When the dance is done, my friend's fiancé tells the old man how he's clearly won the contest of their manliness, and the whole bar laughs, like in a sitcom. 

The music shifts, accelerates. My friend the manager lets her dog off the leash to roam through the bar because who the hell cares? The bar is shutting down, the owner has stopped paying the staff and we are just handing them all wads of cash because we know they are working just for tips, being paid actually nothing. The staff are all drinking. My friend playing the violin makes "can you get me a drink please" gesture to me across the room - I pretend to not know what he is talking about. A drink? Whaaat. Wait, you want what? A drink? One of these?? I do get him a kolsch and snuggle it up dangerously next to his speaker and important wires. The music bangs on; everyone is asking for Free Bird, for the Stairway to Heaven, for something they are going to pull up on their phone, but I like the song they are playing, the one about how "I ain't ever gonna be in your way." 

 I actually have a lot to say today because it's an important day (going to finally do my cave fire behind/under the waterfall) but I just remembered an anecdote from this week that I wanted to write down because it was funny and I want to remember it. 

I was over with my friend for dog date (Monday, I think?) and she sloshed her wine a little bit accidentally into the fire. I tipped a little of mine out and joked, "pour one out for our favorite daughter!" and she said "pour one out for our... wait, uuuhhhh... WHAT?" I had no idea what to even begin to tell her. Eventually I said "well, don't worry about it, it's kind of just a stupid elf thing..." which felt so absolutely and accidentally in-character as a thing Yan would say that I almost started laughing. Thank goodness for small, stupid, interior joys in this life of endless loss and suffering. At least I still amuse myself most of the time. 

 I am typing this sitting in the sunshine on a white crushed gravel patio outside the winery downtown. I am sitting literally on the gravel because I didn't want to bother the staff by making them haul out a chair or table. The last time I was here, the owner told me that sometimes I sit outside in weather that she wouldn't consider sitting outside weather. She said it in a nice way like I was quirky, but I've noticed a lot of people who think they're quirky are actually just annoying. The gravel is cool where it touches my butt and the outside of my crossed ankles. (I am sitting criss-cross style with my long legs bent up under me.) I don't mind it. 

I spent the day (wasted the day) writing. I'm alarmed how quickly I was able to use up this week. I brought two books to read here but then I thought I might write to this first instead. I brought a book on Civil War death and that one I mentioned previously about Appalachian folk witchcraft. The witchcraft one is not very good (a little corny and so many spells for warts! Who gets so many warts that they need multiple spells?!) but the death book is excellent. I get along so well with the Gilded Years generation except when they are acting all racist and not letting their women do anything. (Which is usually.) I would have made a good shitty cavalry man in a past life and died on my back with my mouth open to the sky. Maybe someone would have come along and taken one of those early black and white Civil War battlefield photographs of me.

I dreamed I was writing a porn fic thing about a whale man with a giant penis. (I'm still a freak, after all.) Then I had one of my significant ones full of the past and conversations that I revise and revise in my dreaming mind until they feel real, and the sense of them and the presences in them last for days. It's funny how much reality I give to these dreams, like they are true psychic nighttime meetings with my past, whereas the one I had immediately afterward about attending a bilingual picnic with my most annoying coworkers will be disregarded. (Although, hey, at least I am kind of sorta dreaming in Spanish, even if most of the dream was me not really knowing Spanish.)

There are a truly stunning amount of mediocre white couples downtown right now, pointing at things, peering in windows, crossing the street and then crossing back. Very judgemental of me, huh? Mediocre. I'm the very essence of the word. I'm down here too, drinking my second glass of very dark red wine and eating a chocolate bar for lunch.

The year rubs down to the last little nub, doesn't it? So many people are probably just the same as me, wandering through this blank winter sun afternoon stupor with their puff jackets, using up the last days of the year, wondering where they will be this time next year and what they will have lost, thinking oh, wherever you are I hope you are well.

 Okay, okay, okay. Reset. Do productive things. Make productive plans. I should go for a run instead of languishing around my house like a ghost. I should go get the groceries. I could even sweep the broken pieces of vine off my porch and clean up everything that blew into the yard after the high winds. Is it payday yet? I want, I want, I want. 

Oh, I wanted to save my birthday flash flood fire on here so I always remember it. 

 Even thirtysix.

 Home again. "Home." I waffle between loathing this house now (how ugly the layout, the way the narrow clunky design seems to attract clutter and dirt) and crying over the plants I will leave, the bright windows I love, the memories here. I remember the day we moved in here. My friends helping me with the plants. Right now, the crows are yelling for breakfast. While I was gone, the neighbor has started feeding them - something I feel mixed about. I'm glad they're being fed. I'm glad it means she and her husband probably don't mind them sitting outside the house, screaming constantly, shitting on their cars. I'm glad to think someone will tend to them when I'm gone. But a little part of me - the worst, worst part of me - is slightly jealous. Isn't that ugly? 

I can see the neighbors - actually, both sets of them - saying goodbye to relatives who have clearly been visiting for Christmas. The last week of 2022. It feels like the Sunday evening of the year and I have the Sunday scaries. 

At least I'm going up to Harrisonburg with some friends for the day. I don't know that I feel social, but I guess I have to do something. I don't want to spend my week spinning my wheels. 

 Happy Christmas. Today will make 25 fires, but who is still counting them? (Me, I am. Always, always.)

 Today was so cold. As I was walking out to the big rock on the property, the leaves froze under my boots. When I got to the giant rock, I found an overhang shelter underneath it that I never noticed before. I squirmed up under it, felt the water drip from the ceiling. 

And I did make another fire even though I finished my 22... It was a good one: sturdy, hot, wind-fed.

God, what a mess I am. I feel so soft, dreamy, sentimental, and nostalgic. The way that in this life, even absence can be a kind of interaction. The way nothing ever really goes away. 

 

My twenty second fire was made alone in the pouring cold rain on the roots of a sycamore tree in my parent's backyard, at dark, while the creek flash flooded. I actually have a very good picture: the flood water in the dark looks like another type of gray fire.

I felt something powerful as I stood there, genuinely pleased at my own ability, the concoction of fat wood and birthday crepe paper needed to start a little blaze in such elements felt dear to me and smelled good. It wasn't at all release, even if I put the pieces of the fire one by one into the blown out water and watched the night turn blacker and blacker with each vanished flame. 

Then I walked home through the water-gorged, coyote-rich woods. 

Like an answer to something I called, I had such dreams. 

 Who needs a house, anyway?

 20 days, 20 fires. Two more to go, although the weather will complicate my plans to have the final fire under a particular iced-over waterfall I love. I'll have to come back and do that after the holiday. I should have that entire week between Christmas and New Year off, and nothing quite to do with it. That makes me a little sad, although I'm sure I'll waste up the time pretty good and maybe even get into the woods. The weather will be shockingly cold. I'm worried about the house (aw, I'm worried about the house, she whined again and again - but in this way, I mean the pipes freezing, the cats being cold, etc.). I'm worried about the house in the traditional way too; the email is off to the landlords with the list of demands. Whenever I ask for something like that, I have a vague feeling that I'm going to be screamed down.  

Mmm. It's amazing how good a dream can be sometimes. I woke up from one of those old fashioned ones last night and now all the feelings of it are with me during the day like a little light. I have so much to do today, particularly shifting my travel plans forward, and all I want to do is sit around and think. 

I'll leave this post with one mediation that I have been pushing around my brain over the weekend and into this week, swirling around the last dregs of the year. It's amazing the way that the nature of existence is the relentlessness of life and the way it attracts more life to itself. I could be corny: looking at my friends this weekend, surrounded by beautiful children that weren't there a few years ago. The empty spaces get filled in so rapidly. You get older and life picks up more and more life, like one of those big rolly ball things in that weird Japanese video game. (This is meant to make you laugh, I know it's dumb comparison, but that is how I see it in my mind's eye.) But even my stupid extra cat that attached herself to my household. You're feeding crows one day, and next you're feeding crows, blue jays, wrens, and a big titty squirrel with no tail that will eat out of your hand. I cut back my boxwood and everything living rushes up toward the light. 

 I'm trying to be philosophical about my snapped branches on the butterfly bush; after all, I will have to say goodbye to all of this garden when/if the house deal falls through. The thing did need to be trimmed back. I put up suet; way up high where Trash can't reach it, but still in the view of my window by my workspace. The wrens have found it and I like to watch them enjoying it. They're so fluffy this time of year.

This weekend is birthday festivities out at the villa, but I don't feel very celebratory. It will be cold, and colder next week. I'm worried it will be too chilly for the outdoor woods things planned, especially with kids coming. But I also can't just stay in bed all day like I want to. At least I'm pretty much done with my Christmas shopping.  I usually get sick right around Christmas, so I have that to look forward to. 

I took the afternoon off simply because I wanted an excuse not to go to my team Christmas party, but now I don't know what I want to do instead. I need to go run now that the ice has cleared out, but that won't take me all afternoon. I guess I should do some more cleaning and maybe listen to this book about a 15th century executioner. I could go downtown and walk around or post up to read somewhere, but I'm trying to be better about drinking less, and I know I'd probably want to sit in a winery or something. I still need to work in my fire for today. 

 Me thinking about the house so hard that I cry-barf.

 I like the feeling of a day before a winter storm, even if I'm concerned about my top heavy butterfly bushes and the poor old trees in the graveyard getting through a quarter inch of ice. I have new candles if the power goes out; some of my lights are battery operated. The sky is perfectly white and still. The birds are very active; my crows are even pushier than usual as they beg for snacks. 

It's the 14th, so that means I've had 14 fires and have 8 more to go. I told myself "write about something happier" for this post because I really have been in a funk about the house, and this is my happier thing. It's a nice meditation. The fires are beautiful and they are warm. 

 I get up. I look critically at my stomach in the mirror, actually liking it this morning, and then put on my running clothes. I won't run for another several hours but it helps me stay on track to have them on. No weaseling out of it, although really, my run is something I look forward to every day. 

The coffee machine went off at 5:30 am when the dog was barking, so by 8 it's already tepid in the carafe. I pour it into a Pyrex measuring cup, microwave, then pour it into a little blue mug I bought for Yan's kit almost a decade ago. I plug in the lights, let the cat out of the basement, feed the other cat, and walk the dog under the flat, white, opaque sky that somehow gives me comfort. 

I feel depressed this week. A bad time to decide to strictly cut back on my drinking, although arguably that actually makes it a good time re: the depressant effects of alcohol. I feel generally unhealthy, like things are wrong with me below the surface - secret broken things, ruined things inside. I know that this is not normal, that this is a mania that I have developed in my middle 30s: that I am secretly, unknowingly very ill and about to die, and sometimes I truly believe it. It makes me dread going to the doctor's even for something little, because I am surely about to find out at any second that I have some terminal, self-inflected disease. My dad is the same way, which is not reassuring. 

I am sad about the house. I find myself tearing up about it at odd points in the day: stupid, stupid, stupid. My friend has taken the inspection report and made a beautiful list unpacking every single thing, describing the action to be taken, the estimate price, what the landlord should do to make the contract, what can be done without a huge expense. I should feel so grateful for this, but I feel stuck and helpless and anxious instead. I sit at my desk and drink bitter tea and cry about this. I think about my poor sad burnt up attic and have to go outside and stand in the yard to stop weeping. 

 Sometimes it's really about putting a bag of popcorn in the microwave before you watch something totally dumb. 

 Well, my indecision about what to do this weekend was pretty clarified when one of the friends I hung out with briefly last night tested positive for Covid this morning. I'm not terribly concerned - I have my booster and we were sitting pretty far apart from each other - but it does resolve my plans. Instead of Hilltop, downtown reading, and any more populated hike, it was out to Falls Hollow on the graveyard loop. I gathered beautiful pieces of hemlock, pine, and fern to make a wreath for the front door. 

Happily (or unhappily, for them) the friends I wanted to hang out with this weekend were also equally exposed, so I can take dinner over tonight and get the dogs together, maybe play in the hot tub. I have several nice lamb chops and I thought about cooking up a Moroccan thing - maybe some cous cous with olives, dates, and carrots. 

But for now, I might relax and read on the porch or work on my wreath. 

 All right, all right. I'll stop with my dramatics over the house for a minute. Fire last night (the one for my twenty-two December fires, not the spectral ghost of the one that previously ravaged my roof and attic) was a tiny candle in one of my black legends lanterns. I carried it all over Staunton in the soft rain. 

So let me see, what else. It's all cold and cloudy today, and a threat of rain/snow is complicating my hiking plans for tomorrow. This afternoon will be my typical bell ringing thing; hopefully the rain will hold off for that at least. In lieu of a hike, I'm not sure what I'm doing tomorrow. Maybe I'll walk downtown and visit the Christmas market. I could take a book and curl up in one of the wineries downtown. I have this new one that's about Appalachian folk magic (prepare for me to get even more annoying than usual on this thing about it!). 

At work, the release is about to go out and then I swear to god, I'm going to do absolutely nothing for the rest of the year. "Must be nice." It is! This year has been my worst here, maybe my worst at any job I've ever had, including when I was the world's worst server at a horrible chain seafood restaurant in NoVa.  

 The foundation and the roof. The two pieces that make a house. Weird what a hundred year old house keeps and weird what it lingers on.

Hey, just asking, can you tell me a little bit about what happened with the fire? 

 This home inspection is into hour four, and spoiler alert, it's not going well. 

 Ahh, sad day. Cold rain. My friend came over in the middle of the day and cried on my couch because she'd had to put down her cat - the one she'd had since she was 21, who had been a friend to her in lonely months since her divorce. I cried too - over the last year, I'd been watching the old cat on the regular when she had to travel for work. He was a nice old boy and seemed gently fond of me, even though my main job while watching him was to give him an insulin shot twice a day. Then, my best bud at work found out her mom had passed - while she was on camera during our meeting. Awful news, and such cruel timing. It's been a day for trying to say "I'm sorry, I'm hurting for you" in so many ways when in reality, my words are such weak little things. I think I'll go curl up.

 This morning is such a perfect frosty cold morning: everything is silvered over and smells like woodsmoke. (Although it may be the end of my late season greens. Well, they put up such a valiant fight and gave me so many beautiful salads.) The bells from downtown seem to travel much more clearly in the cold air, or maybe it's that they have their Christmas programing running so that they play bell-versions of Christmas hymns that stand out more than the usual recording. I remember climbing the tower in Granada to see the real (and ancient) bells at one of the cathedrals, rushing down the tight spiral stairs to not be so close to them when they started clanging on the quarter hour. They were so old and had been used so many times that the steps had soft, smooth divots in them from the feet of hundreds upon hundreds of years of people going up and down them.

This week is going to be bonkers. Tonight is quiet and relaxing, and then after that I have something every single day and evening, plus the release at work. It's going to be quite a tangle if I end up needing to work late any of those days. I also have the house inspector coming this week, which gives me a mingled feeling of excitement and dread. This could really be the point where the wheels fall off of this whole thing. Yesterday, I spent hours peeling vines out of my siding, breathing in the dust and pulverized nests of a dozen generations of birds. Still, by Saturday, there will be a clearer picture of everything - and maybe then I can finally think about relaxing. (Ha.) 

Four

 

Fire report: tealight, breakfast.  

Nice little day out at Augusta Springs. It's wild to watch my friends' kids grow up and turn into little people - much wilder still to realize that they like mushrooms, bugs, snakes, and ice cold spring water. In the spring pool, we noticed a banded water snake, and it was fun to pull up my sleeve and show V the banded water snake I have tattooed down my arm now and compare the pattern. I love how much she wasn't afraid of the (live) snake and how she wanted it to come back after the snake had given us a good assessment and then gone back into his hole. I'm grateful to V's mom for raising a daughter who isn't afraid of snakes and bugs; even more grateful to her for being one out of about two people in the world who were nice to me when my life fell apart. 

But I do love Augusta Springs. The light through the swampy pines was shaky as I remember. I was thinking about certain high ridges up at the top, half-decayed stumps with shale disintegrating out, spring peepers. I met myself there in a certain way.

 I think I'm going to try to have a fire every day until the solstice as a meditative exercise. It can be a big one or just a candle. I like the idea of being purposeful about light right now. 

Good fire last night out back with the sky all black and gold and a little pink to the west, even after it was fully dark. December is a little month of fires. And it's finally glugg season, finally cold enough that the heat of the drink feels good on your hands.

What's going on this weekend? I think tonight is a birthday thing downtown for a friend; it seems like so many of my friends have birthdays this month and last. I'm cold just thinking about it. Then tomorrow I think a hike with some friends and their kiddo. I'm a little worried about the weather... might be too rainy for a small person to enjoy. 

I feel sleepy today and a little listless. I have calls to make, work things to finalize, a run to run, but I kind of just want to do nothing and sit around and read weird porn fanfic. I should get up and do something. I should throw the pumpkins off the porch or work some more at ripping down the vine. 

 Ha, reminder that posting whole lyrics I like attract bots. Still - complete bangers. Oh, hello December! Rabbit rabbit, etc.

How this whole year has flown by. It was a big year, though, with a lot in it. I traveled a lot; San Francisco seems like a lifetime ago, and Spain like a dream. I hiked a little bit; I camped even less. I ran my five miles, five days a week, in the graveyard and didn't really push myself. The house saga is still unfolding, but could be one of those life events things. I suppose a lot could still happen in a month. My wretched birthday is coming up. My typical Christmas sickness.

I don't not feel depressed, but it feels different right now. Granted, the way that disease moves, it could all change tomorrow and I might shouldn't jinx myself. I guess I feel very thoughtful and a little keyed in. I had a dream last night that has become recurring over the last couple years. In it, I'm pulling out giant pieces of glass from under the skin of my hands. There's always more and more of it, piece after piece, and as I remove them, my skin looks like a burst blister, a flap of skin where something should be. It hurts, but it's satisfying. I don't actually have a big theory for what, if anything, this dream represents about my life or mind.