for Halloween I am dressing up as a butch lesbian

there are times when I should be forbidden to write, such as when I am actively dysregulated and it’s late and I should be asleep but I’m not and writing feels less like partaking in the divine art of creation and more like inflicting something harsh upon anyone who cares to read – including myself, a little further along the timeline, when I wake up with a headache and a belly full of regret in the morning.

this concern does not usually stop me, though perhaps it would be kinder and more loving for everybody if it did.

Why do people smile when they look at me. It’s like – this smirk as if they know something that I don’t know. Why are they doing that. Why. What have I done. Is there something stuck in my teeth. Am I beautiful? Is that it? It cannot be that I am beautiful, I look like – like two elbows. Have I said something wrong. Are they laughing at me. What is going on. Why are they looking at me like that. Please don’t, it’s embarrassing, it’s as if they can read what I am thinking and they think it’s funny but I don’t know why. Christ. Lord help me. What are they laughing about. I cannot possibly fathom what I am doing to provoke this. I expect nothing less in the future than to be constantly bullied as if I am one of the boys and yet people keep loking at me as if I have done something ingraciatingly cute when I really haven’t. Why. What happened. Is it because I made a joke that indicates that I am not a sweet innocent summer child and that’s unexpected because I look like one. Let me be –

Complete mastery of one’s native language in the spoken or written form has little relationship to one’s ability as a writer. If nothing else the minor grammatical errors and typos and other mistakes will carve out a distinctive voice for the writer and also let the reader know that what they are reading was not made by generative AI but rather made from scratch by a human being. Beyond a certain point past which the writing is clear, comprehensible, and pleasant for the reader – striving for an arbitrary standard of linguistic perfection is a distraction from actually having something worthwhile to say. Why should we say “this peice of writing is a rough draft, unfinished, not good enough for the eyes and minds of other people” before it has been scratched up with a red pen?

In other words turn in the gods damned paper it is likely good enough already

I would rather get him flowers than poison my own lungs and those things cost me almost exactly the same in terms of this stupid artificial currency I have to work with and so it’s not a difficult decision to make

Genuine question for the politically conscious and the socially concerned.

Imagine you are young and broke. This week you have $25 superfluous dollars that you don’t have to spend on rent or a car payment or a phone bill or groceries or gasoline etc.. There are currently local, state and national elections happening, the outcome of which will have significant implications for the well being of billions of people. What are you doing with your $25?

.

(a) donating to a campaign fundraiser to support a candidate you’d prefer to see in charge of the executive branch of the government of your nation for the next few years. Alternatively, supporting a more local campaign.

(b) donating food to a local pantry. You want to see good done in the world, but you don’t trust far away politicians to make that happen. You’re doing your best in your own little corner of the world.

(c) donating directly to a cause you support, such as a nonprofit organization that operates independently from government. You think the limited resources you have to give are better allocated directly in the hands of organizations you believe are doing good work, outside of the political sphere.

(d) spending a little extra money on a luxury item you personally would like that would improve your quality of life, such as a pair of shoes or a paperback, a nice meal, tickets to see a show. You are putting your needs and wants first. If you don’t do these kind things for yourself, who will? You do not think of this as selfish, you think of this as putting your own oxygen mask on first.

(e) getting flowers for someone you love very dearly, because if the world is going up in flames you will be damned if you aren’t going to use your limited time and resources you have left to do everything in your power to make them happy.

(f) buying booze or drugs or cigarettes or all of the above to numb yourself to the incredible pain of watching the fall of civilizations in real time.

.

What are we doing with this hypothetical $25? Asking for a friend.

We have a lot of choices. The pressure to make certain decisions is very real. I’m just curious.

Staying in. Frying banana walnut pancakes in butter on the griddle and drowned them in maple syrup on a plate. Listening to an interesting interview on YouTube. Listening to podcasts. Scrolling. Scrolling. Scrolling. Looking at art. Beanie, sweatpants, sweatshirt.

Tired eyes. Wrists and knees and knuckles swollen and sholders aching with arthritis. Coloring with cheap markers on a page decorated with fall leaves in a coloring book. Sipping coffee. Working at the café, later. Tired, tired eyes.

I bought my first pack of cigarettes from the corner store down the side street from work. It cost me $17. That’s more than I make in tips on a slow night at the café.

I remember the smell of smoke on the breeze at a music festival and the memory is pleasant. Nostalgic. Wrapped up with recollections of music and dancing and crying from partying for three days ad a child without sleeping and probably sensory issues from a bad contact high.

I don’t smoke the cigarettes. I am flirting with the idea of a nicotine addiction to cope with the painful stress of working fast shifts in food service until 10PM several nights a week. I am flirting with an excuse to step outside and take a breath when I am tired. I am flirting with the concept of dying an early death from lung cancer because I might slightly prefer this to a future of growing old and being lonely. But I do not smoke the cigarettes. I just have them in my bag.

What did you get at the corner store? Our jewish line cook with bad teeth and a beanie who inhales vape juice and has red bull energy drinks in his veins wants to know.

I tell him. He is suddenly very still. This man, who quotes bad takes from republican talk shows and constantly talks shit about his partner. This man, who is nice to me and on the worst days will hit me with the words don’t quit on me. He looks sad.

“Don’t start,” he tells me. “It isn’t worth it.”

One time my mom caught me leaning out the window of my attic bedroom smoking from a pack of camels I confiscated from a friend. I told the friend I was smoking them – he used to roll his own from a huge discount bag of cheap mystery tobacco. He had a smokers cough. He said that he could quit at any time. He nearly always had a cigarette in his hand.

“You should throw those away,” he told me. “It isn’t worth it.”

I did throw them away. But after my mom caught me smoking out the window, exactly one time, all hell broke loose between us. This was around the time of the beginning of the mutually toxic power struggle from hell.

During the worst of it, I turned to my kid sister, who has been smoking for years. I crashed on the couch at the trailer, which was so full of smoke you could hardly see through the smog. I stole a lighter from her redneck mechanic roommate.

The other day I ordered a latte with a shot of espresso and the buzz from the caffeine had me shaking and nauseous and wanting to cry, so I walked up the cemetery and sat alone under a tree by the tomb and smoked a cigarette and looked up through the burnt orange leaves at the blue of an October sky. And I felt truly peaceful calm for the first time in days. My lungs stil hurt pretty badly from the smoke. I’ve been coughing.

I have to be so careful with that sensation of quiet, of calm. The temptation is to use that on purpose, as medicine, because god knows I could use that in nearly every waking moment of my days.

And then I went back to work.

The other night I was washing dishes at closing and my arms were in hot greasy water up to my elbows, and I thought – what if in all of rest of my life, this was all there was? And I think I probably wanted to cry again, then, too.

–

“Don’t quit on me.”

Time to get back out into the world – the world where it’s loud and damp and cold and sharp. Again. After so many days of hiding out here at home, where it’s warm and dry and soft and quiet.

Aw hell…

There are lovely and necessary things out in the world that I can’t get here at home.

It’s time.

Of all the ways to suffer that are difficult to romanticize, sitting up in bed with a stuffy nose might one of the worst

The Owls Are Not What They Seem

Happy national coming out day. You do not owe answers to anyone. Mmmmmwah.

Now – go forth, create mayhem, and please remain true to yourself.

What I want is a hot beverage, a bowl of soup, perhaps a Twin Peaks TV marathon, some blankets and a cozy sweater, a brief and comfortable walk through chilly weather, and a hug –

For no discernable reason, a heart overflowing with anticipatory grief, out of nowhere. Very nearly physically painful. Not sure why.

I have theories.

Driving towards the gym through rush hour traffic at 4:30PM on the highway and it’s raining and the sky is overcast and the sunlight is blazing cold and bright and shimmering through the stratifications in the clouds and you can see the faded patches of rain on the horizon and I’m listening to whatever new pop song the six different FM radio stations I can easily get in the car can give me and then the rain is really coming down and – ugh. It’s so beautiful it hurts.

Anyway.

“can’t rot all the time.”

“I have my scars, you have yours
Don’t let them take your power
Don’t leave it alone in the final hours
They’ll take your soul, they’ll take your power
Don’t close your eyes and hope for the best
The dark is out there, the light is going fast
Until the final hours, your life’s forever changed
And all the rights that you had yesterday
Are taken away
And now you’re afraid
You should be afraid
Should be afraid
Because everything I fought for
Long ago in a dream is gone
Someone said the dream is not over
The dream has just begun, or
Is it a nightmare?
Is it a lasting scar?
It is unless you save it and that’s that
Unless you stand up and take it back
And take it back
I have my scars, you have yours
Don’t let them take your power
Don’t leave it alone in the final hours
They’ll take your soul, they’ll take your power
Unless you stand up and take it back
Try to see the future and get mad
It’s slipping through your fingers, you don’t have what you had
You don’t have much time to get it back
I wanna be the lighthouse
Bring all of you together
Bring it out in a song
Bring it out in stormy weather
Tell them the story
I wanna teach ’em to fight
I wanna tell ’em this has happened before
Don’t let it happen again
I have my scars, you have yours
Don’t let them take your power
Don’t leave it alone in the final hours
They’ll take your soul, they’ll take your power
Unless you save it and that’s that
Unless you stand up and take it back
Try to see the future and get mad
It’s slippin’ through your fingers, you don’t have what you had
You don’t have much time
You gotta get in the game
You gotta learn how to play
You gotta make a change
You gotta do it today
In the midnight hour, they’ll slam the door
Make you forget what you were fighting for
Put you back in your place, they’ll shut you down
You better learn how to fight, you better say it out loud…”

Stevie Nicks. “The Lighthouse.” September 27th, 2024.

You know what? You can take your essentialist pastry discourse and shove it –