I hope it's a good night

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

~ Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” from The Poems of Dylan Tomas, 1952. Published by New Directions.

Dylan Thomas died in 1953.

I remember being terrified of telling Steve Rogers that I’d decided not to study abroad. He’d taken the time to write letters of recommendation for my application for the program, which was especially kind of him to do because he’s always very busy. I had a strong application. I was accepted. I’d gotten in. I could have spent my last semester of college on the other side of the world, and it would have been such a lovely and important experience. Steve was proud of me when I told him the application had been accepted.

So when I decided not to leave because I wasn’t ready to do that, I felt like I might have been letting down the people who had helped me apply. I had a chance, and I wasn’t going to take it, and that was embarrassing, but it was what I needed at the time.

“I’m not leaving for South Korea,” I told him. “I’ll still be here next year.” It was late may, and there were flowers growing along the sidewalk.

And his eyes lit up, and he got so quiet and shy, and he said “selfishly, that makes me happy.”

And then there was this moment when he sort of realized what he’d just said, and he turned around and walked away.

I just stood there, wondering if I’d heard him correctly.

I spend a lot of time thinking, hey, if you care about people, you ought to let them leave. Let them fly away and have adventures, even if you’re going to miss them when they’re not here. It seems selfish to tell them that you wish they would stay home. They have an entire life to live, and a lot of that life won’t have you in it, and sometimes that has to be okay. It’s the selfless way.

So I wasn’t at all prepared to hear someone I liked and admired so much back then turn around and say “I know this is selfish but I’m happy that you aren’t leaving.”

That was two years ago, back when he was still off limits.

I still think about that memory all the time.

“All our times have come
Here but now they’re gone
Seasons don’t fear the reaper
Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain
We can be like they are

Come on, baby (don’t fear the reaper)
Baby, take my hand (don’t fear the reaper)
We’ll be able to fly (don’t fear the reaper)
Baby, I’m your man

La, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la

Valentine is done
Here but now they’re gone
Romeo and Juliet
Are together in eternity (Romeo and Juliet)
40,000 men and women everyday (like Romeo and Juliet)
40,000 men and women everyday (redefine happiness)
Another 40, 000 coming everyday (we can be like they are)

Come on, baby (don’t fear the reaper)
Baby, take my hand (don’t fear the reaper)
We’ll be able to fly (don’t fear the reaper)
Baby, I’m your man

La, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la

Love of two is one
Here but now they’re gone
Came the last night of sadness
And it was clear she couldn’t go on

Then the door was open and the wind appeared
The candles blew and then disappeared
The curtains flew and then he appeared
Saying don’t be afraid

Come on, baby (and she had no fear)
And she ran to him (then they started to fly)
They looked backward and said goodbye (she had become like they are)
She had taken his hand (she had become like they are)
Come on, baby (don’t fear the reaper)”

–

Lyrics to a song called “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” by Blue Öyster Cult. Released as Track 3 on the Agents of Fortune album in 1976.

Also, stop being mean to yourself.

I want to fight everyone who’s mean to you but I can’t do that if you’re the one who’s being mean to yourself, because I won’t fight you.

Hey, kid – you have had like five peanut butter crackers, half a granola bar, half a banana, some coffee, and like three sips of water today. It’s 4:30PM. You walked at least seven miles in blue jeans and you listened to sad music the entire time. You did not sleep much yesterday evening because you were too busy having Symptoms and going red string conspiracy theory mode re: your own life.

If this was a video game, your health/mana stats would be in the red. Your ability to function has slowed down for reasons that make a lot of sense. You’re only writing right now because it’s a compulsion, not because it’s a good idea.

You do not need to create an elaborate narrative using the people in your life as characters in order to explain the way you feel right now. You need to drink a glass of cold water, rinse off the grime from walking in the sun, make a meal, and curl up under some heavy blankets with a good book. If you want to entertain narratives after that point, then you may.

Jfc

“The only time I got to praying for a red light
Was when I saw your destination as a deadline
‘This is normal conversation, babe, it’s all fine’
Making quiet calculations where the fault lies
This is good land, or at least it was
It takes a strong hand and a sound mind

The college kids are getting so young, ain’t they?
They’re correcting all the grammar on the spray paint
And I even gave up driving after nightfall
I got tired of the frat boys with their brights on
This is good land, or at least it was
It takes a strong hand and a sound mind

It makes me smile to know when things get hard
You’ll be far
You’ll be far from here
And while I clean shit up in the yard
You’ll be far
You’ll be far, far from here

So, pack up your car, put a hand on your heart
Say whatever you feel, be wherever you are
We ain’t angry at you, love
You’re the greatest thing we’ve lost

The birds will still sing, your folks will still fight
The boards will still creak, the leaves will still die
We ain’t angry at you, love
We’ll be waiting for you, love

And we’ll all be here forever
And we’ll all be here forever
Sure will

We’re overdue for a revival
We spent so long just getting by
But that’s the thing about survival
Who the hell-, who the hell likes livin’ just to die?

You told me you would make a difference
I got drunk and shut you down
And it won’t be of your own volition
If you step foot out of this town

But it’s all we’ve had
For always

So, pack up your car, put a hand on your heart
Say whatever you feel, be wherever you are
We ain’t angry at you, love
You’re the greatest thing we’ve lost

The birds will still sing, your folks will still fight
The boards will still creak, the leaves will still die
We ain’t angry at you, love
We’ll be waiting for you, love

And we’ll all be here forever
And we’ll all be here forever

You’re gonna go far

If you wanna go (if you wanna go) far
Then you gotta go (then you gotta go) far
You gotta go far…”

~ lyrics written by Noah Kahan, for a song called “You’re Gonna Go Far” originally released on We’ll All Be Here Forever album on June 9th, 2023. A duet with Brandi Carlile with the same lyrics was released as a single on February 7th, 2024.

.

POV: you are playing a drinking game in which you’re reading a dark sexy high fantasy romance novel and you have to take a shot of whiskey every time the author specifically mentions that ***His Eyes Are Green***

You are on chapter 10; you barely even know what this book is about yet. You are already drunk off your ass.

“…this is clearly a writer who has never even bothered to read The Book, and yet The Book has had such a pervasive influence on the collective unconsciousness of everyone else around her that she couldn’t entirely escape The Book’s effect, in her development.

The Book’s unmistakable influence appears in this author’s original storytelling. Everyone thinks she’s read The Book, perhaps they even think that she has made a thinly veiled attempt to plagiarize some of it, because the parallels between The Book and her own writing seem so obvious.

And yet she hasn’t read The Book.

The alternative explanation is that her source of inspiration is somehow older than The Book itself – that they share a common ancestor – or the ecological niche she is trying to fill with her writing is similar to the one that lead to the creation of The Book.

In any case, as she writes, she is like an oblivious youngster who doesn’t know anything, imitating what she sees in the people around her in order to blend in, inadvertently sending signals that she does not understand.

Protect her at all costs, as she may yet turn out to be good at this.”

“ooohhh I feel so terrible and gross and I don’t know why”

first of all:

you’ve been staring at a rectangle of blue light, inches from your face, with all the interesting or sexy or frankly even just upsetting information in the universe available, at your fingertips, all the time, any time you please. for literally hours.

you haven’t had any water to drink this week

the last thing you had to eat was a cookie, this was several hours ago

and all the songs you listen to are devestatingly sad! heartbreaking, bittersweet, yearning, miserable.

Anyway.

Hey, punk, don’t tell me what to do –

–

“You graffitied the oldest cliff face in the universe?!“

“You wouldn’t answer your phone.”

–

An exchange between the Doctor and River Song. From “The Pandorica Opens,” penultimate episode of the fifth series of BBC television show Doctor Who. Aired for the first time, like – sometime in 2010. Episode script by Stephen Moffett.

Top 40 pop songs from the year after I got my driver’s license left a very specific impression on my psyche, because of the local radio stations I could access on the car radio.

For those whose minds search contantly for meaning, even in those moments when an intended meaning is unclear, try this.

Instead of, “that must mean _____,“

try, “that makes me think of ____.”

.

This leaves room for the possibility of a difference between what somebody is trying to say and the way that a recipient interprets a message, through their own unique lens of subjective experience.

.

“Tell me that story again darlin’
The one where we all end up alright
Tell me that story again darlin’
Wasn’t it true once upon a time?
Wasn’t it true once upon a time?

I’ll keep keeping up with the laundry
You’ll keep keeping up with the car
I guess things aren’t really changing here
It sure feels like they are
It sure feels like they are

We’ve got good dogs we’ve got a good porch
We’ve got eyes to see we’ve got a good view
We’ve got ears to hear and we are listening
Truth is not something we can choose
Truth is not something we can choose

Tell me that story again darlin’
The one where we all end up alright
Tell me that story again darlin’
Wasn’t it true once upon a time?
Wasn’t it true once upon a time?”

.

Song lyrics. “Once Upon a Time.” Written by Crystal Hariu-Damore of a bluegrass duo called Ordinary Elephant, of Southern Louisiana. Released as a single on March 14th, 2024.

“Your face,” says Steve, “tastes like barbecue.” He kisses my eyelashes, considering. “Well seasoned.”

I assume he means the campfire smoke and the tears, but now I’m laughing, in spite of everything. I had locked myself in the bathroom to lean against the door and write and ugly cry until I could find the right words. At this point I had only just resurfaced.

He straightens up, away from a hug. I feel better.

Steve cooked a frozen pizza and got us a copy of The Neverending Story to watch, as a comfort movie. Now there is a shot of peanut butter whiskey and a frozen chocolate for dessert.

I think that I am in good hands.

We lit a fire to ward off the darkness during totality, to warm our hands against the chill as the temperature dropped and the sky went dark. Keeping the fire going gave me something to do, gave me a reason to stay busy.

When the light returned, four geese flew overhead on their way to the east. The birds began to sing like they do in the morning.

Steve and I stayed over at my parents’ house yesterday evening, so we didn’t have to drive out there today. Slept with the window open and looked out the window at the stars. The sky was clear yesterday. My first extended visit home since leaving.

All the pain of growing up is still held within the walls of my childhood home. Every time I visit, it’s still there.

I still experience pangs of grief, all the time, from the loss of – what, exactly? Home? Connection?

My experience of family isn’t the same as it used to be, because of the way people and connections change over time. I feel a sense of loss about this. I have not processed the changes. I have not mourned properly. A story I tell myself is that nothing will ever be the same again.

A story I think I have been telling myself, a story that I don’t often have the courage to face directly, is that all the good safe love is gone, used up, probably because I broke it when I was having a bad day, because that’s something I am capable of doing.

And then, soon after that, it was time to move away from home.

It took so much to uproot me from that place.

That’s a story I have not been able to translate into words until just now.

It doesn’t have to be a true story to be an exceptionally powerful one.

I have been carrying such a sense of finality. Like a nail in a coffin.

Steve says I can still make good memories in that house, and that all of the loving memories are still there – even when negative memories command attention in a way that so often blocks out the joy.

And, like – do you remember that one scene from A Wrinkle in Time where Meg goes back to save Charles Wallace

“You have your mother’s eyes.”

Should I watch the sun go out standing beside a campfire in the backyard of my childhood home, or should I drive to the shore of one of the finger lakes and watch the sun go out with my feet in the water? Should I climb to the top of a waterfall? What about the creek at the bottom of a ravine? Should I lay on my back in the middle of a street, like in The Notebook? Should I try to write about it, or just stay present in that moment? Should I take a photograph? Should I stand in a parking lot and look up? Should I go to the courthouse, pick up a marriage certificate, find a priest and ask my family to sign as a witness? No, I don’t think so – I was the one who wanted a longer engagement, anyhow. I think of the new mother going into labor during the eclipse. Will I be able to see the stars? Will it be cloudy? This won’t happen again in this town for 175 years. Should I smoke? No, fuck that – imagine being high when the sky goes dark in the middle of the day.  Should I listen to music? Cat Stevens, maybe. “Moon Shadow.”

I think, knowing me, that I will bundle up in a puffy jacket and a brand new rain coat, make a mug of tea to keep my hands from getting cold, sit on a porch, and complain quietly about my arthritis until the light comes back.

On a wine dark sea, as the west wind blows
To be wild, to be young, to be free
To be god who knows

As we find ourselves, in our wanderings
Are we all just the tales that we tell
And the songs we sing

Soul’s invisible, a bit unknown, a little tragic
On a lonely boat, where the longing never ends
Here, then we’re gone, we can’t do this alone
Carrying on, we’re still looking for that feeling of home

We get tied in knots, and we try so hard
And it takes everything that we got
And it can break our hearts

Soul’s invisible, a bit unknown, a little tragic
On a lonely boat, where the longing never ends
Here, then we’re gone, we can’t do this alone
Carrying on, we’re still looking for that feeling of home

We braved the storm, til the land light beams
Coming in, through the mist to the shore
To the house of dreams.

Soul’s invisible, a bit unknown, a little tragic
On a lonely boat, where the longing never ends
Here, then we’re gone, we can’t do this alone
Carrying on, we’re still looking for that feeling of home

Soul’s invisible, a bit unknown, a little tragic
On a lonely boat, where the longing never ends
Here, then we’re gone, we can’t do this alone
Carrying on, we’re still looking for that feeling of home…”

“feeling of home,” by a celtic rock band called The East Pointers. Released on October 13th, 2023.

Did you know,

If you close your eyes

You can’t see any of the screens?

Insomnia is nauseating.

“It can’t be said I’m an infidel

You know my kind of lover way too well

But baby I’m one of a kind

I’m here to change your mind

You keep telling me to live wild

As if you’re Eve and Adam’s love child

Born out of something pure that’s been defiled

You know you don’t gotta pretend

Baby, now and then

Don’t you just wanna wake up

Light as a leaf

Smellin’ like a lilac, feeling complete

Babe if you’re undefined, then I think it’s neat

But while I’m in this world

I’ll take my liquor sweet

A maraschino in my aperitif

You’re too strong for me

You’re too strong for me…”

–

This is Katie Lynne Sharbaugh’s answer to Hozier’s “Too Sweet,” sung to the same melody as his original song. I’m gonna need a recording of this duet and I’m gonna need it right away, thank you.

His original lyrics are as follows:

“It can’t be said I’m an early bird
It’s 10:00 before I say a word
Baby, I can never tell
How do you sleep so well?
You keep telling me to live right
To go to bed before the daylight
But then you wake up for the sunrise
You know you don’t gotta pretend
Baby, now and then
Don’t you just wanna wake up
Dark as a lake
Smelling like a bonfire
Lost in a haze?
If you’re drunk on life, babe
I think it’s great
But while in this world

I think I’ll take my whiskey neat
My coffee black and my bed at three
You’re too sweet for me
You’re too sweet for me
I take my whiskеy neat
My coffee black and my bed at three
You’re too sweet for mе
You’re too sweet for me

I aim low
I aim true, and the ground’s where I go
I work late where I’m free from the phone
And the job gets done
But you worry some, I know
But who wants to live forever, babe?
You treat your mouth as if it’s Heaven’s gate
The rest of you like you’re the TSA
I wish that I could go along
Babe, don’t get me wrong

You know you’re bright as the morning
As soft as the rain
Pretty as a vine
As sweet as a grape
If you can sit in a barrel
Maybe I’ll wait
Until that day
I’d rather take my whiskey neat
My coffee black and my bed at three
You’re too sweet for me
You’re too sweet for me
I take my whiskey neat
My coffee black and my bed at three
You’re too sweet for me
You’re too sweet for me…”

“I could never stop you from loving anything. I don’t have the right. Nobody has the right to tell you who to love or who not to love, and equally nobody’s obligated to love you. If you were forced into loving them, it wouldn’t be love… being unexpectedly loved is so wonderful and terrible, isn’t it?”

Muir, Tamsyn. Nona the Ninth, page 63. Published by Tom Doherty Associates / Tor Publishing Group, 120 Broadway, New York NY 10271. 2022.

“When my time comes around
Lay me gently in the cold, dark earth
No grave can hold my body down
I’ll crawl home to her.”

~ lyrics to the chorus of “Work Song,” written by Irish singer-songwriter Andrew Hozier Byrne, originally published through Rubyworks under license from Columbia records. Featured on the “From Eden” EP (March 9th, 2014). Also available on Hozier’s first self-titled album from October 7th of the same year.

–

“No grave can hold my body down” is a familiar refrain from a a classic American spiritual, with a gospel influence from biblical stories (of the resurrection, I think? Or redemption day, I think).

The song “Ain’t No Grave Can Hold My Body Down” was originally written in 1934 – just before WWII era – by Claude Ely, a twelve year old child from Virginia who was sick with tuberculosis at the time. The first recorded performance of this song featured Bozie Sturdivant, and was included among a compilation of “[African American] Religious Field Recordings” from that era in the southeastern United States. In this recording, you can hear the crackle of the (record player? tape recorder?) in the digitized track circa 1994.

Many musical artists with americana heritage have recorded and performed their own unique covers of this song, including groups who perform contemporary bluegrass, gospel, country western, church choirs, rhythm and blues. Among my favorites is a cover from Crooked Still, fronted by Chris Thile and Aoife O’Donovan.

Johnny Cash made a cover of this song for the posthumously released American VI: Ain’t No Grave album (2010). The song was recorded in 2003, shortly before he died. In this recording, you can hear the frailty in the voice of an old man, and the sound of chains being dragged along the ground serves as percussion.

I’m pretty sure Hozier was among the first to take the worshipful devotion in these lyrics – “no grave can hold my body down” – and apply that to a woman instead of, like – God.

–

I just want an alto harmony cover of Hozier’s “work song,” for the sapphic euphoria moment. Or at the very least a love story featuring Edgar Alan Poe’s Annabell Lee.

Heck, I would even settle for a third season Good Omens.

–

The lyrics to the Johnny Cash track of Ain’t No Grave go something like this:

“There ain’t no grave
Can hold my body down
There ain’t no grave
Can hold my body down

When I hear that trumpet sound
I’m gonna rise right out of the ground
Ain’t no grave
Can hold my body down

Well, I look way down the river
What do you think I see?
I see a band of angels
And they’re coming after me

Ain’t no grave
Can hold my body down
There ain’t no grave
Can hold my body down

Well, look down yonder, Gabriel
Put your feet on the land and sea
But Gabriel, don’t you blow your trumpet
Till you hear from me

There ain’t no grave
Can hold my body down
Ain’t no grave
Can hold my body down

Well, meet me, Jesus, meet me
Meet me in the middle of the air
And if these wings don’t fail me
I will meet you anywhere

Ain’t no grave
Can hold my body down
There ain’t no grave
Can hold my body down

Well, meet me, mother and father
Meet me down the river road
And mama, you know that I’ll be there
When I check in my load

There ain’t no grave
Can hold my body down
There ain’t no grave
Can hold my body down.”

Must remember to charge phone overnight. Must remember to drink water. Very important not to panic and sabotage relationships – will regret later. Must maintain at least a quarter of a tank of gasoline in car at all times. Must occasionally check bank account balance – must not overdraft. Must not cut bangs or shave head. Must remember to feed the cat. Must remember to eat – keep emergency cash for food when hungry in public. Must keep phone charger and snacks on person at all times. Must not entertain imaginary narratives about loved ones conspiring to hurt you on purpose. Must not drink too much alcohol. Must not smoke cigarettes. Must wash face at least twice daily. Must brush teeth. Must improv sponge bath if no shower available. Must apply deodorant. Must take BC. Must show up where and when you said you would, or else must communicate when you can’t. Must not let own masculinity become toxic.

Don’t lie unless safety or privacy is more important, don’t steal unless you are truly desperate, don’t cheat unless the stakes are high enough that winning is imperative.

Must not die, yet. Mom would be sad.

“Chickenshits don’t get beer.”

~ Marta Dyas, cavalier of the second house, page 457 of Harrow the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir – first edition. A Tordotcom book published by Tom Doherty Associates, 120 Broadway, New York, NY. 10271. ISBN 978-1-250-31321-8 (trade paperback). August 2020.

Today is April 1st. No pranks, please. Thank you.

I stayed up rather late yesterday, alone in a strange house, reading one of my Tamsyn Muir paperbacks. They are a pleasant distraction, for some definitions of pleasant – I brought three of them. Just me, sitting up in bed, highlighter in hand, furiously annotating into the dark hours in the middle of the night. I did not cry, no sir, at any of the scenes which persist in being heartwrenchingly sad every time I read them, but I absolutely laughed, often, at the more amusing lines. The absurdity of laughing out loud, alone, at my own vivid hallucinations conjured from a stranger’s precise little marks on thin scraps of dead tree, when nobody is actually physically there to make me laugh, is always a little disorienting.

I’m afraid that my head aches quite badly this morning, which is my own damn fault. A meal of leftover pizza and a glass of root beer (a rare indulgence) is helping a little bit.

Still, I think I am feeling okay, overall. Might put in my earbuds and binge listen to an entire season of a podcast, later on. Will have to see.

“If I could give you everything that you wanted

I would never ask for any of it back

And if I could take only as much as I needed

I’d take everything you have.”

~ Kacey Musgraves, “Give / Take.” From the Deeper Well album. Released everywhere on March 15th, 2024.

“I pray the tomb is shut forever, I pray the rock is never rolled away…”

oh shoot wrong fandom nevermind

I miss my cat.

My partner is here with me for a couple of days; then he’ll return home, and I’ll stay here for a while yet. The prospect of seperation is uncomfortable, but it would not make sense to compromise and try and stay in the same space at the expense of his comfort or my obligation to help a friend. Also, someone needs to be there for the cat.

I usually send him a note with his bento box for lunchtime, and so there are five hand written notes in individually labeled envelopes on the kitchen counter. Not to be opened until the specified date.

For when he gets home.

“Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact
But maybe everything that dies some day comes back
Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty
And meet me tonight in Atlantic City…”

~ Bruce Springsteen

“I keep it pretty close to the chest
Like you never left
I do my best

Til someone makes a joke in a cab
That I know you’d laugh at
It takes me back

There you go in my mind
Another place, another time
Showing up as you please
Come as quick as you leave

And now you feel like a melody I kinda wish I wrote
I swear that I’m almost hearing you, yeah even when I don’t
You find a way to stay next to me, in my car and in my clothes
In my blood and in my bones, yeah you’re everywhere I go

Remembering you were moving me in
It was in the spring, now I’m moving out
Looking back I feel like a kid
Yeah, I kind of wish you could see me now

There you go in my mind
Another place, another time
Trying not to play that song
Hard enough moving on

And now you feel like a melody I kinda wish I wrote
I swear that I’m almost hearing you, yeah even when I don’t
You find a way to stay next to me, in my car and in my clothes
In my blood and in my bones, yeah you’re everywhere I go

I think it’s only a memory if you never let it go
I’d never make you an enemy, not even with your ghost
I never said what you meant to me, I’m hoping that you know
You’re in my blood and in my bones, yeah you’re everywhere I go

I think it’s only a memory if you never let it go
I’d never make you an enemy, not even with your ghost
I never said what you meant to me, I’m hoping that you know
You’re in my blood and in my bones, yeah you’re everywhere I go…”

Song lyrics. Wild Rivers music, “Everywhere I Go.” Released everywhere on February 9th, 2024.

naP.

Me: I would like to listen to a bedtime story with motorcycles, angels, skateboards, tattoos, cigarettes, a flannel, some skeletons, and a cat.

Steve Rogers: ah – okay, just this once. Once upon a time there was an angel covered in tattoos wearing a flannel smoking a cigarette riding a motorcycle. With a skateboard. And their cat. The cat had bones.

Me: and then what happened?

Steve: oh, that’s it. that’s the entire bedtime story.

Me: well don’t they – I don’t know, go on adventures or something?

Steve: who said anything about an adventure? you totally failed to specify anything about any adventures.

Me: *nonverbally wheezing with much indignant disbelief*

Steve: Now you’re getting demanding about your bedtime stories.

Me: good god Steve, you’re terrible at this

Steve: goodnight, I love you too

Me: okay, fine. I’ll suppose I’ll just have to write the damned thing myself

In a plaza off main street, there is an antique shop called Florence’s Perpetual Estate Sale. A royal purple sign with fancy lettering, on the street side of the plaza, indicates to passersby that this out of the way little place exists and is open for business. It neighbors the martial arts dojo across from the convenience store parking lot.

On a bench outside the antique shop, there is an old skateboard. Unlike the other items appearently for sale outside the antique shop, the skateboard’s price appears to be unmarked. There are little red leaves – feathers? – painted on the wheels.

Have you ever been too scared to try something new because you’re quite certain you’re going to fall on your face and make a fool of yourself, if you do try? Not to mention the fear of losing control and falling, or the shock of colliding with the ground, or the prospect of painful blue and purple bruises.

The thing about falling is that you can usually get back on your feet, eventually, and it’s better to be sprawled on the ground covered in bruises than to never have tried. You’ll recover. I know this, in theory, and in some cases I know this from experience.

The only person I know – a little – who knows how to skateboard is so admirably good at it that I am far too shy to ask them to teach me how.

The thing about my fiancé is that if I ask him “are you hungry? do you want me to make you some pancakes?” he’ll turn pink and look at the floor and say “I don’t know, maybe, you can decide” and what that means is yes please I would love it if you made me some pancakes, I’m starving because so far today I have totally forgotten to eat and I have been awake since 6:30AM, I slept in this morning, I usually get up at some ungodly hour of the morning like 5AM so I can have time to be excellent at what I do for a living

and all I have to do is make pancakes.

Sunday mornings are the BEST anyway

Palestine will be free.

This is a photo of a page from an oldish copy of the King James Bible, somewhere in the middle of the Book of Genesis. The page features a map of the Land of Canaan – before some of the land on this map became Palestine, some of it became Isreal, etc..

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”

~ Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Published by Pocket Books in NYC on February 1, 1999.

“I’ll take my whiskey neat

my coffee black in my bed at three

you’re too sweet for me

you’re too sweet for me…”

~ Hozier, “Too Sweet,” from the Unheard EP. Released everywhere on March 22nd, 2024.

If you walk north out of my college town on main street, past the coffee shops, past the church on your right and the courthouse on your left, if you walk until you run out of sidewalk at the edge of town, and then you turn around and walk back towards the campus (but not to the edge of town yet), you will find a tree with a tiny green door near the roots. This is not significant to anything in any way at all, it’s just pretty.

wondering if the roses I got from the supermarket might actually like the corpse water from the body they dragged out of Highland Reservoir, the water supply for most of the city of Rochester. I am not sure.

For a few days this week the city was recommending that residents use bottled water, or at least boil tap water and let it cool before using it for drinking or cooking.

I wonder who’s body it was and how it got there.

~

POV: you are in Gaza and there’s more than one dead body in the water.

At the gym today, an older gentleman who looks a lot like Chuck Berry told me I move like a ballet dancer and this made my dayyyy

Irish solidarity with Palestine is a heartbreaking and bittersweet thing to consider in the middle of a genocide, in the approximate season of Saint Patrick’s Day.

I am celebrating my amateur genealogist’s claim to a little potato famine era immigrant heritage by listening to Hozier and drinking beer and whiskey and getting up on a soapbox for a second.

The starvation of an entire population as a weapon against civilians in warfare is a despicable move for any nation, let alone a nation whose people were starved to death in concentration camps and ghettos. We said never again, or don’t you remember?

Offerring famine relief as bait for an ambush to attack innocent children looking for food is despicable.

I am disgusted by the US supplying the weapons and the bombs for the military that flattened cities and then air dropping cold rations out of the sky onto the refugee camps that  would not have existed if our country hadn’t kept vetoing a ceasefire at the UN.

A man sit himself on fire and died of his injuries and asked that his ashes be scattered in a Free Palestine but the protest which has stuck with me the most is the man who filled the streets of a city in the Netherlands with thousands of pairs of children’s shoes but the photos of the shoes were not in black and white they were in color they were taken yesterday.

Around the world people who are using their platforms to speak up are being disciplined at work, told to be quiet, arrested.

It should not be socially questionable to speak up in opposion to a fucking genocide.

Never again means never again and it doesn’t matter whose families are the gods damned target.

I guess I’m going to step down off my soap box, for now.

Find the old painting studio on the second floor of the theater building – Brodie 220. It’s usually abandoned and unlocked since they stopped funding the fine arts program. It’s a well lit and cozy place to study or write or read poetry or even nap on the couch if you’re tired. I have napped on that couch and I have spun quarters on those tables.

It used to be the office of a classmate and a friend, who somehow had a copy of the keys.

There’s still koi in the fish pond in the greenhouse at school.

Last night we watched old western movies and lay awake talking about mountains. Rain and wind against the windows all night, and the air was colder in the morning.

This morning we woke up early and shared a cup of coffee with a slice of homemade raspberry and lemon curd pie – left over from pi day, 3/14, the first pie crust I’ve ever made from scratch.

We bickered about the metaphysics of personal identity and the no-self doctrine for what felt like several hours, eventually deciding that we have mostly similar ideas about this topic and that our appearant disagreement boils down to different ideas about what we mean when we use certain words.

I scrambled some eggs with onions and mushrooms, ate that with hot sauce and watched a documentary about navigation via topographical maps – got out our own maps and planned an itinerary for a backpacking trip in the spring. Over dinner we watched vlog documentaries about thru hikes of the Appalachian Trail. My heart physically hurts for the adventures I’ve never attempted.

Orzo and “chicken” parm topped with red sauce and mozzarella, a little wine and some dark chocolate for dessert.

The cat is purring, and I can still hear the train whistle even from here.

I would like to have a way to think about my gender which does not rely so heavily on the subjectivity of self perception, even though the freedom to self identify with any gender is an important thing.

I am getting tired of feeling like I am insane whenever I try to reconcile the logic of everything I think I know about gender with everything I know about my life.

I had the experience of being born as a girl, quite enjoying the prospect of femininity as a youngster, suddenly losing any desire to be perceived as anything other than a boy as soon as other people began looking at me and seeing a young woman, finding the safety and euphoria of a cozy little masculine comfort zone in a wallflower attitude and clothing from the men’s section at thrift stores, not figuring out how to “present feminine” – whatever that means, idk – until I was almost halfway through my third decade, realizing that some people declined to participate in the stereotypical binary and feeling an affinity for this path, asking for alt pronouns in a couple of circles, receiving either confused rejection or a lukewarm acceptance from people who I think were mostly virtue signaling with the exception of a few who were being genuinely respectful, and then feeling like – nothing I tried on fit, none of the words fit, including the words I was born into.

I now have a much better sense of my self and who I am and what I am like, at the cost of fitting in with any of these different ways of being.

“Women can be masculine and still be women” okay, yes, lovely, we needed warm bodies in the factories when we sent all our boys off to fight a world war and then it was fine and practical for everyone to wear pants. Brilliant.

What do you mean when you say the word, “masculine?”

I want to understand.

All of this is brought to the surface as I am agonizing over the decision of what I am going to wear to my wedding.

Of course, the nuances of gender are so much more than a binary choice between a tuxedo or a dress. It isn’t how we look on the outside that matters. There is so much more to a well written character than their costume, their body, even their personal voice – not just the spoken word but that they’re saying.

And yet.

And yet.

I would look so good in a tux.

“Nobody on the road
Nobody on the beach
I feel it in the air
The summer’s out of reach
Empty lake, empty streets
The sun goes down alone
I’m driving by your house
Though I know you’re not home

But I can see you –
Your brown skin shinin’ in the sun
You got your hair combed back and your sunglasses on, baby
And I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone

I never will forget those nights
I wonder if it was a dream
Remember how you made me crazy?
Remember how I made you scream
Now I don’t understand what happened to our love
But babe, I’m gonna get you back
I’m gonna show you what I’m made of

I can see you –
Your brown skin shinin’ in the sun
I see you walking real slow and you’re smilin’ at everyone
I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone

Out on the road today, I saw a DEADHEAD sticker on a Cadillac
A little voice inside my head said, ‘Don’t look back. You can never look back’
I thought I knew what love was
What did I know?
Those days are gone forever
I should just let them go but –

I can see you –
Your brown skin shinin’ in the sun
You got that top pulled down and that radio on, baby
And I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone

I can see you –
Your brown skin shinin’ in the sun
You got that hair slicked back and those Wayfarers on, baby
I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone…”

~ Lyrics by Don Henley, from the song “The Boys of Summer.” From the Building the Perfect Beast album, released in 1984. Music composed by Michael Campbell.

Try the cover from Front Country, featuring vocalist Melody Walker

This morning we made fried eggs and fake bacon and banana pancakes on the griddle, drowned in maple syrup on each plate.

I needed that.

We’re planning an adventure in the Catskills in late spring. There are 12 peaks in the Lake George area which sound a little more accessible than the Adirondack 46. We’re thinking about of attempting some subset of the Sleeping Beauty, Erebus, Buck, and Black peak range on the eastern side of the lake, or possibly Cat and Thomas on the west side of the lake for a less demanding experience.

Steve is an experienced waterfall climber and hiker and landscape photographer, but he’s never tried mountain climbing and he’s never been out backpacking overnight. I think he’s going to like this.

I’ve climbed mountains before, particularly some of the high peaks the ADK, and also Mt. Mansfield in VT with one of my Emmas.

Steve and I are gearing up, anyhow. He needs suitable clothing, particularly base and shell layers, but aside from this we mostly have what we need.

I am still aching to attempt a thru hike of the Appalachian Trail. This would be the perfect time of year to begin, heading northbound from Springer Mountain in Georgia.

I just. I don’t want to leave my cat.

It’s not the loss of the comforts of home that are stopping me.

I don’t want to leave them behind.

Please do not let this be the day I get busted for regularly breaking several of the ten commandments.

Please do not let the milk and eggs and vegetables rot in my fridge before I can use them.

Please don’t let me accidentally lose my engagement ring down the drain of the kitchen sink.

Watch over the families whose homes have been bombed to rubble and whose loved ones have been reduced to bloody ashes.

Be gentle with the wings of monarch butterflies; let the milkweed thrive.

Let the forests stand tall and the songbirds sing.

Send your angels to the libraries, the coffee shops, the little book shops and the music stores, the sushi parlors – they’re going to need their strength.

Fortify the nurses and the teachers and the carpenters, offer understanding and the joy of comprehension to the scientist and the poet and the student.

Please send comfort to the grandmother of the child who was recently bullied into the ground.

Let there be all the right books on the shelves for the people who need them.

Remember the dead. Walk with the living.

Keep one eye on my kid sister.

Amen.

“They build wooden houses on frozen ponds
In the summertime when the water’s gone
Diagonal lines in their rolled-out lawns
And the sage always smells so pretty
But nobody cares where the birds have gone
When the rain comes down on Babylon
The stonemason’s phone rings all day long
And you gotta get back to the city

I build my house up on this rock, baby
Every day with you
There’s nothin’ in that town I need
After everything we’ve been through
Me out in my garden and you out on your walk
Is all the distance this poor girl can take
Without listenin’ to you talk
I don’t need their money, baby
Just you and me on the rock
It’s you and me on the rock

I built paper planes when I learned to fly
Like a 747 fallin’ out of the sky
I folded ’em crooked and now I’m wonderin’ why
I could always end up in the water
But nobody’s askin’ why she lookin’ so thin
Why she’s laughin’ too hard, why she drinkin’ again
A falling star, she’s a paper plane
And she was goin’ down when you caught her

I build my house up on this rock, baby
Every day with you
There’s nothin’ in that town I need
After everything we’ve been through
Me out in my garden and you out on your walk
Is all the distance this poor girl can take
Without listenin’ to you talk
I don’t need their money, baby
Just you and me on the rock

It’s an earthquake, it’s a hard wind
It’s a record-breakin’ tide and it is rollin’ in
It’s a big sea, but it can’t touch you and me
It’s just a water view
And what a view
I don’t need their money, baby
I don’t need their money, baby
It’s you and me on the rock
You and me on the rock
It’s you and me on the rock

I build my house up on this rock, baby
Every day with you
There’s nothin’ in that town I need
After everything we’ve been through
Me out in my garden and you out on your walk
Is all the distance this old girl can take
Without listenin’ to you talk
I don’t need their money, baby
Just you and me on the rock.”

~ Brandi Carlile, “You and Me on the Rock.”

I find myself pretending that my partner can secretly read my thoughts. when I think things that i think he might find upsetting, he can tell and he gets sad but he tries gallantly not to show me that my thoughts are making him sad because he doesn’t want me to know he’s telepathic.

I don’t do this on purpose, it just happens.

Driving on a cold rainy day worsens a persistent feeling of anxiety. You know what’ll probably help? Too much caffeine. That’ll do it.

Without shame
Two outfits then to my name
You’d end up in one when you’d stay
We had nowhere to go
And every desire for going there

I heard once
It’s the comforts that make us feel numb
We’d go out with no way to get home
And we’d sleep on somebody’s floor
And wake up feeling like a millionaire

Wish I’d known it was just our turn (we just got by)
Being blamed for a world we had no power in (but we tried)
You and I had nothing to show (we didn’t know)
But the best of the world in the palm of our hands (anything, darling)

And, darling, I haven’t felt it since then
I don’t know how the feeling ended
But I know being reckless and young
Is not how the damage gets done

One time we would want for nothing (one time we had it all, love)
We knew what our love was worth (when we had nothing)
Now we’re always missing something (I miss when)
I miss when we did not need much

Oh, if the car ran, the car was enough
If the sun shone on us, it’s a plus
And the tank was always filled up
Only enough for our getting there

That first car was like wings on an angel (and you flew away)
Before the whole wide world got too thin (from me then)
I swear good will kept up the engine
You were steering my heart like a wheel in your hands (turn back, darling)

And, darling, I haven’t felt it since then
I don’t know how the feeling ended
But I know being reckless and young
Is not how the damage gets done

And if we never run
Before our chance was gone
And if we never run
Before our chance was gone

All I needed was someone (and if we never run)
When the whole wide world felt young (before our chance was gone)
All I needed was someone (and if we never run)
When the whole wide world felt young (before our chance was gone)

And if we never run
Before our chance was gone

~ Hozier & Brandi Carlile, Damage Gets Done

As an early birthday celebration I took Steve Rogers out for a glass of wine – pinot & cab – and some live jazz at a cozy little wine bar in downtown Rochester. I snuck in some dollar store colored markers – orange and purple – and we doodled on a blank sheet of notebook paper. Mostly vi hart doodles and pigpen code. I could feel the sophisticated people who like to go out for a glass of wine and listen to live jazz judging us, silently, but the waiter with the bright pink hair and embroidered waistcoat thought it was cool. I anticipate that restaurant doodling shall be in vogue in no time at all.

Then we split some Tiramisu and the jazz guitar stopped playing.

He knew this was part of the plan. But then we hit Strasburg Planetarium for some Laser Beyoncé, which he did not know was part of the plan and didn’t find out about until we were standing in line for tickets – although you should have seen his face light up when we turned into the Rochester Museum and Science Center parking lot. He was delighted. We leaned the seats back and stared up at the lights dancing on the ceiling throughout about a dozen songs and it was beautiful. It was an aestheically pleasing light display which made full use of the planetarium’s impressive projection technology, creatively synchronized to some classic tracks from the queen B. Tickets were more than affordable. Support your local science museum.

It was a lovely collection of songs, and they weren’t too loud. We took a moment to enjoy the display cases outside the dome, too. I wish there’d been more time to read and fully appreciate everything that was there.

We can always go back.

Yesterday I told him we were going out on Saturday evening so he should probably get all clean and spiffy and get his homework done in time. So he did.

He smiled a lot this evening and told me he hasn’t had a birthday celebration this nice in a long time.

If he’s going to be older than dirt then he might as well enjoy all this time.

Let your

heart break

so your spirit

doesn’t.

This poem, “Good Greif,” was written by Andrea Gibson, and was originally published in their book of poems called You Better Be Lighting.

Button Poetry Inc., Minneapolis, 2021.

Andrea (Andrew, in another universe) is gifted in the art of spoken word poetry.

Got home and read about yet another young queer person from the american south being bullied until they were dead.

I am no medicine woman, but here are some ideas for tending to a nervous system which is badly shaken by this news.

–

– Start with a drink of water. Cold water is good. Roll the cool of the glass or water bottle across your forehead.

– Walk. Move your body. Stretch. Adrenaline is released into your bloodstream when your sympathic nervous system kicks into a fight or flight response; energy and resources are allocated away from nonessential body functions like the immune system or digesting essential nutrients out of your food, and everything is sent to the places meant to help you fight your way out of a tight corner, or run the hell away from danger. This is why you might shake when you read about something profoundly sad and unsettling, a perceived threat to your safety. When you increase your heartrate with even just a little mild exercise, it helps push the adrenaline through your system so that you can disengage from fight or flight. Extended time spent in fight or flight has some pretty gruesome affects on health in the long term and it feels fucking terrible in the short term, so learning how to keep your nervous system from taking you to that place unless you have to be there is a good skill.

– Showers also accomplish something similar, here. Let the water wash away the pain.

– Engage your prefrontal cortex with a distraction. Grab a favorite book into which you can escape as comfortably as possible. Listen to music or a podcast. Watch a show. Just please choose the content of the distraction with care, so it doesn’t fuel a bad feeling.

– Locate any sources of physical discomfort and try to address that. If you have a headache take ibuprofen, if your pants are too stiff change into something cozier.

– Chocolate. Enough said. Hot cocoa is nice on a rainy day.

– Grieve however you need to grieve. Journal about your thoughts. Scream into a pillow. Talk to someone you trust.

– It is okay to cry for the dead, especially when the dead remind you of your loved ones, remind you of yourself.

– Avoid despair, even when that’s tricky.

– It is okay to wallow in your sadness for as long as necessary, and at the same time it is not okay to rot away in pain until you have fused to your mattress and your bones have atrophied and gone all wobbley. I have tried that and it is so much better to rise, slowly, eventually, from your slimey cocoon of grief and go make yourself some tea. Have a cookie. If you’re going to wallow, get comfortable with some ice cream and a duvet and put on your favorite show.

– formally reschedule obligations if necessary to make time to feel sad, instead of disappearing off the face of the planet without notice or trying to show up for your regularly scheduled life in an emotionally compromised state. People can sometimes be more understanding then you give them credit for and it is up to you to discern who those people are.

– Remember that you don’t have to heal this hatefully broken world on your own, and you don’t have to do all of it right away. It feels overwhelming to think about trying to make a difference to such a profoundly embedded prejudice that is very old and very strong and very stupid. But you can create an intention to find a way to help. Make yourself a promise to show up, in little ways. For them. When you’re ready.

– It also helps to try to believe that it is possible for this reality to change and soften into something more loving, even if all you have is just a little control over a very little sphere of this world we’re living in. Other people are fighting and grieving and loving, too, and they’ll be there when it matters.

– Don’t you dare lose yourself trying to change who you are because you’re scared of that same stupid bullying hatred being directed at you. Do the opposite. There are people who are scared and shy and just like you who need to know you exist and that you are lovely, so don’t fall for the trap of fear and hate and dim your light. And yeah, okay, there are some places where it is safer to shine than others – this is the part where you learn how to shape-shift. But please don’t let the fire go out, because the warmth from the fire is important to more than just yourself.

_

Rest in peace, NB.

The man who lit himself on fire on the steps of the embassy was willing to die for the cause. The last words on his lips, before he died screaming in agony, were “Free Palestine.”

What would it have looked like, instead, to live for that cause?

Could the martyr have accomplished any more over the course of a lifetime of painstaking little actions that nobody would remember?

If a million likes does not equal a movement, then what does?

Forget the norms of social hierarchy and the traditionally gendered expectations of relationship power dynamics. I hereby declare this household a tyrannical matriarchy, just like my mother before me and her mother before that.

My only subject (except for the cat) laughs and smiles and shakes his head and tells me that this is a strictly egalitarian arrangement.

I think he’s trying to tell me that we’re equals. Disgusting.

As tyrannical martriarch I resent this approach. This is total insubordination and for his crimes he shall be subjected to the punishment of being forced to sit still and listen to me say nice things about him which are so sweet and genuine that he is going to squirm, i.e., “you look nice today,” etc.. He shall also be court marshaled into (a) remembering to eat enough food and (b) going to bed on time. That’ll teach him.

This is a benevolent tyranny, yet his taxes are insanely steep and include picking up enough coffee and groceries for two people instead of one, listening to me sing in the car, and doing his absolute best to comfort me when I’m sad.

I reap the benefits of his willing generosity and then find as many superfluous kind things to do for him as I can think of so that he’s so distracted by being treated well that he doesn’t notice how much I need him. If he found out how much I need him, my only legitimate claim to tyrannical power would crumble and we would end up having to soldier on as equals.

Damn.

No, not green as in U.S. paper currency. Green as in looking up through the tree branches in the woods in the summer. Smh

The quiet solace of a public library is one of the world’s greatest gifts to anyone with a (slowly healing, yet still) deeply traumatized nervous system. This is also true of trails through the woods in the nearby park, the smallish locally owned bookstore, and the café with the friendly barista who remembers your order even if she doesn’t always remember your name.

this is what happens when you lock the itty bitty baby princess away in a tower away from everyone else because she is definitely somewhere on the autism spectrum and she cries every day when she gets home from school and the only other person in her everyday life for five years is her sister who wears the same shirt size. and then you let her grow up in second hand clothes and her only socialization with the outside world is carefully curated and limited and she is sheltered so that she doesn’t know anything about anything and she doesn’t know you can just put lipgloss in your pocket and walk out the store and the leash is short but at least she has a flip phone which is her freedom to wander out of sight of her mother for the first time at 13 years old and at 16 years old she still believed that writing in a diary meant she had a right to privacy as she processed what was happening in her life with the written word and it was like that until she finally got her drivers license and the first thing she discovers in the world away from home is a catholic highschool boyfriend whose mother believes in abstinence and does not believe in privacy and the second thing she finds is the woods and the lake near her community college campus where she doesn’t fit in very well and the third thing she finds is a blank composition notebook in a dollar store and book of calculus problems and the fourth thing she finds is a flannel shirt and a haircut and the fifth thing she finds is that she has outgrown the a catholic boyfriend and his mother and she cries and the sixth thing that she finds is that women are beautiful and yet men feel so much safer to talk to even when they aren’t because you can accidentally hurt men and they’ll be okay but if that attraction to women isn’t welcome then you’ve accidentally broken something that might never be repaired, and the seventh thing she finds is another safe man to talk to and the eighth thing she finds is a library and the ninth thing she finds is a keyboard and words and Rilke recommended, in his Letters to a Young Poet, “ask yourself if you would die if you were forbidden to write…”

and I think that I probably would.

There’s a book series I’m enjoying called The Locked Tomb. The first book, Gideon the Ninth [for which there will be spoilers], is about two young women who grew up together with no socialization with anyone else their own age, because everyone else on the planet is ancient and none of the other children – survived – except for the pair of them. These women – Harrow and Gideon – hate each other from birth, and they spend most of their lives trying to make each other miserable in ways that are, without question, traumatic and abusive. You could make the excuse that they were only children, neglected and brought up in a desolate environment without love, you could make the excuse that they’ve both lost everything and internalized the idea that this was their own fault and that their best coping mechanism is to take this out on each other  – but this does not explain away the fact that they treated each other badly. This is important for the sake of the story.

Harrowhark is the reverend daughter, the cult leader of her house by virtue of her family’s social status. She is also a necromancer of considerable ability. She’s good at death magic, especially bone magic. She can do weird but impressive things with skeletons. Harrow wants to answer the emperor’s call for help from his necromancers, hoping to travel away from her home and study to become a Lyctor, which is a more powerful and nearly immortal/invincible form of necromancer. Harrow thinks if she accomplishes this task, she will be able to return home restore her house to its former glory.

Harrow will not be able to complete this task alone. She requires a cavalier, a partner to accompany her on her journey, a soldier who is trained as a swordsman and is sworn to protect her necromancer from harm. Literally the only viable candidate for cavalier primary on the entire planet is Gideon Nav, Harrow’s arch nemesis, who is – in the opening pages of the first book – caught red handed trying to run away from home, not for the first time.

Gideon is the kind of person who doesn’t have much in this life except for her yearning to escape from a bad home, the muscles she built from scratch with pushups and situps on the floor of her cell, her dirty mind and her magazines, and her (justified) hatred for Harrow. Because agreeing to assume the role of Harrowhark’s cavalier is Gideon’s best chance to leave the Ninth House and never return, she agrees to serve. Reluctantly. She can see no better alternative.

As they set out on their journey, they have no idea how their trials will bring them closer together in unexpected ways, how they will grow to look out for and care for each other, how each of them will betray the other, and all of the things each of them will sacrifice for the sake of the other in the end.

I suppose you could try to interpret their story without acknowledging that these two characters love and are in love with each other. Romance or marriage between a cavalier and a necromancer is taboo everywhere except for the fifth house, and possibly the sixth. We know both of these women are queer. We know this because one of them, Gideon, never stops thinking about titties and is flattered by the attentions of an older woman who has been slowly dying for a long time. The other girl, Harrow, is canonically obsessed with the corpse of a beautiful woman. We know they’re both queer, we just don’t know if the narrative is ever going to serve us, the readers, this particular lesbian couple. I guess you could read this story without interpreting the relationship between Harrow and Gideon as a tragic slow burn enemies to lovers romance. You could, if you wanted to, do that. It’s just that the books would be boring as all hell without Griddlehark.

Because the internet is – the way that it is, now – I recently had the opportunity to watch two witches argue about the necessity of casting protective enchantments around the house.

The first witch thought that the changing of the seasons is a good time to remember to reinforce the old protective wards. She shared the details her practice, things like pouring salt along the windowsills.

A second witch spoke up in disagreement. Instead of using magic, she thought it would be better to cultivate a relationship with “the spirit of the home,” something which is different for each place. She said that if you are on good terms with the spirits of your home, they will protect you. This leaves you free to spend your time and energy on other pursuits instead of worrying.

At best this is some kind of folklore being passed down across the information-sharing platform which is the little videos people make and share for everyone with a cellular telephone and a wifi connection to witness. Maybe this is just whimsical fantasy and storytelling.

Anyway, I liked this particular thought.

Rationally, scientifically, perhaps befriending the spirit of your home in practice causes a person to take better care of the place itself – keeping it neat and clean and functional, consequently creating a safer and more welcoming space to live.

“Doesn’t stop being magic…”

The spirit of the place I’m living now seems… friendly. Quiet, peaceful. Much different from the rambling old farmhouse where I grew up. Younger, less familiar.

The spirit of this place is somehow wrapped up in the smell of coffee brewing in the morning, the ticking of a clock in the quiet hours, the birds chirping in the trees outside the windows. A cold glass of water from the fridge. Christmas lights left up all year. Comfy blankets on the couch. A well-stocked pantry, much more carefully maintained now that I’m here, with spices and vegetables and bread. Bookshelves. A jigsaw puzzle. Candles we aren’t technically allowed to burn. Black mold which always grows back. An old  stove which will catch on fire if it isn’t used properly. A cat who can see ghosts and watches bugs in the corners.

This place has been my partner’s home for about twelve years; nobody stays in one apartment for that long, nobody except for him, but Steve has a strong tendency to put down roots somewhere and stay put. He watches other people come and go. I am the third partner of his to cross this threshold, or any threshold, and I won’t speak to how I’m different from the other two, but their “ghosts” in this place don’t bother me. If anything I wish them well. I think the spirit of the house has an old alliance with the spirit of my partner, if such things exist, because he takes care of this place as diligently as this place takes care of him.

I do not sprinkle salt along the windowsills. Salt is expensive to buy.

Just in case there’s any substance to this story, I whisper a “thank you” to the spirit of this place.

Thank you.

“If I packed all of my belongings into a little bandanna on a stick and ran away forever would you come looking for me?”

There’s an old man who stands on the corner at the intersection exit ramp off the expressway. He holds a sign which says “please help.” He most likely does not have health insurance. I don’t know if he has a home. He is shaking. I don’t know if he has a home.

I have a purse; I’m only keeping my hair long right now because haircuts are expensive and if my hair is long then when I carry a purse I don’t look like a fifteen year old boy who stole a purse.

My little sister has my promise that for as long as I am alive she will always have cooking oil and salt. Then again, she also has a kitchen. I don’t know if the man on the corner has a kitchen.

I have a purse made of skin and there are convenience stores on every corner because somebody cut down the forests to build them.

I am closer to homelessness than I am to being able to afford to pay for a home in any city in this country.

I also have friends who are worth waking up in the morning for.

If your favorite Disney movie is Robin Hood, you are guilty of (constant) shoplifting and have also never been caught once. You think archery is neat. You’re in the email subscription list for a local mutual aid network. You would do unbelievable things to defend the honor of any woman in your vicinity. Your friends mean the world to you. You have read and could quote extensively from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx.

If your favorite Disney movie is Mulan, you’ve spent time researching eastern philosophy, mythology, or religion. You know a little Mandarin. You tried crossdressing once and never went back because it felt comfortable. You borrow your brother’s clothes and never give them back. You might use they/them pronouns. Honor is important to you. You don’t tend to follow the rules. You would fight for your family and your country but you see the flaws in tradition and recognize when it’s time for a change. You want a pet dragon.

If your favorite Disney movie was The Sword in the Stone, your first stop at any bookstore is the high fantasy section. You know too much about Arthurian legend. You’ve played dungeons and dragons before. You have (or wish you had) a sword collection. You seek guidance from mysterious old men with beards. You’ve always wanted to know if you are worthy, and you would, if you found a sword lodged in a stone, give it a tug when nobody was looking.

If your favorite Disney movie was The Fox and the Hound, then you’ve lost contact with someone you love because you were forbidden from ever seeing them again, or because loving them was against the rules of society.

If your favorite Disney movie was Aladdin, you wouldn’t judge someone for stealing a loaf of bread. You’re a fan of Robin Williams. You know all the words to “A Whole New World.” You would accept a romantic tour of your hometown on a flying carpet. You’ve put serious thought into the question, “if I had three wishes from a genie in a lamp, what would I wish for?”

If your favorite Disney movie was Pocahontas, your dad did not initially approve of your boyfriend for significant cultural reasons. You had a rude awakening when you learned about American colonialism. You’re fond of raccoons. You would definitely paint with all the colors of the wind.

If you loved Hercules, you have an encyclopedic knowledge of Greek mythology under your belt. You once taught yourself the Greek alphabet for fun, not because you needed to do that. You love a classic hero.

If your favorite Disney movie was Tarzan, you respect the musical accomplishments of Phil Collins. Your favorite scientist is Jane Goodall. You enjoy spending time in the woods and climbed trees a lot in your youth. You would enjoy whooping loudly whilst jumping off a rope swing into a pond.

If your favorite Disney movie was Lilo & Stitch, you must really like Elvis. You know what it feels like to be doing your very best and still struggling to hold your life together. You love your family more than anything in the world,  and the thought of losing them – even when they’re acting out and being terrible – is a constant source of anticipatory grief. You have lost people before and it forced you to grow up too fast. You fell in love with other science fiction stories about aliens and space ships as you grew up, but this is where it all began. You would love to visit Hawaii. You tend to see the good in people and accept them into your heart, even when they seem a little strange at first.

And if you loved The Jungle Book, you are forever greatful to be welcomed into a community you weren’t necessarily born into, to have people looking out for you as you grew up. You would do anything to protect your friends.

If your favorite animated Disney movie growing up was the Hunchback of Notre Dame, you’ve since grown up to have some pretty serious questions about organized religion. You are fond of stone statues, and you like the sound of church bells. You always secretly think the pretty woman should have ended up with the guy with the personality instead of the blond one with the stupid heroism and the cliché good looks.

If your favorite animated Disney movie growing up was Bambie, then you’re now a vegetarian with a passion for environmental conservation and you want to work in forestry one day. You either can’t watch the news because it makes you cry or you can’t look away because otherwise you wouldn’t be doing your civic duty of knowing what’s going on so you can lace up and go wave cardboard signs at people.

If your favorite Disney movie growing up was the Lion King, then your favorite Shakespeare play is Hamlet, even if you’re not entirely sure why. You like to visit the zoo. You want to visit Africa but you couldn’t name more than like three individual counties on a map. You have never in your life looked at what words spell when you read them backwards.

If your favorite Disney movie growing up was Peter Pan, you still think twice before you close your window in the summer. You sometimes check to make sure your shadow is still attached. You can’t look at large bodies of water without thinking about mermaids. You consider belief to be a powerful mechanism for shaping reality around you. You like the orange lilys that grow along the side of the road in late summer. You’re fond of the sound of clocks ticking. You are guilty of piracy but you keep getting away with it. You think about fairies when you look up at the stars.

If your favorite Disney movie growing up was The Little Mermaid, congrats, you are now bisexual. You once tried to brush your hair with a fork. You think unrequited love is hot. Sometimes you dance when nobody’s watching. You have been caught singing under your breath at the wrong moments and for this crime you have been looked at quizzically from across the room. You sometimes visit the beach and stare wistfully at the horizon. You never did get married your best friend, who is the most oblivious person you know.

If your favorite Disney Movie growing up was Snow White, you don’t ever accept food from strangers. You could live in a house with a bunch of men who adore you platonically and be perfectly happy in the knowledge that they would do anything for you. You’re totally not racist, but also you can always find a matching shade of foundation at the drugstore. You think being kissed awake by your partner in the mornings is sweet.

If your favorite Disney movie growing up was Alice in Wonderland, you have a secret fondness for chess and mushrooms and playing cards and tea parties. You’re not on drugs right now, but you’ve thought about it. Your favorite metaphor involves rabbitholes. You would eat a random cake without knowing where it had been just because a conveniently placed label suggested it.

If you loved Sleeping Beauty, you like old brick buildings covered in ivy, brambles and undergrowth in the forest, and the ruins of castles. You value your beauty sleep. You’re still waiting for the prince to ride in from the furthest corners of the land and rescue you from your fate. An older woman in your life resents your innocent youthfulness and beauty and hates not being invited to important social gatherings. Not your fault she wasn’t on the guest list. Time for another nap.

If your favorite Disney movie growing up was Lady and the Tramp, you’re still waiting for somebody to try doing the spaghetti thing with. Either this or you have tried it and you got sauce all over yourselves.

If your favorite Disney movie growing up was Cinderella, you never stay up past midnight. You’re still wishing for a motherly older woman to swoop into your life and magically solve all of your problems. You don’t come from money but somehow you still learned how to dance. Your nickname is pumpkin. You own a nice pair of shoes. You always lose your things when you’re out in public. Men chase you, not the other way around. A man you met one (1) time at a party is still obsessed with you.

If your favorite Disney movie growing up was Fantasia then you took art history in college and like listening to classical music.

If you favored 101 Dalmatians, then you are vegan and have attended a protest about the unethical practice of wearing fur. Your pet cause is abolishing animal cruelty.

If you loved Beauty and the Beast, then you like people for what they are like on the inside, not what they look like on the outside. You’re probably a brown haired woman who loves to read. If a scruffy looking man gave you the keys to a library you would leave your beloved family to go off and live happily ever after with him. You can do a French accent. You worry you will hurt the feelings on inanimate objects. You have a particular fondness for the long stemmed rose.

My emotions have been dysregulated all day today. My nervous system is being gross and terrible. I should drink water and nap, but the worries!!! The worries persist.

Was I not built for this world or was this world not built for me?

I just want to feel safe. I know that I am safe, I just want to feel intuitively that this is true.

Consider the question: why aren’t more people using their online platforms to protest the genocide in Gaza?

The relative absence of online outcry for Palestine exists in stark contrast to the massive social media response to the murder of George Floyd. In the spring of 2020, an innocent black man was killed by police in the city of Minneapolis. A video of the up-close-and-personal murder, taken by witnesses on a personal cell phone, was shared and went viral online. Public witnessing lead to a rekindling of the ongoing movement for civil rights in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets during the global pandemic to protest police brutality, especially towards black lives. This sparked conversations about systemic racism both on and offline. In particular, videos of police officers spraying tear gas and shooting rubber bullets at crowds of peaceful protesters lead to cries for policy that would defund overmilitarized police departments.

Reactions to the protests became politicized along party lines that correlate with popular media coverage. Right wing platforms like FOX news emphasized supporting police with the slogan “Blue Lives Matter,” sharing footage of the instances when Black Lives Matter protests became destructive. Selectively curated media coverage fueled the false image of civil rights protesters as inherently violent and dangerous. It also reinforced the false caricature of the black personality as threatening, which has always been a useful motive to incarcerate people of color in the prison industrial complex, wreaking havoc on communities of color while providing the unpaid prison labor on which our economy so heavily depends. (See also documentary 13th). Republican president of the United States in that year, Donald Trump, vocally called for “Law and Order…” a phrase with deeply racist implications which echoed the Reagan administration’s War on Drugs. Law & Order rhetoric was responsible that era’s unjust mass incarceration of black people and the anti-war left.

While popular media made protesting violent injustice seem like a bad thing, a counter movement persisted. Many people responded to the protests by trying to create positive change – as they have done since long before the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement after Ferguson, long before even the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. The parental instinct to create a world that is safer and more just for everyone is not new, and it isn’t going away any time soon.

Many object that the “online activism” which accompanied the Black Lives Matter movement was not true activism, as it almost exclusively deals in spreading awareness of real world problems and gives people a sense that they have done something to help without actually lacing up and doing something about what needs to be done. Sharing articles and memes on social media also tends to contribute to the phenomenon of political polarization, as even the most carefully nuanced points of view do not tend to break through the walls of internet echo chambers. Social media algorithms which show people more of the content they already interact with, trap scrollers in epistemic bubbles where their beliefs are reinforced by hearing more from people who agree with them and hearing less from people who disagree. Some compare internet activism to the mindless sharing of propaganda which radicalizes in ways that aren’t always helpful. As I scroll through Facebook accounts of people I no longer follow, I find this argument troublingly impelling.

On the other hand, there can be no constructive conversation about how to make change if we do not speak up. We will not change problems we know nothing about. Even if we cannot reach everyone or make everyone agree with us about the things that need attention and care, we are empowered to start conversations and share knowledge and perspectives with the technology we carry with us in our pockets. This is the gift of technology and free speech, of the innovation and of freedom from censorship, which we were promised.

Wouldn’t it be fascinating to hear from a living relic from the civil rights movement who could speak to the way social media influences activism in real life? As it turns out, we can do that.

The State University of New York at Geneseo recently hosted a moderated discussion with civil rights activist elder Angela Davis. In her youth, Davis was arrested multiple times and put in solitary confinement for protesting the indignities of anti-black systemic violence in her youth. Angela Davis eloquently protested the injustice of racism; powerful white men of the government of her time advocated that she receive the death penalty. Unlike many civil rights activists of her time, she has survived into her 80’s, and in the meantime she has written eloquent and precisely researched works on prison abolition, including a slim but powerful volume simply titled: Are Prisons Obselete? in which she makes a compelling arguement for the affirmative.

At her recent talk at the college, she was asked to share her thoughts about the intersection of technology, social media, and activism. I did not record that question verbatim, but my notes on the answers she gave to this question are paraphrased here:

“People are afraid of new technologies. We ought to make these technologies capable of making progress possible, but we ought not allow ourselves to be utilized by technology. Young people who have never known anything other than social media are afraid of getting canceled. Many consequences of technology are negative, but some of them are full of possibility. We can tell what’s happening in other parts of the world. It used to be that activists had to write letters in order to know what was going on. Now we can, for instance, witness the genocide in Gaza. We are thankful to know what’s happening and this witnessing also creates a lot of pain. The pain of witnessing is crushing, and is sometimes… counterproductive [?]. [I think she means we look away because watching hurts too much.] The pain of witnessing sometimes urges people to get involved and put pressure on the US government, a major ally of Israel. People ought to be allowed to criticize Isreal without being accused of antisemitism. People don’t realize that many Jewish citizens of Israel are doing so much to criticize their own government. While we should be thankful for the possibilities brought about by new technology, I am fearful that people assume organizing happens only through social media. Young people need to understand that a million likes does not equal a movement.”

None of this is meant to negate the worldwide protesting for the victims of US-funded genocide in Gaza, or the loud and very public cries for ceasefire, or South Africa’s valiant attempt to expicitly call out Isreal for perpetrating genocide. The videos of an anguished and deeply traumatized people who have lost their families, lost their homes, and lost everything, are indeed deeply unsettling to watch. An article called “Nice and White During a Genocide” observes that it is a privilege to be able to look away, to log off, when the violence is happening far away. Our lives are safely far removed from the urgency to take action which is felt by the mother who has lost a child, or the child who has lost a mother.

Since Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke out against the war in Vietnam, the movement for civil rights and the anti-war movement have been inseparably intertwined. To hear a beloved elder from the civil rights movement like Angela Davis speak about the way we witness the genocide in Gaza and how we ought to respond, and especially how our responses are not limited to social media – this was a powerful experience for me, and I want to share that experience the only way that I know how, which is in writing.

I most loved what she said about witnessing being a painful thing, but also a useful one. I think the pain of witnessing what is happening in Gaza as a motivation to take action and speak truth to power is a useful thing. But even Angela spoke to the fact that it can be so painful to watch, to be constantly inundated with the pain of people from the other side of the world. I think this may be one answer to the original question of why more people aren’t using their platforms to speak up. There’s more to it than that, of course.

But “there comes a time when silence is a sort of violence,” to paraphrase King’s thoughts on Vietnam.

So, as you witness, when you witness, fortify yourself with the strength you are going to need to speak up and do something about it.

–

“I could do this all day.”

“You write too much when you get worried, punk.“

“I know.”

For Valentine’s day we made black bean and sweet potato nachos with sweet peppers, red onions, jalapeños, and sriracha in the air fryer. Then we washed that down with red wine and chocolate because we were being all classy and everything.

Steve claims that nobody has ever gotten him a box of chocolates since middle school, which I find completely absurd. It’s probably because everyone else recognized him as properly out of their league by virtue of being excessively pretty and pleasant and also off limits for everyone who thinks it’s a good idea to follow the rules. I was probably much too distracted to care.

This being said, nobody’s ever gotten me a smallish teddy bear called Bertrand Karamchand Martin Rilke Jr. before, either. Not sure what that says about either of us as people.

Steve is no longer allowed to open car doors for himself. This is ridiculous, as he is quite capable of managing for himself. I just won’t let him. I drive him everywhere except for the times when I don’t, so he has extra time to study and I get the privilege of driving and singing in the car. Sometimes I’ll make his coffee for the next morning. I pack him sandwiches for lunch in a little wooden bento box. He will never again suffer from a lack of nauseatingly sappy love notes all over the place. I get him books of poetry. I pick up phone chargers from the dollar store for him when his get broken. I burn his quesadillas almost every single time but okay look the nachos were outstanding, seriously. He doesn’t much care for the cold so I’m the one who stands out in the chilly breeze and fills up the tank all winter because, damn it, chivalry isn’t dead.

He doesn’t owe me anything for this. This is the bare minimum treatment you can expect from a gentleman, which I – like to think of myself as one of those.

He also did not ask for any of this, which is exactly why he’s stuck with it. Particularly because it makes him blush and smile like every single time which is a fantastic high honestly. I can’t tell if he’s ever been treated properly before.

So of course I did the stupidly hopeless romantic cliché power move the other day and got him a dozen roses and a box of chocolates on a whim. Made him wait in the car for a second on the way home while I went in and got them. They were pinkish orange. The papery thin old man standing behind me in line at the grocery store was doing the exact same thing – his chocolates were doves and his roses were a different color – and so we carefully avoided making eye contact the entire time.

Steve loved them. He even put them in a vase.

Hey, 20yo self:

(oh gods that was a long time ago, jfc)

A book that I’m reading about attachment styles in the context of adult relationships tells me that as a person’s attachment style shifts from high anxious attachment towards an earned secure attachment, they will most likely experience a phase of mildly avoidant attachment.

Menanno writes that attachment styles exist on a spectrum from disorganized (“go away/don’t leave me”) to secure (“I’m right here and you’re right here and it’s going to be okay.”)

As anxiously attached people heal from the old, old wounds (on purpose) and learn how to access a more secure side of our personalities, we’ll be less overwhelmed with separation anxiety and more comfortable disengaging and enjoying solitude than we used to be. Someday, a little more distance will feel easier than the perpetual yearning for closeness. Empathy for the avoidants in our life grows. After a lot of character development, it is possible to get from a place of “I need such constant reassurance that the people in my life don’t hate me (because I am secretly terrible aha) that I am perpetually creating interactions which make them uncomfortable and push them away” to “I know their love isn’t going anywhere, so I can safely let that worry quiet down, for now.”

You’re going to lose some people along the way to shedding insecurity. You’re going to lose people who feel important and it’s going to hurt. You’re going to date your best friend from high school and be your absolute worst self in that relationship and he’s going to look you in the eyes and tell you he doesn’t want to be your friend anymore, and it’s going to suck ass so hard you almost end up in the hospital and you will honestly never be the same after that moment. The boundaries and the dynamics in the relationships which somehow survive the absolute worst you can throw at them are going to shift and change. Your loved ones are going to grow and change into new iterations of themselves and it’s going to be an absolutely beautiful thing to watch- heck, you’re going to be a different person in five years that you were when you were nineteen. And then one day it’ll be a cold and sunny day in the middle of winter and you’re look up and fully realize the presence of the ones who are still here, and it will mean more to you than you will ever be able to put into words. We learn to reach out more gracefully, we also learn to respond more gracefully when other people reach out for us.

One day you’re going to be the one who doesn’t have the energy for a visit or doesn’t text back for a couple of weeks because you’re tired and that doesn’t mean you love your friends any less, it just means you’re fucking tired. All the time. And you’ll look back to the you who felt like everyone hated you if they didn’t right back right away, and you’ll understand. And that’s gonna hurt, too.

But you aren’t tired all the way down to the bones, now. Not right now. Just tired in a way that makes you move more slowly on the way to wash your face and get yourself a glass of water to drink in the morning.

You used to wonder what the fuck it meant when people said “you just have to put in the work” to keep your relationships healthy. Do what work? They often failed to specify.

Part of the work is reading. Research. Participating in conversations ranging from the strictly academic to casually exploratory scrolling on IG to intentionally trauma informed discussion. The work involves listening to people who took the time to share their own hard-won insights into the question of how to love properly. Learning more about this is a perpetual thing, a constant and ongoing process, which will never truly be done.

You stood at the edge of the lake for an hour after the first time you read that line from the Andrea Gibson poem, Wellness Check – “is my attention on loving, or is my attention on who isn’t loving me?” It rocked your world.

Part of the work is learning how to take better care of yourself. Better late than never. A healthy body which can walk for a long time, hike up steep hills, lift heavy things, gets enough sleep, eats enough good food, stays clean – this kind of body has room for a mind which maybe doesn’t suffer quite so much as it used to. You will also learn that “healthy” and “small enough to fit into your favorite old blue jeans” do not mean the same thing.

Part of the work was spiritual. Walking in the woods. Writing. Watching the geese. Waterfall hikes. Kissing. Exploring fictional universes. Drinking tea whilst wrapped up a cozy blanket with the cat and the sound of the fireplace.

Part of the work was just – loving, badly, doing it wrong, learning how to repair things that got broken and not throw them away in shame.

And part of it was finding people who loved you, on a bad hair day when your mind was scattered, people who knew how to tell you that they loved you as often as you needed to hear it. Trusting your instincts about people. Taking the risk of asking them to love you, with your persistent presence in their lives, even if they might say no.

You learned. You grew. You aren’t done growing.

A young woman points a camera at her partner, as if to interview him, and asks: “what’s the equivalent of flowers, but for men? Like in the same way a guy would get his girlfriend flowers, what would men want instead?”

After an embarrassed pause, he asks: “…are flowers not acceptable?”

💐

Ladies. Also gentlemen? Etc..

Statistically, most men receive flowers as a gift for the first time at their funerals. After they’ve died.

So give the people in your life their flowers while they can still smell them. Give them flowers before they’ve been buried in a claustrophobic little box in a cold, dark, dusty tomb in the ground, or lit on fire and burned until their ashes are scraped into an urn and set on the mantelpiece or scattered with awkward reverence along the bank of a river on a cloudy day. Give them flowers before their cold and stiff and unsettlingly still corpse has been dumped surreptitiously into the bog under cover of darkness, or thrown overboard into the sea, or wrapped up in a blanket that nobody else is ever going to find useful ever again (maybe because of the cats?) and returned gently to the earth at the edge of a grove of trees. Don’t wait to bring flowers until after their last precious moments of human consciousness, the last page of the story book, the last thing they will ever think or taste or feel or smell or see or hear. They say that hearing is the last sense to retire, persisting for a few moments after the last death rattle. Smell is also one of the last.

Don’t wait to bring home flowers for too long, don’t wait until you can’t anymore and you’re standing there wishing that you had.

In most cases, there’s still time. It us not too late.

There is an intricate connection between love and mortality best summed up thusly: one day, each of us is going to run out of time.

It’s partly the finite nature of our time here that gives life value. Knowing we won’t be here forever the relationships we nurture in our lifetimes more meaningful, whether those relationships are platonic, familial, straightforwardly romantic, or otherwise. We don’t walk through this life alone, and that matters. We are lucky enough to share this “one wild and precious life” with companions who bring laughter and solidarity and friendship into our lives, and leave behind beautiful memories in the wake of that. When we do inevitably run out of time, all of the ways in which we have touched the lives of the people around us are left behind – life a footprint. The entire world is different because each of us was here, and because we were here together, and the world we leave behind for whoever is here next will be what it is because of us.

So we ought to give each other our flowers while we’re here. I don’t necessarily mean give him flowers in the literal sense, especially of you don’t know him, because – well. We’ve collectively inherited some complicated layers of cultural or traditional Meaning and Symbolism such that it’s sometimes tricky to seperate steep expectations of sexual conquest and from the impulsive purchases made by the hopeless romantic, from an offerring of literally just flowers thank you, (as Georgia O’Keeffe insisted of her paintings until her dying day). This is all very silly, except when it isn’t.

There are and there have always been many different kinds of love. These are messier and more complicated, I think, than the eros/philia/agape distinctions from the ancient greeks, but the ancient greeks were definitely onto something. Not all of the different kinds of love require hugs and hand holding and kisses for the sake of closeness; for some of them, it helps. It’s tremendously kind to be discerning and honest and stay true to yourself as you learn how to tell the difference in your own feelings towards other people.

All this to say that I’ve recently heard the phrase “give someone their flowers” interpreted in a way that is not strictly literal. To give someone their flowers might be as simple as making somebody feel seen, known, or appreciated. Tell people all of the best things you think about them, all of the ways they make your life better. Thank them for being here. Say the things you might one day have to say about them at their funeral, but say those things to their face, or write it down and share it in the right moment. Better that they go through life knowing they’re loved than to always be left wondering.

💐

Daffodils are pretty and smell good and are also objectively a little weird if you think about it. Lilacs are similarly pleasant. Roses are fine, and also a big cliché. There is nothing wrong with clichés, as they’re usually that way for a reason, it’s just that roses are the vanilla ice cream flavor of flower options, plus they’ve got their own equivalent of a handkerchief code situation going on with the different colored roses and their traditionally symbolic meanings and I’ve never bothered to look into that. Orchids are lovely and sophisticated and also immensely difficult to care for. Lavender is inherently sapphic, no I will not elaborate. Violets same. Lilies of the valley are cute and make me think of fairies. Rowan blossoms are a traditional element of folklore, I think, and are therefore magical. Cherry blossoms are also very pretty but the timing is all wrong. Sunflowers make me think of Amsterdam and blackbirds. Lilies are elegant. Locusts made me think of eastern philosophy and religion. Tulips also make me think of Amsterdam, but for entirely different reasons. Wildflower or wildflower adjacent flowers like clover and calendula and zinnias and daffodils and buttercups and dandelions and bachelor’s buttons and queen anne’s lace and yarrow – eventually I am just going to take a bunch of seeds and scatter them somewhere they won’t cause too much havoc to the local ecosystem and hope for the best. Green carnations are hella gay, per Oscar Wilde.

💐

If you can’t say the thing out loud, because that’s often difficult, but the person to whom you would like to give flowers is still here – there’s an old saying that actions speak louder than words, anyhow. Hold the door for them. Open doors for them. Do the dishes. Make them a sandwich – bibbidi-bobbidi-boo, you’re a sandwich, unlike the distinct but closely related species of seawich. Offer to lend books. Remember their birthdays and important anniversaries. Send christmas cards. Help them with their homework. Share conversation and company. Hold them for the extra few seconds because you won’t be able to hold them when they’re gone.

Pick a wildflower bouquet in the springtime and leave it on the kitchen counter in a jar.

“Billionaire tortured poet deserves better than dysregulated toxic masculinity from sexy millionaire boyfriend throwing tantrums when he is struggling to (inevitably) win the sportsball game” but then again so does Palestine.

Palestine also deserves better right now.

I’ll never forget Travis Kelse (KCC #87) bellowing “VIVA LAS VEGAS” into the microphone and then bending down to give Taylor Swift a great big we-just-won-the-superb-owl victory kiss. I’m still dying to know what she whispered in his ear that was so important that she flew all the way from Tokyo to Vegas in her private jet just to tell him, after all the cameras in that stadium spent a solid couple of hours watching her watching him win the darned thing.

Still can’t fathom why so many scruffy old men don’t like when the camera keeps switching over to Taylor literally just having a good time in the stands when they’re “trying to watch football, did not come here to watch a pretty woman on the TV, now if you would please direct the camera back to the large muscular men in tight pants physically tackling each other with as much force as humanly possible and then huddling together to tell secrets before each play that would be great thank you…”

That was a phenomenal football game.  I love watching millionaires throwing a laced up cowhide leather prolate spheriod back and forth and wondering when I’ll have healthcare again. Um.

The emotional tension in that stadium was palpable, especially when the score was tied when the clock ran out and the game extended into overtime and the Kansas City defense pulled through in the end. You could feel the prayers of millions of Taylor Swift fans bending space and time to secure a win for the Kansas City Chiefs and leave the San Francisco 49er’s in the dust, but the teams were so well matched. Patrick Mahomes (#15 KCC) sure can throw a football. And so can gifted baby rookie NFL quarterback Brock Purdy (#13 SF49), from whom we all expect great things. He can also throw a football.

I still feel like if #87 is ever going to be worthy of Taylor Swift, he needs to stop screaming at his coach with all of the ferocity his bruised ego can command, all those goosebumps the fragile fear of losing badly in front of everyone can bring to the surface of his character. Learn some basic emotional regulation skills and count to ten, my brother, because she is much too precious for that temper of yours.

Although – to be fair, if you mess up and hurt her feelings, she’s definitely going to write a song about it. And it’s going right to the top of the charts.

That one woman can be obscenely wealthy and also a tortured poet, a talented performer and a gifted songwriter, look that stunning in a long flowing dress and red lipstick and also be such a graceful conversationalist, have a healthy streak of the toxic feminine to strike back at her haters and also carry the strength of her own value system, shamelessly fall in love with 13 consecutive men who were publically known as her boyfriends and not the other way around, be an outspoken feminist who also flys around in a private jet, love her mom and dad and little brother and never stay in any one city for too long… I am in awe. She is an iconic success at 34 years old. She gave up the privacy of a quiet life in exchange for a life of fame and she still opens up the vulnerable pages of her diary for everyone to read and I admire that.

I don’t think she works for the CIA. I think her power manifests at a much more fundamental level than any government agency. She has the rare influence of the deeply beloved. Taylor Swift is a goddess who’s dating a guy on a football team because she fucking wants to.

Everybody has a celebrity crush, I suppose, and she’s always been mine. Since the lyrics and portrait photos in the booklet for the CD case of the Fearless album, in 2010. I still know all the words.

Great big secret life announcement happening soonish. Or maybe I’ll just not tell anyone, so that it remains a mysterious secret. Can’t tell anybody about it yet or I’d have to kill you and then my partner and my sister and my all of my good best friends would be implicated in helping me bury the body, which would probably be terrible for them, and also I don’t have any endangered plant species to plant over your grave to make it illegal to dig up your skanky ass decomposing skeleton.

Anyway have fun red string conspiracy theorizing about that one, boys.

This obnoxiously cryptic segment has been brought to you by Martinelli’s Sparkling Apple Juice. They’re not paying me to advertise for their company, I just like this specific beverage, for some reason. It reminds me of apfelschorle, and it sure is sparkly and delicious. Much like cubic zirconia.

Martinelli’s sparkling apple juice can probably be found on sale for $3 at any local dollar store. Please do not break the empty glass bottle and then tumble the broken glass in a sea glass making machine for two to three days because then you would have your very own sea glass, which would be annoying because I fucking love sea glass and I don’t have any and I would be envious of your sea glass. Also breaking glass bottles is a safety hazard for people who persist in wearing open toed shoes even when their lab profs tell them not to do that.

Do not get yourself all scratched up by broken glass from a Martinelli’s bottle. I’d get that Annie Lennox song stuck in my head, which would be the worst, and then I’d have to remember how to do first aid.

Isn’t this sunshine lovely?

It’s not “ha, wouldn’t want to date Taylor Swift because she airs her dirty laundry in the lyrics of her pop songs and she might write a breakup album alluding to the intimate details of our relationship,” it’s

“cheers to this fucking genius of a lyricist who takes all of the complex anguish she experiences in her relationships, all the pain she feels when those relationships end, translates that sadness into words, puts those words to music in a way that makes her music into medicine because with every masterpiece of a song, literally millions of other people who are hurting will listen to those songs, and hear what she’s saying in a way that only she can say them, and it – makes the pain easier, because if a song resonates with so many people then that must mean we aren’t alone. So many other people have felt this way, too. And we lived through that.

And so anyway you can probably tell how I feel about her 66th annual Grammy’s announcement about her next album, which is called Tortured Poets Department.

I hope what’s his name, the tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, is worthy of her. I hope he wins the goddamn Superbowl. If she stays with him, if he runs out onto the field at the end of the game and all the cameras are on them and he asks her to marry him and she says yes, then I hope they’re genuinely happy. If she doesn’t stay with him – I hope she makes the grief of seperation into beautiful art.

I just want to see the boyfriend of the most important woman in the NFL win this fucking sportsball game.

packing somebody’s lunchbox in the morning with half of a pb&j, some takis, and an ingratiatingly cute little handwritten note in there for them to find later efficiently knocks three of the five love languages out of the park: gift giving, words of affirmation, and acts of service. In this essay I will…

All throughout my today I experienced sharp pangs of sadness, of grief. The odd thing is that I can’t figure out why.

None of the reasons I can think of feel personal or important enough to hurt like that.

It doesn’t feel like the typical symptoms of anxiety or depression. Pure sadness, not waves of discouragement or overwhelm. And the sadness doesn’t – take over, or pick me up and carry me away. It’s mostly just a physical sensation in my chest, as sharp as the sensations of stubbing my toe or smashing my elbow into something solid.

It’s like I’ve lost something important and I can’t remember what.

I bundled up in my sweatpants, flannel, a pair of my partner’s socks, the carhartt jacket and the hiking boots and a knit cap, and went for a long walk around the parking lot at sunset. Good to stretch my legs and breath the fresh air. Made me feel better.

So did the hot water with honey and lemon.

Years ago I turned off autocorrect on the device I use for writing so that I could swear properly, unencumbered by unsolicited suggestions to the contrary.

Sorry about all of my careless misspellings, but the linguistic freedom has been fucking worth it.

Instead of worrying over the current state of my socioeconomic circumstance or the distressing politcal news of the day, I think I’ll read a book.

After all, if wealth and safety were measured by the bound pages on my shelves, then I and everyone I love would be set for life.

My library will take care of me, just as I will take care of my library.

I have worlds into which I can escape at any time,

worlds created by the patient craftsmanship of authors I admire and adore,

worlds collected and curated by the open-minded interest of a curious and lonely mind

still young and growing

just waiting to recieve and process all the things these writers have to say.

It takes a village to raise a child

and I was raised by the type of people who had the creativity and devotion to tell stories as their favorite mechanism for conveying what it is like to be a person

Communicating what it is like to live, maybe how we ought to live.

You can call it escapism if you like.

And yet I ask you to name any finer occupation than working to help people escape from their troubles, even just for a little while,

and find solace in the stories on the page.

Today I went for a walk in the snow in my college town. The sidewalks and the apparently lifeless tree braches were all heavy with ice and snow, like a winter wonderland. I walked up the hill from main street, past the church across from the public library with the comfy brown leather chairs in the loft upstairs, towards the cemetery. Then I took a left towards the park and turned left again, down the hill this time, until I wound up back on main street.

Picked up groceries. The broken glass from the car accident was still there, swept into a little pile at the intersection at the edge of the parking lot.

Spinach, mushrooms, peppers, onions, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, bananas, eggs, cheddar, pepperjack, coffee beans and coffee creamer, chocolate and bread and butter, olive oil and salt. Salad dressing, garlic bread, olives, hot sauce, lettuce mix. Peanut butter and bananas. I feel rich. Food is so good, here. I should be a cook.

Picked up Steve Rogers and then drove back towards the city, and then I accidentally missed the turn off the highway to get home. The land on the side of the highway is covered in trees which are covered in snow, the road weaves its way between ponds that are covered in ice. Winter.

My partner and I are both okay, and also we were in a car accident today.

My nightmare of getting hit by a car pulling out of a Wegmans parking lot came true. I wasn’t driving and also we weren’t at fault – we were stopped at a light when a car that was trying to take a left across traffic into the parking lot was hit by oncoming traffic, and the car that got hit slid across the pavement until their driver’s side collided with the front end of the Nissan. We can’t tell the extent of the damage on the interior because we can’t get the hood open but the damage to the outside of the vehicle isn’t bad.

All I could see of the other vehicle that hit us was that it was gray and there was a little kid in the backseat on the passengers side. That car proceeded to drive away, which would have worked out for them if their license plate hadn’t fallen off during the crash.

I’m dropping Steve off at the garage on Tuesday to make sure the car is okay.

I am writing this down now so that I don’t have bad dreams.

It happened quickly and mostly I am just greatful that we are okay. I can’t stop thinking about the kid in the backseat.

Ily.

Oh, my god.

It’s a conspiracy.

Nice.

“The universe is an ongoing explosion.

That’s where you live.

In an explosion.

Sometimes atoms just get very haunted.

That’s us.

When an explosion explodes hard enough,

dust wakes up and thinks about itself.

And writes about it.”

~ Jarod K. Anderson, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest.

Today I made ramen soup which was so good that I’m pretty sure it unlocked my next level of emotional/spiritual enlightenment. I could feel my immune system fortified with each spoonful.

Afterwards I had a big cry and then felt much better.

For the broth:

• Vegetable stock
• A scoop of Better than Bouillon paste
• Garlic paste
• Ginger paste
• Soy sauce
• Toasted sesame oil
• Sriracha
• black pepper
• 1/4 tsp lime juice

For the soup:

• sliced bela mushrooms
• Grated carrots
• spinach
• sesame seeds
• could add chives, I didn’t have any of those

Add ramen noodles, pickled red onions, and a hard boiled egg to each serving.

CW: a brief yet very grumpy rant about body image and disordered eating and some kinds of weight loss marketing as violence towards people with body dysmorphic disorder

–

I wish I could search for information about strength training and fitness online without being inundated with January weight loss marketing that specifically targets people who feel uncomfortable in their bodies, pouring salt into body image wounds which are already bad enough.

I want to know how to become strong without accidentally hurting my body. Right now I am not looking for information about how to get smaller than I am.

When I was fifteen I went looking for a strength training routine to support my goal of being able to run faster, run further, and increase my cardiovascular endurance so that I could enjoy success on the Track team. I stumbled across a celebrity dieting routine designed for Jennifer Lawrence when she was filming the Hunger Games. I starved by body for months, carefully tracking every calorie in an excel spreadsheet and feeling worried when I ate more than 500 calories in a day, because I wanted to look like the woman in those movies. I had never struggled with anxiety to the extent that I did that year, and my brain chemistry has never really been the same.

Maybe these services are helpful for people who are looking to embrace their own personal health and body goals, and that’s all fine and good and wonderful – but I just – wasn’t looking for that kind of advice today.

Adrianne Lenker of Big Thief may sing me to sleep any time.

Take my hand
And we can go walking
And we can talk about whatever is on your mind
Be my friend, but secretly like me
I wanna catch you staring and make you go all red

I love the way your hair falls in the summer
I’ll treat you like your father treats your mother
And I’m kinda scared of your older brother
Oh yeah

You’re all that I’m needing
You’re all that I’m feeling
And I’ll be the one that’s kicking and screaming
When you have to go

Every evening
Oh yeah

Your feet in the sand
And mine in the water
We can explore these hills if that’s what you want to do
You know I can’t stand, when it gets cold in the evenings
And I’m standing there freezing, but my clothes look so good on you

You play with my hair like there’s no other
And I’m no longer scared of your older brother
He said, “we’re cool, man, I know you love her”
Oh yeah

I’ll get you in loads of trouble
Give you love on the double
We can get drunk and
Our words can get muddled
No cigarette smoke will burst our little bubble
Oh no

Take my hand
And we can go walking
And we can talk about whatever is on your mind

You play with my hair like there’s no other
I’ll treat you like your father treats your mother
And I’m no longer scared of your older brother
And I’m no longer scared of your older brother

You’re all that I needed
You’re all that I’m feeling
And I’ll be the one who’s kicking and screaming
When you have to go home
Every evening
Oh yeah
I’ll get you in loads of trouble
Give you love on the double
We can get drunk and
Our words can get muddled
No cigarette smoke will burst our little bubble
Oh no

Take my hand
And we can go walking
And we can talk about whatever is on your mind…”

~ Picture This

On the way home from shopping for groceries I accidentally ran a red light, and two cops happened to follow me most of the way home.

Cooking when I got here made me feel better, helped ameliorate the totally unnecessary adrenaline poisoning from seeing the police cars in my Camry’s rear view mirror.

Here is a recipe I want to remember:

In a saucepan, try frying some diced onion, sweet peppers, mushrooms, garlic and tomato in a little too much olive oil. Add a small can of tomato paste, vegetable stock, salt, crushed black pepper, and Italian seasoning. Then almost fill the pan with vegetable broth and a box of Orzo and simmer on low heat until the Orzo is done cooking – don’t let it burn or stick. To add protein, try garbanzo beans. For fun, a handful of spinach. Enjoy with parm.

Blood Upon the Snow

a song by Hozier and Bear McCreary, made for a game called God of War: Ragnarok.

~

“To all things housed in her silence
Nature offers a violence
The bear that keeps to his own line
The wolf that seeks always his own kind
The world that hardens as the harsher winter holds
The parent forced to eat its young before it grows

Every bird, gone unheard
Starving where the ground has froze
The winter sunrise, red on white
Like blood upon the snow

The ground walked here is a wonder
It ceases never to hunger
And all things nature’s given
She takes all things back from the living

I’ve walked the earth and there are so few here that know
How dark the night and just how cold the wind can blow
I’ve no more hunger now to see where the road will go
I’ve no more kept my warmth
Than blood upon the snow

It’s not my arms that will fail me
But this world takes more strength than it gave me
The trees deny themselves nothing that makes them grow
No rain fall, no sunshine
No blood upon the snow

To all things housed in her silence
Nature offers a violence…”

At about eight o’clock in the mornings I wake up, brush my teeth, splash cold water on my face. I’ve been washing my face with african black soap, rinsing with hot water, and then rubbing a couple of drops of sweet almond oil into my pores. This is my entire skincare routine, and the acne which hasn’t gotten better since I was eleven has mostly gone away. I also think having any skincare routine whatsoever is a good place to start, which I – didn’t, for a long time.

No makeup yet. I have, somewhat uncharacteristically, started using a little highlighter, bronzer, mascara, and lip gloss around dinner time. There is a fun shade of reddish orange lipstick which is sometimes fun on the days when I am excruciatingly bored.

I never wore makeup until an entire school of children started reminding each other not to call me “miss,” which feels right to me. They were so good about that and it meant the world to me.

I get dressed in blue jeans, a tank top, a cable knit sweater or a button down shirt, and sometimes ski socks for when the apartment is cold.

I measure about three big tablespoons of creamer into a ceramic mug and then pour in about a cup of freshly brewed coffee, just up to the brim. Adding the creamer first makes it frothy. We just got a coffee grinder and we’ve been grinding roasted coffee beans in the evenings, which makes our tiny kitchen smell good. Medium roast.

I sip the coffee while re-reading a favorite book. Then, when ready, chores – make the bed, feed the cat and change the water in her bowl, scoop her box, empty the dishwasher, start laundry. The kitchen is still clean from the night before.

An exercise routine consists of a few minutes of yoga, then 75 crunches and 25 modified pushups with my knees on the floor – Steve teasingly wanted me to know that in the american south those are known as “girl pushups,” I fucking hate the american south – and then like 25 squats. All of this four times – twice in the morning, twice in the evening.

My fitness goal this year is to be able to literally bench press my partner, who weighs like 120 lbs soaking wet. There are advantages to dating a petite guy – my shirt collection almost doubled overnight, and when he’s being cute I can just pick him up and carry him around – like a russian lumberjack mother of five who won’t take shit from anybody and sometimes fights wolves in the forest with her bare hands.

Breakfast is usually scrambled eggs and vegetables cooked in a buttery frying pan. Mushrooms, onions, spinach, pickled jalapeños, and the little cubes of sweet potatoes I roast in a sheetpan with salt and olive oil every weekend. Toasted six seed bread from the bakery at the grocery store is good. Always, always hot sauce. My favorite is Sriracha but there’s a local company called Karma Sauce which is also very good. I am learning to like spicy food.

Whoever checks their phone first during a meal has to wash the dishes. This is nearly always me, and I don’t mind.

Sometimes we get out to the gym and the grocery store. I weigh more now than I ever have, which – I think for somebody with a history of disordered eating, this might bother me more than it does. But, listen – we started a drinking hiatus in January, and also – because of the consistent exercise on the living room floor, and because of consistent trips to the gym – I can lift heavier things now than I’ve ever been able to lift before in my life. My biceps look amazing. I finally learned how to dress muself in clothes that look good on my body. Grocery bags and vacuum cleaners and men are all much easier to pick up and carry around than they were last summer. I am getting so strong. I can also run on the elliptical for about two miles in twenty minutes – I want to learn my way around my local wooded park on foot by the end of the year.

Dinner is at six. We got an air fryer and then proceeded to raid the frozen food section at the grocery store for anything interesting that we could find to put in an air fryer and then dip in BBQ ranch, with exciting results. We also make hecking lovely salads. Burrios and cheesy fries from Taco Bell are only for days when we don’t get home in time to cook, which isn’t often. Food is vegetarian for him and pescatarian for me, as I still can’t give up the idea of tunafish salad or smoked salmon on a bagel.

In the evenings there are video games, or episodes of a neat show that one of us wants to show the other, or a podcast while we work on a jigsaw puzzle on the round glass table. We can sit at the “dining room” table because we finally have dining room chairs – thanks mom and dad.

Bedtime – brush teeth, wash face, make a pot of coffee for tomorrow, play with the cat, who is most awake at that time. Read a book of poetry, or rest with his chest supporting my shoulder and talk about anything and everything until we get tired enough to fall asleep. Like a sleepover that never ends.

–

A year ago, I could not get up out of bed before noon. I did not have the strength to brush my teeth for weeks at a time. I had perpetual red scars on my face from picking at my acne too much, which was an unshakable compulsion for years. I could not even lift the idea of a dumbbell. I would lay in bed and stare at the wall and think of all the reasons that everyone probably hated me, or I thought about worse things that I’d rather not discuss right now, and I was rude and unpleasant to everyone all the time because I was in a lot of constant pain – when I wasn’t rude and unpleasant I was distant, or I couldn’t find the right words to tell anyone what was happening or how I was feeling or what I needed. Sometimes I tried, but it didn’t often seem to work. I felt lonely. And even when I did let people into my life, I didn’t want to tell them what was going on. I sometimes had the mental energy to show up and be a friend and laugh with people, talk with people, ask good questions about their work and lives, be present and loving and mostly just kind, if I could be. I really do think that making those memories with people who mattered to me sustained me through some of the toughest moments of discouragement.

And it had been – like that – for a long time – last year, and the year before, and the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before that. Since years before walking in the camps, if I’m being honest.

–

I am getting so strong, now.

“In more ways than one.”