I hope it's a good night

The fifth of November

I’ve been restless all day.

Steve Rogers gave me an undercut because I trust him to cut my hair for me. Yoga, meditation (doesn’t work so well when you’re staring at a bookshelf full of your partner’s analytic trigonometry textbooks) and also calisthenics. Today I’ve roasted three pans of sweet potatoes and another full pan of pumpkin seeds with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, brown sugar,, and salt.

Breakfast was croissants with lemon curd, omlette with red onion and mushrooms and gouda, and veggie breakfast sausage. Dinner was salad and soup with garlic bread (garlic confit).

Tonight we’re watching Silence of the Lambs. We also carved a pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern with crooked teeth. Currently enjoying a chocolate beer which tastes like drinking trick or treaters’ candy.

I put a witch hat on my bright purple, life sized, 3D printed skull – which will suffice for any further seasonal decorations. This is easily one of the best things I accumulated in college.

My favorite thing about star wars was Carrie Fisher’s portrayal of the princess. Especially her silly side buns.

Cigarette smoke from the window of a passing car

Dry leaves rustling over the pavement

A cool breeze

Blue jeans against the skin of my calves

Soles of my shoes on the sidewalk

And the warmth of the sun.

The price per gallon on the sign at the gas station around the corner from the school (right across from Carter Street) has been exactly the same for three months.

It’s snowing.

“Match to the fifth.”

– homemade potato soup with vegetable broth, smoked gouda, garlic bread, and crackers. Grilled cheese with mustard and Sweet Baby Ray’s.

– blankets on the couch

– beer & wine

– flannels and blue jeans

– pumpkins

– grading stacks and stacks of papers. data collection for the gradebook.

– reading poetry at night

– watching old episodes of Gilmore Girls and tuning in to watch NFL games on TV (for free, with our antenna)

– watching Bob Dylan play the harmonica, live in concert

OKAY SO THERE’S A NAME FOR THIS

As if Florence and Andrew Hozier Byrne had a grandmother with a vocal prowess far surpassing Allison Krauss or Julie Andrews.

Many thanks to my community college librarian for the tickets. I hope they’re feeling better soon.

“The consequences of sin are often most keenly felt by the innocent.”

~ from a recent sermon at the church, heard live over the airwaves, pertaining to the bombing of the hospital in Gaza.

Watching the Karate Kid and eating pizza.

Currently obsessed with an online (probably very unethical) clothing company called Cider. They sell pretty dresses. In spite of the number of flannels in my closet, I am secretly fond of pretty dresses.

Attending a Loreena McKennitt concert in the city tomorrow.

My sister has turned 21. This happened weeks ago, but we’re partying anyway, even if that means we are partying late.

I’m taking her out to get a beer at a local restaurant and brewery that is about three minutes from my apartment, and just about ten minutes from her trailer park. She is old enough to drink beer now. This is all very exciting and new because she has never had an alcoholic beverage before very recently, definitely not, no ma’am.

Dinner’s on me, anyhow.

We’re getting cali wings dressed in country sweet sauce and fries with gravey and cheese and bacon all over everything. And probably macaroni and cheese, or perhaps potato pancakes. I’m really, really psyched about the cali wings. With blue cheese dressing. This is gonna be so good.

Earlier today I baked the oatmeal chocolate cake recipe which has been in the family for many generations. I may or may not have smuggled over some cake in a Tupperware container and – at the suggestion of Steve Rogers – I also brought a lighter and a birthday candle.

She ought to be here in about five minutes. We’re going to have a good time.

Pal, this time

It is real.

Things my students like.

Koi swimming in a fish tank
Orange leaves falling on the sidewalk
Fire and violence in the middle east
A child graffitis the name of the girl she likes in sharpie on the walls of the school
A room of kids, twelve years old, sitting for their October history exam
Testing to see how much they’ve learned about the world
Anticipating pumpkin pie for dessert
Warm blankets, tea, and a cat at home
My hands shake a little
As the weather turns cold.

If I had known

When I sent you out of class, because

You couldn’t sit still in your seat,

because

you can’t sit in a chair like a normal human being, because

You can’t stop talking to everyone around you

Calling them rude names

Like you’re desperate for everyone to see you

Just to see you

If I had known that your mom was going to pull up to the school

And find me in the hallway

Saying, “I just want to apologize to my daughter. I took care of it,”

And then show me the battered old belt in her hand

I would have just let you be.

Keep writing her name next to yours. Don’t you stop.

It doesn’t matter if we find out what color the walls of the school used to be when the custodial staff scrubbs off the graffiti

Never give up on her.

There are poems I want to sneak into your backpack

When you aren’t looking

I just feel like angry feminist slam poetry with butch lesbian energy would help you so much right now

Especially on the days when your skin is still hurting from the day before.

And if I didn’t know about the way it is at home for you then I might risk it.

Don’t stop writing her name.

Butternut squash

Onion

Garlic

Cumin

Ginger

Coriander

Turmeric

Salt

Olive oil

Coconut milk

Vegetable stock

Lime

~

Roast squash in oven with salt and olive oil for 38 minutes. Sauté onions and garlic in olive oil in a soup pot. Add spices and stock. Add squash and milk. Simmer for 32 minutes. Add lime. Blend.

~

It was a dark and stormy knight –

“Match to the sixth.”

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been exploring the zen center in the city where I live. It’s this absolutely lovely buddhist temple where everyone is barefoot all the time, no shoes ever, and there’s often hot green tea, and there’s a garden full of trees.

I really like the part where I don’t have to wear shoes. (It’s probably the hobbit genetics from my grandmother.)

I’ve heard various iterations of the stories and philosophies of the buddha since I was a kid. That part of the experience – the stories, anyhow – they’re important. But for me I think the practice is becoming the most important thing.

The instructions for meditation are basically to sit perfectly still and stare at a blank wall and count to ten and breathe. And if your nose itches, don’t scratch – just notice the feeling. And when you notice your thoughts start to wander, start over with the counting. Over and over again. And we do this for like ten or fifteen or twenty minutes at a time, and then shift into walking meditation, and then return to the seat and settle in for another round. Listen to the sound the building makes and breathe and watch the thoughts tumble through.

The purpose of this is to be more fully present in this moment, not distracted by rumination over the past or worry about the future. I like that purpose, in theory.

Except that at first, I – really hate this practice. I’ve tried it before with little success. It’s one of the most uncomfortable experiences I’ve ever put myself through. Aside from one or two instances of profound physical pain, and some of the episodes when my mental illness symptoms got just exceptionally shitty, this is right up there with the most distressing moments for me.

Because my brain never fucking quiets down. This is the mind that finds patterns in dates and license plates and phone numbers, scrambles and unscrambles the letters in every brand name, connects the dots and makes triangles in the stars with invisible lines, considers the possibility of conspiracy theories, finds words inside of other words, dredges up Poor Decisions from years ago and presents them to my conscious awareness like a cat giving her gaurdian a dead bird, as a present.

Yeah. This brain. Trying to settle down.

Worse than trying to quiet down a room of 33 seventh graders. Take it from me.

At first meditation feels like getting stuck in the dark in the cold wind on the side of the mountain without a coat. It’s fucking miserable.

The counting helps.

I’m going to keep trying because there’s a promise of some kind of peacefulness on the other side of the struggle. I think – I need to practice more often at home. I may have jumped in at the deep end.

I also keep going back because the temple is beautiful.

Steve Rogers thinks so, too.

My students have last names like Rodriguez and Garcia and Jones and Johnson and Jackson (“I’m sorry Ms. Jackson…”) and if I had a dollar for every Jeremiah in the 7th grade I would have $3, which isn’t that many dollars. But it still feels like a lot.

The inside of my brain has been giving John Nash vibes recently and I really don’t like this.

The mortifying ordeal of reading things you wrote on the internet like four years ago

The other day I heard one of my students cry out as we were packing up to leave, and I turned around, and she said this group of boys had been bothering her. And ultimately it turned out that they’d only been pulling on her hair but my first thought was something so much worse and I’ve always been protective so the first words out of my mouth before I could think were “touch her again and I will hurt you,” and that might not have been the wisest thing to say to a group of twelve year old boys. Epecially as a teacher. But somebody has to teach young men to leave girls the hell alone. And sometimes it has to be that straightforward of a message. Just to get the point across.

I could never hurt a child and I’m not proud of what I said. I just needed them to know.

Steve Rogers/Remus Lupin/Calvin O’Keefe/Palamedes Sextus/Strider/William Turner is doing so good.

When you’re tired and don’t want to sleep because of the bad dreams, consider –

if you don’t sleep well for long enough, the nightmares persist in bothering you when you are awake.

Their twisted internal logic doesn’t have to make sense to you or anyone else. They don’t even have to be real. They’re just spooky and upsetting and cause tremendous grief.

When the plots are rich and full and fascinating stories and the characters are some of the people you love, you can’t help but watch as imaginary bad things happen to them

and it’s awful

And I wish I could send you good dreams.

• Need to do work in order to be prepared to teach next week
• Prospect of being unprepared for next week is stressful
• Stress makes me not want to do work and instead run away to the woods
• Running away to the woods would not help at all with being prepared for next week

Several people have recommended taking the lesson planning to the woods and doing it there. For the portion of the work which does not require a wifi connection, this is an excellent point.

Fun writing utensils only thing keeping me going today.

Today I went shopping and brought home some flowers, cleaned the apartment, and took out the trash. There are lots of ways to say “I love you” and actions speak louder than words.

It’s 6:15AM and I’m sitting with my partner in the morning, drinking coffee with oat milk and munching on a belgian chocolate waffle. My partner’s identity is a secret; for now we’ll just call him Steve Rogers. This is the best part of my day.

Befriend janitorial staff

– the neurodivergent experience of perceiving secret worlds of cryptic meaning everywhere because people don’t often just fucking say exactly what they mean –

A random thought – AT stands for apprentice teacher, as well as Appalachian Trail. I was focusing a lot of energy on those letters for almost two years as my possible future after college – and by some coincidence manifested another reality into being.

Never turn your back to the classroom.

Re: I don’t like yelling at kids – I’ve decided not to. I’m not fucking doing that. I woke up this morning and remembered that I’m the only white person in a room of like thirty black kids. I’m a grown ass adult. They’re fucking eleven. I did not sign up for this bullshit. It feels like pouring salt all over a slug.

If they can’t sit still and be quiet because they are fucking nine years old, I won’t fucking ask them to do that. They can work with a partner and take up auditory space if they want.

They’re only like seven and I can already feel them starting to dislike me from all of the screaming and also my head hurts.

Not to brag or anything but one of my (basically newborn) kids pulled me aside yesterday and gave me a picture she’d drawn and told me I’m “one of her most favorite teachers ever” and says she hates it when I have to yell at people because I seem like a nice person

So – fuck. I’m not doing that anymore. We’re going to figure out another way to do this.

Christ.

I thoroughly despise yelling at kids.

Finding out that one of the worst behaved students in my class doesn’t have a home

Noticing the gap in the front teeth of my favorite girl

Telling my scholars how happy I am that they are here

Standing in the sweltering hot gymnasium and waiting for the bus. In the wrong shoes.

Calling my littlest lady by she/her because that’s what she prefers and I’m allowed to do that because she has support at home

For the student who is new – asking a group of girls to get to know him because he doesn’t have any friends yet, and hearing them say they’re happy to include him

Teaching everyone our very own secret handshake

Kneeling beside a desk to answer a question when a hand reaches into the air for help

And teaching.

For the fist time in my life.

The printer named Leonardo is my arch nemesis.

I can measure how stressful the day has been based on the number of writing utensils in my homeroom partner’s hair.

I teach my very first lesson on my own soon. I receive a hug, unprompted, from one of my students. I wonder if she can tell how nervous I am. She and I connected over ADHD – I told her I have it too, and she looked at me with big wide eyes and said “you too!?” and we talked about how we cope in a world that doesn’t work well for us.

The beads, the braids, the styles in my students’ hair are pleasantly distracting. They’re really into this thing called shadow boxing, which is adorable. With all my heart I wish I could let them just be kids instead of telling them to sit up quietly and straight with their eyes forward and their arms up on the desks.

I love them.

Some nights I will stay three hours late at work to valiantly fight in a vicious battle with a printer named Leonardo for as long as it takes to print 120 thick ass copies of the math lesson packet for tomorrow and then I will collapse into the car in a state of bruised and battered weariness and think, this is my life now, and then I’ll wake up at 5:30AM the next day to do it all over again in the wrong shoes.

But the kids are alright and I love them. So it’s worth it.

On my first night in a new home, it rains. There’s thunder and lighting outside the windows for hours. The floor between the kitchen and the rest of the apartment is flooded.

I have brought with me about a dozen comfy flannels, some blue jeans, a toothbrush and similar, and six totebags full of books. Roughly an eighth of an entire bookshelf is filled with the works of Sir Terry Pratchett.

Also have a healthy sourdough starter, along with a carboy full of mead.

At work, I am decorating my classroom with fake plastic plants. This is all I can find. I also want to add Christmas lights.

My classroom.

“You know – I think you would make an excellent math teacher,” says the Calc I professor in the hallway outside the classroom at community college. Years ago.

The people who’ve just hired me as an apprentice seem to agree.

“At this school, we’re more to these students than just a teacher. Some of these kids, they come here and this is all of the actual love and safety that they will receive in a day. So you aren’t just a teacher. You’re like a second mom. You’re an auntie, an uncle, a father figure, a gaurdian. And you’d better believe that we spoil them here. Some of these kids can really stand to benefit from our love.”

I’m about to preside over a cohort of children who are roughly eleven or twelve years old.

All of them will know more about living in this city than I do.

On my first commute home from work, there are gunshots. It isn’t a good neighborhood, but it’s an excellent school. One of the best in the city. Half of our first cohort of seniors just graduated with full ride scholarships to undergrad.

And I want to help.

Yes.

Lentil soup with garlic bread. Yoga and push ups and crunches on the floor in the study. Music through the speakers. Baking Sourdough bread.

Last night was Yahtzee and chocolate and popcorn and fried pickles and Doctor Who. It’s been good.

Have done what feels like absolutely nothing over the past couple of days. Generally vibing with my partner, whose identity shall remain mysterious at this time. Last night we made grilled cheese sandwiches with basil, mustard, tomato, cheddar, and pepperjack cheese on rosemary bread. There’s also been a lot of red wine.

We are currently reading my old copy of The Princess Bride out loud. Alternating between watching a documentary series on the history of jazz music and rewatching Twin Peaks. This makes me happy.

Also got to visit some alpacas at a “fancy ass tea party” up at the farm. Happy to report that there were cucumber sandwich ingredients.

Had to wake up early for work this morning. There was coffee. I am finding that I like driving through the city on the expressways at sunrise. Walks after dinner listening to music, red raspberries and ice cream from a mug, flavored coffee with sweetened oat milk creamer, time in the shower, and a book to read at night.

I’ve started gardening again.

Pulling weeds for an older gentleman from church who often complains about his knees. He insists that the lily growing in his side garden is purple. I disagree, because it’s obviously pink. We argue back and forth about this for a while. He says his wife would have agreed with me, if she were still with us. She passed on of dimensia a few years ago.

Today I drove up to the farm, met baby chickens, greeted numerous cats, was stung by a bee, got dirt in my eye, and did not die of heatstroke due to the farmer’s attentive worrying. I cleared the weeds from around the blueberries and gooseberries.

Let go of every might have been and live for this moment right now.

Activities today included taking a nap, having a shower, wearing a comfy dress, eating rosemary sourdough with olive oil and salt, and sitting on the back porch looking carefully at a mushroom. Also clover and plantain.

Standing at the end of the pier at the northern end of the lake, near the college, in the company of probably the strongest friendship I’ve ever discovered. We got chicken sandwiches from McDonald’s. She blasted Taylor Swift in the car on the way home. I got red nail polish and she got a graphic t shirt featuring snoopy from the peanuts gang, from Five Below.

The air pollution from the wild fires in Canada blocked out the horizon at twilight. There were ducks. We watched the fireworks.

Another friend gave me sixteen bottles of wine. She’s just moved cities and lost her job in wine making this morning and now she isn’t sure if she’ll be able to make rent. Now I have sixteen bottles of wine, a slight headache, and also a belly that hasn’t been there since I was seventeen, but at least I’m eating again. Send good thoughts to a friend of a friend who’s having a bad day, please.

I think maybe I spent most of last winter entertaining this backwards delusional state of grace where everything made sense because everyone was secretly a little in love with everybody else and nobody was talking about this, especially not out loud. And maybe that’s what made it perfect. The not talking about it, the delightfully awful shyness.

Except I’m starting to think that maybe I was wrong. And maybe that’s alright. We move on with our lives.

I’m still grieving the way the stories I told myself made themselves make everything make sense. Back in January, I was trying to make tortellini in the microwave, of all things, only I messed up and got the timing wrong and wasn’t sure what to do and I had the meltdown of the year there in the kitchen and did not end up in the psych ward because when I got there they tried to take away my shoes.

And I was having none of that.

I can still hear my voice asking the security gaurd for my shoes back, please.

And that was probably the last straw, or the lowest moment, because there has to be a lowest moment before recovery starts to happen, before you start kicking your way back up to the surface. I think.

I’ve been listening to the Delta album, by Mumford & Sons. It’s fucking gorgeous, anyhow. Y’all should listen.

Tomorrow I have this intention to get up and drink coffee and make breakfast and go for a walk, in spite of the air pollution that has no business being here on the East coast, and listen to this album on repeat.

It’ll help me feel better.

My family adopted a dog and he’s going to the vet for some heartworm treatment, which could be rough. There’s a gofundme, which is helping financially.

As my dad put it, he is such a good dog.

Tent camping at Buttermilk Falls park in Ithaca, NY.

Hiked the gorge and enjoyed many waterfalls. Also stopped at Hector Falls by the side of the road on the way home for some photography.

Campfire with s’mores.

While visiting Ithaca, visited Liquid State brewery and got macaroni and cheese with green curry French fries and Cole slaw from a food truck called Silo Chicken.

Now we’re home and we’re cooking Italian food. Pasta, sauce, garlic bread, eggplant, meatballs.

Currently reading Arabian Nights and listening to an audiobook called The Story of Earth.

I don’t like smoking because it feels like drowning on dry land.

Still – earlier today I was sitting in the grass under a tree, smoking one of the Newports I confiscated from my sister. Weeks ago.

I spend a lot of time thinking about names.

A “new port.”

New settlement at the edge of the water, where sailors set foot on land for long enough to trade. New town, new city. New place to call home, at least for a while.

Which adjectives would you use to describe some new where, at the very beginning?

How to give a place a name…

Who’s out here doing the naming?

The folks who got there first. Or the folks who *think* they’ve gotten there first, anyway.

Sailors. Cowboys, cow herds. Astronauts. Folks who persist in wandering, who insist on having adventures without ever truly settling down, who aren’t at home most of the time. Folks who return after years at sea and find children who’ve grown so much in the intervening years they no longer recognize their own kin, except maybe the eyes.

Songs like “close your eyes I’ll be here in the morning” or “gentle on my mind” only exist because of this specific kind of person.

“You’re home! Tell me everything“

&

“You’re leaving again. So soon.”

I’m still at home, crossing off the days on a calendar that’s hanging on the wall the way my sister used to do that. Cooking, eating, sleeping, walking. Passing the time.

That’s alright with me.

I’ve never really wanted to leave home.

Wynton Marsalis, Willie Nelson, Norah Jones, Susan Tedeschi.

Leftover Chinese – fried rice with green beans from the freezer and sesame tofu.

Dry red.

Lemon sugar cookie scented candles.

That’s all.

…

given the choice between a dryer and a clothesline, I’ve never really needed the machine.

“Let me know when you get home.”

It’s been about an hour since my friend pulled out of the driveway, headed home after dropping me off from our day of shenanigans.

I still haven’t received a text to confirm that she’s alright, and I’m getting worried. Her destination was ten minutes away.

I send another text as a reminder, then lay in the dark for a while, staring at the ceiling.

I suspect she’s okay. Probably just forgot, got distracted. Maybe her phone is dead.

Still, I’m unsettled. Fifty-five miles an hour down a two lane highway, in the dark, in a car that sometimes creaks at all the wrong moments. And the deer are out in droves.

Imagined scenarios play themselves out, unbidden. None or them are pleasant.

Some time later, the small rectangle of blue light that is my phone’s screen illuminates the dark.

“Dead in a ditch,” she’s announced.

I do not throw my phone across the room.

I call her some rude names, which she deserves, and tell her that I love her before falling asleep.

Probably isn’t necessary. She knows.

Today a friend takes me out for vanilla ice cream in a waffle cone, a walk by the creek in the middle of town, a trip to a second hand store and the acquisition of a green corderoy button down shirt, a walk through the mall, grilled chicken and potato salad at her mom’s house, and Reisling and s’mores around a campfire in the backyard. Kept an eye out for bats. There were several.

Earlier this week there was an adventure out to Watkin’s Glen, for the waterfalls. Later on there was pizza and beer and good company. I got to choose the music in the car on the way home. Almost fell asleep.

I’ve been riding shotgun.

I want to remember this time.

Ian – I’ll miss rolling your cigarettes in the apartment that smelled like cinnamon scented candles over the art gallery on main street, eating chocolate pancakes at 3am, listening to vinyl Pink Floyd and Glass Animals records, losing at chess and arguing against your half baked devil’s advocate stances on philosophical concepts we would have understood better if we’d actually done the reading more often than we did. You are. the worst. and also my time here would not have been the same without you.

Jacob – I’ll miss the way you always spoke up in class with something to say, your eye for the artistic, your political awakeness, your charming conversationalist energy that could consistently be relied upon to light up a room, your desire for a better experience of philosophy, your strategies for how to make that real. One day I’ll be good enough at chess to stand a chance against you.

Emma – there are no words. I miss singing harmony with you. I wish you nothing but the best.

Anthony – I will never look at a scateboard without thinking of you and your yellow backpack. Thanks for drinking coffee and talking about writing with me.

Sky – you actual goddess from the shores of Greece. I love your shoes. Keep on making food that looks amazing. Best of luck to you in law school on the other side of the continental united states, you bad b. You deserve this. Slay, etc..

Moira – the energy you devoted to curating the philosophy club experience these last couple of years opened the door for some truly excellent conversations. Good times. Take your skills with artistic design and leadership and go forth and create something beautiful, please. I believe that you will.

Leila – I would have married you to the love of your life but you wanted our conspiracy theories professor to do that instead. this place will never be the same without your chaotic presence playing Stardew Valley in the department. I will never not think of your kisses when I hear that one specific Eric Clapton song. Until the day that I die. Some of these days I’ll have to hitchhike to long Island for a grilled cheese sandwich. I love you.

Remember that.

pronouns – they/them, more and more often. she/her if you say the words with all the reverence feminine energy deserves. ocational he/him from the cashier at 7-11 is totally understandable on butch days

gender – the one with the flannels (if I get a say)

attachment style – pdf

sexual/romantic orientation – usually accomplished with a map of questionable accuracy and a compass that doesn’t always point north

type – emotionally unavailable old friends, mostly

cats or dogs? – do not make me choose

quirks – anything you say in my presence can and will be written down in a fancy little notebook. might later become part of a story. words on the page are easy. the spoken word in the presence of others is usually stuck-in-the-back-of-the-throat complicated, unless it’s a topic of medium philosophical consequence and I’m in a room full of people, in which case I sometimes have Things to Say

style – just now learning how to shop for clothes and get dressed in the morning

neurotype – homeschooled! iykyk

physical affection ok? – trust is earned over time

walks? – heck yeah

dream job – perpetual monarch chrysalis

oh, so you thought trying to burn all of the bridges at once was a Good Idea?

nice going, you absolute nonsense human.

moron.

twat.

thanks so much for the light pollution from the smoke from your fires. Haven’t been able to see the stars in months.

trainwreck.

do you have any idea how frustrating it is. to call and speak with the engineers. to slowly begin the work of rebuilding the connections you decided to throw away on purpose. all at once.

dumbass.

(good thing the engineers in question still remember you helped them with their calc homework in college, or all of this would be so much worse)

anyway. they’re doing their best to rebuild in the aftermath

still might never be the same.

some of those connections were absolutely beautiful connections and now they’re –

well, here, if you haven’t checked in on them a while

you might need a drink of water and somewhere to sit down.

we are in the process of repairing and rebuilding and also it is going to take time. everything takes time.

meanwhile,

let me lay a plank of wood across a creek to make it easier for the message to get across

to both of those lonely ass braincells rattling around inside your skull.

the trees we felled for the purpose of rebuilding might still be standing if you hadn’t wasted some of these perfectly good bridges

you’re lucky that some of these people on the other side of distance between you and them are still willing to let you reach out

(more than willing, actually – absolutely dismayed when they saw smoke from your direction on their own horizons)

please remember that you don’t need to light the entire hecking forest on fire to keep yourself from freezing to death in the winter.

in fairness,

maybe it’s like – that one specific species of pine tree, I think, that can only make new trees in the aftermath of forest fires, because the pinecones containing the seeds only open when the surrounding temperature is hotter than blazes

maybe sometimes you need to do whatever it takes to stop your own blistered feet from carrying you back to the places to which you find yourself returning, over and over again, even when – upon not much reflection at all, really – you don’t actually like them very much.

maybe something new and important rises from the ashes, like a phoenix.

I don’t know.

Just –

Please don’t play with matches, anymore. not here.

_

[okay look when I said gaslight gatekeep girlboss those were not instructions]

–

It’s been almost exactly five years since one conversation and I still remember her name.

Lost one of ours, this year.

He did, too.

& I still remember another, around the beginning of the pandemic.

–

We’re adopting.

This one got abandoned in a parking lot in Texas. Good natured stranger picked him up and carried him home. He’s about one or two years old.

This one has the same white stripe down the middle of his nose. Same shape of the face. The resemblance is uncanny.

They could have been littermates.

So I think what this means is that the dog days aren’t over.

Not for me.

All I’m saying is that nobody will suspect that you’re regularly shoplifting from the arts and crafts supply store across the street from the grocers if you tell all your friends not to tell anyone that you moved to Washington and you work as an undercover agent for the FBI.

Maybe you moved to Texas and you work for NASA.

Maybe you never left, and you can’t see.

It really helps if you invest in a pair of sunglasses, some flannels, temporary tattoos, and a large and very curly wig that is roughly the same color as your eyebrows.

Why run away to the woods with a bag of rice when you could just grow a beard and change the spelling of your name?

To be fair, the woods are lovely.

Shout out to whoever is out here vandalizing the backs of the buildings next to the funeral home on main street in town with the graffitied letters of my grandfather’s name, in cursive loops of white spray paint.

What a strange true actual coincidence.

May the forth be with you.

If I ever happen to find myself in need a pseudonym, I might could name myself after him.

cried writing this.

To all of the children who’ll never exist

I think if I could leave you with anything, it would be this.

A true knight doesn’t need chainmail, a gambison, plate armor.

You will not require a sword.

Put away the leather.

Quit checking your hair, your skin, your eyes in the mirror. You look fine.

Can’t take them with you, anyway, not where you’re going.

the truth is

I think any knight worth his salt could march comfortably into the woods in a favorite old hoodie and faded blue jeans, the best good shoes with the worn out laces, finger guns, and all of the fortitude necessary to muster a smile.

If this reaches you, somewhere in the multiverse – across space and time and every tangled up alternative sequence of events, because Quantum –

Go forth.

Please have all the best adventures. I’ll still be there, when you come back. Stop home once and a while and tell me everything.

You will never be lost, not really, so long as you can still remember how to find your way back.

Yours, always.

“losing him was blue like id never known/missing him was dark grey all alone/forgetting him was like trying to know somebody you’d never met/but loving him was red….”

– TS

sunglasses!!!

the infamous grey Sebby jacket

ramen noodles with mushrooms

a souvenir from the grippy sock vacation which Definitely Happened.

The red wristband means allergies.

If it’s a gluten allergy, that would make me celiac.

As opposed to unceli – ack.

Sorry.

“Would rather die than give up the foods.”

Cowboy hat.

“Howdy, partner.“

SAND POINT SUB STATION call if you need a deputy. Alternatively you could just call a cab.

Lilac.

(Lack of lye?

For soap making!

Probably.)

It’s 5:30AM and I can’t sleep.

I’ve been listening to an audiobook and crocheting granny squares, twining interesting patterns from a random assortment of yarns. Might could sew them together into a tote bag situation, later on. I’m not sure yet.

Picked up the DVD sets of both seasons of a television show called Twin Peaks, over at the library.

(who killed Laura Palmer?)

Haven’t been writing much. Haven’t been speaking much, either. Without thinking about it, I give up my voice in exchange for something different. I experiment with other ways of communicating, other ways of being perceived.

For this round, I put down the pencils and the notebooks and the keyboards. More and more often I picked up a camera, instead.

Choose your weapon?

No, that’s not it.

Name the tools of your craft.

Which craft?

Witchcraft.

You know –

one of these days, I might actually learn how to spell.

“If I die young, bury me in satin

lay me down on a bed of roses

sink me in the river at dawn

send me away with the words of a love song

the sharp knife of a short life, well

I’ve had just enough time…”

One for sorrow

Two for mirth

Three for a wedding

Four for a birth

Five for silver

Six for gold

Seven for a secret, never to be told

“Wear them anyway.“

“who will save your sole, mate?”

…do I have a right to shoes?

“Wish I had a yellow jacket.”

“Wait in the car while I shop for groceries.”

The seats were fake leather.

Your feet didn’t reach the pedals, in the driver’s seat. Your legs were too short, back then.

While you’re waiting in the car for your mother to get back from shopping for the groceries, you have a couple of options.

Stare out the window and look at the brands of the cars, the names of the stores around the plaza. Parking lot observations – report back on what you see.

Read a book – from the children’s section of your local library, from a bookstore.

Listen to music on the MP3 player, the collection of music that matches the collection of CD’s.

Write in a diary – a diary that has a combination lock, so that nobody else can read it. Ever. Years later you’ll still remember that combination because it was yours. Not for anyone else.

You’ll start writing in journals without locks, eventually.

Your acquaintances will become characters in a story – a mostly true story.

Make believe.

Sometimes small details change, for the sake of anonymity.

Reading though the pages, years later, you’re not sure if you should believe your own memories or the things you saw fit to write down at the time.

You can’t listen to the radio while you’re waiting in the car because mom took the car keys with her “so you couldn’t drive away and leave her there.”

This also means that there is no air conditioning, even in the summer.

Sometimes she drove home with the windows down.

Never on the expressway.

Wouldn’t want to lose those receipts, my guy. Proof of integrity, or some such thing.

We didn’t have a TV at home.

There was a radio.

You knew all of the the FM radio stations where you could tune in without static.

Amd then – when they took y’alls measurements, for the dresses you wore at her wedding.

–

“Don’t write that number down!”

–

“heads Carolina, tails California…” 🍃

Character development.

“Tell me all your thoughts on God
‘Cause I’d really like to meet her
And ask her why we’re who we are…”

~ Counting Blue Cars, Dishwalla

What was that?

“Thou shalt knot steel?”

Perfect, thank you –

If you love her, let her go.

If she loves you back, she may or may not eventually call you out of the blue and ask you for a cheeseburger with french fries and a ride home from the ER, sleep on your couch for a couple of nights, use your stove to make ramen noodles and quesedillas, borrow your car to go pick up a buffalo chicken pizza with country sweet sauce from main street in town, ask your roommate for a ride to the store and then turn up at your trailer park with comfortable new button down shirts, phone charging chords, mud boots in your exact size, a sketchbook decorated with paper flowers, eyeliner, nail polish, chocolate ice cream, easter eggs, clean towels, bandanas for your hair, some interesting new vocabulary words, a truly amazing amount of tolerance for the hillbillies with whom you currently reside, and a solemn promise to fight anyone who doesn’t appreciate you properly.

“No dead sisters.”

Pinky swear.

Echos of some things we used to say when we sat in a circle in the various classrooms at the Honors House, just across the street from community college.

“Curiosity killed the cat,

Satisfaction brought it back.”

“Cats have nine lives.”

“Stay curious.”

First read it in a book of Nursery Rhymes – Old Mother Goose, possibly? A copy of which is most likely still on the bookshelf, back at the house.

“You’re trying to kidnap what I’ve rightfully stolen”

&

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

At home – there was astrology, astronomy, tarot, there was the gem & mineral show, there was a renaissance festival (that was the summer I had a fever of 104° and a badly infected eye and I didn’t want to eat anything other than apples and cheese for weeks at a time, I was fifteen) there was a cottage by a lake, there were kayaks, there was Tolkien and Arthurian Legend and the Harry Potter books and movies, there was a trilogy called His Dark Materials, there was everything Marvel, there was A Series of Unfortunate Events and Anne of Green Gables, there was The Daring Book for Girls, there were markers and crayons and pencils and stacks of blank white 8.5″ x 11″ printer paper for doodling, there was a YouTuber called Vi Hart, there was a radio (100.5 FM, 101.3 FM, 93.3 FM), there was A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle, there was a library and a playground, there were years of guitar lessons, there were walks by the Erie canal, there were visits to Lake Ontario and the yinyard at Seneca Lake, there was a map of the Finger Lakes on the wall in the kitchen, there were stacks of CDs (Alison Krauss) and later there was an MP3 player (John Hiatt, Mary Chapin Carpenter) there was a movie about geese called Fly Away Home, there was the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Shrek, It’s A Wonderful Life, Scrooge. There were library books by Stephen King, Dean Koontz. The Princess Bride. Bicycles. There were christmas trees. There was a music festival in Trumansburg.

There were pretty rocks in the dirt road across from the house, there was “You Look Like Your Mother” over and over again until I went to a salon for the first time and cut off all my hair so that everyone would stop saying that to me, there were grandparents in a nursing home that smelled like ammonia, there was a bird feeder and binoculars and there was a book about how to identify the birds, there was a park with magnolias and lilacs and steep hills and there was a reservoir.

There was a public market, and once a year there would be a free concert series – band on the bricks, I think it was called. Crowded.

Sometimes we brought folding chairs.

This is the first day of spring, according to the calendars. I went outside to check and see if this seems right – it does.

Walked along the beach at Hemlock Lake & drank the closest thing I can find to Apfelschorle on this side of the Atlantic.

Appreciated the sound of waves crashing on the shore. Found a place to sit for a while and listen. Skipped rocks. Collected driftwood – as evidence for my future self that I was actually here and not dreaming.

In this weather, at this time of the day, at this time of year, I feel safe walking alone. This is a safe place to cry where nobody will hear me. There’s nothing to smoke to explain away the redness in my eyes. That’s okay.

I don’t want to try to explain why I’m crying. The easy thing, the half-honest thing, would be to blame it on whichever personality and their assorted bag of skin and bones happens to seem interesting at this time.

I think it’s something else.

Sitting in the car for a minute.

Will drive home soon, listen to the radio.

🍃

There’s this exchange between two characters that I’ve been thinking about a lot, recently. Can’t remember where it’s from –

“HOW DO YOU LOSE A WOMAN!!??“

“You forget to cherish her.”