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.

Have a listen to my first experimental attempt at a podcast episode, where I read aloud my short essay on the noteworthy events of the year 1997. This podcast showcases my reading of Elton John’s lyrics to his song “Goodbye England’s Rose,” a tribute to Princess to Diana, who passed away that year.

A mild speech impediment is clearly evident in my reading – like the audio equivalent of my notorious typos. I apologize for any words I pronounce incorrectly, especially the names – and for any false things that I inadvertently present as true, but I tried to fact check as much as possible. Feel free to submit any corrections you’d like me to know about in the comments on my blog.

I don’t know why I felt compelled to write an essay about 1997, a seemly random topic, but as I explain in the episode I recently fell down a highly enjoyable research rabbithole in a café. I felt curious and typed the year into a search engine, exploring pretty much recent history in comfy solitude over a spiced chai.

I’ve never done this – recording myself reading out loud – before and I used the tiny microphone in my cell phone to record. The sound isn’t bad, considering.

I really should have a bibliography for this project, and I can honestly say without shame that my source for the events and figures cited was almost exclusively wikipedia. I did try to avoid plagiarism, and add my own perspectives on the things that I have learned.

Because of my value system this pilot episode will never include ads, and it will never end up behind a paywall. The approximate transcript is available below for accessibility, or even just personal preference.

(more…)

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.”

[Yeah, okay, look – I tried laying on someone else’s bed and watching him play video games with the boys, and while he did appear to be doing very well at it most of the time, he also had his back turned to me for most of the days that I was there with him and I wound up feeling a bit lonely, honestly.

And there is an alternative way, which feels a lot better, for me…]

Steve and I play video games together, sitting side by side on the pile of couch cushions under several knitted blankets on the living room floor. we are on the same team, playing split screen. he is only a little better at this than I am. there are hot mugs of lemon ginger tea and just a square or three of dark chocolate each. a tall beeswax pillar candle burns nearby in the hurricane glass. the cat curles up in the safety of a trusted lap, unbothered by the thrumming of the controllers in our hands. I keep dying and waiting to come back to life while he shoots bad guys like a pro, which makes absolutely no sense, knowing who he is as a person, but it’s kind of endearing, and he’s a fairly passable shot with his sniper, so it isn’t surprising that we keep on beating levels with relative ease. there are probably some dirty dishes from the dinner that we made left to be washed in the kitchen sink. but we’ll wash the dishes together – work together, play together – then he’ll wrap his arms around me from behind and hold me for a minute – hands still wet from washing dishes. It occurs to me that this is how I want to remember him, years from now, if I am unlucky enough not to be the one who goes first.

This pattern is old. A father passes on the heirloom of trauma to his son, like his father before him, like his father before him, like his father before him – and so on.

And still, it never stops being painful to watch.
When you witness a child who was the victim of abuse grow up to become a perpetuator of the same kind of abuse towards the next generation of innocents, because this is maybe the only way that he has ever known.

This pattern is messy and human and complex. I have no problem saying this to the people who insist that there are black and white and easy answers to questions that have bothered so many people for longer than any of us can fully comprehend.

How far are we justified in going in the name of self defense?

How far are we justified in going to defend the people we love when the people we love are threatened?

How much death and destruction is acceptable? How much? To defend the borders of the place that one has grown to know as a home, a safe haven, somewhere one can sleep at night without worrying.

“When times are bad we take care of our own.”
But studies have shown that the people who stand up for the victims of genocide tend to think that “taking care of our own” extends beyond the simple parameters of people who look like us, people who cook the same food that our family does, people who live next door, people who practice the same religion, people who have looked after our loved ones for us, people who know all the same games and the same stories. If I recall correctly, these people have something called “a universal sense of the altruistic bond.”

You are welcome at this godforsaken table by virtue of being a living breathing thing.

I don’t care what you smell like or if you haven’t brushed your teeth in a while or if you don’t know where your next meal is coming from and I don’t care if you disagree with me.
I might suck my teeth a little if your assets could provide clean drinking water to millions but you decide to buy a social media platform or go to space instead, I might balk if you think it’s okay to drop a bomb on a city full of noncombatants. But – fine.

Take a seat. We can add a little water to the soup – we can afford it.

Because if you can learn to feel safe at one table then maybe you can set down the heirloom of generational trauma for long enough not to turn around and pass on the exact same treatment to the next generation of innocent youngsters who literally just want to know they are safe, that there will always be food and warmth and water, and to know they are loved by their mothers, and that their fathers are proud of who they are becoming.

I read about Yemen this morning.

“Love thy neighbor” is just a simple quote from a really old book that has caused a lot of trouble over time.

How far are we willing to go for love?

Some days I really wish I could shut down whatever pathway it is in my mind that tends to brighten up and think, “hey, have you ever noticed that when you rearrange the letters in this totally normal everyday word or phrase which could not be more neutral in meaning, in a very specific order and with no help from context clues whatsoever, you get an entirely different word or phrase with a totally unrelated meaning that makes you want to throw up?

(See also: grapefruit.)

I have always been fascinated by the concept of the spirit animal. I enjoyed reading about the Patronus Charm in the Harry Potter universe. Each person with magical blood in Rowling’s fantasy book series could learn to conjure up a magical shield against the “Dementors” – great, dark, ghastly creatures who gaurd the wizard prison and will, left unsupervised, try to suck out your soul through your mouth and leave you lifeless, “like an empty shell.” Casting this protective charm was accomplished by attempting to “think of a happy memory” – drawing on the echoes of a time when one had felt particularly safe, content, loved, or at peace. The strength of this memory was meant to be enough to protect the enchanter from a looming sense of dread, foreboding, or even terror – the physical and emotional symptoms of which, as described in the books, are strikingly similar to my own experience of severe and debilitating panic attacks, or the seasonal discouragement and bleak spirals of rumination and pareidolia which usually affect me the most during the Dark Months – November to March. These symptoms are usually at their ugliest in the middle of January, but will occasionally drop by in the summer to say hello. Sometimes it is still very hard to get out of bed and brush my teeth; I am so much stronger than I used to be, and I am so greatful that I am still here.

As a young witch or wizard learned how to cast this protective enchantment, their Patronus would initially appear as a shield of white light. But as their proficiency with the spell grew stronger, their Patronus would start to take the form of a specific animal – usually one which made sense for their personality, and was sometimes connected to their family heritage. The protagonist of the books, for whom the series is named, had the same exact Patronus as his father – and James Potter was killed when Harry was so young that Harry doesn’t remember his father much at all.

I used to wonder which kind of animal my Patronus would become, how it would manifest. As for the happy memories – those aren’t really for the internet, I think.

In Dungeons & Dragons and things of that ilk, my preferred character class has always been the shape-shifting, nature loving Druid. There’s this one particular youngster (gender neutral term) I know who works at a my alma mater’s 3D printing lab – she took one look at me the first time we discussed role-playing games and nodded her head in a self-assured and knowing way and she said, “something tells me you play Druid, don’t you?” and she was right. The internal world-building logic of some of these games suggests a growing capacity for shape-shifting as ones character becomes more powerful or experienced. First one can transform into a bird or a wolf, then they have the additional options of becoming a cobra or a bear – the ability to become some kind of dragon at will is the crowning achievement. I love this because one isn’t confined to a single kind of creature. We’ve got options, range. This feels nice.

I still have yet to play a character until they can become a dragon.

In Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy – you may have heard of the Golden Compass – there’s a universe in which each adult’s soul manifests as another living creature whose traits, like the Patronus, aligns with their specific character. A meek but cozy person’s daemon might be a mouse, a cunning person’s daemon might be a raven – like that. When a person is still a child, their daemon can shape shift from one creature to the next depending on their mood – as they get older, their daemons settle into a permanent form.

Lyra’s daemon – “Pantalaimon,” or Pan – first appears as a dark brown moth, but in the third book – after Lyra’s first actual proper kiss, I think – Pan settles as a pine marten.

I don’t have a daemon – if I did, I’m not sure what she’d be called or what form she would take.

I am still curious.

“The secret to change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”

~ Dan Millman

to aquire a new jersey is to play for the other team.

Are you the kind of goth who wears black boots and likes black cats and the sixth book of the Old Testament and historic bohemian libraries that smell like dust and have stained glass windows and straight-backed leather chairs and framed paintings inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven on the walls, the kind of goth who likes to pretend that they’ll die young of tuberculosis, coughing up blood in a deathbed surrounded by roses

or are you of the variety of goth who likes to find white tail deer skulls and antlers picked clean on long walks alone in the swamp, likes to sit on the porch after dark and watch the moths fly too close to the lamps, carefully avoids stepping on fallen robin’s eggs, would rescue an injured bird or snake, walks on lonely country roads alone, prefers ghost stories sung to the tune of an old hymn, a lilting, haunting melody sung in harmony with a quiet and solitary banjo, unsettling stories with a hint of the book of revelation told after dark on a cold night around a smokey campfire, drinking a mug of hot cocoa and looking up at the stars

“Oh, death

Oh, death

Won’t you spare me over

For another year…”

• Halo on xbox
• A literal, tangible box full of games to get us through the Dark Months
• Warm weather during winter – warm enough to walk outside comfortably. Walks outside, even in the cold
• German chocolate
• Irish cream and maple whiskey
• Roscato (bubbly sweet red wine)
• Charcuterie boards
• Breakfast quesadillas w/ salsa, chips, hot sauce, saur cream, guacamole, cheese dip
• A bowl of pomegranate seeds – hail to the goddess of fertility and death
• Worcestershire sauce
• The sound my dad made when he walked past me by the door to the kitchen and noticed that I was listening to my partner’s heartbeat with one of his stethoscopes
• Stuffed peppers
• Library books
• Christmas lights
• Trinkets!!!!!
• Cinnamon roll coffee creamer in a mug of hot coffee in the morning
• The ability to reach out to any person you love who is inconveniently far away and talk to them when you miss them
• Spending time with family at the holidays
• Spoons
• Cat
• Edgar Allan Poe: The Ultimate Collection
• Mornings (also evenings) with my partner
• Jigsaw puzzles. Especially the one with the koi pond.
• Sudoku, crosswords, logic puzzles, anagrams, cryptograms, coloring books.
• The promise I made to my little sister that for as long as I am up and about and still breathing she will never run out of cooking oil or salt. This year I gave her glass bead mushroom earrings, bracelets, almond extract for baking, a scarf, a throw blanket, a lavender scented candle, slippers, and a glass liquid measuring cup. I spoil her more than I spoil most everyone else.
• Cowboy hats
• Chex mix, snickerdoodles, and frosted sugar cookies: the homemade holy trinity
• The pineapple we got my sister’s boyfriend for Christmas.
• He got her a bread maker. We are all about to enjoy the results.
• My sister’s stick and poke tattoos
• Christmas movies: Scrooge, It’s A Wonderful Life
• Winter break between semesters
• Blankets!!!
• A playlist of all our favorite songs from this year
• All the Christmas cards that I sent out, and all the cards that I got back (yours is on the way, if you haven’t received it already)
• We have always had a dining room table but now we finally have dining room chairs at the table. We’ll likely keep the piano bench for working on puzzles.
• Books
• Music library
• Philosophy & math
• Spooky podcasts
• True crime stories
• Murphy, who is goode
• Old family pictures.

In a saucepan with olive oil: a mirepoix of celery, onion, carrots garlic. Then slice up a potato and a roma tomato into the pan. You have to hold the vegetables in one hand over the saucepan and slice with a small knife the other – like that. Once the mirepoix is translucent or a little carmalized but Not Burnt, add a handful of uncooked brown rice and a smaller handful of dry lentils. Cover everything in vegetable broth and add a splash of vinegar. Add more salt than you think you need and some ground black pepper. Add a fuckton (unit of measurement) of spinach right at the end. Too much spinach. It’ll cook down. Drown everything in some kind of Italian spice mix.

This soup is really boring on its own, so you have to serve it with crackers. It’s also fun to add smoked gouda, parm romano, roasted sweet potato, and a garlic parm seasoning.

I’m trying to tell you something ’bout my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
And the best thing you ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously
It’s only life after all.

Well, darkness has a hunger that’s insatiable
And lightness has a call that’s hard to hear
And I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it
I’m crawling on your shores

And I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There’s more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
Closer I am to fine
Closer I am to fine

And I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry or see a B-grade movie
He graded my performance, he said he could see through me
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind
Got my paper and I was free

And I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There’s more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
Closer I am to fine
Closer I am to fine

I stopped by the bar at 3 A.M.
To seek solace in a bottle or possibly a friend
And I woke up with a headache like my head against a board
Twice as cloudy as I’d been the night before
And I went in seeking clarity

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
We go to the doctor, we go to the mountains
We look to the children, we drink from the fountain
Yeah, we go to the Bible, we go through the workout
We read up on revival, we stand up for the lookout

There’s more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
Closer I am to fine

Closer I am to fine
Closer I am to fine

~ The Indigo Girls

“One of the tasks of true friendship is to listen compassionately and creatively to the hidden silences. Often secrets are not revealed in words, they lie concealed in the silence between the words or in the depth of what is unsayable between two people.”
John O’Donohue

“Taylor Swift is a poet who makes me feel utterly seen in my human experience, especially in my experience as a woman. Stay mad haters.”

~ Clementine Morrigan, @clementinemorrigan on IG, Dec. 20th 2023

she was not a lover,

not a warrior,

not a magician –

but a theif

a natural born theif

who invested in deep pockets, the pockets they don’t make for women’s clothes

a pirate with one leg

a raven

a crow

maybe even a swallow

collecting shiny things that caught her eye

to bring back home to the nest

that was already lined with the remnants of one cracked shell

but had never known the helpless cries or the warmth of a baby bird.

a moth

fluttering too close to the lamp

a moth

almost a mother

if the “er” had only been there

when she missed her carriage.

–

“I am no mother, I am no bride, I am King.”

~ Florence Welch

In no particular order, try:

• A brisk walk in the outdoors, maybe after dark in the snow on a clear night, or early morning. Look up.
• The smell of baking sugar cookies
• Peeling clementines.
• Broken concolor fir needles held close to the nose and examined
• Blowing out a beeswax candle and watching the smoke
• The sound of wood crackling on the nearest available hearth. Perhaps a woodstove.
• A string of Christmas lights, or that one specific kind of reindeer decorations
• A handwritten note to a loved one
• Chocolate covered almonds with coconut flakes and sea salt. Or chex mix baked in the oven
• Raw snicklerdoodle dough rolled in sugar and cinnamon
• Three big spoonfuls of honey, two cups of water, the juice from three lemons, and three shots of brandy in a saucepan until hot. Makes two full mugs.

Thank you.

The tiny dot of blue ink from the chemo port on his chest is a constant reminder to hold him a little more tightly, and not take a single moment of our life together for granted.

Merry Christmas.

Tenzin Chopak’s music is pure magic. Beyond a couple of live albums, you can’t find much of it on the streaming services; in order to aquire his music, you may actually have to go see him perform live (Naples or Geneva or Ithaca, usually) and buy his merchandise in person. I only ever see him live at Grassroots. He’s just made the tough decision to step away from being a caretaker of dementia patients in order to work on his music more of the time. The fundraiser for the next big project is open. Here is the Patreon.

Oh, and he’s also a fairly excellent wildlife photographer. The dark fairy prince man with the guitar and his piano magician buddy have my whole entire heart.

(Steve Rogers can share.)

Tenzin’s Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/fragile-legacy-94943507?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link&fbclid=IwAR0Z6dooqbQZrY6UVmbO1kncZtFaCejOASQ5Zyu1YSDP5K71ASoZ9ssZg0s

If you happen to have old CDs sitting around to which you will no longer listen because you use other music listening platforms or streaming services, I would also love to borrow them or adopt them for you.

Especially if they’re from these artists:

Jewel
Hozier
Florence
Wild Rivers
The East Pointers
Mumford and Sons
Aoife O’Donovan
Sarah Jaroz
John Mayer
Taylor Swift
Chris Stapleton
Gregory Alan Iskov
Nickle Creek
Rising Appalachia
Tenzin Chopak
The Dead Tongues
The Horse Flies
Billy Strings
The Lil Smokies
KT Tunstall
Maggie Rogers
Taylor Ashton
LP
King Princess
Lake Street Dive
Susan Tedeschi
Eric Clapton
Keb Mo
Big Theif
Melissa Etheridge
Taylor Swift
KC Jones
Alison Krauss
Port Cities
Patty Griffin
Brandi Carlile
The Duhks
Bob Dylan
Chris Thile
Yo Yo Ma

I also take recommendations.

My entire IG account is mostly just hundreds of photos of album covers that I like.

If you happen to have, or know people who have books (by any of these authors) to which you are no longer attached, I would love to have them. I know some people are at a stage in their lives where they are trying to let go of some portion of their book collections, but I am still very much collecting. At some point more bookshelves may be in order. Or a bigger home with a room that is just a library. Preferably with a secret door hidden somewhere in amongst the shelves.

I am a simple creature who does not ask for much. Just,

in no particular order:

Edgar Allen Poe
John Muir
Tamsyn Muir
Mary Oliver
Maya Angelou
Neil Gaiman
Derek Parfit
Joseph Campbell
Carl Jung
William Blake
Robert Frost
Andrea Gibson
Terry Pratchett
Loren Eiseley
John Lewis
James Baldwin
Stephen King (The Dark Tower series, specifically)
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Theraeu
Wendell Berry
Douglas Adams
Aldo Leopold
Pablo Neruda
Rumi
Carl Sagan
Stephen Hawking
David Whyte

Dr. Seuss

Ursula K Le Guin

Madeline L’Engle
Amanda Palmer

I know that libraries exist for a reason, but also I’m kind of book dragon who wants to sleep surrounded by my ridiculous hoard of superfluous possessions.

Still open to recommendations, as always.

I feel like this Christmas tree farm would be a good place for a wedding.

I’m not wanting fancy things in particular. These are enough.

“It’s not the long, flowing dress that you’re in
Or the light coming off of your skin
The fragile heart you protected for so long
Or the mercy in your sense of right and wrong
It’s not your hands searching slow in the dark
Or your nails leaving love’s watermark
It’s not the way you talk me off the roof
Your questions like directions to the truth

It’s knowing that this can’t go on forever
Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone
Maybe we’ll get forty years together
But one day I’ll be gone
Or one day you’ll be gone

If we were vampires and death was a joke
We’d go out on the sidewalk and smoke
And laugh at all the lovers and their plans
I wouldn’t feel the need to hold your hand
Maybe time running out is a gift
I’ll work hard ’til the end of my shift
And give you every second I can find
And hope it isn’t me who’s left behind

It’s knowing that this can’t go on forever
Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone
Maybe we’ll get forty years together
But one day I’ll be gone
Or one day you’ll be gone

It’s knowing that this can’t go on forever
Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone
Maybe we’ll get forty years together
But one day I’ll be gone
One day you’ll be gone…”

~ Jason Isbell

“It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon.

I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true

I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.

If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.”

Oriah – Mountain Dreamer – The Invitation

“Bans off our bodies.”

“Headin’ down south to the land of the pines
I’m thumbin’ my way into North Caroline
Starin’ up the road and pray to God I see headlights

I made it down the coast in seventeen hours
Pickin’ me a bouquet of dogwood flowers
And I’m a-hopin’ for Raleigh, I can see my baby tonight

So, rock me mama like a wagon wheel
Rock me mama any way you feel
Hey… mama rock me
Rock me mama like the wind and the rain
Rock me mama like a southbound train
Hey… mama rock me

Runnin’ from the cold up in New England
I was born to be a fiddler in an old time string band
My baby plays a guitar, I pick a banjo now
Oh, north country winters keep a-gettin’ me down
Lost my money playin’ poker, so I had to leave town
But I ain’t a-turnin’ back to livin’ that old life no more

So, rock me mama like a wagon wheel
Rock me mama any way you feel
Hey… mama rock me
Yeah, rock me mama like the wind and the rain
Rock me mama like a southbound train
Hey… mama rock me

Walkin’ to the south out of Roanoke
I caught a trucker out of Philly, had a nice long toke
But he’s a-headin’ west from the Cumberland Gap
To Johnson City, Tennessee
And I gotta get a move on before the sun
I hear my baby callin’ my name and I know that she’s the only one
And if I died in Raleigh, at least I will die free

So, rock me mama like a wagon wheel
Rock me mama any way you feel
Hey… mama rock me
Oh, rock me mama like the wind and the rain
Rock me mama like a southbound train
Hey… mama rock me
So, rock me mama like a wagon wheel
Rock me mama any way you feel (oh, I wanna feel)
Hey… mama rock me

Rock me mama like the wind and the rain
Rock me mama like a southbound train
Hey… mama rock me”

~ Bob Dylan

“Somethin’ happens when everybody finds out
See the vultures circling, dark clouds
Love’s a fragile little flame, it could burn out
It could burn out

‘Cause they got the cages, they got the boxes
And guns
They are the hunters, we are the foxes
And we run

Baby, I know places we won’t be found, and
They’ll be chasing their tails trying to track us down
‘Cause I, I know places we can hide
I know places
I know places

Lights flash and we’ll run for the fences
Let them say what they want, we won’t hear it
Loose lips sink ships all the damn time
Not this time

Just grab my hand and don’t ever drop it
My love
They are the hunters, we are the foxes
And we run

Baby, I know places we won’t be found, and
They’ll be chasing their tails trying to track us down
‘Cause I, I know places we can hide
I know places…”

~ Taylor Swift

“Build me up from bones, wrap me up in skin
Hold me close enough to breathe me in
The moon’s a fingernail
Scratching on the back of the night in which we lay beside

I held every inch of you
I wrote every line for you
I made time when time was all but gone
You’re the love I’ve always known

The night’s so dark and gray
But you’ve helped me find my way
Through the wild and wonders of this world
So take me with you now
‘Cause I need to show you how
I can love you better than before

I held every inch of you
I wrote every line for you
I made time when time was all but gone
You’re the love I’ve always known…

So, play it sweet and low
We’ve got nowhere to go
I am yours and you’re the love I know

I held every inch of you
I wrote every line for you
I made time when time was slow but gone
You’re the love I’ve always known…”

~ Sarah Jaroz

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. Once in a lifetime, perhaps, one escapes the actual confines of the flesh. Once in a lifetime, if one is lucky, one so merges with the sunlight and air and running water that whole eons, the eons that mountains and deserts know, might pass in a single afternoon without discomfort. The mind has sunk away into its beginnings among old roots and the obscure tricklings and movings that stir inanimate things. Like the charmed fairy circle into which man once stepped, and upon emergence learned that a whole century had passed in a single night, one can never quite define this secret; but it has something to do, I am quite sure, with common water. Its substance reaches everywhere; it touches past and present and future; it moves under the polls and wanders thinly in the heights of air. It can assume forms of exquisite perfection in a snowflake.”

~ Loren C. Eiseley, “The Flow of the River.”

“The best way to overcome it [the fear of death]—so at least it seems to me—is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will not be unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.”

~ Bertrand Russell

“When I believed [that personal identity is what matters], I seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.

When I believed [that personal identity is what matters], I also cared more about my inevitable death. After my death, there will be no one living who will be me. I can now redescribe this fact. Though there will later be many experiences, none of these experiences will be connected to my present experiences by chains of such direct connections as those involved in experience-memory, or in the carrying out of an earlier intention. Some of these future experiences may be related to my present experiences in less direct ways. There will later be some memories about my life. And there may later be thoughts that are influenced by mine, or things done as the result of my advice. My death will break the more direct relations between my present experiences and future experiences, but it will not break various other relations. This is all there is to the fact that there will be no one living who will be me. Now that I have seen this, my death seems to me less bad.”

~ Derek Parfit

“Fare thee well
My own true love
Farewell for a while
I’m going away
But I’ll be back
Though I go 10, 000 miles

10, 000 miles
My own true love
10, 000 miles or more
The rocks may melt
And the seas may burn
If I should not return

Oh don’t you see
That lonesome dove
Sitting on an ivy tree
She’s weeping for
Her own true love
As I shall weep for mine

Oh come ye back
My own true love
And stay a while with me
If I had a friend
All on this earth
You’ve been a friend to me”

~ Mary Chapin Carpenter, “10,000 miles”

“The sound of a bell
Still reverberating,
or a blackbird calling
from a corner of the field,
asking you to wake
into this life,
or inviting you deeper
into the one that waits.

Either way
takes courage,
either way wants you
to be nothing
but that self that
is no self at all,
wants you to walk
to the place
where you find
you already know
how to give
every last thing
away.

The approach
that is also
the meeting
itself,
without any
meeting
at all.

That radiance
you have always
carried with you
as you walk
both alone
and completely
accompanied
in friendship
by every corner
of the world
crying
Allelujah“

~ David Whyte

One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of a March thaw, is the spring. A cardinal, whistling spring to a thaw but later finding himself mistaken, can retrieve his error by resuming his winter silence. A chipmunk, emerging for a sunbath but finding a blizzard, has only to go back to bed. But a migrating goose, staking two hundred miles of black night on the chance of finding a hole in the lake, has no easy chance for retreat. His arrival carries the conviction of a prophet who has burned his bridges. A March morning is only as drab as he who walks in it without a glance skyward, ear cocked for geese.”

~ Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your bodylove what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your placein the family of things.”

~ Mary Oliver

“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

~ Wendell Berry

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

~ Robert Frost

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”

~ J.R.R. Tolkien

“It was many and many a year ago,

   In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

   By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

   Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

   In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

   I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

   Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

   In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

   My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

   And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

   In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

   Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

   In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

   Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

   Of those who were older than we—

   Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

   Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

   Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

   In her sepulchre there by the sea—

   In her tomb by the sounding sea.”

~ Edgar Allen Poe

“US vetoes UN resolution calling for Gaza ceasefire. The US was the only nation to vote against the Security Council resolution. Aid groups condemned the veto.”

~ CNN

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour”

~ William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

“And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate
To act her earthy and abhorr’d commands,
Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee,
By help of her more potent ministers,
And in her most unmitigable rage,
Into a cloven pine; within which rift
Imprison’d, thou didst painfully remain”

Shakespeare, The Tempest

Standing in mountain pose, “head over heart, heart over pelvis,” then hands up over my head, lean to the left, lean to the right, stretch, swan dive into a forward fold, halfway lift, back to mountain, dive into downward facing dog, upward facing dog, cat/cow, inhale/exhale, downward dog again, hop to the front of the mat, warrior I, warrior II, lean back for peaceful warrior, look up, lean forward for triangle, don’t lock the knees, don’t wobble, don’t fall, back to warrior II, warrior I, downward dog, same sequence on the other side, make my way to a seated position with legs folded, twist to the left, twist to the right, lean forward so forehead rests on the floor, same thing with the other leg folded in front, child’s pose, bridge pose, happy baby pose, corpse pose, then 75 crunches and 25 push-ups, twice, and 30 squats.

Every day, if possible.

The other day I “ran” on the elliptical for an hour at a 15 minute mile and I think it rewired my entire brain. Totally different set of neurotransmitters. Runner’s high felt lovely.

There’s a weightlifting circuit at the planet fitness 10 minutes from the apartment where I am training my muscularskeletal system to lift heavy things. A couple times a week. I am stronger than I was this summer.

Yesterday I went out for a walk around the apartment complex on my own and listened to music and the cold air stung my recovering lungs and there was a lot of coughing, and my socks were uncomfortably wet and cold, but I felt better after.

“You got to leave me now, you got to go alone
You got to chase a dream, one that’s all your own
Before it slips away
When you’re flyin’ high, take my heart along
I’ll be the harmony to every lonely song
That you learn to play

When you’re soarin’ through the air
I’ll be your solid ground
Take every chance you dare
I’ll still be there
When you come back down
When you come back down

I’ll keep lookin’ up, waitin’ your return
My greatest fear will be that you will crash and burn
And I won’t feel your fire
I’ll be the other hand that always holds the line
Connectin’ in between your sweet heart and mine
I’m strung out on that wire

And I’ll be on the other end, to hear you when you call
Angel, you were born to fly, and if you get too high
I’ll catch you when you fall
I’ll catch you when you fall

Your memory’s the sunshine every new day brings
I know the sky is calling
Angel, let me help you with your wings

When you’re soarin’ through the air
I’ll be your solid ground
Take every chance you dare

I’ll still be there
When you come back down
Take every chance you dare,
I’ll still be there
When you come back down
When you come back down”

~ Nickle Creek, “When you come back down,” Nickle Creek. Sugar Hill Records, A Welk Music Group Company. 2006.

“Find yourself another place to fall

Find yourself up against another brick wall

See yourself as a fallen angel

Well I don’t see no holes in the roof but you find yourself another place to fall…”

– K.T. Tunstall, “Another Place to Fall,” Eyes to the Telescope. Universal Music Operations Limited. 2005.

“Oh captain, my captain…”

The other night I woke up in a cold sweat and remembered that I haven’t seen my favorite button down shirt in months – possibly since last summer – and with all of the busyness of life it’s taken me this long to realize it’s gone. So this morning I took apart the apartment trying to find it – unsuccessfully. I got that shirt the weekend I stayed with my sister and went on adventures with the hillbilly rednecks she lives with in the trailer park. That was the weekend everyone thought I was in the psych ward but I wasn’t. I loved that shirt. Its loss was a devastating thing.

So today I went for a joy ride. I took Rt. 33 west over to Bergen and turned north on Rt. 19 over the railroad tracks, droveober the top of the hill into Brockport, found the plaza with the outlet where I first acquired the favorite shirt a little less than a year ago. I found the same shirt, it was the only one left on the rack, acquired the shirt, drove home. The drive is vaguely wet and grey and brown and quietly pleasant. Nice to get out of the house after being sick. Listened to Scott Regan on Different Radio, WRUR 88.5 FM – found some good music, it sounds like there’s going to be some live music at the Little Theater in Rochester again. He says Sarah Jaroz released a new album recently, must listen.

Went to the gym and got groceries with Steve Rogers. After dinner we put a comforter and some couch cushions down on the living room floor and played Halo for a couple of hours. I am still not very good at this game. I die and come back to life with embarrassing frequently, but at least I shot and killed a bunch of gnarley looking bad guys. My partner is being really excellent about being patient with me while I learn how to do this thing, and both of us are having fun.

This is all for now.

Last night we watched the first half of a movie and then drove through the pitch darkness and the pouring rain to procure a small black raspberry milkshake from a drive thru around the corner. Because I was really craving a milkshake. We blasted a song by Bastile through the speakers on the way home and then hid under the same umbrella on the short walk from the parking lot to door to the apartment building. And then we were home, in our lovely cozy little space – with our books and our piano and our christmas tree and our fairy lights and our cat and our comfy blankets on the couch. It feels like something out of an illustrated children’s book.

I am so happy.

Took a bath today.

Turned on the shower and let the room fill up with steam. Tried to just breathe. Made myself drink bottled water from the fridge. Water ran hot – not too hot, because that becomes unhelpful.

I think I’ve been suffering from dehydration which is slowing my recovery from the the upper respiratory infection. I’m going to try to see if I can find myself some broth, next. For now – just moisturize everything and sleep.

Last night I woke up with difficulty breathing. This hasn’t happened since I was a little kid.

I sit up, go to the bathroom sink, cough up half a lung in fascinating colors, drink some water, throw the water up in the sink because the cough triggers the gag reflex, tilt my head back to stop the nosebleed that’s started when I try to blow my nose because my sinuses are dry and hasn’t stopped in three days. I cannot hear properly out of either of my ears and the resulting vertigo is distressing.

During the day I finally have enough energy to get up and wash the sheets and blankets on the bed. I listen to Florence and the Machine and sleep on the couch instead.

In the evenings my partner and I are cuddled together under blankets on the couch, watching TV shows about true crime. I tell him we should watch something less spooky, tomorrow.

If your ears are working fine with no pain and no inflammation, and if your nose is not congested, if your throat isn’t sore, if you aren’t nauseous, if your belly feels fine, if your hearing is not muffled, if you do not have a fever, if the backs of your hands are not dry and cracked – enjoy the feeling of being healthy. I take too much for granted, I think.

Lemon tea with honey, cold medicine, acetaminophen, antihistamine, water, hot soup, and rest.

“This is going to taste awful,” he says, liquid cold medicine in hand. “But it might make your throat feel better if you can get it down.”

I take a sniff.

“I’m supposed to drink this?”

“Yes.”

“All of this.”

“That’s right.”

“Whatever you say, doc.”

It does smell awful – potently medicinal. Upon further inspection, it tastes awful, too. I take a shot of liquid cold medicine and pause.

“Was I supposed to drink that on an empty stomach?” I ask.

In my current state I cannot accurately recount this story without using the phrase “his brow furrowed,” I am tired and it’s necessary for the plot.

His brow furrowed.

“I think it should be fine. I mean, I can usually – “

I am no longer listening.

About five minutes later my body has thoroughly rejected this attempt to poison me with cold syrup. I sleep for about four more hours.

Happy Thanksgiving.

This week, Rosalynn Carter died at the age of 96. A vehicle exploded on the Rainbow Bridge near Niagra Falls at the border between the US and Canada. There’s been frost on car windows for days.

At home, the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade is on in the background this morning while we make food to share with family later. Now there’s a Hallmark Christmas movie (with the exact same plot as every other Hallmark Christmas movie ever made) playing in the background while we get cleaned up and ready to drive.

Made stuffing with red onion, celery, mushrooms, dried cranberries, walnuts, and a spice mix with rosemary/sage/parsley/thyme. Also made sweet potatoes with a butter and brown sugar glaze seasoned with cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon, vanilla, salt. Bringing along some figs and brie and a milk stout to share also.

My ancestors would be so impressed with my spice collection.

Set up a small but living Christmas tree, complete with favorite ornaments and colorful Christmas lights and a tree skirt decorated with a woodland scene. There are strings of white fairy lights all around the apartment.

I think maybe I “need a little Christmas.”

I’m drinking coffee and trying to decide what to wear. I think the safest thing is to stick with something understated and cozy.

Feeling nervous about being around family during the holidays – sometimes this is a stressful and anxious and uncomfortable time. There is as much potential for conflict and upset as there is room for welcome and enjoyment of one another’s company. I think this is true for most families. Holidays tend to bring a certain set of higher expectations, attachment to outcome, a desire for everything to be perfect. When things aren’t exactly perfect, disappointment leeches a sour and poisonous vibe into the emotional atmosphere – and then old grudges might bubble to the surface, and then and then and then and then. It makes me feel tired and sad. So I’m feeling wary about that potential outcome, even though I really do hope that everything is lovely and fine. Because I love them, of course I love them. All of them. And I miss them so much.

I’m bringing a book and also Steve Rogers, who is the reason it was easy for me to move away from home when I thought that was the one thing in the universe I was never going to be strong enough to do.

I should have watched V for Vendetta years ago