I have a little time to myself. Something more than stolen moments around the edges, but not so much time that I can get lost in it and drift away.
I stayed up all of last night reading a book, because I couldn’t put it down.
This morning I had too much energy and needed to move, so I walked across the top of the hill and down into the hallow and I listened to the music I grew up with.
I’m sitting cross legged at the kitchen table and trying to put my life in order, properly. I have put this process off for a long time, and I’ve been dreading the state of affairs I would find myself in once I slowed down enough to take stock.
Once I got everything written out on paper, it wasn’t as bad as it seemed inside my head. That does seem to be the way of things.
Asking for help is the most difficult.
Friends tell me that there’s nothing wrong with reaching out for support. I grit my teeth and close my eyes and call my ego to heel and I trust them.
It would be so easy to let all my flaws and quirks and mistakes keep me from trying.
The tricky thing is to show up, and to show up imperfect and real.
I hope it’s a good night.
and they said “baby there ain’t no shortcuts on your way,
oh, baby there ain’t no highways in these parts.
you know baby gonna have to drive yourself down every little winding road
A long time ago, on the other side of the pond, I met a traveling man from Amsterdam. He snuck into our backpacker’s hostel after hours and tried to sleep in the loft above the common space so that he could get away with not paying for a place to sleep. The staff scolded him black and blue.
He forgot to remember that all the supermarkets in Germany are closed on Sundays, and so when Sunday rolled around, all he had to eat was bread and water. He joked that it was worse than prison food.
He had an odd charm, and I liked him.
This week, he is vacationing in Poland.
He shared photographs of train stations filled with people who are fleeing Ukraine. He stopped to talk to as many of them as possible, trying to understand how they are doing. He said he was trying to make them feel welcome.
His was not a reputable character and I would not take his stories at face value. But I think there’s room for a little truth. Enough.
I started this blog at 4am in the common space of a shady, dirt cheap youth hostel in Krakow. That was almost as far away from home as I’d ever been. East of here.
Much has happened since then, but if that place is still in operation, I wonder it’s filled with refugees.
I wonder if there are road weary people leaning their foreheads on the cool glass of the window in the bar downstairs, feeling haunted and small and scared.
The bus stations, the hostels, the markets, the streets – I have walked in some of those places. And that gives me goosebumps.
I snagged coffee with a person I would be honored to get to know better
I’ve been knitting in class. It helps me.
I have a warm coat my folks got me for Christmas
My family is safe and whole
I still have a vehicle that works when I ask nicely
My classes are lovely
I have friends…
We dropped by the candlelight service for peace in Ukraine. After a handful of opening remarks, folks were invited to speak.
An old woman sitting in the back stood up with something to say:
“There’s an old song that begins,
‘what the world needs now is love, sweet love.’
and it might not be enough on its own, but it sure would help.”
and she sat down again.
And then there was war, on the other side of the pond. I listen to interviews with families, fleeing, through my car radio.
Tomorrow in the evening there’s a candlelight vigil at the interfaith center at school. Some friends and I are going.
At school, there was cable knitting in the back row of the lecture hall beside a friend. There was sharing notes with an acquaintance in class. There was a lesson on the Shakespeare riots.
At home, there is the smell of baking chocolate chip cookies and burning beeswax candles and tomato sauce on the stove. Incense escapes below the crack of my sister’s bedroom door. The cat is purring. My fingers are absently picking away at guitar strings. Most of my family is close enough to reach out and hold, but some of them are much farther away.
I’m frightened.
Love you.
to all of my trans and nonbinary/genderqueer folks, and to their families, if you need to hear this today
because I did
I love you. If you need anything – anything at all – don’t for one second hesitate to reach out to me for help. If I can’t be there in that moment, I will help you find somebody who can. Your presence in this world, and in my life, is a beautiful thing. I hope you feel safe to be comfortably yourself wherever you are and whoever you’re with.
At home, I wear black pants, black socks, black boots, a purple beanie, a green jacket, and sometimes a black shirt with a picture of a spaceship hovering over the red rocks amphitheater and tractor, beaming the crowds into the sky.
I drive to school and back again. I listen to FM radio stations. I’ve been knitting in class.
I go to class and wish I’d done the assigned reading. Actually, I wish that *any of us* had done the reading.
I’m closer to broke than I’ve ever been, so I don’t buy food from the convenience store on the corner – I go to a friend’s apartment over an art gallery on main street and snag a bowl of something cooked with lentils and white pepper. We talk about ideas we don’t understand (but would understand better if we’d done the reading.) We discuss ways to make money under the table. I tell him that he smokes too much.
I have excellent dinner at home and that’s what tides me over until the next time there’s food.
There’s an acidic tang in the air today. As I walk from one class to another, I break into a run, backpack full of books and all.
Gas prices are skyrocketing.
I think the best gift I can give to a world that feels shaken right now is to stay solid and strong and unfuckwithable and genuinely kind.
I wish the cashier at the grocery store who said, “how’s it going, champ!” when I walked in the door could hear a lower soprano/higher alto voice come out from behind the mask on a body with a messy crew cut and a flat chest and small limbs covered in baggy clothes and not make that small moment of connection with a stranger into either a worried apology or subtle but distancing nonverbal cues of contempt.
I know it’s a small thing to wish for but also it totally isn’t.
Fucking – fortify. Gift yourself all the little things that you need in order to feel safe and comfortable with experiences that are new.
I’m not sorry for being unexpected in a way that makes you uncomfortable but I am sorry that any of us have to feel anything less than safe and okay when we stand side by side.
No matter who you are or where you’ve been or what you look like on the outside, no matter what the cadence of your voice is like when you’re feeling at home and comfy, I hope you get home safe tonight.
If there are walls between you and the dark and the cold and the bitterness outside, I hope they’re trustworthy, solid, strong walls that protect the well-being of you and yours. I hope the door stands firm in its frame, I hope the locks don’t break.
I hope that anyone, even the reaper, could come knocking and you could know that you don’t have to let him in unless you want to.
I hope you sleep safe and sound until the morning. I hope that you dream sweet dreams.
I hope that the unspoken expectation that tomorrow will go on being much like all the days before will be left peacefully intact,
And I hope that you go on living, sometimes without even stopping to notice that you’re alive, because you are so caught up in all the things that make that life important.
Once upon a time, I suspect that somebody decided to strap a couple of flat planks to her feet, the better to walk outside in the winter without sinking knee-deep into snow. As you do.
Later on, somebody else got bored and wondered what it would be like to strap a slightly fancier plank to his feet, the better to rocket down the side of a vertical snow-covered hill. For fun.
And then a whole bunch of other people saw him doing this and thought it looked like a fine idea, so they found their own planks, and it became a sort of game – a competition over who could make hurtling down impossible slopes with a plank strapped to their feet look the coolest.
I hadn’t suspected that humans could fly until tuning into the Olympic snowboarding qualifiers yesterday. Watching the folks who have mastered the art of launching themselves off high places at great speed, twisting themselves 900 degrees in the air before touching down as gracefully as birds do.
It’s enough to make me wonder. It is beautiful.
The opening ceremony in Beijing was beautiful, too, in a way. And it was sad, because they played the song Imagine and I wanted so badly for those words to come true, even a little.
But then the torch bearer was of Uyghur descent and the folks standing behind the man who spoke of peace and harmony stood perfectly still and smiled the whole time without moving an inch.
And I wish I understood, even though I suspect that I don’t want to.
I don’t want to believe that it isn’t going to be alright.
I don’t want to let myself believe that it will be, either, because I don’t want to be wrong.
I need a fine arts credit to fulfill all of the gen ed requirements for a bachelor’s degree from this tiny liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere.
By the time I get around to registering for classes, the only fine arts class with an open seat is Theatre History II.
This was the second day of classes.
My professor is openly making fun of the Catholic church for banning cross dressing in theatre troops in the Spanish golden age. The church also tried to ban women in theater troops, because – of course they did. This effectively created an evolutionary pressure and we just – ended up with a whole bunch of particularly definant theatre troops in the spanish golden age. Which is excellent.
I am cracking up in the back of the classroom. I make eye contact with the professor and it becomes clear that they’re laughing too.
We split off into groups to work on a project and make introductions.
I asked everyone in my group if they went by any pronouns in particular, because I need this to be a normal conversation.
There were three different people who asked for different words, all in one small corner of a room. Three.
The church found it necessary to ban cross dressing in theatre troops in the 1600s. I suspect this has been a thing for a long time. But even a handful of years ago, I suspect that a safe conversation about a small collection of words would not have been a thing. Not in this part of the world.
That moment felt – basically safe and okay. I don’t think that it always has been. I think that in many places it still isn’t.
Bless all the people who went first. All the way back through the years, across generations. Bless all the ghosts of the people who couldn’t.
In the many months of hiding in my room, during this insufferable pandemic, I’d almost forgotten about the messiness of romance that inevitably happens when a bunch of twenty something children and assorted accomplices are thrown together in some of the newest and strangest chapters of their lives.
Christ, I am so tired.
Three years ago, I recognized that trying to be somebody’s partner hurts too much. For me.
Trying to be with somebody I actually like is much, much worse, because I’m too smart to believe that I’m not going to make an enormous mess of things and lose the companionships that matter most to me in this world.
At least, back then, that’s how I was feeling. That feeling has never quite gone away.
It has been well over three years since I promised myself not to try for a partner again until after I’d finished knitting a sweater.
I’d never made a sweater, before I made this promise. I didn’t know how. So before I put myself through another companionship, I needed time to learn.
If I couldn’t teach myself how to make something halfway decent from scratch with my own hands, then I also probably shouldn’t be trying to navigate the tricky strangeness of that sort of promise with an entirely seperate human being.
I haven’t done much knitting, since.
It’s not that I haven’t had time.
I did successfully crochet a sweater, at one point. I wanted to know if I could. It was messy and terrible and far too big for me, but it vaguely resembled an article of clothing. I loved it so much.
But crocheting and knitting, as everyone knows, are two entirely different passtimes, and so I was safe from the obligation of pursuing a partnership.
There have been friends. There have been quiet, ridiculous hopes. There have been butterflies, in unexpected but not at all unhappy moments.
There have been exhausted retreats from the world back to the safety of my attic room with the weighted blanket and the soft comforter and this sweetheart of a cat because closeness sometimes hurts too much.
In all of that time, I am sure there were many hands that would have been lovely to hold.
In all of that time, there were all of two people who made me pause for long enough to think seriously about getting the knitting needles out of the trunk that is tucked against the far wall of the attic. You don’t meet that sort of person every day, I suppose.
Don’t ever settle, a friend told me, once. But that’s not it. That is so far away from being the point.
There are some people who will probably never stop being frustratingly beautiful. Closeness hurts. Feelings are complicated. Navigation is extraordinarily difficult. I have such a hard time talking to anyone about this.
You will go through this life in your own way, and in your own time. And that’s okay.
There’s more than one way to love and be loved.
Ane so, for right now, I’m still not knitting a sweater.
I’m keeping my eye out for some yarn that is soft and acrylic and dark green. I’ve never knitted socks in my whole life and I would be so disappointed with myself if I didn’t learn how in this lifetime. Also, there’s a baby blanket that is long overdue, and a scarf I’ve been meaning to work on.
This morning, I went to the mall with friends. We went ice skating.
I learned how to skate when I was eight or nine years old. It was so much fun, and it was also a long time ago.
My body still knew how, but it took me a minute to remember. If there were pathways – or connections between neurons that knew how to skate, somewhere in my brain – they were buried deeply.
It has to do with balance, which has to do with how you carry yourself. Hold yourself together. Arrange the various limbs until you don’t feel like you’re falling, and keep adjusting them in little ways throughout. Shift your weight from one side to the other, in order to move forward.
Be wobbley. Be willing to fall on your ass and look like an idiot, over and over again, and feel awful in the morning. If you’re willing to fall, you might find it easier to try things that require more balance than usual.
I wasn’t exactly flying. Something closer to hobbling quickly over the ice.
When I’m spooked, it is much harder to move. My brain is powerful. If I’ve gotten it into my head that I can’t do well at something, then I probably won’t.
I can’t afford to be spooked or frozen. The things I’m trying to do are too important.
It’s not about believing in myself so much as telling the part of me that does not and never will believe to quiet down, no matter how loudly it’s screaming that I won’t last two seconds if it isn’t there.
We went ice skating.
There were pop songs playing in the background. I got sweaty. I learned how to move in a different way. I was with beloved people. It was good.
I felt happy. I worked harder than I have in a long time. I am exhausted.
I think it’s important to learn how to say, “I don’t know.”
Alternatively, you could lie.
Act. Pretend. Put on a performance.
Take pride in being a talented con artist
Carefully master the art of bullshitting,
Wear different personalities and attitudes like masks
Whatever you need to be, whenever you need to be it
Blend into your surroundings like a chameleon
Reflect the people around you back at themselves
Split yourself in at least two pieces –
The mask you show to the world,
And the face underneath it that few people ever get to see
At least two pieces.
Each piece is just as much a part of you as the next
Even as you pretend to be something you’re not.
Knowing how to do this is powerful.
Strategically useful, for one thing.
And it’s a gift – because people who have to lie in hundreds of little ways all the time might better appreciate what it means to be genuine, and know how much it means to be trusted when somebody else is comfortable enough to be himself in their presence
I’ve always suspected that everyone is just pretending
Pretending as hard as they can, all the time
Pretending they believe or comprehend
About everything. Morality, attraction, body language, the spoken word, the taste of wine.
How we’re supposed to feel, and what we are
And some people are just… so much better at pretending than others
They’ve gotten so good [at pretending] that they don’t even know that they’re doing it
Or maybe they do know, but they’re afraid to admit it
Because everyone is so good at pretending
That everyone else feels impossibly alone.
And then there are the people – hello – who are frequently awful at pretending
[except for the odd moment when everything clicks]
These are the ones who like strange things, think strange things
People who’ve been looked at sidelong with impatience all their lives
By other people, people who work so hard at pretending that they no longer know how to stop
and it bothers them to stumble across people who don’t always know how
I’m not sure if I fully comprehend the difference between my own subjective experience and the experience of somebody else.
I don’t know what it feels like for them.
Probably a lot like what it feels like to be me, except… less cinnamon and more nutmeg and a total absence of ginger and a little too much salt. Different ratios.
I can try to understand. I can probably learn to do this well, over time.
It took two years of feeling cut off from everyone I know to even begin to understand
How many different ways there are to be a person
How many different ways there are to pretend
And that it’s possible to be connected to people who are different from me
Without needing to change who I am
Or panic and freeze up, from trying
To manage the things that I think that they think
And I think it’s important to work out how to say, “I don’t know.”
Once a year, sometime in November, the WARM 101.3 radio station in changes from top 40 pop music and soft rock to what is essentially just Mariah Carey’s ~ All I Want For Chrismas ~ repeating on a never-ending loop. This year, I have been turning the radio dial past that station every time I’m driving and listening and looking for a song.
We watched White Christmas. My sister is listening to an audio recording of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I haven’t taken the time to listen to John Denver & the Muppets CD.
I cut down a tree, for the house. It’s covered in colorful lights and familiar ornaments. I think I owe the universe about 22 trees, so far. None of this stuff about paying someone else to plant a tree halfway across the world. I need to plant them myself, somewhere I can go back and visit.
The sun’s hanging low in the south for what seems like just a handful of hours at a time. The nights start out early and drag themselves out for as long as possible. I know that there are still and quiet places, hidden under the shelter of the pine trees. There are impossibly dark, cold corners behind dumpsters in the back allys of the villiage where it’s possible to look up and see Orion’s belt.
I could sit here and write about the feeling of not feeling the way I’m supposed to feel around Christmas. But I’m sort of rejecting the notion that there is a way that I ought to be feeling at this time of year, I think. I’ve decided to let that one go.
From 10,000 feet up, I would rather enjoy the time that I’m living through now than feel sad because I’m not feeling the childhood magic that there used to be.
It comes down to perspective.
“Every so often, I look down at the blue veins on the inside of my wrist and remember they’re blue because of a molecule called hemoglobin which is responsible for carrying oxygen to my cells, and that hemoglobin contains trace amounts of iron, and iron can only be forged in the heart of a star that is dying. And so those blue lines on my wrist are literally full of stardust, which became part of the earth when it formed 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years ago, and traveling at the speed of light, which is as fast as it is possible to travel, it would take 81,000 years to get to the nearest star aside from the sun, and that is only the beginning. This makes all of the problems on the surface of this exceptional little planet seem smaller, somehow, and perhaps more important for all of their smallness – because of all the possible lives I could have lived, I ended up living this one. Might as well make the most of it while I’m here.”
[This is an excerpt from a paper that I just wrote for a class about Ethics, which I am going to miss.
*For the sake of acememic integrity, I feel like I need to point out that the stardust-in-our-veins concept was shamelessly stolen from a post that I found on tumblr a couple of years ago. I have a friend who gets cranky about misattributed quotes and I can’t stop hearing his voice in my head telling me to get out of bed and go downstairs and fix this, so – here. Have a paper trail. Love you.
If we fall out of touch, our connection will slowly fade away to nothing. That connection is made of an exchange of attention and togetherness, and… nothing else. That’s all.
Like making footprints in the sand when the tide is low. After the water rises and falls away again, it’ll all be gone.
A hopefully less terrible take:
The mark that you left on my life changed my everything, and it made me into the person that I am. No matter what happens, nothing can change that.
You scratched your initials in the cement of the sidewalk outside of my door before it had time to dry. I see them every day when I leave and every day when I come home, and they remind me of you often. When the pavement crumbles to dust and my eyes are dim, that connection will go on existing, because my friendship isn’t something you can lose.
A long time ago, I made a blog post about taking responsibility for my own conscience, instead of adhering to somebody else’s value system in order to belong.
The premise was that it’s better to carry a moral compass in my own hands, because nobody else ought to be doing that for me.
I still think that’s true, but also I think there is more to the story. There usually is.
A personal sense of right & wrong is deeply intertwined with our connections to other people, other lives.
The conscience that is built alone, from scratch, is always going to be missing something.
I have found that letting a stranger’s story tug at my heartstrings hard enough to change my mind is a potent kind of magic. It almost feels too powerful for one person to hold.
Holding my moral compass in my own hands is sensible, but it won’t help me get where I’m going unless I’ve got a map of the world to navigate by.
If I tried to draw that map based only on where I’ve been and what I’ve been through, it would be a terrible map. Even with the best compass in the world, that map would still get me ridiculously lost all the time.
I think that map ought to be woven from a thousand voices and perspectives and stories that aren’t mine.
Listen as hard as you can, all the time, and let the things you hear and understand inform your perspective. Seek out the masters of storytelling and poetry. Ask the librarians. Talk to the children, the elders, the stranger sitting across from you, the people you’ve known for a long time without ever knowing them well.
It’s alright, you are still allowed to have a mind that is full of questions. Nobody can ever take that away from you.
Dear one, you’ve got two ears, and you’ve only got one mind.
For the last few days, I’ve felt shaken and tired. I’ve been haunting the comfy chairs in the loft of the public library, drifting up the hill to sit at the base of a tree in the cemetary, walking along the tops of high brick walls on the hill at the college like balance beams. I have been thinking too much.
Two days ago, when I got home, I locked myself in the attic. Cried a little, snacked on dark chocolate, drank Irish whiskey (plenty) straight out of the bottle, listened to old albums full of melancholy songs, wrote out a poem with a similar vibe. I cleaned my room all the way to the corners, and then I read a practical guide on using unexpected stratagies to take down entire dictatorships with as little collateral damage as possible. As one does.
(I really should go back and read the Watch books, again, some of these days.)
By the time I let myself out of the attic, I was feeling much steadier.
This evening, I drove through the snow and the far-too-early darkness to pick up some dumplings from the restaurant in the little town at the edge of the lake. The car was almost out of gasoline, and it was cold enough to need gloves between my fingers and the steering wheel. I got lost twice, even though I knew how to get where I was going. A radio program called Acoustic Café was playing, as I navigated twisted back roads in the dark. It helped me.
And, just like that, it is winter.
My family sat down together at the table, with the dog laying down under our feet, and we talked. That doesn’t happen as often as it used to. It was nice to have their company.
I haven’t been answering my phone. It hasn’t been ringing. That’s okay with me, right now.
I know I have friends. I don’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not, to belong and be loved. I have loved ones who have seen me at my worst and still somehow bring out the best in me, without even knowing they’re doing it, without knowing how much it matters to me. There are people in this world who are worth staying alive for; not just staying alive, but really living…
I still don’t know how this happened. I am just glad that it did.
I’m so glad I have a sense of humor. I’ve graduated from “I hope nothing bad happens” to “I hope whatever happens is at least funny” and it is fucking keeping me sane.
I am also appreciating whatever it is that allows me to look at the darkest and most upsetting things in the universe and see them for what they are without falling apart.
This past new moon, I managed to get myself outside to look at the stars. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
It was cold out there, but I found long underwear and warm socks and boots and a comfortable sweater. Stayed plenty warm enough.
I turned off the porch light & walked out into the back yard, as far away from the lights in the windows of the house as possible. The dew on the grass was frosting over. I found a plastic lawn chair and carried it out with me, so that I could rest.
Orange light from the city tinges the sky, to the north. The light from house windows are a bit south of me. There was still plenty to see.
Watching the arms of the galaxy, letting my eyes connect the dots in interesting patterns.
It’s funny – this used to make me feel small.
I still feel small, but it’s a different kind of smallness.
In all of the vastness of the universe, of all of the possible ways to exist and experience this place, of all possible lives, I ended up living this one.
This is the life I have. This is the only life I’m ever going to have. I really ought to make the best of it.
All my friends are feeling low, this week – scattered and worried and tired. Three of them told me about feeling like they didn’t want to be here anymore.
I know how that feels.
and it just – I’ve been noticing recently that for the first time in what feels like a long time, I don’t want to die.
look up, little one… look up and live.
And that’s what I’ve been doing, and that’s how I’ve been.
I saw a couple of shooting stars. I saw the brightness of the planet hanging low in the southwest. I looked out at the sprinkling of lights across the hills, to the east of here, and thought about how each one of those little points of light is a home.
Down the road, a neighbor set off a single firework. I turned around just in time to see it.
And then I heard coyotes crying, and I didn’t feel scared. There’s a warm house with study walls right next to me, so I know that I’ll be okay.
it was time to go, and I went inside and made some tea
This evening I drove out to the college through the rain, through the wet darkness that seemed to suck away at the headlights until it’s almost impossible to see.
I found a parking place in the lot behind the auditorium, and I walked down the hill to a door in the side of one of a handful of old brick buildings. There were wet leaves all over the sidewalk.
Inside the building, there is a room.
I drove all that way because I have a key to this room. Once a week, in the evenings, I unlock the door and prop the door open, and I turn on the lights, and sometimes I open the windows.
And when people start to show up, I greet them. Say hello to the familiar faces, welcome the new ones. I have to wear a certain personality in order to do this well, which isn’t easy, but I suppose it’s good practice.
We get a scraggly bunch of students, one or two faculty members. Some of them have started to show up more regularly. It’s encouraging to see.
This week, we talk about the history of the electric chair, state sanctioned executions, depictions of death in the media, the attack on the world trade center, eugenics, prisons, the Holocaust, the medicalization of the death penalty, the Milgram experiments, a book called The Agent of Death, and the fact that veterinarians have the highest rate of suicide among the medical professions.
Considering the darkness of the subject matter, the tone of the conversation is remarkably open, curious, considerate, kind, and solid. When we talk about death, we remember that one day we are all going to be gone. Sometimes, in the right context, that can bring out a certain goodness in people.
But there’s also a creepy feeling, left over, after the conversation is over. It’s enough to make me scan the empty room an extra time before turning out the lights and locking the door behind me. It’s enough to make me look back over my shoulder, once, as I walk across rainy darkness and wet leaves on the pavement.
I’m not one for looking over my shoulder in the dark. I’m probably the scariest thing out there.
Every day, I make sure to laugh. I have conversations with interesting people, and we talk about strange and wonderful ideas. I am always trying to look at people and really see them. I am thinking of the friends that I’m so lucky to have met, always.
Every day, I walk from one place to another and notice my footsteps. I flop down on the grass and look up through the tree branches, or stretch out on the floor and rest. I look up at the sky in the evening.
I notice the universe, and I am awestruck.
I look at art that makes my brain happy. I listen to music that makes my heart sing. I mostly read books that make me want to throw them across the room. I think messy and intricate and terrible thoughts all the time.
At home, I catch a hug from my mom or dad, in passing. I listen to my kid sister when she talks about her day.
I scratch the dog behind her ears, scritch the calico cat under her chin, and cuddle with my tabby for a while before I fall asleep.
I am burning beeswax candles, and the air in my room is cleaner. Easier to breathe.
My brain has latched onto some horrible thoughts, which are seeping through the rest of me in the shape of a horrible feeling. This feels like… like the shock of accidentally drinking tea that’s gone bad a couple of days ago. My nervous system is stubbornly determined not to let this shit go, and it’s getting to be decidedly uncomfortable.
There are times when I have a clear sense of direction, and the ground under my feet is comfortably solid. This is becoming more common.
But sometimes there are moments when I’m navigating blind, without a compass… and the world, when I can feel it there at all, keeps sliding away from me.
It depends on the weather.
The tough thing, I think, is to keep going. Even when I feel shaken and lost.
Other people have gods to turn to. In the absence of certainty, at least there is some kind of faith.
The faith that I do have mostly belongs to the trees and the stars and all the things about the universe that won’t be discovered until after I’m gone, if they’re ever discovered at all. This world is so beautiful. It helps keep me wanting to stay.
I have this notion that even if I don’t know what I’m doing, even if I make a terrible mess of everything, I will somehow be able to figure things out, and learn, and grow, and repair things if they get broken, and grieve properly when things are lost.
Even if I’m wrong, it’s nice to think that I might not be.
A much harder thing to believe is that the same kind of resilience can exist between and among people who care for each other.
I have seen broken understanding and awkwardness and resentment and exhaustion tear companionships to pieces. I have lived through this. I think most people have.
I was just a kid, and it bruised me a little.
It does me so much good to stumble across old companionships that are still beautiful.
Not because they’ve lasted a long time, exactly. Time isn’t the thing that matters. The things that’ve happened in all of that time… those mean everything, I think.
Some of the things that happen over time are going to be difficult. That’s how it goes.
And so, when I find things that are lovely that have also existed for a while… I think about all of the things that they must have been through. Made it through. Scratched up and dented and held together with tape and string in some places, but more or less whole, and still laughing.
This gives me more hope that I can put into words.
When I feel completely frozen, I can always prove myself wrong. The smallest motion is enough to prove that I’m not frozen.
Even if I don’t get everything done… a little at a time is better than nothing. It is so much easier to get things done after I’ve started working on them.
I can do just about anything for two minutes.
Sometimes it is necessary to stand outside in the cold for a moment, to take a hot shower, to listen to music and dance and sing along, to take a turn around the room.
Grounding myself in my body might not actually be as helpful as using my brain for something that is comforting. A book is a wonderful escape.
It is okay to rest.
One day, I’ll get to tell the stories about these moments, and it’s up to me to decide how those stories are going to go.
So if I’m going to work on a thing, I might as well do the best that I can to make it into something amazing. Purely for the sake of collecting quality storytelling material.
It sounds like work, but in the words of an excellent storyteller – it is my life’s work.
A friend said that I have something to add to this world that nobody else does, and the world would miss that something it if wasn’t there. I don’t know what that is yet.
There is only one way to find out.
…I think it begins with the first two minutes of this godforsaken pile of homework.
if I open the upper half of my attic window, I can lean out and look upwards. lots of moonlight and cloud cover at the moment, and I don’t have a clue where my glasses have got to. but the stars in the eastern sky are still there. I’d be worried if they weren’t.
for the first time in a while, the air smells like winter is coming. cold and sharp. it feels too soon, but then again it’s not unheard of for late October. I keep hearing rumors that this coming winter will be one for the history books and I am a little bit too excited about this.
a swirl of memories – colors and smells. hot cocoa. itchy wool scarves and hats and boots a size too big, for growing into. dragging a sled through the pine trees. laying in the snow, looking up at the sky. climbing over the drifts. footprints.
there are at least four (4) people that I would dearly love to challenge to a snowball fight, at the moment. you’re one of them. this is partly because I am sure I could win; I’m a decent shot with quickly handmade, sadistically cold projectiles.
but also, I’ve decided against growing up, because it is boring and stupidly difficult. If you need me I’ll be playing outside.
I might spend less time hurting if I had a thicker skin.
I could leave cuts and bruises to fester, let scar tissue creep over the wounds…
I could build the walls higher,
Lock myself in a tower
And sleep for a hundred years.
I could wrap harshness around me, like a coat, against the wind
Carefully presenting an image of indifference
Could I be safe, after all this time
*
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but only words can hurt me.
*
Hard, brittle things crack under pressure.
Softness doesn’t break.
Strength, toughness, resilience…
These things are not won by the people who lock their hearts away for safekeeping, who have numbed the pain until they can’t feel anything at all.
Even if they seem unbreakable on the outside, it comes at a price.
Close your eyes and tilt your face towards the sun.
Unlock the doors, push down the walls like dominoes
Go to the healers, care for the wounds.
Cry, if you need to, if words have ever hurt you, if you buried the pain long ago. Let it out, let it unravel, let it dissolve, and then breathe in the relief.
It’s okay, here, and you can come back any time you need.
I am starting to think that the strongest people in the world are probably also the most unexpected.
I am using up an average of one and a half composition notebooks per week. When I sit in class and listen in on the discussions, my right hand is constantly taking notes – practically flying over the pages. When I have a thought that seems important and doesn’t align with the direction the conversation should be going, I write it down. For later.
If you asked me, I probably couldn’t even tell you what I’d just written down, because I am carefully listening. When I flip back through the notes that I took a couple of days ago, I find interesting thoughts that I have no recollection of thinking. It’s like reading something that someone else wrote, but I recognize my voice.
There is a rough, round bump on the first knuckle of the third finger of my right hand, because that’s where the pen rests most of the time. It’s a writer’s callus. It gets red and raw when I hold on too tightly, but it doesn’t hurt.
I’m a little bit proud of that. It’s like… the work that I love to do most in the world left a mark on me. A real mark, something I can touch.
When I need to reach for the confidence of knowing that even if I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, in this moment, I will somehow be able to figure it out…
Late last night, I crawled out of the attic window and onto the slanted edge of the roof. The wind was persistent, stong gusts tugging at my center of gravity, pushing my hair out of my face.
It was cold up there, but I couldn’t feel it. I could only feel the wind.
From there, lying down on the roof, looking up – I can watch the sky. Not just the stars, but the clouds that drift across them, the moonlight, and the swirling of the shadows.
The roof, beneath me, is comfortably solid. And the wind in my hair is a magic that’s hard to describe.
Those two sensations, in tandem – the freedom and the safety, the comfort and the thrill… it’s a rare thing, to strike that balance. And it’s beautiful, when it happens.
I have no idea how long I was out there, letting myself be rocked in the cradle of the sky.
The timelessness was broken when my cat poked her nose out of the window, anxiously, wondering what I was doing, wondering if everything was alright. I noticed that I’d gotten stiff, got up, and ducked inside.
I’m not afraid to be alone; not anymore. But I’m so glad that she is with me.
I know how another person is going to respond to the things I do and say, before I do or say anything.
I know what other people are thinking and feeling, even if they never tell me… in body language or in stories or in words.
It feels so real, inside my head…
It seems so real that unless I am careful, I don’t even wonder if I might be wrong about things.
I am so sure of myself that I don’t even bother to ask you how you’re feeling, what you’re thinking. I don’t give you a chance to speak for yourself, and so I never have a chance to hear what you would say.
And this would be fine if I actually knew what you were thinking, but I don’t.
Not everybody thinks in the same way that I do, and so unless I listen to the way that you think, I am always going to be missing something.
Since I already know what’s going to happen, and I know it isn’t going to end well, I’ll just… bend space and time and matter around me to make damn sure that a sad future never comes true.
And this would be fine, too, if I could actually see into the future. That would be fucking useful.
Except that I can’t. I can’t know what is going to happen before it does.
I am usually wrong about things, even and especially when they make perfect sense inside my head. The inside of my head is hilariously devoid of context. My perceptions are distorted, and they’re always going to be.
I can’t know what is going to happen before it does.
I know this. Because even when I put everything I have into the abortion of sad endings, they usually happen anyway… even if they don’t happen in the way I expect. Sometimes one sad ending happens precisely because I was trying to stop a different one from coming true.
And so… I cannot read your mind, I cannot predict the future and I cannot predict how you are going to respond to the things I do and say.
And so I missing something, I am always missing something, unless I am able to bring myself to talk to other people. And that’s hard for me to do.
I am learning that I’m not a telepathic precog, but I am learning that the hard way.
For fuck’s sake, stay true to yourself and don’t pretend to be somebody else, because otherwise what is the point.
For fuck’s sake, don’t lie and pretend like you don’t care for somebody when you do. If you lie well enough, there’s a chance they might actually believe you.
And for fuck’s sake, kid, give the people around you a little credit. Let them surprise you with their kindness, especially when you don’t see it coming.
Listen to that feeling, the one that isn’t sure that you’re right to be worried. Listen well. And then go looking for those answers, when you’re ready.
There is so much potential for joy, and laughter, and understanding, and love. And it’s worth the risk of a sad ending to imagine that they might be there, even when you can’t see them.
It’s a Tuesday in September and I hope it’s a good stretch of time.
Go outside. Practice getting too hot, too cold, covered in sweat and bugbites and mud and rain and dust.
Lay down on floor *as much as possible.*
Look up at the stars. Connect the tiny points of light with imaginary lines.
Cook with rice, corn, black beans, avacado, cheeeese. Hot sauce is especially important.
Every night, read a book until you fall asleep and drop it on your face.
As you read the things you have to read for school, write questions all over the pages.
The answers you find on the internet will probably not be as interesting as the insights that are already there in your head. Go looking for those when you can.
Notice when things are objectively absurd, and find the humor that exists there.
Write because you have something to say.
The things you have to say might become more interesting if you spend more of your time listening.
Put your blankets outside in the sun, when it isn’t raining. They will smell nicer.
Give yourself a break from whatever hurts the most. Set it down, even for just a moment. It’ll still be there when you come back.
Classes are starting in a couple few weeks and it just landed on me the other day I am now in my senior year of college. It took me longer to get here than I expected, but here we are.
I have a persistent feeling that there was a right way to do this thing, the college thing, and that I didn’t do things that way.
It wasn’t what I expected.
It was living at home with my mom and dad, commuting instead of living on campus, driving in every kind of weather, listening to my car radio.
Making friends.
Buying textbooks so well-used they were falling apart, with notes from previous readers in the margins. Using the printers at school because there wasn’t one at home, using a tablet instead of a laptop for three solid years. Never, ever taking out loans, even if it meant bending over backwards and turning my life inside out to pull it off.
Obsessing over keeping my GPA in the 3.9’s, but never asking for help with a single writing assignment even when I really needed that help. Spending all the free time that I had giving that kind of help to other people, and hoping that it counted for something.
Working on campus, living in learning centers, working a total of seven different jobs over the course of five years.
Zoning out every thirty seconds in class, all the time. Objectively admirable procrastination abilities. Debilitating anxiety over deadlines and exams. An actual existential crisis when I got a 75 on a term paper, that one time.
Doing the best that I could.
Listening, and asking questions, and speaking up when I had something to say.
Earning scholarships from every department of every program that I was ever enrolled in. And then some.
Knitting in class. Countless $1.07 mugs of black coffee from the cafeteria. Walking with friends by the lake.
Favorite grey jacket, a green lanyard with my car keys, old flip phone, wallet from a dollar store, and a chipped coffee mug. So many composition notebooks, a thousand different favorite pens.
Earning a two year degree in mathematics with honors and crying at graduation because I didn’t want to leave that place.
Somehow believing, in spite of much evidence to the contrary, that I wasn’t bright or resilient enough to carry on down the path I’d been walking. Walking away.
Accidentally taking a gap year, because I didn’t know what to do next. Somehow, traveling the world, a little
Staring in abject horror at the state of the world and not being able to look away, and not being able to process any of it with any kind of grace.
Stubborn determination to go back and finish the school that I’d started, no matter how much time or work it took, no matter how hard it was to remember why it mattered, no matter how strange it turned out to be.
Transferring schools during a pandemic, zoom meetings and online classes with professors I will never meet.
Studying in the back of my car.
Laying in the grass, under a tree, barefoot, eating a salad I packed at home and reading a book for class.
It wasn’t what I expected. I don’t think I was ever sure what to expect.
This is the part where I’m supposed to say, “if I could go back and do it all again, I wouldn’t change anything.”
But that isn’t true, because I would. Hypothetical mechanics of time travel aside, I think that’s just an interesting way of telling people that you haven’t learned anything.
If I could go back…
But I can’t. So that isn’t useful.
I am a senior in college and I don’t know how to put into words how good it feels to finally be able to say that.
It’s been a long time.
I am almost through. At least for a while.
I don’t think that knowing what I want to do is as important as I used to think it was. I like the idea that it’s okay to make things up as I go along, and keep finding interesting things to do until I die.
I don’t know where I want to end up, or how to get there, but I do know what I want to do next.
This fall I’m taking five 300/400 level classes. They will focus on the subjects of nonviolence, medicine, environmental issues, and genocide. The fifth class is statistics, because I am one class away from a math minor and it would be silly not to just go for it.
~~~ I am a terrible hippie and should be banished to the 1960’s as soon as possible ~~~
It is going to take lots of showers, naps, snacks, chats, cats, meds and water to get me through the heaviness of the things I’ve just signed up to think and talk and read and write about for four months.
But I think I’m going to be okay.
One day at a time, until Christmas, and then… one day at a time, until June.
I’m stretched out on the ground outside my parents house. The sun isn’t setting yet, but it’s about to be.
Right now, in this moment, everything makes so much sense. I feel at peace.
I’m laying here thinking there’s no way I’m going to be able to remember this later
I am thinking in words, which is normal for me. But if I try to hold onto those words for long enough to say them out loud, or write them down… something will get lost in translation, and it won’t be the same.
This morning there was news about a report on the state of things, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Conversations about this are happening in the newspapers and on the radio.
It seems like things are heating up in here.
*
Life on Earth is stubbornly resilient.
It also exists within this delicate balance of environmental conditions that it needs to have, in order to survive.
The best science we’ve got is telling us to stop fucking messing with that balance, because we’re already losing it, teetering, swaying dangerously, and now we have built up enough momentum that there might not be a way to slow it down.
People tell me that the planet is actively dying
the bird was flying too fast when it hit the window and the only thing to do is give it somewhere comfortable to be and
The planet under my feet is made of rocks and dust, and she will go on spinning through outer space for a good long time, no matter what happens to the life that exists on her back. Astronomers think there is probably going to be a moment sometime in the distant future when the Earth falls into the sun, and maybe that’s another kind of dying.
But I think that death, in some ways, belongs to the living
Death belongs to the sparrows and the crickets, and the dandelions, the terriers, tabby cats, whales, trout, chipmunks, swans, herons, bees, monkeys, oysters, kelp, bears, snakes, spiders, bats, mushrooms, moss, and human beings
Queen anne’s lace, and goldenrod and yarrow, plantain and clover and black eyed susan and burdock and sunflowers and ferns
The oak trees and the pumpkins, and the blue corn and the beans
All these things that came into being because once, in the very beginning, carbon and nitrogen and oxygen and hydrogen held hands and danced in interesting ways
It would a be such a shame to see those things go, because they are beautiful. Every single one of those endings is a sad ending, a tough goodbye, and a great loss.
But everything is temporary. In order for a word to be spoken out loud, there has to be silence before, and silence afterwards.
I am thinking about the weeds growing up through the cracks of a pavement, in the most polluted city in the world.
Life is resilient.
*
There will be other moments to talk about what we can do, about how to take care of each other when the weather is bad, when the fires are burning and the rain won’t come, or when the flood just washed away somebody’s home.
There will be other moments for sitting down and learning more about what the science is telling us right now, and what it all means
There will be other times to talk about how to stop fucking with this delicate balance.
*
For right now… late last night, or early this morning, there was news about a report on the state of things
And I just needed to let that land on me, and let it move through.
I hope it’s a good night.
“Baseline perception of reality is a playground for the devil and the sicked
We, just as Jesus, perservere in the face of the wicked
Some are, or have become, as crazy as all hell
A life of endless wanting is a life of never well.
Before it’s too late we much fix what is not right
Do unto others what you would like
What you would like done unto you
And act in full contemplation of what true love would, or would not do
Whether you are a corporation, government, or a person.”
I live in a galaxy, one that’s flat and round and spirals outward
I live in a solar system where many rocks and several planets orbit a single star.
On one of those planets, which happens to be the third one out from the star in the middle, there is a strange thing that we call life. Basically, some interestingly shaped molecules on the surface of the rock sat up and started to breathe, and eat, and eventually move around by themselves
And some of the things that are alive have evolved to the point at which they’ve become aware that they are living.
(Hello! That’s me. I’m one of those.)
The thing about life is that it is temporary. It comes into being, and then it exists for a finite amount of time, and then it doesn’t.
I’m only going to exist for a little while. There is going to be a time when I don’t exist, anymore. There’s going to be a moment that is the last moment that I am aware of my own existence, just like there was a moment that was the beginning.
Between those two moments…
There is the living of the life, and the life of the living.
I get to look up, and look around, and become aware of things happening outside of me.
I’m aware of the shape of the rock that’s under my feet, and the universe that is everywhere. This is mostly because I am a living thing that moves around, and if I wasn’t aware of the shape of the universe, I would be constantly bumping into things all of the time.
Inefficient, if nothing else.
I am also aware of the existence of other living things, and I am aware of the way that being around them makes me feel.
There is this thing that happens when two or more living things are together in the same space. Sometimes, there is an agreement to help each other keep on living, in one way or another, or at least to have a better time while we’re here.
The connection that is forged in the wake of that agreement is a powerful thing.
It might not be a thing that matters very much, compared to the stars and the galaxies and the universe
but from the perspective of a tiny speck of consciousness in a universe where I keep fucking bumping into things all the time, and from the perspective of a consciousness that knows that one day it will cease to exist and I don’t get to know when that’s going to happen, yet
it is something that matters, to me, and it’s something that matters very much.
When you think about it, it is so amazing that any of this ever existed at all.
I am so glad that the stuff of the universe eventually formed itself into the shape of a friend.
I hope that you’re having a good time, while you’re here.
I turned on the radio this morning, and these words and phrases were repeating:
Delta varient, case numbers, ventilators and ICU beds, vaccinations, arms, mask mandate, virus transmission, social distancing, CDC guidelines, vulnerable demographic, children under twelve…
Felt eerily like turning on the radio in March of 2020. I was even driving the same direction down the same stretch of road.
We are not through this thing, yet. And that reality kind of smacked me in the face today.
Folks in the part of the world where I am sort of collectively started trying to move forward into a way of life that felt like the way things used to be. It felt too soon, in the beginning, and it still does. But there was this moment… after the vaccinations. There was this moment when the restrictions started lifting, when we started to be able to see each other again, when I almost began to feel safe. I started to relax into life again without thinking about the virus at all.
And I, just… I don’t think that’s a thing I can let myself do yet. Not completely.
So many of the things I’m used to doing don’t really need to be done. And sometimes, when I have to, I can let things go for a while and still keep living. I know this because I already have.
It’s simple, but not always easy to do.
I have missed dancing. I’ve missed laying on the floor and talking with friends. I’ve missed school, and I’ve missed working. I’ve missed the library, and the coffee shops. I’ve missed holding people, and being amoung people, and sharing a space.
Being away from those things is hard, and when you have to let go of them for a while you realize how important they are in your life. And I think when you get to come back, even when it’s only for a finite amount of time… you remember what it was like when they weren’t there, and the love that you have for them is somehow more profound.
In March of 2020, I felt like the world was ending. I didn’t know for sure that there would be a time when things felt alright again, even just for a while.
Things aren’t completely okay again, right now, because they probably aren’t ever going to be for as long as people keep being people. But for just a moment, in the summer, it felt more okay than it was before. And that isn’t going to last forever, because everything is changing all the time.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that the last time I felt like the world was ending, there was hope, and I wasn’t able to see that it was there, and I wish that I had been.
Leaving room for hope is not, like – the equivalent of trying to reassure a child by telling them that everything is going to be okay, because that isn’t true. It just isn’t.
An unfathomable number of people didn’t make it through this thing. I looked it up, but I’m not even going to write that number down, here, because I can’t wrap my head around how many faces and names and personalities and connections and stories we lost and I can’t comprehend the numbers of loved ones who are grieving, who are still grieving, because it hasn’t been that long.
I have been so lucky.
Leaving room for hope is not a promise that everything’s going to be okay. It’s just that there’s an off chance that it might be, and you can’t let yourself lose sight of that.
Take care of the people around you, even if that means letting go for a while, again. Cherish the people you love while they’re here.
I read once that if you’re not at least a little bit embarrassed by the person you were about a year ago, you’re probably not growing enough.
The concept that you’re not going to be the same person in a few years’ time is beautiful and scary and bewildering and also, quite possibly, a big releif.
What does it mean if you’re embarrassed by the person you were a month ago, or last week, or yesterday? How fast am I growing, then?
I don’t know.
There’s something about using shame as a metric for measuring growth that doesn’t feel right, to me.
The business of growing and shifting and changing is fuuucking uncomfortable because… in order to grow, you have to be making mistakes all the time. You’ve got to mess up, in order to learn things. Messing up is painful, but it’s nothing compared to the embarrassment of looking back at the asshole that you used to be and not liking them very much… and then slowly realizing that sometime in the future you’re probably going to look back at the person you are right now and think the same things about them.
The people you used to be stack up, over time, like beads on a necklace. And you’re stuck with them. You can’t go back and change things that’ve already happened. You can’t go back and make them different, you can’t force them to be anything other than what they are.
And I just think… hating the person you used to be doesn’t do anything to change the things that you wish you could change. It’s just an elaborate way of punishing the person you are in this moment.
You weren’t literally a lot of different people, over time. You’ve always been you, and you are constantly becoming.
The problem with having a self that has been lots of different shapes over time is that you’re going to have to be nice them. The whole lot of them, and that includes the ones you can’t stand. Even when you can’t find it in yourself to be nice, always find a way to be kind.
I wish I knew how.
If I could choose a metric for measuring growth, it wouldn’t be shame or embarrassment or loathing for the person that I used to be.
It just takes up so much time and energy and space that I wish I could be spending in other places.
Spinning around in circles with your arms outstretched until you fall down onto the grass. Climbing over fences. Cooking food. Skinny dipping at three o’clock in the morning. Reading a book, or gaming, or writing, or watching videos that make you laugh, or making music again. Playing with friends, or maybe just laying on the floor and talking about anything for centuries.
Things that are actually important.
So measure growth in something else. Anything else.
Cut me in half and count the rings, perhaps. Put my heart on a scale across from a feather. Throw me off of a tall building and, assuming that there is no air resistance, calculate how many units of laughter there are in one human soul.
Count the number of beads on the necklace, and be kind.
Hope it’s a good night.
It is four in the morning, and my whole entire self hurts.
My thoughts have been racing nonstop for three hours, now. They got so loud that the distractions I’ve been leaning on recently weren’t keeping me safe anymore.
Body is trying to process signals that best translate to English as intense anxiety, sadness, and shame. All three at once is confusing and overwhelming.
Emotions are meant to tell us something important, I think. That is why they exist in the first place. They’re meant to move through you, communicate what they’re trying to say, and then… pass away. But mine get stuck, sometimes. Jammed. They don’t fade after the message is delivered. They stick around until it hurts.
I am trying to sort out where this is happening in my body so that I have something to work with.
Right now, this feeling is showing up as a lump in my throat. My shoulders and neck are tensed up, and my jaw is clenching. My chest is tight and my breathing is shallow. I can also feel it in the hallow space behind my eyes, the tops of my legs, in the back of my head and neck, all across my back, in my upper arms, and in my wrists and hands.
This is worse than usual. It doesn’t usually spread through my entire body like this, which means that there are fewer corners of me that feel kind of okay right now.
The safest feeling places right now are the ones in contact with blankets. Lots of heavy blankets, even though it’s summertime. I am also holding a stuffed animal, which is comforting.
My brain is sifting through memories to find all of the times that I’ve made mistakes and all the things that I don’t like about me, just to fuel all this shame that is burning. The shame, in turn, is fueling the anxiety like nothing else can. And when I dwell in anxious places I often end up feeling so impossibly sad.
And I don’t understand why
And also, shame tends to set off a sharp twinge of, just – not wanting to exist. Followed immediately afterwards by a few moments of kicking myself for having that feeling.
Throughout all of this, there is a healthy portion of existential dread, along with a fair bit of helplessness. This is hard.
Over and over again, rushing, thrumming, burning, aching, shaking, crying, hurting. For hours, and days, and weeks, and sometimes on and off for years.
Fighting against this is really hard. Waiting it out is terrible but sometimes that is the best option that’s available to me.
It’s – not unbearable, but close.
There are going to be nights like this, nights much worse than this, for as long as I am alive. I am going to have to be so strong.
There is a small part of my consciousness that stays calm and quiet, throughout all of these things. There is a presence there that almost doesn’t feel like me.
It’s nurturing, and gentle, and calm, and sure, and kind, and solid. It reminds me to do things like roll over on my side because it’s easier to breathe, and tells me to get up and blow my nose when I need to. It reminds me about coping mechanisms. It doesn’t fight with the spiral of thoughts, it just – doesn’t listen, because it is predominantly focused on making sure that I’m okay, and everything else can wait until the morning.
It isn’t loud, but it’s there, and right now it’s telling me to try to sleep again, a little.
Being young and stupid and not knowing what the hell you’re doing is a necessary step on your journey to becoming a slightly older person, who still doesn’t know what they’re doing and also has a lot of regrets.
Life is short. Our cells start to die faster than they can be replaced at the age of 25. Ask literally any 25 year old, they will confirm.
The experience of fucking unbearable pain in response to real or perceived rejection is not pathetic. It is human and normal to be scared and sad at the prospect of having to live disconnected from people who matter to you.
…if they’re clearly online and they haven’t texted you back yet, they are probably watching a stupid sixty minute YouTube video of some dipshit trying to start a lawnmower at the bottom of the ocean. Sometimes, nothing else will do.
Negative feedback loops are not written in stone. The trick, obviously, is to stop the negative feedback from looping.
The fact of your existence on this planet in this universe is a beautiful scientific coincidence. Also, having a consciousness living amoung other seperate consciousnesses is such a fucking trip. The way that one person can compose words out of thin air to describe an emotion and then somebody else can come along years later and be moved to tears, but also, I can’t figure out how to sucessfully communicate basic concepts. This is so weird.
If you say “I love you” to a person who thinks they are impossible to love, they will naturally be highly suspicious. And it’s tough to tell someone you love that you love them, when you know they don’t know that it’s true. Tell them anyway. You might need to kind of thwack them over the head with it for a while until the message gets through.
Life isn’t fair, and there is so little that I can do about it. So little. But at least there a few small things that I can keep doing for the rest of my life. When I think about how much time I might have, if I make it safely to whenever I’m going to die… I feel like all the little things might count for something.
Heard recently that mixing a pound of sugar into a ton of concrete will prevent the concrete from setting properly. I want to see if this is true.
Also recently heard about a man who decided to kill himself. But before he went through with it, he figured he might as well do all of the things that he’s always wished he could do but had been too afraid, since it didn’t matter now because he was going to die anyway. He made a list of things. And by the time he got to the end of the list, he no longer wanted to die.
The world doesn’t stop for anyone, and there is never going to be a time when you’re completely ready to do the thing that you’re afraid to do. Return the fucking library book that has been sitting on your nightstand for eleven months, you dumbass
professional mental health support network that is covered by insurance
all of my time with my Jeep, whose name is Helen
ridiculously inapplicable horoscope predictions
disordered eating management resources that are helpful
the one guy at work who understands about needing to rest.
“i’m ready,” a neat track by Sam Smith and Demi Lovato which has been stuck in my head for this entire week but could absolutely stop at any time and I would be fine with that
I am a friend, and I have friends, and I am still surprised about this. Anyway it’s real and it is stupidly important
It has been such an objectively ridiculous year to live through. Somewhere along the way… something inside of me got broken, I think. The piece that had always helped me with steadiness was gone.
I felt so alone, and lost, and terrified, and I am still in recovery.
But now… something is different. Shifting. I don’t know how, or when, or why. I think this same stretch of time that left me shaken in so many ways was also a catalyst for another kind of change.
It keeps showing up in unexpected places
It’s hard to put into words.
It’s the way that I walk, the way that I take up space in a room.
It’s the sound of my voice. Louder, clearer. The harmony that is always there. It’s the “I love you” that I can say out loud.
It’s not caring what people think. It’s taking a chance and speaking up for myself, especially when I’m afraid to. It’s not taking shit from anyone.
It’s a touch of defiance. It is knowing that I have a choice.
It’s deciding to let go, and leave.
And it’s also deciding to stay. To keep trying, even when it’s daunting. It’s the decision not to give up, not now, because there is still hope.
It’s daring to think that there might still be love and it’s trying so hard not to cry when I realize that it’s still here, and it never left, and it’s going to be okay.
It is the admission that I have been wrong and probably looked very stupid, that I’ve messed up over and over again and I am most likely going to keep doing this, and that all of those things are so fucking human and that it’s okay and I really do know this
It’s in the moments that I needed to live through in order to even begin to understand, and it’s in all the things that I don’t know yet.
It’s the relief of setting down the weight of a world that I will never be able to heal by myself, even though I want to. And it’s the sensation of lightness I feel after having carried something heavy for too long.
When you set down all of the things that were never yours to carry, you’re better able to carry the things that were always meant to be yours. May you carry them well.
It is perspective. And embarrassment, and confusion, and awkwardness, and lots of swearing as much as possible all the time. It is hilarious coincidence, serendipitous connection, dawning comprehension, and regret.
It’s letting things be what they are, and not trying to force them to be anything else.
It’s… taking myself less seriously. It is relief that this world revolves around the sun, instead of me.
It is hard work, and careful attention to the little things, and wanting to do a good job.
It’s a kiss on the mouth that hasn’t come true yet. It’s the smile I was wearing all day.
It is the laughing. So much laughing. Laughing until my face hurts and my heart aches and there are tears coming out of my eyes. Laughing at myself, and laughing with you, and with him, and it’s awestruck listening and it’s looking up at the stars.
It’s this calm that is there on the outside that helps me stay centered.
It is a very quiet strength, from a grounded place. And it snuck up on me.
For these last two days I have been staying at the house of a friend who is traveling and needed someone to be with her dog, because she didn’t want him to have to be alone with the sounds of the fireworks.
– this next bit is a sad story –
Once, a long time ago, this friend left a dog alone at home during the fourth of July weekend. The dog was so afraid of the noise that she jumped out of a second story window, and her injuries were so bad that there was nothing they could do.
So I totally understand wanting someone to stay here with this absolute sweetheart of an Australian Shepard. We have hung out before on multiple occasions and are totally excellent friends.
He is pretty low maintenance. He just really, really doesn’t like the sound of the fireworks.
Mostly he just needs someone to sit near him when the sound of distant explosions become too intense. His whole body trembles, and he whines quietly.
Mostly we are just sitting together and listening. He seems comforted by all the hugs.
Once he got up and did a lap around the room, investigating, and asked to go outside into the twilight. When I opened the door, he just stood there and listened. Carefully
Also, this arrangement works beautifully for me because it means that I have entire house to myself for a weekend. The solitude is so peaceful, and the getting away feels like something that I’ve needed for a while.
It’s a good house. Comfy and homelike. The aesthetic here is… a kind of prettiness that only happens when somebody who pays attention to the little things has lived in once place for a long time.
There is a pool in the backyard, here, and the water is pleasantly cool. I snuck out after the fireworks had quieted down and swam around in circles in the dark. There were so many fireflies. I just barely made it inside before the rain came.
I am trying to figure out whether or not I have anything to say about the holiday that is happening around me. I am looking for the words.
For right now, I am watching over a friend who needs comforting. I am swimming in the dark. I am sitting in the quiet, and I’m thinking all the time.
It happened quietly. I was washing dishes, with my back to the rest of the room so nobody could see.
I was operating on maybe four and a half hours of sleep. I had just worked as hard as I could for three consecutive days and I still had the fourth day, ahead of me. And I was just so tired.
The chaos and the noise happening around me suddenly collided with the anxiety and turmoil going on inside my head. I can usually cope with either one of those things separately, but it’s tricky to manage both at the same time.
And it was all too much, and the tears bubbled up and out and then I was swallowing sobs and standing up straight and tall and strong to keep my shoulders from shaking.
In the back of my mind, there is a calm place. It’s a bit like the eye of a storm. Inside of that space, I was able to think – okay, okay. So I’m crying at work. I’m surrounded by people I don’t know and I’m having an honest to goodness meltdown and I am crying at work.
And honestly, I don’t really care.
I felt surprise and also tangible relief when I realized that I was crying at work and it actually didn’t fucking matter.
I have been washing dishes for half an hour and I am already soaked to the bone with dirty water and I haven’t slept or eaten enough in days and the pile of dishes to wash is stacked high and is growing and nobody is saying thank you or even looking at me, so if there was ever going to be a time when it made sense to cry, it would sure as hell be right now.
And I needed to cry, and nobody was about to fucking take that away from me.
Once, I might have worried about people thinking less of me for crying and it would have sent me further into that state of distress. But in that moment, I just felt indignant and angry that anybody could think less of another human being for needing to cry. That indignation at the ridiculousness of the state of things kept me in a place where I was able to breathe.
I can work as fast as I physically can soaking wet for seven hours. I can fly across slick floors balancing heavy dishes on one hip, lifting them higher than I can reach over my head to the top shelf. I can plunge both hands into scalding water over and over again. I can send every dish from this entire restaurant through this battered old machine, on a busy Saturday afternoon, in an unfamiliar kitchen, with nobody else on the schedule to help me. And this is fine.
Just please don’t tell me I can’t cry.
My grumpy old kitchen lady friend looked at me and shook her head and told me that a grown man twice my size would have had a hard time with that shift.
By the end of the day, the line cooks had started shouting at me across the kitchen to take a break. “Go get a popsicle out of the freezer, and if you find them right away, pretend like you didn’t for a while.” Appearently, I looked like I was going to pass out, but I was still going because there was more to do…
I drove home feeling a strange sensation of lightness. Maybe it was joy. I can’t for the life of me understand why, and currently my money is on the endorphins flooding my body after walking five miles worth of steps in that crowded little space.
I don’t feel like many people work a dishwashing shift and then come home and write about their days like this.
I’ve landed a summer job working part time for a restaurant and brewery, just across the street from the mall. I made like 100 lbs of guacamole on my first day.
It’s been a little over a week.
My whole entire body aches from standing all day in the wrong shoes. My acne is flaring up. My throat is sore from breathing the air in the place where I am currently working – a mix of water vapor, fryer oil, cigarette smoke, onions and jalapeño peppers.
On my first day, somebody asked me if I smoked cigarettes. I said “no,” without thinking, and I should have said “yes” because people who smoke have an excuse to step out of the chaos and the noise for like two minutes and into the relative calm of the pavement just outside of the back door.
I’ve been quietly thrumming with anxt for the entirety of every shift this week, because what if I’m not doing a good job and what if somebody is going to pull me aside at any moment and tell me that I am not useful and I don’t deserve to be here
Sometimes I escape into the walk in cooler for a minute, just to breathe. I have done this in every kitchen I’ve ever worked in. This is easy, because all kitchens are secretly exactly the same.
In every kitchen I have ever worked in, there has always been at least one person that I could go to if I needed to ask questions.
This is the person who knows exactly what they’re doing and where everything belongs, but also doesn’t get paid enough to worry too much about whether or not everything is running smoothly. There’s a kind of balance there that leaves room for patience when talking to new people, especially the ones who are trying to do a good job.
They are generally grumpy old ladies with crooked teeth, sad eyes, a solid sense of humor, and their own copy of the recipe book which nobody else is allowed to touch.
There is one of those, here. She’s probably old enough to be my grandmother. She has a red tattoo of a dragon with butterfly wings on her ankle, which she told me she got in Australia.
When I talk to this kind of person, I don’t feel like a burden, and so I can actually think. It calms me down, a little. Enough.
I am focusing on keeping up with the whirlwind pace of what is going on around me, and learning how to do as many of the various tasks as possible.
Ask questions. Take nothing personally. Notice small details. Follow instructions. Work together. Pay attention to your surroundings. Clean up as you go along.
I am pushing so hard.
I’m going to try to rest now, because I am so tired. I hope it’s a good night.
A friend turns twenty-two, and celebrates with a small gathering of old friends.
We burn a large pile of dry brush, inside of a circle of stones. The heat sends all of us a few steps backwards, for a moment. The flames are taller than we are.
We carefully throw an old Christmas tree onto the pile and watch the flames double in highth and width, for a few moments. It is breathtaking and beautiful and we are all extremely pleased.
When the flames die down, we roast marshmallows over the coals. I roast two of them on the end of a twisted piece of grapevine that is longer than I am tall, because the heat is still intense.
Someone is playing music through a bluetooth speaker. Also, there is a bubble gun or two, because this is a party for Adults.
For some of us, this is the first time we’ve had a chance to actually talk, since… it’s been a fucking long time. So as the sun goes down behind the trees, we talk. About what we’re doing with our lives, about the world, about history and science and religion. We also gossip to no end.
We’re different now that we were in high school. We’ve grown – up, and out, and over the edge, and across the water.
We’ve all learned an unexpected thing or two about ourselves. We’ve seen horrible things, and tried to come to grips with how awful the world can be. We’ve experienced things so beautiful it hurts. We’ve gone on adventures. We have fucking tried new things. We’ve worked and rested, laughed and cried, gotten lost, and figured things out in time.
We’ve all loved and lost, and it shows. It really does.
And now we’re here around the campfire, eating chips and talking about All Of The Gay Things. And it’s fucking lovely.
I drove home smelling like a campfire, and I couldn’t stop smiling inside.
Last night, the rain came down hard on the attic roof. I looked out the window and saw flashes of lighting tumbling through the sky to the north east. The clouds seemed to flicker, tossing the light back and forth amongst themselves. I haven’t seen the sky put on a show like this since I was very small.
I pulled on a pair of cargo shorts and a sweater and navigated through the big empty house, down the stairs. I made my way to the porch.
I settled into a hammock chair, and rested. The rain came down all around me, but in the shelter of the porch it was cool and dry. I watched the lighting make silhouettes of the cherry tree branches. And I listened to the thunder, which seemed very far away.
It was peaceful.
I forgot about everything, until the storm faded into the darkness behind the trees.
Today, I went to therapy. I filled my tank with gasoline. I purchased a large cheese pizza with mushrooms and some sweet iced tea. I read a book about serial killers, stopped at the pharmacy, and made some phonecalls I’d been putting off too long.
I am in my mother’s garden, and I am not wearing any shoes. We are picking strawberries.
The ground under my feet is dry and crumbling, parched in the sun. This space is overgrown with weeds, and cluttered with old fence posts and curling wooden boards.
We didn’t plant strawberries this year, but somehow they are here anyway. The patch is thick, and wide, and it rambles.
I balance on my heals, close to the earth, and reach out my hands for the berries… bright red, all the way down.
I talk and she listens. I try to tell her what is wrong, and I think she almost understands.
Two opposing things are true at the exact same time. I am more grounded that I’ve ever been, and I am also impossibly lost and shaken and I am so frightened.
I am filled to the brim with a sensation that something is horribly wrong in the world, that something bad is going to happen.
I feel as though the entire universe is hovering on the brink of something I can’t name.
I am back for about two seconds from a brief and accidental hiatus from writing for this blog. I got to the end of last semester and realized that I needed to sleep for a thousand years, and then life caught up with me for a while.
This has been an interesting time.
Since the beginning of this summer, I feel like I’ve jumped feet first back into the world. I have so many stories that need telling, but this isn’t the right place nor the right moment.
There have been campfires.
I’ve fallen in love, a little bit, for like a grand total of seven minutes. There were caterpillers. And then I picked myself up, again. I’m walking with a bit of a limp. My knees are still a little dusty, but the scrapes are healing. No hydrogen peroxide was applied to open wounds.
I’ve fallen asleep in the back of the car, on the way home from trivia night at a gay bar in the city. Our table was the best table. We won a shot of strawberry lemonade vodka, from which everyone took a sip.
I have sat cross legged on the floor of a living room with two amazing humans. We played slap jack until our knuckles were sore.
I’ve unearthed dusty boxes of seashells and fabric and glassware and cassette tapes that used to be my grandmother’s, in the attic over the kitchen. It is tough emotional work.
I’ve worked out that I am roughly a size 30 in men’s cargo shorts, which is tremendously useful information to have.
I have accumulated what feels like an unnecessary amount of knowledge about serial killers. This predominantly happens as I’m drifting off to sleep.
I’ve taught myself how to paint, a little bit. I tried to paint lots and lots of naked women, but the boobs are unexpectedly tricky and I still can’t get the shading right.
Aaand I’ve learned how to take a hit like I know what I’m doing.
It has been wild.
I want to sit with you and tell you these stories. Maybe, someday. Maybe I will write them down.
These last few days I’ve been struggling under the weight of a long, drawn out, and extraordinarily shitty depressive episode. Today was really bad. I woke up feeling like like I’d been run over by a truck, but in the emotions? I hope that makes sense.
I tried watching Bob Ross videos. I have just discovered that I can watch those on YouTube, because of course I can. They make my heart sing and calm down my brain.
But then I tried to make a painting, and the painting was predictably imperfect, and I felt frustrated and sad. I wish I could write him and ask what to do about feeling sad when you’re not able to make something perfect. I think he would’ve written back.
I tried walking, aaaaand it was really hot and muggy. I stopped and got a cold ice tea with lemonade from the convenience store at the intersection in the middle of town. Driving in the sun with the windows down, drinking iced tea with lemonade, felt sooo nice. It broke through the awfulness of the aching, overwhelming feeling, even just for a moment.
I drove to the pharmacy to pick up the next thing that my doctor says I should try. The woman behind the counter has known me since I was small. I wonder what she thinks of all the different kinds of medicines I’ve tried, of how many times I’ve had to change them in the last couple of months. I don’t know why, but I actually told her about it today. “I’ve been looking for something that helps my brain, but it’s so hard to find something that doesn’t throw everything else out of balance,” I said, very quietly. Even though we were both still wearing masks, I could tell from her body language that she understood. She was very kind about it.
I wonder if all of the things that I go through in this life will make me into someone who is kind. I really hope so.
I’m currently trying to focus on the textures of the surfaces around me, and hold onto those sensation with everything I’ve got. Crocheted blanket, solid teddy bear, linen pillow case, heavy phone under my thumbs.
My biggest fear about all of this is the knowledge that I might wake up tomorrow and not feel able to get up and move around, and maybe I won’t even want to. I’m so frightened of not being able to move through the haze, but I know that it might happen, because it’s happened to me before. And sometimes the only thing to do is give it time, and wait it out.
It’s hard to maintain equilibrium because it takes energy to balance.
This is really hard.
I hope you’re holding up well, but if you’re not, I’m with you.
The other afternoon I was walking through the streets of the town just adjacent to campus. There are lots of little shops, on those streets – books, music, pizza, Chinese food, sub sandwiches, little handmade curiosities and whatnot. As I walked past one of them, I heard a familiar sound. It was blasting through the speakers in the doorway, pouring out into the street. And it was zydeco music – not the cheap kind that sounds like it’s gotten trapped in a tin can, but the good stuff. The genuine Louisiana article. And then I started to cry.
I can go for months at a stretch without hearing that sound, and then I’ll stumble across it by accident. And every time it’s like remembering who and what I am.
I remember dancing barefoot with my little sister in the muddy field in front of a stage, letting the music move up into our bodies from the ground. And eventually the music from the speakers is so loud that it cracks the sky open, and the rain comes down. So we run and hide, in the safety of the wooden dance floor under an enormous white canvas tent. The rain fucks up our carefully painted faces, and we laugh about it. But the music is happening here, too, and so we go on dancing. Swing apart, swing together, awkward two step to the left and then back again, and I spin her around like I know what I’m doing, and she laughs.
And we are the zydeco music, the accordian and the fiddle and the bassline thrumming in the wooden dancefloor.
And this is who I am, just in case I ever forget, just in case I ever lose sight of the fact that there’s something in me that exists to be held and shared and understood. And maybe not everyone is going to be able to understand, but maybe that’s okay, because this self that I have doesn’t need anyone else to understand in order to matter, to just be.
I am the zydeco music.
I’m the trees and the grassroots, the dirt flying up underfoot in front of the stage. I’m the hula hoop, spinning around. I’m the drumbeat holding everything together. I’m the smell of smoke. I’m the one handing you your first cup of coffee in the morning, and I’m the one giving you six quarters in change for that dollar fifty you paid for it. I’m the smell of food cooking. I’m painting a butterfly in bright colors on the face of a four year old girl. I’m reading a book on a blanket under a tree, in the afternoon. I’m the shade. I’m the paint on the drop cloth. I’m the harmony between the banjo and the fiddle and the upright bass, in the middle of a song in the evening.
That’s me. That’s part of me.
And it all came back to me, on the street outside the little shop, beside the campus. It all came flooding back, all at once. I guess I’d forgotten. Sometimes I do.
Sometimes I forget who I am. But in that moment, I knew.
The CDC just recommended allowing fully vaccinated people to go without masks in most places.
I’m remembering the first time that I heard about the NYS mask mandate, in the spring of 2020. I think I was sitting in the living room of my parents’ house, one evening, after work… or maybe we were at the dinner table, talking.
Remember back then? We kept checking the case numbers, every day, watching the increase, watching the spread.
I remember feeling as though this was all very real and strange and terrifying and new. Going out into a world full of people wearing masks felt like stepping into a science fiction story, or a nightmare. Now it’s the opposite. Now when I think about going out into the world without half of my face covered, it seems odd.
In the last year I’ve gotten to know people – teachers and classmates – without ever knowing what their noses were shaped like.
I also had a new way to tell whether or not a stranger in a crowded room cared about other people, or liked being told what to do. I’ll miss that simple test of a person’s character.
When one half their faces were covered, I was forced to look into people’s eyes in order to read their expressions. I also had to speak up a little more loudly so that I could be heard through the fabric covering my mouth. Never used to speak up, much, before. Never used to look people in the face unless I knew them. I wonder if I will gaze more calmly into people’s faces, if I’ll continue to speak like I want to be heard.
I’ve been waiting so long for this small piece of news. I’d recently started to look forward to it, to wonder when it was going to come.
But now that it’s here… what if it’s too soon? I’m having a hard time believing that things will ever go back to normal, at all.
This pandemic took so much away from me. It could have been so much worse, and I know this. But I still feel like so much is missing that should have been here.
In his parting video lecture for the semester, my astronomy professor told us that he hated teaching like this, from behind a screen, without ever meeting one of us. Because he missed the people that he’ll never get to meet, the classroom full of students, the banter, the questions, the “how was your day” and the “have a good weekend.” It’s the little things, but the little things matter. He didn’t cry, as he was speaking, but I could tell that he would after the camera was switched off. So, I feel like – if I’d ever gotten a chance to meet him, we probably would have been friends.
And maybe after all of this is over I will find his office, somewhere on this campus. And I’ll peek around the door, with my face without a mask, and I’ll say “hi. You never met me, but I was your student. You taught me so much about the galaxies and the stars and the universe, and it was very beautiful. And I just wanted to say thanks.”
I don’t know how many friends I didn’t meet because things turned out this way.
Fuck, it’s been a difficult year.
I hope you’re alright. I love you. We’re going to get through this.
I need to sit up. Get off the couch. Take a shower, wash my hair, put on some actual clothes. Eat something. Brush my teeth. Charge my phone. Take my medications. Drink water. Study. Get ready to go.
I’m full of anxiety again. I feel an intense desire to keep myself numb, to stay where it’s warm, to distract myself so I don’t have to think. I’m exhausted. Overwhelmed.
Thoughts are flaring up again, too. It feels like the end of the world and I don’t even understand why.
For the previous several evenings my whole body has been so full of anxt that I couldn’t function, couldn’t study, could barely sit still. My skin was crawling, I felt restless, like I desperately needed to move but I was so tired and I couldn’t. My brain filled up with so much agitation it was hard to string two thoughts together consecutively. All I could feel was the distress.
For most of the day I’ll be able to get by, but in the evenings the feeling will become impossible to deal with. I’ve been spending my days dreading what’s coming in the evenings, because it hasn’t been going away.
And boy, do I really not have time for this right now. This is the last full week of school before finals week. And I need all the time, I need more time, and here’s this thing taking time away from me when I need it the most.
I do some research and discover that there is a name for this feeling, and I understand why this is happening to me. I talk to my dad, who knows about these things, and we come up with a plan. I call my doctor to explain the situation and ask for help. I leave a message, and then I wait.
In the meantime, in the evenings, the only way to sooth this feeling is to drink lots of water and then become decidedly unconscious. So I go to bed early. As soon as I start to feel the symptoms getting worse, I force myself up the stairs and I lay down in bed and close my eyes and will myself into sleep.
I’ve never actually been able to go to sleep on purpose before, but this week I discover that when I need to, I can.
After going to bed at 7:30 or 8:00 at night, I wake up with the sun and have enough energy to sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed and get up. A little bit of the feeling is there, behind my eyes, but mostly it has faded.
Getting out of bed early in the morning is usually difficult. My sleep rhythms are inclined towards staying up late for a long time in the darkness, and blinking awake to a room full of light.
Just when I need more time the most, my body catches on and decides to wake me up hours before I usually do. With energy. Like – “here you go, hon. Sorry about last night. Here’s another chance.”
I say thank you with a glass of water and more of the necessary chemicals. And then the late night of studying which never happened becomes time hunkered down over the books, while the sun rises.
And it’s a peaceful time. It’s quiet. Nobody else needs anything from me, nobody is arguing in the kitchen. The light is gentle, not artificial, not from a smartphone. It’s real.
I decide that even though it’s been awhile I still really love mornings. Maybe this is good. Maybe trying to work on a different schedule is actually going to help me get through these last couple of stressful weeks. Maybe I needed this.
I read somewhere that when your health is really bad it’s hard to understand what to expect from yourself. Some of the incoming messages tell you that it’s okay not to push yourself, it’s okay to rest, it’s okay even to sink down into the mire without fighting it. Some of the incoming messages tell you that you must fight it, you must fight very hard, you have to push yourself to the brink until you’re almost frozen. And it’s so confusing and scary not to know which path is the right one.
But I think there might be a third place. A place where I’m not sinking into the helpless feeling and I’m also not stretching myself so thin that I can’t go on anymore. I think there might be a happy medium.
I’m just not always sure where to find it.
I found it for a moment in the morning, doing my best with school after a difficult night. Just sitting cross legged under several blankets, drinking water, with a textbook balanced on my knees. Feeling okay.
I’m almost to the end of my second semester in a new place. It still doesn’t feel like home.
Four weeks. One term paper, three exams, two labs, a handful of different homework assignments. And then I am free, at least for a while.
I’m listening to the same song on repeat, the way that I do when everything feels overwhelming. This time it’s a waltz called “Transatlantic” by Aoife O’Donovan. It’s soothing, easy on the ears, and pretty. And I still don’t know what it’s about. Something about two people falling in love and then falling asleep on a boat that’s crossing the ocean between Ireland to America. I think.
“You take the high road, I’ll take the low road, I’ll get there before you…”
Also, I picked some daffodills. They are turning brown around the edges in a jar on the kitchen table and I like them. The plantain is just barely coming out, but there’s deadnettle fucking everywhere.
This morning I made tea. I also filled a hot water bottle and took medicine for pain. I wrapped myself up in several layers of fleece jacket and vest and comfy pants and I slipped on my inside shoes. I listened to Whitney Houston, put my hair up out of my face, had a tiny meltdown, cuddled with my cat, and then made breakfast.
My back aches. My face is breaking out. I feel exhaustion everywhere.
Also, it’s fucking snowing! Happy April, New York. There is snow on the cherry blossoms on the tree outside and it’s pretty.
I’m happy because I get to stay home for the next three days. I don’t have to go anywhere or do anything. I can take care of me and work on writing term papers. We might light the stove for the last time this season. And I’m thinking of taking a little time to read a book that isn’t for anyone but me. It might happen.
I’m looking forward to a long stretch of time without a constant stream of deadlines. It’s coming soon. But between now and then I have work to get done. And I want to do a good job.
There’s this breakfast sandwich on the menu at a local coffee & donuts shop. Nice treat when I’m out that way. Eggs & cheese on an everything bagle.
I was driving through the streets of town this morning and I noticed that the leaves on the trees along the streets are coming out. The cherry blossoms are in full swing. There are magnolias and daffodills, and purple deadnettles have completely taken over my mom’s garden out back. Things are living and breathing again. It feels good.
There is a super massive black hole at the center of the milky way galaxy. It’s responsible for holding everything together. Just one of the reasons we all of us are here. I just learned about it today. This is something that I didn’t know existed, but it literally holds the shape of the galaxy together. Wild.
I reached out to an old friend that I hadn’t spoken with in a long time and said, hello, would you like to get together and catch up this summer? And they were genuinely excited about that prospect. It made me smile.
Another human who I’ve seen go through tough moments is doing just beautifully well, right now. This does my heart good to see, and I’m so proud.
My dad got me a book, as a present. It’s been on my TBR list for a long time. I’m not sure how he knew this. But now I have a copy, waiting to be read.
I’ve made some progress on the papers that I need to write for school. What I have so far is a long way from perfect, but it’s a solid beginning. A place to start. And I have a little time.
I got my first shot of the vaccine. My arm hurt a little but other than that it was fine. More and more people around me keep doing this. It gives me hope for a time when we can all be together again.
My sister keeps getting tattoos and piercings and she’s curling her hair now and altogether settling into herself. It’s fun to watch, and I am proud.
I came out of my shell in a big way, in a philosophical discussion at school this week. I said what I thought, in front of a lot of people, and I said it loud and clear. Since then, four different people have independently sent me emails that go something like “hello, here is an article that you might enjoy. Nice to hear your voice at that meeting. You made some good points, you did a good job, it was a better conversation because you were in it.” And that means a lot to me.
Some other things:
A friend’s roommate passed away. I can’t offer more details here, because I’m not sure that I should share them. But it’s a sad thing. Please send good thoughts in the direction of a friend and her partner as they process what’s happening together.
My dad is struggling with health things. Again, I don’t want to throw details into the wind at the moment. But he’s home right now and he’s resting. He keeps recieving get-well cards in the mail from people he hasn’t spoken with in forever and it’s giving him reasons to smile. He’s very strong.
My dog’s arthritis is acting up. She’s getting old, and her knees weren’t ever built to carry her weight, and she’s getting tired. I don’t want to think about how empty this house would feel if she weren’t here, but for the first time I’m noticing the grey hair around her muzzle and the bumps on her skin. And it feels like an ache, you know?
Even though I often stop and focus very hard on the sweet things, I still spend a lot of time feeling mentally sick and tired and unhappy. I’m looking for ways to tend to myself when I’m struggling, and I have a handful of skills to lean on when I need them. But it’s one of the hardest things in the world to cope with, especially when I’m under a lot of stress.
It’s all feeling heavy right now. If I’m writing a little less, then that could be the reason.
So I’m here, just tending to the places that hurt, noticing the explosion of taste in the everything bagles and the blossoms on the trees and the strength of the friendships.
I’m really tired of watching people bully one another on the internet. This sucks. I’m going home.
If there was something meaningful that I could do, then maybe I would. Maybe I would stay. Maybe I would do the 21st century online equivalent of getting into fistfights in back alleys and using a trashcan lid for a shield.
But – nope. This is not a power that I have.
A friend reminds me that people find it soo much easier to be terrible from behind the screen.
What bothers me is that more often than not, the folks who are doing the bullying are literally just standing up for what they believe to be right. But somehow, this manifests as something with the power to really hurt somebody else. And it’s spooky.
I don’t know, I just – I’ve gotten sucked into watching a particularly dramatic spectacle unfold online. Again. And I have actually started getting invested. So I’m starting to sense that this would be a good time to step back, for my own sake.
I feel like there are much better things I could be doing at the moment.
Currently, *better things to do* includes looking closely at black and white polarized images of the Crab nebula from 1975. The resolution is a little fuzzy, which is understandable!
Space is neat.
May I have the grace and the thickness of skin and the sense of humor and the perspective and the humility and the compassion and the confidence to know when to stop, and the discernment to be able to tell when it’s worth staying.
There are six buttons on the dashboard of my vehicle, each corresponding with a different radio station. When I’m driving, I can skim through the radio stations until I find something that I don’t mind listening to. This is likely going to be either the trashiest top 40 pop song that happens to be playing, or an old familiar rock song that everyone half-knows.
While I drive, I adjust music without really knowing I’m doing it. Navigating away from commercial breaks, listening to snatches of different songs and deciding which one I’d like to hear through to the end. This is how I listen to music, mostly. I’m pretty sure other people do this diffetently, anymore, but it still works.
Sometimes I’ll croak out some of the lyrics, or try to harmonize. I am glad that nobody is listening. It’s a nice distraction from the knowledge that I’m hurtling through time and space inside of an ancient rustbucket that still just happens to miraculously work, when I ask nicely.
The rustbucket’s name is Helen. She’s a kelly-green Jeep from the mid 00’s. She is covered in peeling and faded bumper stickers. She burns oil and the tread on one of the tires wears thin faster than the rest of them. She doesn’t like accelerating up any of the hills. Her best feature is her radio. And she plays CD’s.
I have lots of memories from before the pandemic – before Europe, even – of having to stop and refill the tank about once a week. In the winter, the metal pump handle would be so cold that my fingers would go numb. I’d stand there and watch the digital numbers on the screen tick at regular internals… dollars as a function of gallons. It’s a linear function, but the slope keeps changing in response to changing variables that seem very far away.
Now that I’m not driving every day, the intervals between refills are longer. This is nice, because I’m saving a little money. But also the less time I spend driving the more frightened I am, every time I get behind the wheel. Out of practice.
I’ve come up with an ingenious way to avoid the company of other humans.
Right now, masks are required in all of the public buildings around campus. As they should be. Still, I don’t love the feeling of something covering my mouth and nose and I’m still trying to stay away from other humans if I can help it. But there are these long stretches of time between my weekly mandatory COVID test and classes, and home is too far away to justify not just waiting it out.
Recently, I’ve been finding a place to park my car near the college. I fold the seats down in the back and set up camp behind the passenger’s seat. I balance a computer on my lap, books and papers spread out on the floor around me. If I crack the windows, it isn’t stifling. It’s not exactly cozy but it works. And it suits me.
There are vast halls and little nooks and niches, all over campus, all of them meant for students to gather and work. These are mostly closed down, right now. I wish I was spending time in these places, getting to know this college, maybe finding things to like.
But for the moment, I’m just camping out in the back of my car, working. I got into the habit of buying sandwiches from the gas station on the corner. Sometimes I sip orange juice or coffee. I have almost decided on a parking spot, actually. There’s a public lot behind a dentist’s office, an office building, and a restaurant & bar. The parking lot has two hour parking until 4PM, and I don’t even get there until 2. It works for me, for the moment.
This is just one way my life is weird and different because of the pandemic. But I don’t mind this. It’s peaceful and kind of nice. I’ll take it.
When it’s time to go home, now that the weather is nice, I roll down the windows and turn up the music. I take an unnecessarily indirect route home so as to avoid every single one of the scary intersections. I drive by the end of one of the smallest finger lakes, through the town where my older sister spent half of her childhood time.
So – yeah. I am practically living out of my car, except when I’m not. Except when I’m at home.
My cousin on the other side of the pond is ridiculously happy and she deserves it.
More and more of the people around me are getting vaccinated and I’m starting to feel like there’s hope.
I scheduled a certain appointment at a local clinic and I’m very stoked.
Homemade brownies exist and they are lovely and there’s absolutely no such thing as too many of them.
My dad is breathing. This is important. Sometimes he has a hard time breathing and it’s worrisome, but he’s still here.
The flowers are coming out, around campus. There’s a kind of tree with thick, waxy white blossoms planted at each corner of the quad. I sometimes have to stop and just look at them for a minute.
As much as each day feels overwhelmingly full of things to do, in the beginning, I am finding that I’m able to get through them – moving slowly, deliberately, one moment at a time.
My cat has started curling up into a ball on my chest and purring, when I lay down to sleep at night. It’s centering.
I can keep going to school. I had a moment this week of not being sure I would be able to keep going to school because of arbitrary factors like scheduling and money and class credits and time. But I can keep going.
The skill of discernment. The ability to sit down and squint hard at a messed up ball of anxiety and gut feelings and sometimes tell the difference between those things, so that I can work out what’s actually true.
I have friends. This is a hard thing to believe, most of the time, because I never expected that it would happen. But it’s real. And it makes me so happy.
I have a fidget cube, a cup of coffee, a dose of necessary controlled substances, and a healthy serving of that particular anxiety that only shows up when you’re sitting perfectly still looking at your phone and you know you’ve got Things that need doing by 11:59 in the evening but you can’t – move –
I stayed up until 3AM watching familiar movies about pirates and also superheroes. I have spent my entire morning looking at memes. There’s an Alanis Morissette song stuck in my head.
And you know what I guess I should clarify that the superheroes and the pirates did not appear in the same movie, although that combination would be the absolute best. I can totally see it.
This weekend is a weekend for putting my hair up and out of my face and drinking tea and writing term papers. This is a weekend for true crime podcasts and Taylor Swift albums, for excel spreadsheets, for thick readings about the philosophies of distributive justice. These next few minutes are for doing laundry. At least one hour before bed sometime soon is for drawing up connections between epistemology and political discourse. At least a couple more of those hours are for naps.
I wish I had a largish whiteboard, an attention span, possibly a soulmate, understanding, and more time.
Ice cream sandwiches, in the back of a pickup truck, in a rainstorm, hitchhiking from Boston, Massachusetts to New Port, Oregon. Only one person is allowed to wear a button down. Rock, paper, scissors tournaments are involved in deciding which one. Two out of three. Let’s go.
You know what else, though –
A hypothetical space in which nobody had to be made invisible, or make themselves invisible, if they didn’t want to be.
A space where nobody ever had to tell anyone that they were valid because the concept of a lack of validity didn’t exist.
A space in which people approached one another with curiosity instead of expectations.
A space where nobody had to come out, because y’all had never made the assumption that existing in any particular fashion is a deviatation from the norm.
Purely hypothetically, I think this would be wonderful, and I kind of want to go and physically build places like this with my own bare hands.
I’m saying this because I am very good at making myself invisible. I didn’t even get to be that way on purpose. It’s just a habit. Being a pathological liar is a habit. So is not ever saying certain things out loud.
And sometimes it hurts.
So it would be fucking beautiful for nobody to ever have to feel that way. Not if I could help it.
This week I’m learning about the birth of stars, and it’s lovely
I found a fidget cube in my house and it’s keeping me sane
Boots
The immediate relief from the pain that is so constant that I don’t notice it anymore, when I found some aloe vera gel and put in on the evil daemon acne from hell
Muffins. Banana walnut, specifically
Suez canal shenanigans. The memes have been truly excellent.
The existence of little people
Neurodivergence in all of its forms, because the world would be a flat and colorless place if it weren’t for the people who were born to see things differently.
German past participle words. Those are nifty
Water pressure in the shower
Walks with my dad
House
Radio broadcasts
Spiders who don’t mind taking a short trip from the ceiling over my bed to the outdoors
Beeswax candles
Every person who has ever taken the time to make a text post about the way mental illness shows up in their life and makes things difficult, because that little bit of “ah, okay, this is a thing that happens to other people” is insanely reassuring
The friend who doesn’t mind when I send dozens of memes at a time
The friend who doesn’t judge when I talk about stealing plastic turtles from a gift shop, multiple years ago, in a different state
My phone. This place to go and rest and watch TV or look at cute things that make me laugh at 3AM when everything seems bleak
This space to write
The sound of birds outside
A place to rest in the sunlight
Did I mention this fidget cube? It clicks and makes other satisfying noises
When my head got stuck in the back of a chair Don’t know how, I guess I was talented.
I still remember the feeling Fragile bones, soft flesh Trapped between two metal bars Screaming for what felt like hours Because I couldn’t move I couldn’t get out And nobody was around To hear me crying For I can’t remember how long
Eventually, my father found me Had to go get an electric drill And take the screws out of the chair Inches away from my face and ears And then I was free, but still shaking
Ever since then I’ve hated the sensation of not being able to move Of being stuck in tight places Anything wrapped around my neck Pushing down on the back of my head
When I walk on cold days without a scarf My neck feels vulnerable and fragile When I drive in a car I imagine unexpected collisions At every intersection I anticipate the snap Then nothingness.
If past lives exist, I wonder if Maybe, I wonder if I was hung from a tree I wonder, was I French aristocracy
And sometimes I throw up Just thinking about it.
And so, now When I think about Knees and necks Uniforms and innocents When I think about Eight mins and 46 sec’s When I think about Running out of breath It gets to me.
And eight fucking minutes & 46 sec’s Was a long fucking time to kneel on his neck It’s a long time to watch the light fade from his eyes It’s too long not to move while an innocent dies
And it hurts.
And I remember the feeling, from back in the day Fragile bones, baby flesh, a cold, red, metal cage Could not fucking move. It was sort of absurd. But then what would have happened if nobody heard
And the child whose breath comes in sharp little gasps and cries
Reaches out to the man who can’t breathe, while he dies
Breakable, fragile bodies in similar places
Empathy is stronger than race, gender, age based expectations
My fingers fly to my throat, and that’s probably why
It still gets me this much, thinking of how he died.
And it’s so far away from being the same But it gives me enough to relate to the pain Of one man, amount thousands, who died in this way. Just a little. Barely a fraction. A smidge. Just an echo, a blur, an imagined image
But if even that smidge haunted me for a life
then I think I can understand all of the strife
The fire and the call and the pressure to change /the world so that this never happens again
In this world where the lynchings never actually stopped
There’s gonna be a trial, for the blue boy, the cop, today
Out of thousands, participating or complicit in a legacy of violence
Even as they pass laws in Georgia
Making it illegal to bring water to those waiting in line to vote
I just want to stop and take a second to note
That I don’t
Want to live in a world where generations of people can’t know
If it’s gonna be a gun or a knee or a rope
– snap, then nothingness –
So hold your head up high
We’ve got a long way to go.
I just want to make this world into the kind of space
where everybody is some kind of semblance of heard and safe
Where the trauma that lingers and continues to be perpetuated
Patchwork white and crumbling shingles Beside newer white siding Keeping out the rain Periodically interrupted By a plethora of windows Letting in the light
Uneven white paint on old, old walls Sun through wide kitchen windows Barn roof shingles on the grass after wind Cobwebs in living room corners Textured blue plastic porch floor Expanse of deck, with a barbecue smell On the warm, windy days.
French glass doors covered in Smudges of dog nose prints Only one door ever opens Except at Christmas When we bring in the tree.
Heavy iron pellet stove Chipped red painted floor Adjacent scratched cherry floorboards Peeling white painted door frames Mismatched light fixtures (especially the round one in the middle of the ceiling that the youngest daughter unabashedly refers to as the ceiling titty) Threadbare grey love seat, and crocheted blankets, for naps Television, in the evenings Doctor Who, Marvel Shrek, The Matrix, Scrooge, It’s A Wonderful Life.
Piano that nobody knows how to play Globe on top of one bookshelf (the one with the sliding glass door) Old clock on the armoir with the blankets And the dusty games, the wooden chess set With the green velvet lining Losing horribly to cousins Every time.
Dark, wood grainy kitchen cupboards With the mismatched set of dishes Thick white plates with pink rose pattern Around the edges Thick white counter top Coffee maker, toaster, clutter, sink With two taps, one with softer water A small black handle, older than me. Stainless steel pots in the corner cuppboard The one with the hinged door that bends My older sister crawled inside once In the very beginning Cranked linoleum kitchen floor That sags in the middle And looks like woven white and brown square tiles, arranged in a simple pattern That repeats, over and over again
White Christmas lights over the windows The BOSE radio on top of the microwave The stack of CD’s Listening to Live From Here Coloring at the kitchen table Baking cookies and cutting them out Doing math homework Prisms and knickknacks by the windows Casting rainbows on the floor and walls When there is bright sun in the morning
The door to the creepy stone basement with the cobwebs and the untrustworthy stairs The door to the pantry The mudroom The room with the sink And the room where the cats sleep And the room to the rest of the house.
The steep wooden stairwell We keep the door closed because of the cats. Painted insane pink, because my mother Let five year old me choose the color The plaster lump in the stairway wall That looks like a monster lives inside Breathing slowly
Uneven wooden floorboards, rickety railing
The little hallway with four doors Attic, bathroom, bedroom, bedroom. You have to cross a narrow bridge Over the stairs To get into the attic
God, the attic Where I have been sleeping Since I was thirteen Since I needed a space of my very own. The attic Filled with three generations Mother, grandmother, and great grandmother Doilies, Christmas tree ornaments Soapstone, old cloth Dusty telescope Old trunks full of tiny dress up clothes Stuffed animals Old diaries Children’s books Carefully preserved Two windows And the terrible ugly vanity Inherited from somewhere With drawers full of my candles And small tangible things I hang on to, to remember Like the paper with the first calculus problem that I ever asked for help with in college.
Downstairs, again The wooden statue of a heron With its head high and its wings folded By the windows The rickety table Doing homework Under the roof In the shade of the big pine tree Strumming guitar on the porch steps Cradling stray kittens in our arms Sitting in Hammock chairs and reading
And always the unpaved road Running north to south Across from the driveway Mailbox across the street The unpaved road with the bend in it And the creek, and the fields, and the woods Endless walks, every day, forever Not really ours, but as much part of home As any of the rest of everything
The row of maple trees, the pines, the cherry tree, the tree house tree with white blossoms, the linden tree which we planted, the apple trees, the peach trees, and the gardens
And the views of blue hills Fields and hedgerows, watertowers The stillness and the quiet That everyone noticed Whenever they visited They always noticed the quiet
And the fire pit that I build and dug with my own hands and a shovel, “all by myself” (But not really, I had help)
And the stone covered grave Where we buried my girl My sweet, black lab, coonhound baby The one they adopted The summer the year I was born
And the one who is still with us Who has terrible arthritis But still loves to go for walks
And all of the cats, so many, over the years.
I don’t want to leave this place. I don’t want any of this to ever change. I don’t want to lose this, I don’t want to have to give it up.
But mostly, I want to remember. So I make it into words.
cats, the peepers in the hollow, the storm coming over the valley, daffodils opening, boots, mud, driving with the windows down, songs from that old mix tape from when I was fifteen, the MCU, getting caught outside when it’s raining, noodles, home, pants that fit, perspective, water & candles when the power goes out, crocuses, three days of t-shirt weather, an entire day of eating popcorn and watching anime, the option to cry when I need to, my folks, my little sister’s stick & poke tattoo, dogs, a place to sleep, the handful of safe things in this world that is very hard to live in and be a part of.
Grounded, instead of trembling Competent, instead of flying by the seat of my pants all the time. More skilled at regulating my feelings, and infinitely more graceful when communicating about them Connected, instead of attached Confident, instead of hot and bothered Courageous, instead of frozen Wise, instead of perpetually confused Unfuckwithable, instead of delicate Laughing uproarious, instead of offended Discerning, instead of judgemental Capable, instead of fumbling Comfortable in my own skin Content, instead of always in pain Chill, instead of jealous Patient, instead of restless Present, instead of distracted Conscientious, instead of prejudiced Honest, instead of pathologically not
Soft and warm, instead of carrying this impossible awkwardness that feels like the wall of a glass honey jar between me and the rest of the world
(These binaries are not absolute truths, but they are tools to help me understand.)
And all of this is a little strange.
Because, incidentally, here are some of the things that exist in absolutely everyone I care about, and I don’t really care:
In the people I love, there be tremors, fumbling, fucked up attachment styles, perpetual confusion, impossible awkwardness, harsh judgments, discomfort inside of their skin bags, fragility, a tendency to flee or fight or freeze, hot fucking botheredness, difficulty feeling and talking about feeling, restlessness, entire hidden rooms that never open, impatience, dishonesty, jealousy, insecurity, distraction, and so much constant pain
And I don’t care. I see y’all. I know you, a little. I’m not pretending we aren’t all incredibly messy and fucked up. It’s just that these are not the things which will stop me from wanting to be your friend.
Maybe some of them used to be. But I’m so tired of shutting people out of my life. I’m so tired of thinking of people as disposable because we aren’t.
Please. We have so little time, here. Please remember that you accidently forgot your scarf in my life, and come back for it.
And to be very fair, I think – I think there are times in the course of a life when, in order to stay safe, you have to be a little cold. But I think they’re further and farther between than my mother taught me. I don’t want to be cold anymore.
I’m trying to learn how to love imperfect people, because if I don’t I will never know love. And I’ll never be safe in my own skin, if I don’t learn how to get by with the having of the faults.
It’s easy to say I love you anyway to everyone but myself. I’m trying so hard to learn, but it’s difficult.
I love you in spite of all of the things that are uncomfy. Perhaps even because of them.
I can give you this one gift when I can’t give very much of anything else. It isn’t much, but it’s all that I have.
To the best of my understanding at this time, eight people were murdered in Atlanta, Georgia, last Tuesday. Seven of them were women, and six of them were Asian women. If I’m wrong about this, I’ll try to put out corrections in a future post.
Hello, friend. I need a moment to breathe.
I want to take a moment to think about death. To think about what that means. To think about the absence of life.
And then I want to take a moment to think about dying. About the last moments of a life. About how most of us want to go out – safe, surrounded by loved ones, or nuzzled one last time by a familiar snout of a cat or a dog, or sleeping.
I want to take the moment and think about what it must be like for the last moments of a life to be filled with confusion, shock, fear, pain, horror. The last moments of the first person perspective experience of this world, spent like this.
I want to take a moment to think about what it must feel like to get up in the morning and not know that this was going to be your last day alive.
Grief. I want to talk about grief.
I want to think about that phone call. The first moment you hear that news. The immediate need to find somewhere to sit down. The tears. The attempt to remember the last time you spoke with them.
Think about times when we’ve all lived through the rest of that day, after hearing the news. And that week, and that month, and that year.
I don’t know what it’s like to loose someone like this. Not in this specifically horrible way. And I don’t mind saying that I hope I never know this pain. I hope I never inflict this pain on others. I would not wish this on anyone.
I have met death in other ways. I’ve lost creatures and people whom I knew or loved in violent unexpected ways, and long, drawn out, and tired ways. But it was never like this.
My heart goes out to the people in the lives of these eight people who were killed.
As for the person who did this – I felt shaken when I realized that he is the same age as me. Maybe even younger.
We talked about him in philosophy class, yesterday. One classmate says he ought to be tortured, slowly, for the rest of his days, because death is too good for him. One classmate says he does deserve to die.
I would rather not kill anyone at all, actually. I don’t know that it would make any difference. Those eight people would still be gone. And I don’t want to deprive him of all of the time he could spend alive in the knowledge of what he has done. All those sleepless nights. Honestly, I don’t want him to deprive of the pain of remorse.
That felt cold. I’m not often cold, but sometimes I can be.
That’s enough for right now.
I think this individual is one manifestation of a problem that runs deep and very wide and right now it’s growing. I’m specifically referring to rise in hate crimes directed towards Asian folks since the beginning of the pandemic, because… well. People wanted somebody to blame for their problems, a scapegoat for all of the hurt. And it’s wrong. It’s exactly what happened to Jewish folk in Germany. And look what happened then.
It makes sense to look for a reason to explain why the world hurts so much. I get it. I understand the impulse. But please, not like this. Please don’t make it the fault of people who seem different on the outside. Please. There’s so much diversity among us, within us, between us, and it’s a beautiful thing. We don’t have to be afraid of it. We don’t have to shove the others to the edges, like they’re somehow less. Because they’re not. Nobody is.
Maybe there’s something that all of us can do to keep things like this from happening. Maybe. I don’t know.
Because… yeah.
I need to breathe.
I want to think about what it means to a person to know that they are especially at risk. And to never feel truly safe, anywhere. I want to think about what it means for many different people who share a similar burden to speak up and say, “we don’t feel safe,” and for nobody to listen. Until it was too fucking late, for some of them.
When a person or a group of people is telling you that they’re being targeted, that they’re in danger and that they need help…
Fucking listen.
The Chinese food place in town burned down at the beginning of the pandemic. There’s another place a little bit south of us, and one near the college that I’m currently attending. I want to go to them and give them my patronage. I don’t know how they’re faring in this place and during this time, but I want them to still be here and be doing okay once we get through all of this. I’ve been peripherally aware of this since a friend invited me to do something similar at the very beginning of all of this, a year ago. I haven’t been very good about doing this, but right now seems like a good time.
It seems like a small thing, but I think it matters. This is something which I can do, even in the middle of everything. Because sometimes engaging with community in a bunch of little ways on a very local level is the best that anyone can do, especially during the hard times.
These are hard times. I’m beginning to wonder if this is just how the world is, if my expectations of ease are naive. If that is the case, I think I’m going to need a thicker skin.
Writing helps me, like it always does.
Thank you for reading. I hope you’re alright, today.
Every once in a while I sit down and write down things which, to me, are some combination of satisfying or funny or comforting or grounding or lovely or beautiful and strange.
I need to do this. I think it pulls everything back into balance. When I leave my brain to its own devices, it will spend too much time in the dark.
Also these things are wonderful and deserve to be noticed, in their own right. I am surrounded by these things, all the time. They’re right fucking there. What kind of person would I be if I couldn’t see them?
Maybe you can see them, too.
Here are some good things:
really good storytelling
affectionate cats
also, less affectionate cats who need a little time to feel comfortable
cats who are absolutely terrible
shoes that fit
every crocheted blanket anywhere
radio stations with long stretches of uninterrupted familiar songs
sharpened pencils and pens that have enough ink in them
filters available on smart phone cameras which make pictures look so much prettier
my voice. singing in the car, alone, badly, to keep the darkness away and keep me from feeling nauseous
the German poem which I read in its entirety this week
interesting astronomy observations
(Parallax is fucking fascinating. So are the stars and all the ways we learn things about them.)
long rambling talks about Ethics
Vincent van Gogh
Skepticism
The friend who helped me build a schedule for this semester which is actually working beautifully
The Last Podcast on the Left
all this time I have before my term papers are due
the birds, who are coming back
whoever set me on the path of looking for nuance and presupposing complexity and thinking outside of the boxes and outside of binaries. Thank you.
the book that taught me that it’s not what things seem like, it’s what things are like. (A Wrinkle in Time)
whoever taught me how to listen.
whoever set me on the path of reflection; (Hello!!)
the professor who told me that there’s hope for a growing acceptance of different kinds of people, because he’s seen it grow so much in just the space of one lifetime
the recent aspiration to pack my bags and head south and become a sort of homeless boondocking nomad. This has actually been very fun to think about.
online learning.
the capacity to pause or rewatch lectures and walk away from them when I get tired, or if I need to write something down
the capacity to watch lectures on 1.5x playback speed, because it helps me focus
learning from my bed, my couch, my place at the kitchen table
memes and funny posts that make me laugh inside. I have officially hacked my Instagram algorithm and now this is it, that is all there is. Just memes
and sometimes pictures of the night sky from very dark places.
the first time I was able to drink coffee in several weeks
I went out for a three mile walk in the heat of the sun, and there was a warm breeze over everything. It was lovely.
I also found time to take the Hammock outside and string it up between two trees. I curled up there for maybe a half an hour. I didn’t sleep, but I almost did. It was lovely.
My eyelids are a tad sunburned. They’re cranking, just a little pink.
Tonight I am sleeping with my window open for the first time since October.
Tomorrow is supposed to be even more lovely than today was. In spite of all of the school things, I’m looking forward to it.
Maybe this is only a false Spring. A now-you-see-me, now-you-don’t March parade of days that are only going to fade back into the cold again.
But whatever this is, whatever it’s been, it has lifted my spirits.
And small green shoots poking through the ground speak to hope of warmer days, coming. Barefoot days, campfire days, days spent out on the water or up in the trees.
This morning my dad and I sat at the kitchen table and sipped coffee and finally watched the videos of Perseverance landing on Mars. We both teared up at the end when the folks at NASA were jumping up and down and cheering and crying and hugging and it was a good time.
I am more than peripherally aware of this kind of thing right now because I’m taking an Astronomy class from a professor who is absolutely head over heels in love with his subject, who wants to share that feeling of wonder with each of his students. It’s kind of lovely to see.
Studying things that scientists know about space and galaxies and stars does more for me than just offer perspective. I think that the things I’m learning are beautiful. Every little detail is so neat that it’s actually charming.
The light that reaches the earth today was formed in the heart of the sun about a million years ago. It takes a million years for the gamma rays, born when hydrogen smashes together to form helium and matter is converted into energy, to make it from the middle of the sun out the edges. Once the gamma rays make it to the edge, they’ve lost some of their energy and aren’t as dangerous for life. It takes about eight minutes for this light to travel – as fast as anything in the universe can travel – from the sun to the earth, and by the time it reaches us, the atmosphere around the earth has made the light that reaches us safe for life to continue to thrive.
But the light that rains down on the earth today was born about a million years ago and I think that this is beautiful.
Light is old.
Learning about the universe feels like getting to know a person, a person with lots of little interesting quirks and dark places and vast swaths of secrets they haven’t told anybody yet. But the universe might tell her secrets, one day, if we learn how to communicate with each other.
I hope it’s a good morning, today. Sometime, take a second to notice the light.
I feel like I should go to sleep. But I also want to stay awake, so that I can have more time to think about things.
Did you know that if you take a left down US route 20 and just keep going, you’ll eventually end up at the pacific ocean?
The specific town there at the edges of things is actually called Newport, Oregon. On your way to there, you’ll pass straight through not just Yellowstone National Park, but about a half a dozen other slices of creation which are just as sprawling and beautiful and neat. Bare bones of the earth. The pictures of some of them look like pictures taken on Mars or on the Moon. Other-worldly. In one of them there’s an enormous waterfall and in another, there are rows of sand dunes along a beach. Yet another is folded into the arms of a harbor on the left coast. Then there are the rock formations, smooth bedrock, jagged and dark edges of stone and sand, crators and canyons and caves carved into the edges of the landscape.
Did you know that if you step out onto the road and just keep going, you’ll find things you never ever knew existed…
Also along US route 20 you’ll find cities like Chicago, Boise, Cleaveland, and basically Portland Oragon if you’re willing to stray off the beaten path a little.
Favorite other attractions include a potato museum in Idaho, and a free zoo in the middle of Chicago. There’s also a memorial to Anne Frank.
Off the north side of US route 20 in a small town called Lima, in NY, there is a small house where my parents were living while my mother was pregnant with me.
A little further East, there’s a smallish city called Canandaigua. I know it very well.
Boston, Massachusetts is the easternmost bookend of things. I once visited an aquarium, there. And there were penguins. This is most of what I remember.
I want to travel again. I miss it so much.
I feel like Ariel, confined within a pine tree. Only my pine tree is growing – no, living – in the front yard near my house.
I want to get in the car and go. Go to the woods and the water, go to the mountains, go to the hills. To the Badlands, to Alaska, down Route 66 to California, over to Nova Scotia, across the continent. Back across the ocean, one day, maybe. Definitely.
Everywhere.
Except that there is COVID-19.
Except that I don’t want to leave my cats, my dog, my staircase and my kitchen and my bookshelf and my attic, my mother and my sister and my dad.
Still, there’s a backpack packed and ready in the corner of my attic. In that backpack, there’s a sleeping bag, a first aid kit, some duct tape and a bandana, a length of cord, a pocket knife, some matches, and a tarp…
I could get along fine. I could do this.
I’m not putting things off until someday. I’m making the plans, carving them into the pages of old notebooks. I’m waiting for the world to recover from this sickness. But just as soon as she’s ready…
I want to fly.
I’m coming back. I’ll always come back. And I’ll see you when I see you.
Does it count as procrastination if it’s very intentional?
Anyway. I gave myself the gift of two days off, from studying. And I needed this.
Soo much.
So a good thing happened.
I have walked a little every day for the last nine days. It’s been almost a year since I’ve felt able to do this. I don’t walk fast and I don’t walk far, but I’m walking. A little every day. I walked today and I will walk again tomorrow and every time I come back from walking my mind feels clearer, more centered, calm. They say it takes a certain amount of time to built a habit. And it’s hard when boughts of mental illness keeps disrupting the patterns that I’m trying to build. But every time I’m able to get back up after being knocked down, it’s like… I remember. My body remembers how to remember to walk. And because I remember, it isn’t as hard to settle back into old habits again.
Writing. Walking. These things are old and familiar and they are mine and they’re just two reasons out of hundreds of reasons to stay.
Here are some things I did this week instead of studying:
Listened to a podcast about how to save the planet
Watched a George Clooney science fiction movie with my dad
Ate chocolate ice cream
Organized my bookshelf and let go of a handful of the ones that someone else might like more than me
Worked on planning a road trip with the wife, for not this summer but next because planning something for the future gives me so much hope to hold onto
Thought about campfires
Watched all the episodes featuring River Song in the eleventh Doctor’s chapter of Doctor Who
Slept, and had strange dreams about an unfamiliar beach
Stayed off the Z*ckerberg platforms, for the most part
Stole strawberries
Sipped coffee
Thought about Maslow and child psychology
Thought about epistemology and ethics and how they are connected
Put on socks and shoes and went outside and up the driveway and down the road, and took them off and set them aside again when I got home
And walked every day for nine days.
And it was good.
I also aquired a length of paracord, a space blanket, some duct tape, and a bandana, a rough first aid kit, and some chocolate, and threw everything in a backpack in case I need to go on an adventure.
The problem is that I don’t know where I’d go or if I can ever leave this place. I have to stay and make a lap for a tabby cat in an old not-leather chair and burry my face in her hair and breathe in the smell of dust and honey.
I can’t run away and drive south and sleep in my car and complete all my classes from Georgia. Not for as long as she’s here.
Einstein was allegedly obsessed with light. I remember this, because I watched some random documentary about him when I was like ten and this detail has never left my brain.
This recollection kept circulating through my thoughts, yesterday, as I sat through an astronomy lab about the way light interacts with matter. We squinted at rainbows for two hours, through ancient lab equipment. We played around with convex lenses and concave mirrors. We played with light.
Six feet apart, wearing masks across our faces… it all still felt hushed and hurried and tense.
The study of light is not the first thing that I would’ve thought of, when thinking about the study of planets and solar systems and galaxies. But maybe it should’ve been.
On some clear night, after darkness settles… look up.
What do you see?
Stars, you might answer. As many stars as there are grains of sand on all the beaches in the entire fucking world.
Here’s the thing. The only reason that we know the stars exist at all is because of their light. Their light, which has literally traveled as fast as anything in the universe can travel, through empty space, sometimes for longer than there has been life on earth. Those same photons brush tiny mechanisms housed within our eyes, which sends a signal to our brains. Those same photons. That same light.
And that’s how we know the stars exist. That’s how we know the universe is there. Because of the way that light moves and interacts with everything it encounters.
One day I will fucking put this shit in book. I’ll wrap it up inside a story.
I just think that should be a thing.
I don’t understand why people think religion and science can’t coexist. I don’t care if all of this just randomly fucking happened, unfolded on the basis of dry chance. If I was going to worship anything, it would probably be this. Because it’s fucking beautiful.
So we have to understand how light works, because that’s where almost all of our information about the universe comes from. We have to be able to build models and predictions, interpret data, to get at the nature of things.
And it’s more than just the light we can see. There’s an entire electromagnetic spectrum available to us, stretching from gamma rays to radio waves, from ultraviolet to infrared. And it’s all up there, even if we can’t see it.
Sometimes, with the right tools, we can.
Not the same thing, but Galileo used two concave lenses to discover Jupiter’s moons. So there’s something.
I used two concave lenses to make a smiley face on a whiteboard appear slightly closer to me, and also upside down.
Within the spectrum of visible light, different wavelengths correspond with different colors. Squinting at a tube full of helium gas, through a tiny lense in an awkwardly heavy device, we could see the full spectrum, each wavelength fading into the next so you couldn’t quite tell where one color ended and another began.
I’m not entirely sure that I passed this lab.
The equipment was kind of terrible, even if it did let me see things i wouldn’t usually be able to see. Or maybe I just had a hard time understanding how to use it. Maybe it was both. It was hard to focus and keep track of all the information and it was late and I was tired and I still haven’t really learned how to ask for help when I don’t know what’s going on.
So I fudged my way through it. By the end of two hours, it was very not perfect, incomplete in some places, messy and generally terrible.
I felt horrible.
Horrible for not being good enough to do well, in something that I thought was so wonderful. I think that’s part of why I was sad.
And somehow it mattered, next to the stars.
Fuck it, at least there were rainbows.
I hope it’s a good Wednesday. Some of these nights, look up. 🌙
In which I touch on politics, again. I keep coming back to this.
As I listen to the impeachment trial in the Senate, on the radio, I am reminded of a handful of things.
I am reminded of what it felt like to live through this experience. As I hear those same audio clips, I am reminded of how violated I felt. How upsetting it was. How I couldn’t stop thinking about the beginning of A Handmaid’s Tale. About how badly I wanted to hear from everyone I loved to make sure they were okay, in case something bad happened to them.
I am reminded of how shaken I was…
I am reminded of all of the time it took my nervous system to even begin to process what it felt like to live through an attempted coup and an incident of domestic terrorism.
I’m reminded of how funny it was for me to realize how much it mattered to me that nothing bad happened to the government of this country when I spend a fair amount if time criticizing her for her flaws.
Like, yeah. Things need to change. But not like this, and not in this direction. Please.
I’m reminded of how much of a shock it was, after the fact, for me to realize how many people could believe something so strongly when it wasn’t true. I am still reeling and trying to process this reality.
They only believe in things so strongly based on what they understand about the world combined with what they are being told.
I had this moment when I realized that – even if my politics are on the complete opposite end of the spectrum – I am also vulnerable to this kind of manipulation.
Witnessing mob extremism from the other side of the spectrum made me seriously take a step back from everything that I believe in, and assess how much of my belief is genuinely accurate and in line with my fundamental values. It made me question those fundamental values. It made me stop and think about how media and social media influence my beliefs. It gave me that much pause.
What happened at the Capitol made me not want to be part of an ideology anymore, even a comparatively sound ideology, because I don’t want to give away my capacity to think critically and disagree with groupthink. I want to hang onto my capacity to think for myself. I need my conscience to be in my own hands, I need my agency to belong to me and not be at the whim of a mass conviction that is not true.
If it could happen to them, it could happen to me, too. If they could be wrong, then I could be wrong, too.
I was so shaken by this moment in history. Shaken. Shook. So fucking shook. It brought out all my skepticism and all of my doubt and all of my uncertainty.
I feel quite proud that after a lot of reflection, not much about what I believe in has changed. There are absolutely some things that need my attention, and that’s clearer to me, now. I’m grateful for the incentive to take some time to reflect, because the path forward is looking clearer than ever, now.
After what happened… if anything, I feel like what I believe in is more important now than it’s ever been.
Things like integrity and acceptance, like thinking about things in context, like knowing how to listen, like a commitment to growth. Compassion, humility, knowing how to walk in somebody else’s shoes, not taking things too personally, recognizing flaws and trying to address them, seeing how the world is deeply flawed and loving it anyway and trying to find a way to heal it…
Those things have value for a world that’s actively dying, for a world that is still unhealed from a deeply traumatic history that’s still playing out.
These things matter.
it’s just taken me a good long while to begin to feel that centered in my convictions and beliefs again.
Like – fuck.
There’s a difference between fighting to overthrow a government in the interest of holding onto power, and fighting for the kind of social change that will help as many people as possible.
Your extreme intolerance is different from my recognition of the need for more equity in the world. Your hunger for power and money and influence is different from my willingness to stand up for social change, my wish to do right by everyone, no matter who they are or where they’re coming from.
There is a difference between right and wrong.
Yes, there is a grey area. No, probably there is never going to be a universal standard of morality that works for everyone. We’re always going to disagree on things. Trying to force things to be otherwise is foolish.
But there are some things that are objectively right and true and just and good
and having an intolerant madman who rejects empirical evidence incite violence and uses mindfuckery to try to stay in power after he was voted out
***was not fucking one of those things.***
This event in history has left a mark on me, and on all of us.
And as we go forward from this moment, I hope we go forward with integrity. I don’t dare to have very much hope about this, at least in terms of what happens in the Senate.
I cherish what little hope I’ve got.
I care about the world that exists around you, all of the ways that it could be doing a better job supporting you through the hardest times. That is a tiny fraction of what I mean when I say that I love you.
I hope you’re feeling okay, and I hope it’s a good night.
I don’t like driving back and forth to school in the dark, for this one class. There’s this one intersection where my nervous system is convinced that I’m going to die, every time. I hold my breath as I drive across it.
I go carefully.
In spite of the risk of COVID-19, I enjoy sitting in class with other humans. I am reminded that there’s a side of me that surfaces, in a room full of people, which dearly likes to entertain. In a room full of people, I may or may not end up saying things which are accidently hilarious. No idea where this comes from, because for years of my life I was pure awkwardness with nothing to say that could make anybody laugh. Even just over break, I’d forgotten that I could do this. It feels nice.
It’s terrifying, because there are like ten college students in one room and I don’t know how careful any of them are. But it’s also good, at the same time.
Driving home in the dark, I turn up the music. Katy Perry announces that she’s wide awake, over and over again. I am, too. Lewis Capaldi’d gotten “used to being someone you loved,” and I like that song because I can harmonize in that little slice of tenor range that is sometimes available to me.
I don’t especially love these songs. I just need something to drown out the creepy feeling of driving alone in the dark.
I think putting something between yourself and the empty silence rushing past outside is acceptable.
Still, when I got home I had to unclench my jaw, and sit on my toes, to thaw them.
I haven’t left the house to go anywhere in a long time. This felt strange. It felt odd to be in a building that wasn’t my parents’ house, to get lost in the stairways and the double doors.
It’s so strange to live in this time. It’s strange to cover our faces, and even stranger that nowadays an unfamiliar unmasked face looks naked, like there’s something wrong.
It’s strange to worry this much about going out into the world and living.
I don’t think I’ll take that kind of thing for granted for a long time. Not when this clears up – when it does – and not for a long time after. I think every time I leave the house without a mask I’ll feel like I’m forgetting something. I think every time I’m standing beside someone, closer than six feet will feel too close.
(tune in next week for another episode of “is this worldwide pandemic potentially traumatic??”)
To be continued.
Anyway. Yesterday took a lot out of me. Leaving the house at all was tough.
Today I’m lucky – I get to stay home, boiling eggs and drinking coffee, reviewing German cases, learning about Kepler’s third law and the mathematics of elliptical orbits. It’s good to move through the world like this.
But I’m tired.
Soo tired.
Reading Braiding Sweetgrass is like having a piece of summer in your pocket that you can take out and look at whenever you need it. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys connecting to that feeling.
I’ve also been listening to songs from Danielle Ponder & the Tomorrow People. It’s beautiful music.
Last night I turned off my phone and stayed up late reading a book for the first time in what seems like a long time. Taking the time to make a dent in my ever-growing TBR pile feels like a good thing, even though I keep telling myself that I don’t really have time.
This time, book is Braiding Sweetgrass. The author is Robin Wall Kimmerer. The first chapters are about an indigenous creation story, about the mysterious synchronousity of pecan fruiting seasons, about picking wild strawberries as a child in upstate New York.
I picked strawberries, as a child, in upstate New York. That was a good time.
This morning I am slowly but steadily working through all of the Astronomy work that I get to do. I learned today that there are spots on the surface of the sun which are three times the diameter of the earth. I genuinely cannot wrap my brain around this kind of scale, and I am reminded of that one Douglas Adams quote about space being… big. Like, really big. The exact words are escaping me in this moment, but some of you might actually remember them.
These labs are tricky. If I get a C in this class, I’ll be okay with that. And I haven’t felt this way about anything in academia in a long time.
Just glad to be here.
After the Astronomy stuff there is the Art History stuff. This is straight up general education, and honestly it could go a handful of different ways. I could just plow through it and get it done without slowing down enough to take any of it in. I could probably do things this way and still get a good grade.
But, since I’m here…
I’m just trying to remember that time when I was lucky enough to walk through the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, with a cousin and a woman from Morocco that we met that morning at the hostel. I’m trying to channel that feeling into this classwork. If I remember correctly there were some actual tears.
More goes into art than paint and canvas. There’s a human element. This is just another medium for storytelling, if you’re paying attention. And stories are powerful things.
General education feels like a good place for me to be visiting right now. Like it’s – centering, to try new things. To push myself in a different direction. It helps me to practice being open to things that are just a little bit random. They inform my brain that there is more out there in the world than the handful of things that I struggle with, the weight of things that seem impossibly wrong.
There is more, out there in the world. More than you can ever possibly be aware of. And some of it is beautiful. And a whole lot of it genuinely matters.
I’m sitting cross legged on a rolled up yoga mat on the floor of my attic bedroom. There is an ancient laptop that looks a bit like a tank, open in front of me. It used to be my dad’s, I think? Like. Thousands of years ago. But it still works, and that’s all I really need.
In order to run the next online lab for my Astronomy class, I need to download the most recent version of Excel. I haven’t actually done this before, so we’re teaching ourselves how. On the spot. If I don’t figure out how to do this by tomorrow, then I won’t be able to work on this lab, which would suck. Royally.
This is fine, I can totally figure out how to do this.
Meanwhile I am so glad that I randomly decided to take Astronomy as a general education credit. It’s so cool.
Last week we downloaded a program called Celestia and got to take a simulated tour of the fucking universe. It was beautiful, and fascinating, and the scale of things puts life into perspective.
The universe is 13.8 billion years old. If you were to compress all of that time down into the span of a single year, all of human history would fit into the last 30 seconds of December 31st.
I’m sitting cross legged on a rolled up yoga mat on the floor of my attic bedroom, just south of a little town full of right wing religious conservatives who like to play golf. The town is situated in amoung a few lakes scratched north to south across the landscape, as by the fingers of an enormous hand. The lakes are situated in the upper righthand side of a continent that takes up a wide swath of a northern hemisphere of a roughly spherical planet that is mostly covered with water. The planet is hurtling in circles around a flaming ball of heat and light. This solar system of which my planet is a part is about two thirds of the way out from the center of a galaxy, populated will billions of similar stars.
If the sun was the size of a grapefruit and was situated in Washington DC, then the nearest other sun/grapefruit would be somewhere out in California.
On this scale, the earth is roughly the size of the tip of a ball point pen.
Philosophy says that there is no way to verify the objective nature of reality other than to start at this place where most of our subjective realities appear to overlap pretty well, and go from there.
Science says that even though it might be impossible to fully understand everything in the time that’s been given us, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t at least try.
And the latest fucking version of fucking Excel is taking fucking forever to download, in my little attic bedroom, and somehow, miraculously, this matters.
It’s astounding.
Somehow it’s possible to feel happiness when one book out of millions of books is written. Somehow it’s possible to feel a hundred complicated feelings, listening to the words Malcolm X. Somehow it’s possible to be warm in the confines of a wooden house and freeze your ass off out in the snow when life is so impossibly unlikely in this cosmos and it’s beautiful
And I like it here.
From my attic to your place, wherever that might be, I hope it’s a good Monday.
Guess who just impulsively did a thing and now has bangs for the first time in seven years… 🙃
I like my hair right now. It’s this light red/purple color and there are bangs up there and it feels good. Also it isn’t currently shaped like a mullet, which is something.
also I look like a girl?? At the moment?? And it’s Not Terrible? Is this okay? Should I roll with it or try to fight it? what do I do
asdfghjkl;
This is fine. This is totally fine. I’m a randomly shaped glob of electric meat and bones, with hair and fingernails and stomach acid, living on a ball of dirt that’s circling a ball of flaming gas that is 2/3rds of the way out from the middle of a disc-shaped galaxy floating through predominately empty space
I can have purple hair and bangs if I fucking feel like it.
Stop for a second. Take a deep breath. Relax your shoulders, unclench your jaw. Breathe.
There.
I have an hour to just write. I don’t know if I need all of this time, but I’m going to play with some stream of consciousness stuff and see what happens.
A thing happened this morning.
Usually when I wake up in the morning I wake up in a state of obsessive rumination. Like my first moments of half-consciousness are saturated with anxiety spirals. I notice myself scrutinizing every memory and thought for things that are wrong with me, ways that I’ve fucked up, evidence that I am not lovable or loved.
The heaviest things to carry come from the inside. For me.
Once I’ve gotten out of bed and started to actually do things, it often gets better. But the thoughts follow me around, catch me at the least expected moments, when I’m least prepared to deal with them head on.
I often feel helpless.
I did not fully notice this pattern about waking up ruminating until a few days ago. I happened to stumble on a well articulated post in which someone was describing a similar experience, and something clicked.
The post was a reminder that even when it feels like we’re helpless, we’re often not.
When I woke up this morning, I remembered about the pattern. And I tried to remember that I am not completely helpless, even when it feels like I am.
I noticed the thoughts as they showed up.
They are almost all familiar and repetitive. I know them very well. I know what they’re going to say before they get a chance to land on me. I have this one advantage.
This morning, I didn’t fight them. I didn’t argue with them. That would’ve been too much work.
I just looked at them, and wrapped them up in a box, and wrapped a scarf around the box, and tied a string around the scarf, and tucked a flower under the string, and put the wrapped box in a drawer, and locked the drawer, and put the key in my pocket.
And I took a deep breath.
Not right now. I don’t need this right now. This is not helping me. These thoughts are only thoughts, that’s all the are. I don’t have to engage with this bullshit, now.
Noticing the pattern and having some idea of what was coming, combined with the reminder from some random post on the internet that I am not helpless, was useful to me.
Maybe some of these thoughts are worthy of my attention. I think there are some ways that I’m out of integrity with everything, and I think those are the things that deserve to be taken to heart and worked on.
But I think most of the anxiety spirals that come back to haunt me on a regular basis are actually just a stressed out nervous system… doing its best, but also getting things wrong, all the time.
What else should I expect?
What else should I expect from a body made of stardust, from an accident of physics, from something so improbable as consciousness and life in a universe like this one? Every time a body gets sick or dies, it’s a reminder that even though we’re impossibly beautiful and strong, we’re also finite and fragile and imperfectly designed. We can be both at the same time. And that’s okay.
So I don’t blame my nervous system for getting things wrong, for fixating on things that don’t matter. It’s a flaw, but we all have those. This is as good a time as any for compassion.
I think it’s important for me to understand that not ruminating first thing in the fucking morning isn’t negligence of anything important. It isn’t avoidance of something that I’m responsible for fixing.
It’s really just fucking okay to have boundaries and not engage with things when it doesn’t make sense to do so. And some of the most important boundaries exist inside the self.
This morning I woke up and thought of a handful of the best memories of a couple of my friends. I thought about a character from a TV show. I thought about an ethical dilemma from a book I’m reading for class and I let it bother me, I let it get well and truly under my skin, because it belongs there.
And then I got up and put on a t-shirt and jeans and put my hair up and out of my face and went downstairs for some coffee, and I said good morning to my dad. And the day unfolded from there.
This might have been one moment of strength among thousands of moments of not being able to fend off the bullshit. This might have been one good day, not the beginning of a good stretch. I don’t know what’s coming, and it scares me.
Right now I’m sitting that one down, for a while. And I’m going to go to class. My hour is almost up.
Thank you for seeing me, just seeing me, and for not running away.
I get to take ethics this semester and I’m happy because I really needed to take this class.
It’s an opportunity to think and talk and read and write about right and wrong. It’s a chance to develop and grow and work out how best to decide which thing is the right thing to do. It’s a chance to work out how to think about the niggling existential questions, to reflect on the natures of rightness and wrongness.
It’s a chance to do all of those things in the safety of a structured space. This space exists apart from the internet community of strangers, apart from the overwhelming prospect of entering into this kind of work alone.
It’s just a college class. But I’ve seen pretty amazing work happen in college classes. I’ve seen names change, I’ve seen confidence blossum, I’ve seen people realize that they could do things that they didn’t think they could. One well timed anthropology unit when I was 18 changed the way I think about gender things, for always. Those insights landed when I really needed them and I’m so glad that they let you keep that kind of thing after you graduate. Because it left a mark on me.
So I feel hopeful about what this ethics class could help me to work through and process. I spend a lot of time thinking about this material in my own life, because I think it’s important, but the way I think through things isn’t always helpful. I think thinking about these things in the context of a class could be good for me.
Also, my professor isn’t shy about where he stands in terms of what he thinks right and wrong look like in society. And the perspectives that he wasn’t at all shy about sharing on the first day of class made me feel particularly safe.
He’s a grandfatherly person from Italy. He didn’t put his perspectives into the same words that people use on the internet. But the words didn’t matter, the way the ideas were expressed didn’t matter, because underneath the words, there was belief that seemed much stronger and more real.
When you’re in philosophy, you spend a lot of time challenging your most cherished beliefs. And when you’ve challenged your beliefs for many years, the handful of things that you’ve got left combined with all the things you’ve accumulated in time are pretty fucking special.
Wish I had more elders in my life.
I needed this class so much, lol.
And I needed to write this, this morning.
I need some coffee and a book. Love you. Hope it’s a good morning 🙏 🌄
For a while in there I was feeling nervous about going back. Ever since I decided to take a gap year, my relationship to being a student has felt different. I feel like I have to work harder than everybody else, since I took so much time away. Even though I was successful in my first semester back, I can’t shake this feeling that I don’t truly belong in the world of academia in the same way that I used to.
So it’s strange, knowing that there are going to be classes again.
I had such a nice break. It didn’t go by too fast, but it didn’t stretch on forever, either. I worked some things out. It isn’t linear, but I feel like I’m giving myself the space that I need for growth to happen. And it’s going to be alright.
Anyway.
I get to take a class about ethics, and another class about how knowledge doesn’t exist. Which is…
…going to bother me, I can feel it.
After about a week of everything being online, I’m stuck having to go on campus for one hour twice a week. I worked very hard to rearrange things so that I could learn online completely, but because of stupid arbitrary parameters reasons, it didn’t work out for me. I think it’s still going to be okay.
Fortunately, perfect attendance is no longer a priority during a pandemic. If I need to take some time and just stay home from this one class I have to take, that door is open. I’ll just have to work a little harder on my own to keep up with things. And working a little harder on my own is something that I know that I can do.
Otherwise, everything is happening through this rectangular blue screen, through a tiny symbol shaped like radio waves. Everything is happening in this chilly, narrow attic room, at a little round table with fake leather chairs. I’ll be studying in my own space, surrounded by rag rugs and crocheted blankets, beeswax candles and dried flowers, and a tabby cat.
I like this space. It could be worse.
I hope to do better in this semester of college than I’ve ever done in my life. It might be tricky, under the circumstances. But if I give things the regular amount of effort under a harder than usual set of circumstances… you can see where that could go.
So I hope to do well. Will do my best, which actually does count for something.
There are a lot of things in the world that deserve that kind of care and attention. I’m not entirely convinced that school is necessarily the one that should get most of my energy in that regard, but also I’m not too far away from being done.
I think that a lot of that energy could do really transformative things if I was able to focus it outwards and send it into this world. I have a only a vague picture of where I want to focus on, specifically. It’s frustrating, to not have that clarity. But it’s getting a little clearer over time.
I used to train my body so that I could race in the relay races and the mile, every spring. I used to be pretty good at it.
The entire purpose of training every day behind the school was to push our physical bodies to the very edge, to push beyond our limits, to grow stronger.
Four years of training in this way left a mark on me, a certainty that growth is possible even and especially when you’re willing to experience profound discomfort on a regular basis in order to get to that place.
When I can’t bring myself to push to the brink of my endurance for pain, I feel as though I am not trying hard enough to figure out where my edges are.
It’s just one of those things in life that sticks with you.
It has been four years since the last time I ran that mile.
And still, every time I put up a boundary, it feels fundamentally weak. Every time I recognize my limited nature and decide to rest, instead of challenging myself to go beyond my limits, I feel like I’m not working hard enough. I feel like I could be doing more.
And then instead of feeling genuinely good about the compassion I try to offer myself, I end up feeling frustrated and a little sad.
I am frustrated by my finite-ness, my limits. I wish I was so much more than I am, and I wish I had more to give.
I can’t shake this feeling that if only I worked harder, and if only I cared more, I could become stronger.
I can’t shake the feeling that if only I was stronger I would have so much more to give.
But instead I feel weak. Like I don’t have that much to offer the world. Like my limits are holding me back, shoving me down, sitting on my chest so that I can’t get up. It feels like my edges are keeping me from being able to love and be loved, being able to work, being able to fully exist.
And I’m not done grieving.
Fire helps. The smell of baking bread helps. The sensation of beeswax in the palm of my hand helps. Doing laundry helps. Walking helps, breathing in lungfulls of cold air. Listening to voices laughing and sharing thoughts, and listening to fucking sea shanties, and feeling the weight of a paperback book, getting lost in the pages… these things help to center me as I grieve the fact that I am not unlimited.
I wish I could be doing more.
I wish I was that strong.
I just feel tired.
I hope that you’re holding up well, today. Love you.
A conversation which culminated in the phrase “clams absolutely enjoy folk music”
The acquisition of a book called The Wizard of Earthsea
A really excellent breakfast sandwich
A moment of clear headedness, when I was driving and singing along to the radio
Some time spent purposefully rearranging the clutter in my room. It feels ever so slightly better in there.
Laundry that is now folded and put away
Two episodes of MHA
News about a beautiful book that’s coming out soon.
Good things that haven’t happened yet today but are going to happen, soon, because I’m intentionally moving all the necessary matter and energy around:
Mug of hot tea
Shower in the dark
Nap
Online meeting that will hopefully open some doors for me.
I am trying to remember to count all the things, to pull myself back into balance.
A couple of hours ago, I was sitting outside in the loft of the barn. Everything was calm, quiet and still and cold, covered in snow. And my head was quiet, too.
In that moment, I felt better than I have in a long time. More at peace. Clear headed.
And then I got up. I went back to the house, and then there were other people around me. There was noise and conflict and discomfort, echoing in the walls.
I’ve been trying, recently, to notice how absurd it all is. All the conflict. If you look at it that way, it’s – well, it’s actually almost funny.
But once I’d come inside and landed, the peaceful feeling started to fade. And I missed it.
There is so much to carry.
Do you ever cry for no good reason, when you know that nobody is watching?
There doesn’t have to be a good reason.
Sometimes, sadness just is.
And I don’t have to go looking for the triggers or the trauma. I don’t have to go looking for somebody to blame, and I don’t have to go looking for something that’s wrong with me. I don’t have to shove this feeling into a box labeled “cognitive disorders,” in big black letters on the side.
Sometimes, my breathing is just heavy for a moment, and my eyes well up, and my throat closes down, and I don’t have to know why.
A thought is just a thought. That’s all it is, so it doesn’t have to be true.
I’m always trying to sift through the universe and try to understand things. But, generally, just when I think I’ve gotten close to grasping onto a Thing that makes absolute sense, it tends to slip through my fingers. Like sand.
I wonder why this is so difficult. I look to other people, people who speak in absolutes, people who present themselves with confidence, and I wonder what makes them different from me.
Have they figured something out that I haven’t, yet? Or am I just brave enough to admit that I don’t understand, where most people see cluelessness as a weakness that must be concealed?
I feel like it’s never just one reason.
In the very earliest days of philosophy, great thinkers were often spectacularly incorrect about the nature of the universe. This did not stop them from spending a great deal of time trying to get nearer to the truth.
Since nobody actually knew what was going on, there was this whole mess of different ideas about how the world worked, where it came from, what it was made of. Everybody had a slightly different perspective.
Often, thinkers influenced one another’s thoughts. They could either adopt pieces of other perspectives, or they could be critical of other viewpoints and reject the pieces that didn’t make sense in favor of their own propositions. Usually, both of these things happened.
Sometimes you had thinkers who lived far away, on other continents. You had thinkers who were isolated on islands and surrounded by lots of other people who didn’t enjoy philosophy very much.
The isolated philosopher would invent new ideas, untouched by the influence of others.
When many different ideas formed in far away places came together for the first time, there was often quite a lot of bickering about who was right.
Wars have been fought over this shit.
But sometimes, rarely, people who believe different things and have different cultures learn how to live side by side and respect one another’s existence. They learn a little, from each other, too.
Wish this would happen more often than it does.
Even in the midst of all of the bickering, there were some people who stuck with one of the basic tenants of philosophy, which is an odd mix of critical thinking and compromise.
Here is something a philsopher might say:
“Even as I recognize the excellent elements of an idea, it’s also up to me to look at it critically and work out what doesn’t make sense. It’s up to me to either consider alternative perspectives or come up with my own alternatives. And then it’s up to me, informed as I am by two or more perspectives, to decide what I think is approximately true.”
We’re probably never going to be able to grasp the truth in its entirely because we’re fundamentally limited, and we don’t an infinite amount of time.
But this shouldn’t stop us from trying.
It shouldn’t stop me from trying.
I don’t want to devote my entire life to thinking like this, because it is exhausting. I don’t want to fill up my head with the purpose of life or the nature of the gods.
But also… knowing how to think this way has value. It’s applicable in every aspect of my life. Whereever there is discomfort, whereever two apparently opposing things are trying to coexist, knowing how to think like this is useful.
Right now I’m trying to apply this way of thinking to my own political perspectives. I’m trying to decide if I can call myself an activist in good faith. I see so much value in the insights from the left, but there’s also – cult thinking, and narrow-mindedness, and pressure to respond to everything in a very specific way.
And I need to figure out how to adopt the things I belive to be really quite excellent without absorbing the things that feel toxic and wrong.
I believe there is a way to do this. Thinking for myself, trusting myself, not giving too much of my power away feels like a good place to start. I am also borrowing open-ended question asking, from my experience as a tutor, and adding that the list of things that might help me in this process.
The world is unfinished, still raw and rough and a bit wobbly, and there are deep scars in so many places. It needs work. It needs healing. Even in my lowest moments, when I feel sooo far away from being good enough, I still want to help.
And I want to help in a way that doesn’t completely flatten me. I’m still afraid of being uncomfortable. While I’m willing to stretch, I need to make sure I don’t break.
I have some of the tools that I need in order to do this work in my pockets. And it’s comforting.
Two memes were circulating, late in the evening, on the night when 46 took office.
The first was the image of Bernie Sanders at the inauguration. He appears in his infamous grey jacket and knitted mittens, sitting with his arms folded. To me, he looks something adjacent to dejected and sad. Which is somewhat heartbreaking, actually.
Many have pointed out that he appears to be wearing the same grey jacket he wears in that one other meme. You know the one. With the snow??
Anyway. Bernie’s image has been gleefully photoshopped into a variety of other photographs, from other times and places, to the general benefit of everybody.
Bernie is everywhere.* Archeologists from the future are going to have an interesting time with that one.
*except in the Whitehouse, which is horrible.**
**tentative Jungian shrink analysis – the entire collective unconscious is feeling the loss of an alternative parallel universe outcome in which Bernie Sanders took that oath of office. And we’re creating memes because we’re using humor to cope with the fucking grief.
I adore you, Bernie Sanders. I appreciate your vision for this nation and her people, I am so grateful for the way you have fought and continue to fight for our well being, and I wish you had been our 46th president. I’m so glad you exist.
Also, I love those mittens, and I want to know where they came from and who made them.
…okay I looked it up because I had to know…
According to the internet, they were a handmade gift from a teacher named Jen Ellis, from Essex Junction, Vermont, who has since been inundated with requests from people who are trying to buy them. They are made from repurposed wool sweaters and lined with fleece made from recycled plastic bottles. Ellis gifted them to Sanders 2+ years ago and was surprised when he started wearing them on his campaign trail.
So glad you wore them to the inauguration because now they are famous. As they should be. They are great.
The second circulating meme is the collective realization that John Mullaney’s figurative horse has, officially, left the hospital.
Hank Green went on the record and said that, yeah, if a horse left a hospital after four years of causing havoc in there, it would absolutely make sense to take a minute to celebrate.
But after the celebrations were done, it’d be time to clean up the place and get on with the business of helping people. Because it’s a fucking hospital, and that’s what hospitals are meant to do.
This analysis hits differently in the middle of a pandemic.
It’s honestly time to clean up the place get on with the business of helping people, my loves.
I hope you woke up feeling like a weight had been lifted. I hope you read that list of the 17 executive orders that Biden signed last night. I hope you let out a breath you’ve been holding for four excruciatingly long years.
You know… when I woke up this morning, I just… it genuinely felt like Christmas.
And I don’t like ceremonies. I don’t always love speeches.
But I did tune into Biden’s inauguration ceremony, today. I listened to those speeches, and those prayers, and those poems. This time around it was important.
I was sitting in my car in the parking lot of a café, in the sun. The wife sat across from me in her own vehicle, parked next to mine. We had the windows down. My car radio was loud enough for both of us.
We got $5 socially distant celebratory bread bowls, full of soup. And we listened.
I saw Obama fist bump Harris. I witnessed this moment in history. Her story.
I heard Biden’s call for unity. And I genuinely wanted to know how many times he said that word in the course of his speech, lol.
As I listened to Biden’s words, I was reminded of the apparent paradox of tolerance. How can a person practice tolerance for everybody, when the set that is everybody includes the incredibly intolerant?
I think of that meme with the white person with the guns and the c*nfederate flag and the sw*stika tattoos, standing next to the person of color with the turban or the blue hair or the pansexual flag or the tie-died jumper, and the caption that says “why can’t we all just be friends…”
I wonder how to honor a call for unity, if there’s a line in the sand that is so vast and old and impossible to cross.
It’s hard.
As I reflect on Biden’s words today, I realize the way that his words contrast with the sentiments of his predecessor.
I remember that the fundamental message, from the highest tier of authority, in one of the most powerful countries in the world, for four years, has been one of extreme hatred, rudeness, division, unkindness, bigotry, intolerance, and negligence.
And while that chapter is going to leave deep scars, it’s over, for right now. The hatred and corruption that 45 reflected and magnified existed before his time and will go on existing after it, but his time is done.
I feel comforted that the first words from this administration were words of kindness and hope and acceptance, of pattern recognition, and science, and reverence, and duty, and an understanding of the gravity of loss.
Fuck. I haven’t cried all day, but my eyes are welling up as I write this.
Hard to know where to begin, with unity.
Recognize the humanity in the people who are around you. Know that their fundamental worth is untouched by their actions and beliefs. No matter how abhorrent they might seem to you, no matter how objectively wrong they may have been or continue to be.
The person across from you had a mother, is capable of suffering, and is going to die one day, just like everybody else. Remember that, as you navigate the community of humans. Amoung family and strangers. In person and online.
It might not be unity, but it’s somewhere to begin. It’s a starting line.
The name of the poet at the inauguration ceremony today was Amanda Gorman. She is 22. This makes her one year older than I am.
I want to remember this. I was moved by her words.
I hope you felt this relief, today. And I love you.
Today (yesterday?) I went for a walk in a graveyard with a friend. We masked up and talked for a while about politics and books. I can often hold my own in those conversations.
Friend’s mum’s bee associates and chickens are responsible for more eggs and honey than she needs. I offered to turn some of the honey into mead.
We already have too many eggs, but I think I effectively communicated about the existence/premise of certain free food stands in the city as one possible place to share food with people who might appreciate it.
Take what u need, leave what u can…
Rochester has a plethora of mutual aid network / food redistribution nonprofits. It just feels like they’re collectively hurting a little for supply, but this also could be a seasonal thing.
Later in the evening I baked two loaves of bread. One tastes like oats and powdered milk. The other one has a distinctly sour yeast smell. Based on like three data points in an experiment with many uncontrolled variables, it seems like letting the dough proof for three days makes the best bread, so far.
A different friend sewed together the rag rug. I’m getting subtle Captain America vibes from this thing and I kind of like it:
Collapsed into bed and watched a little anime, decided it was time for sleep, turned out all the lights, and got caught in this impossibly uncomfortable half asleep place where I wasn’t quite resting but wasn’t quite concious enough to get up and move around. The plot from the episode I was watching as i drifted off was bouncing around inside of my head like an echo and I couldn’t feel my toes.
…hence the tea and blog post writing at one o’clock in the morning on a Wednesday.
Holy shit, guys, it’s inaugurf*ckingation day. We’re still in the very wee hours, but it’s here.
I hope that this day unfolds with an apt degree of grace.
There’s a certain charge in the air this week. A quiet expectation. Like the world is holding its breath. This tension is heightened by the aftershock of recent events, and by the numbness in the wake of 2020.
For one thing, western NY could be one football game away from collapse, if the Buffalo Bills don’t keep winning like this.
It’s always been strange to me that so many people could care so much for this team. They’ve been absolutely terrible, for all the years of my life. But there’s always been this stubborn pride and devotion, a faint memory of better times. It’s strangely hartening to see them do well, especially right now, especially as someone who realllyyy doesn’t care about sports.
This is the craziest time…
When I was younger, I used to read a lot of historical fiction. It always seemed odd that even as those characters lived through major historical events, they’d mostly be caught up with everyday life.
As I live through… this time in history, I think I’m beginning to understand.
I’ve been trying to keep myself distracted from the murmerings and rumblings of unrest. This doesn’t mean that I’m unaware of the state of the world, because I’m keeping one eye open. This doesn’t mean I’m pretending that everything’s fine, because it isn’t. I’m just aware that if I do not distract myself, I risk sinking into a dark and despairing emotional place where I’m of no use to anyone.
Instead of losing myself in this numb and shaken, feeling I’m going to:
write
go for a walk
make a cheesecake
read a book
bake some bread
cook food that looks pretty
go to the woods
listen to podcasts
take photographs
make soap
listen to sea shanties
shower
remember to eat
drink water
light candles
do laundry
clean up the kitchen
talk with some friends
These are the things that keep me centered and engaged and focused on what I’m doing with my hands and ears and eyes. Sounds and smells hold my attention. Even the sea shanties.*
*recently there has been a rise in the popularity of sea shanties. It’s because people started making covers of a song called Wellerman. I hope this is not a fad, and that it just becomes something that we carry forward with us into the future. Someday we can all get together and sing at the tops of our lungs:
Soon may the Wellerman come To bring us sugar and tea and rum One day, when the tonguin’ is done We’ll take our leave and go…
I’m looking forward to tuning into this inauguration. Looking forward to watching four years of – all of this shit – come to a close. But it’s going to be an interesting time, trying to pull things back into balance. I hope with everything I’ve got that nobody gets hurt. I hope that those who deny the outcome of this election will stay the fuck at home and be peaceful.
In this moment, when the relationship between society and the self is tenuous, I’m mostly not looking for new posts to share, new thoughts to think, new books to read. I’m not looking for more wokeness, even though awareness is important. There has been so much of that in the last year that I’m reaching the limit of what I can hold.
Intead of those things, I am looking for actions.
Not the actions of an activist, even though activism has value and I see this.
What I’m looking for is a way to volunteer. I don’t really know how to do this, but I’ve found a couple of places to begin, and they look promising.
I hope you are holding up well, this Sunday. Love you.
I’m stretched out on the ground outside my parents house. The sun isn’t setting yet, but it’s about to be.
