Beer and bags of food at 10 in the morning because there’s no rules at a festival
Mara’s back for the weekend 💜 Home feels complete.
I have very specific standards for wine:
- Red
- < $15
- Cool label
Just got a timeline: Our apartment remodel should be done Oct 1, move back in Oct 4-5 weekend.
Faster than I thought, which is great! but I’m not existentially prepared for packing everything again + another weekend spent moving. At least this one’s permanent for the foreseeable future.
i like charts. from How the Online Right Fell Apart
D&D night woooooooo!
A lot of my best meals are random circumstantial combinations of whatever’s around.
Today’s lunch, for instance: leftover cauliflower, roasted with chickpeas. Crumbled, herbed goat cheese. Chorizo from last night’s dinner. Diced red onion that was in the fridge.
Not pretty, but it’s delicious.
I HAVE CONCEPTS OF A PLAN
Kamala coming in with some zingers before the half woooohoooo
‘we’ll find out’ WE ALREADY KNOW THEY ARE NOT EATING DOGS OH MY GOD
living for Kamala’s head shakes and scoffing facial expressions. Yes. that’s the only level of regard he merits
No feeling is final
Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final.
―Rainer Maria Rilke
I’ve had to learn that no feeling is final. Not happiness, not sorrow, not anger, not grief, not boredom. That resilience is preferable to safety and one cannot acquire resilience without risk and stumbling. That discomfort is the doorway one must pass through to arrive anywhere meaningful.
Substitutionary grief; Or why I am crying over a crushed flower, an insurance commercial, spilled milk
There are some pains that are so vast and deep you have to shy right past them and find another, smaller pain to dip into.
You have to grieve, to wail, somehow. You can’t pretend no pain exists.
But there’s self-preservation in all of us, whether we want it to be there or not. We fear losing ourselves in a void of blankness and we fear losing ourselves in sorrow so dense and specific that our very identity unravels, disintegrates in the pressure of it. So we find a neighboring sadness, a few steps down the path, and grieve some lesser thing. Substitutionary grief. It’s an outlet, an imperfect one, but something, and I guess it keeps us alive. And maybe the idea is that, given enough time and space (there we go again), we reach the point where we can open the real door and encounter the real pain and perhaps live through it. Or maybe we just lost the fear of death.
A few delightful things:
- about to start playing Cult of the Lamb co-op with one of my best friends
- just spent 5 hours making pickled things with two hilarious, wise, fun women
- I have been accepted into the Cat Lady Cabal™️ in my apartment complex
- My ex is on “get the child home from sports practice” duty so I don’t have to go anywhere else tonight
- weather feels like fall
All that is within me
Self is / I am: a sloppy mess of life, bundled up and spilling out.
Even in the best moments, so many rough edges.
Here I am giving too-long looks and undeserved bitch stares, too-short hugs and unsaid gratitudes. Here I am with too many words and too many silences, with the wrong thing at the right time or the right thing at the wrong time. Cross the best of intentions with the worst of expressions: here I am.
I stand back and back down, judging and measuring myself, always saying to myself: No no no no no no no.
Not for you. Not safe. Not now. Not like this. Not like that. Not yet. Not ever. Not until…
When does until meet with the open space of today, the only time when things can actually happen?
I would never: breach the line, cross the boundaries, disrespect the sacred or the profane.
Until (there it is, until) I look back and see, Oh no, too late. I have already done it. Have said it, have crossed it, have ruined, have failed, have hurt, have disappointed, have been what I said I would not be…
And yet here I am.
Still here, with the Self I was and the Self I am and the Self I am always becoming.
We contain multitudes, I guess, and it’s maybe simpler to open and accept all of them.
Perhaps love all — serve all must start with all that is within me.
Then perhaps it can extend. To others. To the world.
To the outward versions of myself, the reflections and incarnations, every form, near and far, to the Self is / You are.
I’ve been menopausal for almost 7 years now, have read lots of books and done lots of research on dealing with what that means, staying healthy, etc and I am JUST NOW learning that the increasing joint pain I’ve had is most likely due to menopause. That estrogen, it’s powerful stuff.
There is a girl inside
by Lucille Clifton
There is a girl inside.
She is randy as a wolf.
She will not walk away and leave these bones to an old woman.
She is a green tree in a forest of kindling.
She is a green girl in a used poet.
She has waited patient as a nun
for the second coming,
when she can break through gray hairs
into blossom
and her lovers will harvest
honey and thyme
and the woods will be wild
with the damn wonder of it.
I’ve always thought it odd how I have some memories that are crystal clear, and so many large portions of my past life that are gone, escaped from my consciousness, buried deep in my brain somewhere maybe but I don’t know how to access them. QUICK: What was I doing on September 3, 1997? No idea. I’ll never be able to tell you.
But I can tell you that one summer afternoon when I was about 5 or 6 years old I went to the kitchen to pour myself a big cup of Kool-aid and the pitcher was quite full and I was rather small and, well, the delicious sticky red beverage went all over the floor. And I remember thinking two things: 1) That’s a lot of Kool-aid on the floor and 2) Mom doesn’t like it when we waste things. Those two thoughts led to my next choice, which is why Mom walked in to find me on my hands and knees, licking that Kool-aid off the kitchen floor.
She was horrified, but honestly, she kept a really clean kitchen so it was probably fine.
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