Tomorrow is our first dick butter cook. Like meth, only different. I cleared my schedule for today, calling in Quiet (my "sick") in order to prepare. I intended to clean the kitchen while dancing to whatever plays for me. 

Nebraska texts me. Says he will "give me all the space and time I need" . Uh, thanks God of Space and Time, for what shall I use these gifts? 🙄 I don't respond.

Then my sister calls to debrief the follow up she got from Nebrasks until I could tamp my FURIOUS down to not giving a shit enough to think, then we mulled the possibilities. When we get to discussing Janis, the fat dog he adores but never actually cared for (cough cough), we spitball that it would be great if Nebrasksa fell in love with a cat lady in Omaha, and then I could move to Phoenix for the job he discarded there, and he wouldn't want me or the dog. "Let's manifest that!", she declares. Okay let's! smib, laughing

An hour after that, Nebraska texts me to ask what I'm doing? I don't respond again. 

An hour after that, Priest emails me, wants to set up a meeting. I haven't responded. I forward it to Sister for wording the response. 

See how this owns every one of my waking hours? Nebraska just TAKES. Built for it.

I'll meet with the priest. I cannot afford not to. And Nebraska knows that. Cornering me into responding.  Shoo!!

Playlist tbd. I'm going to take a very hot bubble bath and smoke a big fat joint. 

My sister calls. Nebraska has texted her. Good lord, who does that? And to MY family, does he have a death wish?? She reads me the long convoluted message about my "thinking about breaking up with him" and/but his greatest concern is for my health and state of mind. 

Wow. 

Sister, God bless her heart, took it upon herself to tactfully reply. At disapproving length. 

"Known by the company you keep."  I just keep running that by folks to get their take. Today, the prevailing theory is that my current institution is a rudderless fractured place no longer turning out "dollies" and isn't going to land that DO school, which will drive the place under. THAT is the company I keep. I do think that's a fair assessment. And in that narrative, I am unsinkable Molly Brown, and Phoenix is the rescue ship I tried to flag down. 

What I know: I am incorporating the "known by" phrasing into my own vocabulary because it clearly is magical at creating opacity. 

What I know: I need to gain weight. I don't know what to do about that except force myself to eat as if I were happy. Which is a mindfuck, gaslighting your own body. I'm always hungrier after sex, so I keep leisurely masturbating. But it just doesn't hit the "now I want pasta" threshold. I gotta get back to yoga, which also works, but this weather on top of the shitty gauntlet I just ran, oof. I'm really struggling to keep going atm.

I have to get up the energy to do something crazy. 

too skinny ft fat dog

ain't gonna drown - elle king

 

Image removed cz it's giving me a headache. The letter attached is backdated to October '24 and runs through 2030. If they're building in a 7 year itch, they better backdate further back. 

I'm not marrying Nebraska, regardless.

Clearly I just do not understand the World of Men. My nun did not train me to deal with STEM dudes other than to hit them with a gavel. In the car on the way home from the airport, I told Ears all about the "known by the company you keep" and told him I broke up with Nebraska who didn't seem to really notice. (Is that possible??) Ears says simply, "Sounds like patriarchy." Not a huge fan of that! Lol. I wouldn't kink-shame anyone, including the half of the country that wants to get hate-fucked by Elon. You do you. But I do not want to indulge, sorry but the "pleasures of patriarchy" turn me into a furious little cunt, stomping around wanting to slap the shit out of folks. Who then try to keep me and assume they just can. What the hell kind of magic/kink is that? Answer: Patriarchy, an ancient form of dark magic like the Druids fucked Henry VIII or some shit.

💞

you don't have to believe me - eric hutchinson ft daryl hall I do believe you (whoever you are, sending songs with toast - Toast Ghost), and yes I would like to chitchat about woodwork first - I do believe that's just down the road from where Ex now lives with M, who tortures him every day while definitely fucking a grad student on the side (minimally), cz that's what you get when you get what you want too much #patriarchy

Leaving a day early. The m4 volunteers did a panel to take the others' questions about handling things like an icu patient begging to die for a month or someone waking up in 4-points and a trach who desperately wants to watch TV...These m4s are the ones I met Flav with, way back. Daniel. Clarice. Shannon. They will be GOOD doctors. And I realized, given how broken is my own planet, that these m4s are the closest thing I've seen to "watched them grow up" in these the last years, and the last students that I might ever see that way. I will sorely miss that.

But I am leaving. Sad finally, the next stage of grief or whatever. Please Mary, get me home safely.  smib

I am innocent! (of that)

spellcasting is bargaining, so I just am FURIOUS through all phases (shocker lol) - I'm stumbling around between depression and fuck-it, after which maybe there is a backyard chicken named Hope (🐓mote of hope)

The fire marshals refuse to allow more than 120 students into a room. Absurdly this rule is one of the justifications for my being here, because medical students never fail (one of the most cruel systems I've seen taken out on students, truly would make anyone a rabid beast, "never failing" meaning something like covenant marriage in Alabama x 100ks in debt servitude), and hence there can be no "kiddy table" on zoom, they all must have their own live pocket charm. Some of them have to "attach" to me. But, I have refused for the day. This will be good-bye for M2s, and there is no way they have bonded enough to me for my face to be the last one they see. No. That's cruel. So fire or no fire, they're going all together into one large working room. I had last night a bright idea for an experiential learning activity to bolster them, but I didn't share it, not my job, no you can't have any more of my bright ideas for free. I can't even remember it, because instead of articulating it, before I could let my mind go down the road of helping these people anymore, I sat on Nebraska's face instead. STAY! The only problem with that approach to this life moment is that mounting this self -  pure frustration and grief and pent up longing for not-this and concentrated me-ness altogether packed into 100 pounds of marrow-made fury and condensed estrogen - makes a DIY bronco ride that ends in my squirting shutthefuckup. Under normal circumstances, I'd say a man who falls head over heels over that phenom is promising. But no, I've utterly had it, I'm just riding this out (ha). While he 🥰!  I'm like the guy in Rapture, miles away in his head through a blowjob. Jesus, being around guys might be turning me into one!! I'm pro trans, absolutely, but not planning to switch sides myself lol 🤦🏻‍♀️. 

Welp, today I'm doing nothing but wearing a killer dress and refusing to do anything else. ArmsCROSSY. Nebraska can handle it, since all this belongs to him, he should handle it all then, DO THAT. While I sit to the side in my boots, the students who have started to drift towards me all watching the look on my face. 👁

hoop dance national, hosted by the Heard Museum, that's the final 6 dancers for the win, in the circle dancing is a 2S+ activist in beading that takes a year to complete, trans blue&pink, the crowd cheering 100% love - that honestly made me weepy with gratitude for these people still existing 🙏 the emcee, a really old Seneca dude, made ICE jokes about delays, like they deported our sound guy but just to Flagstaff because it was closer (🤣), they could kind of give 2 flying fucks about us all killing each other, good riddance frankly...they agree with Jesuit Mary, come to think of it

Just maybe, they will put me on a plane home early. I just might be unpleasant 🖕 enough in my 👁 disapproving silence that it trumps 💦.

#notpeople

dangerous - joywave ft big data shazammed just outside the med school over ACOCADO FUCKING TOAST

Me: you look like you're having a fucking heart attack 

Her: have you looked in a mirror lately?

Me: yes 🤨 I look like I am starving to death

Her: listen

Me: (Jeremiah 17:5) don't trust these guys, I got that

Her: listen 

Me: "... let me hunger only for what truly feeds me .... [amen]..."

Her: listen

Me: ... Paul to the Corinthians, blabla hungry is good, but you satisfied fuckers are in for a holy kick in the ass... Luke 6:24

Her: smib

Me: wow, I never heard the hex in that before

Her: you're welcome

https://youtu.be/ySqn2iZOsB8?feature=shared shazammed outside the church over the ubiquitous avocado toast 

IV bars. I first found out about them in NOLA, obviously marketed for hangovers. (I hope an EMT patented that shit.) I've gone to them repeatedly since just to get over being sick, bolster my immunity for planes, help my hair from falling out in acute stress waves, keep me on my feet for a life I am force marching myself through, day after day, month upon month. Mostly the marketing is beauty, vitamins to give you glow or whatever, sales on V-Day 🙄, but your FSA pays for it, it's "coded". The IV must be administered by a nurse. And there's a new rule, a 1 minute "go ahead" telehealth conversation with a physician required. He was on a ski slope in Colorado. It always comes up, what I do (wtf do I do? try to make it better, somehow, the whole healthcare sucks for everybody thing). English Professor for the Health Professional, a pocket charm. And then inevitably, the situation update. One nurse went through critical care to hospice, the ratio of caregivers:patients being impossibly low:high, more appropriate for dying than healing (though I can assure ya Hospice Buffalo Dude is not on board with that math). She graduated in 2011, she would never go into NUR now, but this IV thing is okay, pays less but she makes people feel better here, something no longer widely available in her profession. The younger one went right here, to IV bar, via the physician, who is paid more for 1 minute than she is for the hour, the new "rule" nothing more than another $ loop and we all know it. "He's really nice, though." Yes, they are generally quite nice, demons of some kind. Who comes in here now, is it beauty seekers? "Sort of", they both look kind of pained. "A lot more nurses actually, I have this one friend who bought her own red light system for home!" Red light, what is that? "I'm like girl you're 29, that job makes you OLD! She should give IVs instead." So nurses come in here to get help from nurses for the crap they feel like being nurses? "Just like you, kinda!" We all laugh. 

I think I'll go to church this morning. Not the range, which my gut rejects, I don't trust Nebraska enough for that, not that he'd shoot me but that he might like to stir my fear(s). A man teaching a woman to shoot a gun should be about her defending her SELF, not about reminding her that she has no means to do that. Right? 

So. I will go meet the Jesuit Mary. I'm pretty sure I'm never coming back here, but if I do, I want to make sure the Marys have eyes on it. 

"stuck on you" cocktail ft too skinny

My MOON sign is PISCES: You can't help but feel that you are so much better than the cycle a relationship has pulled you into, and you'll prove correct. You will find a civil resolution for uncivilized discourse — a huge step toward reclaiming your peace.

🙏

There was no girl drool intervention needed for Toughie, but that doesn't mean I didn't brew one up. I very much did. Like broth I could bring up at will. I could think it up at him, I could smell him, I didn't have to "fantasize a scenario", I could just lay hands on him in my mind, kissing him after many other points of contact, my fingers and tongue everywhere exploring, my face my thighs pressing against his thighs his face pressed against my panties wringing wet until I come my brains loose biting back his name and whipping Nebraska's head nearly off his shoulders to the right to the right..

Privileged people expect everything is transactional. What are they getting out of you? What does it cost? Larry Summers (the Obama econ dude) is married to a friend I made here, and she explained to me the emotional economics of relationships through this lens: it is the math of "transaction costs". So it is possible to imagine transactional magic. 

She gets what she needs. And that helps her be who she is, in her own right. 

The sex act is vital to my keeping my real magic oiled up. Spit shined. Flowing. I hate toys of any kind, I've tried the new "tongue simulator" things, nope. See that's the thing with my magic - it only works with real things. Even OG stopped working in the end, I could feel the veil, feel the reduction of my self into pros/cons, feel it becoming what I have now, all I've had since. I did my own calculations then. I watched as he was too busy with himself to see me any more, to see any of us, even Ears. I let him pack the photo album, hiding things so clumsily that a toddler could win that game. I kept that up as long as I could stand it, making love to him and feeling him grow cold-enough. He even tasted different. I imagined him breaking apart into motes and reassembling himself. So I herded the motes into one thing left to say to me: good-bye. I could have done better, which I think about a lot now that I'm verging on another goodbye. 

But I am hurt. I am breaking apart and breaking apart, ressembling frantically. I'm the one going. In the other direction. Away from transactions. It is possible to imagine transactional magic, but witches should be recompensed in the coin of each their own realm, and my magic is made of hands on absolutes.

There is somebody with a hidden, perhaps here-to-fore unknown, inner life whose capacity for, whose need for, sex (material body) magic is waiting to resonate with my own animal call. I can feel lurking. Until that bell rings, I'm brewing tinctures of love potions to set by, like canning pickles only different, as any well prepared witch would. I take the orgasms offered by Nebraska, effective transactions that my body laps up and stores away with less fuss now that I'm done giving him my words. Toughie helped me brew up some very strong sexdabs. I will be ready to drown a man in drool and swallow to rehydrate, blasting his inner life with an otherworldly pressure washer of pleasure. My lovehealing ways know a body very differently than medicine men do. But it only will work on the ones it works for. So I wait, watch, stew, brew. Think. Write.

I make the low songsound of it again now. My little call. Here, on their weird carpeted concretes and sidewalks traversed with power conduits. You know the tune. Kinda like a purring growl if you play it at 1.5x speed, which is how everyone here listens to everything: stompstompstompstomp...

Today, I want hoop dancing. Nebraska brought guns, bought ammo, found a range - he knows I've been wanting that, but not from him. Gone Already hurts. I would ask if I taste different, but I know the answer and he wouldn't understand the question. 

Happy V-day!

"You are known by the company you keep." I am supposed to know what that means, but I do not. I had concluded it meant good bye. 

Priest says Dean only reads the first sentence of any email. So I sent him one sentence.  He's also notorious for not replying. Which he did within an hour. "We will talk more soon."

I have no idea what the question was, let alone what the verdict means. Truly 🤷🏻‍♀️

I know that if Nebraska knew about that exchange, he would think it means we are getting married. And that for SURE is NOT what it means. 

I tried one more time to actually speak to Nebraska like dude wtf seriously. Epic fail. I'm not even mad anymore. Guys like Nebraska are that, they're GUYS, you can't talk to them. And people who have always gotten whatever they wanted had no need to develop an inner life. All he can do is what he's doing, try to have his way and get what he wants. Period. 

I'm ready to go home now, but I have many days and 2 classes to go. 

(sigh/welp)

While I'm here, I will keep observing in the hopes of figuring out wtf this world is, how it works. The intellectual curiousity part of me is intact (unexpectedly). Not much else is, so I will be glad of it. I want to learn how to, as they say here, "speak physician". The students would teach me how, ultimately. I'd eventually be let in on their jokes. The students I'm drawn to aren't these baby ones, it's the m4s / residents, the hardening competence around serial terror I see in them like when a baby becomes a KID, a corner turned one day, over and over. These are adults who do very compressed forms of adulting to re-adult, over and over and over for a super intense decade+. And they're often extremely articulate, though not forthcoming. They're wary, equal parts feral and extremely controlled. All I know for SURE is that they do have the need of developing an inner life, BIG TIME NEED. They have a lot of junk in their trunks. They have already told me that much, told the Priest in front of me multiple times also.

But. How I am going to get at that surrounded by people I can barely read, and linked to Nebraska whose inner life is simply nonexistent, honestly, every sentence out of my mouth astounds him. Such as "this sucks".  Which for me, this nothing but sucks. He cannot compute "this sucks" unless it sucks for him, and nothing sucks for him. Except me, I guess, and not in a good way. 

If I take an actual job here, I think one of the first things I would naturally do is start rooting around in physician inner lives until I found a good one (driven half craycray) to 🌀 all over. I mean, logically speaking, falling in love with a fucked up physician would teach me a LOT of that language quite quickly. But how do you seduce in a foreign language? (Stand there and look strikingly out of place?)

Humor is sexy. That I am here is funny. Wtf do you guys need a foul mouthed witch for? Who violates professional dress code with the tattoo on my hand let alone the boots? To stand here out of place in front of 120ish students to inform them that they will need an inner life? Really? But nobody else thinks that's funny, they're just like yeah -_- 

Meanwhile, Toughie is gone. He texted to tell me, I scared him sufficiently, he is out on medical leave, his kidney dr having agreed with my assessment of imminent collapse in the face of relentless work harassment. You wouldn't think getting your office moved overnight without warning could kill a person, but it can; being reminded relentlessly that you have no power while having a ton of responsibility put on you SUCKS, like *sucks to death*.  So good, run man, run for your life. That place needs his skills so badly that they had to make sure every day to offset his worth by treating him like utter shit, and nobody knows that routine better than I do. Losing him is another nail in the university's coffin. So mote it be. His life is worth more.

Then my chair sent out a mass email to announce he's turning to carpentry and looking for work, followed by a services offered list to pass along. Again, ❤️ him, so fine, but an email like that from your leader = hopelessness for others.

I'm ready to go home, but am reminded constantly that my home planet is dying. I'm homesick half to death with no home planet anywhere. How anyone could imagine that not killing me, or at least that it sucks for me, I dunno, except to ivy league guys everywhere is home, everywhere is theirs. 

Only one thing could make this worse enough to be funny: it's fucking valentines day! 

Song tbd. What are ya listening to? I do wonder 🤔

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). There's something crucial waiting on the back burner, but go forward anyway, in celebration of the opportunities you've already seized and the progress you've made. You'll soon have all the time and space to dive into the passions that set your heart aflutter. (The daily horoscope that broke the new years resolution of course would be the V-day one 🙄 hahaha fine, backburner, like a crazyass dr around here somewhere hiding amongst priests, which given my track record wouldn't be a stretch of the imagination whatsoever) 

hard out here for a pimp - terrance howard gallows humor 

"You are known by the company you keep." Verdict from the medical school dean. With the Priest one one side, Nebraska on the other. He is a smart man, smarter than I by far in this world. 

Priest understands me; the purpose for my work (my self) is missing (stolen), I'm merely being used, and while that has of course always been true, when it was a nun via Mary that was fine, but now my soul hurts. My. Soul. Hurts. Under everything else, that is my core problem. (And what kind of magic can I make with that?)

Nebraska does not understand me, and he never will. He wants me, but he's taken and taken from me (given) to create a spot for himself in this medical school, not for me. And now he'd like the Dean to give him my body, since it has to eat and my school is going bankrupt. I'm not for sale, I need redeemed. I can not-eat, clearly demonstrating the difference. But he will never see it.

The Dean understands all this, and pronounces it out loud in one sentence. The position I am in. The position he is in.

I put my fork down. 

The Dean must do what is best for this med school. There is too much on the line in this world at this moment to do anything other than that. It is his duty to know that. And I respect that. I envy that. 🙏

My poem, from Poetic Intelligence workshop, at which I was informed this lady is "my" new poet in residence and "my" student activity $ is going to pay for it. Priest tells me this.

I have to infer the who "me" is. Catholic education is absorbing this work as theirs and me with it.  Or something like that. 

I think way way back. When I had that problem with a bad man. I thought I disappeared him with my mind! He thinks he took a better job in Canada. But how do you get rid of a man who is in the way of Good Work? You promote him to elsewhere. Sister REMOVED HIM, she sent him there to "see about" that job, and he never came back. So I was free. Catholic "free". Of course she did.

Can priests just appear people, like nuns can disappear them? 

suddenly I see - kt tunsall  

shazammed over avocado toast, playing so obsurely under chatter that I could barely hear it, listening with my eyes closed willing it a little louder, my phone resting atop my head 

It's a song about Patti Smith, and I am walking this path purely on faith that Good for Something is somehow lighting it. Patti Smith is one of the patron saints of trust in the magic of this world. I'll take that shout out.

We do the class about brain death. The 4th years come back to sit at each table and facilitate talking, they do this for free, 8-10 students per table, 120 total, the 4h years rotate and stay after to talk more. They mean so well that it feels like a fist squeezing around my heart. Like that always did, does. They do it because these classes, the ethics and the writing and the spaces to Think About Shit, are the real lifeline when it goes south, which it does relentlessly. 

People are shockingly built to die, and fresh out the gate you might get a 31 year old hiker just dropped dead, so unfathomable that death isn't a moment, it's a space of time you allow before you profuse the brain and prove it, time needed or the family's brains just can't compute. The baby M1s can't know that it will be them who marks time for living brains to accept dead ones. That that's the job. 

I used to ask OG sometimes why the sudden dying all over in the first place. "Just blew a gasket," he'd say. And I'd think back at him do not blow a gasket, don't accept that you might ever do that, and I would knit his own horrifying explanations back over him like an inside out sweater-spell, cuddlearmor against any gasket blowings.

I can't witch-knit love armor for all these people. But maybe I can help cast this circle around them so they can heal themselves. The longer I'm here, the more I get the feeling that's what my Priest wants. He wants me to cast a protection circle around the work, build one (a department to shelter them). And he might actually get me to do that (!). Well intentioned priests and snakecharming witches have an odd affinity for one another. The Priest talks about me like I'm already his (married). Right in front of the fiance. And he might not be wrong.