We all love to feel like we're making progress, but sometimes, even when we're moving forward, the grind is such a slog that it feels futile. So we can't go entirely on how it feels. The sun and Venus come together in ambitious Capricorn now, urging us to keep track of the efforts we make, not just results. Evidence of effort can sustain and motivate us when the win is still far off.

I am tired of slogs and dickwad horoscope peptalks.

How long am I supposed to keep it up? 

And when do I start counting the from? 

How about here? The day after I shut the book. The day the "get what you want" tree rings started. And I got a thing + tried not to starve, right out the gate.

To test that theory, I broke the rules, unbound and opened the book. 

 

and turned it upside down (like Superman reversed), then pulled a card to see what might happen - "wishes come true" - welp, I gave my wishes away so 🤷🏻‍♀️

1/3 pages still empty - I want to cut them out and mail them blank, or mail the whole darn thing if prefered: you can write the rest however you want it.

WWJD

grit ft underwear for clothes

I laid around in bed and worked all day. (Read.)

"Things in nature merely grow. There is no suicidal or angry rose, there is no depressed or rebellious lily. Plants have but one goal: to live. In order to live they grow when they can, and go into dormancy if needed." ~ Things in Nature Merely Grow, Yiyun Li

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/03/31/the-deaths-and-lives-of-two-sons excerpt

I already have a lot of material that I call 'think like a tree'. A tree can survive a wildfire and add it to its rings - a shitty year of hundreds of years. And if it can't survive, it can send its resources to others intentionally. You might think only people can have grit; I am going to not just challenge that assumption, I am gonna suggest maybe we have less of it than any other still-living thing. They will get handed that idea by reading a memoir about the death of two children, so what are they gonna do? Say "fuck that"? No, jesus, they have hearts and minds. So they'll give the ideas courtesy/repect. 

Reflection: What does it mean / look like to "tend" something? 

Experiential learning (+ discussion forum for weekly uploads of update photos): a bonsai. Why? "There is no good way to say this: words fall short."

I am sorry (not sorry) for the giant headache it may be for my bosses to order general education bonsai trees for my umpteen failing students. I can hear my supervisor (close friend, we're 🤞), "but they're all going to die!" (he will laugh soon as he says it cz I always say GET TO YOUR POINT, WE ARE ALL GONNA DIE) Yes, probably, almost all the wee trees will die. But each for its own reasons (did not get what it needed but got who knows what instead) that will show the students how they personally "tend" and feel about it and that it is a fact of failure that it can happen despite best efforts. The pot will be a souvenir from the class = a reminder that they could always try again. Folks need solid metaphors. They can feelthink if they do what I ask; I'll reach right into human hearts through bloody chests in my way too. Like magic.

It might be a disappointment to meet the rest of me, many sides of whom can be unsure and proven wrong and all kindsa human. 

maybe this is what an answer to prayer feels like, a sudden freedom from needing to pray. POW (new nickname) is unchained, status "all is well".

Wolves appear to be howling at the moon, but what they are really doing is howling to one another. They howl to greet, to celebrate, to warn and most often simply to find one another. Under the first supermoon of the new year, who is it you would like to reach? Send your signal to the moon and it just might land in the heart of another.

I just want to howl. And howl and howl and howl. Nobody needs me to do otherwise, or wants anything from me, or has anything for me. I could howl out a sonic boom with no intention at all except to let it fly from this throat. 

full wolf supermoon (forgot, but felt) - view from front yard 

Wolf Moon, the first supermoon of 2026, overnight into tomorrow. The emotional tug echoes a truth about intimacy: Those closest to us evoke the deepest reactions. Their friction, their barbs, even their resistance can be, on some level, the tender proof that we matter to one another.

dickbutter 26.1

if I needed you - white horse guitar club if so how, if not why, if I can't
why can't I 

"for to ease your pain"
butterydickbutter

my fave card, means ENOUGH ("house clean, bills paid, man close, kids dogs oldsters all well cared for") #lucky pull for a new year

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Your fresh start is a seed of faith. What you plant will grow — believe it and be patient. Seeds don't sprout on demand; they sprout because the conditions are right. Create those conditions and let your inevitable future unfold. Lucky charm: jade.

Jade. I own nothing made of it, I don't even have anything that color. 

As for seeds, that tracks. Sunshine and I discussed my bright idea overnight, a garden including a seed library (like those book things people have in their yards). I bower as a kind of gift of my ability(s). I could build next a garden to hold a magical handfasting, bursting with abundance, butterflies alighting, songbirds bathing and nesting, children playing, water flowing, all arrayed around a place to still be standing - and then I could give it away. Sunshine could marry fairies. 

I made no wishes (gave them away). Thank you 🙏for my still waking up. That's all. 

coffee at dawn, still standing

Sunshine pulled me a ruin

"enough already"

"I think maybe love is about choosing who I want to witness me, who I know watches me in the way I want to be watched". ~Elseship, Tree Abraham

A weekend spent with Bug was a bit of slap upside my head. I don't want to dwell, don't want to wawa, don't want more time on any kinda shitty; I am trying every day to be PRESENT and putting out goodness/healthy. When I look backwards, it is to salvage what can be salvaged.

Power, I believe, is not a thing you HAVE, it's always present and fluid and we merely direct it for good or ill. Or fail to direct it at all (sheeple syndrome).

Bug has her own beliefs. She believes that my power/person has been taken as granted / siphoned. That I have been diminished by evilasses, as the heroine often is in plotlines, before a resurgent deadly comeback. That evil caused me harm, visible to her in the half my weight, half the house, half or less as many words (often dead silent). That something(s) need more than just kicked to the curb. She can't quite articlate all that, but she can by adding these drawings. There are the "kill me, I dare you" types, my fave. And 

some folks deserve
dismemberment

In my lately Irish goodbyes, I dis-member-ed myself. Maybe it is time to reverse blink. Now that I have settled in what looks like a life cut to the size of her ("closests"), the policy going forward: membership limited (!) + dismemberment for cause ☠️! signs (like the "Posted" signs she has seen). 

Fewer candles, more torches.

She does not yet understand the delicate balance of defiance (life supportive) versus bitterness (dis ease). But she is also not entirely wrong.

"Don’t Let ‘Em (Get Inside Of Your Head)" - Julian Taylor ft Jim James

karma - AJR for me from Bug. she is pickin up what I'm puttin  down, unnervingly captured in the sing-song style of children's CGI movies music

hahahahaha ❤️🌪

"The first day of the last week of the year brings a fresh Aries moon and a dare: "Pick a card, any card." The lunar hand features a Jupiter square, a Centaurian conjunction and a Mercury trine. So what do you need most in these final hours of 2025? Closure perhaps? Luck? The boldness to speak up? The humility to stand down? The choice is yours."

guess I'll pull the card of the day..

means CHOICE
"The word "choice" comes from Middle English chois, borrowed from Old French chois (Modern French choix), meaning selection, fact of having a choice"

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Your rational side may take charge for a while, but the emotions don't just disappear, they wait. You may need to compartmentalize a feeling, but make time to return to it later so it doesn't weigh on you.

Yes, I shall be me again today. 

Another card for insight.

 

"puppypile"

I bracketed it (mostly) until all was quiet, them all asleep in a giant pile of childdog.

Today, new day, a cake with secret vegetables in it. We have settled into the new routine - sleepovuhrs (so cute how they say it) start with me then cousins next, so the germs go that way. If I feel hard feelings, I will go ahead and feel em, but later. I will light a candle.

"who is who game", TJ quizzing (they oddly love this game)

who is is your mom's mom?

YAYA! 

who is my mom?

SHE'S WHITE! 

🤣 very nearly 

like hell I do - ken presse (acoustic) - the official vid has the saloon vibe, but I like the gritty-irked solo 

Virgo: Christmas is over. 

Brainfried in a panic I thought "I forgot to call my dad!" and slammed my jaw shut, falling asleep that way, waiting for it to unclench (it didn't).

One more holiday to go. Unless another option (magically) arrives, my current plan for New Years Eve is bourbon. (Kill it.)

At the heart of each lesson plan is defiance, how to in a million forms - defying Death, in this case, "how to" they do.

Reading: Between Two Kingdoms (excerpt)

Media: American Symphony (watch)

Media: Awake My Soul - Mumford w Jon Baptiste (listen)

*Reflection assignment: focus on the lengthy dedicated silence during American Symphony (performance) as starting point. Then tell me about what it means to express dedication.

card of the day - "student of swords" - used to be his. I pulled it after midnight, then worked.