VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Today favors learning through direct experience rather than theory. Ask better questions. Questions meant to confirm a position answer only that. Shift from "Is this right?" to "What's actually happening?"

What's actually happening? I am all👂s (really).

I expect a very quiet day. The girls have moved on in the daisychain of sleepovuhrs, after a day's delay, which turned out to be their fave day because the wallpaper ladies were magic to them. They swooped in and made walls look like Butterknife's vision in a day. My mom is on team wallpaper revival, big time. And I like things that have been made faithfully for 100+ years, old methods by authentic craft persons. The girls were mesmerized, and paid such close attention that maybe a career in walls was seeded. And then the lead one is a NURSE too, clearly of some kind of magic to me, which they're too young to fathom but picked up on every bit. They know that lately I go into hospitals a lot and people die like Tbone or don't die like their dad, and that I am afraid of only hospitals (far as they've ever known), and now turns out there are other hospital-able adults who face death AND transform walls (wth!!). I share their impressed with all of that, tbh. 

"wannabe bayou" is the paper's name, mom and Ears picked it

Now I am alone for the weekend, curled up in the warm quiet atm, the only sound is the dog snoring against my back. Trying to soak up all the "I can ok-corral!" energy that I put into all this. I will probably blabla a lot, like these words that will be unblogged in a min or two ...

I don't know if I have strength enough for what's coming in Boston. In all honesty, I really don't think I do. But I will have to fucking find it. It's gonna be as bloody as a gunfight, and I still don't know how to shoot a gun, and I won't have a shot of whiskey for my nerves. I'm gonna walk into it empty handed and alone. And I'm going to come out the other side, somekindahow, in order to keep someone else more important (to me) than me alive. Or I'ma die trying. There is no other choice. Not for me, anyway. Maybe loving very few people is God's way of protecting my heart from death by That.

songs tbd, I am gonna read some more about Neptune in the silence awhile

I like this "A relationship that causes you to continually override your own instincts and feelings is not sustainable. Work that offers you relief only when you sleep or dissociate is abusive. Stop asking, 'How can I do this with less strain?' and start asking, 'Why am I doing this at all?' Now is an editor with scissors: no crossing it out, just cuts."

Virgo - Today, your ruler, communicator Mercury, sails into your partnership zone until April 14, prompting you to connect with other individuals. Whether you need to get something out in the open and hash it out together or you’ve just been out of touch with a few people who matter to you, start the conversation. 

😶 I'm practicing my listening skills. 

💔 I cannot stop seeing that kid in the lewiston top's check out - pneumonia should not be killing any of our kids 

"good intentions" 

 

"underneath" (secret mural)

hot n cold - katy perry Bug's song-gift for me today

"watcha thinking?"

Theory: we unwittingly co-created a monster, a voraceous Void of some kind; it was lurking til life got hard; then it scoffed at the "for worse" that lovers vowed; it scoffed at our mettle alone; it tries to eat my liver still; it has turned the thing we loved the most, Everyday Life, into a trial, lonely stasis interrupted by continual crises navigated with shattered minds, punched down hearts, sick spirits, and breaking bodies.

One might say, "that's just growing up". But I was a grown up, I was born old, Methuselah (is your type). So No. 

That Thing waits for me around every corner. I want it to come closer now so I can stick my head in its mouth and detonate. Like Titus flying into bits, the dirty bomb version of 'going to pieces' #grit

"It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice." ~ Heart of Darkness No.

by and by - caamp 

 "To write about a struggle amid the struggling. I know you don't like me to ask what's brought you here." ~Yiyun Li

self talk

man, I wish he was here so bad rn

this is the kinda shit that I never figured out so I just gave up - the 'closure' work - my instinct is not to go toward people in pain, at all, like I'ma dial 911 - unless it's family, especially a kid, and for my mother it was my dad. so this urgent wish to be nearer to him atm is, like, I dunno. see? I dunno what that is. even when all other threads between us are clipped, that remains, cz here it is. decoupled, obviously, from any other intimacy, still it's there. AND to be blunt, I did not have that towards other men I've fucked at all (hahahaha omg not even 🤏) cept maybe the Greek but oof he hated that so I repressed it from the get. Nothing like this. So, I mean, it isn't that I like to rescue dudes w broken wings or whatever like some women do. It's not because I am so inclined, generally. It isn't contingent on fucking, exactly. I just very badly wish he were here right now, crabby or drunk or day 4 talking like a sausage if necessary, asleep would be great, just safely where I could see him would be good. Be good for me, it's entirely selfish, I get that too. 

I dunno what I'm gonna do, nothing prolly, options seemingly none but wait, I am just idling high 🏁 alert (and smoking his housewarming blunt), staring into the fire, thinking at him, not these words, other ones, wondering if he hears them. then I wonder if he hears my mother. then wonder if so, does he talk back? then I shut up a while.

I gave myself a sunburn with the nicole face thing #dork

I am going to Montana for a week in July. With my mother, sister, neice - we've all watched Yellowstone a buzzillion times, the RIP fucking scenes a buttbuzzillion times 🤣. I dunno what possessed my sister. Intuition at least in part. She didn't know the only candle I found yesterday was for "cowboy getting" cz I need something warm and real and smells good, like leather. Like alive. 

https://homes-and-villas.marriott.com/en/properties/40456228-big-sky-cowboy-heaven-luxury-suite-6c

maybe there is an ideal porpotion of boot time : everything else = tolerable
what do u think?

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Refinement involves repetition. It's a thousand small moves to polish the surface. It's the 50th read, the dozens of meetings, the comb-through, the edits after the final edit. Refinement is what sets you and your work apart.

ok but 50? I mean...

The statistical distribution of serious recovery attempts was highly skewed with a mean of 5.35 (SD = 13.41) and median of 2 (interquartile range [IQR] = 1 to 4). Black race, prior use of treatment and mutual‐help groups, and history of psychiatric comorbidity were associated with higher number of attempts, and more attempts were associated independently with greater current distress.

SO, either 5.35 or 2, not 50. 

It takes 5+ if you're Black. the average may be substantially lower than anticipated because cultural expectations are often based on AOD problems being “chronically relapsing” disorders implicating seemingly endless tries  English: if you're treated like someone who will relapse cz you're culturally coded as "like that", you're more likely to, and if you're Black that's how that goes. 

HOWEVER, the provider in this case is himself essentially, who has called the patient (also himself) a piece of shit umpteen times, with court documents asserting same to boot, so which 'model' of disease has his 'culture' internalized? The chronically relapsing model, presumably (?)

See why I don't trust this? On a weekend = high risk of "current distress" always. Globs or kids, it'll be distress. I gotta hope his mom is feeding him nothing but positive messaging - uhhh - my mom yea, his mom? She might be pretty drained herself by now w the dad foot and no iberostars, to be fair. 

This has nothing to do with "faith" in him. The cards are simply stacked against his being "ok" today. Impaled is statistically more likely. 

babe, thats only for pretend!!

in my mind - ken presse throwing some crows at it

mint tea - johnny blue skies "bandaids on bullet wounds" sounds like Huck's next R&B album 

"yesterday was the most contented connected happiest day of my life so far" 10-11-2011 

Some things never change, like twenty minutes waiting on her fucking hair-do .... reading astrology, Neptune started shit in 2011 ... 

After telling her about this supposed huge celestial event, and rereading the related year as she dicked around with her clip-ins, I declare 2011 was worth its weighted blanket in gold. "Are you sure you know what the full price is yet?"

😳 🤔 I do not. 

What I do know is: He is sick. Helpless / useless re that is hard on me. Like a deathly sick kid only different but not that different, and I can provide no comfort. So I want to be home alone with my Worry under a plush throw making 🫂 collages.  

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). It's wise to acknowledge the limits of one's own knowledge. You avoid the moral or intellectual self-righteousness that might narrow thinking and shut down learning. People who stay curious and open tend to be more constructive than people who are rigidly certain.

That is exactly how I wound up hanging out with witches. Radical left turn into ways of thinking/being/knowing that were foreign to me. If I knew everything, I figured, shit would never fall apart, so obviously I need to know a bunch of stuff that I don't already know. Logically. Right? 

Today, I have to pay the price for yesterday. I don't mind doing that, I just don't know what all it will entail. Hanging out with a voodoo priest that Sunshine wants to hang out with is part of it, across the border in my more reliable car, at a bookstore that's really a bar that's really a conjure craft space in disguise, where I can buy candles. Fun fact, 7-day candles are sold out here. Seriously, unless you get lucky with goya, the only kind that you can get are at the dollar store (shit).

I have used every devotional candle that I owned. I've said all I've got to say to Mary right now, and her candle last night was flickering like a motherfucker, which I took to mean she's already "on it" and meeting resistance - i.e. she doesn't need me up her ass. So I'ma going across the border for the first time in honestly I don't know how long, and not going to IKEA (!), which .... well I am in new territory, put it that way. And I have to wear a skirt because on the way back she wants me to change my energy by meeting a salsa instructor 🫩. 

Those are some personally high prices to pay for new candles and some herb plants, just sayin' lol. But a million little things "ain't gonna do theyselves". 

pour booze down the drain / have these stashed from the Italian market in the falls - does that gesture make any sense in a world where I couldn't feed him soup anyway? It only makes sense if you can imagine the world between us, all around us, filled with threads. I snip one and then pull another one through, make a knot. Do that enough times in enough ways, and you have woven something new entirely, eventually.

song tbd 🤷🏻‍♀️

Unless you've been through it, you have no idea what it feels like. And unless you've loved such a person, you don't know anything about that either. 

I can see from the spelling he's shaking. 

It's day 3 now. Past the hairpin turn of day 2.

We'll be counting days this time. 

Can you imagine 365 days? In that time, if you do some version of full monty quit: telling Everybody to put eyes on your self, out the silent suffering closet ya go (hey, you didn't transition, and even if you did 🖕), the right antidepressant so your junk works n you don't ideate beyond what is literarily necessary, vitamins, real therapy. You can feel sound again. And anything might happen. You might accidentally get kinda hung up on an ex whom your mom adores and try to perform soul-cpr via dream fucking. And/or date therapy chickens (fish, goats, cats, a rescue horse), ya never know. Anything!, z'all I'm sayin, the world's your oyster 🦪. At the very least, it could have oysters (or clams) in it.