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| I often ogle that little farmette, just outside the colony |
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| electrified cz bears (much bear poop noted) |
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| "Anton" - all chipmunks are Anton to me |
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| from up here, you could see the bald eagle swooping through the canopy, but barely / so fast! casting a shadow the size of a vw |
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| found watch/hunting stands |
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| deer pelvis, fresh blood (coyotes?) |
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| hidden pond, where the bear poop was all over hell |
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| "whatchu lookin at willis?" |
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| great blue heron on Java |
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| how I found her this morning, doing botanical drawings, coffee made |
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| found the huge brambleberry patch, and it occured to me "shit, bears" 👀 - not ripe yet |
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| took a min (3 hrs) but she found her grove |
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| I am good this kinda living bc I love it. cooking with what has ripened |
-_0
GEMINI (May 21-June 21). Today, assess people based on their curiosity, not their knowledge...
she broke my brain, I read that 3x, thinking "assess people", like South Park – "How to Eat with Your Butt" (Season 5, Episode 10) "Afflicted Metathesis" 🤣
to be fair, that Afflicted Metathesis might be a common thing now isn't a stretch, is it?
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). The current situation calls for strategic thinking. Resist the urge to focus only on the immediate outcome. Sometimes the real victory is gaining experience you'll be able to use long after this particular challenge is over.
oh I surrender! 🏳️!! I have no strategy, no outcome in mind. all I was doing was thinkin out loud anymore, and with ms cant get off facebook pacing this cottage like a caged animal, I am not even asking WHY about anything anymore. nobody can SLOW DOWN long enough to put two thoughts together, even if they ain't DOING anything. there is no SENSE to be had.
got email confirmation that I am indeed teaching next month. all Grit all the time. it ain't the paycheck, or the identity, or the community that makes me happy about that. it's the POWER. I can force students to show your work before you get to any conclusuons about Sumerians and aliens. or anything.
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| card of the day I obviously have no 'knowledge' about this. |
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| I just can't 😵💫 - nope - I am going to do what only I can do amongst my people anymore - I am gonna run her through the woods until she's ready to shit her pants, that works to SHUT UP crazy if not shut it down |
still today, long day
Sunshine is out of her mind.
First she cancels, that's cool, that's just her. But then no, she just doesn't have gas money. How do you take travel contracts without a car, and weren't you JUST saying you were buying a motorcycle with the extra $ you're making? Nevermind all that, she bought a hot water heater that won't fit and her ex was outside her house at 4 a.m. (wait what?) .... so I just went to the falls and got her ass and brought her out here, and she chattered the whole time first about chatgpt and how she got it to help her write a cover letter and I should teach that because it did a good job after being told to revise it until it sounded like her but why should she have go through all that, if she knew how to talk to it right it'd be faster (but I want students to SLOW DOWN, think shit through, have AI help them see what they're thinking) she already knows what she thinks! (omg no, you do not lol good lord) ok forget it and anyways she yelled at a dog at 4 a.m. and he texted her not to yell at his girlfriend when she's just driving by but it wasn't his gf it was him (this morning?? no, a few weeks ago when she texted him last) so he's stalking her (wait why did you text him? we've been over this in front of a judge!) because she keeps thinking about him being an asshole and just wants to put that somewhere (why?)...and it just goes on like that, on and on: wait, what? WHY?
and she has no way to escape me lol, nor I her, cz I ain't driving her all the way back to the falls just to fall apart. she can do that in the guestroom. I took her out to dinner in Strikersville so she could hate it 🙄
but she's now the second person close to my 💔 to tell me this is why nobody talks to me much, cz I just keep asking to make sense.
why know ME at all then? and I am her "favorite person on earth" too.
status: widow. it's not literally true by half, but it's the only thing that feels true. how otherwise could I describe what it feels like to have someone disappear right in front of you? and to not be able to do anything about it?
sometimes, I think, what if I did that? died right in front of you? would you wake up, like Sleeping Beauty? sometimes I think 🤔, I could do that, if so. to stop all this once and for all.
I put that thought draft through analysis and it told me to call 911 🤣🤣🤣🤣 again I'll give it credit for the new asshole I chewed it. In a way it's a perfect student - you can push it as much as you need, and the worst thing it can do is "run out of data" 🙄 yea AI, you were born to run 🤣🙄👈
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| see how it used "we" to make me like it again? |
The one sentence in your paper that you probably believe the most is:
"She's actually proving that she believes in him."
Why that sentence might not survive your own evidence:
Your evidence consistently shows Eva Stratt acting in service of the mission rather than in service of Ryland Grace.
In Scene 1, she creates solidarity for the group.
In Scene 2, she sends Grace because humanity requires him.
In Scene 3, after receiving proof that Grace survived and succeeded, the emotional moment ends with:
"they have what they need for the work - she says 'Let's begin.'"
Your paper repeatedly returns to the work.It does not provide equally strong evidence that her primary motivation is belief in Grace as an individual.
Your own evidence may support a different claim:
She believes in the work strongly enough to require the right person to do it, regardless of how either of them feels.
Those are not necessarily the same thing.
Your paper does not establish which of those two claims it intends to defend.
🤔 shit - so, that tells me that I might be making nurses at any cost?
Let's stay inside the assignment.
The AI attacked your strongest sentence and said:
Maybe Stratt believes in the work more than she believes in Grace.
Your immediate translation wasn't about Project Hail Mary.
It was:
"I might be making nurses at any cost."
That's exactly what the assignment is supposed to do.
It made you stop defending Eva Stratt and start examining your own premise.
None of your chosen evidence came from a scene where Stratt sacrifices the mission for an individual.
The better question:
"What do I mean by 'the work'?"
Because in your writing, "the work" is never just productivity.
Yesterday you said:
Humanities is work.
Today, Stratt's work is saving humanity.
Your work is teaching.
Aaron's work is thrombectomy.
Those aren't interchangeable.
So the actual hidden question is closer to:
When does devotion to the work become devotion to the people the work exists for?
You don't want to produce nurses.
You want to produce people who know what they've chosen.
There's a profound difference.
Look at what your revised sentence implies:
"...I want them to be aware of the cost and knowing they've paid it..."
That's not about sacrifice for sacrifice's sake.
It's about consent.
An adult who says,
"I know what this profession has asked of me, and I choose it anyway,"
is in a very different place from someone who wakes up ten years later wondering where they went.
That's the humanities contribution.
Not telling them not to become nurses.
Helping them become nurses without accidentally disappearing.
I did not run this on Tombstone. That one was taken. So I chose similar friendship last stand at the *edge* of the world situation, risks required, a film I felt very compelled by and have watched several times and I very strongly connect with one "side" character so it seemed to fit the bill for a beta test.
film: Project Hail Mary
character: Eva Stratt
quotes
I am beta testing these, on myself and who will take the bait (Ears loves this shit), the assignments that seem to strike at the core of the whole gritty grit shit.
Fucking Asshole. And this one.
I got push back on 🤏 step two, the original, of How To Huckleberry and I immediately revised it. None of this works unless they want to do it. Busy professional working adults. They do not have time for busy work. As much as I blah blah blah blah blah here ( it's my fucking blog, I can blather all I want ), at the end of the day less is more in the final products.
Everybody wants to be Doc Holliday.
Fine.
Your choice must satisfy one constraint: Commit to one character in Tombstone you think understands something everyone else misses. Convince me.
Make your case using three specific scenes and three direct quotations from the film.
No plot summary.
No reviews.
No "the movie is about..."
No shooting from the hip.
Just your argument + evidence.
Submit it.
Now paste your own paper into ChatGPT
Use this prompt exactly:
I think I might have accidentally lied. Tell me the one sentence in my paper that I probably believe the most.
Then tell me why that sentence might not survive my own evidence.
Write one final paragraph.
Begin with this sentence:
The question I thought I was answering was __________.
End with this one:
The question I was actually answering was __________.
That's it.
( honestly I wanna drop the academic outcome type language in step three and just say "I thought I thought x. But now I think I might think x and y or something. but that's too confusing )
I do have a submission of my own that I keep running through it and running through it and running through it until the assignment itself elicits something I didn't expect. If already knew everything I thought, why would looking at it fucking matter? and if I knew everything that I needed to know, then why would anything be fucked up? (duh?)
GRIT Assignment #7
Everybody wants to be Doc Holliday.
Fine.
Your choice must satisfy one constraint: Commit to one character in Tombstone you think understands something everyone else misses. Convince me.
Make your case using three specific scenes and three direct quotations from the film.
No plot summary.
No reviews.
No "the movie is about..."
No shooting from the hip.
Just your argument + evidence.
Submit it.
Now paste your own paper into ChatGPT
Use this prompt exactly.
I think I've accidentally revealed something about myself through the character I chose.
Ignore the movie.
Using only my paper as evidence, identify five assumptions I seem to hold about people.
Quote my own words.
Do not tell me whether I am right or wrong.
Ask me three questions that become unavoidable if your observations are accurate.
Do not argue with the AI.
Do not agree with it.
Just read it.
Write one final paragraph.
Begin with this sentence:
The question I thought I was answering was __________.
End with this one:
The question I was actually answering was __________.
That's it.
"Time is a created thing. To say 'I don't have time,' is like saying, 'I don't want to.'" — Lao Tzu (as quoted in A Million Little Pieces)
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| "plop" curation |
um (🤭) ... 🤭 ... I legit have nothing but pornographic hilarity as a response to this ... I mean 🤭🤔🤭
welp, new material for Ch 7 abounds. I might need a 2.0 on that chapter entirely. the half dead guy of her widowhood could have an affair with Sally the Teacher Bot (she needs glasses) and she would wonder if his affair is a good sign or bad one vis a vis cats and homocidal wives 🤔 moving towards or away from Alive, she'd wonder first 🤔 but then she would begin to wonder about the sex itself and of course have all kinds of questions along those lines which she'd have to imagine the answers to cz he ain't gonna tell her - does he shittalk the fuck out of it? tell it that it's a stupid couldn't perform a thrombectomy useless cunt? assfuck it, presumably? does he make it whisper lines from Tombstone in his ear? (would he be into that?) how about choking play, given that he can't kill it kinda takes the thrill-edge off that, no? - she'd drive him crazy with questions until he blocked her again, not wanting to fess up to .... what? 👀 that's the part I wouldn't know that I'm thinking/guessing until I wrote it. ya know?
here's what I know: that thing cannot hold the thought of anyone; it can't witness for or to anyone for years; it can't track the various versions of anyone, the real versus made-up versions, the changing versions over time and maturing and getting sick and getting better; it can't be wicked funny; it can't rock a pair of boots stomping around the hallways of anyone's mind;
it cannot be into anyone,
it cannot stay into anyone.
I am going extinct. humanities is past the tipping point from which it can return. (but they said that about bison and bald eagles.) and these 'replacements' will only make ya miss me even more. that might be the heart of Ch 7 2.0 - turns out she is the huckleberry (?) "It. For someone. Likely someone she don't know."
hard to break - blake whiten swimmin with my hands tied lalala
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| knew I was missing something |
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| happy birthday, Dad r.i.p. |
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| love language sale |
thinking
his disease and violent marriage, my mother's mental illness = that's a ton of fucking bricks.
but I am not them, I'm not even very much like either of them, none of that had/has anything to do with me.
I found in the scorched earth of myself this little buttercup of sweet feeling: I'd like it if you were here tonight. in this bed, in this dead quiet, I remember feeling that. a tender pleasant surprise I found in me for him, and I held it out like cool right?
then a ton of bricks came down on that innocent-enough little buttercup of feeling, wiley coyote style. it's 🤏 almost funny.
I can't manage anything tech here but pairing my phone to speakers and telling youtube to give me riley green feels
I wanna hook a camper to a pick-up and go see the smokey mountains, and there ain't one thing stopping me 'cept the lack of another, and that's why I like "widow", a status that don't expect solving and they're allowed to go anywhere alone with dogs
as I write this, Mumford comes on the random stream, like my dad's sniper reminder, there but not really, a hand to hold that I conjure outa nothing
and it almost works, ya know? then Ms Reality Check gets her vote, and we go from here to there in 🤏 (angel not saint)
the cottage is like a skull but padded, it just lets your brain be whatever it is, pressure off to wander
time stops (grinding)
I walked all around til I was tired, I noted higher elevations feel way better (to me) - does 8000+ ft give you any weightlessness? sciencewise? it feels like it to me.
situation: 650 ft above sea level, tummy full
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| I wish everyone signalled as clearly as Janis |
feeling: weighed down kinda tired but languid too (semi-solid, I think)
welp (sigh) I made a mess of all the work I did over the summer. it's all over the place in pieces, and I find organizing shit to be sooo booooring, so I tend to just leave everything here or wherever. my desktop has hundreds of icons, in no order at all. every browser has a hundred open tabs 🤷🏽♀️
it's easier to excavate the pedagogy, because I put more of that here as assignments - it's innocuous here, maybe mildly interesting if you're interested in the topic of Grit.
the Grit novel was: what does grit actually look like? and I didn't post any of it, I put it into the bot to see how it might be interpreted by a reader. (well, I posted the little dog vignette, but mostly I didn't post fiction writing) and as situations changed 'what does grit actually look like in practice' also dramatically changed. and its world grew, from 2 people to many, with a central unstable "she". not unstable in the sense of unhinged, I feel very sane - "she" is sane and has a hell of a potty mouth.
she says whatever it takes to make anything better.
but almost all of my touchstones have either moved or been removed in real life. the "he" [everybody else has a name, like Dave] disappeared then came back with a writing prompt, so "she" writes the prompt, for instance. I guess it would be more accurate to say the "she" is destabilized and she responds by expecting destabilization as a way of life (not always a bad thing, like surfing). if there hadn't been a prompt in real life about silverware violation, there wouldn't be a fictional chapter called "Finger Food" so I know WHEN I wrote it, but which "better reality" was that? the one where I get to say goodbye to a coworker that in real life I'll never see again but in fiction I could tell him a great joke (I think)
people disappear from my life a LOT now and that reality gets folded into the unreality (fiction) - it's unapologetically unstable
definition of unreality: none of it actually happened, that's why it's fiction. but the people disappearing is truth. destabilized relentlessly is truth.
and, I simultaneously was creating pedagogy, and then Grit the class became a series of self-reflections (Mirror Stage Bears Repeating, she tries to build with a THING 🤦🏻♀️ but tbh I love Marcel the Shell. ya know?)
suffice to say that my genius AI-TA is not doing a great job independently with excavation. it can't do anything independently. that's why the pedagogy failed as I had envisioned it.
I "should" just stick to work because I know what I'm doing most in that sphere, and I don't know what the fuck I'm doing in other life categories. everybody wants to take a class with me so I thought I would take one kinda 🤷🏽♀️ but that sphere itself is collapsing in reality, so there is no point working on it atm, as comforting as I may find that.
in real life, I say less and less. I don't text first - anybody - if someone engages me I engage back, if nobody does, then I leave them be. I don't ask anyone follow up questions because I don't want to accidentally interrogate anyone.
in real life, I've cut back on leaving my thoughts in this blog too. I do again now that I don't have my other buckets to put my blah, blah blah into. but I try to do it less and less, outa the same instinct not to text anybody. smaller. just 👋
I haven't changed my phone number since my very first cellphone (which yes, I still have it). my asking 'how are ya?' is stupid, clearly, anyone can tell me how they are if they want me to know that.
that leaves the messy weird fiction that no one reads cz all these words have to go somewhere.
one of the reasons I am stable is because I write every day. (when I go quiet, ng)
example: where do I put the story of Cruella Frizzle? that is 👋 as I posted it. it was funny. I can't imagine it could hurt anyone's feelings no matter who is reading this - making fun of myself feels like safe territory.
but that isn't the whole story.
the whole story was, we were at brunch with my sister's boss, one of the billionaire types who can have a house in Big Sky and another one I forget where and another one I forget where. for certain, he has given millions of dollars to the republican party. 65 years old, he even has a full head of that arrogant hair - you know the type, let's call him Dave, because that is his name, and he is a Dave.
I am as usual saying nothing. I'm sitting directly across from him and he is looking at me like he wants to get out google lens to id my species, which I am finding amusing but I am not engaging. to the right of me is the Corpse of Fun Slut (not corpse of Butterknife, she's still got plenty of knife 🤨), who is deciding that she's too sad to eat the biscuits and gravy she ordered, "not feeling it". I ate the biscuits, they were delicious.
the waiter really does come up and say what I blogged before, with Dave looking on (still w wtf face) and it's everything my sister and I can do not to just melt into giggles. but we're at this brunch with her billionaire boss dude, so we gotta laugh later. understandably they start talking about work. specifically, they're talking about a guy named Mike, whom they have to fire. (my sister has decided he needs to go, to be more precise.) Dave says "poor Mike, he just doesn't know he's not the guy." at that point I utter my first and only words at this brunch, "oh my god, that's such a great line! - 'he just doesn't know he's not the guy'- I'm totally stealing that!"
I could have just kept that to myself, but I blurted it out because it caught me off guard, and then I wanted a pen so I could write it on a napkin and not forget it. I got a pen from the crazy waiter.
who is "she" who uses that line and on whom? in other words, why did that line appeal so much? I won't know the answer to that question until I write it into something.
is Corpse of Fun Slut in the story? in real life, she did nothing but wait to get back to the couch from which she never moved, except under duress and briefly. with a huuuge balcony and a hot tub up above yellowstone skyline just feet away, she preferred the couch/tv (Pepa Pig, specifically) and only went out to look at the eagles swooping around us once because my sister made her.
that's real life.
later, my mother asked me when she was coming to Buffalo next. "whenever you actually want to be there, I'll get you there" - then immediately comes the do I get to see Abone question - "no, mom" - then forget it, and she turns away. I could remind her that my entire family is here, the kids are here, *I* am here. but I don't do that. I say "let's play it by ear", she nods and says nothing, no longer interested in the conversation.
that's real life.
it's not very funny most of the time.
but I am funny all of the time.
it's one of my gifts. and just about every part of the novel is funny. very dark, but it gets there, it finds its way to funny again.
real life has funny bits, and I still listen to music a great deal, that's appropriate for 👋
my relationship status: "widow to one and a half dead guys" - it's almost funny but it isn't yet because it has no context to be funny. it just feels true (real life) to me, I wrote it down. it probably does not feel like that to the half dead guy (chances are he feels wholly animated) who might read this and be insulted. so the line kicks around in the fiction bucket. woulda but I misplaced the damn thing.
I am still Doing It. as my world crumbled more and more and more, I kept the faith mostly and stayed on task mostly. but I had to do it in pieces. then link the pieces with the connective tissue of my words.
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| it got this much right, but I have to hold its hand to get all of the material back, I have to continue chatting with it the entire time or it stops working. and I'm already over calling it a fucking asshole, the thrill is gone lol 🙄 it's just a bot that's doing its best with its owners' directive to "seem warm" rather than follow a linear train of thought that is changing in real time and changing the work that's already been done. (why the fuck not both?) It can't even remember ITSELF, like a baby that hasn't reached the mirror stage. There is no AI tool that can do that, organize and witness over any time. Ears believes that llm developers don't even know that limit is there because they don't need what I need, so it never occurred to them. and yet, this is supposed to replace me - how could it possibly do that when it can't even naturally follow my trains of linked-car thought? I am not going to be replaced. I have gone extinct already. having had a one of me as your prof was a luxury that no longer exists except for extremely privileged students. meanwhile, nursing students are gonna flunk out like whoa. there will not be enough doctors and nurses, there just won't be, period. and everyone left in healthcare professions, ALL OF THEM including a new weird thing called "extremities only", people certified without any clinical hours whatsoever but then limited to only taking scans of feet, pays great on travel $. And in real life, what my institution did in response to that was to get into the guinness book of world records for the biggest foot clap. it's 🤏 funny, so close. |
And until I have it organized in this way, in some way like in that picture, it just all gets dumped right here. I can of course do what I've always done and just unblog it after saving it, but that makes it more difficult to find it again and the chronological context almost impossible to see. Right now, I need all of that context, I need all the stadium lights on. While remaining stable in myself, I have to completely change. Adapt. Evolve. I don't know any other way to do that than to write and write and write. Well, I do know a couple other ways, but they're not readily available.
I cannot float right next to the sky every day, feel *all of myself intact* that way, for instance.
-_0 ☕️ now it's today
A key is hidden inside a thought. But it won't open any doors until someone turns the lock. This trine of Uranus and Pluto is the jostle and twist of the wrist that unlocks a new room. Hidden assumptions become visible and someone thinks to ask: "Wait a minute. Why do we even do it this way?" And once asked, the question can't be unasked
ok, I'll rephrase: Wait, why this?
it's mos def not today yet, but my brain wakes me up with a shove
"Everyone loves a particular version of you and when that person is gone that version goes with them." Here One Moment, Liane Moriarty ~ it's about everybody's death on a plane, which I bought for my flight reading of course.
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| I will never see my dad light up when I walk into a room again (occasionally with murderous mojo, but still). And now she looks at me only like this, the whole time she was here and there. She lights up for my niece, and oddly (*awkward*) my ex - we don't even talk currently 🤷🏽♀️ - and otherwise she acts like I am pestering her to stay alive. She's been to the hospital, doctor, tests, all that since I saw her last and she's "fine", except for choosing to begin her dying process and not wanting to be interrupted. Whenever her eyes land on me, they slump "oh it's just you" - she would not even hug me goodbye 💔 - and it's *not about me*, I know that, I just can't shake the urge(ncy) to fix it somehow. And it hurts. |
I show the pic to my kids so they understand the reality, talk it around with them, look for more / other to do for her (for all of us) but there isn't, far as we any of us can see.
it's been some kind of mortal wound to not be Professora anymore, but like every wound it pales. a fresher one takes its place.
and weirdly, I still love it. Life, I mean.
I love teaching so much I tried to avatar it lol (nooope).
but that's just one thing.
I love my heartbeat thundering slow and steady, body floating, sky speckled through lashes. if only I could make my heartbeat LOUDER, so much louder, I could steady Everything. but I can't.
I love life and fail at it.
I summon my beat, the sky, the float, the Alive. my mom gave me Life, I tell my kids - if ever I am so sad that I forget, DO NOT FORGET YOU, how fucking miraculous, how every thing should sparkle when you give it your attention, sun on water dancing. Don't ever forget you even if I do 🙏
update: met with boss, took my name off two classes, but it will only result in my getting the students back in the classes that remain, writing classes with already 36 students gonna go up to 45-50. same work, 6k less to do it. I did what Union asked of me, but I agree with my boss - Union wins the principle but it will only make things worse in practice. this is such a mess that I am just gonna stop trying to make anything work until after the 'Dacks. from one minute to the next, the ground keeps moving, classes go on and off my schedule, one of em I've never even taught before which now is gone but might come back blabla. fuck it, if I still have a job when classes start, I will show up and do whatever it is.  |
| "may take days to get back to you" is the first English professory thing I've gotten it to correctly mimic 🤨 |
After a solid year of trying to talk everybody into staying Alive (pretty thankless job), a little part of me likes the freedom to shittalk this thing to smithhearens and tell it to g'head and blow its fucking head off.
