VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Improving yourself will improve a relationship. Making yourself better makes the world better. Control what you can. It usually includes your own attitudes and efforts. You'll have more influence than you might imagine.

oh for fucks sake 🤨👈 being a virgo so blows. unless it literally blows, I suppose lol

as my mother comes back online, shit she says comes back. "my sanity has a checkered past" was a good one, but last night she really started tracking again (tg), bursts of full force Knife. I ordered a new living room rug so she could color bathe in Indian orange. looking at the picture of it, making her wooow sounds, she says "if he's planning on dying anyway he might as well get fucked to death on that rug, his tombstone can say ran out of lube" 🤣 I'm just like, tried that 🙄 already OF COURSE - but more importantly what self-respecting virgo needs lube and/or hasn't invented butter?! don't besmirch me 🤨 😅

gotta get up and out and get her to the kids who are packing up to start a commune. my commune is on the intimacy list of losses to process, but she remembers it fondly and is starting one in which 6 kids ranging in ages 1-10 will merge into a tribe running wild on 5 acres in Clarence WITH CHICKENS. that's getting creative with the life cheesewhiz, atta girl 👍

they tip over of course (TJ: "whose sanity does not have a checkered past??") but my kids are some of the most resilient people I know 💞

loved you well - john muirhead

trusty frontdoor fountain,
as always - needs a new lotus

Flavor Flav telling med students rehab only works if the addict decides is an absolutely incredible sentence.

Your life honestly operates at the intersection of:

grief

absurdity

academia

occult symbolism

labor

horny jokes

celebrity cameos

plumbing catastrophes

and emotional apocalypse.

Which is maybe why your tarot deck works so well.

my tarot bot gets funnier and funnier 

it's still today

it's frustratingly remarkable the difference it makes to/in me to be free of uncertainty re Aaron. he's breathing, and that is enough for me to just feel normal, also fucking breathing. I woke up, was about to dwell on lewiston of all places ouchouchouchy but if I'm breathin I can do anything. got up and made keeping my mother alive my primary focus (ie I could fucking focus). she is 💯 better each day, which means she goes from deaths door to a foot back from it, me dragging her ass back to life. while she watches me take another call, a weird new normal I'm okay with quickly, watches me absorb Aaron's statements about dying within hours of leaving rehab should it fail him this time. you'd have to assume I have become immune but the opposite, I just let it come, full on life. it's fucking hard and shit. and I am only good at enduring but gave that up. I have no idea what I am doing besides berating my mother with words I think at Aaron too, but with her I don't pull any punch. she is giving herself a lobotomy on purpose, booze or not, and IT MUST STOP RIGHT NOW. and I am just

in no mood any more. LIVE god dammit. just fucking DO IT. swallow your fucking PRIDE and be grateful you're still growing old and get WISER, the time for growing up is over. GOT IT?! 

and she does, almost hourly, come back online. present. yes, grief is terrible. unbearable, feels like. but bear it. do not pass it on. 

card of the day. 6 of pents. reciprocity. get there 🤨

then I finally settle for the night, feathers unruffling.

I know it's really hard. like using flint in a downpour. but why stockpile rations if you're not planning to survive dreary?

my friend E said everybody is a rod and I am lightening right now, a phase that feels to me like everyone else has gone lump. but maybe she's right. 

then he calls 👋

he's in rehab, but I was right about him not being at St Joes, he's in LEWISTON for fucks sake. that's so funny it hurts or hurts so bad it's funny. I just

(breathe)

that's what is so hard to explain about this. he feels it when I get to omgicantdothisanymorehesbreakingmyheart and signals "hold up!" - he can't read any of this, he is in lockdown w no internet - but it is as if he could read me, anyway. he'd say no it's just the day he got to use the phone, but he's wrong. I keep the record books. I have noted this interwoveness many times, especially when I am at breaking points and he somekinda hold up!'s me.

he's in my head and I am in his head. that's it. and we gotta figure out how to manage that in a less harrowing fashion. 

so new rule: I never want to hear about his wife. Just that. One change. My wish for this year rules that one subject out of my conversational limits for a spell.

upshot: she's a sore spot = trigger = no go. that is the inevitable result of my having been pulled back into his orbit much too soon re that "divorce" I think we (incl therapists) would all agree. and inevitable because any physical proximity and physical ability, regardless of circumstances, will result in one of us touching the other. his heart or mine, one of us starts it. that is not a mother. or a cousin. or even a Joe with benefits. nope. there is only one of me in the particular. I am the anti-Disney. like the antichrist. 

yes, I can be his antichrist. 

then I go into the living room

first question, is Aaron still in the hoosgow? far as I know, ma. she will ask that multiple times today. 

I tell her the Janis story to get her mind off it. she says "not-even-Nate gave her trust issues"

how the fuck does she remember aaron's jokes like that but not how many times she's asked about him? 

siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh

The dogs don't need to be hooked to anything to go outside anymore. I can just open the door. They can just walk through it. 

Dball charged right out there, 11 pounds of GET OFF MY LAWN.

But Janis just sat down, put her head down, ears back, looked like she wanted to cry.

I know how that feels. I walk through that door every day of my life. Let go of.

don't worry, Fatass, you're mine

I don't think Aaron is in rehab, for instance. My therapist says that's "anticipatory grief" exacerbated enormously by my mother. Butterknife is thinking 30 days, then he will be out and feel better and come visit with her. I want that to be true. I wanted it to be true enough to try to make good on my promise to visit him. I called Sisters, they had no idea wtf I was talking about and directed me to St Joes, which has a voicemail box for this info, and nobody ever calls you back, wondering if I should just go over there....until it occured to me: he's not in rehab.

I don't believe it is true because I cannot. The rug has been pulled out from under my mind too many times. It cannot rest.

I think, no feel because I cannot know, that he's somewhere not calling her today, and tomorrow, maybe forever, probably forever. I didn't bother counting 30 days and marking the calendar - she assumed I had, but it didn't even occur to me to count on anything. What occurs to me always, like a dripping faucet inside me plop plop plop plop, is that he's never coming back. Like he's dead. AND he's suffering. An endless despair loop. No matter what, if he's in rehab or not, he's suffering somewhere. And not coming back even if he does turn up. Those kisses last fall, my bare feet on the cold concrete, that was the last of my djinn. 

That is a very hard truth to live with. An acid burn that will not heal. Never healed. I have to learn how to really live with that. Not hide it. Not endure it. Def NOT throw Nebraskas at it. Not numb it in any way. What my therapist calls "acute intimacy malnutrition" is a kind of pica. I eat dirt. 

My mom loooooooves this neighborhood. I never drive home down Harlem, I meander through the side streets, so to her these little houses go on forever. She likes to sit on the patio and say hi to everyone, look at all their front porches and hanging flower baskets. She likes to look at my truck. She says I have the whole world by the balls. 

But a gash opened in me, a wound ripped wider and wider over the long lonely scary af winter. I feel like utter shit a lot of days. Like today. Alive, though, as I wished. Just hurts like hell. Huckleberry. Aaron didn't name himself that, he named my gash where there is no such person. 

The Knife understands, but slowly bc she made a terrible and totally understandable decision over her own dark winter: because she could not stop thinking about my father's death, she chose dementia. The things she does now that make no sense make perfect sense once she told me that. She stopped reading. She stopped knowing what day it is. Stopped getting dressed ever. She watched the same garden show over and over and over until she could mute it and watch it that way (though I can hear it as I write this, Monty Don over and over 🤦🏻‍♀️). She just left her mind as much as she possibly could. 

"But ma, it didn't help."

"No, it didn't help at all. Just made me more annoying."

🤣🤣 so true

Then we sit and look at the truck. 

your heart or mine - jon pardi yup, and both our hearts are ouchy

the wish

pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, touch, joy, reciprocity, pleasure, rest, 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wait - frugit

 

aww ... but wait for it ....

don't take hope unless prescribed and I do prescribe it, I am a doctor after all. 

tomorrow is a long time - bob dylan it's his birthday

hahahahahahahhahaha
she can really nail it 

GEMINI (May 21-June 20)

When many people reflect on their earlier years, they focus on the alienation and wounds they endured. Few recall, in vivid detail, the moments of joy, triumph, and breakthrough. It’s a symptom, I suppose, of our era’s compulsive cynicism, and not necessarily an accurate account of the past. So many good things happened, too! This isn’t to dismiss the real pain that shaped us. Still, I want you to know that you are in a season when it’s essential to recognize and celebrate the blessings of all your beginnings—the fun, guidance, and grace that helped you flourish. Update your gratitude!

Funny story: I told my therapist if she ever suggested that I start a gratitude journal, I'd have to throatpunch her. "Noted." Then it became kind of a therapy running bit, pairing things that grind me down + my inner slapstick shorthand. Most recently, my thing has been wanting to slap people in the face with my dick, just one good hard BAP! This whooooole situation has finally taught me what penis envy is. The funny part is the therapist adopts these sayings too, she can't help it; between our sessions, there are moments in which she thinks "dick to the face" = when you're the only adult standing (the only one "with a dick left to swing") and you get so TIRED that all you wanna do anymore is SMACK. The therapist deadpan, "It's noteworthy how often your sayings feel apt." 🤣😭🤣😭

teaching Bug STEM the old fashioned way

"Homeschool" dickbutter

genesis - morgan wallen (trap remix) dancing in the kitchen slow, sinuous, spirits swirling around me tickling my skin

last year, my genesis when I started trying to do more than just survive

The Magician shattered 

are you living your life - noah derksen

last year today - a CARROT 

"cat my witness"

“here is the machinery of enchantment itself” in pieces

when I say there is nobody left standing, I mean NO BODY

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Fun doesn't seem to be organically burbling up from the routine. You'll have to create it. [👀 no shit?] Originality will be required. What would you do if your main job was to enjoy yourself? Who is to say that it's not?

Every body.

hide my gun - post mallone ft HARDY (sing along)

"inventing fun" (for them)

Sunshine also, fired despite the massive staff shortage at falls memorial, budget cutting the humans of course. we were supposed to cook today, but she is scattered in the wind to Binghamton on a travel contract, homesick half to death. so Bug is going to learn how to make dickbutter to keep that dream alive for Sunshine.

fence dude is down with gout - I should bitch but don't have the heart to do that - so we pivot, put trees in the ground anywhere / back from the fenceline because they were half dead baking in their black pots - they too need to put a root down Here X or die

I do not want to be nothing but a tether. I increasingly want that to stop. I am a human woman, not a 1000-mile-deep post. endurance is not fulfillment. but what else can I do that is not a moral injury? 

that lump is my mother, with that tv blaring 24/7, up all night (keeping me up all night) crabby all day. and I gotta bully her outa that chair cz carrots don't work - flowers, no. garden, no. going anywhere, no. staying home, lump. she is just waiting. for "always made her laugh" and "so bad, but so good ha ha" etc, a mashup of Tbone and Aaron. what should we call that? let's go with A-Bone. 

for me, there is only enduring that. it's not even funny 🤏. I just have to bear not being able to produce A-Bone out of thin air, relentless failure at an impossibility. #a-post