Tuesday, August 18, 2026

What does it actually mean to be a witch? How do you know if you are one? I think everyone is one, at least nascently. Not everyone would agree And it is true that skills are earned. They don't just come out of the fucking ground up your asshole out the top of your head like fucking glitter. You have to have a Way, first of all - probably several. A Way is a thing that you do faithfully, a practice, a focus, of control and self-reflection that can be sustained and returned to, not for comfort but to "screw your courage to the sticking-place" - and it must entail your body, your whole body, and not just consume it like burning fuel. You have things in common with both a living tree and a log but you are neither. These and distinctions like it must be front of mind much of every day. It is your job to figure out how they stay front of mind for you. (Otherwise, you may do some very damaging things to keep your body doing what it is, burning itself right out.) 

You have to have a moral code that constrains your behavior and guides it. It has to be chosen and clearly articulatable. It can't be some vague bullshit about how you were raised Catholic or whatever - you don't get to inherit a vague moral compass, even if that is your inheritance. In that case, it's on you to correct that fact. Personally, I live by the threefold law and the transformative humanities golden rule. Respectively, 1 what you give, you'll get 3x back 2 (much more crucially) if someone else can do a thing, then you should help them do it / don't do it yourself, and if something needs done in the world and you are the only person who can do it, then you must do it. 

The first part of rule two - if someone else can do a thing, then you should stop doing it and help them do instead - acts as a countermeasure for the tendency towards martyrdom that the second half of that rule leans toward. 

You share qualities with the God of your understanding, but you are not Jesus. You should always remember that. Even if you think he's a good guy. And not everyone would agree on that.. I never asked him to climb up on that cross and would not have asked that of his mother. As a syndrome that can metastasize out of the perfectly good, fundamentally good, impulse to be measured by what you provide, martyrdom as a syndrome is deadly droll. Do you enjoy it when someone martyrs themselves for you? I mean as kinkplay sure 🥰 but.... Otherwise probably not so much. 

A witch spends a lot of time aligning your body with energy and want and swerve and persistence, the fundamental states of what's around you, and tries to love every one of them, yet use discernment about what feels in accordance. 

In some ways it's very easy to be a witch. You've always known. You take a deep breath and very often run in the other direction, for as long as you can remember, away from distraction and noise. Or you might do the opposite, follow the surge of the energy around you, like surfing - human energy, animal energy, tree energy, all of it. Ideally, you could do both at any one time. And you've always thought about these things, you've always FELT these things.

And then all other ways it's mostly frustrating to feel like a witch. Whatever is already exists, and you can't hate on it because it exists. Even a plastic bottle harming the ocean, even if you want no more of those plastic bottles to be made, you can't just look at the plastic bottle and think "fuck you" - it didn't ask to be here any more than you did. But here you both are. 

That's you and the whole fucking world. And for me personally, I can't feel it ALL anymore. It's too expensive as the world is presented currently. It doesn't exist in real life mostly, it exists on devices, and that's not real. Even if it depicts factual things that's not the same thing as being lived reality. If you spend that physical actual lived reality looking at the simulations of reality on a tiny device, that's on you. If you are a  witch, you can explain to me how, by doing that, you're surfing lifepower in a morally compassed way to any end that you can articulate. 

If you cannot do any of those things, I strongly suggest you just live out your days in peace and don't think too much about being someone who wields witchpower. Because mostly you do not wield it at all, even if you know all about it. You just feel it. And sometimes with great focus and control and effort, you can shift a stream of power and make reality change course right in front of you. For the better 🤏 If you can do that, people will admire your ability to do so, and/but you're probably lonely. It's not necessarily a lot of fun being singular.

And this extends to holding perfectly still. You don't need to perform an action to be held to the moral codes and the energy all around you. If you are lying in your bed alone or with your pets, and you are thinking about all that you hate, you are throwing up into LIFE. So you better knock it off or not be a fucking witch at least. As I said, I believe everyone is to some degree or another a contributor to Life in this way. But you're a witch if you spend a fuckton of time thinking about what you're "putting out there" from the center of your being radiating out at all times. You are doing that to other people, whatever that is. 

I don't know how to perform a thrombectomy. Different longstudied skillset. Both hard earned. Often both thankless and pointless and doesn't change the outcome. There's no recompense for lighting a fucking candle at all. It keeps you up all night, you don't get paid, and you have no idea whether it has any effect at all (probably not). Practice creates an obligation to practice well, not a right to results. For whatever reason, however you got there, you are in a pull, a current, and you're trying to shift and survive it usually because you're trying to grab onto someone else, which might even make it worse. "If in doubt, let go" has not been a rule that I've been great at observing.

Do you think about the relationship of your corporeality to the universe? And the way you might land intentionally or unintentionally, even for a moment on the corporeality of someone else in that huge ocean of Life? Is that front of mind? Are you alone in that deep blue current, both submerged and floating? 

Are you making anything?

Leanore's aria - Fidelio Beethoven's only opera, he didn't know the ranges/sounds of a human voice, he had to imagine all of it.


I told them no to being on camera. I'm gonna walk the cemetery instead in a procession of us who remain.

a coworker death per August - actual not metaphysical or figurative or whatever other kinds of Dying we're all doing - and they want to make promo out of it  ...  

status update: 👆 shit + one more class in the bag, on schedule


VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Maybe it's effective in dating apps [👀 hell no], but in real life, people who want to make new friends don't typically lead with a list of requirements. You learn more in a 10-second face-to-face interaction than in hours of digital interaction.

like Mary Likes Hornet Figging Guy ("Junior")? - that impression landed in 10 seconds 🤣

it's weekly oracle day, let's check those out..

VIRGO - 

I am nursing a hopeful dream that you will give yourself a fun surprise or two in the coming days—maybe even more than two. Not necessarily the most expensive delights, but those that would inspire your nervous system to relax and your spirit to celebrate. Possible options: a few hours of free time with no obligations, a hike where you adore and praise the sky, a conversation you’ve been craving, a daring yes, or a long-overdue no. Or how about finally starting a fun project you keep postponing, or setting down a burden you’ve been carrying for too long? You might ask yourself: “If someone who loved me dearly were in charge of my rhythm, what would they arrange for me?”

uncanny, the "nervous system" language of that. let's crowdsource ideas?? (ask my mom [?] - dicey af lol). what would you arrange for me if the magic wand were yours? all healers, adventurers, ghosts, friends, dogs, even Eggs the cat I've been saving since I met him -DM me yo. I'd love to hear it. I picture like an oldschool coumpouding med cabibet, and every time I pull open a drawer, a different 'arrangement idea' wafts out...

Meanwhile, I have classes to finish,  one more cup of coffee before I jump back on on it - anyone who's been following along if you would like to offer which has been your favorite assignment that might be useful to me, if you care to share! 

And I gotta help get vehicles bought - one per each of the kids who drives. The eldest just got a modest donation of $ - I've learned less is more w that one. Ears, on the other hand, at his request, I am bossing the absolute shit out of him even though it makes him snappy. He is gonna be requiring some cosigning, I believe, now that we know how far short the schmitzes fell of the goal. 

We are getting shit DONE NOW. Enough already.

song tbd

card if day, yupyup


Monday, August 17, 2026

status update: one class is a wrap.

goal: one per day / done by Thursday

on thursday I re-up the class I co-teach w my boss -  so that will require almost no thought / no change, unless he's making any changes.

In my own 3 classes, I am systematically going through every assignment, and adding an AI step to it, and then constraining them to use no other AI, then, make 'em run it through AI for analysis/revision before I see it besides etcetc. 

So far, I have done the easiest class. Tomorrow, a writing class. 

Upside: by doing this now, I am constraining the amount of attention anyone could get from me for the rest of the semester; and I am making it possible for every student to get an A simply by following the directions very strictly. It's got a dominatrix vibe to it for sure. I'm taking all those grit(ty) assignments and adding them structurally into specific course material.Which means wherever I've been reading chatgpt anyway already, I'm just letting them do what they were already doing, and not calling it cheating, calling it prep work. Then one SHORT actual thing that I read. If they cheat on THAT THING, they fail. Period. 

It takes a surprising amount of time to design an assignment that actually works, that a student cannot get around and just hand in bullshit. If you think that by asking them what they feel, or whatever, is gonna get you around that it doesn't - they ask chat g p t to have their feelings for them, and it's getting better and better at faking those. It used to be that you could catch it because somewhere in it, it would say 'of course, I don't really have any feelings' and the student would be too stupid to even proofread the fucking thing before they turned it in. But that was in the days when I could actually read these things and I can't anymore, first of all, and second of all, it confabulates better now, so it wouldn't make that mistake in the first place. I have to plug in the original assignments and make it cheat digest it, right in front of front of me, so I can reverse engineer what to tell the students to do, which is what they were already doing. And they still can do that. Strangely, that makes them feel as if they're doing homework lol - that's how's how much they use it! I'm just not going to fucking read any of that shit any more. They get to ask chatgpt what they think and then they get to ask chat g p t to write drafts for em and then they have to ask chat g p t what it is they would ask a real human being at that point and then they have to answer whatever fucking question that is in two hundred motherfucking words typa deal.

And let's see what happens.  

I certainly don't want to read any more chatgpt fucking essays. THAT IS PASSING BUTTER. No. So. One class per day. Nothing changes except every assignment. Every one of them is A/F so do it exactly the way I tell you. Including be funny when I tell you (amuse me). This is very tedious work, assignment design, but it's long overdue, really, it's been a couple of years now that I've had my eye on the ball of aliving desperately. One should update one's assignments continually, ideally. But now several very hard years have gone by since I last did that. 

So. There's something satisfying now about going through each one of these classes, and the update is that every single week I crack a leather whip over the heads of two hundred people. I can almost hear it. They are gonna do it my way, or they are gonna fail. And when it comes to the writing classes, I'm going to make sure they fail by week 4, if they're gonna, so that they won't even be there as part of my statistics, they'll have dropped. Self-analyzing to see if they should persist (harder) or swerve is one of the assignments at week 4, when I am mandated to report them for being likely to fail. Or not. They're going to decide. But they're gonna use AI to come to a feeling-less conclusion on the subject based on the evidence. There will be zero late assignments accepted until MIDTERM - after midterm, if you've been on it, then you've earned some leeway. I am dogfooding all of that here because I can't bear to sit in front of that laptop for one more fucking second at ten p. m. But I did get one done. 

Tomorrow the writing intensive version (WIP means writing intensive program, and yes, I did come up with it, intentionally sound like whip 🤭, a good fifteen years ago. It used to be writing across the curriculum (WAC) which was a whack lolol but that got dated, so I thought it would be funny to change it - omg the shit that nuns used to let me get away with was awesome - that's an actual program, WIP, and every single student at the college is subject to taking two whip classes lolol very very often misspelled just like that -  we had a middle states commendation for it! - and stillll cracking myself up about it 🤭) of the same course, the worst offender re students turning in total bullshit. 

Wed - Narrative Medicine 201, with an eye towards a Week 4 guillotine of some kind, right before that conference presentation. Oct 2.  Handy timing. What will we want to be able to say by then in that particular one 🤔 - but all of my classes count as narrative medicine, they're all taught to healthcare provider students, and they're all about stories.

Maybe I could get both those classes done tomorrow - yes, let's GRIT THAT OUT. setting that intention 🙏. then yoga Wed. 

Thurs - Graphic Medicine class, the reading list for which ChatGPT hallucinated a book by Ken Dahl and started this whole thing about hallucination and verisimilitude confabulation - but that class won't be changing because that will be up to my boss, the BIO part of the course runs that show. I will tell my boss all about the presentation on Oct 2 and see if he wants to get in on that which he might, we have done many presentations like that together before. Totally up to him. I booked 1-2 hours that morning for us to catch up and get the class out the door. Nobody but he and I have a class that big. It breaks the enrollment rules for a freshman class by one hundred percent - and that's why he and I both still have a job. And I understand that. We are both very pragmatic people (he's a capricorn). 

Then all there is to do, if nothing else bad happens and classes actually begin on the 31st, all I have to do is go to the union funeral picnic on the 28th to confirm that yup we are still alive, then I press the "ON" button on the classes. That's it. Half of my job happens when I'm not doing my job. It happens in summers and in spaces betweens. It happens when I look back, and I look forward and I make these decisions. Otherwise, I'm free to be anywhere, doing anything, while everyone else is going to physical classrooms and I am not. And everyone else is wondering what they're doing next week, and I am not. My students know every single thing that's going to be occurring and that they'll be responsible for - they can see the entire class laid out in front of them on day one, and then they get to decide what to do from there on out. I'll be going to Wisconsin for sure. I wanna get to the high peaks for sure. If I get accepted to that conference, which is almost for sure, I'll be going to kalamazoo michigan. All that is in Oct. in the meantime, I'm going to head out to my cottage. I think the cottage is mostly where I'll be for lotsa Sept, 'cept labor day ( fucking fireworks ) until I gotta close it up for the year.

The only other thing I did today was get that bees nest, which is hornets actually, offa Mary. The guy comes to the door, he's got a yellow shirt with a big bee on it and something stuck in his teeth (like a little bit of a hamburger bun from lunch). He introduces himself as so and so junior, I'm pretty sure this dude is some kind of drunk or high. He's really really happy to see me. And all I've said is hello. So I bring him around the side of the house to where Mary is. The hornet's nest is in the foundation of the house right behind the base of Mary. So it does look like they're flying in and out her ass, to be fair. But this dude actually says that out loud and adds "virgin birth, ya right!? didn't think she'd be KINKY though!!" and cracks himself up completely so then I'm also laughing because it just feels so absurd. All of it. All the time. And he's not alone, he's got a driver too - my guess would be this is the company owner's kid, middle aged guy who probably does not have a driver's license anymore. So Beeguy Jr calls to the other guy, "come see MARY dude, she's got fucking hornets in her ass!" Like, I have little old people for neighbors across the street 🤭🤦🏻‍♀️. Not to mention that I didn't get dressed today because why would I (?) so I'm standing out there in bare feet and this little stupid black dress I sleep in 🤭🤦🏻‍♀️🤣 Janis sitting there, swagging her tail at the whole scene... he wanted the check made out to him personally, no tax, or cash? (no), a check I wrote out fast, thanking christ for the driver dude standing there or Junior woulda hit on me it was feelin like 😵‍💫🤦🏻‍♀️. He told me to write my email on the check so that he could send me a receipt that never came 👀 (sigh range)

grit to self: "you can't have or do anything you want until you get your classes done on Canvas" 

no fuckwriting or streaming cowboy shows, etc. now that the laptop is open it stays on WORK until that's done. I'm waiting on a couple answers (are you sure these dates are right?), and ANY question is bad, as the answer will be MEAN and call attention to the fact that I still exist for now. But I'm co-teaching a class with my boss (he's out of options but HIMSELF, as all chairs eventually discover). so I need to ask him how we're doing that...

I click the announcements, killing time waiting for answers, while joking with Janis, "let's see if they've closed any other departments!"

so weird

hey Janis, do you think that other button leads to a Phish show? 🤷🏽‍♀️


Sunday, August 16, 2026

I wasn't feelin it (usually don't lately), and nobody would go with me (typical circumstance), but I went anyway (I don't require a hand to hold or I'da died already). Glad I did. #ontopic










 
Vegas Mary has a halo of bees

card of the day - not feelin' it



I gotta get it up to go to that damn opera..

wild horses - coooper ❤️

(snort) if the universe (or alexa) is trying to tell me something, I don't know what it is  


Saturday, August 15, 2026

Friday, August 14, 2026

grit novel swerve + class assignment (smerge)

What if I go back to the sobriety games and I just keep writing those for a while...

At the end of the modern chair thing, I sent him to where the real-life person said he had to go, ie Blackops Disneyland. And thus ended the sobriety games / I hit a wall. 

At that point, he does not have a name, no one would know who "he" is except for his wife and mother.

I couldn't go any farther with that "him" and I still couldn't. 

However, when Craig came back to measure for the door, my sink plumbing had fallen apart and started leaking all over the floor so he helpfully got wrenches out and got under my kitchen sink for about an hour. He didn't charge me for that, even though he has an official handyman business now that I make my checks out to - he was just being good to me. And he stunk up the whole kitchen like a handyman. It made me a little woozy for a minute.

After he left I uhmmm "meditated" (wheeeeew 🚬) 

So what if to go forward, I make a mash-up? My mother already made a horrible one, A-bone, which fills me with despair. I'll leave that one on the cutting room floor.

I'd make a mash-up of a "he" and start to flip it - it's herself she's keeping sober. he's being nice to her. that's how I phrased what happens at the end of the sex chair story, that he's trying to be nice to her. he has intention towards her for the first and last time. he has intention at all for the first and last time, as it stands, and with that intention, he does two things: he's nice to her once and he renditions himself to Blackops Disneyland.

But this is fiction, I can just take out that last sentence. No disneyland to go to, boom, I shot it.

He then continues whatever intention(s) that the Mashup Man would have. It's not him anymore, it's a Hucklejeffcraigleunionberry Guy. 

I don't want to fall in love with Craig in real life in any amount of sentences. But I sure have the material for a sobriety game chapter.

I joked with him about not smoking a joint because he was here, and the walldoor prevents good air circulation so I had to "be a good girl" re substances and lying around depressed in my underwear all day, which is what I would have been doing if he hadn't been here, and I said it just like that.

The drag show vid that he showed me. In it the performer is singing around him as he sits on a restaurant chair. And then she kicks open his legs and points at his dick just as she's singing "have you ever let your heart decide? lala" disneyprincess shit, then sits in his lap with him spread eagle like that and almost knocks them both onto the floor. he showed it to me twice, being submitted and nearly thrown to the floor by a drag queen, delighted. he wasn't flirting. he really just thought it was really fucking funny and it was, but give it a slight nudge and it can get to weird flirting.

Then he changed out of his painting pants in the other room, and he laid on my kitchen floor for about an hour.

fuck


I'd crosspollinate, every man I know brings each their own qualities, skills, jokes, musk. keep some huck, stir in a couple of big scoops of jeff, (🤔 and some E maybe too, actually, always a simmer there) (and Craig is a hell of a lot like Puckhead, smells like him, I could stir some of that retro material in maybe, surely I fucked him in an Ikea on here somewhere rt? I def did fuck him over fixing my sink, I remember it, he laughed at all my hair in it and called it a "dead squirrel"), move the trip to new orleans into the near future and move it geographically to the bourbon festival in Kentucky in September (happening in real life, which I have discussed going to with Ears and Sunnie both MAYBE). If I move the new orleans trip to kentucky, that stirs in a dollop of Union by association, he's a self proclaimed hillbilly from exactly there. Maybe "he" follows her there, so she doesn't drink. Which at the end of the day (2 days), is exactly what he did do in new orleans in real life.

I don't want to change the structure. I like swerve-kill-swerve. 

But taking the one sentence out of the end of the sex chair chapter opens up that section of the novel to an infinity of scenarios that eventually leave her house (the setting changes), moving west, even if they resume on the kitchen floor in the next game.

He is increasingly trying to reach her. She is increasingly becoming unreachable in a way neither of them understands. You could flip the he/she of that on a dime. One of them could become a dangerous alchoholic. One could kill somebody. Either of them could do either or both of those things. 

I can make that frequently funny. it's the Knife in me.

And writing fucking is fun. I mean...here, try it! 

Grit Assignment - write a page of "therapy" porn: fuck somebody to life (reverse blink, no matter how badly you need to get laid, you do not want to be "fucked to death" now do ya?). So the intention is reaching someone who is drowning, with your body, without drowning yourself.

AI step, CHOICE (meet yourself where you are)

1 if you have no idea how to begin such a thing, then set up a series of conditions, including you are trying to use an erotic form of argumentation to talk your lover into living, setting is X, scenario type is Y, etc, all your choice, and ask chatgpt to write your first draft. then, add a lot of swear words to it, repeat until you are happy with a version. 

or you can skip that

2 write it all yourself, any way you want to. if it's in your head already, just write it. (btw you can USE A PEN for this, if you want to, in a journal / on a napkin whatever, and then take a pic w your phone and chatgpt can read that / it could read my handwriting)

3 submit your erotic scenario to your AI for a "fucking asshole check" - use the same one as before - ask it for an analysis of how you helped or harmed the nervous system of the other person and/or your own nervous system in the fuck-process. 

Final submission = short final reflection on that analysis.

Learning Outcome: imagine → make → interrogate consequences → decide whether to persist/swerve

That final reflection can be pretty damn short. As in "you blew his/your circuit box" in which case you wouldn't want to keep writing those scenarios / persist. Even IN THOUGHT, your brain would simply stop doing it, you certainly didn't mean to hurt that other person (or yourself), that is the opposite of what you were going for, which is why the games stopped writing themselves, and I got so quiet on that and all related subjects to the point of I don't feel my body that way at all for anyone (until today for about 5 lovely minutes, plop ft pop-oft).

But if I go FULL FICTION on it and make every man into ONE, and she is the one in a driving-her-to-drink fucked up situation she doesn't know what to do with - fuck it ? shoot it ? flee it into the arms of a cave ? - that does 2 things:

I write more fucking for a while, it's a compelling form of writing that kind of goes where it goes once you start, just like sex does, and so I would open my laptop for it, where classes that I do not want to teach and an inbox I am avoiding to death await me right now ☠️ - maybe I can get to September that way....

And "she" is already coming apart in Sobriety Games, upping the stakes and crying and stepping onto suicidal ledges with "him" - that is the "she" who shot Nebraska eventually, so she'll be moving towards murder as if by undertow, but not taking Huck-for-Whoever with her, as I did not take him with me by blogging almost nothing about Nebraska until I shot him / posted a photo of the bed I could have killed him on.



grit novel Vegas notes 

if books could kill - Grit  hilarious and bang on

I was aware that the original book is total shit, of course. in CLASS, I was as much undermining it as I was playing along with it. at every turn, the assignments SLOW DOWN THINKING long enough to look at it. then if persistence is actually applicable, apply it! mos def. but if not, pause. it's the same concept applied in the kinds of yoga I do - in order to get anywhere, you have to know *where you are* (duh), and to do that you have to look yourself in the face. and I've been a teacher a longass time, teaching versions of opt out / opt in - more often out than in, deciding that persisting can become "the hobgoblin of little minds" (Emerson) I wasn't planning any assignment that included reading that stupidass Duckworth book, or watching her Ted Talk (unless to critique it, but meh, I'd be too bored to read that). the grit concept is old news, which is why my employer thought it was innovative. (wouldn't surprise me if next they stick me with The Secret. [which I'd also be great at lol])

I've run away with the whole idea and the novel has been dogfooding grit. from HERE, I can see that grit is half of what is killing everyone. including me, hence dragging my feet to go back - something can be survivable and even worthwhile and still become intolerable because nothing new can happen anymore (the meeting will go according to the fucking agenda, which might kill me, like if it drove me to drink — if that happens I will go on disability permanently [quit]). everyone is told "open sesame" at walls will work if only they keep it up. only once is "kill that" on the board in the novel, and I took the shot. 

aliving->murder->aliving

(over->dead->dying)

(swerve->kill it->swerve) 

the middle is the rupture, but the outside terms aren't “before/after" they're two forms of continuing (trying to imagine how to / making shit up as I go).

the only absolute thing in that structure has been dead / kill it / murder in the center (no) - from here, now, it looks like 3 intentionalities, the outside 2 of which were/are winging it. I'm (she is) trying to keep us all alive, unless I/she can/gotta shoot the fucking problem.

clear intention / improvised means

clear intention / available means

clear intention / improvised means

persisting is difficult. and persisting in sameness is boring besides. so it better be 1 worth it and 2 not gonna kill ya (or what was the fucking point?)



From "abracadabra" to "bibbidi-bobbidi-boo," history has collected a hefty volume of words widely revered as magical. In these moments before a powerful conjunction of Mercury and Jupiter in the sign of the cat, there's a huge benefit to playing around with words and phrases to find the ones that fit. Muses favor you landing on your own personal "Open, Sesame."

thinking about the concept of "sunk cost" - why keep doing a thing? because you've already done it / been doing it? for a person who tends toward constance, that's potentially problematic. why stay in a shitty relationship of any kind? because you've been in it is not a good reason. I know, on one level, that it's absurd for me to not want to go back to work just because there is no Jeff to flirt with. I have a CV as long as your arm, I've done all the things, I have the highest rank there is to earn, my career outsizes the trifle of flirting by a mile. but that's the problem, too. if I am writing it in the past tense, it's backstory not story. see? you only play a game if you don't know the outcome. flirting is compelling because it's unpredictable. flirting w Jeff was how I jumped out of the fucking meeting agendas (and the only time I talked to him lol - it was our agreed upon meeting survival strategy), the laid out map of what is supposed to be happening, supposed to be talked about. I just don't want to follow the agenda, any agenda, any more. they want my magic back at work, that's what my boss literally called it. but what fuel is there for that magic? for "open sesame" to work, THERE HAS TO BE A FUCKING DOOR. 

if everything is only backstory, that = she kept going because she'd come this far, The End. I don't want "sunk cost" on my god damn Tombstone. thus, #grit in all its forms has hit a wall. hit it hard. I don't disavow any prior layer of life. I am just only interested in what might happen next. #maybe

#grit is a highly problematic concept - not a BAD one, just kinda like a loaded gun, you could easily shoot yourself with it, that's the reason to learn about it. persistence is great - but toward what? at what cost? who decides the destination remains worth reaching? (a: only you) at what point does “grit” become sunk cost wearing a virtue costume? stopping because something is difficult is not the same thing as stopping because continuing is no longer a meaningful use of your life.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). It's easy to stand by your principles when nothing is at stake. The real test comes when doing the right thing costs you money, status, convenience or approval. Which values are you willing to pay for?

what is "the right thing"? someone please tell me what that means. 

I should mow the lawn, but it'll just grow back 🫩 I don't want to. 

I do not want to do ANY of the things I am supposed to be doing here. 

Not. One. 

Craig is here working on the roof, so I had to put on clothes 🫩 I told him we shouldn't have a semester-start picnic, we should have a drag show cz going back IS A FUCKING DRAG. he wasn't invited (sigh). but he has recently been to a drag show. he whipped out his phone to show me a vid of a drag queen sitting on his lap singing a Disney song, of all things. Disney has now escaped and become a fucking invasive narrative species.

if the universe is trying to tell me something, I don't what it is.

card of the day: ace of cups. nooot feelin' it. 

but. I just hired Craig to INSTALL A DOOR. that will help with two problems. 1 I hate that fucking door, it makes that whole room ugly and swings the wrong way so that it blocks the fucking room if it's open and the room is stifling if it's shut, which means IT FAILS TO BE A DOOR by SUCKING whether it is open or shut (the only dharma of a door) 2 it will motivate me to get back to work and to earn the paycheck that will pay for the new fucking door.

I do not actually want to fall in love with Craig in four sentences or any amount of sentences. but I will love a glass patio door, with better steps for my mother, less deep + better railing, a brighter room and better access to the yard that I don't want to mow right now, but then I would wanna mow it because I could see it through the fucking door. I guess that's virgo magic: noticing that I want a door / don't wanna say "open sesame" at a fucking wall.

ugly fucking door

route around - rebelution from Ears

gee, wonder why am I single 🤔

even without the karaoke factor, it's unabomber adjacent 

Thursday, August 13, 2026

pulling my shit together around a herd of dogs to go fetch Ears and head to Lewiston, listening to new releases including new material by LP (mia corizon sp

recovery - LP for Huck-For-Whoever - this sounds right to me - the *pitch* of it, and the "don't call me, my nerves are shot, we can't be friends, the shades are drawn, go away, be quiet!" vibe of it all - plus that matches the orange that my mother 'prescribed' for lack of a better description and with which I now live wall to wall (I don't mind)

upside to everything, if we were friends, I might hit him up to go see/hear this with me, 2 nights only -my yoga friend Louis is in town to sing (beating the utter crap out of me this morning was just a bonus / wow did he ever!) - I've heard them at the UU church once before, it's sound bathing of sorts and about as far away from a bar scene as I can imagine other than the top of a mountain

but I cannot (shut up!) so I shant :( sadly 

update: I feel like a god damn
BEAST

Ears car to fetch from Lewiston / more Carmax shit to figure out

2 extra dogs more to babysit for a week (E and I trade off) arriving soon

bosses emailing/texting (doing emotional labor as I taught them when I was raising them - if you ignore the emotional labor, shit don't work - now turned ON ME = "please come back!" [no ft not yet])

and outa nowhere one of my fave yoga teachers who disappeared a year ago when both partner and mom got sick texted me - he's teaching *this morning* please come - so I'm doing what I did in the dacks, forcing myself awake early to get climbing - by noon I'll be a sweaty mess, 4-6 miles behind me with still a full day ahead of me

oof, the upkeep here, this yard is huge, I am swamped by it truly

upshot: being here is lonely, but it's very full time

status: LIFING while planning next migrations, to the cottage, then to WI and to MORE MOUNTAINS. could my mom get to Lake Placid? 🤔 I dunno, but that's my best bet, ADA compliant resort (flight to Montreal?   ... shit, are we at war with Canada? god dammit .. )

song tbd, listening to the backlog, dancing to Riley, that mustach 🥰, tho tbh I am experiencing my body as athletic more than sensual at all. another difference the year made.

-_0 brace yourselfs






Wednesday, August 12, 2026


status: back in Vegas

Ears said it was his best Tawista ever, and all there was was that, us talking about writing. I bought us leather journals. economically, it seems like there's nothing left there except artists. everything else is boarded up and we wondered how anyone is making a living. did Blowhard sell the trees?? there are a LOT of lumber trucks. even Tops only had one person working, and in each of the two times we went there, that one person (older man, jaundiced) told us he was about to quit (fuck it). but artisans of every kind - mosaic makers, blacksmith, tattoo artists, glass blowers, leather workers, riverwater whiskey brewers - that's what's there now. so the journals were none two alike. I got one that was so me, and then he picked one that was so him. and we talked about writing, which really is talking about everything. I have taken Ears there every year of his breathing life. I have taken all of the rest of the kids except the newest babe there (yet). they have all been baptized in dacks water, with the oxygen bubbles tickling their growing limbs. but Ears more than anyone has that green air woven into his blood. and when we feel homesick, which we agree we both very often do (ouch), we've decided there's/that's mostly what we mean. it's not just a place, although it's a beautiful place. it's not just that cabin, ever never changed. it's a feeling. the way there, memory layers rather than just pools and weighs you down there. it's a feeling that all of the feelings can be felt all at once, cohering, like the muscles that are rebuilding themselves under my skin. 

home builds you up, not tears you down. like gesso. like collage. like narratives until there is a There there.

Those layers are our art. What we make. That's what is most important. What complex Feeling are we trying to Make of ourselves and how?

we talked about many ways in which we're going to change what we're doing here to *build* up. example (of many) - I am going to pack his lunches again. sometimes, I'll write little notes to tuck inside them, like the little angel that I left hanging on his rearview that says he's never alone, which he's not. I bought that for myself in 2014 when I needed to hear it, and it's been hanging there ever since, "as cheesy as it is" he does look at it. I've been trying not to climb up his ass, thinking he reallllly needs to learn how to buy a house now before it's too late, but biting my tongue-thoughts back.

(god damn, I bite-back so much) (you have no idea)

It was such a liberation to us both for him to say, "I want you to climb as far up my ass as you can get" hahaha. You spend fifteen dollars a day on lunch at Tim Horton's, I tried not to exclaim (!) I've wanted to pack your lunch for several years but I didn't want to infantilize you, I tell him. It's clearly an upsetting thought to me, he understands. I won't feel fucking infantilized, he says, I'll feel fed because that's how food fucking works, and we laugh.

mostly we laughed and laughed and laughed. even though at one point, we thought we might be at war.

(a HUGE military plane flew over us so low it cast a shadow the size of the fucking pond. we were both reading. I called thru the wall, are we at war do you think? he was reading about nuclear war and had just gotten to doomsday planes, as if he'd summoned one. we both decided we'd rather keep reading and writing than know)

I don't really want to be writing what I'm writing except that I'm writing much more than he is and he wants to be writing what he's writing but he's not writing nearly as much as I am. So we tried thought experiments of other subjects.

My favorite was "Unabomber Tinder" - like, might that dude's whole life have gone differently if he could have gotten laid, but how could you/he? you'd have to use a CB radio or maybe it's a short wave of radio - ?? - I'm not sure how technology works - CB's like you call a trucker to get laid?, how does that turn out well? Or short wave would seem to run into a mountain, no? Its name would suggest that it only goes a short distance and might run into a mountain. HAMM radio (!), I shout out, tho I'm not sure I'm spelling that right, but I think that's the one that goes to space and let's you maybe sex chat someone in a russian gulag (?). But even if that's right, how does that really improve the life of a unabomber? It might even make it worse if you think about it? Sex chatting with the enemy or aliens or whatever? Besides, they made him do lsd in college, everyone knows that, that's why he lived in an a cave or whatever. seriously? wait, they made him into an LLM human prototype?! that totally explains my students' writing style now vis a vis a NYT manifesto (oof, so boring). Ears says, look, if you were in a really rural place like this, you would just go to the bar and the first person that you saw was it, that's how tinder works. but there's no bar (!), I point out. okay, you go to the first *wherever* and the first person you see is it. but the only thing every single town has in common is a tiny post office with one person in it. she did seem really grateful that we came in to buy stamps, he says, shrugging apologetically as if it would insult her. and I have to admit she did thank us three times for buying two stamps. but every unabomber can't use that tinder, otherwise it'd be, like, post office bukakke (sp??) - (aside, do you remember when her gma asked TJ to explain what a bukakke was? yes, I do) - I mean, not that there's anything wrong with that - not kinkshaming - I'm just saying I'm not sure the logistics would work, not to mention the narrative arc. Ears says, the story is called "Your Cave or Mine?" - at that point, we just can't stop laughing long enough to breathe, and we shelve the idea along with the past tense chunks of my novel. 

wtaf is that? "for sale by owner"

"choose your adventure" ft too soon?


















plop There 

plop here



imagine that - riley green new

Tuesday, August 11, 2026

grit novel dacks notes

 


it could have all happened just the way it did except at the end, I kill him instead of myself. and I (she) gets away with it. Nebraska. I of course did not murder him. but I PLAUSIBLY could have.

I just want to put it behind me. but it doesn't seem to want to stay there, a story needing killed as much as told. it's BORING. a story like that is only interesting if you're annabella sciora, which I am not. it'd include only enough detail that everyone I met is in it. like Priest. the impossibility of talking to any of them about what was happening right in front of them - they preferred not to see it and I prefered not to be seen. until the day I couldn't any longer and I killed myself over it to stay Alive. but in the book, I would kill *him*. It would be that day he brought the pistols to the hotel room, showing off.

(real life):
I threw my hair at the wall, exhausted, sick, painfully sick sober
he brought guns into the bedroom "because he thought I'd think they were cool"
he loaded one and said isn't that cool?
a loaded gun was on the bed, we were 2 ft apart, I could have easily just plucked it out of his hand to confirm its "coolness" - in my minds eye theyre literally blue, which can't be accurate but I swear it

just a small slip between real life and fiction. with shaking hands and weighing only 89 pounds (real life). it's his gun, he loaded it, there are only his fingerprints on those bullets (real life). observations that take less than a fraction of a heartbeart. she just slipped. everyone believes her and do all they can (which is A LOT, they are POWERFUL) to help her out of that jam, eager to get rid of that mess outa their work condo. she goes away just exactly like it all happened except there's his blood on the wall wall instead of my hair. that is 100% plausible. it would happen mostly off the page, like power moves when it wants to, swiftly and quietly. like it all happened mostly off the blog all along. a past tense within past tense.

that's how all of the novel works - it could easily be true, it feels true, it just didn't happen

section 1 - she tries to keep "him" - and, increasingly *herself* - alive/sober by fucking, something I totally coulda woulda tried, I just didn't

section 2 - she kills Nebraska. I could have done that, that day that way, I just didn't - a brutally short section, preferably granting him no dialogue at all.

section 3 - the most interesting but messy - all the REASONS, whats KILLING THEM and who they are, all real, it just never happened. I have barely changed their names if at all. that section *contains the present*, wherein their/our past tense(s) emerge in realtime, where blog and novel keep smerging. this month, Union has scheduled a for-all-faculty party to celebrate coming back for the semester at the same location where we had Patti's memorial last year this month as my father lay dying. an inside "joke" that we are left Alive to get. that is actually true, he actually did that, I am going for his sake and will surely blog/write about it, hoping to capture it, like a bug outa midair snatched, the very darkly funny held in my fist. the invitation is all red/green, Xmas In Vegas (real life)

this novel would shock nobody except everyone I know, maybe enough to blow it down

"he" has no alias in the book, the huckleberry chapter does not call him that, you'd have to *know him personally*. everybody else is obviously who they are. by section 3 "he" just haunts her, disappeared like a political prisoner, captive at Blackops Disneyland, attending mandatory meetings and sucking blood globs out of likenesses of himself, renditioned by demons of low cunning so BORING it's triggering to me, that same sinking helpless nauseous feeling like thinking about Nebraska.

I imagine the author picture on the inside flap being only a sideview, sideboob, all tattoos bared and white streak flashing 👁 Cruella d'Youboreme

From here, I can see the shape of the whole Grit novel that way, how all these disconnected pieces connect

Aliving->Murder->Aliving
(Over->Dead->Dying)

Smerging. The funeral welcome back picnic is a perfect example, it hasn't occured it but it's already in it, already part of the Great Absorbing of Being Past Tense - maybe *beyond tense*? our nerves are so shot, maybe we're beyond tense.

all of it is either funny or fucky or both except for the murdering. but even that muder scenery, in real life, it had Sobriety Games in it for ME. I was sober very painfully. I blogged a selfie for him/"him", skirt and boots. I don't have any signal here, like I didn't for Transformative Fucking last year, but these words will save on this fancyass phone I got to save or publish everyfuckingthing. when I am home w nothing better to do, I could find that room in Phoenix, the bed, if I just find that photo, white/black skirt brown leather boots thighs spread. I could have very plausibly shot Nebraska in that room on that bed. but I played a sobriety game w "him" on the blog instead. (that selfie is the only funny/absurd part of that story). maybe I'd spend more storytime on that one-sided hail-mary blog post (the nothing) than on anything that did happen (the muder [that didn't happen])
down the road here (real life) is a house we ("he" and I) once thought of buying, falling down house, 100k acres, $89k, big handpainted signs waving in the periphery - lives not lived are SCENERY for this one, which has not been liveable enough, so I finally hacked it up like Luca Brazzi. (grazzi? you know what I mean)

The closer someone gets to my reality, the more outrageous the novel becomes because they recognize it's entirely false + how much is not. Reader vertigo.

Was this move available on the board? If yes, fiction can take it.

If I could land that, I would have written something fatal to my current identity.

No one I know would ever look at me the same way again. Like disappearing only different.

Here, the urgency the figure to it out at all has seeped away day by day (I'm already gone). If it returns as strongly at home, tiz bc my own life has become so hostile to my coherence as a person that I'll need these notes to remember me by.

-----

What do I miss in Buffalo? No loon call, literal or otherwise, beckons. On our last full day here, stock taken: this year feels different, not like I've been restored to return 


found in my yoga shorts

I shook my clothes out more carefully after that / shrugged it off





Monday, August 10, 2026

goodnow (writing)



 

Sunday, August 09, 2026

balm of gilead (deciding)

 

Thursday, August 06, 2026

I went to town so I could call my mother. Now that I'm here, I realize why she wanted what she wanted. so I called her to promise that I could do it alone. Bring her back here. She sounded half dead when she answered the phone. But that perked her up. She knows that I don't break a promise. If she keeps breathing, I will keep it. 

https://youtu.be/VZA2saqe1TE?is=jmwYDnROgrLW6FHI

Wednesday, August 05, 2026

As I walk out this door, it occurs to me: witches love THREES. "by the power of three, so mode it be", so ...

phase 1: NO! And did I have what it took to explode my entire life? burn every bridge? relationship job money, all of it? knowing full well it could and probably would end up right here with every major category of my life dead dying or over? obviously, I could.

phase 2: Yes. Could I do that? Even in the face of dying dead or over? let's not belabor the point - I could like a motherfucker.

so logically, phase 3: MAYBE

(get my attention or don't)

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). As Venus leaves your sign, let go of believing every answer has to come from you. [let go ✅️ ] The next chapter is collaborative. Your greatest advantage won't be knowing everything, but attracting people whose strengths naturally complement your own.

As I was saying, almost a miracle (magic) has to occur.

"You have to want to swim to the surface of yourself. And there has to be someone there who wants to catch you."

time to hit it ft. after more coffee


Tuesday, August 04, 2026

I'm ready. 

This is the pilgrimage. The yearly reckoning. Every year. Who can still make it? Once, it was all of us. Last year it was me on the road alone, madmaxi. Head up, eyes forward, get there, knock wood. Take stock.

I went there last year thinking everything had fallen apart. It hadn't nearly gotten full momentum falling apart. 

I thought it was gonna start to get better from there. It did not. 

The fog hadn't cleared yet. I couldn't see the full extent of damages. I got my ass into the car in tatters, but I got there. 

That was the important part. Is the only important part.

Me to Ears earlier, him stranded at the Polish Nook: "this year, that's you, just get in the car in your underwear if necessary, it doesn't matter" and he believes me because I've lived it right in front of him. And I held.

Music is the medium between. Sure didn't turn out to be a Boom. But in retrospect, it wasn't about whether I was going to fall in love again (nope), wasn't about whether things were gonna start to get better (nope), wasn't about what I had endured, not about overcoming anything. More in it than over it. I asked myself one simple question and I answered it. 

would you still - diplo ft cameron whitcomb) 

would I still? love (ghost of), work (death of), etc - every category of my life is dying dead or over - I know that - would I (could I) still SHOW UP? 

A: Yes. 

That's it. 

And it could be argued that I got absolutely nothing out of that. This year I even lost my witness, my mother 💔, who if no one else understood always did 💔 - it feels almost unbearable / I am bearing it. 

So. No one "gets it", and what we all had to endure had to be endured anyway no matter what I did.

I went to night yoga - I was not getting limbered up for hiking - I wanted to check one last time. Do I need to look at my throat, my chin, my nose, or can I land right on my eyes? 👁👁

Yes. I can 👁👁 for any length of time required, sweating with all the effort 95 pounds has in it.

Last year I was stunned. This year maybe I am just stunning. 


ft cattleprod
[image removed]





Grit, presentation 1

update: proposal submitted deadline met 8/15

The final version was more sweeping and more circumspect, both. I do not roast my employer specifically bc they are just like every other health professions university. It's about healthcare students needing (imo) both human attention and reflection-scaffolding, but what they have instead is their hallucinating phones glued to their face - not as a distraction from school (they're not misbehaving they are behaving as expected) - but as a tool that is supposed to be "school enough" for them. It is not, but I was/am willing to test the theory. By Oct, the new assignments (in much tamer/G-rated forms than what I've been posting, but structurally same) will be in classes that ran the same as last semester EXCEPT FOR THESES NEW GRITTY VARIABLES (2x the students + AI "assistance"). And we'll see what happens ....

Then, I sent the proposal to the one other English professor still left on my planet / the associate chair in charge of assessing me - heads up. 

He had just also submitted a proposal to another related professional conference in which he argues that a Marxist critique would strongly suggest WE SHOULD NOT BE DOING THIS (exactly what it is I'm doing lol). In part, his critique is the same takedown of the original Grit concept, which is now being applied in higher education with the assistance of AI.

So independently of each other, we both see the same reality (these days, people agreeing on what reality is 👍), and we reacted exact opposite way(s) to it. AND, I am the most compliant, and he's a compliance officer. I'm all in. Radically compliant. This is NUTS so of course I'm all in. We're not going to be able to "turn around" now, so GO FORWARD. Right into the gaping maw of it all.

He is supportive / understands. In Narrative Medicine class alone, I have 70 students enrolled. It's too popular to kill (yet). And the intellectual property is mine until they figure out how to shoot me.

The laptop is open. No need for the fuckwriting lure. I'm in teacher mode now.

I am compartmentalizing like a motherfucker. There's really no other way of writing this for me other than the odd present 'breaking through' the 'near-future-past' fiction that would capture a moment in which I am sitting in front of HBO watching house of dragons when I decide to work in 'angry dragon' into the novel I'm writing in part to dogfood AI (and cope with all of it), specifically my llm that then there's a commercial on HBO wherein a slightly demented elderly woman uses chatgpt as her "companion" - She's knitting, and they're both laughing over one another because it doesn't matter that they understand one another. I stop what I'm doing, and I look up the ad and I feed it into chatgpt, and I'm like "did you know that this?! you HALLUCINATE, that is ethical af!! This is going into the presentation goddamn it!" but uhmmm none of that can go into the slidedeck sooo. It feels like I'm writing a noose. Not a bunch of standalone but kind of related islands of things - more like concentric circles tightening. In writing, tightening is always good.

I remain unconvinced that there is no way to utilize what they've got - phones on faces and reel length attention in lives that are already high stakes regardless of profession - and at the devils crossroad of Teacher and Provider - oof - I'd take a reel 🤷🏽‍♀️ - I am going to take whatever access I can get to cracking open skulls like walnut shells, or at least drilling holes into which I layer coils, excited but becalming myself so I don't lose count (recall)

----------



I will figure how to do exactly what they wished "put AI in everything." And why I did it, how I did it, got nothing but tangled smut out if it, and an assistant who hallucinates. 

Persons who suffer hallucinations often get absolute shit care (ex addicts) while we're all carrying around hallucinatory confabulators in our phones. 

I'ma roast everybody. The LLMs and my employer ("as an example"). Then, turn around and fill out the little form of professional productivity, yep did a presentation alright ✅️🖕

Working title: Dogfooding the Companion: Narrative Medicine Meets the Hallucinating LLM

At the moment I'm telling it the abstract isn't good enough isn't good enough, isn't good enough, isn't good enough, isn't good enough, between cups of coffee, until it gets to the point where it's worth my own 👁time to edit. 

I've been to this conference multiple times. Leans heavy towards bioethics. Can't imagine they'll love unexamined high-verisimilitude confabulation.

grrrrrrrrr


VIRGO

 (August 23-September 22)
Virgo biologist Stephen Jay Gould argued that evolution isn't a ladder of progress but a branching bush of experimentation. Most species that ever existed are extinct, but they weren't failures. For a very long time, they were successful experiments in being alive, well adapted to their environment. When conditions changed, they ended. That's how evolution works. Let's apply this lesson to your life, Virgo. If a part of your world is concluding, celebrate and thank it, then bid it a fond farewell. Feel grateful that it succeeded completely at what it was meant to do and gave you all it had to give.

Yes, I am aware. Everything in every major life category, every body,  is dead, dying, or over. Farewell, in some cases fondly.

love in letting go - warren zeiders ouch

https://www.pcmag.com/news/ny-school-district-shelves-plan-to-spend-58k-on-robot-teaching-assistant not it