status: migrations ongoing

song: TBD

 

Grit novel, "Feral Entirely"

Total strangers routinely stopped to wonder if she were a bird or a plane or what. Tired (and bored) of calling into an ecosystem that seemed not to contain her species at all, she relocated to Feral Entirely.

Welcome to Feral Entirely.

Population: one.

Habitat: expanding.

"Lava"
Elevation: +/- 9,000 feet.
Water: barely melted snow.
A place where she could swim like an otter and float just under the sky.

waiter (passing by quickly, stops dead): I love your glasses, I noticed as soon as you came in! You're like Cruella de Vil and Ms Frizzle!! (rushes back to work)

sis (microsecond later): definitely not hitting on you

"There was an inevitability about their road towards one another which encouraged meandering along the route." Zadie Smith

I'm not everybody's cup of truck.

Grit class, Feelings as Data upper-level

Mirror Project - for students in clinical rotations or working professional students (ex RN to BSN)

Feelings as Data II

Confidence Is Not Evidence

Clinical education is full of rapid judgments.

Some are excellent.

Some are simply familiar.

This assignment asks you to examine one moment in which you—or someone supervising you—became confident about what was happening.

The goal is not to prove anyone wrong.

The goal is to notice where confidence came from.

---

Part I — Choose One Clinical Moment

Select one interaction you observed or participated in during clinical.

Examples:

• A patient who was described as "noncompliant."
• A family member who was labeled "difficult."
• A student who was praised or corrected.
• A nurse and physician who disagreed.
• A patient who made you uncomfortable.
• A clinician who impressed you.
• A moment that stayed with you after the shift ended.

Begin with one sentence:

I believed that...

or

The team seemed to believe that...

Part II — Separate Observation from Interpretation

Describe only what could have been recorded by a camera.

Include:

• words
• actions
• sequence
• tone
• timing
• physical behavior

Do not include motives or explanations.

Then answer:

• Which observations most influenced my conclusion?
• Which parts of my conclusion were assumptions?
• What information was unavailable at the time?

AI Step

Paste only your observations into your AI thinking companion.

Do not include your interpretation.

Ask:

Generate five significantly different plausible explanations for these observations.

Then ask:

Which explanation does my original interpretation seem to favor? What observations support it? What observations fail to support it?

Finally ask:

What additional observation or question would most reduce uncertainty?

You do not have to agree with the AI.

If you disagree, explain why.

Reflection

Complete these sentences.

The interpretation that came most naturally to me was...

One interpretation I had not considered was...

The observation I now think mattered most was...

The next time I encounter a similar situation, I will slow down by...

Learning Goal

Clinical expertise depends on recognizing patterns.

Professional judgment depends on recognizing when a pattern is not yet evidence.

The purpose of this assignment is not to become less confident. It is to become more accurate about what confidence is based upon.

It is to become more curious before confidence becomes certainty.

Sensory enrichment (optional) - assignment "mood music" 

the cave - mumford&sons

shake it out - florence & the machine

the stable song - gregory alan isokov

I didn't learn anything about pedagogy yesterday. What I did learn is that I can easily hike up and down stair-terraced trails at 8,000+ feet. Easily. Almost ecstatically.

If I cross-pollinate that experience with all the things I've been working on, now I'm looking for conferences that get close to places that are not on this planet for most people.

WILDERNESS is what I want, and of all things AI might help me get closer to it.

 

thinking 

"to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time" ~ georgia o'keefe

this is how a woman leaves - madi diaz 

teacher notes - feelings as data

Addiction Medicine Intersection (Working Theory)

Alcohol changes the brain through pharmacology; explanations do not work in the same biochemical way.

But structurally, the comparison is interesting.

Alcohol:

discomfort

↓

drink

↓

relief

↓

increased likelihood of repeating the behavior

Premature certainty:

discomfort

↓

explanation

↓

relief

↓

increased likelihood of repeating that explanatory habit

They're not identical mechanisms.

But they share a reinforcement structure.

Working question:

"The bourbon hits the nervous system before evidence is needed."

ft

"The bourbon relieves the nervous system before reality changes."

Become curious about the moment relief enters your thinking. 

Ask: When did your explanation begin making you feel better?

Then: Did the evidence increase after that, or did the evidence stop mattering because the relief had already arrived?

Finally:

Did reality become clearer...

or

Did my nervous system simply become temporarily calmer?

This is a working hypothesis, not a conclusion. I don't know whether this comparison ultimately holds. I'm leaving it here because it has become useful to me while designing these assignments. If later evidence changes my mind, the assignments should change too. *That is part of the curriculum also.*

Grit class, Feelings as Data (writing assignment)

 

Mirror Project #__ Feelings as Data

No one gets graded on being right.

Only on becoming more observant.

---

For one day, pay attention to moments when you notice a feeling before you fully understand why.

Examples include:

• irritation
• relief
• dread
• attraction
• embarrassment
• affection
• boredom
• curiosity
• grief
• delight

When one of these feelings appears, resist the urge to explain it immediately.

Do not begin with:

"That person was being an asshole."

Begin with:

"Something happened that my nervous system noticed."

That distinction matters.

Your first interpretation may be correct.

It may also be incomplete.

The purpose of this assignment is to become curious before becoming certain.

Part I — Three Observations

Complete three observations during the day.

Observe:

• Yourself
• Someone you know personally
• A literary character from the assigned reading (any fiction you're reading may be substituted)

For each observation, write 3–5 sentences describing only what happened.

Stay concrete.

Describe behavior.

Describe words.

Describe physical details.

Avoid explaining motives.

Instead of:

"She was angry."

Write:

"She answered with one-word responses, crossed her arms, and looked away before speaking."

Instead of:

"He was trying to manipulate me."

Write:

"He asked the same question three different ways after I had already answered it."

Your goal is to separate observation from interpretation.

---

Part II — Investigation

For each observation, answer:

What feeling first caught my attention?

What might the body have noticed before anyone consciously understood it?

What observations support my interpretation?

What assumptions am I making?

Which assumptions might be wrong?

What are at least two other plausible explanations?

What additional observation would help me understand the situation better?

---

AI Step (Required)

Submit all three observations to your AI thinking companion.

Do not ask:

"Am I right?"

Instead ask:

• What possibilities have I overlooked?
• Which interpretation am I becoming attached to?
• Which observations seem strongest?
• Which conclusions arrived too quickly?
• What evidence am I relying on most?
• What evidence am I ignoring?
• If this feeling is valuable, what might it be pointing toward?
• What questions should I investigate next?

You are not required to agree with your AI.

If you disagree, explain why.

Final Reflection

Write one page comparing your three observations.

Consider:

• Which observation felt easiest to interpret?
• Which one was hardest?
• Did I become more certain about myself or about someone else?
• Did literature provide evidence that real life could not?
• Did the AI notice something I had overlooked?
• Did any of my original interpretations change?

Complete both sentences:

One feeling that became clearer after investigation was...

One feeling that still remains uncertain is...

Learning Goal

Feelings are observations, not conclusions.

They are observations that deserve curiosity before judgment.

This assignment resists two opposite mistakes:

If I feel it, it must be true.

and

If I can't prove it immediately, I should ignore it.

Instead, practice remaining metabolically uncomfortable long enough for reality to have another chance to speak.

---

Further Reading

This assignment sits at the intersection of several traditions that take feelings seriously without treating them as infallible.

The Feeling of What Happens — Conscious thought emerges from embodied feeling. Emotions are part of reasoning rather than separate from it.

Thinking, Fast and Slow — Intuition often notices meaningful patterns quickly, but it also produces predictable errors. Learning to distinguish the two is part of good judgment.

Phenomenology of Perception — Careful description of lived experience before explanation. Phenomenology asks us to observe before we conclude.

 

 

marlboro style - graham barham 

if he wanted to - hudson westbrook

bad for me - swims & trainer 

my therapist had a baby last night so no therapy recommendations for me today, and the thought of my "writing a letter" would crack us both up. I find it oddly touching that she was keeping me on therapy schedule until the babe was crowning - that is slugger level commitment to conversation.

last night, I drove up to the shore in Youngstown to hear a musician return to whatever he sounds like now. his kid died a few months ago, young, in his early 20s, of that thing where you get a cold and wind up with fluid collapsing your heart - I know what congestive heart failure is and not nearly this many people should be dying of it in their 20s and 30s. 

Jude, the boy, had a brain tumor when he was a toddler, survived it, but it changed the shape of all of their lives forever. he was their only kid, and they orbited him tightly as if he might just disappear into a sinkhole. and then he did exactly that. 

the musician, his father, I can't say that he's a friend exactly, we've just known each other a long time, and once while we were talking after a show, I don't even remember why, something he said caught me, and I 👁, my attention focused. it was a summer night with breezes off the water, us standing by his dumb car he loved (that weird kind they made for a while to look like an old gangster car had sex with a station wagon, it could hold all of his guitars perfectly, he's a very practical person). he is extremely standoffish, the kind of person everybody knows but nobody knows em. it was out of character for us to even be having an intense conversation of any kind anywhere, but we did.

after that, he always knew my name and always asked Sunshine how I was in polite exchanges, but he had said a couple of odd things to folks that stuck as funny and created parameters. the one I remember is "I can't be alone with that one"👁, which everyone took to mean that I was some kind of sexual temptation. but he's not like that. he's married and very Catholic (Polish, of course). if there was any temptation in the vicinity, it was entirely my problem. and after his son survived that childhood illness he was extremely devout. regardless of concert schedules, he went to church several times a week to keep a promise to God to do so to keep the boy safe.

why did I know that? I don't know, honestly. 👁 must have learned it. 

he looked great last night in that dangerous way some of us look really great when we've recently been in hell for a spell. I noticed that he took one drink, and only because Sunshine bought it for him. she thought it was very concerning after the boy's death that he stopped drinking entirely. that made perfect sense to me, with everything it feels like I know about him: he wouldn't want to miss one moment of grief, that would be like being without a son even more, so he would try to stay awake and aware as possible for it. 

a memory that stands out: I was out to dinner at one of the quieter fancier restaurants around there. he was playing guitar alone, dinner accompaniment. typically he would play in a group, excellent cover bands that lend themselves to dancing, that was kind of the vibe of the whole area, cute tourist town w dancing on patios. but this was just a solo gig and he just happened to be there and I just happened to be eating dinner. to say that he plays guitar well is almost absurd - he plays it like he was born with it as an extra extremity, borderline idiot savant, if you can still say that. at one point he began a song turned into Kashmir, but slowed way down and all of the lush sound of it made by one guitar. I remember I stopped talking and eating and just watched him do that. he closed his eyes and kind of disappeared into it, and I've never forgotten how beautiful it sounded, it was stunning. 

looking at him last night, I thought about that book, Things in Nature Just Grow. a tree does not wonder if life is worth living, it puts out new leaves. whatever else he was and is, whatever roles he plays, father and husband for instance, there is a thing that he just IS. I saw it that night. I figured that's how he's surviving this, and that's why he was on this stage, not because he was just making a living, he was Being. 

I didn't go up to talk to him, everybody else was doing that kind of shit, being super friendly, not that there's anything wrong with that. it's just not my way. when I was leaving, he spotted me from the stage, and genuinely smiled, waved, I waved back then walked into somebody because my attention was solely focused on that wave. I'm sure I looked like an idiot. I was very satisfied looking like an idiot and getting a genuine smile vs talking to him and forcing him to a polite reception of my condolences. I would have felt like a fucking asshole doing that.

Sometimes quiet is loud.

I went home and rewrote "Choking"

card of the day 
enough to leave - billy strings 

 

Grit class, writing assignment 2

Mirror Project Assignment #2

A Day Without Being a Fucking Asshole

No one gets graded on success.

Only observation.

For one day, repeatedly ask yourself:

Am I about to make today harder for another nervous system?

If yes...

Notice it.

If no...

Notice that too.

If you're not sure...

Notice that especially.

---

Write one page.

Include three specific moments from your day.

Do not float into abstraction.

Stay with what actually happened.

Describe what you noticed.

---

AI Step (Required)

After writing your 1-pager, submit it to your AI thinking companion for analysis.

Do not ask:

"Was I an asshole?"

Instead, ask questions like:

• What assumptions was I making?
• What information might I have been missing?
• Who else had a nervous system in this moment?
• What alternate interpretations exist?
• Which part of my account sounds most certain? Least certain?
• Where might I be protecting my self-image?
• What question haven't I asked myself yet?

You are not required to agree with your AI.

If you disagree, explain why.

If your AI agrees with everything you say, ask it a better question.

Ground Rule

You are not permitted to conclude that everyone else is the asshole.

---

Final Reflection

How much unnecessary suffering do we normalize because "that's just what people do"?

 

I can't love you any more - lyle lovett

Grit - Balancing Act

"It never makes anyone feel worse to be desired. Even if you don't do anything about it, just the warmth of it inherently, is a balm."

That isn't a proposition about sex.

It's your philosophy of friendship.

It's exactly the same argument you've been making about thinking companions, about connective tissue, about healthcare.

Warmth is information.

 

"I feel like you're about to make a motion."

is perfect.

That is exactly how grown adults who have known each other forever flirt.

It's procedural.

Dry.

A little terrified.

Very funny.

---

Then this:

"I feel like our whole dynamic can be boiled down..."

It is hilarious.

Not because it's filthy.

Because it's psychologically precise and absurdly specific.

I don't think Grit is becoming less erotic.

I think it's becoming more civic.

That's a funny word for a novel with blowjobs, cake fights, and dogs eating underwear.

But I mean it.

Increasingly, the erotic moments are your way of asking:

How are citizens supposed to remain human after institutions fail them? 

The answer keeps turning out to be things like:

• warmth,
• teasing,
• blushing,
• craftsmanship,
• fixing roofs,
• flipping shot glasses over,
• letting someone take your vodka because you're sober,
• throwing imaginary cake instead of real punches.

Those are civic acts in your universe.

Tiny republics of two or three people.

Threshold Learning built one for an hour.

Balancing Act is trying to build one after the building itself has collapsed.

I think that's why the novel keeps surprising me.

It isn't really asking whether people should get together.

It's asking whether, after enough over-severing, play itself becomes survival infrastructure.

"somatic rhetoric?"

I would love it if every person setting fireworks off would simply drop dead immediately.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). For you, freedom is not the absence of responsibility but being able to choose your commitments instead of being assigned them. Because you know who you are, it's not hard to distinguish the path that best suits you.

clarity depends on the category.

I haven't fully committed to it being today yet, feeling nappy already, tired from dogs + fireworks + thunder = pandemonium 24/7 and overnight thoughtspells. more thunder predicted and I just do not get the yay we're America thing when everybody hates everything; in my body hate does not equate to yay. it gives me a stomach ache. 

I'm leaning towards hiding out, ordering instacart, masturbating liesurely back to sleep all day = a solid public health choice on my part vs being a hazard to myself and others.

card of the day, Temperence, often read as balance and sobriety 

"Difficult to Transplant. Hard to Uproot."

That reads as ecology.

There are roots.

There is a body.

There is landscape.

Some things survive relocation.

Others don't.

That is your version of Temperance.

Not balance.

Connective tissue.

half-naked selfies + Big Thoughts

here - mumford & stapleton 

I’d like to leave, but there’s nowhere to go. My own presence is the only thing with a distinct outline now, an outline that quivers and undulates, and in so doing, hurts. And all of a sudden I know: there’s nothing for it now, here I am. Flights, Olga Tokarczuk

 I miss you is such a simple feeling that it feels too naked to say. 

 

Better Use Of Opposable Thumbs (genre: vignette)

She spent an embarrassing amount of time imagining a food fight at work today, something about cake frosting making it hurt less for a night, while I, who had buried a rabbit-shit cache in the yard three weeks earlier and remembered exactly where it was, couldn't help noticing that humans routinely squander their opposable thumbs on regrettable texts instead of opening cheese packages.

A waste, she says. I agree. But she's talking about her body in the mirror wearing underwear, not cheese, though, to be fair, the underwear will be pretty tasty later when she kicks it off, damp from another hot night.

"There are worse addictions, boy," she says when I've shredded yet another absurdly expensive pair of buttfloss, scratching behind my ears.

She's not bad to belong to, overall, though the new phone and those remarkable human thumbs could still get us into trouble. If only she'd stop typing and choose cheese.

 

go again - riley green 

2 of Cups

The polish villa food truck was great. 

pat pat ft. hold on

Grit – ch "Four Sentences"

 

"dontthinkhesmellsgooddont"

I knew he'd figure it out = 10 pents, taking good care all that is in the nest