till the going gets gone - lindi ortega

plop

The phone came sans ersatz pollack, and I ate something. I didn't get back to the mall to get it programmed for what I want to do, but I have the guy's number, I'll find him again, and as days go by I am more certain of the Work so less rushed more lush about it. The fuck-it-all-upness of it. Just the pure disruptive power of it. In these ways, what I can surprise-invent in pedagogical space(s), I love my mind.

I am so sure of it that I threw the switch, lit up the board, reported our program closures and faculty retrenchments, put thousands of eyes on it/me on listserves and ongoing med admin research that my employers are totally unaware exist. We are the talk of a town that they've never heard of. Last time I was "talk" of that town, it was as the woman who just very loudly disappeared in a moral outrage whirlwind  - now,  "wait, what?"

I have ZERO doubt in my blood around this kinda stuff. I totally understand how a person can be very troubled in one way, and calmly confident with a scalpel too - same person, overdeveloped one way, impoverished in another. 

In a better world, humans get to understand one another at close range enough to offset, redress, trade strengths - they have friendships and communities, partners and compatriots. Hands to hold TO THINK. This is not that world. I am very much living in not-that-world. And as everyone points out ad nauseum, I'm perrfectly fine. 

If this is fine (for argument's sake) then I can simply teach being this-kinda-fine. How to not need anyone. Starting with not needing your professors, and by extension any one university (this one, for instance), logically speaking. 

Union wants me to teach less, but in this one way, I have to refuse him. I want the whole incoming class. And I can't tell him why. All I can do is reassure him that he will have to defend my getting fired (he loves that deep down, his careWork, and it'll be a slamdunk) for taking that entire incoming class's minds away. 

I have always taught independence of thought Thinkers, telling stories that'll rip your heart out, and I will keep doing exactly that. But. I also tried for years to fix the systems that we were trapped inside, to make them kinder to us all. That part really did not work, by any objective measure other than money. 

So to be this-fine, essentially Gone Already. There is a lot of thinking about money while you're thinking about freedom - are you freer with less debt?Are you freer with more things that you want? Are you freer or less free to do Work (capital W) that is beyond monetary value, while being dependent on the money from the work? How much is your time REALLY WORTH? (to whom?)

While much of my mind, and all of my body have been dwelling on feelings questions, I had to wrestle with the subjects of freedom and money a lot, too. Freedom math. 

I remember when Aaron had a searing A-HA moment of freedom math. They took his health insurance away just after he'd almost killed himself for the rest of us in the pandemic - I mean, not just him, they did that to the nurses. And it was quickly resolved so forgotten, but I didn't forget it because I considered it trauma (from a professional point of view - we were barely talking at that time, I was very much Working). Outa the blue, he texted THAT FACT, inside of which he could make a virgolike list of horrors on the job (= why the benefits action was unfair), because he wasn't really telling me about those horrors even though he was, because he was talking about money. Men can talk about money. For a minute, and then they buy an r c car from temu, but it's an emotionally 'neutral' subject.

The repeated firings at my job that resulted in multiple funerals, starting with Martha, our office manager for the department who had been doing that job for thirty five years -  she was furloughed then died of a "Covid-related heart injury" the next day right out the gate spring 2020 - have kept freedom money math front of mind for me for 5+ years now. Patti got in trouble for putting Martha's picture all over the central reception area where she used to sit and for keeping the lights off so no students could study there; she kept that up until she herself died. 

I digress, I am just illustrating why this *system* cannot be made kinder. To be employed within it (healthcare-education) is to suffer moral injury and to get paid to do so. Reverse blink: you are paid for masochism work. People who own your time are really into that, get off on it, make you thank them for the opportunities. You are venus in furs, man - see it or don't 👁

now it's today 

Relationships fail not just because feelings fade or change. They fail when you no longer are seen—then you no longer exist inside them.

A mirror is not valuable because it tells you you're beautiful.

It's valuable because it shows you that you're there.

see me or don't 

strong - charles welsey godwin (acoustic)

"too short to get the 👢s in the shot"

I shoulda left after the first opener (rocky mountain low is a great song), he was by far the best of the lineup anyway. And I guess I should have given her more credit for trying. Which she did at first. But I can't keep it up at $13 per hard seltzer crap to keep her semi shit faced enough to be "upbeat" after her fashion. But then, of course, downhill, it became all about how much she hates everything. On the the 10th 'this isn't really country music', I turned around and started walking after my fashion and just made her trot after me because while she's 10 years younger or whatever she is, like everyone else I know, basically dying or whatever. Can't walk up a parking ramp without getting out of breath and I'm the asshole for not having a problem walking for fuck's sake (ok, stomping) after I heard the first little bit of the song I was waiting for by Jordan Davis just out of principal or spite or I would have stomped off sooner. We certainly never got close to the headliner. But I don't really care about that dude anyway. So I guess by today's standards - this year's standards, the standards that have been set by the entire last year - tonight was great (because my hair was great ft nobody died they were just their usual shitty).

The night absolutly fucking sucked and especially the diatribe about 'I gave my life to caregiving and blah blah blah and something something her shitty ex' and then the inevitable monolog where she's spent her life trying to be Good and has so little to show for it wah wah and till my head popped off, and I completely lost it at her sitting in my living room. 

It is statistically impossible for all of you, everyone I know, to be the most caring person on earth. I mean, one of you has to win the race. It can't be all of you. And I don't feel cared for at all. So actually, I think youre self absorbed and addicted to self pity. At least that's what I said to her. It was probably a little harsh. But it got through for a minute like a slap 👏

aint the  - jordan davis the night could have been fine, I like dancing to this, the crowd had kids in it, I wanted (still want, wont get) wings - it was just a summer night. It makes me feel hopeless anymore to set expectations below "ok" and call it good

90 lbs going to bed a hungry idiot

siiigh, she did try. I'm not going to put her or anyone through any more 

wild as her - corey kent (acoustic) ft carter faith  

[images removed]

 "Behind every beautiful thing, there's been some kind of pain." — Bob Dylan

cigarette burns - corey kent

I found a way to live this, the death of Teacher as I knew it, a counterintuitive upsidedowned idea breathed life into me 🤏  after I set that in motion, I went and bought a dress for the concert tomorrow, and an extra one for quietly devastating occasions

"What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate." Thoreau

 

Thinking: 

Tawista. Solo again presumably. The good part of solo is silence. I am going to climb and swim and do things and go places that nobody should do or go alone. It's worth it to me. If that kills me like that poor fucker who died in shallow water, I had to die somehow and I don't see anybody killing themselves any better way(s). 

Things I know: I want to die. I want to die feeling alive af. (All I have to do is finish the sentence, have the whole thought.)

I see it now: why people jump out planes. at least we used a parachute, you can hear them thinking at the rest of us

second morning

It's a new thing I do where I get up really early. And then I do a bunch of virgo shit like make lists and load dishwasher and write to a nun (how do you do this?) and then climb back into bed under dogs and go back to sleep and then wake up around noon and call it today again. Two days for the price of one, the 2nd day is free, so it's to waste (?)

I want to take a drive out to the cabin, but I can't do anything there, my finger will break open and bleed all over the fucking place like it did just taking a shower. I can't make the damn bed.

maybe just take the ride anyway? silence ft country music?

coal - dylan gossett

I haven't sat here alone since

she can't do that anymore, ever again, so I can't sell this place

I forgot about her Nick Cage pillow (facesitting HA HA) 

always let it play whatever - the universe sent me nothin but Marcus the whole way

I am glad I came. It's Tuesday, dump opens @430 and Ears doesn't know MILK GOES BAD DUDE wtf. Gonna hit the dump, then home for meatloaf (my herb garden here is great). I invited Sunshine because she doesn't want to go home, she's on the road back from a travel contract. She probably won't come, but I'll be there anyway. I'm used to that, nbd.

Not that I don't like it because I do, I just never play Mumford&Sons  

I've listened to this so much that I regularly sing the chorus karaoke style. I don't blame anyone for looking me up and down across this room. It's a small room.

typical exchange lately - her: "wanna go?" / me: fuck no (and I am very barely repressing many detailed and explicit elaborations of thats not it no just thinking about it grrr)

Gimme a break. I'm already writing to nuns. How much more sacred otherworldly whatever the fuck could I possibly want or need? I just don't. I am flesh and blood (for now). I've lit all the candles I'm gonna light until they're for ambiance or the power goes out. 

Do you know how much time I've spent in the last year trying to think up a story to make someone who's hurting laugh for just a minute? And I don't mind doing that, I'm pretty good at it. But it is not reciprocal. With any of anybody at all. Not even my mom no more. 

Being there today, I wondered things like if I had known him, would I have called him Bobby? I just wish I could make it understood: it'll happen so fast, you'll think "be nice to hear her voice" but it'll be too late. 

Things I Do Not Know: 

Whether a tiny children's wheelbarrow full of Tito's is an act of friendship, grief, flirtation, performance art, or evidence for future legal proceedings.

Whether Patti would be horrified by current events or delighted to have been proven right.

Whether Sister Denise knows the answer to courage or simply kept showing up long enough that everyone mistook persistence for wisdom.

Whether being "raised by nuns" is a legitimate sociological category or a regional medical condition.

Whether my purpose is dead, mostly dead, undead, or simply wandering around looking for its glasses (on my head prolly).

Whether grief is love with nowhere to go, or love that has gone unibomber feral.

Whether four cats is the clinical threshold where a man officially becomes a cryptid.

If "I love you" is a conversation starter or ender, which more often.

Whether the universe is trying to teach me a lesson, send me a message, or just enjoys watching me overanalyze signs.

Whether I am healing or merely collecting increasingly sophisticated metaphors.

Whether the giant web of relationships I keep mourning is actually broken, or merely changing shape faster than I can recognize it.

What I hope for vs worry about, like re how today unfolds.

What's the real difference between serious and critical, conditionwise

How to line dance (still). 

Things I Do Know:

Patti would have opinions, all of them certain and well organized.

Walter can locate a nun faster than most people can find their car keys.

Sister Denise has attended enough funerals to know some shit.

I was raised by flamoyant lunatics, followed by gray nuns. 

Making Brandon laugh improves my day by approximately 17%.

People are easier to love when they are alive, but not by much!

If I buy a children's wheelbarrow and fill it with vodka, at least two people have to find it funny.

Every year I become slightly more like my mother and slightly less surprised by it, until now.

I do not actually want answers. I want witnesses. (Are you seeing this?👀)

Love is not an emotion as much as an administrative burden.

Someone always needs a ride, a casserole, a letter, a memorial, a recommendation, a prayer, a raffle ticket, a pet, diapers, bail money, a strong hug.

Nobody (worth writing about) is ever really "done." Not with grief. Not with hope. Not with each other.

I am much funnier than most of my problems.

The purpose of life is probably not productivity. If it were, orange cats and shihtzus would have gone extinct.

Despite all available evidence, I remain glad to be breathing.

she misquoted Nietzsche (she's a little kid, how does she know Nietzsche?) in the right direction imo. Shit does not NOT kill ya; it DOES kill you. except you're not dead yet.

I want the living who have survived becoming strangers to themselves to tell me: here's how I crossed over/back; here's what I carried; here's what I bloomed into on the other side.

I want to spy on bereavement groups. 👀 That isn't the sanest sentence I've ever written.

 

fathers, wish you were here - jj cale

me: we are crossing into the apocalypse officially
ears: (snicker)
me: it starts with tomatoes
ears: then...
me: then we'll be like that lovely gay couple on Last Of Us
ears: (snicker)

no I do not have a pomeranian's worth of pubes, that's E's dog hiding the only place she stops growling ft ancient tshirt left from the nuns, appropriately holey

 

"fishing w dad"

It's summer soltice, longest day of the year, under a Virgo moon (try again).

One last request. Please, please, please be happy. Try. You’re going to die, you know. Trust me on that one. Called in Dead

Think: the reverse of this day is the longest night of the year coming. 

When someone writes your obituary, you will like it because you will have laughed a lot during your life and you had friends and a dog and went to parties with balloons and to the beach and so many things that at night, each night, when you go to bed, you will think, "Wasn’t that a great day.” 

And, it is Father's Day 💔. Have a nice one if that applies to you. Remember, if you can, the rest of us, who are mourning. Bleeding in my case ('fuck a duck'). And trying to fill my dad's shoes while wearing my own boots.

At some point, I will have to call my mother.

I don’t understand death. The biology of it, yes, but not what remains for the living. Pain and memory and an empty place. I think to fully get it, you have to feel it so profoundly that it upsets your sense of the world. It has to make you a little crazy. But it also has to make you love this miracle of existence to the point of bursting. If it doesn’t, well, then you don’t get it yet. Life prevails. How strange and wondrous. In the midst of death, life prevails, calls to us, begs us, says, Come, please, don’t you dare waste this precious gift.

Self help crap tells you 'try one new thing a day' - so stupid - I've never eaten raw pork or smoked crack 🙄. Try it Virgo Way: create one new thing. 

These days, all that would have to be is a genuine laugh for just about anyone. 

Sex is largely about contact. Flesh helps. The look of it, the curve of it, roundness. Breast, hip, inner forearm. But also breath, irregular and hurried breath, partially open mouth, the newness of this experience that you’ve had many times, renewed, made fresh, made alive, the urgency that begs for slowness, the seeing someone so closely, just a few inches from a freckle. The slow jazzlike rhythm of it, unplanned movements somehow seamless, intuitive, bodies moving in a kind of slow dance, as if they had met long ago, a feeling so exquisite, Don’t end, don’t move, and yet the movement itself a kind of sublime pleasure. This feeling of wanting to laugh, to cry, to say things that in this moment you know you feel without a doubt. This act has nothing to do with sex. This is something different. This was what you had been looking for. This feeling of being fully alive, connected, emotionally, with someone else. 

It has been a decade since I have felt that. (except S.O.S.) This bit, fully alive, connected emotionally, with someone else. I looked it up, hair rising all over my body as I read it (incorrectly then) - I felt the bourbon watching, waiting.

1, 2, 3. 

He reached over, without looking, and I felt his little paw of a hand take mine. We sat, looking out at the street, waiting for life to continue, holding hands, holding on.

So what could-ought I do today? One-handed?

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Your summer superpower is magnetism. You'll draw people, opportunities and revelations toward you without forcing a thing. Keep the passion, lose the suspicion and remember that vulnerability creates stronger bonds than control ever could.

That's "handy" cz all I've got is vulnerability and (so far) the stamina to live with it. 

be cheaper next week (v. life is short)

Butterknife update - better there (ass up) - I can hope, but the odds are very iffy re her ever returning to NY

😭

 

she's 💯 right

omg painpainpainpainpainpain 😭 

fuck.

puckering like a butthole, filling itself in from below, thinking about festering, exploding in white hot complaint with every alchohol sanitizing pour over. I have done this to multiple fingers (TJ, aka Correct Opinions, calls it "the mandolin manuever"), over the years, at times like these, when it feels as if I have (do have) a deep existential groin cyst (I wonder what ever happened w that?) that's wantin-poppin - I am in constant pain / fed up with the boredom of pain. for my pistol permit, they were sooo irritated w the fingerprint reader thing, unable to vouch for half my damn fingers ("you a chef professor?"🤨). if this were a murder mystery = heavy handed foreshadowing. I am in fucking physical agony right now (walgreens, cvs, and amazon all failed to ease my pain with lidocain and second skin and anti stick gauze IS NOT A REAL THING). and bored with being in pain, too. life can't be boring, it's too short. life is painful, pain gets boring. 
see what I mean? 

so I read a very long book about a Bored To Death (Almost!!) man. stage 4 tetris. *abruptly fired* / unstable unhappy loved-ones network, post-mid-breakup-divorce (intimacy tossed salad, not in a good way), you get the idea. 

sitting shiva, in my way

great book. super funny. almost nothing "happens" (just pain) so that what does emerge from that can be foregrounded. 

what I find almost unbearably sad (thud) is that I know (trust) everybody on my 💔 list is Aliving out there somehow. but they're all not mine enough to share how they're doing it (holding on) = on my own to figure it out without comic relief.

so. maybe I do the mandolin on purpose unconsciously. "throbbing" feels like an apt description of what I am doing, been doing, finger or not. tiny sharply painful identity obliterations. 

(breathe)

that vomitty revulsion aphasia thing

another example, right now

fb chatter says it's somebody's grandson, rescue angencies adamant everyone stay away

private thread, IGNORE IT! all theyre talking about is the raffle sales for the booze, for real. they won't even post the emergency advisories on their website cz some vague sense that EMTs are ....what? ON YOUR LAWN??

what the fuck is wrong with you

I dont want to pretend to be outside that, whatever that is

in the face of it I feel 🤮 and wordless and visceral recoil and go wordless. slo mo stunned. stood there like a fencepost lalala

Ears says, of moments like these, change the channel. so I quick, try to think of something else. And then I realize how much my finger hurts and I don't wanna unwrap this fucker then I think it would be kinda funny if I died of finger sepsis by bagel. Only kinda, though. 

my life is this long road trip. I thought I was doing okay. Things felt pretty good. Job, wife, future. And then it was like someone changed the script on me. Changed where I lived and who I lived with and what the future looked like. This new script was crap. I had a very bad part in this script. I was cast as middle-aged lonely guy. I don’t want that role. But here I am. And I feel like somewhere along the drive I passed a marker, a signpost, a spot along the road. I didn’t notice the spot. It was a nothing spot. But once I passed it, I crossed into the second part of my life, the part where youth and a fair bit of possibility are in the rearview mirror. And this voice, this person who told me about the signpost, I ask him where it’s all gone, and he says, Oh, it’s at the last rest stop. You drove away, thinking there was nothing but time. And I say, why the hell didn’t you tell me?! And he says, I tried. Like, a million times. Every day. Every word you wrote for your work. Every fucking moment that passed that you let go without doing something to make it matter. Every season that passed, every holiday you didn’t spend with anyone. A million times I tried. But you didn’t listen.” I was breathing heavily and staring at the carpet. I looked up at her and she stared at me. “Important women in your life leave you.” “Yes.” “And you blame yourself.” “No. Maybe. Yes.” “You ask, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ Worse. You doubt yourself. You no longer try.” I watched her. I refused to nod. I didn’t have to. She seemed to know what I was thinking. “The story forms,” she continued. “The women leave. You’re to blame. So you retreat, don’t trust, perhaps begin to loathe yourself like they must have. The story hardens. What was once merely a thought, a fleeting, fact-less notion, is now a bedrock truth.” 

“Let’s stop for today maybe,” I said to the floor. 

“This is where the fear comes from.” 

“The fear comes from opening my eyes in the morning.”

(replace "fear" with ❤️‍🔥onfire - only lately have I been stupified)

dickbutter batch idea: nap (got a better idea?) 

 “Cognitively I know that life is precious and beautiful and blah blah blah. Can we agree on that?”

“Absolutely,” I said. 

“But I no longer feel it. The Hallmark cards and TikTok posts and insipid beer commercials tell me to feel it, plead with me to feel it. Do I most days? Alas, no. Freud spoke of ordinary unhappiness as something to hope for. I understand this completely now. An evening under the duvet, with a pint of Häagen-Dazs, watching reruns of Law & Order? I’ll take it.” He was drunk, bonkers, and made complete sense to me.

my finger ooooouch 😢 but I ordered liquid skin and gel finger sock bandages, determined not to pass out (gonna put sugar under my tongue and sit on the floor), trying to stay home (!)

Tarot Bot recommended collaging The Hermit thus - impractical advice and I already did that one, with a double meaning inscription from The Wasteland (a cover of Canterbury Tales prologue)

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour Of which vertu engendred is the flour; Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne, And smale foweles maken melodye, That slepen al the nyght with open ye 👁

"April is the Cruelest Month ft Looking Forward to It"

It’s a strange thing to have your life upended, to go to lawyers and pay a lot of money and not speak to this person you were once married to. To part with half of your life savings. To become bitter and angry and no longer trusting of people.

Not strange even 🤏. When I was talking with the union lawyer, I joked that in jobs like ours eh you get divorced a couple few times 🤷🏻‍♀️ - he didn't laugh, but my coworker did. It's the (still) Alive (again) part, as inevitable as April, painful cold sloppy muddy shitty. And the why? A: Because. 

(Got a better idea?)

“Do you think this is a male problem?” I asked. 

“Absolutely. Women are vastly more intelligent emotionally and frankly that’s the only intelligence that matters. I can list every world capital and details of America’s involvement in the Pacific Theater during World War II but can’t mention to the occasional lady friend why I weep when I watch a Subaru commercial.” 

“The one with the dad and the school bus.” 

“You know the one.”

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Your sense of humor will help you handle frustration. You'll laugh at the weirdness of life, and annoying moments lose their power. Finding the funny side of things keeps small frustrations in their proper perspective — tiny enough to blow off.

a lot of it, 🤏 close to funny

a lot, 🤏 close to tiny enough (big picture) to let go of (reverse blink)

"don't operate bagels while crying"

now it is today. forunately (?) I left the scene of the crime ('cat my witness'). a lil slice of my finger is in the bagel ☝️, and thus neither Ears nor I can go to the lake (I can go to Urgent myself but might as well let Ears close ranks w me). we are, in fact, closing ranks he and I, details to follow...

Today, we should just NOT be there:

Assisting agencies include the New York State Police, New York State Police Aviation Unit, North Java Fire Department, Wyoming County Office of Emergency Management, Mercy Flight and Arcade Fire Department.

Public asked to avoid area

and yet

re old people, it is allll about what's for dinner

It'd be further disrespectful to the dead to make a fuss today. But, I quit. (And you can't have my flag, even tho I don't personally care about it, I'ma bringing that baby to the nearest olde timey pollack VFW, I should be able to spit and hit one round here.)

It's father's day weekend - having lost mine, I'm hyperattentive to the fact that no one I know, NOBODY, incl me!, needs another painful memory in the fathers day column. 💔 full stop. 

So it's not just that these people are selfish to the core like many old people are because they can't help it like babies, these people are also just plain fucking too stupid to turn a corner in their heads (THINK ABOUT IT 💔). And that I just can't take any more. 

For the record, the only one who said maybe we should think about how people feel is the dude with the plumbers crack that nobody likes 👁 (called it)

----------------

-_0 hand throb wakes me, OUUUCH - I aint even unwrapping this bloody fucker 🤢 - holiday weekend - how nuts would urgent care be by sat? 

resume thread

it's not today yet 

try not to be awake

reassess after Wellnow opens 

fuck.

drownings only happened 2x b4 said my relentless phone, I have no idea who just died. it's an interesting (odd) feeling (do nurses feel this?), freerange dread (faceless / raw) 

no body 

way too poetic cmon give me a fucking break 

(search for it [he/she/them anybody everybody] resumes in the a.m.)

turn the page, next ch of the book I am reading (I'm not making this up)

someone drowned in the lake. tonight, now, where I was supposed to be

....

.... that had to sink in a sec ...

I swim like a motherfucker, everyone knows that, that is literally the only thing they know about me there, I'da maybe gone right into that way too cold water. (probably)

wow

(throb throb throb, my heartbeat in my finger)

The thing is, though, when you listen too carefully, too closely, day after day, to that pain, to that keening, it can take a toll. Because to really listen is to feel it, isn’t it? Therapists are taught not to own the pain, not to take on the pain, but instead to simply observe it, at a distance. And you do, for a time. And then you don’t. Then you begin to let it in, to live it, if only for a moment. How can you not feel it some days? There’s a person and you’re asking them to talk about the most painful thing that’s ever happened. Do that day after day and tell me you might not want to walk outside and bum a cigarette off someone, a thing you kicked long ago, taking deep drags, feeling the thick smoke in your lungs, the instant nicotine buzz, while trying to let go of someone else’s death, wondering why the world doesn’t stop ...

there it is, a small desire: I want a cigarette. if loose tobacco were a thing you could still buy 

I tried to eat a bagel and just lopped off a chunk of finger instead. my phone is blowing up over that stupid picnic flag shit and I just can't. and I am not making Ears do it for me, he picked the table off the ground already and I am just STOPPING TRYING that just makes everything worse and worse and worse. I can't any more I just end up bleeding all over fuck and in even more pain. I have to just be in pain. full time until I get that done. that's it. back to naked reading except for the now bloody bandage throbbing like fuck

cryin shame - ransom bros

.. she said to me, ‘Do you want to live?’ Doesn’t say her name. Doesn’t say hello. Just said, in this weirdly calm voice, ‘Do you want to live?’ “And I said, ‘No.’ “She nodded and said, ‘Okay. Then there’s nothing else for us to talk about.’ “She stood up, walked to the door, opened it. It was strange, the effect. I panicked. I thought, They’ve given up on me. She’s going to walk out that door… I said, ‘What if I did?’ And she stopped at the door and looked at me. Didn’t say anything for a minute but just looked and then said, ‘Well, that would give us a lot more to talk about, wouldn’t it.’ I don’t know why, but I started laughing. I laughed until I was sobbing. I wanted to die. I really did. But I also wanted to live, by just the tiniest fraction more. I just didn’t know how. You remind me of that guy. This … person who refuses to step into his life, watching, commenting. Maybe we’re all obituary writers. And our job is to write the best story we can now.”

that sounds like something I would say/write

but

"plop" has been replaced by "thud" inside me. it's not her fault (!!) but my mother just about killed me, and now that she's outa here, I don't must stand up. hell, I don't even have to sit up

"Private equity now. I want to make a difference in people’s lives.” 

when I do get fired, that's totally what I'm going to say

I think, and it’s just a guess, but I think we let go of everything and the true nature of experience falls over us. This … miracle that is existence. Which we layer with so much. With anxiety and fear and greed and smallness and what’s next and hurry up and I’ve got a meeting and all the … stuff … that gets in the way. I’m not saying we should all go live like a monk. I’m saying that if you haven’t lived the life you want, if you haven’t loved life, then at the end, I think a deep and very sad regret comes over you. 

🤔 That would be my guess as well. Maybe why my mom is relentlessly remembering (missing) all the best parts and making that shit up where necessary.

I am living an enviable life - I have a jobby job, shelter only insecure to weather, food if only I wanted to eat it, healthy kids who all love each other and me 💞💯, friends close enough that loss of them is killing me (cf to Phoenix, where I miss no body), a trusty little body. I am wanted more places than I am willing to go be, such as in Java tonight setting up for the big annual picnic tomorrow (no) or Fri weekend- warrior yoga (mayyybe). In a way, my mom is right. I am better than fine. ✅️✅️✅️

I am just not fine enough anymore to feel that at all. 

Of course I do not wish that I was an alcoholic, but I cannot count not drinking today as an achievement (I never even finish a beer). I can't even want weed enough to go one block to buy a joint.  

If I could stop main-lining nothing but sadness, now that'd be something. But I am on a "self-help" strike. Gratitude journal my scrawny ass, no. Like telling your lazy partner I AM NOT COOKING TONIGHT DAMMIT except I am talking to myself. And not cooking tonight.

Thunderstorms are starting. I should go get that joint. It'd make the coming plopplop less annoying. (I won't.)

#bangbang 

🥱 tried a reboot, back to sleep now 2nd morning - good part, nothing happened; bad part, same

 ☕️📖

“I know how to live,” I said. “I’m just … I’m in a transitional phase, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.” Called in Dead (snort)

"4 dog life"

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). The body, mind and spirit all work together. You think better when you eat better, and when your heart is filled with love, you feel like expressing yourself through movement. Anything you improve through joy will affect all parts of you.

True!! But. Given alllll the contexts, I am recalibrating. I am at pancakes (or equivalently innocuous). 

It's firing Friday, as every Friday is. I could always get fired but will probably get back overtime pay instead as they try to sanitize the battlefield. 

I am supposed to go to the cottage tomorrow a.m. I probably will because I am supposed to (virgo ocd), it's the opening annual picnic, I donated a WW2 flag to hoist and all. But nobody will die if I just don't. And I cant help thinking about how a year ago there a new season began - ya know? 

(plopplopplop) 

and thats finefine, most of us Lived to see this day, which turned out to be All Of It, all anybody could hope for.

but now I am laying here, not going towards anything or away either. waiting for someone (not me) to do anything surprising (in a good-trying way), like looking with periphery vision cz I have looked Dead-on aplenty ...

leak is worse if all the furniture 20 ft from it goes flying (I do not understand physics)

critter highway patrol

okay

cartoons ft read

You've moved from: "How do I save everyone?" to "Can somebody sit on the porch with me and laugh for ten fucking minutes?" That isn't regression. That's wisdom.

wisdom is overstatement, but re scale desired, yup. doesn't mean I'm gonna get it. which doesn't mean I'm gonna move much again today.

song tbd (if I move)

plopplopplop 💧💧💧... ok that really is annoying -_0 ugh

"It was too easy to decry it, to say it was ruined. But was it better now because of it?" (right question)

“You know who cares when you die?” he asked to the bustling street. “Almost no one. Your spouse. Your kids. Your best friend. The rest? After about two weeks … hell … a few days … and you know what they’re talking about? The new truffle-and-mushroom frozen pizza at Trader Joe’s. Which is fucking delicious, by the way. Which is why there’s you. To make it matter.” I See You've Called in Dead

it took both of them to deal with mom today, my sis calling bro for back-up; I was alone with her and this "episode" for weeks unless a kid was available, as my world got burned down again with people in it 💔, and I was already full-ugh 🫩 

so. reading naked all day and chocolate for dinner, both relatively pleasant. not the most thrilling version of that combo, but had the benefit of needing nothing.

now listening to plopplopplop of the (new yet) leaking roof, as if my inner plopplop is summoning it somehow. I think at it: okay be a shitty roof, your choice 🤷🏻‍♀️

“There are these nuns..We ran this story a while back. They practice something called memento mori. Latin for remember that you die. They sit and pray, meditating on this notion, that in every action we should remember, have to remember, that we die. When they were asked if it was depressing, they said no, quite the opposite. They said it makes life so … almost impossibly beautiful.”

I want to feel that, the impossible beautiful in stuff, not despite but because of this mess. the defiance instinct. defy how this feels shitty all the time, somehow, bc how could it not?! right?! but that is the right question: how could it not, as-is? how do you live after a broken heart, with one, more beautifully? I dunno

hey, can something not-shitty happen ever? just a surprise that isn't shitty, it could be pancakes, anything. "send me a sign" typa deal 🙏

a: maybe

update: it's the kind of thing that I would hesitate to blog or have the urge to unblog later. But. I don't think I should do that because this is the kind of thing I know to be pathological, so I feel shame about it. But I don't know what to do about anything unless it's write about it, so I should. 

I do not like shame as a feeling. In fact, it is my least favorite feeling I think. I try to avoid it by being sex positive and always right. But uhhh, being Cruella in my mother's hysteria? there is no right way to do/be that. that's not even endurable 😭

They're ruling out a clot cz of a swollen foot, blood count low, needs iron and is dehydrated - her usual down-the-tubes events minus the vodka thank god. but here's the kicker. it's the NUTS that she is. the dark side of her joy magic is she'll go off the rails in a reality that is too joyless. she will go insane or whatever the diagnostic language is, it's gone off her rocker (again). 

she does that. and it looks very frightening. almost as bad as something like detox. do not forget, SHE SCREAMED AT ME when she first got here AND COULD NOT READ babblecrying. I have seen this my whole life, serially, most often at times related to my father's behavior (he's violent:she's checked out) (this time he fucking died). at her age, it's impossible to tell her nutsness from dementia, which is what my sister is concerned about understandably. But experientially it's the same right now: She's nuts. 

And my heart feels in my throat pounding right now because she told my sister Aaron was here, that he said her heart was sad and needed a pill, that he and I had discussed all this, together here, and on and on like that, a wholly imagined reality that she prefered, full blown A-Bone pathology. AND that I was going to get to decide who got fired from now on because they realize I'm a genius, so there was nothing to worry about. Everything worked out great. "A party every day." I feel mortified. 😭 just. Mutually debriefing, my sister and I were both speechless finally. (her: he was never even there? she made it sound like a housecall party, me: no there was a photo of a party on my phone, us: 😳) We figure that at home her behavior is so rote and Jen isn't a self-reflector type, she can not notice that mom went quietly insane sitting there watching television non fucking stop. no tv here 🤯 

I don't have a "welp" left in me for that shit. I know I am catastrophizing, vulnerable to that atm. but it feels like some kind of psychological warfare, raining fucking frogs or some shit

"Best to table that thought. Time to butter the toast now, to make a list, to begin another day with the assumption, the hope, please God, that there will be so many more, that they won’t just end. So your mind, on overload, thinks of the day to come, the errands to run, the meetings, so much to do. Too early for existential dread. But then your wife, your husband, your partner enters the kitchen, heading for the coffee, and doesn’t understand the hug, the intensity of it this early, doesn’t understand"

dogs don't understand either, but unlike people it doesnt matter to them that you are too dread-ful to get dressed today, that although it does nobody any good you'd rather feel awful if awful is where your people all went away to, they have no idea why you're just lying around naked bc Alive is what you're holding on to today, down to that, and your body is where that Lives, so that you're not alone exactly, your body is still there with you, your oldest beleaguered friend. 

my mother is in an ER with my sister rn. the pattern holds. my parents tell me allllllll about how they're Dying Inside (emotional labor), then Jen has to deal with their compression sock compliance (practicalities) and is rightfully annoyed but I SAID SHE WAS DYING what did ya think I meant?? 🤦🏻‍♀️

siiiiiiiiiiiiigh

roof is leaking like a bitch, same spot, I will hire Craig if he will let me as soon as he knows - if I did it now, it would increase his pain, my knowing first - if I wait, he'll know I knew and even argued for someone else over him (he's not as @atrisk) - so anywhich way even tho we know we had NO MORE CONTROL, the severence was a union miracle, we know it might hurt too much to be around each other for his choosing how long 

and the therapist canceled

painfully earnest 💔

and the weather is shit

so

wake n bake and stay in bed, I figure. all day. 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Creative growth depends upon showing up repeatedly. (aka breaking)

the final list is 8 names dropped, 6 of them ours 🫂 💔 

there might be a word for this feeling in another language. I can only describe it situationally: you've done an impossible job really well, and no one else could have done it, practically a miracle you figured out how to pull it off. It's your magic that did it. It took every kind of art you had. And because of you, people were seen, something saved or harmed less, and it mattered (that always matters). 

in every fairy tale, without exception, magic comes at a cost.

the cost to that kind of magic is that you only feel what you couldn't do. everyone congratulating you while you just want to crawl into a quiet corner and lick your wounds alone to death.

in every fairy tale, without exception, magic comes at a cost.

the cost of that kind of magic is that you only feel what you could not do 💔

I know Brandon (a "he", Union) is feeling only that, is what I mean. not me. I am remembering it (or rendering it). thinking

thunderstorm = count the dogs piled up my ass a mile, everybody shaking like leaf