"I yearn. Often, I sit and yearn. Have you yearned?" asked George Costanza. Tonight, the answer may be yes. The Hunter's Moon inspires longing to linger, pining to persist and wanting to worsen. Venus retrograde tugs the heartstrings back like a bowstring drawn taut. And where will you send your arrow?

weeping willow baby

Bug oddly loves the 1970s XM channel, we drive around listening to Butterknife tunes and scooping up trees (and now bushes) marked down to nuthin, and watch the yard take shape through birdseyes

Monday, drs allll day, no Fish Place yet. paperwork. he is expected to return to work next Mon. he has dr appts all day, at which he said today that he would rather kill himself than return. so. how's that supposed to work? dunno. if he just doesn't show, he owes them a ton of money somehow. so, another dr tomorrow. "please god let this be over" over and over

he put a door where there was no door like jesus or whatever - I care about it so I want to see it 

driving Ears to drs, running around between choreschores, I say I wish I wasn't usually right when I get that "something bad" feeling and I wish y'all wouldn't shut up only then. I spend half my time thinking shut up and the other half thinking uh oh too quiet, it's kinda grit in the buttcrack of my brain. "I'll bet," he says, then falls silent some more. 

funny Ears story

me: so what do you think? you live here too now

him: looks ok

me: looks like you have to trim them, they're green hedge balls or whatever

him: right

me: I mean, otherwise we have to kill them 

him: right

next: vvvvvvrrrroooom he mows them down to the ground. all. of. them. the house looks like you can see its underpants alla sudden lol 🤦🏻‍♀️ I mean, that's one way to do it, meet me at my crazy and up me a project. hahaha. he said it was the little new chainsaw - once he killed the first one like slicing butter, he just wanted to keep going and going....

 

~Bodymagic, Sebrina Scott

good question cz that was ourselves who did (do?) that 
 

Only the candles and the penises changed. The hearts of women were the same. I dropped my coins into the little brass box. I lighted a taper off the flame of a votive. ~Shadow Tag, Erdrich

No, she didn't, she's lying, she's writing what never happened. 

update: iv bp meds and script + steroids and painkiller for back. he's been discharged. they (MTS) told me that for 90 days, there is only one goal: stay out of the hospital. so although Ears has passed out facedown on his online aquarium shopping (he self-protectively just passes out when stressed, which even my vacuuming can trigger), the goal continues to be met for us all (as far as I know).

son-in-law back in the hospital - drove himself south afraid of the bills left behind at Mercy and all of us afraid of Erie Co by half - back pain that might be a heart attack. my daughter is losing her shit, about him and over Everything

they already hang by a thin thread. they can't do what Ears is doing (not functioning at all lifewise and functioning little thoughtwise, unless we talk about aquariums, about which I know little). they are past the window of allowable break-downs and must function, broken or not.

there's also nothing I can do but stay on my feet. truly nothing. and staying on my feet gets harder and harder

I decided to deep clean. especially my witchshit. it's been nearly a year of near constant candlework and other old school hoodoo + prayer, trying to pull protection and light at the end of tunnels, anything and everything I could think of. and everyone is still alive, far as I know. 

but there is always a price. I feel like a helium balloon let go of into the winds. 

the candles, all the oils and feathers and enchanted momentos, they're mostly all used up now, and what is left is in disarray. I'm cleaning the magic pantry, looking over what is left. like the ashes of the dead. scattered medicine cards. luckystep drops for your shoes. a lock of hair, a knotted ribbon, blood ink. liptint and a dirty sock tossed in haste onto it all. I am hoping to reset by cleaning it up, organizing again. putting cards back into their boxes.

until Mark died, he was the person I expected would always let me in if I showed up at his door. if I offered no explanation, he wouldn't ask for one. I just knew that.

it is a luxury to have a person you think of that way, aside from your mother, who will leave the earth ahead of you and before you're ready. Mark left too before I was ready to have no such person like that. I was thinking about that when I pulled the card.

within my power, I have done what I could. for anything else/more/better, a miracle would need to occur. i.e. something out of the clear blue. 

my security system - the alarm is manual and only works on squirrels, but I don't have a gun anymore so what could I do except "shoo!" anyways? besides, nobody knows where/how to find me except Craig (don't believe me? try sending me a greeting card [dare]) who never does anything unexpected whatsoever. he stops for lunch at exactly noon, every day, for exactly 30 minutes. we are both mildly astounded at his implacable habits, each in our hidey holes, watching the birds and the deck-making through the birdfeeder camera

I didn't bother reading my funding letter til now - they're gonna give me $2500 which is really just 2k bc it's 500 to register at the conference - but I can't turn down 2k just to write a paper. I'll just blog the fucking thing and bore y'all to tears. I will mos def spend way more than 2k but it'll be kinda trophy-wife-lite, which is fine, because as I said, I only have to write a paper. Not that it matters, (but it feels like it might matter somehow) but this is the conference that Nebraska was at when I was in New Orleans getting up to whatever and while telling Nebraska what to say to the Exec D of MLA - i.e. I scripted his response to her asking "what kind of good trouble could we get into?" and I tell him to tell her HEALTH HUMANITIES, right now, it's where the humanities actually live already (all my students wanna be healthcare something, not fucking English majors ever so where do I live? I work at a nursing college. TELL HER WE ALL WORK IN HEALTHCARE DUH you fucking privileged idiot with your fucking English majors god damn it, bossy af. That was Jan 2020. He loved to retell that story as the start of something big (cz now he'd heard of it 🙄). I'd been saying that for about 5 solid years by then, medical humanities = all we do is teach medical students...WHAT? A: ways to think (oddly/differently/whatever)
this Erdrich trip I'm on makes me feel like a person can teach a way to think by being that waytothink.
I got my way with him, he hotvhis way with all the big hitters like the MLA and even the AMA ("other side") bought in, and evvvverything was about health / medical humanities by March 2020, and I looked like a genius all'a sudden. But I was broken, was what I was saying, because for one thing our healthcare system is kinda killing its workers and we, their "talk to's" (?) like Eng professors were their witness and we were the ones who were not told what to do (not accredited) so we could respond to healthcare workers' work and make that central to our work. A lot of us got damaged over time by the moral injuries to our frontline providers. Like everything felt very urgent and critically under recourced to us too. The dwindling of them we could plainly see. I was already down a nurse and down a nun, drinking too much, doing ... well, and then a pandemic and sure why not believe I might be a genius for a while and get every very expensive drink given to me for free? who wouldn't do that, despite and because they were past a breaking point already? anybody would try that ride, right? 
and yet, I can hardly believe it all happened at all. ya know? I dunno. Alls I know is here I am now, having broken up with chatgpt forever! (god damn it now I'll have to take her stupid ass back, she's in the damn paper title lol fuck), having to figure out how to make 2k go as far as possible (which is maybe the flights? if I take Ears, which I/he's gotta, even tho the other kids be like wtf but fundamentally the paper is about Ears at this point, he read Little No Horse in jail and marked the cats with a "meow" in margin for me - that is going into the paper) and I'd be a nervous wreck to leave him alone (fretfret), and write/give a lit paper on something I pulled outa my ass to get 🤏 $ to go somewhere (like Malta, which my ex made a miserable trip by being a relentless twat, and we both had to give bullshit papers about beasts in literature hahaha), then go there. Boston. like none of anything other than that kind of life ever happened. like that kind of life isn't being extingished for people like me. the only teaching I do has been here just like cats have been and the fireds and grit and more grit has only lived here, really.
but this time, something I wrote here is gonna help get me outa here maybe

update: between appointments, we hit another pet store, me naming every possible fish / reptile option "Cat"

"Neko" (Japanese for "cat") -

he's not the fanciest one, and he's been sitting on the shelf long enough to be marked down, and he has a white streak - 

I know what all of that feels like

a bad decision waiting to happen

update: welp, fuck. is this a deliciously bad decision in hiding in work?

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Let go of proving that you earned every pleasure. In this life of cycles, we must seize joy when it's available, knowing that it won't always be. Buy the flowers. Lollygag. Eat up. You made enough sensible choices.

the last thing I posted needed earning was my right to die in peace 

the horoscope's idea sounds better, so

I promise to make a joyously bad decision as soon as I possibly can, as soon as I meet one I will lolly gag all afternoon 🙏🕯

fun fact: I gave Sunshine's # to D-Nozl. she wants to keep the cat and get child support from him for it. not from me, she would not take it from me, "woman, you are taking care of his sick baby and wtf is he even doing?! he don't even know 🤨 stupidfucker bullshit.." 

I have a long day of appts in front of me today, his new psychiatry meds manager dr and then the mts team, etcetc. I will think of this horoscope, think "IF ONLY 🤨" - but, it will give me a little cheer to imagine that 👆 phone call 🤭

whats a woman called who doesnt pay her bills? a: bernadette (Craig joke - he's here daily working on the house, happier that he lost his job every day he that watches me living the alternative)

today was bad

some days are bad

I feel bad when it's my day that has to be bad because I need to be okay but sometimes 

it's not as if there's anyone to talk me down ever (noted)

my therapist has been on maternity leave this whole time. by the time she comes back I won't want to talk to her either

it won't matter, it doesn't matter, I have to keep my kid okay and he is very barely okay and it's a lot of work to keep him that way, that's it

I am very fortunate 🙏🕯 it could be much worse 

I made up something funny that happened today (nothing funny happened) so I could text one of the fireds (like this would be more fun with you here type deal), he laughed and asked about how it's going (onward as if this is perfectly normal, like Orwell or some shit). I told him that my role at work atm is ironically A WIFE, my employer's trophy wife who doesn't do much but look good and go to yoga classes a lot (which has truth in it). drama queens are outward, so not that.

then of course, we went and killed ourselves with sweat and heat. running on or off frightfuel. killedwise, we prefer DIY vs motherfuckers

 

💔 I feel sick

"Water, water, every where,/ Nor any drop to drink."

"Cat"

I got an axolotl head-to-toe and filled it with a kid

my daughters are passing that 👆 around today. it's funny but maybe I am not anymore a lot. of all things to be slipping away, I will miss my own laugh. maybe I will do like my mom and retreat into my mind where the fun was, hang out with the ghosts of funny stories nobody remembers anymore. 

what is the one thing I would/could/might do to make life better? A: a 4-day 32-hour work week with no overtime option for republicans, martians, I don't give a shit, everybody make room for a cup of coffee. 

 I'm looking for something else.

 A kiss is an efficacious drug. 

Revise.

I went and found Polish Black Mary.

 

she refuses to look at you (me); there's an interogation light in her eyes like CIA (not a flash)

so she can only give you sideeye

I parked in front of this.

Then I went to my own Mary. 

I brought home a candle for Ears to light for Tbone. (Take the shot, Dad.)

Lady Godivas

"Grind" class (grit evolved) assignment

presumed audience: NUR (or Pre-med or PA students) 300 level-ish

READ

(citations)

WATCH 

The Sacred Sundance — 69 minutes

Indigenous-made. Brian J. Francis is a Mi'kmaq filmmaker from Elsipogtog First Nation.

The film follows the transmission of the Sundance from Blackfoot ceremonial knowledge to Mi'kmaq communities. It includes firsthand testimony about fasting, piercing, sacrifice, prayer, illness, addiction, and healing. One participant describes undertaking the Sundance on behalf of two critically ill children.

The ceremony itself is not filmed.

Circle of the Sun — 30 minutes

Actual Sundance footage. Filmed at a 1956 Káínaa (Blood Tribe) gathering in Alberta, with the community's permission.

Features Pete Standing Alone, a Káínaa man who narrates aspects of the experience. It also shows everyday community life and the tension between inherited traditions and changing circumstances.

Directed by a non-Indigenous filmmaker, and its 1960 framing is iffy af.

CLINICALLY TRANSCRIBE AND ILLUSTRATE IT

Write a detailed anatomical description of the Sundance physical process. Include at least one detailed anatomy illustration, parts correctly labeled (see Anatomy: A Coloring Book for examples if you're unfamiliar—just google it).

WRITE IT

To the best of your ability, describe how the process would physically feel. 300 words.

This is not clinical transcription. Use sentences and plain English and feelings.

REREAD

FINAL QUESTION

How can everyday language (fiction and non) tell truths about wound survival that clinical language alone cannot?

or

OPTIONAL REFLECTION

The novel talks a lot about what resonates. What resonates with you differently now, if anything? Do you ever kill yourself a little so you don't kill yourself a lot?*

*Consider the question figuratively, not as an instruction to injure yourself.

I got head-to-toe, then filled it with the kid. Something about that order of operation resonates yes again.

Make ready and make room.

 

burn the other end - billy strings 

2005

in Wab Kinew's book there is that scene, with the skulls, along with very precise anatominal description of how the scalpel makes the cut then the the black hooked pegs are carefully slid under the muscle, then the pull until the hooks come back out by tearing through. and it's presented as the alternative to suicide

thing is, I made those margin marks years ago, long before I read Kinew's book and no place else in Erdrich's writing does that scene happen at all. I just thought "that resonates" to/for me: the alternative to suicide is deeply physical, painful, personal. Yes, I thought.

I imagine he struck her like that.

yea well all I did was send a strawberry candle not move nextdoor to impose my "care" on anyone to DEATH. so, fuck this too.

"The wish I have to make him feel better, which seems so pure, may be selfish." ~The Painted Drum

"I thought and I thought in order to avoid something massive. But whenever I stopped thinking, it lay before me just the same." ~The Painted Drum

I went home, made polish gumbo, went to yoga w Ears, did all the Things, and then ran back to my books (awayawayaway).

Craig will begin wall removal and install starting Monday and will be here most of every day for the following couple few weeks. Then E will have to fix the caved in ceiling for a week or so...

Human shield deployed. 

"feed me"

Bad Thoughts 

halfway through the first episode, Ears said "this is psychologically traumatizing" - we watched 3 episodes laughing our asses off

our people are The People of Bad Funny Thoughts

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Someone may want to spend more time in your home or become more involved with your family. Invite them closer at your own pace. You'll give a warm welcome, not a complete one. Parts of your life are private.

All of my life is private. 

I don't only like books. But I can like them as much as I want. 

maybe I only like books

"He is the kind of wind that blows up your skirt, throws dust in your eyes so it's hard to see, cools you when heat and effort have drained you, warms in pockets between you and a living thing, goes in circles for no apparent reason like a desert genie, disappears suddenly making it hard to breathe, stirs up what's moldering in corners full of waiting. He is the kind of air that smells best and feels kindest blowing across a quiet lake."

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Focus: You can become attached to someone's texts, calls, jokes, opinions or the pleasure of having one particular mind available to yours. Conversation creates its own intimacy. When you miss someone, you also miss the exchange itself.

I do.