Marie

Right now, all I want to do is this. Read. 

 

never pray for strength - there's only one way you get stronger and it hurts. I don't wanna get any stronger. maybe it makes a diff that I reimagined that card when I was reimagining every fucking thing I could think of, but still. 

Provide me rest from just that for a spell plz 🙏

update: both HI proposals submitted ✅️ 

11th hour effort

card of the day

that was a totally shitty year followed by a cold hard summer with a single sugar cube of a kiss last fall as the only magic mote of sweetness

status: leaving 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). The doubt: I have overlooked the flaw that will undo everything. The remedy: Look for the next necessary correction, rather than every possible thing that can go wrong. Revision and repair belong inside the plan from the beginning.

the beginning of what?

oh, work - yea what I made out of the shit summer (grit redefined, ai steps, mirror assignments) could light me up again. as in attention on me, not lit up from the inside. one of my work survival strategies: be in such plain site, it's hard to justify shooting me or getting away with it quietly 

Trooper is struggling to keep his head above water. I feel ya, bud.

my mother dragged me here, seemed so kinda 🤷🏽‍♀️ at the time, ok ok I easily agreed, instructed me not to let go 

of this day in particular, she was very fond, twas the art of the photos by half I suspect, she is nothing if not a sucker for beauty and joy. but for me, I am more of promises made, she hammered home, that is who I am regardless, with full faith in me 

and then she let go

I didn't understand at all that is what she was doing 😪

and now I think shit like "you can at least deal w the kid's cat, daddy up" and I don't say much 🤷🏽‍♀️

I write. I follow a cat. it leads me where it leads me. now I can only find one very dated article following this trail because it does not want to be "followed" and "liked" very deliberately. of these eruptions of new life/lives, my goddess of authors is cavalier. she rewrites foundational characters "every chance she gets" and she often just "wants to keep going" (with one) and makes changes to do so. loops around in time. it's dizzying to follow this way, to try to make a straight line in retrospect that resists all attempts to do that. life erupted over and over, blasting this one life force, Lulu, all over in bits but also weaving her (slinking) through everything, a side piece and a scrap and a passing thought, but surfacing like a touchstone holding threads together that otherwise have no stable narrative thread through umpteen stories told and yet to be told.

The archive doesn't merely preserve what happened. It remains alive enough to change what the story is. Do you understand how rare of a "problem" that is? it's sooooo nerdy it has a an audience of one who for some reason believes herself to be important lol. 

so okay. it's just a story like any other. I remember bc she made me hang on tight to it again. I look at it objectively and wonder WHY? seriously, what was she was so intent on? I can no longer ask her, and frankly don't want her to recall it. I'd rather see it for myself. 

obviously, right off, we're all still alive. 

younger, but that doesn't seem very relevant (to me). I mean, that doesn't seem like what my mother was pointing at.

we are all SMILING - for what was the first and last time like this (everybody but the kids still unborn). from all over, every friend, every estrangement, every body, all (re)made on one day into a rare pure collective joy that my mother doesn't want to be the only one who remembers.

and when I look again, I understand: I don't want to be the only one carrying this shit either.  

and I know what the standard jaded response is: people always smile at weddings. but no, they really don't. I've been to plenty of weddings that felt like a divorce waiting to happen. Some of them in the courthouses they are going to land back at in a heartbeat lol. Way more weddings are like pre-funerals than not ime. 

I think in part it was because I was the girl least likely to do this, call Everyone to order for it, any of it. I blew glitter out my ass shamelessly ONCE.

and so everyone was happy at least ONCE.

my cat, lol

my dad

in real life, I think my mom wanted to gin me up to blow glitter out my ass like a bubble machine so she could check out. seriously.

in real life, what else fell out of this book, sitting at home next to my bed, is a letter dated a year ago from my psychiatrist that says I can no longer keep working, my ptsd is too severe for my workplace, it is a danger to me. no glitter. best I could do is endure it another whole year, all of it, anyways. 

Augusts, ooooof. they're a lot.

I dunno. Honestly 🤷🏽‍♀️. I am not my mom, so I'm straining to understand why this particular. Best guess: she wanted me to only remember the best parties of life, strenuously desired that outcome

But what I see is me asking: What authority does what happened later have over what was alive then/tomorrow? Like, literally how does that work? 

Sunshine

I still wear this lol, slip dresses are back, w boots of course

 

 

first cat pg 83 and it's AS LULU, domesticated but wild at heart, and always appraising the situation would I fuck you (= are you interesting, do I wanna closer look, maybe scratch you, hold still 👁...)

so like,

I am looking for 2 things

Lulu accretion: What is present in 1984 what gets added later when can manuscript evidence show Erdrich imagining/writing the additions?

Cat accretion: first appearance p. 83  whose consciousness/description summons cats what cats are doing when they appear whether that changes across revisions and later novels.

And the first data point is cat and Lulu enter together. When cats appear, I prolly won't read that as symbolic, it'll be literally Lulu in catform. Slinking around many minds.

pg 86

I'll be damned. I wanted to reread The Island just cz Lulu is my girl and she went to a strange place filled with cats and I was trying to wrap my head around cat stuff being in my constant periphery now weirdly ... 

but, Lulu came from that island. she is one, and obviously a witch in almost comically fable fashion. 

there she (I) is (am)

spoken of briefly here and there, but she doesn't show up as herself until pg 74, and she will not have the backstory I know of her before she does here/now in 1984.

you have to understand. this character is my shorthand for, shit, well mos def everything re men. and mothering. I know every word of her, including this bit, where she's thinking so hard she winds up fucking him twice by sheer force of wish of it. once in this timeframe (at the end). and once also back in the day - her remembering it hard - just as I did earlier today. If I posted all the pics of every single person that day, the almost insanity of glee, it'd kill ya. so I blogged it. I don't wanna carry it around, leave it here to be replaced simply by more days.

Lulu does not pull the punch. she makes him remember. not by recounting, but by remembering it in front of him. she makes toast/bread and slathers butter and sugar on it, eating it in small decisive bites, licking a crumb of sugar up. while he talks and she remembers everything, and eats sugar. by the time she's done snacking, he's forgotten why he went over there and is following her into the bedroom. 

she's my kinda witch.

she gets me / I love her. hahahaha everything about this character. most of all her fiercely her-ness. there is only one of her, and she knows it. she gets what she wants if she can, and she isn't sorry. why should she be? you wanted to do whatever that was AND prolly wish you could do it some more whatever it is, so wth. I think I have quoted every word she ever says.

But now I know I quoted everything she would eventually say, but she hasn't yet! That won't get into Edrich's brain until...well, I'd have to look at manuscripts to KNOW when/how that happens. 

Meanwhile, not only does she not show up here until she's middle aged - this novel is about the other one, Marie. The dutiful one, the one who "takes in strays" all through this novel, when Erdrich was newly married with adopted kids and more coming. At what point did she start to take her own stray in, Lulu? who by the next edition is fully half the center stage balanced against Marie, both of em fucking the same dude (who somewhat inconveniently loses his damn mind)

fascinating to nobody but me.

fuuuuuck alllll that, nope lol. I didn't even bother with the competing programming of a zoom drop in. I just downloaded her little PowerPoint at 1:00 she can see that I was presently elsewhere, and then I continued to email co-workers about work through her stupid meeting. So probably their phones were going off if they were there just in a running fuuuuuck you from me

welp I tried funny ish. unblogged it. went wayyyyyy down a rabbit hole cz I have 10k magically backing themselves in clouds that you can look at, say, all Augusts for the last 15 years 😭 if you need a cry. unblogged it. then already before her stupid meeting she's YELLING AT US that we DONT WANNA GET NEAR HER. has anyone ever successfully nagged and threatened someone else into loving them? the best she can get is fear so she'll take it. 

so far today I learned: I actually cant do meetings without Jeff without crying AND TEXTING HIM I cant..

I was gonna go back tonight. 

I can't make myself do it. 

Tomorrow: Alls there is the lawn to mow (no!, Ears is doing that shit when his ass surfaces back from offgrid) and a "listening session" w the president. So I decided to have a "listening session" here (but I'd actually listen) same time as hers. I have it planned out in front of my fire, feet up, fireside chat zoom drop-in for students in any of my classes. I'm not just not-going, I'm creating an on-the-spot (isn't there a contemporary term for that?)  competing event (optional v compulsary is a really important distinction [to me]).

Will spend the morning making sure zoom works - they took away the obvious button to "personal meeting room" and moved it somewhere under "schedule meeting" so they can track my time LIKE I WORK FOR BURGERKING + THEY ARE SOCIOPATHS 👀 fine, track my using it right then (I am sure I've got liptint around here somewhere)

Storms tomorrow. If the power goes out, fuckergpt will have to talk me through the know-how of using Fancyass Phone as a hot spot. 

I am not opening my email tomorrow til noon, by which point it'll be too late. Meeting starts at 1. I am too far (gone).

of that 15 are dean, my chair ("boss), and 2 co-chairs - 26% of persons attending are paid at gunpoint, the rest are terrified); Union is the one red X. I wanted an "Other" button, maybe purple.

AND I coteach with my boss, so he'll know I just pulled a 🖕 in his name too. 

(Say. When.)

I treat my person better here

Sunshine made it. She wants me to go to some mediumship gathering Wed, told her no too (Death can have meetings without me also)

listening to lotsa music here in the rain and I cook and watch birdTV and dance around - hard to pick - I might change this out but currently: 

no springtime - allison russel

stray thoughts 

here, there are more of em 🐈‍⬛️

such as: my next lover(s) will hear about my mother - there's almost no way to get through a day without quoting her or seeing evidence of her in all our lives - but they will never have known her. there are deathspiral conundrums you don't see coming, like that, ya know? how could anyone know me if they never met her? it's too weird to imagine.

moon over Java

infinite love - goldie boutilier

fini

Virgo: you almost punched the dean in the dick yesterday, but didn't, 2 a.m. brainrot not withstanding. #goodenough

sinnerman - nina simone sofi tukker remix

all fall courses opened ✅️

I call him "Trooper"

having opened Monday classes early, I retreated

lawn HERE mowed ✅️

in process, needs touch-ups before the rain ⛈️

a bright blue door facing north "Acts as a welcoming 'Mouth of Chi,' inviting beneficial life-force energy to cross your threshold." my mom didn't even get to see the cottage this year, but I can send her a picture

I used to think that there was an art to everything, any/every waking living moment. #strawberrymilk. and I was much happier, every little minute of my fleeting days. I wanted to fly with those days like a gazelle, fish, raven, water on rock. gone in a blink.

but somewhere along the way, enduring the moment (after moment after moment) became all I was doing and now it's HABITs. living itself can't be just a habit

status: migratin prep -> cottage / sans Labor Day 

off to the picnic ft I could kill you with a thought (with all my heart)

 

with all the care in the world, still, survivor cake just gotta cave in a lil bit 🤏 - fitting offering

I just need you - riley green ft hannah mcfarland from the "I don't need nothin' almost" kitchen playlist

blooming his little head oft

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). What if you lost preconceived notions of what people expect from you? You're a generous giver. Someone wants to love you, not for what you do, but just for the person you are when you're not doing anything at all.

are you 👆 my horoscope or my shrink or my primary or my tarot deck or, uh, God? yaaaaa, so I have been told a GUZZZZZZILION times all summer, and yet 🤔 not much evidence lmao

Janis, be honest, do you love me for  A. who I am? or is it more B. the expensive kibble, sleeping on the silk pillow, my cleaning it up whenever you feel like pissing on the rug?
Is it even a 🤏 column A column B? 

Vegas leans in hard on light pollution - I can see the moon being bitten with my naked eye but hard get the bite in a pic

creatures of the night - all I see all day are webs, I've never met these folks til tnite 😬

 

river flow - dylan I let alexa pick the tunes (#radiogame). I'm calling this batch "Catnip" acknowledging all the 🐈‍⬛️🐈🐈‍⬛️🐈s lately