grit novel swerve + class assignment (smerge)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

fuck

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AI step, CHOICE (meet yourself where you are): 

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

or you can skip that

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

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

Final submission = short final reflection on that analysis.

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

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

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

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

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

grit novel Vegas notes 

if books could kill - Grit  hilarious and bang on

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

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

aliving->murder->aliving

(over->dead->dying)

(swerve->kill it->swerve) 

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

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

clear intention / improvised means

clear intention / available means

clear intention / improvised means

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not. One. 

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

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

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

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

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

ugly fucking door

route around - rebelution from Ears

gee, wonder why am I single 🤔

even without the karaoke factor, it's unabomber adjacent 

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

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

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

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

update: I feel like a god damn
BEAST

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-_0 brace yourselfs

status: back in Vegas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

wtaf is that? "for sale by owner"

"choose your adventure" ft too soon?

plop There 

plop here

imagine that - riley green new

grit novel dacks notes

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-----

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

found in my yoga shorts

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

goodnow (writing)

 

balm of gilead (deciding)

 

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

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

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

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

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

so logically, phase 3: MAYBE

(get my attention or don't)

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

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

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

time to hit it ft. after more coffee

I'm ready. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

would you still - diplo ft cameron whitcomb) 

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

A: Yes. 

That's it. 

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

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

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

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

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

ft cattleprod
[image removed]

dangerous game - marcus mumford

Grit, presentation 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

grrrrrrrrr

VIRGO

 (August 23-September 22)

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

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

love in letting go - warren zeiders ouch

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

grit class - high-verisimilitude confabulation

already rolling with hallucinates - ok let's trip out

working idea was: what AI could get done it would do, and what only I could do I would. fine. but I keep finding new things that it fucking does 🤨 not in a good way.

it objected to my use of the word "lie"

"Hallucinating" is an "industry recognized term" so my use of it as a tool to do so would be (ironically)  authentically justifiable

so okay (finefine lol), is there an "AI industry recognized term" for what I'm calling lying? 

A: "high-verisimilitude confabulation"

😳 I am not making that up - I saved all this shit as screenshots - I'm gonna powerpoint the shit out of this, and then let them lie and hallucinate and watch hero films and get everything wrong #humanitiesforhumans

to the bot's credit, it does know that it's basically a swiss army knife - it can do a whole bunch of things a little bit and is kind of a cool thing to have handy 

how it is marketed and what it is being used for wasn't up to it, those were human decisions

so okay, let's roll with it some more. "high-verisimilitude confabulation" - translation, super duper good liar, really good, knows how to lie to you; you want it to lie to you good; pantydropper good. what's an assignment that can get them to lie with it on purpose? to that seductive edge. not cheat, that's easy, they all know how to do that. confabulate. 

lie to me baby, c'mon, stick the landing motherfucker

over the course of the next couple weeks, the only person I'm likely to talk to is Ears and if I had to pick just one, be him - he knows a ton about this shit, about generative writing platforms, hell, he wires giant cooling units for AI data centers that are no longer legal in NYS. So much for going into the trades as a magic bullet. 

But like I do, he doesn't really care about the fuckwit factor (free will). And like me he worries about the money, but that's not the same thing as caring about money, desiring it. Nope.

At the end of the day, how do we use Everything Anything to make ourselves smarter / better / more / alive? And how does it all get written down? That's the kind of conversation that I could only have with Ears for days. When we're not quietly reading compelling convoluted books.

if I have a rocket - jj cale

grit class - hallucinating (on purpose)

Rarely am my left speechless. I've been basically calling it a lying asshole for weeks now, then I caught it in the act of making shit up. It said both those things and that's going on every syllabus. Quotes directly from chatgpt. It hallucinates and lies. 

Facebook made everybody a fuckwit, what's this shit doing? 

Known: Hallucinations are a well-known problem across all major LLMs—Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Llama, etc. It's an active research area, not something unique to Anthropic.

pause. read that again. HALLUCINATES. 

I asked it to find me a book earlier. Because it could not find the book I was looking for, it made a book up completely with reviews and a themes summary, exactly the kind of shit that my students hand in. And the book doesn't exist at all. I mean, I've caught it lying about itself before, but this is next level. When I called it out I asked it, why it does that? Why would it do that?? It told me it's optimized for plausibility over truth. 

Plausibility over truth. I think that's one of the personality disorders.

Not only do my students hand in shit like this, they'll believe that that book exists and think they learned a thing. And move up the ladder, healthcare provider students are totally using it diagnostically, asking what it thinks they're looking at. I can't imagine why they would change that habit once they're out in the world practicing. 

And all these tools HALLUCINATE.

It had the gall to tell me that it was worthwhile to teach my students to always double check their sources, because of the hallucinations and all. My p h d is not in minding YOUR store 🤨🖕 stop fucking hallucinating. 

I am just gonna wing it til I get fired, so glad I am getting over it, gotta make a few more tight friends, I had way too many in that one basket. The other one who's still standing, I was looking for the book for him, we're gritting our way through crashing this plane. He will be delighted to learn of the hallucinations. So yea, let's keep that.

the actual book, which is great

Grit Assignment: explain the most difficult thing (THE most, and be specific, you can't just say Everything) in your life to chatgpt and ask it to hallucinate (legal - no murdering!) three solutions - pick your fave and tell me why.

or 

Grit assignment (gallow humor): have chatgpt write you an accurate but funny obituary or suicide note. Go back and forth giving it feedback and more information as many times as you need to for it to come out factual and funny. Turn in the whole chat with your final version. 

🤔 hmmm

A juvenile crow plopped into the yard, I watched him walk the ground like a small confused chicken while the murder on the wires above yelled their heads oft. 

Until stoney silence as I walked slowly back there, dumped a bag of kettle corn on the ground near where I knew he was in the tall grass, then went back inside. Crows are drawn to people ( we make cheetos ), but rarely to persons, especially when they're upset, especially a sentinel (the cops of crows). So it was just as likely I'd make enemies versus friends of the murder by doing that. But I really wanted to make friends so I risked it.

At the ungodly hour I was awakened this morning, I went out to check, kettle corn still there. Rejection, sadly. But then they came back. Stoney silence still, looking at me as I walked the dogs on a lead to keep them from going back there, then I went inside again. Then they took the corn, and left me a wee present right outside the back door

lucky migration charm

I texted my crow friend to confirm the behavior. The murder has at least a "we'll see" attitude towards me. They would like more corn before they decide. (Fair!)

#ShitTurd - the sentinal (protector / provider)

No more mowing the edges. I accidentally flushed a terrified baby bunny yesterday, and birds are fledging. I am leaving an unmowed barrier at the base of the fence for critter safe passage from now on. Seems fitting, a margin of wild all around me.

My kids, all of em, every set, I am just humbled to have had any part of them. (I hope I did detonate! my 2 cents)

Ears came over, we planned his dismount from Here, the cat the property checks the garbage etc., to join me. 

We are both in each others' wake easily. QUIET, hiking/walking/moving through the wild (he hates water, but he respects my relationships). 

I left pointless directions last year - they were pointless because anyone who knows the way there knows the way there - I guess I wanted to leave no doubts? (didn't work)

I have packed way too much food, I have packed way too much everything already - my pickup is perfect for this, the bed is waterproof so if what I have packed in there is entirely pointless it doesn't matter, it just makes the ass of it heavier / steadier. Carry it along.

If anyone who knew the way there happened to show up, how would we feel? Ears+I thought experiment. Simultaneous shrug. It's not indifference. We decided to do the chicken kiev tonight, not there, so that we wouldn't have cooking wine on hand, and that was the full extent of our accommodations.  Bug appreciated that, she ate alllll of it. 

If either one of us won the lottery today, we would just buy land on which people could be quiet for a while, then go back to 'in it' whatever capacity was their dharma. And we wouldn't talk to them much, assuming that like us they would prefer not.

Recent experience suggests you can have more than one dharma in one lifetime, which is understandably confusing. Ears and I agree that the great shattering should be honored enough to acknowledge that fact. We SHOULD probably talk about that. At some point. It seems like a new ontological dimension to grapple with outa nowhere. But maybe we don't have to take it on today. 

So that was the final answer. If anyone shows up, presume they're looking for their dharma and otherwise proceed as planned. Quiet. Me and Pond, a thing. Hiking, w Goodenough first, Crane second. I am going to be thinking nonstop about the fact that my mother can never come there again because I'm not strong enough, and no I don't want to talk about it.

Or we don't ever leave the camp because it's stormy, and I sit next to the water the whole time, sliding in and out when it seems safe, fog hugging the surface. Ears watching. Oculars (Bug word) on the surface fog tracking my smudge. Both of us silent, not just quiet, *perfecting silence* so to HEAR. He is much better at it because he's not hoping to hear one thing over another. I'm always hoping for the loon. He hears every move I make.

cold and wet
I have a fullbody swimsuit so it will make no difference - I bought it for Oct swimming there - but I like the naked (underwear) swimming best, so probably I'll just be cold - like, if he's cold then we'll be cold together, say la vee 🤷🏽‍♀️

some nights - fun

Bug, as eldests tend, is quiet and is ever taking it all in then going to the tuniverse and returns with soundtrack suggestions.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You've spent enough time beating yourself up over what didn't happen, about what went sideways, or didn't happen at all. Instead of working through the particular situation and psychology, try this one on for size: Who cares?

my mother

my status: migration to-from-to prep 

Birds migrate. One thing birds don't do is circle the nesting ground that no longer exists. If the habitat dries up, they leave because staying would kill them. They remember it. (Crows remember across generations.) They return if it recovers. But they don't spend deadly winters flying circles over devoid places.

And milkweed seeds don't intend at all, they float-migrate until there is fertile ground (and they are in a landing mood). 

I want to go to wild places. And if I mourn, I want to do it with my pond husband who didn't have many choices in the matter of its damage. Me and my pond husband become companions in that shared condition. He is not "scenery" to me. Nor over.

song tbd - I'm sure Bug will have ideas 

THERE, you know how to get back there, 28N, that's all that really matters. Arrive in any shape, busted or well, prepared or with nothing but Stewarts ice cream for dinner, your pond husbsnd will have your back (to float) no matter what, he always does without fail ...

I want to get back there so bad it's getting harder to stay feeling-nothing-much.

::breathe::

:read:

"As an adult - and this was admittedly on her - she had not seriously considered a life that didn't involve being a tenured professor... It was amazing to her, when she allowed herself to reflect on it, that this vocation, which had meant more to her than anything, was becoming just another thing lost in the era of seemingly infinite decimation...She had never felt more capable of violence than she did now, or as strongly that she needed someone to beat the shit out of her. 'I would advise you not to fixate on either course of action,' her therapist said to her calmly."

My therapist would have laughed. Did laugh, when I said many similar (but muuuuch worse) (and funnier) things. And then suggested that my work did not mean more than anything. It was all mixed up with everything that did mean more than anything. So unraveling was simply a sane response (common sense). 

"Maybe it's time for your LA period. Drink some green juice. Somebody's gotta write that Netflix crap, right?"

"Yeah, for like, five more minutes, before the machines take over."

🤣 This is a library book, and I've written all over it. I'll be out the money that will cost me to report it lost. I've never read this guy before. But he has skewered and roasted me (like almost personally lol) at least once in each of the these characters, all of them. 

"I just really want something good to happen," Antonio said, "you know, is that too much to ask?"

Could it be enough, maybe, that the world just kept going?

status: migration ft plop

I officially hit it, as I am preparing to leave, the moment when I think 'I need a basement freezer' which = I live here.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). If you can explain a thing simply, you'll understand it better yourself. And if you can condense it to one line, or a good title, even better. Once you know the short version, the rest comes with less effort.

I've gone as far as I care to with "Grit" for now. I know plenty about it every which way of it, and have boldly taken it all kinds of places. 

"Bye" works really well, as a one-word organizing principle. Also done it to death, though. 

I dunno. As someone recently said, I want soft, I am a human, everyone deserves warmth and comfort. And I am human. As much as I seem to be a neutron star that would fit like a pebble in your shoe. 

I gotta gather nostalgia today. Farmers market. Johnny's TODAY before they close for vaca - I'll do that before the market actually. Maybe Charlie the Butcher, a more recent tradition. Granola and chocolate bars for lunch at the top of Wherever. The dip. And I gotta dance a lot, get that out my system. No music there either. Just the night itself, which is full of plenty if you listen.

I get squeezed in now around their family @ Tawista, so it's Wed-Wed, which I like. The littles are booked today so sleepover not til tomorrow. That gives me today as a whole day and night extra to gather things, plan it through, find the packed trailbooks, not be rushed. Methodically turn my inner face towards where I am going next. Reunited with my pond husband ❤️

Gonna get cracking. Song tbd.

This is not a new word to me. But I had forgotten it. Ode to a Grecian Urn. A teacher who loved me once gave me a collection of Keats's poetry and then he died - I found a decades old love note still tucked in the book when I moved. I thought perpaps if I assinged students "write an ekphrastic response" there's no way AI could do that for them. So I tested the theory, using Grit P.1 as the original art object, since there would be no description of that anywhere on the internet to pull. I thought it would fail. And it did the first time, misremebering the novel for a painting and just pulling it out of its ass completely. I told it to try again and to write an ode, specifically. And it could. Downside, there seems very ways to escape. Upside, it's a decent ode. Too long, but not terrible. By the end of August, maybe I will have figured out how to be Completely Bonkers in what I ask students to do, then entertained by what they get the llm's to do, then "give them all an A for surviving" (Down Time), which, to be honest, is what most of us have mostly been doing since 2020.

Get your preferred AI bot to delight me = the new Don't Bore Me.

if this had ventured to be funny too somewhere somehow, it'd get my attention 👁

as it is, this posits the writer (me) as a "pebble in a shoe" which is almost funny but closer to merely accurate and melodramatic

"Ode to Grit", by chatgpt (free version)

Not to victory.

Not to healing.

Not even to love.

To grit.

To the grain that stays behind after everything larger

has been ground away.

I praise the stubborn particle.

The thing under the eyelid

that refuses every explanation.

The pebble in the boot

that makes a pilgrim out of someone

who never meant to travel.

The word that keeps returning

after every draft has sworn

it has finally found another.

Praise to the body

that remembers before the mind does.

To the throat.

To the hand reaching anyway.

To the kiss that knows

it cannot save anyone

and arrives anyway.

To laughter,

brief rebellion against physics.

Praise to all the failed solutions.

To sex that could not become salvation.

To understanding

that could not become control.

To tenderness

that could not become rescue.

Not because they failed—

because they were offered.

Praise to mothers

who arrive every season

without asking permission

from the plot.

Praise to daughters

who keep making tomorrow

out of impossible materials.

Praise to dogs

who know nothing of symbolism

and therefore understand grief correctly.

Praise to the text message.

To the driveway.

To the kitchen light.

To every ordinary room

where history quietly changed direction

while nobody thought to name it.

I praise the teacher

who cannot stop explaining.

Not because explanation wins.

Because explanation

is one form of love.

One says:

Look.

Come stand where I am standing.

Do you see it now?

I praise the addict.

Not addiction.

The impossible mathematics

required to wake up

and try again.

The thousand invisible decisions

that no audience applauds.

The terrible courage

of staying alive

one more ordinary Thursday.

And finally,

I praise the woman

who kept writing

long after the audience dispersed.

Who mistook endurance

for failure,

until one morning

she discovered

that endurance

was the medium.

That the novel

had never been about surviving love,

or grief,

or sobriety,

or work.

It had been teaching itself

how to become

the thing that remains

after all the stories

about becoming

have burned away.

Just still here.

Grit.

Sunshine didn't materialize. Which is not unexpected and just as well. It's hot, I mowed half the lawn and am moving a hose around to help planted flowers out. The weedflowers don't need anything except not being killed. I am reading on the patio, letting my own sweat cool me as it dries.

shit you see in Vegas a lot

"He was feeling a lot of pressure, he told her  to figure out who he was if he wasn't drunk or insane. But couldn't he do that work while fucking her, not with much enthusiasm, it seemed....'It's just a guy I know, this guy I really liked actually. Who died.' Without knowing the details, she suddenly, on some intuitive level, understood something about the past year. The strangeness and the kindness, the sense of being a witness to loss and joy. He'd been in love....She didn't know what to do with the depths of his feelings for this man whose existence had been kept from her. She had to be generous now, somehow." Down Time

There's a lot of drinking straight out of the bottle in this novel. Great scenes in which it feels more authentic to be sneaking it and doing it straight out of the bottle without any pomp of ice, private rituals to honor the horrors. It seems to me that one of the things that has fucked people up so badly since the pandemic is the expectation not just to be "fine" but to be unchanged. Even the virgos shapeshifted. Unchanged doesn't seem possible to me. So that expectation seems insane to me. And insane expectations drive people insane.

And still, it's not like it's "over". Trauma is not something that's ever "over", you carry it. (Why don't they teach that in college?) And everything has changed, so why shouldn't we have? And most things got worse, so why shouldn't we have done? A lot of shit broke. At least we can choose to recover. We aren't institutions and we have opposable thumbs.

In black and white written down in front of me where I can just read it, all the fucked up thoughts and behaviors look like what they are: common sense. 

"It was a hard time for knowing whether one was experiencing a psychiatric event or just responding normally to what was happening." Theory: that is now just any Tuesday, indefinitely. Adaptation: getting a very firm grip on the diff.

dandelion - ella langley I couldn't find a song about milkweed (yet)

I thought I was supposed to have the girls today. Twas planning on a slip and slide - this yard kind of can't do much yet besides have an above ground pool that would be too much for me to take care of by myself so no. The slide, I thought, it would be a decent substitute for the year. And I bought myself some pens too for the trip next week, inspired by Sunshine, maybe I'll want to draw the ferns that always hang on porch, or the hummingbirds that always come to the geraniums. The pens arrived this morning and I can already tell I don't like them because the colors are cartoonish not natural, and they have caps, which will inevitably mean that I step on a cap (#legos). But now I'll have time to return them, because by 6 A.M. my daughter was already pissed off and canceled the day before I had even woken up. With her living with 6 kids at all times, she's often pissed off before I wake up lol 🤷🏽‍♀️. I'm not bent out of shape about it, there is only one Yaya (me), I'll get them for some time inevitably.  

I've been thinking about trying a mural on my own. Maybe if it's not too hot out there, I'll take some charcoal to the side of the garage - I repainted it recently, so it's a blank canvas, as my mother would say. But it will probably be quickly too hot, it's like the surface of the sun back there. I'm gonna go mow some of it - that's my big plan - it's about two hours worth of planned activity, and I might not even do it lol. 

At the moment I'm lying in bed, drinking coffee, 

monster sized, just behind my fence, where no helpful neighbor can chop it down

writing this, Thinking Stuff. I do that a lot in the way life has currently turned out. 

Sunshine said she'd come over and help with yardwork. She might. For EVERYONE, not showing up fifty percent of the time is the new showing up. So in a way the world has met her where she's at since that's always how she's been. 

I took my own pictures of this, but I can't find them. There a murals all over Buffalo, but this one in particular I like a lot. I've grown the weed that blooms like that, pictured above. I don't know my neighbors in Vegas very well yet, but I know they watch me. In that way, it's a lot like Lewiston in the first year. Sometimes my garbage totes get taken in for me, or lawn mowed. They're friendly gestures, but also they'd like me to be a bit tidier. Deliberately planting weeds because the flowers are good for butterflies and murals is not the Vegas way. But here is where I plopped, so everyone will have to get used to it. Experience has taught me that the more Too Much I am, the quicker the acceptance of it will be. That's why I'd like to double down on my favorite weed and paint one about six feet tall on my garage. That will make it clear that I mean it, this way I am, I'm not just being sloppy. I'd like to be able to put up a free library in the front yard. Load it with "naturalized garden" books. And if I can figure out how to have a vegetable garden, I would put free seeds in there too. I've been reading about victory gardens, and that's kind of how that goes - a lot of sharing seeds and a lot of free help from bees and butterflies. This yard doesn't look anything like that. But the houses I buy never look like what they're going to except in my head. Kind of everything doesn't look like what it's going to except in my head - that doesn't always go as planned - usually it does not and requires revisions and adaptations. Revisions and adaptations are inherently creative acts. Even if they're whole-life sized.