countdown to kiss my ass goodbye 2016

In some ways, it was a good year. Careerwise for sure - I knew the future would arrive sooner or later even for the Catholics. I stuck it out. And it paid off this year. Commitment usually does pay off, in my experience. People quit things, but I don't much. Unless there really is no choice left.

And on the personal front, no choices for me were left this year. He got to make all the choices, and he did, leaving me none. All of 2016, he owned it. I had so little choice that it left me free of having no choices, finally. 2017 looks like this. Shelterless ft. zero bullshit.



...VIRGO You imprint yourself on others, even when merely passing in the street. It's an interesting thing to think about, your casual impression. To understand the effect you create is no small matter of mind.
Bonus track. (gonna order the soap.)

 
Neil Diamond - If You Go Away

Devil Doll - Bourbon in Your Eyes

VIRGO There's someone out there who would love to double your joy and divide your grief. Perhaps this person is already in your world, only you haven't yet shared enough to know how well you fit.

Chet Faker - Talk is Cheap. (Live.) High rec.

Alexander - Truth VIRGO Whatever happened before, leave it in the land of before. Future-you is still to be determined. You're the determiner. You will be what you make of yourself.

My family arrives today. Sister, mother...I love them and it will be nice to see them. But it won't be nice to be seen by them. To myself I am myself, in my own skin. But reflected back at me in their eyes, I am sure I look terrible, a failure and alone and sad.

I set my blog to 365 days visible, so I could look at each year as a snapshot totality. There is a lot of repetition. Variations on a same theme.

VIRGO Remember when you got some long, consecutive, non-interrupted time chunks to organize your life around? Boy, that does seem like a thing of the past now, but don't worry, it will also be a thing of the future. 



Uhhh ya. I always get realllllly organized around sexual frustration. And sabbaticals. Let's hope for the latter shall we?

VIRGO Your best intentions, well, that counts for something even when intentions aren't enough to get the outcome you were hoping for. However it works out for you today, it can still lead somewhere good.

 (It is what it is.)

VIRGO A partnership that drains you is defeating the very purpose of partnership. Partnerships should contribute to your sense of well-being. Go get a partner who shares your goals and complements your skills.

VIRGO A partnership that drains you is defeating the very purpose of partnership. Partnerships should contribute to your sense of well-being...

I liked hurting girls. 

Mentally, not physically, I never hit a girl in my life. Well, once.

The thing is, I got off on it. I really enjoyed it. It’s like when you hear serial killers say they feel no regret, no remorse for all the people they killed. I was like that. Loved it. I didn’t care how long it took either, because I was in no hurry. I’d wait until they were totally in love with me. Till the big saucer eyes were looking at me. I loved the shock on their faces. Then the glaze as they tried to hide how much I was hurting them. And it was legal. I think I killed a few of them. Their souls, I mean. It was their souls I was after. 

But don’t worry, I got my comeuppance.~The Oxygen Thief

Ask yourself a lot of questions, accept reality, don't close your eyes to the truth.

VIRGO The avoidance of worry is a form of worry. It's a struggle to avoid struggle and a pain to avoid pain. In light of this, avoid avoidance altogether. Take life head-on, at face value. Forward march!

VIRGO It's mighty fine when the game is good enough on its own, but that won't always be the case. When it's not, you have to BE the fun. What you bring to the table will make the intolerable thing tolerable.

Bonus track: Snort. 

We must risk delight.
We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness
In the ruthless furnace of this world.
~Jack Gilbert

(Who is we? And where can I find them?)

Welcome to Your Life - Grouplove

One must move on.

Lonely.

Picturing Love - July Talk

Fuck. She was fine a fucking minute ago! Damn.

Tonight was orchestra for TJ. The last kid in the nest. His father showed up and sat next to me, the empty chair and all so finefine. His nameless eternal hostility toward me seeped sideways through my skin - what is that?? Was always there, who knows, I found it potentially sexy once but godnonopenopenope. I left at the break after TJ's part.

When TJ got home, first thing he asked about was Aaron. His current chest cold and his dog. I took a deep breath. Said Aaron has a new Whatever again, so I am irritated and trying not to count on seeing him much but ok I will ask about the dog if (when) he surfaces. TJ, knowing what to do with disappointment and pain, gets funny. "Has he got a new south buffalo 90's prom queen runner up?" Sigh. "Tiffanny Lin (you have to spell it wrong to make it stick)?" Sigh, ya, something like that. "A Samanthony?" gigglegigglegigle omg Samanthony. Slayed me. Hahahaha

Samhain. Thank you to all the nasty women in my blood. So many and so necessarily tough as fuck or we wouldn't be here still. Help me, if you will, guide me forward. The world is melting. I am worried not only for our own children but for everyone's. I worry all the time. ALL THE FUCKING TIME, I worry. I worry for our thoughts, our MINDS most of all, collectively shrunk to hostile grasping need of dinner and fear. Who can think let alone read books in the face of that? I worry about our desires, marginalized and made brutal as a result. Who can afford to love on anyone anymore honestly, without shame? I worry about money, so much worry about money always all the time. I was hemmed in by cultural ignorance and poverty. Those were surmountable. Now the generation of my kids and students are hemmed in by education defined by skills that have planned obsolesce built in, and debt debt debt which is poverty prostituted forever. Who can serve anything but their immediate needs, selfish essentially in the face of that desperocity? I am one of the lucky. I got up and out. No one owns me. And I can afford to educate and keep and feed my own. On this Samhain, I invoke and entreat my dead peeps: help me know what best to do with what I have, this privilege in this place and time, for myself and the greatest good. S.M.I.B.

VIRGO Your verbal acumen might make its way into costume form with a punny suit-up. It's fun to figure out how you might embody the Whip and Nae Nae or Jon Snow White.

nasty

I remember. I used to drive back and forth to WI frequently and when I did I would look at every off ramp and wonder what it would be like to just get off and start a life as if mid step, like jumping into double Dutch, as if I had always been someone else.

I keep thinking about that. But in reverse. What if I jumped into my own life as if I were someone else? Someone who knew exactly what to make of it.

wintersleep - the great detachment (spirit)

The square of Venus and Neptune is an opportunity. On the surface this can be like a dark cloud passing over your dreams, obscuring your original idea and dampening your drive. But there's a silver lining that could reignite your drive, too. It's the obstacle that makes you realize how badly you really want it, or don't, as the case may be.

 Bonus track  I love the one about hair conditioner.

"We know what the world wants from us. We know we must decide whether to stay small, quiet, and uncomplicated or allow ourselves to grow as big, loud, and complex as we were made to be. Every girl must decide whether to be true to herself or true to the world. Every girl must decide whether to settle for adoration or fight for love. There on the bed..."- Love Warrior: A Memoir, Glennon Doyle Melton

My hometown. I wonder if Mark is still lingering, watching and shaking his head. WI must be real shit show right about now.

Meanwhile speaking of places and spaces and ways that are better off in rearview, I gotta get the hang.

This time kept the toys.

VIRGO As for a certain relationship: Your options are to go on, or to stop. Sometimes you can go on and stop at the same time, which is what you're doing when you don't make a clear choice. 

Yup. 

VIRGO You're a masterful organizer and your flawless logic in this regard will be executed to perfection. Still, the wild gypsy in your soul wants to be free — of possessions, psychic bonds and other people's definitions.

lunar eclipses call our bullshit (bring it)

This lunar eclipse represents an emotional shake-up. Ultimately, great things could be inspired by this pattern-interrupt of the Pisces full moon. If no one answers the first door, move to the next and knock with confidence. Resilience is the gift that comes with not taking rejection personally. When it's right, it clicks in. Until then, keep going.

"...he understood now what adult love could be. Something where two people did not merge so completely that they had trouble figuring out where one ended and the other began, but rather the joining of two strong, separate beings, creating a future rather than trying, over and over, to redo the past...."

"Of course it had all been bullshit." ~Eleven Hours, Pamela Erens

This is a beautiful book. I was too sad and upset today to go to work, called sick to read. (Reading, where I go when there is no other way out, as my shrink observes, makes admirable use of my coping skills - they look just like talents.) The story is about a woman in labor and her nurse. The father of the child cheated on the woman and she took her fetus and left him. She escapes the birthing room and wanders alone around the hospital, remembering him in the nearness of other men when they pass her, savoring her lonliness that she has grown used to. But she has this nurse to consider. To help her. Who will not leave her alone ever again after that.

 "“I need to know that you are all right at all times," says the nurse." Ah! Lore is ashamed! That you are all right. At all times. Lore has been uncooperative, ungrateful! Who else has made this offering to her—that you are all right at all times? Who else has taken this on as their duty?"

 I find the story very moving, and well wrought, the medical details, hospital smells, glimpses of lives through doorways. So I keep reading. Though it is occasioning unfortunate feelings of self-pity. I can't help reflecting that in my world, there is no nurse. Even if I were to need it, especially if I were to need it, there would be nowhere and nobody to whom I could run to care or shelter me. No matter how deep the cut, I will save myself somehow or bleed out.

VIRGO The more you love, the more willing you are to suffer for love. There have been times, in fact, when suffering and love were synonymous. [they aren't?] And now for something radically different — temperate, easygoing stability. 

 If fucking only.

VIRGO On whom can you depend? As emotionally close as you may feel to someone, practical matters must be assessed in practical terms. Reassess your support system, based on the evidence of recent behavior.

"Screw your courage to the sticking place.
And we will not fail."  
 ~Shakespeare

(or don't)

What the?

Watching this old HBO series (Oz) with TJ. In the context of the plot, that bit is inspired (!) Bonus track

word

VIRGO Every relationship has a status quo. You've changed, and the basic nature of your relationships must change, too. The norms that used to be fine with you are no longer satisfactory.

....and then the plumbing failed and the bathroom flooded, and I hauled ass to campus to drop Ears then back again, running several projects by phone in transit, now back at my home desk while also on the phone while also waiting for the plumber, hoping to get back to campus in time for the 3 p.m. meeting I shouldn't have to go to at all except if I don't the A. Nothing or B. Something Stupid that will occur will be a pain in my ass surely.  And I need a cigarette so bad I could shit my eyeballs.  But I don't.

But maybe I should.  Just cut the cord.  Cuz what I really need more than a cigarette is an actual friend.

Update: I cut the cord.

word

I couldn’t afford to be a 24-hour woman. But it didn’t stop me from trying till it shattered me.

VIRGO Is what you want really worth working so long and hard to get to? That future day will come whether or not you worked long and hard — only, if you don't put in the work, that future day won't have nearly the same significance. (sigh)

I wish this were a novel and I could turn the page and it would be his mind's turn to speak. What is really in there?

(Betrayals unceasing.)

(shrug)

queen of cups

"I do not want to be disrespected anymore. Undervalued. As a person, as company, as a friend, as a lover. This I know. I am not confused about what I do NOT want."
-----------

I tried unblogging the rest below in favor of the upshot up there. But no, I haven't gotten any further (yet) in my thinking.
-----------


Could it be that he was more invested in our plotline than I was? Wouldn’t that be an odd thing to discover? I mean, I wanted commitment don’t get me wrong. But it was more absolute. As in, if you are attached to someone then you are, period. Married was code for me, to mean that. To him, the plotline mattered more than the person in the plot. But me, well I’ve read about a buttgillion plots, each worth reading is its own weirdness and entirely character-driven. He cheats. He leaves. And in so doing switches out the woman he has for one who is better on paper. New plotline, one he can more easily see the arc of, her ovaries probably work (if not, we can switch her out again), it’s not her that matters much. Then as per usual he realizes he doesn’t like her smell, her anything. So yeah, the plot can’t drive the story dude. The people drive the plot. I’ve told my belief in that a million times, he can’t fathom it, he and I just cannot see eye to eye on that basic value structure. Plus, his dick talks him into this shit too, every time he does it, whispering crap into his ear like “this is the one!” just because it likes new pussy and pussy it ain’t supposed to have too especially (like a button that says don’t push me). That dick of his is like Mr. Nicotine, whispering in his ear all the time, about how good it’s going to feel andit probably won’t kill him (and ya never know, she might have something totally new, a clit piercing or something, LET’S FIND OUT!). It’s laughable, it really is, the logic of a dick when it’s being a dick, ya know what I’m saying? I do not want to be disrespected anymore. Undervalued, as a person, as company, as a friend, as a lover. This I know. I am not confused about what I do not want. And I don’t want the plotline anymore either. Not that one. It was his in the first place and he is the one who bails out of it (!) To hold him inside a fence means he immediately ruins the yard digging escape holes. Fuck that. The gate is wide open. So stop making a mess. Anyway. It was never the plot in the first place that I was in it for. It was HIM. I didn’t want to be married and then looked around for someone to fit that bill. He came, and with him came plot. He likes a fuss. So I threw a fuss. And added a spell to own it too, make the fuss my own for him. Now that is done. I speak in other currencies entirely unless I am trying to speak to him in his. If I met a man for whom my defenses fell and I unfurled, with whom I could talk for hours about nothing, who got all my jokes and could withstand all my desire. And he said, Look I want to never live in your house or have dinner with both you and my mother, but I’ll tattoo your name on my ass and take out every dirty thought I’ve had on your body and then sometimes feed you bbq. Then go home to play with my fish tank and do my own laundry. (The downside is?) The downside is that’s not plot. And he likes a plot. He likes THE PLOT, his parents’ life, their exact plotline, played out in the same place, with the same parameters, the same fusses, anniversary gifts that match the number of years, the script all laid out in every detail. And hey, we all want what we want. He wants that. And I am not that. I am I. All he gets out of me is me. Not enough. For him anyway. Not by that measuring tape. But I don’t have to use that measure – I never wanted to grow up to be his mother so I ain’t, which is no surprise to me. And he DID want to grow up to be his dad, but he AIN’T, and that’s some kind of surprise to him but … (shrug) All this, it isn't MY downside. For me the downside is that we have to add in “And I want to fuck other people that my dick has picked out and pretend I’m going to have kids with them until I get to know them, because I’m into that from time to time” to his list of stipulations, which is, well, hard to plan (so much as a vacation) around if nothing else. I can’t really blame him for it – most of my closest friends went through some ‘polyamory’ period in their 30’s. And I always thought it was nuts, but then again my 30’s were no fun at all, so what the hell do I know? I probably didn’t do it just because I wasn’t into it, which is hardly an achievement on my part. I dunno. (Shrug.) He clearly is some kind of attached to me. And I still am studying the matter. And if I am honest, except for how much it is not what he wants, now is better than what it was for me. How it is now isn’t all I want either, obviously. But I’m much more open in my parameters of what I consider valuable in an intimate partner, and this now compared to that then, this is better for me. I don’t want to HAVE to partner for any reason except my own desire, I have no plotline I need fulfilled for me. And now my own desire is unfettered from that, from his plotneed, and I am not trying to do anything else but know my own desire(s), not trying also to do everything else the way I was before, killing myself trying. I'm reverting back to my own language(s). What I value most is searching interior inventories (sharing them), wit sharp enough to carve into the world and look at its guts, lovemaking that is about itself about its object of desire about creating a source of energy that recharges stronger with each use. I don’t want to be anyone’s mere wife, label it and forget it. Fuck that. I want to be exactly what is on his ass, the only one of me, called by my own name.

second day in a row. universe must know something I don't. which come to think of it should come as no surprise

queen of cups

VIRGO Someone has wronged you in the past. If only it were enough that this person has apologized and wants your forgiveness. It still seems a little too easy, doesn't it? There's more that will occur before you'll be ready to let this one go.

VIRGO They like you, but that's not what's important here. Furthermore, the praise may not fit your mental script, and the accolades won't be what you expected, either. The point is, your contribution is making a difference.


even when they try to they can't do it like I do la la la

the Virgo perspective

VIRGO You have easier access to the heart of your love than you have in a long time. What gives you this open door? Trust. You've earned it by doing as you say you will or better.

(doubt ft. shrug)

What I've earned from that is trust in myself. What I want now are people around me that I can trust even half that much. In whatever category. Trust to look for as much humor in everything. To be as grateful for a body. To give as much thanks for blessings. To live by priciples they hold themselves steady by as best they can, always trying. To reflect as much. To honor as much. To cherish as much. To take to heart the pleasure there is in providing for another. Even half as much. When is the last time you put your whole self into making someone else's day? Start there then put one foot in front of the other, is how you get to where you might be someone who could make another person's life better for your being in it. ....

This is what I wanted. To be steady rain and sunshine for them I loved. It was enough. More. I never understood how else you want to. How else a person could want to want. But I am learning. I want watered. a duet ft being alone

VIRGO If you knew what exactly was keeping you stuck, you wouldn't be. Pondering won't help. If this were a physical issue, you'd wiggle and pull until you could figure out exactly the sticking point. That's what you need to do. Bonus track - TJ cracks out an impersonation of this, gives me the giggles every time. "...the middle to the side!", snort

I swam in that pond for hours daily. Felt like I was cooling a fury, my soul a hot coal, I almost expected a sizzle sound when I'd slide in.

Everything here reminds me, reminds anyone who comes here, how fleeting and insignificant is anyone. It all is so much older and untouched that you are. You are a baby compared to a mountain, and nothing much too really. It makes me serially quite anxious this year, like a turtle would be overturned, and also at peace (resigned?). I am just a glass of cold milk once in Tupper.

"An affection that was calculated was never trustworthy.” ― John Irving, A Widow for One Year

more frogs this year. from the center of the lake treading water I watch a large hawk swoop past TJs head on the hunt for a fat frog, my son oblivious to it, intent as he is on watching me lest I suddenly go under and disappear. I never do though

The silence here you cannot imagine. I am never anywhere else on earth like this place. There is not even the hum of modern electric ping, which has a sound unlike the old hardwire, which is wrapped and ear invisible. NOTHING. I can hear against the backdrop of it. Here is the palest sound of humidity dappling pond. Light which sounds like birch trees mostly not moving. Bats, which are one decibel above a void. If I won the lottery, I would buy Silence. Through which I would swim and swim, the sound of hummingbirds huge in their swooping by. I am right now (doing): 1. Perching atop my jeep to catch a cell signal In the middle of nowhere overlooking a desolate lake, calling In to a board of trustees meeting, to shepherd the end games, honing In on my next boss, my next Dominant. 2. Processing still the fallout inside me of mating as a Catch and Release program. In his defense, how did I think I could live where he does? In the din of fuss? I tune all that out as far as I can, just as he abhores a void and fills it with anyone new (i.e. loud). If we were mythical ceatures, we would belong to entirely different categories of beings. And many more of his kind inhabit this planet. Why should he have lived in my Quiet dimension? It was like some star trek type shit, a Klingon bummed out by his clan weddings every weekend falls for a Cube of Light woman temporarily. 3. NOTHING. I am doing vitally important things related to the very nature of my material existence right now. But to look at it, I am a woman sitting on a jeep, still and alone and watching dragonflies in the distance, and that is all.

I get up, write a little / make mental notes / go for a walk writing in my head / get a smoothie at the juice bar noting the owner in detail, the defensive quality in her cold aging beauty, making a mental note of it / come home lay out chores jump in the shower / grade papers and read the resumes I have to for my afternoon meeting / get dressed and check my liptint before heading out.... / realize I am still wearing the same outfit as yesterday, as in from the photo yesterday, as in from 20 years ago, and since I am so STAYED I wouldn't be surprised if these jeans weren't originally Mark's, the same, so long have I had them that I have just always had them.... /I don't know what there is to see in that. I dunno.

VIRGO From time to time, even the most exciting people get bored of their own stories and skins. Being around the people who love you dearly will help you see yourself with the adoring eyes that they see you through.

Like...? My mom? She thinks I'm a Goddess of Indestruction. (lol)

the memorial is today

I looked at a man-boy that way twice in my life.  Once then, when I was 15 years old.  And then after many years of pain and anger and lonely struggle, I looked again and wrapped a cord worth two lives around myself for him, hoping it would stick this time and my heart would hold together.  It didn't again, of course.

Mark would understand that.  Did understand it.  There was a woman after me, many years of pain and anger and lonely struggle later for him too.  Her name was Evelyn.  She loved him, and he surely loved her.  But she was erratic, troubled, selfish, left him a time or two, came back, then abandoned him finally and he died alone.  One of the last things he said, and I believe he said it to me who would understand it because he said it to my mother because I couldn't be there (wasn't there, chose not to upset Aaron by going), was, "Don't let them say anything bad about Evelyn." Those last words he spoke about Evelyn say nothing about her at all; they say everything you'd want to know about Mark.

Now two of the four people in that photo, he and by beloved grandmother, are dead.  And I'm next.

r.i.p.

inspiration

"This is the mark of a really admirable man: steadfastness in the face of trouble." ~Beethoven.
  "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places." ~Hemingway.

I'm surprised by how much the DNC is getting to me in places. Like Biden. I need to have faith in the tried and proven, that that's a real thing, I guess.

"Wolves in shells are crueller than stray ones." GASTON BACHELARD, The Poetics of Space

The boys and I watched Gone Girl. It looks like a murder mystery but it's really a study of a marriage. Of what marriage is and does to people. I said something like, If you're not already convinced it's a bad idea...I didn't even finish the thought before they were both like MARRIAGE IS FUCKED UP NO FUCKING WAY etc etc. Well, probably not fucked up for everybody (your grandparents have a good marriage for instance) but I've set you an extremely terrible example, so you'll probably struggle with it some. I'm sorry. "It isn't your fault. But yea, just the thought of marriage makes me feel sick, like here", says Ears, putting a hand to his guts where I often do too. If I were to come anywhere near anything looking like a romantic plotline in front of them again, they'd be coping with a sickening feeling of dread over it immediately. So hey universe, condition #1, until they're grown no romcom plotlines! I ain't nobody's better half, I've got to be whole. Then we switched over to the DNC some more, and TJ read us an article speculating about the role of the 'first dude' and how every time Bill has time in his hands he makes trouble so Hillary has to keep him busy, so TJ starts interjecting inuendo as he's reading about how Bill owes her head in the oval office so like 'get under this desk and get to gettin or I'm calling Cory Booker', and had me in stitches.

What are the biggest life lessons you learned?, I imagine their shrinks asking. That marriage is like playing Russian roulette while drunk on hope, that men wreak havoc on women and children, and that the most valuable life skill is extremely inappropriate humor at the ready at all times.

They'll be really pissed at me, I imagine, and rightly so.

10 years I've been keeping this blog.  Comes in handy for a retrospect.  Though ... eeesh .... long before Trainwreck, what the fuck was up with all that kitten bullshit?  I hate cats :/

I removed every picture with my whole face clearly in it from the entire 10 years.  Why?  Because even that much, seeing my face ever again, is conditional. I'm thinking: maybe if I set a conditional on giving anything, I'll start having people around who can nut up and meet an expectation for a change.  And they'll have the opportunity then to be(come) those kinds of people by extension.  And if not, fine, go look into someone else's eyes then.

On the upside, I got to see all the faces of others since I keep them eh? Am the keeper. And regiggle at jokes.

For instances,

(I still don't know why this is funny - but it is)

VIRGO No one is ever alone in a feeling. However complex it may seem, someone else in the world has gone through or is going through something very close to your emotion, but you have to reach out to know the truth of that.

"..We don't get what we want, we get what we think we deserve." ~Sarah Silverman @ the DNC

"Ah, but when the road narrows to the width of this bed, when there is nothing in front of you that is known, dare you disdain any guide?", A Single Man, Christopher Isherman

A man is hard to find, good or otherwise, but guys are everywhere now. Meanwhile, I know way more women than girls. ~I Don't Care About Your Band, Julie Klausner

What I deserve: Men. Not guys. And certainly not boys.

girl crush

I want to be like her.

Thunder down the gorge. First real rain of the summer.

“Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.” ― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score VIRGO: When you can't say it in words, or emojis, you'll say it with the way you move.

tree canopy out my bedroom window lit by fireworks tonight

VIRGO Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and blurt out what's on your mind, but this is not one of those times. If you feel nervous and wordless on the subject, wait it out. Nothing needs to be said just yet.

“I used to think marriage was a plate-glass window just begging for a brick.”~Jeanette Winterson, Wrtten on the Body

My new shrink (I got one because I wanted to yell at a shrink about how lame the last shrink was) drew a lifespan on a piece of paper, circled 5-15 years old, and asked me, What is the number one life lesson you learned in those years?  I thought about the bonkers they were, the knot in my stomach all the time, the crazy it drove me, "That I'd be better off on my own."  Well then, that's why you do it, get on your own.  "But HOW? When I tried so hard not to?"  I don't know how, just why - what you resist persists, you know Jung.  Then she went into a thing about maybe trying some yoga, getting in touch with my spiritual path, and I thought O for fucks sake she's about to recommend a book with relationship diagrams in it I'm so over this shit...And she sure did, then told me a story about her and husband being complementary personality types, completely oblivious to her Partner Privilege.  Jesus >:/

But I thought the Jung bit was pretty good.  I'm sitting here, well sit-lying as per usual, drinking coffee, listening to the birds, thinking about that.  And about him, to be honest.

more self help

I let the boys crack me up keeping me anchored to the present moment.  TJ suddenly likes really shitty 80's music in the car, such as (occasionally a scrap of the refrain sung in Mike Tyson's lisp), which slays me:

bonus track, for whatever reason Aha gives him the giggles. We take turns and I sing Megan Trainer, "if I vas you I'd vant to be me too, lalala" him laughing despite himself.

Plus, it's Cards Against Humanity expansion pack season.

self help

The subnarrative of the healthcare providers makes this hilarious even more, to me. (Which means today is better, not as raw.) The AMPED paramedic is my fave (!). Followed by wish-i-was-on-smokebreak nurse, inhumane doctor literally, and finally just-sad resident.

It is a nice clear Capricorn full moon tonight btw - look up.

Today was hurty.

"It struck me then, for the first time, how unethical anxiety is, how it voids the reality of other people by conscripting them as palliatives for your own fear. For a moment there, I was able to step outside that, to hear.." ~Imagine Me Gone

...what would happen if you

say what you wanna say la la la...

bonus track - this dude is hot, no diggity

"Painting #1 The first thing that catches your eye is the light, or rather two lights angled toward a single focal point, becoming a figure-eight flare at the center of the canvas. It is big, this painting, eight feet long and five feet high, the once white tarpaulin transformed into a smoky gray glitter. Or maybe what you see first is calamity, two dark rectangles slicing the frame, jackknifed, their metallic skeletons glowing in the moonlight. There are flames on the edge of the picture, as if the story doesn’t end just because the painting stops, and people who view the image have been known to walk to the far edges looking for more information, microscoping the framing wood for even a hint of added drama. The lights that flare out the center of the image are the headlights of an Amtrak passenger train, its caboose having come to rest almost perpendicular to the twisted iron track that bends and waves below it. The first passenger car has disconnected from the caboose and now makes the trunk of a T, having maintained its forward momentum and smashed the engine dead center, bending its bread-box contours into a vague V. As with any bright light, the headlight glare here obscures much of the image, but upon further examination a viewer might discover a single passenger—in this case a young woman—dressed in a black skirt and torn white blouse, her hair tousled across her face, matted by blood. She is wandering shoeless through the jagged wreckage, and if you squint past the illusion of light you can see that her eyes are wide and searching. She is the victim of disaster, a survivor of heat and impact, cantilevered from her resting position into an impossible parabola of unexpected torture, her once placid world—gently rocking, click clack, click clack—now a screeching twist of metal. What is she looking for, this woman? Is it merely a way out? A clear and sensible path to safety? Or has she lost something? Someone? In that moment, when gentle rocking turned into a cannonball ricochet, did she go from wife and mother, from sister or girlfriend, from daughter or paramour to refugee? A fulfilled and happy we to a stunned and grieving I? And so, even as other paintings call to you, you can’t help but stand there and help her look." ~Noah Hawley

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VIRGO Life is going fast. In the blur of events, important details could get lost. Stop a moment to calm down. Also, remembering the lessons of the past will give you more power going forward.

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Yeah, everyone is always in a hurry - especially at work, it's deadline this and that, hurry up and grab it, power to be had blablabla. Get what you want, everyone tells me.  But: Unless you're awful careful what that is, it'll be a curse to get it.

I think, we wrote a story with an apocalypse clause in it.  That part was my doing, mostly.  I only had a single condition for staying with him.  The 'don't lie/cheat' clause.  So in any single moment, the time it takes to cum, a hard pull to the brake line and the whole thing derails like blam.  The outcome might have been different if I had had more conditions than just the one - I certainly wanted more things than that and wasn't getting them. So why didn't I?

I don't know why, but I am trying to do the opposite now, trying it at work, being very conditional in my love of it.  I do love it, but still.  I put forward proposal in response to the project they want me to take on next: double my raise and I want an apocalypse clause so I can just bail if I don't like the work. They'd be pretty crazy to take it.  But if it has to be me, well then, pay up and hope I don't fuck you over or simply fail.  And if it doesn't have to be me, well then fine, then get somebody else (shrug).

And meanwhile, since my personal story, had that derailment on page 222 of my life, it is as if the narrative stopped mid-sentence.  Then you turn the page and see this

and I like this page, actually, in so far as I don't feel in a big hurry to turn to the next.

Sitting here, just sitting, is the STAY version of being in the wind.

I am pondering my "best attributes". How do you know what those are without the mirror of other people? And do you listen to what other people say of you or witness your impact on them? Most people take words as truth. 'I love you' as simply true when someone says it, and to mean 'you are lovable' as well. And that seems dubious to me now, either assumption, about those words.

I prefer concrete reaction categories instead at this point. For instance, I know I am funny because the other person laughs, not because he says 'you are funny'. For your attributes, you would have to have evidence like that to be able to make a real list, I feel like.

What is the appreciable impact of you? How do others feel after they have come in contact with you, and how do you really know what that is? How can you know in what ways you left them better or worse, or nothing at all, for the minute or hour or year(s) you spent?

I am sitting here, also working. Among my (many) blessings: it is my job to think stuff. Next week a class starts. Personal Disasters, a short story class. And I will open it with these questions about personal attributes and the results of them. I am writing the questions down in my mind, staring at my feet in the tub.

VIRGO The idea that "everything" could hinge on one thing is usually an overstatement. But today it rings true in some way. Your "everything" — that is, however you feel about yourself — becomes magnified. Take an inventory of your best attributes.

(headtilt)


Bonus track

Update:  I tried unblogging this into a distilled version...The closest I could get was Our Plotline Failed Us.

"You don't want to think about it, but there's an ethical limit to what anyone should have to endure. You can't just negate that with sentimentality. With the idea of some indomitable spirit. That's a fairy tale." ― Adam Haslett, Imagine Me Gone

A decade ago, I would drive to work past the Peace Bridge every day, and I would think about EX getting stuck on the other side of it somehow, in another country, away from me. Every day, I thought that. Then he got a job offer in Canada and left me and my country. Like a miracle. But there are no such things as miracles.  There is intention.  In a million little ways that I myself do not know and couldn't recount, I created the conditions to get that wish to come true. I believe that.

This is wiser than the counseling Trainwreck and I got. I remember just once our counselor asking me why I found life with him valuable. What was the GOOD in it? Aside from my schpeel about commitment, why would I WANT to be in the life?  And at the time, I had a long list of what had been valuable to me, in our first life together. Stuff about how we nurtured each other, trusted each other in the everyday to get our backs, were friends, laughter, home. And that list outweighed the hurt.

Hurtling myself back in for our second life ('the next'), I amped up the sexual affection by a factor of 100. I thought that would fill it in, the air pockets between us, where his discontent holed up and festered. But it didn't work. It wasn't a sex problem in the first place, so sex couldn't fix it. And we didn't break up over sex, either, not really.  Sex I can handle, can understand, (a better word than 'forgive', for what right does anyone have to forgive someone else's sexual orientations?). The essential problem under that was that I had lost the list.  The reasons, the valuables, didn't move back in with him. And I was toughing that out for a very long time before the hotel receipt.

Since he has been gone, I put myself back together as if after a long slow beating. I remember he had a split lip that wouldn't heal and I worried about it, my stomach knotting, because as a lifelong smoker his oral cancer risk was high. And I thought, I will love you and care for you if you lose half your face, so not to worry. The dramatic irony of that detail isn't that the lip problem resulted from his using his mouth on the lips and bodies of other women, the irony is that I was already caring for a man with half a face, and it was draining the life out of me. I barely noticed anymore, I had grown so used to it. He required constant care and attention, would otherwise go crazy, eat nothing or worse than nothing, get into trouble like a kid who likes the taste of paint, break things, hide messes to be found later rotting food or shit it would be impossible to tell, need his miseries witnessed to nonstop minute by minute at work, or worse disappear into habits of 'happiness' that would spin him into manic episodes of sleepless shiftiness for exhausting days on end. Even with his mother surely up his ass, and a couple women whose attention he has (2, I'm pretty sure, a red head is in the background noise somewhere I sense), at least one of those a vegan farter and thus health conscious, even with all that surrounding and supporting him, I know his meals come from vending machines and he is smoking at least two packs of cigarettes a day and he mainlines as many emergencies as he can find to trick his body into vigor. I don't need my third eye to tell me that, I just know him.  Trying to keep him alive against his tendencies otherwise was like holding a door all the time against the pressure of a clambering hoard. The lying to me to convince me I was crazy and treating me like a disposable/replaceable maid were insults on top of all of that injury-drain already.

So it is little wonder that now the scaley patches on my skin are disappearing again. The bad dreams come less frequently (Stella licked my face last night), and I don't wake up yiping so much or go days with no sleep at all. The skin around my nails has stopped bleeding. The house stays clean, so much less work, my back not always sore from stooping. Since I started eating again, it is simple and the food of my own people - I take the boys to the good Italian place in town, now their favorite snack is bread with a dipping bowl of olive oil. So yeah, I look a little better day by day.  But.  I came out of the (clean) bathroom and there is an antique mirror there and I was stunned by a thought when I saw my own face in it looking back at me like someone else. Now granted that mirror is speckled and very grainy, so it doesn't reflect very truly  - it is put there to be a flattering play of light not an accurate portrait. Plus my camera is crappy so it is like being looked at my someone who is nearsighted. But still. I look like I am 'not dying', like I stopped getting chemo and my entire palette shifted from gray to pink. And it occurred to me: he was wishing me dead. Not like in anger, just ... GONE'd.  He didn't mind much of the life, it was me and my grounding him in it that he was sick of. If I had died, he could keep on rolling, live here as The Girl was instructed by the will, hire an actual maid. How many times did that cross his mind as he looked at me? How did I die, I wonder? I think maybe to him he wasn't really lying to me so much as he had killed me off inside himself so thoroughly that I wasn't even there anymore, to him. Not flesh and blood anymore.

My guts still hurt. That is the only real symptom left of of being worse for the wear of it all. I put my hand protectively there all the time. And now praying it wasn't cancer he killed me off with in his thoughts. Praying that the affair(s) were his way of leaving what was left of me alive.  A last ditch scrap of kindness towards me, in its way.

Tick, tock: The second hand becomes more significant as this Virgo moon aspects different planets throughout the day. Waiting for what you want can seem like agony. If it's really worthy of you it will still be worthy of you next week and next month. Time is a test. Time is also a wise counselor, healer and teacher. Time illuminates the best path.

long hot afternoons, one way to spend them

Reading. Working. Thinking. Un blogging schtick.

Though amusing, it is inauthentic - Shrill I am not. Nor a sanguine snarky either.

My real hutspa is a quiet, a 'to scry'. For what it is worth.

Apparently I am dangerous. That is a heartening thought. I like the idea of being a scourge! Who wouldn't? And a privileged scourge at that. I'm not only redefining the nuclear family as a single parent institution, changing the contours of home ownership in America, and freaking out religious conservatives in the process (while working for nuns, which if you knew any nuns would not strike you as ironic at all), I have the rare benefit of being able to afford all that AND new shoes (a lot).

I'm a little dubious, though, on it being likely that I ever meet a man who knows how to do laundry AND use a drill. Doubtful. Even ONE of those skills in a man is rare anymore. And I'm not sure about how sexually liberated/satisfied we all are, either. I've personally seen little evidence that women like me are changing men/relationships for the better in any of those ways much (yet?)

<: br="">

VIRGO. It's an ideal day to assess your current status in concrete measures. Whether it's counting your blessings, children, money or body stats, size up the facts and find out exactly where you're at.

I received by certified mail today a promotion to the highest rank of my profession. I celebrated by cleaning the [Dahmer-disgusting] fridge in peace (I like chores) then putting the letter on it. (And according to my physical last week, my BMI is now a dead center perfect 23.)

It will be ok, I will be ok, I AM ok...

la! la! LA!

maybe (maybe not)

"... I’ve fallen into the habit of talking to myself, instructing myself, encouraging myself, as one might a stumbling child: You can do it. You will be all right. You can do it. You will be all right." ~Joyce Carol Oates, "The Widow's Tale"

I looked it up. After 6 months of 'near suicidal grief', she meets a new man at a dinner party at her home and marries him 6 months after that. I thought, She threw a dinner party?

I have lunch with the interim president today. I don't want the job he wants to give me. I don't even want the lunch. I am not dreading it. I just don't anything about it. I don't care about being a woman invited to the Buffalo Club. Doesn't make me a member, does it? And I wouldn't want to be a member, either.

I am wary of committing to wanting anything.

I am wary.

 

I woke up at 3 a.m. as the Brexit news was breaking and the first thing I thought was 'o look honey, Britain left its wife. And seems surprised it has, like o shit now what.' I wondered if maybe I was one of the few not at all surprised, Cz if I had a dollar for every time I heard 'I wish you'd stop worrying that is never going to happen' in the last year, I could afford a midlife crisis car (truck).

(My advice: sit yourself down and brace yourself then give yourself the news. The thing you're not going to worry about that will/could never happen, Yes it will.)

By the time I got to work, my boss was joking that the girlfriend Scotland was like 'o no dawg, we liked you with your wife, we don't want to own your bullshit'.

And this morning, the EU is all about not getting depressed over it, like she is going to get a mani-pedi then take herself to DSW and buy herself some fuckme sandals and a pair of new boots. Fine (armscrossy), be free Britain, and do your own laundry without my migrant labor while you're at it.

I wonder if the EU and Britain start having an affair now that they've broken up...or Scotland starts emailing the EU, while Britain and France start hate flirting...or the EU throws on her boots and has lunch with Greece who in retrospect wasn't that bad of an ally (ish)...or mother Russia starts taking Britain over now that ain't nobody else obligated to be getting Brit's back..or the EU gets a grief puppy (I want a grief jeep, a 'grieep' as TJ calls it, in brightbright blue)....

Every news outlet on the planet is using this metaphorical f'd up marriage framework to talk about Brexit. That storyline is so familiar, apparently, it translates easily into every language on Earth.

!

VIRGO. This thing you've earned for your years and years of dutiful, cheerful, constant and loyal service will look suspiciously like good luck. Or is it the other way around? It's confusing, this business of "deserving."

He won on the argument re working on relationship, the value of. (Shrug.)

Update: The accreditation commission met yesterday, and I kickkkkked asssssss. Fanfare announcements are flying my way like gangbusters.  Outcomes assessment is so damn tedious and confusing and political that getting 50 faculty to do it unpaid besides like I did was like, well, was like MAGIC :p

Then, Ears and I took a walk and reflected. "It's like your left hand got mauled in a woodchipper accident but you keep trying to use anyway."

I feel too much nothing.  Like, I speed by a cop car on the 190 and it pulls out behind me and my heart has no reaction at all.  None.  That’s not normal.

I believe we are all putting stuff out there all the time.  I don’t like the word energy.  I dunno, more like blood.  If you were shot in the gut, you’d look at it, trying to assess what was coming out of you.  Right?  It’s like that.  When you’re wounded, you pay more attention. And you notice.

Like, I lie in bed waiting for sleep and wondering about meeting people more than halfway and how that does both of you a disservice in the end and my last thought is ‘I can’t imagine what a man could do to get me to so much as cross the street now zzzzzz’. I take a walk the next morning. In my town, the center street is dotted with signs, it’s a rule, light or no light. 

I stop at a corner, and a giant Denali pick-up stops for me, but the oncoming traffic the other way doesn’t stop, and so I shrug and signal for him to give up and drive on.  Instead he throws the truck into park, jumps out and walks in front of oncoming traffic, a car screeching to a halt inches from his legs, the car behind her screeching to a halt inches from her bumper, etc.  He bellows at the line of cars, CAN YOU NOT SEE THE WOMAN CROSSING THE STREET?!  And then he gestures for me to cross, like ushering me through a door.

My father has left WI and has not arrived yet here.  He hangs mid-way like a ballistic missile.  For all the bane of my existence that man has been, he is old now, and loves me almost as desperately now as he did so badly when we were young.  I have to create a soft landing.  He is dying 10 different ways at this point.

I go the liquor store, the big one, with double ups and the big scotch selection.  He says he wants scotch when he arrives, so.  I pull up and get a prickly feeling.  I look around and nobody is there, the lot empty.  I shrug it off, but.  I whip through the store, walking fastfast like I always do, go down the end by the scotch and bourbon.  And then I know.  He has been here, IS here even.  I whirl around and could swear I feel him as clearly as when someone walks up behind you.  But there is nobody there. (He must have been there recreating one of our date nights with the other one like he does for God knows what reason God damn it.) But it’s like a deep stab into my stuffing, which feels as if I am stuffed tight with shards of glass, I can almost hear the hurt.  If he had been standing there, even with HarryPotter-Lynn standing there too, I might have thrown my arms around him hard for a moment.  And that would just not be good. 

We are all so disfigured. In so any ways, pockmarked by desire experience. It isn't just me. That is what I want to feel: like it isn't just me.

as if on cue 

"The main reason that religious and magical rites can be considered the highest form of prayer is intent." ~Jung

The widow wakes just before dawn to find the ceremony candle burned out finally.  It took a long time but then again it was intended to be burned once a year for the rest of their lives, so it was a dense bugger.  This day also being solstice , when the sun stands still in the sky mid-way moving neither north nor south for a minute and glaring down its energy full blast - and the end of Gemini - and a full strawberry moon – well, that kind of convergence of energy was rare indeed.  So, it seemed about time she put a stopper on it, so to speak. 

At their parting, for the sake of the kids, she’d walked them through the bullshit that is the kind of things you say to set a good example.  “Sometimes people have to leave you, and you wish them well on their journey.” Blablabla.  Yes yes, he’d cried, agreeing – wish me (it’s all about me) well!  [eyeroll]  Since then, ever trying to be truthful, and knowing it would be good for her own sake, she had tried to mean it. To feel that way, to be putting that out there. It was not easy.  She knew, for instance, that the other woman sported a tattoo that read “Snitches Get Stitches” and that was illustrated with a Harry Potter quidditch ball, quite literally advertising her commitment to keeping secrets as a principle of life along with her 5^th grade reading level.  Rising above ironies that big was like trying not to notice a really fat ass in front of her in the cosmic checkout line.  She really had to work at it. 

So it was a pickle, as her mother would say.  How to dispose his half of the cord now in a way that would be apposite. 

And then it did come to her. 

May you get what you want. s.m.i.b.