Tonight is the longest darkest one. After this, a little more light shines each day, on whatever there is to see. (smib)

What do you predict you will?

high rec

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You find yourself in the midst of unwanted dynamics, doing your best to squeeze goodness out of it. That's no small feat. In the middle of obligations, to still search for joy and purpose? That takes resilience. Give yourself credit.

I need the rest as I quietly gear up to get in my jeep and hit the road. Because nothing/nobody is stopping me...

One of the funnest days at work I had last year was 100+ med students asked what "dead" is and watching them work on an answer they could all get behind, and never succeed. I would say a person could die in the time it would take them, but that depends on your definition of dead. Given that the heart-lung machine will keep a torso 'alive' indefinitely, and if you don't count toes/fingers (sometimes arms/legs) lost to dry gangrene (which you cannot use as defining because that would be ableist), it's tough to call it! Ask them how many have advanced directives for themselves (none), or for their elders (almost none), or if they know how much those are worth (not much, but that's not why they don't have them). Ask them how many are too terrified of death to ever talk about it except when required to do so (by someone like me), apx 20%. These are the reasons I want that job in Phoenix - med students are as dark and fucked up as nurses, know less and have way more freedom to "contemplate" = I I can very happily fuck with them allllll daaayyy. But. Without that NEH $ they stole, much harder for me to bust that move. If I fully trusted Nebraska about there being an actual job, which I do not. IFFY at best, all of that. If I had to predict (read the signs), Nebraska will have a new job in the fall using all that I gave them as his own and to him it'll feel like it is his, because I am (was). And that'll be the last of that ... but we shall see. 

reading in bed for hours ft Dball bitching his head off at delivery season

In my first grant, I set up a faculty workshop there, my students were supposed to have access going forward ... they stripped all that out when they stole my 2nd grant.  Ways I built OUT and ways IN to healthcare, the whole history of the it HERE in this city (where I don't know why I live anymore). I should have made friends with Dennis for MYSELF, but I didn't. In every case, I arranged for faculty to make friends, so their students could have nice things. I built bridges, but my only personal attachment was a cable of intention that could be and was CUT.

I do not own the means of production. I knew that, but like my mortality, I had to ignore it.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Emotional and physical bruises work in the same way — tender until healed. It's common not to know an injury exists until something brushes against it. Today helps you realize what parts of you shouldn't be pressed right now.

The department I dreamed up and built scored highest on every single student satisfaction measure. EVERY MEASURE. That was news in my inbox today too. They took it from me because it was worth something. 

Nebraska will arrive at some point overnight (he comes, he goes - has become the way of it 🤷🏻‍♀️). I don't know how long he is staying. More importantly, I don't know what he is. Perhaps, to me, he is the witness for all that went down, for all that came down on me, including himself. From across the divide where he lives in privilege and safety, he sees me living in a low rent simulacra. Two lives, not one that we share. That isn't sustainable. Seeing that way. Or living that way. 

My personal playlists are all 'how I want to feel' songs atm, for manifesting that. A lot of men crooning, what feels like like being touched by warm calloused hands. But this is Globug's current fave song, from the soundtrack for hitting the ceiling scheiBe - lady gaga

3x

a Globug creation, chocolate cheesecake with chocolate whipped cream and chocolate chips and a cowboy (cz a cowboy makes anything better)

December 20, 2024

You’ll get through this. Healing takes time. While the nurturing moon glides through your cathartic twelfth house, you could be recovering from a wound or loss. Today, la luna moves into a harmonious trine to the vibrant Sun in your fourth house of kith and kin, hinting that your nearest and dearest are here to support you. Pour your heart out to someone you trust. There’s no shame in this game, Virgo. You help people all the time. Now it’s your turn to lean on others.

🙄

6 hours

Cover me up - Jason Isbell the song that made the cut (nostalgia for the future version) smib 

...the Stuff that gets all tangled up in a life, snarled into an ache of the spine. A gordian knot. (Can you feel it?) Imagine cutting through it, and letting all that LOOSE. Energy streaming out to bloom freely.

The hand was last. By that time, we had been at it for 6 hours. That detail he added to make "a living magic wand of the whole thing".

No omelet is made without breaking eggs. No house is built without breaking ground. No love unfolds without breaking hearts. No new order can be established without breaking the current rules. Venus floats a question to Jupiter in this late hour of the Sagittarius sun: What prize is so special it's worth the drama of destruction?

 If you need more TLC than you’re getting, you might be barking up the wrong tree to begin with, Virgo. (Noo shiiit.)  During today’s disillusioning square between the generous Sun and foggy Neptune, people may not fulfill their obligations. Or perhaps your own desire led you to misinterpret the signals someone was sending. (I have received no "signals" to misinterpret that I'm aware of [?]) You don’t actually need them to take care of you. (I rarely need anyone. Which is good. But 😒)  Try looking at this as an invitation to broaden your social circle. Stay open to a range of fascinating folks, and you’ll draw in plenty of fresh faces. (RSVP to invitation: YES)

I have been doing a lot of waiting, as my new therapist pointed out, on men to do things so I know how to respond. That waiting list is long, covering work, home, relationship status. Maybe I should reverse that waiting dynamic? (Yes!) (How?)

How much more obvious can it be that a woman is trying to bust a move if she's lost 1/4 her body weight, is buying herself new clothes/underwear, getting a sleeve tattoo [today, pics and playlist forthcoming]..) But to whom/what am I making it obvious? 

Today's tarot card is the Tower. Hardest one. I expected as much. If a thing is built on an insufficient foundation, it will crumble, usually in a drastic all-at-once collapse. (There are other more dramatic examples than that one, but let's go with the one in NOLA where Cockcandle came from, eh? The building crumble happened exactly in the same timeframe as the candle burned itself down and out.)

The Tower card 

I am not sure what will crumble in my world. Maybe multiple things. And it's bound to be painful. But it also does precisely what the vortex healers intend, a complete clearing out from sphincter to crown. Light pouring out the top of my head to clarify it - in my churn, I will spin that light in a wide bright circle. Try to.

I need guidance forward in the dark. The dead live there, in the dark spaces between what humans make/alight while they live. So, I asked for hands to hold, to pull me across that darkness to a new island of living-light. I beseached help from who did that for me while they lived. If I held my hand out they would take it, instinctively, without hesitation, as if pulling me out of a fire while waving the smoke from my face. I trust they would do so. 

from “Flesh and Blood” Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich:

“I just put the wax down,” I said. “You have to wait.” He stood there looking at me over that long, shiny space. It rolled and gleamed like a fine lake between us. And it deepened. I saw that he was about to take the first step, and I let him, but halfway into the room his eyes went dark. He was afraid of how deep this was going to become. So I did for him what I learned from the nun. I put my hand through what scared him. I held it out there for him. And when he took it with all the strength of his arms, I pulled him in.

Just like that. But I am the one who is in need of it this time.

I used to love my mate, I cherished my work/community, and the way I lived felt aligned with what my heart had to give and my talents could serve. (simple syrup recipe: man close, bills paid, house clean). I know what that feels like. And this isn't it. 

The songs I chose were a prayer to be returned to that balance but in a new configuration that I cannot see (yet), and to be worthy of it (whatever/whoever it is). Only 3 songs, so each word had to count. And had to be in concert with the intention, which I spoke across the surface of 29th pond water.

These songs didn't make the cut, but are all useful if what you need is to feel better about pretty much everything. Love medicine spell long (play)list:

 QueenB - texas hold em - for plain spokenness ("don't be a bitch, boy")

I ain't saying - jordan davis for wrong pairings

be yourself - wilder woods (stripped version) better than bullshit (trust me)

living in lightening - city and colour you can't keep that up

I got the lonely - mel parsons get up (a.m. help)

the great unknown - mighty oaks change means changing, for help accepting that

made up mind - bonnie raitt for when you need a retro vibe and a virgo mind 

come as you are - zach bryan  pining for a/your herd (not a Nirvana cover)

wayside / back in time - gillian welch present use for the haunting past: remember the good parts (let the rest go)

the wood song - indigo girls for when you need masculine (re)solution(s) but your dog (companion mojo) is a lesbian 

we are very tired today

headstart - jade bird for frustration with the obtuse

you should probably [not] leave - Chris a sex song from one of the patron saints of demisexuals ("I know you, and you know me") - live version, because visualizing is part of conjuring and he embodies - warm, grounded, tangible -  surrounded by a constant whirlwind, he just IS, steady, and his IS-ness is a loop made whole by his mate 💞

Now comes the hard part... But that's ahead. For now, I rest.

Update: cleaning it all away now, I thank my cockcandle for his hard work 🙏

the Cold (super)moon in Gemini

29th pond (husband) water 

 

Sunshine and I baked goddess bread all day, having a blast talking shit

only love in my heart - gentle sparrow clean slate - donovan woods  the good I'll do - zach bryan by the power of three, for the good of all and harmful to none, so mote it be

faithful

I was flanked by two men in one of the stores in New Orleans you have to know about to find them. 

I can put myself right back there, smell the shop, feel the fuckboy man to the left of me, feel the man to the right of me who is closer, almost touching. I put my hand out and grabbed the shaft of the candle, "this one". The man to my left chuckled. The man to my right nodded. A momentary triad.

I've been reading every 'get ahold of yourself' book I can find. I am at the center of perfect storm energywise, a 3fer - home insecure, relationship hanging by a thread (or noose), career/livelihood battered. 

Magick is a material practice. It is not "magic" at all. It is POWER to CHANGE things and the WILL to do so. The "magic" is having faith that things can be different than they currently are. 

I have faith in the power of my body. I asked it to lose 10 pounds, it lost 30 (3x). My gradschool-weight wardrobe right now consists of the jeans left behind, a leather trechcoat, a tattered-from-stroking fur coat, boots that are as old as I am, and an old "hex therapist" t-shirt. It's as if my body forced me to unpack DECADES. And each decade had a partner + me alone, in apx equal measure, offsetting the damage respectively.

So for no SPECIFIC reason did I reach out and grab that cock candle, but I knew I might need it someday. And now is that time. A spell for Change and Healing, difficult things to pair. I need a wand of girth (the verb, to encircle 💞). Since the new moon, I've been charging it. I'm overly self-reliant, a challenge when what you are seeking are better partnerships / otherships. So I sought some help charging the wand. It made Nebraska upset and angry in ways he still is coping with, but he gave the help of his own volition and was recompensed. 

I owe no thing to any one. 

(Except maybe some apologies, which I have left on the table, take if you need one.)

Not quite time yet, but the full moon is Saturday. I am calling the quarters, gathering the rest of the materials, calling for more help from female friends (freely given) for balance, bringing all the energy I can summon, (thank you lake for your effect 🙏). And I will implore spiritual help this time, a spirit I will have to trust, a thing I both lack and need.

Not coincidentally, my Eric Avery finally came home. Now that it is hung where intended, I see that it mirrors the unhomed artist's painting, a total of 3 figures, all crucified ft radiant. 

The Hardest Walk / Kaposi Sarcoma (ft my familiar)

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Do what you want, not what they want. Even if it's the same thing, intention matters. It will go right if you're doing it for yourself, and things will progress differently if you're doing it because another person prefers it.

... yup, everybody wants me healthy (ABLE bodied). The last injury from that terrible fall (that maybe we should have cared about?) gets fixed Friday, a hairline crack in a tooth that my increasingly shitty insurance won't pay for, that bothers nobody but me so of course that doesn't count, I had to come up with the $$$, and I did. A temporary crown is in there now, about which my dentist said "no biting into apples, nothing sticky, nothing too hard". Don't put anything hard in my mouth for a week, got it. At which he and the assistant giggled. "You are our funniest patient!"

If I'm really skinny and really funny, you should really worry about yourself at that point. 

healthy gut, certified cancer/ailment free top to bottom, tits included

These are whitelady witchbody problems, which I have the power to change. Most women don't have that much power. I am grateful for it. smib

[image removed]

I help folks like this, teach them the sentences they need, tell the STEMs to watch out for them, get them back into community as much needed providers, which this one wants to be because an ER sent her home to watch her baby die of "a bad cold" - he smiled at her, his last gesture on this earth. EMTs answered that call, they wind up my students too. Why the hell should I care what anyone else wants me to do?

I was going to go to the weekend open houses, near a park and (even better) out on the fringe, but I must be patient. Cleaning down to it one mess at a time is how you always find what you're looking for. 

loneliness - bears den

"You are your best thing." Toni Morrison

Good morning?   I mean, it is Saturday 🤣🤣🤣

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). When things work out the way you want, it feels like destiny is sending you to the heart of your dreams. When they don't, it might feel bad at first, but it's still destiny, sending you to the heart of your dreams, but on a different route.

(irritating)

Update: I learned a new word, what my own sexual orientation is called. So I take it back, I'm still on the "pro understanding" train. Albeit impatiently.

Theory 1: I am extremely demisexual, i.e. it's a kink. 

And I'm straight. Which is a challenge. Needing meaningful emotional connection before fucking magic can occur + reliant on MEN = no wonder I finally lost my god damn mind.

I don't know what it's like being with a kinky demisexual, which I do want to fathom if possible, what the other side of that is (🐾🙄). All I know is what it's like to live with it - unsatisfying annoying surface level bullshit exchanges stultifying for the seemingly endless stupidity of what is on people's minds (the soup, AGAIN, really?) + totally lousy half-assed often drunk-enough to tolerate it sex that results. 

No.

Since I have to blow everything up anyway, I'm trying to figure out how to create the conditions for my sexual orientation to thrive in the rebuild. You have to "embrace" your orientation if it's some kinda weird. So, I'm embracing it. I'm hardcore demisexual.

I want to know what you're really thinking, what you're really really thinking, really really really really. Dark humor is useful for this, what a person laughs at tells you so much. And there's so much playing with my food in being this way that there's time to decide NO, for whatever reason, which I usually do = a lot of guy friends whom I've (mostly) never touched. My vagina just votes NO and that's that. And she's not wrong. You gotta dig for the gold, and usually you're just not going to strike it. 

Theory 2: Unknown Font is also a demisexual of some kind, and I was the food he played with, and he learned that shit from me. (?)

Maybe if I was the romance demi orientation, then I'd just have shitty sex and talk about soup. But no, the sex IS the romance. Bringing me flowers is not going to make me WET. I mean, I like flowers a lot, but not like that. 

NO. 🤯

It's too late for Nebraska to back up half a decade and us to cultivate a friendship that eventuated (miraculously) in my wanting to eat his soul through his cock. And that has been a problem all along, that no such process ever occured. And the more upset I got, the more flowers I got. 

A disaster.

But, although I think it might be breaking him, for the moment he's insistent we "keep trying". I am at full 🤯! Soooo much yoga lol (thank you my angry kinky little body), a 30 pound 6 month tantrum is epic. A slow burn. Like the frog in the cooking pot. I'm hot af.

Now it's the holidays. Time to put all such pesky things aside and put up lights. Which I do. While Nebraska watches fretfully and my kids are just like 'yeah, she does this 🤷🏻‍♀️', goes kaboom while also moms. He knows better than to mention soup, he's nervous saying any thing at all, which is good. Directly answer direct questions only and practice your edging skills like my root chakra's wellbeing is your sole purpose for living (which it is atm). While I think.

------

When I try to understand how and why we tried again, I know I instigated that, I didn't "take you back", I took your ass back. I talked to everyone around you, conjured a net of words, and scooped you back up. Like rescuing someone out of devils hole in my mind's eye. And then as soon as I had you in my hands, my demisexuality quickly metamorphed into a unique private language we could use. So we could talk for hours again. Even though in the end that failed, in retrospect it seems like a pretty loving way to work through grief without any help. Most couples just cave over kid related pain(s), they don't develop an enviable private language. (I'm being *demisexual positive*.)

------

So. What are the universal principles? One thing is that I absorbed Font's particular fetishes/proclivities as my own. So I presume that is something I do. What was in his mind infused my body, and I internalized it. Since then it's been in keepsakes storage. Mothballed. 

I need to figure out where and how to live more urgently. But I can't do anything much on those material fronts, and Nebraska is between my legs, and every self-help remedy book I get stresses the importance of sexhealing to a witchbody. Sedona healer said same, stuck at the root. I need like 10 life-saving orgasms STAT. Or 100 solid ones, easier to tolerate longer course of treatment. But SOMETHING.

So.

What would my orientation look like with a different person? One answer: I would absorb his fetish/proclivity as my own. So let's try that. Tell me, blow by blow by blow what a "spanker of women" meant/means. Interesting answers that I will never internalize as my own. But!, I could take them. Not absorb, but take. 

What if he could only have what he craves if another man watched? Another man got it as well? Another man was the only one who got any, and all he got was to watch? Do you like it when I fantasize about someone else like this? (This is kind of fun 🤔...)

That's when he started to break. It appears that might kill him. And/but now he sure ain't gonna get over me either. (Sigh. Welp. #slapstick)

Speculation: This relationship is going to give Nebraska mounting panic attacks the more authentic I try to be/live/work/love until he taps out. I look 20 years younger, he looks 10 older. 

Theory 3: Being with me = Tap out or stroke out. While I'm looking for bliss out :/

Basic guiding formula (1): what it is comes from him (whoever he is) and what I want is to own whatever that is.

Play me a song?

 

VIRGO

(August 23-September 22)

I hope you will hunker down in your bunker. I hope you will junk all defunct versions of your spunky funkiness and seek out fresh forms of spunky funkiness. In other words, Virgo, I believe it’s crucial for you to get as relaxed and grounded as possible. You have a mandate to explore ultimate versions of stability and solidity. Shore up your foundations, please. Grow deeper roots. Dig down as deep as you can to strengthen and tone your relationship with the core of your being.

This blog is like sky writing. 

big swimmer - sharon von etton king hannah

update: pantyhose still suck

Current theory: there is nothing to understand. A fleshlight is self explanatory. And nobody cares what it's thinking.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You're standing at the edge of something unfamiliar. Lean in with curiosity; this path has much to teach you. And though this goes ever-forward, it still somehow connects to part of your past and the chance to release old grievances.

I'm trying! 🙏 Please be relieved of any old grievance with my name on it. Please.

brief holiday lull

tessellate - mumford n sons (alt-J cover)

tessellate - alt-J (session version)

tessellate - alt-j broadbandits remix (it takes as long as it takes)

face down in the moment - nathaniel and the sweats  from the "Posting From The Bathroom" playlist

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Someone is out there right now wondering what you're up to, hoping they get to meet you. Picture them having their own little moments of daydreaming about someone like you.

🙏

left and right - a bunch of boys

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). The concepts you find simple are challenging to others...

We'll just leave it there 🤨 And God knows the reverse is also true. 

 

What could be even more fun than Thanksgiving while navigating multiple families and a relationship on the rocks (wawawa guiltguilt) and spastic kids and a dog already barfing at dawn (playdoh)? Clearly I am not on the brink of getting married - upside to everything: no mothers in law. But my dad is God knows where atm, having made himself homeless with no plan, and might show up here! Nobody knows, but Tbone trumps mothers of any maddening variety, so dodging a bullet today is approximately as likely as peace on earth. 

I just ordered frozen waffles from walgreens, abandoning cinnamon roll intentions. The apple pie intentions are already dying in my heart. If I still drank, I'd mos def be day drinking today. Kalua in my coffee already.

My sister takes her whole family to Mexico for this holiday. I can't afford that shit. But I might could afford to GO ALONE 🤔 Let's put a pin in that thought 🤔

my card of the day - it's almost funny - by the end of the day, it's bound to be darkly funny right?

#songless :(

new religion - tiny horse obsessed with this song

Mercury just turned retrograde, fyi

love is such a hard thing - noah derkson from the "hopelessness can be sexy" playlist (maybe it's the mustache)

maybe we should try it - do anything #wthmagic 

The problem of resources: the ones you need the least are the easiest to get.

I can only act upon / control myself. But that looks made of at least two, maybe three components. To give it (give), to receive it (take), to rejoice in it (make). 

energy raising (trying)

Trader Joe's has bitches on the merch-branding staff, for sure

freedom - george michael (MM studio) first track on the home alone dance mix - they're each alone (and one sounds like the Despicable Me guy), but it doesn't feel that way

a pentagram above me ft beaver moon - Sedona, AZ

I gotta be the only crazy bitch could use a cigarette in fucking Sedona - but it looks like somebody is listening, I pray 🙏🌪

bad for me - teddy swims ft meghan trainor (acoustic) from the 'my nerves are shot' playlist 

Another thing I've kept all these years. My black leather trench coat. Even though I couldn't move my arms in it after those god forsaken fertility treatments. I put it on this morning and it not just fit, it has all its magic, like a hug made of pure badass. The closest I can get to a hug from my grandma from beyond the grave. She always had complete faith in my power 🙏

move like jagger - maroon 5 watch and learn, I won't show you twice 

Her choice for the last song she listened to on her deathbed. That's who I come from.

 

Ears: is that..??

Me: yeup

Ears: 😳

Me: it is somethin' to see him again

Ears: he looks ... 🤔

Me: like something cuddly wearing a nazi disguise?

Ears: is he okay?

Me: good question - my guess is he would angrily respond to the suggestion that he might not be, but 🤷🏻‍♀️ 

Ears: you have a lot of practice being scary af when you're not okay

Me: I'm doing it right now

Ears: so we might be projecting 

Me: we might be

Us: (looking at the photo again)

Ears: I can't square the cute socks with the nazi vibe

Me: hahaha ya and if that's supposed to be a Hitler mustache, um 

Ears: that's 1970s porn stache 

Me: I love it 🤭 - except "maybe I'll put you in a mass grave face ft I give great face rides ft toasty toes", I can't quite land the plane 

Ears: what happened to him?

Me: life 

Ears: when did he send that?

Me: around 1-2 a.m. from a hotel somewhere full of hockey women in a lobby 🤷🏻‍♀️

Ears: what does he want? I don't mean that in bad way, just (?)

Me: again I'm just guessing, but maybe a really really good laugh (?)

Ears: you are really funny ❤️

Me: ❤️

Welp (so many of my thoughts start with "welp" lately - siiiiiiiigh), can't keep mulling the nazi duckling for a spell, I am about to have to save my own ass some more.

Nebraska lands within hours to fetch me for Phoenix, and to prime that pump I laid out a few hours worth of painfully honest shit that turned him into a sobbing mess, a rocky 'can we cut the crap?' start/end.

Some things are deal breakers with me. Not being able to stop pretending everything is fine/whatever is near the top of the list. I get it, everyone wants to live happily ever after, but acting like you are doing so when I am VERY CLEARLY NOT LIVING HAPPILY EVER AFTER RIGHT NOW is intolerable.

Gaslighting me. Deal breaker.

For happily ever after to be real, you have to be real. DUH. If you were trained to be inauthentic, I dunno what to tell ya, figure out how to fix your shit like a grown ass man. 

I will not perform (fake) anything for anyone for any reason any more. No phase! And while he has a keeptryingdobetter somethingsomething meltdown, I gotta work.

I have so much expertise running rooms of 100+ people while looking scary while I am not okay while at least one man is driving me fucking crazy, I should start a consulting business: how not to be full of shit in front of people who are judging you while in a man's world while your own world comes apart. I can do that backwards and in high heels (boots). 

How come it seems so challenging for others to keep it real just sitting in their own living rooms? 

People confuse me. 

Siiiiigh.

I intend to come back with a visiting professorship appointment. I intend to get financially independent, regardless. I intend to sell this house in the spring (assessed today) and buy myself a smaller one on a park. I intend to hold steady. I am going to kick this fucking life-mess of mine in the twat like a grown ass woman.

protection - colin james (ft lucinda) for me, LOUD in my truck ❤️

Feelings are just one of the many ways the mind processes information. This day before the Venus change recalls how each person inhabits a unique experience of the world. We all feel things differently. There is no feeling more correct than another. Likewise, it is impossible for a feeling to be wrong. Your feelings, whatever they may be, are acceptable — so accept them.

🤔 I'm gonna hold off on deciding the song for that ...

heaven made the darkness - ruston kelly

I'd had a very long and, for me, good day. I cleaned, I walked several miles, I met with my grad student and landed that like I'm made for it, I listened to a friend closely and gave her what I think might help her. I shit you not, a little girl rode by us on her bike bare legged, no shoes, "All summer she rides her bike naked" says my friend. All of that was using my powers for good, good for myself and good for anyone else I touched.

I'm thinking at him the whole time. I am writing, in other words. To him or about him. All the things I did were a way of writing. House clean bills paid everyone getting what they need and nothing they don't from me - I don't know why this feels important - but I can just sense that it is. Or that it is a reply of some kind from him. Salt of earth.

Then there he is. A few words like bubbles to the surface. He comes up for air, then goes under again. This is his current pattern. Like a mammal in choppy sea.

I can't help myself, I honestly can't because I don't know how I'm doing it, but it feels to me like I can actually feel him. Those little strings, landing all over him, like a physical exam by tendril. And he doesn't feel entirely well to me. I know what he says about eating my pussy or whatever, but it feels like the last thing in the world he needs more of is a woman. (Not this woman, anyway.)

I'm not wonderfully well, let's face it. I'm seething. And starving. So I'm trying to be very careful. Deliberate.

He was married the last time I made him miserable. He said she made him unhappy. But. I was also starving. I didn't give the slightest shit about that little wife once I got a taste of him, in fact I was offended she existed.  The relationship I had with that man's body was religious. In my mind, it was just obviously right. He had come out of nowhere, dropped out of the fucking sky knowing me already as if paying attention, and wanted me as-is, as known. And I knew him too, had been reading his inner monologues for years, a fixture in my peripheral vision that I had gotten used to. It was, I believed, actual magic. I absolutely believed that I was going to fuck him as a constant fact of how the Universe intended things to be. It might even solve climate change!, righting the world itself. We had figured it out, how to be Wrong together made a Right. I mean, I had us bound for life with witchcraft for christ sake. I can see the humor kinda now (slap stick always slays me lol 🤦🏻‍♀️). 

But it is also true that I'm not less dangerous than I was then. I've grown more confident. More powerful. I've been in this body longer. If I felt that about anyone again, I would be even bolder. And I am not in a good place. Fed up as I am utterly 🔥

But 🔥 is not a risk between us, I do not believe. It feels more like he needs a bowl of soup. No (closing my eyes)...needs something sweet. He is 🤔 bitter? (Close my eyes, focus on taste). 

Bile. 

Why? He is leaving her, but bitter bile comes from being left. Abandonment fills you up brackish. You drown in it. It's a very painful way for a selfhood to die.

I just sit a while, smoke a joint, sink into my own body. Go over myself with the tendrils, use myself as a mirror, how it is reacting tells me something about what it is reacting to. 

I don't think I believe him; I don't think he wants to get near me actually. Of course, I can't know, I am having a telepathic exchange with a sea mammal caught in a south Buffalo haboob of some kind. But. If he's getting divorced because he had an affair, he isn't telling me that part / it didn't go well / there is a missing cause for this bile. He's in there, I do feel him in there, but it's underneath something else, a shell of 🤔. I dunno. Entrapment is the word that comes to mind.

Ok, welp, with the information I have, I am tentatively concluding: Something is making him feel mean, has maybe made him mean; he doesn't want to be mean to me. Maybe he thought he did, but when it came down to it, no. Using me is not going to make him feel better.

I'm not people. I've never been people. For all my many faults and shortcomings, I am not that.

 

VIRGO

I wish it were true that the forces of darkness are lined up in opposition to the forces of light. Life would be so much easier for you. But I'm afraid it's not that simple and clear. In my view, a more accurate metaphor might be that the energies of smokey grey are squaring off with the energies of dusky beige. Each side has a touch of both wrongness and rightness, a bit of ugliness and beauty. So what is the most honorable role you can play in this showdown? My suggestion is to develop a third side, an alternate way.

Theory: Not being "in love" back makes people shitty. They can sense you want to mean it. That breaks them into multiple shitty personalities disorder. Just making you say on command over and over I love you too like a "speak!" trick, it's fucked up.

Case study: (gray) beard v beige (heart)

At Como Park, chasing kids, the place filled with men, dispatched there with children to get out from under women's feet. As the only woman there, pretty soon I'm watching all the kids - the little boys are insanely going up all slides and making girls complain about mud on their skirts, toddlers of every kind are accidentally almost killing themselves variously, girls have quickly clumped and exchanged names and are whispering plots, my little psycho is patting and talking to a tree by herself dangerously near a treeline into which I know she will disappear if given a moment's chance (as I would). 

The men are all looking at their smart watches. I am texting my daughter but have my hands full, so I switch to voice and loud enough for all these men to hear me, I say (truthfully) "I am so sick of every damn thing, I'd go with with the first lumberjack who carried me off." I feel them all hear me, smartwatch guys freeze like prey. I read my daughter's response, a woodsy quiet type would be right up your alley, but are there any of those? I say out loud, laughing with purposeful volume, "good point, where have all the cowboys gone?!" 

Men are everywhere, they'll send you dick pics just like "p.s." I assume if I had a penis, I'd maybe want to show it to everyone (?) (I'm not the judgey type). It is irritating, though, how everywhere men are, but try getting into one. I've long suspected authenticity is trained out of them. Trained to think/be one thing and do/say something else. To go down the slide properly and shut up about it. 

I want to march up a slide, stepping over the offending boys and complaining girls, then turn around and slide down, getting all my own mud on my own ass. THAT'S HOW YOU DO IT YA LITTLE SHITS. (My urge is always to teach). 

In the distance is a dog park, my people! (The dogs, I mean.) "I'm going on that naked bike ride later, so I'm taking it easy right now", I say loudly at my phone. There is no naked bike ride, I'm just idly daring anyone to have the balls to ask where to find it. A little boy stops in his tracks, "Do you ride your bike NAKED?" It might be a little cold for that today actually, what do you think? "I would!" 

His father calls him back, says "sorry" in my direction. I look the man over from under my hair, I can see the outline of his dick through his tracks pants and I like the peppery stubble. He stands up straighter. I close my eyes a moment and pull it up my spine, this power that you left me with. I open my eyes and throw it at the man, like silly string made of plastic intention. He starts to walk towards me. I don't smile, I don't look directly at him, I just roll up the strings, my spine like an anchor spool on a boat winding in. "Cmon, lunch!" A woman's voice. He stops. Now I lock eyes with him. His son runs past towards his mother, "I like you!" he calls to me as goodbye. I cut the silly strings (NO ✂️) and go back to watching kids play. His father follows the boy to his wife, I presume.

See how easy this is? But it doesn't work. Even if the man responds, even if he is a fan of cunnilingus and his dick works 👍, even if everything works it still doesn't work. My magic works on them, but theirs does not work on me. If I really really try, if I let the man get close enough, then technically executed orgasms may be had, good for my pelvic floor. I even let a man get an engagement ring onto my hand in exchange. But I just make that man (all men somehow?) miserable.

This process makes me feel guilty, inevitably. I'll create a need inside someone that cannot be met, and I will let him and everyone down (again). If I can't (don't want to = cannot) explore each molecule with my tongue until all his life force has gathered and is responding to my witchy sexthew, it's just a body. And my body knows that, responds like my stomach does to wax fruit.

Nebraska will be here again soon; I will always be like this. It feels increasingly untenable to me as an oft-repeated combination of facts. I can build up some love type care, I can act loving, I can do loving things, my behavior toward him can be respectable. I can be faithful (in deed), dutiful, supportive. I could even marry him and make him very happy for a minute, until it inevitably turned him into some kind of asshole and I would want offleash from that.

So. I am guilty of all this. But I am also fed up with feeling guilty. I mean, ya think I like this? No. Barking "I love you toos" on command (I will not anymore, No). Not to mention all the yessing I've had to cough up at work (also not doing that anymore, No 🖕). Surrounded by constraining behavior demands in every direction like I'm a failing-to-be-domesticated-enough animal. Brimming with love that I cannot feel except for my kids. And the kids cannot take from me the other brimming(s) I am/have, obviously. Nobody can. 

So, what is the "honorable third alternative"? Even if I knew, which I do not, the words would probably get stuck in my throat like chicken bones. 

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