Tawista 2025 v 4

Friday 

Early morning, the heat broke and left the water warmer than the air, and now I can float better. Was I holding my breath when I got here? (Yup.).

Went to town again to buy more milk now that Ears has surfaced. They're fixing main street, I park and walk in, the man in the hardhat bowed to me, deeper than a nod and not a dog whistle, I don't know why. It was notable because his belly, like men of that age often, was a large hard watermelon - what IS that, and why do so many men have it? I don't find it unattractive, it just reminds me of my grandpa, which reminds me of my mother. Lately everything reminds me of my mother.

(Aside. Town = signal. Iffy but 1 bar. Enough to find that blogger itself broke my promise and took the harmless tits of my last post down. That's a new wrinkle. Hey Elonia, we know you're gay, honestly you're the only one who thinks THAT's the problem.)

I have been trying to learn how to be more like my mother, who had none of my delusions about herself (invincible, for instance) and had instead a will to see the Good and Wonder-Inducing Beauty in things. But how do you learn that? It can't be by DOING. She rarely does anything, old now, can't move easily, will soon need a wheelchair, and I will build a ramp, I hope in time for her to need it and before it is just another thing that will remind me of her, about which I will have to chuckle anyway because even in her prime she'd be like, why take the stairs if there's a ramp? 🤣 I think of her as Light, and I want to be Lighter. But. Maybe I have it reversed, as I have most things. Maybe what she is essentially Not Afraid of The Dark. 

Trying to follow my mother through the Dark, then, into the Better. But I am not gonna (re)write the rest/worst of what she said. And I can't repost the thought experiments re what might be needed or wanted depending on mood and circumstance, any of which might trigger blogger to cancel me. I could post all the hate I wanted, because Hate is not the scariest word.

Everything I wrote and lost, the good and the hard and the filthy- sweet, it is better twas unsaved than censored. Guess that content is analog f2f again now, #oldschool

Experiment - hey Ma, play us a song? (Will Sirius or FM work here? For her, apparently yes.)

forever feels - calvin love

Tawista 2025 v 3

Thursday a.m. What I wrote in the last two days (v 2) disappeared, far as I can see. The clouds here are just actual clouds.

On Tuesday, I ran into town, which published what I had written until then. Then I realized I couldn't take anything back or even reread it. There is no take backsies here. It kind of unnerved me. But maybe we would be better off if instead of trying to not-say or un-say, we just SAID STUFF without curating.

Later that day, a photo came in. There is no way to tell when it was sent. It felt like a response, I read it that way, and I responded like my writing itself had gotten a Yes. So I wrote us a series of pillowtalk conversations, his parts sketched in as best guesses. About life, work, kids, sex, pain, pleasure, time, words, beavers (not a metaphor) and birds, about broken bodies and climate change both here, hair (ingrown and thrown in handfuls respectively). We talked about Anything. As if we had that time to lie on a creaking bed with eternally green sheets. I think the best parts of that writing was the series of "Mood Swings", how we might  through a series of moods we often each feel. I believed he could hear me in his mind and feel touching tendrils. 

Then all of that writing was just gone this morning. Maybe he took back the photo - people do that, unsend like I unblog, tho I don't know how - and all my 'reply' went with it. 

Late tonight / tomorrow Ears should arrive, though with him (also) you never know if you will see him until you do. In case, I will go to town to get bread for dip, and I will wear some clothes. I stayed utterly naked here til now, inside and out of the cabin, trying to just be a Living Thing along with Everything Else here. I didn't look in any mirror, didn't even occur to me, and until last night didn't even take a (half-assed) selfie. Maybe this will publish. If so, I won't take it back even if I want to. 

>imagine removed by blogger<
 

The week @ Tawista 2025 - tagging it bc I will unblog everything I write / file it away.

Sunday. I don't feel afraid. Beyond that, I don't think I have words. It is gobsmacking beautiful here and dead silent beyond reckoning. It hurts (knife emoji) that my mother can't ever see this place again. I could not safely get her onto the porch. That isn't a hurt from the past, it's a hurt in the present and, worsely, in the future 💔. I am glad I did all that I still could while she could still see me do it. More than anything, for her to see me well is the reason I am trying so hard right now to be. "If I have to die worried sick, I just don't know Lord..." I heard this countless times. And FAIR, I have been an absolute fucking mess in every life category except maybe parenting. Out of pure endless boundless love for my children, I mostly did ok parenting if judged by how LOVED they know themselves to be. Very. They, in turn, will do everything they can to be okay, for my sake alone if life reduces them to that. But I pale in comparison to my mother. She has pure boundless love for all things Good and Beautiful, and I top that list for her, always, even when I am a clearly broken person. Maybe even especially then. I am Good and Beautiful, more now than ever for the struggle visible on me. SMIB! 

Talk about a powerful witch. 

In the wee hours. I take a photo of the Sturgeon (surviver) moon. I am not afraid of snakes or bears or coyotes. It is so quiet that I think I am as utterly alone as a person can be, with not so much as a frog croaking.  

I wonder if he feels me as a void. 

Tuesday wee hours (I am bouncing around in time. It's all about you so far so try to follow 🤷🏻‍♀️). Misses me, I meant, by "feeling the void". We have unexpectedly (to me) broken through the veil of this blog so that we are talking. He started using the comment box, so to speak, and then it was like a switch was thrown, and I was free to feel whatever and words started flying out my nipples.

I have no way to leave anything for him/you (good thing I am adept with mutable pronouns), blogwise, while I am at Tawista, which makes me feel surprisingly unsettled. Old feelings of being helpless to make him happy, turning over in their grave. This is different, though. I'm not what is making him miserable. Not directly. But I think I am making him uncomfortable, that I am doing so right now by being here. I am showing him that he cannot do that. He thought he could, but he cannot. I am not trying to upset him. But I am shoving him toward happier, pulling him towards me to fuck every miserable bastard in his head, tempting him, delving into his Dying, bothering if not stopping it. Trying to throw increasingly accurate monkey wrenches into this whole Dying by Butter thing he's got going on. 

I dunno all the reasons that I am Dying. But one reason could very well be that I am starving drooling maniac. 

"I know both the problem and the solution, and I know how much brave solutions like these require." 

"When I asked him to do this with me he said yes, seemingly without taking the time to feel the weight of 'yes' on the decaying cartilage that barely holds life together." 

But he had felt the weight of it. Mulled it, stuck to Yes, added Please. And I am figuring out where the 'yes' can get in edgewise, in real life/time (Virgo). I will free him if I can figure out how to get a bobbypin into his cuffs.  "After all, everything we are afraid of has already happened."

All quotes from same source below, which was yesterday / earlier, when I "sang" to you. 

"I find riding the edge of taking it too far pregnant grace. People who are just learning how to walk are not afraid of taking things too far."

--- 

Monday. Wake up 9 a.m. to phone ringing, water raining in the dining room at home, where my kids are "house sitting" while I get the septic that they fucked up pumped out / repaired at cottage. I love my kids obviously, they are my community. But they are my kids, even as adults, and kids crash into shit. Kid math, eldest kid = 5 kids for that ONE. I wouldn't trade them "for all the riches of Denmark," another funny phrase I have adopted, funny cz for kids you'd need all the riches of someplace richer than that.

The sale of my primary home makes it possible to pay myself back $ loss upon loss, and come out even ISH. You know the drill: work ceaselessly, allow people to abuse you for the right to work yourself to death, and stay barely above the water line. Treading water, one of my strongest skillsets. Want less, another strong suit. That is just money and there is never enough of it. This is America, also not a rich enough place.

What is much harder to quantify is human cost, such as what fucking Nebraska as part of the abuse I took just to work myself to death, what a year of that did to me. "I approach my vagina as a decolonizing project." What it is gonna take from me and break inside me to move AGAIN all by myself, reliving every other time in the process. I can't catch a break long enough to assess what all is broken in me, but it's a lot. I can afford to want less, but wanting nothing is a death sentence I feel breathing down the back of my neck. Death. You always personified it like a conscious enemy, and now I feel it like that. I do not smell like it (yet), I smell like decolonizing pussy, but I am not underestimating Death's cunning or its lurking presence anymore. 

I had thought maybe if you showed up, we might climb Goodenough again, find the geocached little book, and add the names of 5 children born between us since then. It's a hell of an achievement, those 5 adorable faces. And these years also cost(s) us dearly. Breaking us down like cardboard boxes. We are not made of cardboard. I dunno what you're made of; I am flesh, nettle, and bone.

It's a big R rescue needed. And that feels like resetting a bone, maybe a multicompound fracture.

I am scary, maybe, because I will break a life (rebreak it to reset it). I am good at that terrible thing. "I don't know how to leave." Yes you do, you loved me and the kids and left. Twice. But you did suck at it, hated it so much you'd get a return address tattoo, and technically I kicked you out last time, which broke my heart but you had to go. I remember you telling me that I had caught you too soon, you "weren't ready" but when would you have ever been ready to be gone? Ya couldn't just "ready, set..." forever, blowing through Samanthonies while I stood there - that's not healthy, and as you now know, you owe healthy (enough not to die like a drama queen) to your kids (if not to our mothers). And now you have to leave again. And here I am again, this time helping you the way I help myself. That'd scare me too. I AM scared too. I might do any fucking thing to climb out of this SHIT. 

If you are standing in SHIT, do ANYTHING but sit down. From rules to Live by.

"I am a bobcat that's not been fatally shot with a .22 and I'm still being pursued..How could he not know this about me by now?"

I will put an entire home inside your apartment so it is no longer solitary confinement, which you crave. If you can take it. What's that song, when I drink alone I prefer to be by myself lalala. I half expect you'll get rid of that apt to get out of taking the couch and blame it on the landlady by the time I get back. I will also put Tawista in front of you, yours for the taking or not - even harder than the furniture, cz here you'd be naked and far from the comfortzone of the hamster wheel. I know cz that's why I am here, standing in discomfort. And this time you are going to keep the kids, they are not just hers. Neither was Ears. It's all about the kids, right? One of yours is all grown up now and a lovely warm hearted young man, one of my favorite people; maybe if you get some Ears, the "I can't leave my kids" injury gets some remediation. Hence why he only is coming here and knows that you might-but-won't turn up.

My mom said you hugged her like a drowning man and instructed me to not to let go your hand. I mind my mother, and even a cunthair away from dead, I can keep throwing "whens" at you like dodgeballs. 

If you had a blog, what would my blogname be, Huckleberry? 

I go back to sleep a lot today. Still not sliding into my pond husband. I feel too weak yet. Not to swim, I can do that easier than walking, but of being submerged in all these feelings I am allowing, that I will drown in them in the lake, which is at this moment is glistening, sexy af. And I want to drown in my pond husband. Oh to finally want something could be more than I could resist. 

I am grieving. Just like when you cried and cried because ur daughter did NOT die. I am not dead but I am sick with the things I have gone through. Full of sick of it, head to toe. I am so full that I am never hungry. 96 pounds when I left, that's what all my sadnesses and fears and wraths weigh. If I can't figure how to add some Good feeling back in, my next step will be into the grave. I need a happy ass, and I just do not know how to.

Suddenly texts makes it through. Random fleeting satellite dump so no telling when it was sent, and there is no way to respond. He cannot come. I get it. I cannot eat, fail even want to a lot 😶, so am here trying to get some can into me. I will not text back "bummer maybe next time" to the stuckpain I know he is in. I refuse him only having to play full of shit games like that. (And anal, def on the fence.) 

I could drive out to text him back but no. Been there done that. I left the phone number, if he wants to talk he can call. 

i'll stand at the foot of your lake

i'll wait in the grass while you take it too far

i'll give you the keys to all the canoes

i'll sing to you, until you sing back

i'll sing to you, until you sing back

~This Accident of Being Lost, Leanne Betasamosake Simson

I read that today and thought of him. This blog, what is it atm if not singing? 

Tuesday. I walked into the lake in the underwear I slept in. Realize I could never drown, I FUCKING FLOAT duh, plus Disco insists on sitting in the baking sun nonstop on the dock despite the shade cover I built, STARING at me intently, preventing harm. Gonna note, naturalist Thoreau-style, even here there is algea, killer red. And no beaver. No loon. Many crows. My pond husband is getting sick too 😪.  Now my attention is on him, floating and listening and watching and trying to feel what is wrong. My feet keep sinking, and that isn't me bc they floated as usual on pink bathing suit day. Oxygen, the tiny bubbles usually all over my skin, they're not here. I am so sorry, I think at my pond husband, with what is left of my whole body.

This. 

I was 'a woman scorned', I could have talked him into this tat, then ghosted him. He could have done a lot of things, but he chose indelible. Rescuing each other by trust fall. Repeatedly. And the bigger the fall the more dramatic (sudden, indelible, exposed) the Rescue. Historically, I mean. I've been thinking about this because it's another cycle (repeat repeat) and we both need another Rescue now = begs the question of what this one is gonna look like 🤷🏻‍♀️

I am going to Tawista because we said I (we) would. I would not have decided to go alone, but maybe that was a shove I needed. (I honestly have no idea how this Yes/Rescue works yet.) I spend much of my time in soliude, but I have never driven to Tawista / anywhere that remote alone before and I am afraid that I will be afraid, fearangry, pissed about the pistol permit / smallfeeling. But. Whatever I feel, I will just feel it. And eat. Or starve to death once and for all - I packed no nutritional shakes, just food. 

Ok but just in case, a refresher: Go to North Creek, then take 28N off 28, head north to Minerva past the biker bar. The driveway is to the right if headed north, marked by a cairn on a boulder at the end, just before the stony pond trail marker. If you see that, you've gone to far. Phone # 518 251 4644

No one song cuts it today playlist. My everlasting lover, someone cut the brakes.

trying something new - leaving in a bar vino esque skirt boot combo 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). This is the time to tweak part of your routine because the new way will stick. Daily rituals can be art. Then the joy won't just be in the outcome. It's in the grace of doing it well, again and again — the elegance in repetition.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Zg98LfSuWafKmKfk6 

like clockwork

Ears has weighed in, planning to come up next weekend. So I added another treat. 

borrow my boots - tami neilson

Medical humanities case study: Patti. In addition to the previously mentioned details that handed me human composting as a topic of inquiry, she left me a trail of encouragements. Literally. They start on the hallway downstairs and end in a cluster in our shared office suite, basically ending at my doorstep. She even left her signature with the last one. But nobody else knew her handwriting, so they didn't even see it. 💔

Think about that. She's dying. "Filled head to toe with it," you said, which was exactly right. Died of Dying. That is a real thing. And sometime during the very end she had snuck onto campus alone to do this. 

I found it when I had to go to campus today for the first time since. 

Question: what medicinal course of action did this person need? 

"blooming lotus" - mural draft

Making my mom happy is a core guiding principle for me, always but especially now. She wants to paint a new mural while she still can. On the side of the new garage / a backdrop for the pond (of course there will be a pond!). I watch the lotus bloom, working on its 4th now (never needed more than 2, but his life is heavier than just his own now by a factor of 2x humans). So how about we paint them, HUGE, feet wide each (like "GILF" in hot pink on black pavement)? Yes, Ma. "I AM SO EXCITED!" That's the road that leads to still excited at 83, so I go down it.

Closer - Scenic Route to Alaska

I was gonna unblog all this, but again I am choosing to leave the trail of thought-crumbs. I ran to my own cottage today to get my hiking hat, bare summer minimums that I've not needed once yet, too busy climbing out of the grave to do anything else all season. The septic there is overflowing, another mess/expense to deal with 🙄.

good thing I was crazy enough to move one of my trees to the cottage, and that I braved their mess to take a piss and flush the toilet 🤦🏻‍♀️

I am running around buying compost and cantaloupe seemingly (life), but I am trying to unbreak in reality (Live). "We should fix each other." Yes, please. 

-----

The appraisal came back on my new house. Upshot: my sister is right. Everyone ELSE is invested in everything going smoothly now. Sellers, agents, brokers. Nobody gets anything they want/need if it does not go smoothly. So unless called upon to do A Thing, I am going to let them all handle it all for a spell (let that spell work itself now). 

Attention turning to next steppings. I need to pause ordering skirts that look good with boots, summoning drool days, because I will need to move anything I buy but moreover I just put in a mail hold (no deliveries) Sun-Sun. 

Considering I haven't been able to pry any time at all out of his web of obligations (my mom could better than I lol). Considering that Ears doesn't know what PTO his job gives him if any (that kid is SO like me, jeezus). I have no idea how to "plan" for Tawista; it's not really up to me anymore. I did my bit. I suggested a do-over on that time we were not there together tho he wanted to be. That broken looks easy to mend in retrospect; Tawista heals, always has. "Yes!", he said. And if I could get that, even though they no longer rent it, would Ears want a day or two.. "YES!" So, I summoned Tawista back into our lives.

Now here it is, another "when" that I get to say, starting Sunday.

If he can. If he can. Two men, two wild cards.

So I am gearing up for what I think will be like a portal I've opened. It'll remain open for 7 days. I will be on the other side, maybe alone the whole time (?) Or maybe fucking and playing games after dinner. Or maybe some combo of those things on some subset(s) of days. I am thinking of what to take with me, like a tiny version of the radical downsizing choices ahead. I shouldn't bring too much, of food or loungerie, the kinda things that I would need them there for to need it. But not none either, because at any moment, either or both COULD walk through the portal. And I am a person too.

Are either men likely to tell me when or if or for how long they shall be?, she wonders. I know what "say when" means. They both know me, so that I would figure out how to say it should be no surprise. But. This little Virgo is all about reality, how it really is/feels (mouthfeel!). Especially in the case of Huckleberry, fantasy doesn't exist unless he brings it into my equation (yes, please) and he's maybe still (re)learning that I can only mean what I say. But Ears knows that when he steps through that portal for even just day, there will be waiting... 

Johnny's meatballs

Flavor of the year ice cream from Stewart's

Beaver Bite beer, also from Stewart's 

Me swimming through witchmate waters in my underwear (if anything)

🤔 so that's all I will gather, plus books/writing/weed for my own little self. I could bring other things, such as enchanted cock rings or ingredients for dip, if requested (?)

every chance I get I want you in the flesh - dan aurbach

Update: Sold. Not the HUGE payday that got me hot n bothered for a second, but I am not disappointed by that - it's enough - and entitled motherfuckers write checks with their mouths that their asses can't cash. But tiz worth noting that I am no longer the only person who thinks like that. EVERYONE in this ENTIRE process has come down to "who do you trust". Nowhere on any contract does it say that, but that's the new economy. I see it everywhere. People find jobs, work, housing - all the Maslow things - through friend networks, reverting to trading/barter economics. When offers came in, we reviewed the WHOs in Whoville and made the final decision based on the WHO factor. We accepted the offer made by and through personally trusted folks, even though the other offer looked better on paper. Since we don't know the WHOs of the cash offer, we only can imagine how that person might fuck me over. There is no benefit of the doubt anymore.

He said that for me it matters TO WHOM. He is 100% right. And that still might just be a ME thing when it comes to intimacy. My problem only (?)

But I see it applying across other vectors of life now, more and more. Blowhard is creating an ecomomy of VIRGOS. So here we are, at the first "when". I have done what it took to say when about one thing to one person. As promised. 

objectively speaking, covered head to toe in magic dickbutter atm, including thru my hair with macadamia oil, no make-up, no photo-smoother ... I think I look Aliver, little by little by little (?) - wish my mom were here to confirm 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Your mindset has shifted. Your emotional energy has changed. Because of this, the world looks different to you. It's evidence that reflects the work you've done internally.

So I've been told. Mostly as an accusation. Yes.

Today is the aspirational "review offers day". Either this strategy worked or it didn't. If it didn't, I lost a 5-digit bet. If so, I'll survive, one way or another, but I am not going back to a 'way it was' that broke me, regardless. 

My kids are all adults now, yet with me in this waiting. If you wouldn't wish your life on your kids, don't model it for them - a touchstone rule of mine. I am praying 🙏 today is a happy one, but it might very well give me nothing but more shit. So, it matters most that my rudder is deep enough for storms. Because life hands you a lot of storms, the worst often of your own making.

My youngest kid, who does not believe in private property in the first place, is waiting it out while visiting her father. EX has not changed. He's living on a bucolic farmette that M inherited. My daughter is texting me true heartbreak about his divorce from reality, feeling sick, in real time. Your parents matter allllll your life. So no matter what, bravely and soberly is how I have to face today. And even if the strategy does work, it's not a "success", it's a successful way to face how much/many I have failed. And my children are all as aware of that as I am.

Fight is exhausting, flight has been exhausted. 

song tbd

A wave of panic washed through me, but I grabbed the feeling and pushed it down, felt it fall through my body, pool on the ground around me and evaporate. Fear could not help me. Magic might. ~Sycorax

I unblogged all (below) after writing it last night, not happy with how short the words fell to capture what it feels like to send myself out of myself like that. I'd have to be able to paint, like my mother, because tendrils of intent streaming out of me doesn't have words. It's healing - which goes both ways - and makes everything else recede to the background. 

With almost no warning, I had to flee because the buyer my heart wishes to lay a hand on, want this take this from me, suddenly reappeared at 12:20 wanting in at 12:30. So I threw on clothes (...wait did I remember underwear?),

Yes.

jumped into the truck w dogs and just DROVE. Found myself at a nursery, no shade, so sitting in the AC looking at a pink flamingo of all things. Guess I would have to buy it. 

I tried "play me a song", hit the radio button - it opened to an ad about healing hearts at CHI cardiac. 

So I'll pick. 

one more dance around the sun - great lake swimmers

Not for nothing, the man last night looked (in peripheral vision) kinda like the Mr Potential in my house atm

------------------

Last night, putting it back up for now because I was spellcasting with no purpose except pure intention:

I get there, but it's not her, the schedule just hadn't been updated to account for her leaving (it's hard to keep up with all the ghosts). The new teacher, graceful tall blonde around my age, is nervous. She's not NEW new but she's not used to a whole clutch of newbies ("home from college") who uh are about to a get a not-relaxing yoga experience and not be able to do it by half and maybe barf. The teacher asks me to practice in the center at the front so they can watch me. Sure, no sweat. Behind me is a clutch of college girls (Groupon, prolly). Flanking me are two young men, bearded both, furry - you get the picture. They are not new, they're injured. The teacher has told them all to watch me and do what I do. But they can't, I don't know them or why but they have modification blocks which are like prosthetics sorta that you use to do something for you that you cannot do. 

So. I have to do the whole class perfectly. Any winging it I might allow myself on the reg, I can't do that or I will risk injuring them. I mean, I woulda kept to the traditional practice just for the girls, but they're like green twigs at that age, you can't break em, all they need is an encouraging smile. But these dudes aren't that young, old enough to need a fix-it. They need more than a smile.

This isn't, believe it or not, an erotic story. 

It's not lost on me that they are beautiful and that's probably part of why. But it isn't lust that comes over me. A STRONG urge to be PERFECT, as far as I can be, and RESPONSIVE in the peripheral, try to understand the injury(s). Understand: perfection and responsiveness are opposite, like 'by the book' v 'what works'. In a perfect practice, you only look at your own two eyes in the mirror. That's the whole point. All the sweating is to help you beat yourself as hard as you gotta to be able to do THAT. So I can only look at me. They're shadows that I can see just well enough to know the broad strokes. So I can only utterly control myself and offer what they can follow. And I am flawless - it's been 19 fucking years doing this, flawless is the easy part. What is difficult is sending all of it outward toward them with all my attention, and to make micro adjustments as I go that might make it possible for them to do without the prop-ups. By halfway through, I have honed in on the guy to my right. Pain btw shoulder blades or maybe a chest problem, one or the other is fucked up, and it's the same problem either way: constricted. Either convex or concave. 

I can't explain the practice itself, like the specifics, except one way: with my own body. That. That thing. And it works. Small example, changing my breathing and slowing it and willing him to match it. And he does, and doesn't give up the mod but does get back up off the mat and tries again. The more he breathes, the less he gives up. And I am focused completely, everything else falls away. I am willing my body into the perfect expression of the postures, slowly, methodically, STOPPING when he does, taking another breath (I could always use one too), and so on. I do this with all my body (like how other people would say "with all my heart"). At no point am I thinking about fucking this guy, he is not in a fuckable category right now. But what I am doing is the sexless version of sex. I am talking to this man, about pain and when to back off it, push but not to breaking, find that line and accept it. You can't move forward if you don't know where you're at, and the only way to know is to push yourself until you hit your limit for today and accept it. I say all that to him with my body.

took this earlier, first of a "building back" series

We never exchanged a word, respectful curt nod only.

VIRGO

Sunday, August 03, 2025

As if overnight, somebody's thoughts about a situation (I'm happy to cat-sit for free, I love kitties!!) may well have crumbled beneath the weight of their feelings about a situation (e.g. I've developed allergies, I'm overwhelmed with responsibilities, you can pay me or forget it!). So bear that in mind as a management hint.

I am aware. "It's right there" = behind the thick glass of a hyperbaric chamber. I finished the movie (in pieces around fleeings), so I know what "say when" means now and that now isn't when I get to say it. About anything to anyone.

A Night in the Ground - Trent Willmon

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Resentment weighs too much. You're better without it. Say what you want. Say no. Say yes to your own fun, your own peace, your own right to take up space with joy. You don't need a reason. Just do it.

 

"your right to take up space with joy" sounds like something my mother would say

straight line - keith urban 

I want to go to Paradox with him and get a growler because I just want to. 

born running out of time - lukas nelson "..don't outpace my heart lalalaaa" 

"summoning different time"

In a right-tided world, we would both be Okay. And in my work, case studies like his would be part of how I do it, and he would no longer be in the place of actively being a case study. He is writing me a second one now - don't think I've forgotten the case study of the kid, oh no - quite the contrary, that trauma is now part of the failure of "whole person care" case study if (when) nobody, EVEN THOUGH THEY KNOW HIS ASS, connects the dots between the stress test tomorrow and STRESS. Will he connect dots, out loud? What does "know better" mean in this case? It's not an easy answer. There are costs for exposing your whole person, which could cause new traumas, folks are very rightfully guarded.  How does a trauma brain parse all that? 

I see a pattern of his ONE, I extrapolate. How many parents of children who have had a traumatic life threatening protracted illnesss themselves grow ill with trauma-related disease such as panic attack disorder? Subset the healthcare worker parents. Story of one, closely read it. Then widen the lens and there it'll be, a pattern. I am rarely wrong, honestly, about this kinda stuff. Take a little pattern you saw (through his eyes), go get grants. 

Or, this time, change the tide of the earth 🌊 . Cz fyi, case 3 of these interlocked case studies so SOUTH easily. This, the parent, would be C-2. Good doctoring needs to happen in C-2. Not just technically good, I mean insightful. 

I do (did) have a lot of fun with getting good at this. But it's not worth a damn if it doesn't save a life right now. Two of them. 

I have faith in my mother. God shines through her. I will never know exactly what my mom said to him, and fretted about it at the time, but it doesn't matter. Whatever it was sent him upstairs with an ear to ear smile that was 100% authentic, and that kiss was happy. And seeing him like that made me feel good. 

It's right there. I just need to change the tide of the earth 🌊. 

Update: Wheeeeeeeeeeeeew 🚬 my nerves are shot. But, another day ✅️  It takes a village, they used to say. Feels too hard and messy for that metaphor now. I think it takes a warm pile of people who are intimately aware of each other's chosen battle: To Be Okay (Really). That's it. Stop everything else (NO) except Yes. 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You're in this spot for a reason. Maybe you're still growing into it — that's how it works. The ones who care most always wonder if they belong. That question doesn't hold you back. It keeps you awake, aware, rising.

The pest control kid stopped by yesterday, rebait the rat boulders, a thing Nebraska pays for that I figured it'd just end when I leave so no need to talk about it. But everyone takes pics now, of every delivery, of every service, to prove it's been done. So a pic goes to him of the house and I get an email almost immediately "wishing me luck" with the sale. It's inevitable. All he has to do is send the dogs a treat from Chewy, and boom, gets a photo. It took less than 24 hours to track my life decisions and inform me of his power to do so in the form of "being supportive". 🤮 And today, I will have to flee, go to the cottage for starters, dogs in tow, their collars tracking us all. In the jeep, whose payments I must make, but he dealt with annoying shit like pairing the phone ... both his and mine, so, I assume he can just track the truck itself if he wants. There is nothing I can do about any of that but hold steady while triggered. There is nothing I can do about being triggered half to death between that shit and my house full of people today, pawing my things, me racing to find my grandma's squashblossom so I can put it in the safe that takes 10x to get open, which is why I hid it God knows where in the first place. Steady steady steady, eat something, breathe.

That is all I can control: me. That's it. Until I am on the other side of this, all I can control is ME, my physical person, which hovers at 100 pounds of what feels like pure grit held together by will in the shape of a woman, more or less. I am my own sandstorm to walk through. 

Later, I calmed down hearing about blowtorching hearts to play tetris, which soothed my nerves a lot. Report to shrink, haven't seen him since the kiss she saw, but he is "there" as I go through this, as am I for him, which she will affirm (fyi, if you had a shrink she would affirm having a 'psychological support system', believe it or not we're healthy, all things being relative). 

Although this feels like an extreme test of my ability to accept it, it's simply true that all I can control ANYTIME, always, is me. That's it. And my body will die, some dumb bloodglob is gonna take me down, so ultimately I cannot control that either. Except today. 

(Shrink will remind me, TODAY, that's why some people count days sober, to keep track of that CONCEPT, today is what you have, not to just endure but to be in fully.)

Today I can get up (I am doing so right now, writing myself awake). The menagerie will arrive soon and grab stuff to move, what we can, 2 women and umpteen kids including a pissy turkeyball who will cry if not held, so 3 adult hands (1 gotta hold the damn baby).

"Turkeyball"

Then me and the dogs in the 2-faced jeep to take a shrink appt on my phone in a parking lot or side of the road, then stay out all day somehow with panting dogs and sweaty kids, all while my home is being poked and prodded, my collages taken down and put back crooked, a million ways that it's just ME somehow that is being sold. And I must allow it. And I must land at 6 pm at yoga for my friend's last class, no matter what, so I will work backwards from that, from what matters most (your People). 

Grieving - Leith Ross

how to save a life - wyatt flores

That ("idea stealers and greedy feelers") is what came to mind today, as the showings begin and my horoscope says I hit a sweet spot where I am paid for what I have to offer, and I thought "being wanted, me or my stuff, isn't the problem - if they want it they try to take it and if it's me they want then they knock me down to take that too". So. Yeah. This house, I could SEE IT, and others could not (thanks Dad for my house-eyes). Now it looks like what it was, Buffalo in its first hayday. It was built by the people who cast Buffalo's spell, the Queen city of lights and theaters, artists and performers, the walls covered in mirrors to reflect it back, two Lucille Balls for the price of one at every party literally. And while I restored it, I built a whole discipline around the suffering people who really live, work, and die here in hospitals on fire and under fire. The house has been broken into or invaded umpteen times now, and that career was stolen. Everything, the end of my world, "they", the powerfuller, came and took everything. Tried to pay for it with compliments, like glass beads for land. Metaphor intended, as it included "thank you for all you have (had)", an acknowledgement that I will never forget the mouthfeel of. Many hard lessons that I needed. To reTHINK, reverse blink.

Weekly oracle: 

VIRGO

 (August 23-September 22)

The love-fakers and promise-breakers and delusion-makers are no fun, but I think you will ultimately be grateful they helped you clarify your goals. The reverse healers and idea-stealers and greedy feelers are perilous to your peace of mind in the short run, but eventually they will motivate you to create more rigorous protections for your heart, health, and stability. In conclusion, Virgo, it's one of those odd times when people with less than pure intentions and high integrity can be valuable teachers.

"Healing yourself is connected with healing others", Yoko Ono

"A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality", John Lennon 

The Yoko quote came up among shrinks. What you have to do to heal is not selfish, it is in service to others (reverse blink). When I looked it up for the original context, I found it's paired with that quote of his ubiquitously. 

"The term "hierophant" is the name of the fifth card in the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck, often depicted as a religious authority figure like a pope or priest. In the context of Tarot, the Hierophant embodies tradition, spiritual guidance, and structured learning."

The original/traditional card looks like the pope and represents teachers. To make my own set, I considered every symbol and intention of the original, then made collages that would work ON ME, that would bring to mind what the card intends but in MY language. So, when I must rely on my spirit (mind and body drained), what kind of spiritual guidance would help me? Who/what mentors me? The spirit of home, Buddha that sat by the door in Lewiston, flowers from my own garden, a mason jar not a fancy thing like what holds communion wafers, the woods not a church. And that photo of John and Yoko, "wholly giving over" (trust). 

I do too much. I wear myself out and deprive others of their ability to DO TOO. I know that. It is a strength that can be a weakness (all strong suits have a weakness). I am doing my very best to heal, stop the spiral, turn this all around. I send naked pictures, summoning time. I post songs, serenading. But HE is naked, in that photo, not her. Don't get me wrong, it makes me feel soooo much better to take a shower, smear myself with butter, pull on silk, send photos, serenade beneath the window of his phone - all that helps ALIVE. And I have no intention but to More Alive. 

🤔 But if it helps me, doing those things, would it help him to do them / send pics / his versions of seduction, whatever they are now? ALIVE-wise? That hadn't even occured to me. Until today. (And it ain't like I don't want it, duh. I'm just an idiot.)

Lay down I wanna talk to ya - Dierks Bentley

I was going to unblog this but I will let it stand for how today felt

Update: Final walk thru, last details of the contract discussed. I'll sign it in the morning. I can't whip thru it quickly enough on an e-sign (they make you read the fucking thing). I don't even want to think about it any more. It hurts, Leaving. Even if you want to go. Because let's face it, nobody ever wants to Leave. Nobody goes anywhere if they are safe and happy and FULL enough where they are. People flee what's killing them 😶🤮. Or they die. It's pretty simple and really hard.

It feels like I have to wrench myself out of myself to save what is salvageable. I'm good at it. Doesn't mean I don't half hate being good at such a terrible thing. So satisfying but only if it saves a life. I built a LOT here, it was, is, the prettiest house I ever will live in. A millionaire's house restored completely. People are stunned by it, how good it all looks (on paper).

"dusk"

But it was not like what I built in Lewiston. It was not a happy home. There were some happy times in it, but. Not like home. Not like 'the only thing missing is'. Nope. I've been as broke to shit, glimmering in plain sight.

I know there can be no Living part until Leaving gets done. But it's very hard. It feels like someone shoving something under my sternum. I call it a sob jab. I want to fold forward around it. A rubberband ball of ouches. That fucker has got to GO. Maybe shitting out kids makes me more able to know when it's time to bear down? Now.

Once it's done, it's done. There was no choice, this "living" isn't sustainable without fatal injury. One must love one's life not just withstand it like a tinman in the rain, stuck without drool. 

If you wouldn't wish your life on your kids, do not model it for them. 

The agent thinks it'll be sold inside a week. As soon as it's contracted, then the moving can begin. Starting with everything marked his/yours, everything from Lewiston, I've more than used my timeshare up on OUR home, now it is his/yours. Or moving it can wait til closing if that's too ouchie still, i.e. after Tawista, which is 2 weeks from today, Sun- Sun. 

I want turnovers from the bakery in Inlet. 

Aside from the mountain of legalities and the raw pains of moving, I don't know what comes next that's sweet beyond the turnover (hopefully) and promised rambling meaning of life's absurdities conversation(s) "under the covers with sushi". I love that phrase. It makes NO sense, which is perfect. 

Right now, I only need to believe in an afternoon. 

GEMINI (May 21-June 21). You are trying to be kind, generous and honest in an ecosystem that punishes those very things. When your tactics don't work, leave and try them somewhere else. A thriving person is often a well-placed one.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). A royal play is unfolding. Someone will re-enter your chambers, not to conquer but to be conquered. And you will never even lift your scepter. The force of your presence, the power in what you've already commanded, the scent of your power will do the rest.

The final days of Venus in Gemini offer a chance to connect, flirt, explore and express without the weight of definition. In this airy phase, the heart gathers impressions, tries on possibilities, flits from thought to feeling like a butterfly choosing its bloom. If something matters, name it now — before the current turns inward and tides roll home.

Name it now: I want the 💝asstat next time, if there is a next time, like that, with anyone, to be on me. I want to have a return address. I cannot imagine doing that. I cannot imagine exactly what those feelings even are, is what I am saying. 

Doesn't matter how or why, who died or didn't, upshot is I found a revision of "the talk" in my own head/heart/body: If anyone is getting a name 💝asstat, it's me. Like name and serial # so that what's left of me will be returned to the person who would cry the most / give a shit / want the battered pieces.

"A body cannot feed when its heart is filled with yearning." ~ Sycorax, Nydia Hetherington

No, it cannot. And I am not hungry. The listing goes live tomorrow. Today, I must throw out all food. Kitchen empty of (my) life, so they (whoever they are) can imagine theirs here. From now on, I will either waste $ I dont have not-eating alone in restaurants, or I will eat alone in restaurants. smib

Feel free to play the 'play me a song game' as I chorechorechore...

lotus #2 coming up ft clockwork - each its own little milestone 

"But hush. My thoughts make too much noise." ~ Sycorax, Nydia Hetherington

I could use a love song - little girl with shih tzu (maren morris cover)

"spirit animal"

 

 

I'm going to noon yoga. Fave teacher and friend. A medical error crippled her husband and rewrote her life completely, brutally and forever. Trauma, all the longest teachers/students, Without Exception, that's what we know/share. All different kinds. So many ways to go through the windshield of life, including literally. All I can do is worry and wait. Or keep throwing as much magic as I can, the way I do, staring my self down in the mirror. Choosing the latter.

https://youtu.be/mU9CkwEbOfA?si=aj0W1LyvEnFJk2zq "Home"

Update: VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Thinkers may linger in doubt, but it's the doer who crosses the finish line. A smart plan is ideal, but any plan — or none at all — will do, because once you're in motion, instinct takes over.

Right. Put down the plan. It was drawn up by an ego anyway (mine, yours, whoever's). The only thing that lies more than booze is the ego. So chase me motherfucker 🖕. Right out into the open where I can get cleaner shots off.  

---------

It was Stacy. Stacey? Jello Shots. I am looking for the photo of him in a hospital bed, heart racing, hands shaking, getting tests. She sent me the photo. It was the look on his face. So purely deeply sad.

"...from many years before, she can map his initial disappearance from her life that time to a question she asked him: “With what are you alone?”  From that moment, he would begin disappearing and reappearing in her life..."

I am not going to link back to where in here that note is exactly, it would only upset him to read it. To read "he's all yours", as if rolling up and dumping him in pieces on my lawn.

And I did approximately what I am doing right now. Putting a stop to it. With the same sense of urgency. Even if I had to befriend the stupid girlfriend and then her stupid boyfriend, hold off mothers-in-law like zombies behind splintering doors, move heaven and earth just to get back to losing him again to it, not understanding, it's ABOUT THE KIDS. 

It's always about the kids. 

I still don't understand it all and probably never will. I know the first groove he can remember is 8 years old, the age our respective little girls are now apx, and I know it stays in there, a crushed puppy or whatever it is, a groove of trauma that loves to eat brains, like a rift opens and into that rifts runs your brain chemicals along with everything you try to fill it. I dunno all he does about the human body, but I know more about trauma brains. His and mine.

How could he be alone with this divorce? It makes no sense. But I am now alone with this. That's another thing we both do. It would be really good if we learned to not do it anymore with each other. (Therapist confirmed.)  In what context did I even ask that first question, still THE question? "With what are you alone?" I don't remember. But essentially, I asked it again. And essentially the question hurt again. 

Thank God my mom left, she'd be demanding to go to Mercy, unafraid utterly to tell the wife and Normandy to go fuck themselves, and why isn't his own mother on his side EVER enough? She'd be losing it. 

There isn't even a damn girlfriend to befriend. Can I have Shotglass's number? Hi, I uh, well ya might know me already sorta, kink as selfhelp ft teacher fetish?, but right now can you go take a pic of him in whatever hospital bed he's in, hopefully just hooked to an ekg thingy? I need to see his face. I'd call Honeybee, but drinking buddy, I was a functional alcoholic recently. The kink was pretty healthy, the drinking was def not. And the 2 don't mix well in a 40+ year old body. By osmosis, the booze would lessen if I could just..

The card of the day is the center of the simple spell to break this cycle (let this house go). 6 of coins. If you need help, take it. If you have help to give, give it. To have more room to do THAT THING, and yes he inspired me to move FAST to do it, I had to let this house go. It's not about $. It's about THAT. 

He would say to be worried about cardiac something whatever - ever trained as they all are to compartmentalize, diagnose, cure, done. But I know better. Even if his heart is what he once called "floppy", it's alone with all this shit that's the root problem. Shotglass for one bit, pass the butter for another part, Honeybee for I'm not sure what part, but scattered like that then nobody SEES IT WHOLLY. So he's alone. His normal. And that could kill him. (I should know.)

Please don't make me grieve you. Ask for anything else. 

I think I might be giving him a wee heart attack and I am truly sorry if so. But we have to feel real things. 

can I call you after rehab - devon cole you can call me needing bail, we've talked about this ...

I don't know why. But from the moment of Yes Please (runner up choices: Help Me, Say When) + I'm Your Huckleberry thrown in, I've had a feeling like he'd be caught. Not cheating (N/A), or even leaving (wait, do his people ever just divorce forever as a way of being married? I hadn't thought of that), but by glee in his voice. 

It would stand out as atypical. 

Get caught by whom in what way, tripped somehow by what cosmic ottomon, to what end ? - no idea. And he might even throttle it himself as unfamiliar anymore, talking god knows what smack at his own self. So before, no during, whatever that fork was/is, I had to outpace it. 

"Loungerie" 

At the last minute, the mortgage dude called me, if I pay off the mortgage in less than a year, he is penalized. Heavily. Nobody knows that, the realtors can't know anything about how he makes a living. Prejudice somesomething. He was just out on leave. I know what that means in any industry. If he processes these mortgages for me, like this, to get free of them NOW, he is fucked. "I won't then. I will wait, hold the funds in a CD, pay it off in one year and one day. Because I need to get freer of the boot on my neck, and help anyone I care for do the same." Loooong pause. So many PAUSES. (Do you trust me, gay man who has no reason to trust anyone?) 
Okay. 

Photo people is how it starts, the glam shots. Final fussing in the yard. I decided to take a TREE with me cz that is the kind of hairpin I am, so I start digging it up. I throw on some music. Let's play the play me a song game, since he's sooo quiet atm, sucking blood globs with eye forks ..

you don't want to love a man like me - big al anderson

(HAHAHAHAHAHA)

That surely cannot possibly be for me. But since I've been up since before dawn, am now just too tired to fuss anymore, might as well sit here and listen to it again. Bemused.

1. Don't tell me what to do. (Unless we are fucking, then I might bow to your greater expertise.)

2. ...well it doesnt matter cz that song wasn't for me and photo dude is here...