VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). People who make you laugh get a VIP pass straight to your heart. It's wild how much more you'll let slide just because someone's funny. Humor makes its own rules and makes everything feel a little lighter.

Truth.

I have tried many times to find the right words to artfully (v clinically) capture a chronically partially dissociative way of living. You're there, but you're not. You, actual you is 'current address unknown'. But someone who looks just like you has taken your place, like to save the real princess a robot replica has to take her place type situation. And everyone treats the robot like it's you and go on saying the kind of shit they say (which is what your actual self ran from in the first place, probably) and your robot self says "okay". Dead eyed. Then of course, because you're not insane, you just feel like you are, you notice that real you is trapped inside this robot piece of shit, and you're like: fuck. 

But those aren't the right words. (Too many!) The right words to describe that: "pass the butter"

What I can add to that far more succinct wording are some health humanist factoids. Such as, brains of those people start to look like ones with traumatic brain injury neurologically. Like you got hit in the head in slo mo.

It'd be interesting if, studied through a sexual proclivity lens, the person (not the same as just brain) would develop a taste for asphyxiation as a succinct way to share his feeling(s) 🤔 

That's just the kinda shit people like me get grants to ask 👁 and go all "qualitative analysis" on it. A lot of scholarship to sift through.

[Thought I was done delving into his kink(s). But in my defense, Lust has transformed itself into appetite, bowls of cereal at 2 a.m. and I gotta get this body to want (to live) somehow before I snuff out, pun intended. While my mind dwells on him, it picks at its own Wrath scabs less.]

There is another him inside the butter robot, and that one has a lot of Pan in his nature. The less he's fucking, the darker is the bonkers he's going if his rules of thumb still hold true. Imagine an inner '(horny) goat on the truck' - that's the real one, in my experience. The one who laughs / makes me laugh almost constantly.  

"....there can be a link between BDSM and PTSD, specifically asphyxiation-related traumas, although it's a complex relationship. Some individuals may engage in BDSM as a form of trauma-play, revisiting past traumatic experiences in a controlled and consensual environment to process and potentially heal from the trauma. Others may find BDSM practices, including asphyxiation-related scenarios, to be a source of pleasure and sexual arousal, which can be a coping mechanism for managing PTSD symptoms."

headlock - imogen heap

Was gonna unblog all this but 🤔No, I am gonna stand by this analysis until/unless any new info comes in 🤔 incl what's motivating me atm 🤮

card of the day (again)

"at least he got an answer" -  response from one of my kids

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You'll be nudged — perhaps even pushed — into action, not because the universe is being a bully but because it's taking some of the pressure to decide off you and showing you there's a clear direction, a place you are needed. You are, in fact, already there.

Pfft, g'head, give me a shove. 

running on time - parker milsap 

Welp, that was somewhat liberating 🤔. I am chalking it up as sex magic spellwork (thanks for the assist). All I've said for a year is "no". A simple "yes" is medicinal. 

how high - the record company turn it up

"assist" (it feels better now)

"Yes."

Recipe - new moon in Gemini, to upright 3 of Swords (= healing wounds of heart)

Materials

3 heart candle, neutral color 

Intentions

Identify blockages to healing. Forgive, let go, free suppressed emotions, embrace what the future Wants to emerge / awaken from dormancy (seed). No is a full sentence; so is Yes. Move forward, wearing your scars on your sleeve. 

Saying "yes" is a spell of activation. In one breath, you align your will with creation itself. Where "abracadabra" calls for magic, "yes" becomes it — sparking movement, inviting possibility and turning thought into tangible, living reality.

SMIB

I must have dreamed it

From the "thinking about your cock ft don't wanna eat a glock" playlist 

if it takes a lifetime - jason isbell

"Be the hearth, not the mirror."

First nap of the season, starting now 🥱

There is/was a bunch of little things I need for the cottage. Duraflame, cz the stove is cavernous and I suck at startings. Stuff like that, which I gathered today in the umpteen errands that requires. I walk like lightening through stores, weaving my skinny ass in and out of bovines. I hate it, and it's cold and rainy, and Disco hates how close thunder feels out there, plus the plumbing needed done, hot water a crapshoot, bathroom sink still 🤷🏻‍♀️ etc. So although it's cottage season, so far it's just cottage chores needed done then back to the city. 

But there is something under that, a deeper reason.

I am not sure how to care for myself at the moment. I mean, I can do all the normal stuff, brush my teeth and pay bills. Excellent adulting skills. But I don't know how to care about me. If I were good at that, I wouldn't look or feel the way I do. And the cottage is FOR THAT. 

Will it come back to me there? Like it always did at Tawista? 

When I think "what will I need out there to pull my self back together?", I draw a blank. That's the hold up. Not the cold or the thunder or even the dark. 

How do I know this? Because today there was someone else to care about in that way. In the 'what might make it better that you've come apart (?)' way. This isn't seduction, I didn't get a pedicure (clearly). I just know/feel if that person opens the cottage fridge and finds a small charcuterie, he will feel like someone gave a shit about his person in a nontransactional way. That separate from the kids, the wife, the lives saved, the tries failed, all of it, he is a person with intrinsic value.

Why can't I do that for my own person anymore? 

I broke something. My heart has broken arms. When I try to use it just to give enough of a shit to decide what I want for dinner, it will not work. I cannot care. Somehow, in some way, my heart threw out its own will to want for its own self.

There has been a whole lifetime we have each lived in these years. SOooo much happens. I write all the time. I feel compelled to stop and consider and describe and fathom what is happening. 

But. Would I have kept this blog? 

No. 

I would not have fed myself my own words without him (you). 

"thinking ft intrinsic"

Carrots,” she paused for effect, “give you the will to live.” He took a bite of the latke, which was perfectly made, crispy at the edges and delicately salted with a touch of herbs he couldn’t name. “What do you mean?” he said, chewing. “It’s a root. And roots prevent you from getting the blues.” She picked one from the bowl; it gleamed under the kitchen light. “You see, carrots become bright orange because it’s so dark in the ground. They make their own light because the sun never reaches that far—like those fish in the ocean who glow from nothing? So when you eat it, you take in the carrot’s will to go upward. To heaven.” She tucked the carrot back in the bowl, gently, as if it were a tiny person. “Ever heard of a rabbit jumping off a bridge?” she winked. “Of course not. That’s because they have the light in them.” ~Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong

feel this way too - ariel posen (redux) 

I don't know what that central body part is there in the middle. I know what it's supposed to mean, but not what it is.

I know what I have to do. I am sick of it, but it's what needs done. Lesson learned: if you're with somebody who makes you lonely with their presence, you don't get as much YAY I'M FREE phase (always loved that phase!); you move right to wanting touched because in the privacy of your mind/heart, you haven't been in a long time. 

My heart sings looking at this, which I could not pull off alone. And more importantly, I wouldn't want to by myself. It wouldn't be full that way. I am existentially pouting over that fact. And I need to just knock it off.

If I were falling in love, it would most certainly be with someone who could stand the fuck up.

answer

Today, the first med class in Phoenix graduates. 

I saw that medical campus when it was a hole in ground, when it opened, when it bloomed to include the health humanities consortium, everyone I used to know. I watched the first students from Omaha choose the new campus, watched how their financial decisions were all made for them to adjust between cities, and learned that they make none of their own such budgetary decisions and in most cases haven't the foggiest notion of their debt fraction now nor debt/income ratio later. I sat in the sun on the grass with them, that first cohort, eating boxed lunches and listened to them all teach each other that fact. I watched them be filmed, Flav was a treat in that process, but the stand out was the student Daniel being filmed talking about stoicism (Marcus Aurelius). Military kid, I won't ever forget that one....

And that was just that. 

Like everything, the housing market is getting worse by the minute. I'm going to go look at this today because it's walking distance to a park that I like, but really just to see how it goes, how it went by the end, how many and who signed the little check in sheet, be a fly on the wall. If I sell my house this year, I have friends in Parkside with an in-law studio they'll let me have for the winter. I would (I want to) sell most of my shit, put all the books / precious things in a storage unit. Take myself down to dog(s), handful of clothes, boots. Pretty sure the dog is mine now, so 2 lapdogs + me + boots = 150 lbs total? Maybe it'll just be too hard to sell anything at all this year, but I keep whittling anyway. Trying to get down to what's realest. Flesh and bone.

he isn't coming back for her

let it slide - matt anderson and the big bottle of joy loud 

There's this show, Alone. I tapped out on survivor island when they ate tarantulas, so I never watched Alone. Sis says, you have to watch the Australia one, there's a contestant with your name, but it's more than that, she's a You. So I watched it. 

No, I failed to be that person. Not the survive in nowhere part, not the understanding ketosis part, not the head of streaky curls - all that, yes I can see it. But it's the part about her lost child and best friend. Sadly, no.

It probably wouldn't have worked, your mother alone would have been insurmountable, and it's unlikely we would have stopped fucking each other at that point since we sure didn't (not sure we would make it a day NOW let alone then), but the point is I couldn't even try so we'll never know. It might have all turned out .... well, it'd be no Thing long ago by now and you'd be helping me figure out outdoor tubs and the kids could play. And THAT is what I wanted to say sorry for: I am sorry that it never even occured to me to try to be that person. 

And now I'm going to put that shit down. Gonna go clean the kitchen to my favorite doing dishes song (keep the boots on if ya like lalalaa). I got shit to do + ❤️ shit needing done.

storm in the city last night

Evidence strongly suggests that we are happier if social obligations and traps are stripped away, and I'm allowed to stoke my little fires. Why why why is everything in the way of my doing that atm?? There's way more hot tubs and pasta and orgasms and less pure bullshit my way, just sayin 🤨

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You may not feel motivated to do certain things people want, but that doesn't mean you lack motivation in general. Strip away the obligations and little social traps and you'll find there's plenty you're driven to accomplish. Stoke the fire on those dreams today.

step 1, hot/cold outdoor plumbing

I will get this done. There will be a tub of hot water under the stars in my life again so help me God. 

Didn't have time to read my horoscope til after, and yeah, I need to WORK THAT OUT. With my fucking body. 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Gratitude rushes in for your full and complex life. You give care, you create, handle logistics, celebrate and yes, you grieve, too. You've loved deeply and known all sides of that love, including the bliss and the pain of loss.

a wish

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Some people go looking for trouble, while others avoid it at all costs. You're only up for the kind of trouble that fits your curiosity like a glove worn by the spirit of adventure herself, beckoning you into an irresistible scenario that's worth the trouble.

rescue me - elise legrow (cover) 

This is how I read my horoscopes atm 🫣

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Success often arrives not as a triumphant moment but as subtle shifts: a reaction you no longer have, a thought you no longer believe, a story that no longer defines you, or a weight that's just ... gone.

good news - shaboozy 👢

I can't "see it as opportunity" anymore, I just can't 

I turned off the commencement stream as soon as I pulled the card of the day. If we are all being fired again / some more, I didn't want to hear about it on YouTube. 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You're feeling feisty, but you also know that to fight is to invite a kind of ruin, even when the cause feels just. To create, to teach — these are acts of building. What served once may not serve now. What does this moment call for?

I have no idea. 

No song in my heart.

(And I am not "feeling feisty" for the record, zero urge to fight.) 

I went to a shrink appointment, the meds one. And I just lost it 😭 can't take it anymore, the job the shitty bf the shitty boss 😭 the TRAPPED 😭. 

And then in a fraction of a second, I turned it completely off, face still, voice steady.  As if I were running a meeting. I kept talking, the department dissolving story, getting that news as the grad student is texting me news of having just become his new object of affection in front of everybody. I didn't cry. I didn't look like anything but as if reading from a teleprompter. 

😭 how long can a person function this highly while getting punched so low? 

She was appalled, and maybe a little impressed (wow, but your body can't) wrote me a letter that said I was in incapable of working until further notice in case I wanted to try a med leave for stress, as two of my colleagues had done. But they're both white men. I can't survive using that letter. But if it's the only way to survive? 

Then I called a lawyer. A very crabby one, at first, who demanded to know who had referred him and all this shit in a thick NYC accent of some kind. I flew at him in my underwear this time: one prideful guinea to another, these people are bullshit and this is who I am. (Was.) The NEH ecetcetc, and I need to know what a person like you can do for a person like me. Now, please. 🤬 His body language changed on the other end of the phone, I could feel him relent. Said he'd look into it. I believed him, liked him sorta.  Storms make ports or wrecks, I've learned. He kept his word. 

[image removed]

I know that place like I know my own body. I don't have the right words for that either, but I know when it's dying. It's doing it now, dying. The school needs new dick and a cheeseburger STAT. It needs a miracle.

Then I went to the Basilica and lost it and lost it and lost it and lost it. I haven't been back to OG Mary in that condition in a long while. Keening. I just sobbed and begged and apologized for everything anything just not any more of this, please please, I need a hand to hold across this 8 lane bullshit, please please just one break. All I want is decent work and a decent mate, and I'll settle (again) for just the work 😭, please. Please. 😭🙏 

And then I drove home and my phone started blowing up that we'd been all merged into a mega department chaired by my own faculty vice president (chair), followed by the guy I gave my job and grant to graciously (vice chair) and last but not least the woman I'm teaching the crows class with that she does 99% of and thanks me (vice chair). Those are my new bosses. My own ducklings. All grown up, which is unexpectedly so useful. Wow.

I pulled over to text my new boss how unspeakably grateful I was, then scold him for letting everyone have an EXISTENTIAL MELTDOWN over NOTHING why the fuck did he sit on that for a week god dammit, but still, thank god. 

(Update - I talked to them at more length today, they didn't know ahead either, one was crying, thought she'd been pulled in to get fired ... 🤦🏻‍♀️ )

I know all these people to trust them.

So, here I wound up. Right back where I started. But I am changed forever. Now I live a body of veal meat with a much more sober than sunny mind. 👁

A thing exists that I didn't know existed: micro betrayals. Like micro aggressions but different. 

Mary is 🙏 wow. Amen. Whether Jesus ever puts me in baskets not withstanding. 

If my own ducklings run this show, that changes everything. There's almost no hope of stopping the spiral, but not no hope. 

There's a world of difference between almost nothing and nothing.

Today I will finish putting in final grades. End it for the year. End THIS, the bullshit ride. And start rebuilding.

the cottage is blue now, not brown as in the old listing photo - that's the bush - the more I looked at it yesterday, the more I thought to tuck it around the corner

woodchuck, needs shot

My mind is so tired of bullshit, all I want is the simplest of things.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Healing is returning to wholeness, not necessarily how things used to be, but how they can feel right again inside you. It's cellular and spiritual, personal and collective, and non-linear; it circles back, deepens, pauses and resumes.

My house was sorta broken into again (sorta) but they failed cz frankly they looked the big lebowski level stoned. I had been at the tool library, renting tables for mothers day basket sale lemonade stand and securing a dolly with which to move the clawfoot tub outa my yard in the city and down to the cottage when the alarm at the house went off, it's SO FUCKING LOUD it's terrifying and the security called me. I went racing home by which time whoever pushed at the screen was gone. I went charging around in here yelling my head off cz I AM FED UP KILL ME OR DON'T ALREADY. It's hard to describe this emotional state: bored with how much is killing me anymore 🙄. 

Can't we all die some other ways, just for a day, just to switch it up, like everybody move one chair over, I'll be whoever you are and understand THAT/YOU for one day if for no other reason than I'm fucking bored of my own perspective on any/everything - ?

Later, after I've cleared the alarm, called off the police (who never come anyway lol like ever), I'm lying in bed and they COME BACK. The dogs go bananas, they're like I dunno wtf looking in the kitchen window or some shit below my bedroom, and I ALMOST go charging down there in my underwear to punch whoever that is in the fucking face with pure fury (no fat, I'm like veal meat, penned in by furious will to live) for the pure fight club love of it. But I put my pants on. So, they were gone by the time I got down there. 

I have these cameras all over, again of dubious worth bc all they would do is show your harm in tedious choppy detail not prevent anything 🙄 but I fiddle with the screen thingy that's got like a guzzinion buttons and little bars that mean "something moved". The 'something' was a couple dumbass sadsack looking stoners, one of them had on a Hawaiian shirt I shit you not. It had to be the weed. To be fair, I smoke a lot of weed and they're kids all around here. Kids to ME, ie students. 

But. 

Wait.

I just invented, I have been inventing, a genre!! The story of the story of what didn't happen, a story that's more boring than *any* other option. Imagine, regardless of outcome, how much more interesting that story would be if I had just not paused to put pants on. A woman old enough to be their mama, also interested in nothing but smoking the last of her fancyass infused weed, who is lying in her bed reading a novel and trying to ignore the fact that masturbating might be the best part of her days by simply not doing so at that moment, hears the two dufuses and bursts out the door in her underwear and ancient threadbare KISS tshirt, fists flying.

See what I mean?

Whatever might have happened, even DEATH, it's less boring than rubbing one out being the best part of my day. Which it totally was 🤣🙄🤦🏻‍♀️

No fucking song. Who jerks off to music? 🙄

When you're down to hoping Jesus and magic are both real, you should have exhausted all else. I'm pretty sure I did, short of doing things that have been suggested but that I don't understand / know how to do / am ABLE to do. Like creating a "only fans" account for when I peed into a salad bowl (no plumbing) while watching birds fly by (the thrush migration is in full swing out in the bookdocks, fyi). I'm not going to even ask WHY anybody would do that since I would be UNABLE to fathom the app or wtfever is involved. 

thunder water ft witch tears + I need a manicure

Selling witch tears on Etsy I COULD do, but it takes longer to fill a vial than you'd think. I'd have to charge $$$$.

So, back to lighting candles (currently St Michael, protect priests 🤷🏻‍♀️) and pulling the card of the day, with the intention to follow its advice. If I understand it. Which I do not. 

Card of the day

I know all that this card could mean, as I do the Lovers card, I just truly do not see how it applies. My heart hurts not overflows. I've pulled this card re the Priest but in that context the hand is God's, over which I have even less control than anything else. All I can think is WORK ON PLUMBING cz that looks like a tub sorta (?)

Let's try the other decks, anatomy and erotica. Same card. Any insights? 

the "true" part

the "patient" part, appropriate for a medical deck

Maybe I should make love potions made of thunder water and witch tears while sitting in a tub. It's not a terrible concoction idea if I put it together with 'patient' and 'true' intentions, I guess. But I can't envision making anyone pay$ me for that. Everyone deserves love and honesty and patience for free, no?

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). When you see others struggling, your instinct is to step in and help without hesitation. Allow yourself the same grace when you're the one having a hard time. Helping is a privilege — don't deny someone theirs.

[thought image removed]

The shower plumbing is fucked, was fucked and the winter killed it, the water runs through the wall onto the ground, delaying my retreat by a week. Standing there with the apologetic plumber, I thought something like "help me" and asked him how much more expensive would it be to add a hot/cold on the outside too, like for a hot bath, a hot tub for one? Since he has to take that wall out to fix it anyway? "There's a bush right there, though." I'll take care of that, I'll figure out the platform, the tub part. "How about $300?" Sold.

How the hell will I do that? A puzzle for my mind to occupy itself.

🤔

Still no song, though I've caught myself humming light me up I'm wasted in the dark sometimes.

Keep going. That's all. One hour, and then another.

Right before her thesis defense Friday night, the grad student texted to make sure I was going to be okay. Nebraska had not told EVERYONE, just her and the other attractive women (and by extension EVERYONE) that he had dumped me. That day. The day when what ACTUALLY happened, was happening THEN in realtime, was my chair calling me to tell me that my department had been closed down. So I had to do a job I don't have, a thesis defense for a grad program I'm not employed by, with Priest and Nebraska and like 10-12 people, all looking at me like I'm a "toxic asset". And I put myself through it for 2 humiliating hours, because it was not her fault. 

I texted her back: "of course I'm not okay, nobody is! lol"

Make a joke to disarm the harm. It didn't disarm it for me, though. That man will never put a hand on me again unless I am forced into prostitution. I'm recording that here and now so that if he ever appears on this blog again, I won't have to spell that out.

"I could hide here and discover what I am supposed to become. How do I use my gifts, now that I am closed for business? What is this body for?" ~The Antidote, Karen Russell 

waiting on the plumber to open the hide-out 

No song. I have passed into the hopeless depression stage of grief. 

I either have forgotten how to pull through or now there is just too much stacked against my abilities to do so. 

"voyager ft I can't keep going"

tell me how - loryn taggert