heart stop - the revivalists

if I were a grown up chicken, I'd be pedo #chicklonging

Grit novel, Ch XIII

Trying to imagine other than the current haphazard halfassed halfblind halfhearted indifference being shoveled at me like shit turds. 

no springtime - allison russell

tell me whats on your mind - the decemberists

went with the red leather after all

 

"I believed this was my destiny: for a plane to recognize me as his soulmate mid-flight and, overcome with passion, relinquish his grip on the sky, hurtling us to earth in a carnage that would meld our souls for eternity.... whichever plane would finally recognize my worth and claim me as his bride in orgasmic catatrophe. ~Sky Daddy, Kate Folk

I never thought of that. #lackofimagination 

 

sad plane

"Grown-ups are not good at masking their concerns, although they can hide their delight and curiosity surprisingly well. Whereas with children it is the other way round. Children can tactfully mute their anxiety and conceal their sorrow, but will struggle not to express their excitement. That is what growing up means, in some simple way: learning to repress all expressions of pure happiness and joy."

There are Rivers in the Sky, Elif Shafak

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). For security guards, a good part of the job is just staying awake. So they do the rounds, walk the perimeters, do system checks. It gives a signal to themselves and the world — we care, we protect, we're ready.

YOU OKAY? 

#moresilence #ouch

card of the day, a fave.
welp. all that is true again now - place, kids, animals, coins enough, as promised 🙏 - and my mother will be back soon to fuss the flowers. I dunno who that dude is, or if he walks this earth at all; if he exists, he's gonna have to find me 

The Hermit

can you get to that? - mavis staples

grit reading / haiku assignment

"In the end, perhaps what separates one individual from another is not talent but passion. And what is passion if not a restlessness of the heart, an intense yearning to surpass your limits, like a river overflowing its banks?" ~ There are Rivers in the Sky

happy haiku day 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You express the poetry of your soul through thoughtful care and elegant precision. You notice what needs tending and quietly restore harmony. Haiku: Morning dew on wheat. A careful hand mends the seam. Order hums softly.

"constancy" 

assignment: write a haiku of you, holding together a wee 17 syllables

With the new moon in Aries simmering in your eighth house of intensity and sharing today, you could soon feel ready to get up close and personal with a new love paramour. Or you might strengthen your bond with bae and try out some new tricks (or toys) in the boudoir. Mercury, Mars, Saturn and Neptune are all gathered in this zone, prompting you to dive deep into strong emotions and transform something that’s been lurking in your psyche. Seek out the resources you need.

(the suitcase from the cottage under the bed atm?)

welp, I am doing nooo thinking so this makes sense, everything rn is below my neck. I took up hot interval weight training - HOT room, 110 degrees and humid, I do that then 30 min break to cool down, then a bikram class = 3 hours total. after all that, there is *no thought*, just an increasing awareness of my musculature such that I could probably pinch a dick clean off inside me if I did think about it 

hot and hard good

love is such a hard thing - noah derksen

bonus cover me up - morgan wallen same song, another voice

I'm gonna miss you - noah dierkson

cover me up - colton nordvic jason isbell cover (original is better), I love this song. short

weed dog biscuits for thunder-fear #thoughtlent

not voyager, artemis 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). If it doesn't have a solution, it's not a problem. How long should you mull a thing around in your mind before you decide it's unsolvable? Twenty minutes. If nothing comes to mind, reintroduce that thing next week.

guess I'll take the week off

#thoughtlent

the worry about him sits like a hot stone right on my ribcage. I am feeling it now because I am too weak not to because I spent all my weaponized fine on sunshine today and I have none left. 

Weaponized fine. sounds like a potential chapter title, doesn't it? it's when you have to be always fucking fine to the point that you are nuclear fucking fine. I'm so fine, it'd make your head spin.  since approximately that obit search which we'll repeat tomorrow night when Ears comes over for dinner inevitably.

welp. if the goal was to discourage me from wanting to fuck him ever, that has been accomplished. which only proves it didn't really have much to do with that in the first place since that doesn't do anything to remove this stone of worry. 

I am flummoxed by man's inability to see women as whole things. there's always a just before the word girl. I would bet my life that he would not let joe worry because he has not fucked Joe and that is just a fucking cunt hair off from a woman in that dude's case 🤨 and yet. 

I should text that dude and see if he's worried. if he ain't worried then definitely there's nothing to worry about, he's just treating me like a girl. but I can't do that. can't or won't. won't.

sunshine says I'm a sucker. "if they's blocking you, they just on a bender, that's all" 

I don't think the word just belongs before the word drinking any more than it belongs before the word girl in his case. 

he has stressed to me over and over that he is hanging by a thread over Dead - that isn't me being hysterical, that's him telling me that and demanding that I believe him

now I feel forced to have the thought experiment that I've outlived him. 

I am trying to figure out how in the world this hot heavy stone on my chest could be a good thing because I'm stuck with it and I don't want to feel anything I don't want to feel which is like this. maybe I could learn to think of it like a cat, no claws unless I try to move it so I leave it alone (?)

I dunno what to do or think or feel about anything except dying is bad let's try to avoid it - that's it - and even that now I gotta be like "or not, cool either way"

I hate to admit defeat but 

I'm scared. leaving me nbd he always does that 🙄. leaving me alive = leaving me for dead. that's different

"....every displaced person understands that uncertainty is not tangential to human existence but the very essence of it. Since one can never be sure what tomorrow will bring, one cannot trust Dame Fortuna—the goddess of destiny and luck—even when she seems to favor you for once. One needs to always be prepared for a crisis, calamity or sudden exodus. Being an outsider is all about survival, and no one moves foward by holding back." There Are Rivers in The Sky

if I was a cowboy - miranda lambert  

off to forage the Falls for Sunshine - her address is not one I'm hesitant to show up at like it or not, I. Do. Not. Give. A. Fuck.

If I was a cowboy, I'd be the queen

Woah-oo-woo, woah-oo-woo

Sittin' pretty on the prairie, baby
I'm your Huckleberry...

found her - 45 min to Singer Farms and 45 min back, wawawa the whollllle time (ok, barf it up and outa there some more, I gocthu) (sigh) (how does anyone come back to the living and hold at least? there has to be a way, we've still got thriving to do yet 🤦🏻‍♀️ even someone whose name is SUNNY ACTUALLY can see no light, it's like I'm living with everybody's ghost and finally, I'm like, fine we're already dead. I accept 🙄 whatever. but. if so, then there's nothing to lose and I'm back to stomping around. it's dis-heart-ening. we've all cried so
o god damn much)  and I got a Grav Gandolfini

Jim Beam stopped production for a year (The Great Sobering Up, called it)

Grit, a novel

ch 11 "Velocity"

For every 3-4 "up critiques" like these, the editor sends 20 suggestions for improvement, mostly having to do with my tendency to write very densely. Sometimes I do get tangled up in claws/clauses. And then it makes suggestions for where the plot might go next that I never take, and in fact I rule them out. There is no plot. I just write and rewrite until the changes I make add up to a pattern that is recognizeable so that I myself can see what/how I am thinking. 

not true, there is just some truth in it; we forged a ride-or-die pact of recovery, that is why not "want"; that ride had ejector seats 🤷🏻‍♀️

It's a beautiful day. I was going to go outside and play, but it's still so cold 🥶. So I collaged the Empress card, then let this chapter bubble up into its words. Full on Virgo, all I did was make sense (art) today.

It doesn't have to be pure joy all the time, obviously. But like a really beautiful lie has to have some truth in it, this shit has to have some joy in it. And the darker the time, the sharper that joy has to become. 

You’re in full-on Virgo mode this weekend. (uh oh). You're thankful to be out of survival mode, but the lessons you learned there still apply, and you can conjure the vibe when you need to. (on a dime) You focus intently on what matters. All else shrinks to its proper size.

no springtime - allison russel ft joy oladokun & julie williams 

"when the Empress card appears, it is an invitation to take care of what is most important to you in a joyful loving way."

[image removed]

her name is Blanche

they took 6k off and threw in a towhitch and took the wrangler back as-is, and I still needed to pick up summer overtime (while at the dealership) to bridge the over budget I went (it is nice to have bosses who love me at the moment, I even got an uncomplicated straight-up "I love you" over the phone to boot), but the important part is it's over 

"pants off ft it's spring"

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DUwdQHYDpvP/?igsh=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

lit another one "Exceed Expectation Harder (Please)"

my bed is so full of kids and dogs right now that a cal king be too small lol, one dog and one kid take turns using my ass as a pillow

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Relationships bring out your creativity, and that's why people find you so fetching. You don't just show up hoping to fill the role; you show up with the burgeoning creative energy to make it your own.

What the fuck have I been saying all along? This is the apocalypse, both personal and global. The only good thing about an apocalypse is nothing has to be anything it has been before. It doesn't even have to be called a word that already exists. And that's not just for romance (the most annoying of categories), it goes for every kind of relationship. I always thought that way, inclined that way, but now it's a belief. 

There is no part of me that wants to go back to the past anywhere in it. I look back and pull out of the rubble the memory diamonds that got created in the pressures, that's all. 

I want to look ahead of me the same way my mom would look at a blank wall. Excited for the possibilities of a million little choices of beauty. Mulling where she'll put the first stroke. And then the second. When she does that, everybody comes running to watch or to pick up a paintbrush, and she's universally enthusiastic about folding in what shows up and letting it change what becomes. 

training season - dua lipa

the girliest pickup I have ever seen in real life 🤣 I had only ever seen them online 🤣 I could also try out the honda ridgeline, but because of the chevy silverado song, I thought that might be too nate-adjacent existentially. and I have to give them credit for listening to me about my mom and bringing me the one with the step ups already installed. I do like it a lot when people are just plain ol nice

Limited: 2.5L Turbocharged engine, Standard AWD, 5,000 lbs towing (reading about it 🧐)

Grit, a novel

ch 10 "Testing a Theory" 

Grit, a novel

ch 9 "Not Even Nate"

my inner butterknife! she who weilds words like God's kind-ish cleaver, may I grow up to be more like 🙏

He has asked me to stop giving a shit. That is what blocking only me can only mean. And I can only do what I've always done in the face of that ask. Go to space. 

I realized I was in space again when we googled his name for an obit on Monday, something I used to do all the time but haven't done in years. I haven't had to assume that's the only way I would find out. But it is again now. 

I really hated that obit search. #trigger

"I love you never doubt that."

>something is missing here<

"If I die, the newspaper will let you know eventually."

I do not doubt the love, actually, as uhhm amorphous as it is. But see how the space between those two sentences is a wtf lacuna? What can any sane person do with that space? I tried filling it with a novel of options, vixen to cousin to fucking auntie, because what do I have but words? That's why I have to mean things. Try hard to find the right words. Why I spill so many, trying.

But the space between those two sentences is a void. And I spin off into it, as requested, every time, sending smoke signals back. All The Verities of Nothing, A Thorough Study of Emptinesses.

In space, words don't matter as much as grit.

her: well hello

me: it's her candle (cocking my head in Sunshine's direction)

her: she didn't even pray

me: she has no faith left, that seems like a you problem

her: and you're just all good?

me: yup. I'm grateful everybody is still breathing, that's all. everybody who is still breathing. say hi to my dad 😪 if that's allowed. 

her: your dad, wow

me: hahahaha I'll bet, it's almost scary to imagine him with wings now on top of everything else, I'm sure he's workin' it 

her: he stays awful close to you...and you know it, and you armed him

me: yes. and yes, I did. both my parents love me a LOT, even though they did it in batshit ways I am very grateful, but my dad....

her: loves you most, maybe loves you only 

me: yes 😪, and for my sister and mother, well (siiiiiiiigh), but it doesn't matter anymore, there's no point arguing with angels. my dad was an excellent hunter, I trusted him to make the shot if a shot needed to be made

her: that logic makes sense only in this one particular. barely.

me: welp I feel like at this point I really just need to accept the wtf - you can see everything so look behind my eyes, what do you see there?

her: I see only a candle flame 

me: yep.

Then I stood up and strode back through the church the same way I came in, stomping, the noise of my boots on marble ringing off the walls, all eyes watching me but I did.not.give.a.fuck, I liked the way it sounded and stomped harder, dragging Sunshine and her tears out of there, back to the living by her hair, stomping down the street with my skirt whipping around me in the cold, her squealing ok ok slow down... 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Today's quick fix only really works if it makes sense for tomorrow, too. You're looking ahead to make your future life sweeter. The long line of tomorrows that will be impacted by today's decision are worth heavier consideration. 

I dunno what to do with that. #playmeasong 

#playmeasonggame aint no love in oklahoma - luke combs welp, there ain't no love in Nebraska either brother

What exceeded my expectations today was getting a personal phone call from some v p and ending up with one of these little pickup trucks being delivered to my driveway on Thursday just for me to try it out. And if I want it, I can have it, and they're gonna take the wrangler, and that'll be that. I don't want to count my chickens and I wish it were blue, but I would be satisfied with that outcome. They were certainly exceedingly nice to me, that dude and then the director of sales for the district so I can have any one of them I want, whatever I want. And that is my favorite thing. I love getting what I want. And I really am into it when everyone seems happy with the outcome that I want also, which they certainly seem to be happy about it and I am very happy about it. We were all great friends by the end of those phone calls. That probably means I could have been a much bigger cunt. But I didn't want to be a cunt. I just wanted a little pickup truck. Now please. I had to ask a bunch of times and be very, very patient and not lose my temper and get only a tiny bit cunty finally (fairly so). That's the upside of the constance thing. I'll just stand there all fucking day forever (armscrossy). I was always like that but now I just do. not. give. a. fuck. I do not want to be made to feel any shitty thing I don't want to feel unless there is a very fucking good reason (like you're fucking dying), so I was a constant pain in the legal ass. Until finally "Justin" (nate adjacent) felt my pain. He got to feel good about having the power to write my lease problems away. And I got to feel gushingly grateful. 

All gushing is good. 

Then Sunshine and I hit the basilica. She is still cryyyying. For mannnnnny months. And I get it. Very much. But. No. I dunno, I just. No. When you're standing in shit, don't sit down. So. I let her have my candle (gave her my wish). Then we shook it off getting wings. Loganberry, who knew? 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You've been disappointed in the past and you know how to soften the social tension when that happens. But have you learned what you do when relationships exceed your expectations? (no) You'll figure that one out today.

When Ears was here last night, we ran through the options and agreed that the best case scenario is he's being an asshole. We're hoping for asshole. 

So I don't know what this horoscope is talking about, but my bar is set at being able to be an asshole (breathing). Loooots of room to exceed my expectations.

"truth or dare" - I can do both, can you do either?

update: Someone just taught me how to do a check, so I now know he's not dead, just being an asshole (to me specifically). Bar met. For his sake I am very relieved. But. "If you call twice in a row, I will always pick up" is the last promise.

section next: living fully broken

Today is the end of lent. I wanted to quit blah blahing here because it's a one way street, and talking to yourself is either fiction or psychosis, so I decided on fiction for a spell. 

I spent the better part of a month privately writing my way around corners. I thought up new solutions from which to choose. #shareyourgrit 

But.

For much of 2024-25   it's over. 

In the face of increased helplessness, the disempowered turn to magic. They always have.  

Libation, a large bottle of benedictine, a prayer candle lighted and melted into it, poured at the feet of Mary. Prayer. What is prayer if not an attempt at magic? 

TJ says that if I had a nickname, it would be Constancy. 

I make The Dip.

I write and I think, and I teach, and I make the dip, and I never change my phone number. And I'll always keep doing that shit.

Word lent taught me a new definition for love: being okay with never being okay. To live that out and make some new wild beauty of it. As long as everybody keeps breathing. (Are you breathing??)

brave - ruston kelly

This photograph has nothing to do with anyone but me.

scared

 

✍️

 

the Hanged man

[image removed]

dont fret - slow leaves 

Write things down. It will magically aid with remembering, forgetting, processing and poeticizing. magic ✍️

grit class reading

 

poetry to balance manifesto(s) (discussion: writing itself as a way)

grit class reading

"I refuse to push my body to the brink of exhaustion and destruction. Let the chips fall where they may. I trust myself more than capitalism."

"Everything always starts with the personal...The microhistories and small details of our lives hold the keys to our redemption."  

"Survival is not the end goal for liberation. We must thrive."

"I’m inspired by remixing and being subversive. I am inspired by disruption and tenderness. I am inspired by imagination. I am inspired by grief, mourning, and lament. I believe deeply in vulnerable, generative spaces for healing. I am inspired by rest, daydreaming, and sleep...Rest is radical."

"I wish you rest today. I wish you a deep knowing that exhaustion is not a normal way of living. You are enough. You can rest. You must resist anything that doesn’t center your divinity as a human being. You are worthy of care." (a handy incantation)

Rest as Resistance:A Manifesto

I'm not for everyone - bros osbourne 

"how to collapse"

it's not your fault - slow leaves

VIRGO Real life is no melodrama. The dimple-chinned hero will not show up to save the maiden strapped to the railroad track. 

full Pink moon in Libra (balance)

change my mind (acoustic) - riley green