wantdog

by the end, I wanted to leave most of the novel there on a shelf passively building time with Scrabble. THERE is home. not that cabin. we have been smitten with other cabins and even a lodge a couple times. what that cabin has is access to my pond husband, the one who has remained, through all my thicks and thins. every time I let him go, I pray over him, offer tobacco, make my wish to see him again. but now I know I will, even if the cabin is withheld, I always will sink into him again someday as long as my legs can carry me there through the forest. and my legs will. we usually take the iconic yearly treepose shot on the last day, when hiking has made me strong enough to balance in stillness despite disorienting moving water giving me no fixed point, but this year I could do it on day 1 and did it many many times. I don't have to "walrus" my way onto the dock, I can lift and roll to standing, a proper gymnastesque dismount. we took 'the shot' on the shore of my lake boyfriend (13th), across from the beach I swam from to the spot I was standing, a half mile away. in all these ways, it felt like going home. going home to the body I was used to having before fertility treatments and a lot of self abuse since. home to stringy muscles just under my skin all over, except for my pear pop 🍐 still filling back in a bit but nearly plumb. home to where I remember where every road goes, how pond trails end, which ones have too many flies, which ones go up before they go down and which ones go down before they go up. I've driven its roads and ogled its farmhouses. if it's a no motor lake or a reclusive pond, I've swum in it. 29th pond is my heartest of hearts. but I've loved a whole bunch of them, and I intend to love more.

(now I'm back in Vegas, and it feels like a nice enough place to live atm - plop)

Ears said it was his best Tawista ever, and all there was was that, us talking about writing. I bought us leather journals. economically, it seems like there's nothing left there except artists. everything else is boarded up and we wondered how anyone is making a living. did Blowhard sell the trees?? there are a LOT of lumber trucks. even Tops only had one person working, and in each of the two times we went there, that one person (older man, jaundiced) told us he was about to quit (fuck it). but artisans of every kind - mosaic makers, blacksmith, tattoo artists, glass blowers, leather workers, riverwater whiskey brewers - that's what's there now. so the journals were none two alike. I got one that was so me, and then he picked one that was so him. and we talked about writing, which really is talking about everything. I have taken Ears there every single year of his entire life. EVERY YEAR OF HIS BREATHING LIFE. I have taken all of the rest of the kids except the newest babe there (yet). they have all been baptized in dacks water, with the oxygen bubbles tickling their growing limbs. but Ears more than anyone has that green air woven into his blood. and when we feel homesick, which we agree we both very often do (ouch), we've decided there's/that's mostly what we mean. it's not just a place, although it's a beautiful place. it's not just that cabin, ever never changed. it's a feeling. the way there, memory layers rather than just pools and weighs you down there. it's a feeling that all of the feelings can be felt all at once, cohering, like the muscles that are rebuilding themselves under my skin.

home builds you up, not tears you down. like gesso. like collage. like narratives until there is a There there.

Those layers are our art. What we make. That's what is most important. What complex Feeling are we trying to Make of ourselves and how?

we talked about many ways in which we're going to change what we're doing here to *build* up. example (of many) - I am going to pack his lunches again. sometimes, I'll write little notes to tuck inside them, like the little angel that I left hanging on his rearview that says he's never alone, which he's not. I bought that for myself in 2014 when I needed to hear it, and it's been hanging there ever since, "as cheesy as it is" he does look at it. I've been trying not to climb up his ass, thinking he reallllly needs to learn how to buy a house now before it's too late, but biting my tongue-thoughts back.

(god damn, I bite-back so much) (you have no idea)

It was such a liberation to us both for him to say, "I want you to climb as far up my ass as you can get" hahaha. You spend fifteen dollars a day on lunch at Tim Horton's, I tried not to exclaim (!) I've wanted to pack your lunch for several years but I didn't want to infantilize you, I tell him. It's clearly an upsetting thought to me, he understands. I won't feel fucking infantilized, he says, I'll feel fed because that's how food fucking works, and we laugh.

mostly we laughed and laughed and laughed. even though at one point, we thought we might be at war.

(a HUGE military plane flew over us so low it cast a shadow the size of the fucking pond. we were both reading. I called thru the wall, are we at war do you think? he was reading about nuclear war and had just gotten to doomsday planes, as if he'd summoned one. we both decided we'd rather keep reading and writing than know)

I don't really want to be writing what I'm writing except that I'm writing much more than he is and he wants to be writing what he's writing but he's not writing nearly as much as I am. So we tried thought experiments of other subjects.

My favorite was the "unabomber tinder" - like, might that dude's whole life have gone differently if he could have gotten laid, but how could you/he? you'd have to use a CB radio or maybe it's a short wave of radio - ?? - I'm not sure how technology works - CB's like you call a trucker to get laid?, how does that turn out well? Or short wave would seem to run into a mountain, no? Its name would suggest that it only goes a short distance and might run into a mountain. HAMM radio (!), I shout out, tho I'm not sure I'm spelling that right, but I think that's the one that goes to space and let's you maybe sex chat someone in a russian gulag (?). But even if that's right, how does that really improve the life of a unabomber? It might even make it worse if you think about it? Sex chatting with the enemy or aliens or whatever? Besides, they made him do lsd in college, everyone knows that, that's why he lived in an a cave or whatever. seriously? wait, they made him into an LLM human prototype?! that totally explains my students' writing style now vis a vis a NYT manifesto (oof, so boring). Ears says, look, if you were in a really rural place like this, you would just go to the bar and the first person that you saw was it, that's how tinder works. but there's no bar (!), I point out. okay, you go to the first *wherever* and the first person you see is it. but the only thing every single town has in common is a tiny post office with one person in it. she did seem really grateful that we came in to buy stamps, he says, shrugging apologetically as if it would insult her. and I have to admit she did thank us three times for buying two stamps. but every unabomber can't use that tinder, otherwise it'd be, like, post office bukakke (sp??) - (aside, do you remember when her gma asked TJ to explain what a bukakke was? yes, I do) - I mean, not that there's anything wrong with that - not kinkshaming - I'm just saying I'm not sure the logistics would work, not to mention the narrative arc. Ears says, the story is called "Your Cave or Mine?" - at that point, we just can't stop laughing long enough to breathe, and we shelve the idea along with the past tense chunks of my novel.