my mother dragged me here, seemed so kinda 🤷🏽‍♀️ at the time, ok ok I easily agreed, instructed me not to let go 

of this day in particular, she was very fond, twas the art of the photos by half I suspect, she is nothing if not a sucker for beauty and joy. but for me, I am more of promises made, she hammered home, that is who I am regardless, with full faith in me 

and then she let go

I didn't understand at all that is what she was doing 😪

and now I think shit like "you can at least deal w the kid's cat, daddy up" and I don't say much 🤷🏽‍♀️

I write. I follow a cat. it leads me where it leads me. now I can only find one very dated article following this trail because it does not want to be "followed" and "liked" very deliberately. of these eruptions of new life/lives, my goddess of authors is cavalier. she rewrites foundational characters "every chance she gets" and she often just "wants to keep going" (with one) and makes changes to do so. loops around in time. it's dizzying to follow this way, to try to make a straight line in retrospect that resists all attempts to do that. life erupted over and over, blasting this one life force, Lulu, all over in bits but also weaving her (slinking) through everything, a side piece and a scrap and a passing thought, but surfacing like a touchstone holding threads together that otherwise have no stable narrative thread through umpteen stories told and yet to be told.

The archive doesn't merely preserve what happened. It remains alive enough to change what the story is. Do you understand how rare of a "problem" that is? it's sooooo nerdy it has a an audience of one who for some reason believes herself to be important lol. 

so okay. it's just a story like any other. I remember bc she made me hang on tight to it again. I look at it objectively and wonder WHY? seriously, what was she was so intent on? I can no longer ask her, and frankly don't want her to recall it. I'd rather see it for myself. 

obviously, right off, we're all still alive. 

younger, but that doesn't seem very relevant (to me). I mean, that doesn't seem like what my mother was pointing at.

we are all SMILING - for what was the first and last time like this (everybody but the kids still unborn). from all over, every friend, every estrangement, every body, all (re)made on one day into a rare pure collective joy that my mother doesn't want to be the only one who remembers.

and when I look again, I understand: I don't want to be the only one carrying this shit either.  

and I know what the standard jaded response is: people always smile at weddings. but no, they really don't. I've been to plenty of weddings that felt like a divorce waiting to happen. Some of them in the courthouses they are going to land back at in a heartbeat lol. Way more weddings are like pre-funerals than not ime. 

I think in part it was because I was the girl least likely to do this, call Everyone to order for it, any of it. I blew glitter out my ass shamelessly ONCE.

and so everyone was happy at least ONCE.

my cat, lol

my dad

in real life, I think my mom wanted to gin me up to blow glitter out my ass like a bubble machine so she could check out. seriously.

in real life, what else fell out of this book, sitting at home next to my bed, is a letter dated a year ago from my psychiatrist that says I can no longer keep working, my ptsd is too severe for my workplace, it is a danger to me. no glitter. best I could do is endure it another whole year, all of it, anyways. 

Augusts, ooooof. they're a lot.

I dunno. Honestly 🤷🏽‍♀️. I am not my mom, so I'm straining to understand why this particular. Best guess: she wanted me to only remember the best parties of life, strenuously desired that outcome

But what I see is me asking: What authority does what happened later have over what was alive then/tomorrow? Like, literally how does that work? 

Sunshine

I still wear this lol, slip dresses are back, w boots of course