VIRGO It's mighty fine when the game is good enough on its own, but that won't always be the case. When it's not, you have to BE the fun. What you bring to the table will make the intolerable thing tolerable.

Bonus track: Snort. 

We must risk delight.
We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness
In the ruthless furnace of this world.
~Jack Gilbert

(Who is we? And where can I find them?)

Welcome to Your Life - Grouplove

One must move on.

Lonely.

Picturing Love - July Talk

Fuck. She was fine a fucking minute ago! Damn.

Tonight was orchestra for TJ. The last kid in the nest. His father showed up and sat next to me, the empty chair and all so finefine. His nameless eternal hostility toward me seeped sideways through my skin - what is that?? Was always there, who knows, I found it potentially sexy once but godnonopenopenope. I left at the break after TJ's part.

When TJ got home, first thing he asked about was Aaron. His current chest cold and his dog. I took a deep breath. Said Aaron has a new Whatever again, so I am irritated and trying not to count on seeing him much but ok I will ask about the dog if (when) he surfaces. TJ, knowing what to do with disappointment and pain, gets funny. "Has he got a new south buffalo 90's prom queen runner up?" Sigh. "Tiffanny Lin (you have to spell it wrong to make it stick)?" Sigh, ya, something like that. "A Samanthony?" gigglegigglegigle omg Samanthony. Slayed me. Hahahaha

Samhain. Thank you to all the nasty women in my blood. So many and so necessarily tough as fuck or we wouldn't be here still. Help me, if you will, guide me forward. The world is melting. I am worried not only for our own children but for everyone's. I worry all the time. ALL THE FUCKING TIME, I worry. I worry for our thoughts, our MINDS most of all, collectively shrunk to hostile grasping need of dinner and fear. Who can think let alone read books in the face of that? I worry about our desires, marginalized and made brutal as a result. Who can afford to love on anyone anymore honestly, without shame? I worry about money, so much worry about money always all the time. I was hemmed in by cultural ignorance and poverty. Those were surmountable. Now the generation of my kids and students are hemmed in by education defined by skills that have planned obsolesce built in, and debt debt debt which is poverty prostituted forever. Who can serve anything but their immediate needs, selfish essentially in the face of that desperocity? I am one of the lucky. I got up and out. No one owns me. And I can afford to educate and keep and feed my own. On this Samhain, I invoke and entreat my dead peeps: help me know what best to do with what I have, this privilege in this place and time, for myself and the greatest good. S.M.I.B.

VIRGO Your verbal acumen might make its way into costume form with a punny suit-up. It's fun to figure out how you might embody the Whip and Nae Nae or Jon Snow White.

nasty

I remember. I used to drive back and forth to WI frequently and when I did I would look at every off ramp and wonder what it would be like to just get off and start a life as if mid step, like jumping into double Dutch, as if I had always been someone else.

I keep thinking about that. But in reverse. What if I jumped into my own life as if I were someone else? Someone who knew exactly what to make of it.

wintersleep - the great detachment (spirit)

The square of Venus and Neptune is an opportunity. On the surface this can be like a dark cloud passing over your dreams, obscuring your original idea and dampening your drive. But there's a silver lining that could reignite your drive, too. It's the obstacle that makes you realize how badly you really want it, or don't, as the case may be.

 Bonus track  I love the one about hair conditioner.

"We know what the world wants from us. We know we must decide whether to stay small, quiet, and uncomplicated or allow ourselves to grow as big, loud, and complex as we were made to be. Every girl must decide whether to be true to herself or true to the world. Every girl must decide whether to settle for adoration or fight for love. There on the bed..."- Love Warrior: A Memoir, Glennon Doyle Melton

My hometown. I wonder if Mark is still lingering, watching and shaking his head. WI must be real shit show right about now.

Meanwhile speaking of places and spaces and ways that are better off in rearview, I gotta get the hang.

This time kept the toys.

VIRGO As for a certain relationship: Your options are to go on, or to stop. Sometimes you can go on and stop at the same time, which is what you're doing when you don't make a clear choice. 

Yup. 

VIRGO You're a masterful organizer and your flawless logic in this regard will be executed to perfection. Still, the wild gypsy in your soul wants to be free — of possessions, psychic bonds and other people's definitions.

lunar eclipses call our bullshit (bring it)

This lunar eclipse represents an emotional shake-up. Ultimately, great things could be inspired by this pattern-interrupt of the Pisces full moon. If no one answers the first door, move to the next and knock with confidence. Resilience is the gift that comes with not taking rejection personally. When it's right, it clicks in. Until then, keep going.

"...he understood now what adult love could be. Something where two people did not merge so completely that they had trouble figuring out where one ended and the other began, but rather the joining of two strong, separate beings, creating a future rather than trying, over and over, to redo the past...."

"Of course it had all been bullshit." ~Eleven Hours, Pamela Erens

This is a beautiful book. I was too sad and upset today to go to work, called sick to read. (Reading, where I go when there is no other way out, as my shrink observes, makes admirable use of my coping skills - they look just like talents.) The story is about a woman in labor and her nurse. The father of the child cheated on the woman and she took her fetus and left him. She escapes the birthing room and wanders alone around the hospital, remembering him in the nearness of other men when they pass her, savoring her lonliness that she has grown used to. But she has this nurse to consider. To help her. Who will not leave her alone ever again after that.

 "“I need to know that you are all right at all times," says the nurse." Ah! Lore is ashamed! That you are all right. At all times. Lore has been uncooperative, ungrateful! Who else has made this offering to her—that you are all right at all times? Who else has taken this on as their duty?"

 I find the story very moving, and well wrought, the medical details, hospital smells, glimpses of lives through doorways. So I keep reading. Though it is occasioning unfortunate feelings of self-pity. I can't help reflecting that in my world, there is no nurse. Even if I were to need it, especially if I were to need it, there would be nowhere and nobody to whom I could run to care or shelter me. No matter how deep the cut, I will save myself somehow or bleed out.

VIRGO The more you love, the more willing you are to suffer for love. There have been times, in fact, when suffering and love were synonymous. [they aren't?] And now for something radically different — temperate, easygoing stability. 

 If fucking only.

VIRGO On whom can you depend? As emotionally close as you may feel to someone, practical matters must be assessed in practical terms. Reassess your support system, based on the evidence of recent behavior.

"Screw your courage to the sticking place.
And we will not fail."  
 ~Shakespeare

(or don't)

What the?

Watching this old HBO series (Oz) with TJ. In the context of the plot, that bit is inspired (!) Bonus track

word

VIRGO Every relationship has a status quo. You've changed, and the basic nature of your relationships must change, too. The norms that used to be fine with you are no longer satisfactory.