12.30.23
Year-End Lists
Goodbye, 2023. What a prickly pear you turned out to be. Fingers crossed 2024 is as brilliant as a woman, as beautiful as a horse, and as friendly as a dog. Here are my phone's favorite media and other assorted '23 notables.
Favorite Read:
Plant Dreaming Deep, May Sarton
Favorite Listen:
i’m faking my own death just to get some rest, sleepingdogs
Favorite Watch:
World War II: From the Frontlines
Favorite Line:
“I like being privy to your crickets and your trees.”
Favorite New Thing:
Grounding
Favorite Realization:
I can do the dishes in increments.
12.23.23
Laughing Like Pee Wee Herman
What a funny week. I started laughing like Pee Wee for kicks. What a game changer that's been, really separates the men from the boys :) I started making commercials for house plants (Hey man, are you thirsty?). And, internet slumlords served up this informative doozy lol Until this happens... I'm just demented! I liked this week. I hope you liked it too.
12.16.23
Getting Another Year With My Best Friend
Tomorrow, Henry Dog turns 13! THIRTEEN! Last year he was a dead man. I keep thinking about the day I tried making peace with, what at the time looked like, his imminent death. I went for a walk in the woods and collected leaves and thought of all the worlds I wouldn't have seen if not for him. I thought of all he showed me, where he brought me, who he introduced me to, and I realized all I ever had to do was look to the leaves or the sky or the ocean or a rock and he'd be there doing Henry things. I think that is the imprint of loss, the marriage of life, and it's made me sincerely grateful for the past 365 days of new memory.
{
[I made this video on our one-year anniversary. Happy birthday, Henry Doggie. Eyeball <3 stew.]
12.9.23
Manson Days
They have arrived.
12.2.23
Midnight Walk Characters
In particular, the women with the missing teeth who smoke cigarettes outside the meat market who call me “honey” and Henry “paw paw.” They always ask how we’re doing and listen while I answer; they give the “head up, chin up” advice I like. I also really like Nemo and Genius (congrats on the baby). And the guy who likes electric bikes.
11.25.23
This
"I have thought for a long time now that if, some day, the increasing efficiency for the technique of destruction finally causes our species to disappear from the earth, it will not be cruelty that will be responsible for our extinction and still less, of course, the indignation that cruelty awakens and the reprisals and vengeance that it brings upon itself ... but the docility, the lack of responsibility of the modern man, his base subservient acceptance of every common decree. The horrors that we have seen, the still greater horrors we shall presently see, are not signs that rebels, insubordinate, untamable men are increasing in number throughout the world, but rather that there is a constant increase in the number of obedient, docile men."
- Georges Bernanos
11.18.23
Friend Wisdom
"Just remember: It’s all your fault and everybody does it better than you. Takes the piss out of everything.” - AD
11.04.23
3 4 1
Spilanthes Mouthwash
Elevates oral hygiene to ecstatic levels.
Truth, Courage, Strength
Experienced all three at once this week. Being aligned with women of integrity in a culture that favors the mutability of trendy attention-seekers has buoyed me. I remain inspired.
Triangle of Sadness
Watched this for the first time yesterday. It's so brilliant it's distracting. No wonder critics found fault.
10.28.23
Notes: The Morning After A Revolution
Shadow kept another year
Funny
There’s flirting and then there’s pleading
I like pleading with you
Soon there’ll be California dreaming
Nothing passes time like idle beauty
Few reach Q (Yes, V, indeed)
It’s a broken sound her body makes
My lost sister will be eternally hateful
I’ve no buoys only echoes
Adrift in a hidden place
The underground bar in Prague
Emanations from a trash heap
He separates me from my polka dot dress
Surprise makes him unforgiving
I am again belittled and dismissed
Yesterday I learned my first house is stacked
All I understand is I’m an idealist, a magnet
I have the power to destroy
Or the power to heal
I love hockey season
I love days with horses
I love Henry
I love the wildflowers planted in April that bloomed in October
I love sleeping in a hammock
I love the grace of time passing
I love aging and dying
I love difficult beauty
10.21.23
Monday's Dream
We are Billy Pilgrims unstuck in time and walking again, saying, "Hello, can you hear me?" in our heads; it's all so exciting. Your breath is steady, your reaction true, the sun is hot, I meld to you. We separate and yearn. I am in my house of glass and you stand outside. It's dark and foggy, after the rains, before the snow. You hold up a skeleton key, the bit has worn down, it can't open the door. I say, "I'll find another way." Then I woke up and said: Let's break the glass.
10.14.23
The Letter
Dear Anonymous,
Thank you for the mysterious treat.
It's been a year of few comforts;
you are a pillow.
<3
To answer your questions:
1) I’m allergic to insincerity and vanity; I've no choice.
2) No, I just like their music. For lyrics, I turn to neither / visibilities. Give the album look for yourself a listen. It's beautiful, honest, painful. I've listened to it countless times and still my heart swells and stomach drops.
3) Lol, yes... sometimes.
4) Yes, I’ve been working on one since April. It’s very large and complicated. I’ll post it here when it’s done.
5) The acceptance of moral ambiguity and the complexity of character; the necessity of intergenerational communication; and, for people to stop buying more than they need or to at least stop buying new.
6) Courage
7) The cello
8a) It was my ex-boyfriend’s. He hurt me very deeply and burning it helped me separate the fantasy of our love from the reality of his deceit.
8b) No, to be expected. Think of the harm you create. Think of the harm you endure.
9) No, I’m far too frugal.
10) I go for walks, I talk to my sister, I sit by the ocean, I take hot baths. Caring for horses helps tremendously. I also practice CBT, which keeps me from taking the same roads to nowhere.
I can’t remember what I was listening to but someone somewhere said their therapist induced a panic attack as part of their therapy session and then timed how long the attack lasted. It lasted seven minutes. Seven minutes and the feelings subsided. I like this for a lot of reasons, primarily: It is important to remember the ebb and flow of emotion, and a great power to know the duration of each.
11) My own hand when my doggie has died and my curiosity is sated.
9.30.23
Harvest Moon with Henry
9.23.23
Domino's $23.49
Clowns, jokers, and the consistency of pizza.
9.16.23
High Surf Advisory
Hello, wave. Hello, rip tide. Hello, goodbye.
9.9.23
Stranger Un-Danger
Jamey Joe, metal clerks, and bottoms up. That was something else.
9.2.23
Slumber Parties With Finn Dog
8.26.23
When Prodigy Comes On The Radio While I'm Filming A Spider Dog Friend
8.19.23
I Don't Know
It was a tough week. But one day there was a tornado and people got riled up, which excited me. And one night I sat by the ocean with my newest friend and we threw rocks out to sea and buried our bodies in sand and stared at the stars without expectation. Perhaps that's it?
Things I Love, 8.19.23: The electricity of weather and the ocean with Remi.
8.12.23
Even-Keeled
As if I’ve contracted an unknowable disease, the terms of which I can not fully understand, the greatest comfort I’ve come across is wind. Yesterday, I noticed this balancing act while suspended above water on ground as thin as pudding skin and my body racked by transformation: The violent motion raced through treetops, moved leaves around branches like scales, forced dark water to ripple white foam, lent the sail a viable paunch fit enough to carry our boat out to sea. And then there was the afternoon horizon, the heat of infinity, the golden blindness of abandonment, and the wind our direction home.
8.5.23
This Thing This Person Said
last night at the liquor store. He came in and the cashier said some "hi, how are ya" type of pleasantry and the guy said something back that negated all hope of possibility, which I found to be very funny so I laughed and he said, "She gets it! She knows!" And I had wanted to remember what he said but the store got hectic with all these people talking about the Powerball and this one guy said, "I almost won Wednesday." And the cashier said, "Oh yeah, you get a buncha numbahs?" And the guy said, "No, not a one. Close though." And then this woman said the same thing happened to Diane. "The same thing happened to Diane, she had all the numbahs but was off by one or two or three. Real close like." Then the guy from earlier reminded us of horseshoes and hand grenades and told me he liked my style.
7.29.23
Healing
I thought this would be cathartic. I thought of Wittgenstein and the limits of language. How to say what has to be shown? How to explain an experience? I sat with it. What gives a symbol life is the use we make of it.
7.22.23
Sounds In The Night
Not knowing and imagining, then knowing and imagining anyway: the motorcycle's radio is a whale.
7.15.23
The Idyllic Nature Of My Job / The Refuge Of The Farm
There are no liars and there is no famous. There are no opportunists, no broken promises, no pretense, no solicited recognition. There is no loud hustle, no manufactured importance, no greed, no revolving torchbearer of cool. When the day is stripped of these modern obsessions, what remains is the honesty of doing. The hours, though difficult, roll safely forward; peacefully and dutifully driven with the levity of a horse fart.
7.8.23
Reading Cioran
Reject medals. Steer into failure. Love the absurd. Suicide is for optimists. The only reality is silence.
7.1.23
Certain Songs
6.24.23
My Dog's Breath
It is vile and revolting, like hot garbage on soiled Kotex. But it is Henry's breath and I will miss it when he’s gone.
6.17.23
Rainy Day Ambience
An open window to a gray sky. A light on in the living room. Dim with tea. Inside busy with slow meaning; the sound of rain on leaves.
6.10.23
Surprise Hairdos
Waking up with glue in my hair. It is crunchy and bends like a sucked on ponytail.
5.20.23
Watched this last night on Kanopy. Soothed feelings of homesickness with talent, humility, doing-the-work, and grace.
forever chinatown