Apologies

Prove it, I said. Act like a partner who is sorry to have treated his wife that way over, and over, and over.

Kinds of protein

Yesterday after leaving the house at 7:30 am and skiing for so many hours at nearly 12,000 feet above sea level and clomping back to the car with skis and poles in my hands, a snowboard in his, and no food in our stomachs, we stopped at the Qdoba by the exit to eat a late lunch on the car ride home. I requested the taco salad, at which point the Qdoba employee gritted his teeth, shook his head balefully, and asked me if I had seen the notices posted on the doors and on the glass case between us, which stated that Qdoba was not currently serving romaine lettuce because the CDC had cautioned against it. I informed him that I had seen the signs, but that I would like a taco salad anyway, albeit without the lettuce. I intended to create a lunch from the ingredients still on offer that day. After wiping down the silver-sheened counter the Qdoba employee asked me which kind of rice I would like, to which I replied brown. Then he asked if I would like black or pinto beans, and I requested black. Next he asked me what kind of protein I wanted, meaning did I want chicken or steak or perhaps the other meat that I was unable to identify from behind the glass, to which I replied, trying to sound cheerful and not judgmental at all, lest the Qdoba employee think I was being in any way judgmental, Actually, I'll just have the beans.

Doing my eyebrows

For several decades I have neither felt nor expressed the desire to do my makeup, including the desire to learn how to do my makeup in the first place. Yet this week I found myself watching YouTube tutorials about doing your eyebrows, and a couple days after that I had added two eyebrow-related makeup products to an online cart and proceeded to purchase them. One of the products is an eyebrow pencil, and according to the tutorials I am meant to draw the shape of an eyebrow -- any eyebrow shape I want, though I'm advised to create a particular shape if I want to complement the shape of my face, which, according to a chart I found, is either square, round, long, oval, or heart-shaped, and it is further advised that determining the right eyebrow aesthetic for my face shape and my particular brows is based on a rather complex series of measurements from the inside of my eyebrow to the outside of my nostril and from the outside of my nostril diagonally across my eye to wherever that line abuts my eyebrow -- around my existing eyebrow, and then use a special tool to smudge the eyebrow pencil into my actual eyebrow hairs so it looks my newly shaped eyebrows are filled with hairs even though it they partially filled with eyebrow pencil. According to a Buzzfeed article entitled "10 Tips for Beginners That'll Make Your Eyebrows Fleeker Than Fleek," I am supposed to use a special tool to comb my eyebrow hairs upward before lining them in eyebrow pencil, but because I am new to all this and the YouTube tutorials that I watched prior to purchasing eyebrow-related makeup products didn't stipulate that this tool was a necessity for doing one's eyebrows, I have not purchased an eyebrow brush, and I'm not sure if I will, because I am not yet sure whether I intend to continue doing my eyebrows. The second makeup product that I purchased is meant to be used immediately after lining my eyebrows with eyebrow pencil. Depending on the source you consult, this product is simply called eyebrow gel, or, possibly, a spoolie. When I consulted the Buzzfeed article after purchasing my eyebrow-related makeup products, I was at first dismayed to read that a spoolie is an essential piece of equipment in anyone's toolkit of eyebrow starter essentials, because I had purchased an eyebrow pencil and eyebrow gel, but, to my knowledge, I had failed to purchase a spoolie. Imagine my relief when I did some more research and discovered that eyebrow gel and a spoolie seem to be two terms for the same product: a sort of tiny mascara brush for the brows. Twice now I have attempted to use my new eyebrow pencil and eyebrow gel, the first "actual" makeup that I've ever attempted aside from some eye shadow at high school dances and the eighth grade formal, with mixed results. On the first instance I neglected to conduct the series of measurements recommended before applying eyebrow products for the first time, and I swiped the eyebrow pencil and gel too far down along the outside of my eye, creating a kind of upside down "U" shape from the inner edge of my brows to the far outer corner of my eye. I did not repeat this mistake a second time, making sure to finish lining my eyebrows and using my spoolie before reaching the section of my brows that curves downward from the bony arch of my eye socket. The results, I think, were more successful, at least according to the standards established by the YouTube tutorials and the Buzzfeed article. Even my husband, who to my knowledge is not generally a fan of a made up aesthetic, or who, at least, has never referenced pejoratively the fact that I have never been inclined to wear makeup, remarked on the fact that my eyebrows looked "good," though it's not exactly clear what that means. Nevertheless, I found myself feeling unsure about the results, though it is unclear whether that is because the results failed to create a positive effect, or because I am unaccustomed to seeing myself in makeup and thus find any application of makeup, and my concomitant reflection in the bathroom mirror, to be irregular and maybe even slightly disorienting.

hard cheese

eating a late-night grapefruit and a few drops of thyme oil hoping they will cure the spinning in my head

all day, every time I stand up. in spite of the energy I think my body is mandating a break

I am more excited for my future than I've been in quite some time, and I am also so, so tired

It's been a rough eight years




I don't think I want to be a politician after all. as if the choices I've made haven't precluded it

perhaps I should trust them



At the same time I do think I'll be ready soon to be more active again



listening to those sad podcasts realizing the women talking are describing my life



I am at risk of being compromised by my own success


I will not let myself be trapped



I am watching my friend travel farther and farther away from me, into the astral plane, and the other one on wheels


What I am considering is that perhaps the surest path to greatness is by saying Yes to the Universe moving through the person I really am


I have spent so much of my life being sick, but I'm getting steadier. Now I get it: what you don't confront comes with you



Did you ever love me? Do you?



These many years later I can only vaguely picture all the penises I've known



I wrote a lot of smart things in my head earlier but now I can't remember them

"At the Justice Department November 15, 1969" by Denise Levertov

Brown gas-fog, white

beneath the street lamps.

Cut off on three sides, all space filled

with our bodies.

       Bodies that stumble

in brown airlessness, whitened

in light, a mildew glare,

       that stumble

hand in hand, blinded, retching.

Wanting it, wanting

to be here, the body believing it’s

dying in its nausea, my head

clear in its despair, a kind of joy,

knowing this is by no means death,

is trivial, an incident, a

fragile instant.    Wanting it, wanting

          with all my hunger this anguish,

          this knowing in the body

the grim odds we’re

up against, wanting it real.

Up that bank where gas

curled in the ivy, dragging each other

up, strangers, brothers

and sisters.    Nothing

will do but

to taste the bitter

taste. No life

other, apart from.

We were going to go skiing but then we did not go skiing

I am not in my twenties any more.


When he's on, he's wise.



It takes me half the day, two walks, a run, and 30 minutes of at-home cardio before I finally settle in for the day.


I have named my collection. All's that's left is to write it.




When I read the literary magazine, which I began reading as soon as it arrived in my post office box (or rather I should say as soon as I picked it up and brought it home from the post office box since I am not entirely sure, actually, when the literary magazine arrived in my post office box)--a fact that runs counter to the arrival of previous issues of the same literary magazine, because they felt so heavy and I have felt so heavy and therefore reading something heavy has felt like it might be the stone that finally sinks me--I am reminded that I am not, in fact, a writer whose work is regularly published in or even considered for publication in esteemed literary magazines. In fact I might be a pretty amateur writer, and yet here I've been thinking that I was worthy of being an esteemed writer even though I haven't been practicing and I haven't been very brave. It will take some time to get up to snuff.


Likewise I think I have thought I had one of the best opinions about everything, when there are people whose whole lives are devoted to serving refugees in camps, if you know what I mean, and here I am writing silly stuff and in some respects not doing all that much of substance with my life.

I am so glad to be going back to school.


I've spent so long telling myself I can do everything that I haven't focused much on doing anything.


He says I should try being kinder to myself.



On the one hand I miss sleeping with multiple people in the week, the titillation of sitting on the bed with a man or a woman friend when one or both of you is considering the possibility of touching or otherwise stepping beyond the conventional bounds of friendship, the get-up-and-go to climb aboard a citibike and ride it all around Georgetown and sing in a choir and read guerilla poetry and have lots of sex with lots of people. On the other hand, life is change.


You're at a different stage in your life. Stop holding yourself accountable to a standard you maintained when you were a different person. 




Did I wring every drop out of them? 

It doesn't matter. It was perfect. 




I think I have a bit of an issue, I say, and I feel a little better simply for having said it.

"Is this leading to a good result?"

The only way to become free is to become aware, to really see that This is leading to a good result, or This is not so skillful, not wholesome.

We forget that the next moment is just as impermanent as this moment, so it’s not going to offer resolution of anything. 

like the flowers, we are all unfolding in our own way, in our own time

  

All quotes from this article

The last Halloween on Earth

"I know bile intimately"


Pop culture is a crutch.

An excessive amount of animus


He's got a lot to prove. He left during patisserie week. 

You're trying to do art; a lot of stuff's bothering you 

Don't hold the pose; let the pose hold you


Am I the first one to think of that?


Hey chef Anna Maria, it wasn't a jambalaya contest. 


We're made of flesh.

Kaya is beautiful and I love her.



Mutated (surrounded by walls)

What if my dad is using doomsday thinking to cope with his own mortality



I believe in teaching that is accessible and practical at the same time that it is challenging, affirming, and uplifting



I can clearly see the flaming embers of hell.


I'm just going to weigh off some currants. 

"The only way to escape the corruptible effect of praise is to go on working."

  ~ Albert Einstein

Hawthorn Ham

So many writing ideas and also I'm so tired. I write for the love of it and I write more when I have concrete justification. Does that make me less of an artist? Maybe. I don't know. But a self-aware one. An artist who leverages her self-awareness to write more, because really that's what she wants to be doing more of, it's just that she's developed so many awfully unaligned habits


I miss our accountability


I had forgotten that I had agency over anything


I understand that our outsides can be a reflection of how we're feeling on the inside and also they can be a mask for it. I have not felt as good as it might look from the outside

I'm sad that none of my friends asked how I was doing when I was living alone.



I'm sad in general today, not sure why, or rather I have so many possible reasons why that I'm not sure which one might be today's driving force. Hanna is restless; we've been inside all day; it's the first day I've spent inside possibly all year. In half an hour I will press myself up off the couch and we will go hike the snow-muddied trails where coyotes prowl at dusk

Mountain lions, too, but they don't make noise or otherwise call attention to themselves. If they don't want to be seen they won't be. Picture the largest housecat you've ever met and multiply it by whatever integer zooms it up to 180 pounds and seven feet from wriggling nose to tail


The last time we were camping together she slept and I laid tense and breathless listening to a fox scream


The last time he and I were camping together our tent froze over in early July. Hanna pressed between us in her den of quilts and we triple spooned for warmth


Computer algorithms create fabricated synchronicities. Is it faith or capitalism?


Starting in 24 days I am really going to apply myself to something for an extended period of time

Also I already have been--for more than two years now I've been teaching something that I love


After driving with my partner to the woman-owned ski shop and laying down a credit card for performance boots so that I can learn how to downhill ski this winter and for the rest of my life, because I live in the mountains where I have since childhood felt I belonged, it occurred to me that in some ways perhaps I am leading an even more remarkable life than I'd expected

"How Wonderful" by Irving Feldman

How wonderful to be understood,

to just sit here while some kind person

relieves you of the awful burden

of having to explain yourself, of having

to find other words to say what you meant,

or what you think you thought you meant,

and of the worse burden of finding no words,

of being struck dumb . . . because some bright person

has found just the right words for you—and you

have only to sit here and be grateful

for words so quiet so discerning they seem

not words but literate light, in which

your merely lucid blossoming grows lustrous.

How wonderful that is!

And how altogether wonderful it is

not to be understood, not at all, to, well,

just sit here while someone not unkindly

is saying those impossibly wrong things,

or quite possibly they’re the right things

if you are, which you’re not, that someone

—a difference, finally, so indifferent

it would be conceit not to let it pass,

unkindness, really, to spoil someone’s fun.

And so you don’t mind, you welcome the umbrage

of those high murmurings over your head,

having found, after all, you are grateful

—and you understand this, how wonderful!—

that you’ve been led to be quietly yourself,

like a root growing wise in darkness

under the light litter, the falling words.

parallelism

Castanets clicking shoulders spasming stomach contorting the theme is exorcism the theme is embodied the theme is integration hear it Take me to the river dancing grief lakeside can't be me can that gold-bathed warrior really be chest broaden shoulders pull back I have healed my spine she/I walk regal through forest frog rabbits deer lions we pay our respects removes broadsword from sheath redacted swallows me

shoulders arms wrists hands twitching stomach contorting absorbing stillness happens when integration is complete. I found you. Tears roll. Dance in-outside grief exorcism castanets Amazonian warrior woman dressed in leather shining gold fighting for higher consciousness


I bow my blue-grey wings to the great blue heron. I bow my brown-white wings to the red-tailed hawk. I prostrate my woolen sides to the bighorn. I take honored to red-furred fours before the grey fox.


We howl



Like the coyotes before us, three or four on that rigdeline over there, sounds like an army, sounds like they're playing, sounds like they love each other, sounds like part of me anxious to go inside. There cooking peppers onions quinoa chicken and apple sausages on the electric skillet and the hotpot learning how to host we cook for him we listen to the Grateful Dead we laugh sometimes and exclaim over the color purple in paintings


Like an itch like a compulsion anxiety building until the release, get back to writing, you're on the right track, remember who you are


Today's extra hour spent cross-country skiing six miles into the backcountry, back down again knees ankles aching from forcing way through cold-hardened snow

Imagine how much easier in powder. Look how beautiful