And another thing

And another thing I decided last night that I am done with this pain in my chest, I am done with not being able to breathe. I am committed to caring for myself even if and when I'm not forced to. The pain and the shortness of breath that forced it has served its purpose, and I am grateful, and I do not need it any more, because I will be taking it from here

Leap

last night during the film festival I sat in the second row neck tilted up toward the enormous screen strangers on every side of me the blind man kayaking whitewater as his friends called to him, and called to him, my face flooded with tears


Remember Lonnie, I wrote, and

My favorite word: Remember



I have been feeling so weak, but I know that I know how to be strong. I just forgot for a little while


It's not fair that I have to clean up after all this, but nevertheless it's my responsibility


So I will feel it, I will feel all of it, come on then, come on, I know that I can not take but receive it, and I know that I can let it go



I am at a point where the only way out is through

Please sign the Doom Bird

I should have gotten the Doom Bird II.


How quickly things fluctuate. Exactly 15 days ago I watched him manipulate me and cried. Today we're better than ever.

It's because of a lot of things, including his commitment to me, his commitment to being healthier, my commitment to seeing and calling out things that aren't healthy, and my commitment to being nice to myself in some ways for the first time ever

So yesterday when something inside of me said I can't, I said, Okay. Let's go eat a nice lunch and sit on the couch. And earlier today when he was tired and overwhelmed and spewing grumpiness, I said, Your grumpiness is starting to wear on me please get a grip thank you I love you, and he said Sorry, and stopped spewing. And even earlier, when we were lying in bed and I was feeling so peaceful, and he started to perseverate about coronavirus, which is a fine thing to do but which would, in the past, have sent me into an anxious tizzy of empathy, I put my hand on my heart and repeated silently, You stay right here

We looked at a house and the realtor wanted us, I think, and we wanted the house, but not for more than half a million dollars, and that's what houses cost out here. (Out here, as if my frame of reference is still somewhere far away.) So it was a mixed bag of emotions--feeling excited and actually seeing it and wanting it and then using a mortgage calculator (and then another one, in case the first one got it wrong) and realizing that for now most likely probably we can't have it, though I'm going to meet with Grant asap to see if there's anything we can do


Something I have been really tuned into is just how much people lean into alcohol and assume that everyone loves alcohol and should be drinking it in as many contexts as possible. It's off-putting and lame


Granted, I was prepping for pandemic


When he dated that girl at Barnard he'd visit her and go to the Upper West Side and eat tacos oozing queso Oaxaco

I have never had Oaxacan string cheese, but I like to imagine him eating it



Thanks Simon! 

"Why We Don't Die" by Robert Bly

In late September many voices
Tell you you will die.
That leaf says it, that coolness.
All of them are right.

Our many souls—what
Can they do about it?
Nothing. They’re already
Part of the invisible.

Our souls have been
Longing to go home
Anyway. “It's late,” they say,
“Lock the door, let’s go.”

The body doesn't agree. It says
“We buried a little iron
Ball under that tree.
Let’s go get it.”

2-23

Started the day with a in my mouth

Blasting Kishi Bashi into my ears from close range to drown metal baskets clanging

He was mean then I was mean then Hanna and I went skiing

through the rain-snow getting wetter no-seeing through sunglasses trusting metal edges on previously corduroyed snow

Do not underestimate girls' agency

What I am learning from reading more and more and more is that I can do it any which way, need to stop imagining audience and write

panicked-blocked it is harder in some ways to be the one who hurts

I guess I got tired of being the one who's hurt

Hanna and Wilson snuggle into my chest hard to be anything but content when you're this loved

The label I have denied myself that feels most truthful is artist

(Give birth to that which wants to be birthed through you)

no way to do it but doing it

from "A Litany for Survival" by Audre Lorde

So it is better to speak

remembering

we were never meant to survive.

salvage by Rachel McKibbens

I have learned to need the body

I spent years trying to rid the world of

have learned to cherish its pale rebel hymn

warped by ghost heat, carried, carried

by all my loyal dead. I have learned

to crawl backward into the wildnerness

to ask, to eat, to steep in your gentleness. 

Let this be where I permit forgiveness

to know your name, to leave our cruelest years

where & how we need them most—

                                                       behind & unlit. 

BLK History Month by Nikki Giovanni

If Black History Month is not

viable then wind does not

carry the seeds and drop them

on fertile ground

rain does not

dampen the land

and encourage the seeds

to root

sun does not

warm the earth

and kiss the seedlings

and tell them plain:

You’re As Good As Anybody Else

You’ve Got A Place Here, Too