Don't go back to sleep

 

Dang, we haven't been listening to enough jams 

Remember when we'd walk for the best bubble tea in Queens 

Earthlings and aliens 

Hanna drinks from the water bowl in the bedroom 

I was ready to sleep before the music hit 

This one's about a werewolf and the crowd howls 

These are good vibes 

Half of the dead limb has detached and fallen from 40 feet up

The other half remains attached to the trunk of the chestnut oak, reaching--

Wish I hadn't been hurting during this summer's shows 

Am I your manic pixie dream girl? 

Feels like it's very cleansing 

That time I tried to party on crutches

Handing out capris and good vibes from the grassy hill above the sidewalk  

My goodness it's been a long time 

Ziplock of mushrooms in a Denver fanny pack 

I do not know, any more, what is reasonable or appropriate 

Remember shopping at Hannaford's and buying $5 pizzas 

Let's go back to the coast 

Barndoor farmers' markets 

Emailing late-summer love letters, legs draped over the arm of the chair 

Another time: weeping fighting on the beach 

I can take it 

We can turn it on both because we're afraid and because we are leaders

Trying to slip between the black and the white 

The tiny pumpkin sits beside the small picture

From here the tent looks like a mountain

I haven't forgotten 

Watched you consumed by texting in the chair on the darkened lawn

So many people are certain that they're right

Trying not to become one

 

All the sex I had in my twenties

Wish I knew then what I know now 

Not one for lobsters but I love wearing waders 

He shucked oysters by sunrise and fucked me at night 

Boot-dancing in a sundress at the upstairs bar in Maine 

First hand at rock climbing 

I'm so much less fearful now

I am such a fan of intergenerational music making 

I have recently received the worst haircut of my life 

I hope they do a summer tour 

It's a little better when it's pulled up. I have bangs again

I think I'm finally starting to get it 

Nordic skiing in the sleeting snow, fistfuls of ice to staunch my bleeding nose, dogs racing ahead, cheeks red and stinging 

I really loved living in Colorado  

Writing in that small wooden cabin in Wyoming 

Walking to the black-night outhouse in grizzly mountain territory 

Hiking alone into the middle of the river 

At times languid and urgent in my veins 

And I guess that's the main things about me 

June don't you dare forget how much you love to dance 

"I'm an orthopedic surgeon"

 

How does Powerball work

She busies herself with dressing the salad 

After ripping ivy from beneath the arbor vitae 

I have finished the gluten-free table crackers 

You can match the white ball numbers in any order of play 

My fingers are sore from inserting one hundred grommets into the bottoms of one hundred large plastic bowls

Pulling 50 metal carts out of the old sales building 

Weed-whacking around the sleigh 

I don't think we have a 45 

Something has ignited in me 

What's the opposite of the inverse

Outversion 

How to find out if you won Powerball 

The line in RoFo is lively 

Gas is cheaper in Maryland 

Didn't even know it was happening 

I miss reading the newspaper 

Understated music for dogs 

I don't think we won 

They take beautiful old wooden furniture and paint it ugly fake colors, only to them, presumably, the colors do not look ugly or fake. To their eye the color improves the pieces and to mine it ruins them 

Increasingly I am mindful of my limited vision 

Two goals: 

Close the gap between the stimuli and your authentic response (thank you Geena Davis) 

Stay tender-hearted and soften into kindness 

Because I am not on Instagram, I am unable to view the photos on Instagram 

I eat dried mango with chili flakes 

Soon enough I will finish the book I am reading 

I think it might be worth four bucks

Ask me then

 

Before I was 35 I would not have believed that sleeping in a soft bed after attending a show, comfortably removed from the seedy haze of post-show festivities, could be just as pleasurable and vitalizing as sleeping in the grass at the base of a tree somewhere on the venue's grounds. I would have thought anyone who said that had given up on life. From this vantage point, I see that in fact I am appreciating life in new and different ways, and the appreciation is no more stultifying merely because its locus has changed. In fact these days the life-giving force of a comfortable bed is both different and in many ways equitable to the vibrancy of sleeping drunk and buzzing under the stars 

This softened state

 

The upside of my back injury is that I have gradually and with much emotional toil become less concerned with my muscles

My arms are softer and I feel calm about it

A revelation

In fact I was thinking earlier how much I like thirty-something bodies, mine included 

They've been humbled, lived in. They know some things. They've encountered limitations and kept going. There's something so attractive about a body as it slows down, as it grows wiser. There's less pretending; it's less possible. They're softer. When you press into them, and you are also in a lived-in body, they squish together. They make room for each other 

For a little while there I mistook physical toughness for strength -- all the rock climbing and the mountaineering and the bike climbs and the backcountry skiing. And I was strong, and I'm grateful for it, and I'm glad to know I'm that capable. And also I think I am stronger now, in this softened state, than I had been for quite some time