February, Frustrated and Flooding
February 1-15, 2024 / Nightmares & Morning Pages
2/1: All pink upon waking - pink beyond the fog and reflected on all that the sun has whispered to. A snow-covered world gone rosey, too early in the morning to even believe - in light, in light, in possibility blushing all shy for us. Cats as my witness. I wonder how they see all this behind sleepy double layers, irises that shrink as the day turns bright. I write 02/01 but I won’t write the word yet - winter more and more.
Turn the calendar on to something pink and red. Fur slips under the needle but the melody is easy to find again. All the couldas and shouldas quiet this morning. One bouquet in the vase and the other hanging to dry over the sink. Why haven’t I been saving them all this time? What is a home w/out dried flowers? Like a morning that goes straight to blue - no history, no warmth, no love preserved. These are things my mother teaches me. She has been waking up in the dark for the last decade, taking photos of the sunrise over the water. Every bouquet dried and dipped in wax, making them last. I remember melting down the wide neck candles and squishing into something warm, petals coming up strong and smooth, smelling not of earth or perfume but of cinnamon and vanilla bean.
I see a flash of blue out my kitchen window - could the blue jay be here still? I imagine feathers fluffing up to keep warm, blue jay strong and smooth too, bringing joy to my door. Patch Adams said, happiness is a choice - you wake up and decide to be happy or you can let the world decide for you. It is an insult not to be grateful.
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2/2: We make pickled onions after breakfast, jars of tightly chopped purples going pink. I went to the magic school in my dreams again, classes on pottery and love. I always wake up missing the friends I make in that realm. I’ve been feeling sharp moments of clarity this week, since the Aquarius shift really, and my defiance has purpose again. I am strange in a strange world, changed and changed and changed by love and its games. I listened to a pod about crush psychosis and remembered the birth of February’s wrath.
Oh, to love again how youth does - truly deeply freely, unafraid and unchanging. What did love do to you? What did loss do to you? Even the most enduring, enlightening and genuine moments of love have had a little fear in them, compromise in them, anticipation of the end in them since that first time. Who were you once you learned how a heart could break? How old where you when you learned love doesn't just go away? Did you always understand love as energy or was it a game first? (The other way around for me. I had to be someone else when I played it, had to be someone else to be loved. I believe again what I always knew). Love, an everlasting no-excuses type of thing.
I believe I am 29. I am tired of losing pieces, pieces I value and pieces I love. I am tired of trying to prove lovability.
I get to the tea shop early, everything patterned and soft, spirals all over the door. Shopkeeper catching up on a Friday on her own time, putting the reggae on when she remembers to. I’m waiting softly for J in a new place in my city, in the second part of my morning as the water boils. I am seeing more clearly the ways I have been loved and the ways I have been seen or at least looked at. Landslide plays, the live version, and I think my mom holding my hand and singing along as the jet boat kicked up curtains of water, making waves that rock us violent unless we go faster. I always wanted to go faster.
My boots are still and I am home from pottery, feeling dark like Friday night. You know, heavy heavy but w/ air to breathe, bless it all bless it all. Everything is back on - no off-season in Vacationland this year. Everyone’s got that energy, all afraid to slow down again, the world all fragile.
Today, I split a pot of tea w/ my good friend. We sat on the teahouse floor together. God, just wanted to talk. God, felt good to grab ahold of speech and to be held the whole time. We talked to the shopkeeper more than we talked just us two - about money and the world and finding our own unique paths (the ones we didn’t hear about) through our own little rebellions. We live our lives in small protests or small prayers - how we align over time.
All human life is organized by belief (I believe) 𖦹 the center the center, where we all spin out from. We are living and learning things. When we disconnect from intention, the world spirals out w/out us. When we center, we walk straighter, our weight balanced where it should be, no tension the size of our pain or our shame or our heartbreak. We walk like animals who know themselves or at least who know what they are.
The worst messages we have created all say: there is one good way to be happy & one good way to treat each other. These messages rob us. They robbed me. I cannot wait until the world wakes up and shakes up. I will fear war when it is on my doorstep. I will know what I stand for when it does. And like everyone capable of dreaming up war, I will also dream up gods that I can pray to - the sun, the center, energy love, ether love - pray that all this pain isn’t for nothing.
I have painted my pots black and white and I’m waiting for them to come out of the kiln and look like real things, real things I can find imperfect love in. I do it w/ everything I touch. It feels so good to be doing it again, to love even heartbreak and pain, to love fear, to love being wrong because to be alive is to never truly know.
This week, shadows were seen for me and for my friends and for the world at large but we are talking about it. We are talking about it, getting ready to move w/ it, to do all we can. Our rebellion is care, care at every turn. No one can do this alone. Community, the true story. It is better to share fear, to share knowledge, to share admiration, to share pain and lust and resources, to know we are capable of it together. We can eat this fear thing, this hate thing, even if it takes a long time.
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2/3: I don’t want to show up as myself but I don’t know how else to show up. I am writing my words smaller today.
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2/4: In my dream, T was driving me to work in the Toyota. In the Toyota an odd sunroof, closed. On the sunroof, a jaguar peering down at me, making eye contact through the glass before jumping effortlessly down and strolling off.
Yesterday I woke up still afraid to speak, afraid to be seen. I was hoping to return to my pages between conversations but look at that, I never did. I met up w/ M & MC at the Outlook Studio TB owns downtown, not really sure what I was doing there; hanging out, helping out, zoning out. A called me and we talked for almost two hours. I wandered the painted halls and perched in the sunny window by the bathroom, listening to my friend who hadn’t been listened to for months, talking heartbreak and conspiracy, this world we’ve come to know. She’s coming up to stay at the end of the month. I returned to the shoot just as they were finishing up, bold red backdrop and yellow lily. Beautiful, beautiful. M had to get home. MC invited me to lunch. I tagged along, ordered nothing, got to be nothing except a soft heart (unable to help precious tears. I admit, I was looking for comfort, for a friend to react to the ugly parts of me and hold my hand).
It was fucking cold yesterday. I couldn’t help but feel all of it. After non-lunch, I ran over to SPACE to work the door for a 4:30 high school performance of the Gaza Monologues - collected & written by Palestinian children aged 13-18 about life w/ their war, their fear, their families during 2008-2009. Since the time the script was written, several more wars have devastated Gaza by the Israeli military. We have been getting updated death tolls every day since October. Our money made into weapons, our ignorance funding genocide. The other day, as I left the teahouse, I was late to pottery, detoured around the protest by the exit ramps, honking in solidarity and running late. I passed recently raided homeless encampments, police here too, making every mess bigger. Too much traffic to answer my phone but there, messages of fear and hope, fear and hope.
I’ve wept enough of my own tears this week, these fresh tears are for Palestine. I wondered if these monologues mirrored children’s’ sentiments now. I wondered if any of these children were still alive today, w/ their hopes and dreams, their youth ripped away w/ their safety. One child said, the dream [in Gaza] is to die a good death, not to live a good life. They spoke of dying in one piece w/ their families, quick quick painless painless if possible possible. Throughout the performance, they used the word “martyred” not “murdered” - an important distinction. I wondered if that was the children’s word or the transcribers’ word.
From my place by the door, w/ guest list and face mask, I hoped w/ all of me that this performance would have a positive impact of some kind - from children in Gaza to children in Maine, families in Maine, our small contemporary art gallery in Maine, our big hearts and our protests. It is easy to be cynical, to be doubtful, to be busy, to throw our hands up, to empty pockets for donations and feel nothing change except more fear.
It is exactly performances like this, art like this, that argues its importance - for or against, depending on who you’re talking to. What does participating in and making an effort to see and support performances like this do for people whom tragedy touches and takes from? Some say awareness is everything and some say it is nothing. Some say getting arrested for protesting a genocide across the world from you is meaningful. Some say the opposite. Some believe all art is a waste of time. Some believe it is the only thing keeping them alive. Distractions or integration? Egoic or humanitarian? Powerful or pathetic? What is the power of your attention? Of your time and your money? If everything in the world comes down to choice, I know what I am choosing. I choose art. I choose attention. I choose sustained effort. I choose to listen to the children, screaming screaming, Let hope give you power! Let hope give you power!
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2/5: Dog-Ear, free to read for now
Dog-Ear: Feb. 5, 2024
2/5: We can just be & have our needs, can be awake & know the sun is still hiding something, can be going in circles & taking detours of dreaming. It’s all changing anyway. Nothing gets buried w/ time. The future too, an undead thing. I have spent the morning in the Hologram. It’s always unintentional but things take the time the…
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2/6: It smells like essential oils in here: patchouli and tangerine, cinnamon and damiana. I did a foot soak in a soup pot last night, talked to myself for an hour. I don’t know what I was saying but I recorded it so I could pretend someone was listening w/out inviting anyone in. So much of yesterday spent w/ my mouth shut and my head hurting. I moved my body a bit and fucked around w/ clay, making almost nothing. First thing this morning, I knew I needed to touch hot water to feel better. I almost gave up on it, stubborn in my bad feelings, but I reconsidered myself when the moon showed up. Punishment is sneaking into the ways I care for myself again - hot hot water and pushing my muscles to shake. Does all care feel like punishment at first? I am showing myself sweetness. I am showing change I am open to it.
I met the sun as she passed right through the bedroom into the G room, getting all caught up and refracted in this corner of the house. Quiet up here, sun on the end of the bed w/ a candle lit. There is an antique mirror in here now. T’s mom brought it and left it, a good size and a good shape, matching wood tones. I am becoming secretly protective of this room, knowing it is a generous space and a generative space, intended to be shared and visited. I am visiting now, visiting in my home, picking at myself, asking no questions.
I made a deal w/ myself to clean today since I wallowed yesterday and I will get started soon. A few more minutes in my room touched by sun. There are unasked questions under my thin nail beds and in my split ends and in my cracking knuckles. But I am resolute. I am stubborn. I am practicing receptivity now that I’ve lost faith in myself again, in the possibility of my own goodness again. I make myself weaker when I pick, weaker or more porous. When I put myself last, it is because that is where I think I go. I will be honest about my boundaries, my limits, even here but I am stretching them more and more - adding water and thinning them, trusting the universe to push when it needs to, to get through to me and fracture w/ light; the order of things and the time it all takes.
Learning requires paying attention the entire way through, in order to repeat it & believe it & live w/ it. Until pure thought becomes thoughtless. Until our muscles know better than the rest of us. Until knowledge cannot be separated and becomes just another thing our lives can lend before they are lost.
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2/7: This morning, I wrote the date for today and wrote nothing else - dizzy & headache & stomach ache - sick of myself but also making myself sick. Each word was paranoia, not ready for the page. Yesterday I talked w/ A on the phone for a couple hours and ate dinner at 1PM before leaving for work. That was the last I ate before this morning at 8. Had a glass of wine at poetry because I was feeling sad, feeling shy, feeling neurotic. I read my piece in the second half but all my friends left in the first. Lincoln’s cleared out after I read some dirt poems & I talked culture and exhaustion w/ new friends. By the end of the long day and long night, I felt grateful for community, in the way we were all feeling February’s pain and showed up still to share what we were doing w/ it.
I climbed into bed holding close to T, home and warm in bed already. I crumbled in the closeness, holding like I needed, being held like I needed. Sometimes it’s the only thing that gets through to me, love as touch. It calms my too hot head and tunes my heart to the unconditional.
I don’t feel resilient today and despite all my talking, I don’t know what to say. I am still trying to give myself permission to speak at all, to feel at all, my instincts all pointing towards punishment. I put on a good face until I can’t anymore and it hurts to ask for the kind of help I want, the kind of forgiveness I’ll believe, the kind of understanding I’ve had only a little proof of.
These days, I feel I don’t deserve a thing. These days, I am speaking desperate or I am pretending. These days, I dream of disappearing, though I am in no hurry for vacation - don’t even feel worthy of the sun at her best. Hell, I’m still feeling a little weak, maybe will never stop feeling selfish. Guilt is a thing to get addicted to like everything else. How do I love myself now? I have therapy in 20 minutes, peeled clementine rinds in my cup holder, unanswered test messages & a job to get to after this, wearing red wearing black, thinking only about hot hot water - all I can let myself desire, like baptism on fire, my sins all burning off my body w/ the door closed (grateful, grateful).
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2/8: Dog-Ear, featured
Dog-Ear: Feb. 8, 2024
2/8: Last night, I showered w/ shame. I remembered that my secret New Year’s resolution was to stop punishing myself. On a now-deleted post I wrote, I am sick of paying attention to myself, I just want someone else to do it. I am writing it again, feeling it again. OK OK OK
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2/9: I am sitting down at 12:34, pages neglected w/ the busy morning - groceries and food prep, pottery soon and a party later. Turns out bad moods can’t last forever, even if nothing moves can’t last forever. not when there is life worth living. No guilt in joy today. There should be no guilt in joy for any of us. February rolls and rots along. I dreamt Bowie was my teacher, showing me how to make art that lasts forever.
When I got out of bed, there was music playing already. I felt I could believe in myself a little, more than yesterday. At the start of the week I had fantasies of canceling all my plans as punishment but I’m going to try and show up for all of it - not for me but for everyone who invites me, trusting them when they say, yes, please come! OK OK OK, I can be myself again, I can like myself again, I can wear my shoes and walk honest. If I can’t trust my mind, I will trust my energy. If I go out tonight, I will bring meat & cheese & grass & fruit. I will wear my clown pants and breathe gracious. I will celebrate love regardless.
Dancing starts w/ feet in pointed toe boots, makes silk fall open and hair go wild, hands find their way to other hands. A mind filled w/ music opens for all kinds of magic. I used to think Magicians were philosophers but philosophers are just addicts of life while Magicians are alchemists, brave in their bodies, watching the world in all its changing states. There is a New Moon tonight and a party tonight and I will be alone when I sleep tonight, all pink and red, in my dreams taking notes.
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2/10: I wake as a heavy thing in the sun, the house as I left it - doors all locked, scarves all scattered, my pages close by waiting for this moment. I got home after last call, the cats fussy in their loneliness. Grass & water & antipasto keeping my body alive.
I went out after the valentines party over the bridge - my city was awake in wild night, I had to go, my cowboy boots took me. The party was small, soft living room lights and cut out paper hearts scattered over jute rug - polite conversation except for whatever I was saying. Do you like me honest here? Forgive me, it was nice to meet you. Heart shaped waffles cooked up quick on the living room floor, art and books and markers left out and all over. I stayed to help clean up, our generous host changed into a t-shirt. Naturally, I was the last to say goodbye. Got in the Soul to leave, waiting to be told where to go, whoever responded first.
I love being a devil in my city. I park on cobblestones and find jazz. I know where I am going, sharp and leisurely, trailed by smoke. Sometimes my cheekbones freak people out and other times it’s how I walk, strong and sure, stomping stomping the ground, scarf red and thrown over my shoulder. I am one w/ the dirt under my feet and the fire in the center of us all. Red light shines on sea slick brick and the music changes to something throbbing, a guitar learning to scream into the street. My sins, my sins right here on my body. The air was fresh last night. On hard days, I laugh harder and I mean it more. I am shameless through it all, bearing the horrible truth of me and laughing, drawing spirals on the painted brick by our favorite bar, the one w/ all the maps.
All my friends and I are powerful, yes. All my friends and I are heartbroken, yes. My friends and I losing our minds on Market St. The bar rooms all filled up against the cold night, reckless, smirking. I listened to everyone talking, talking like they couldn’t hear themselves. I talk like that too. Thank god there is still somewhere we can go for this - our chaos inspires a bar tab and eyes that look too closely. We are easy and willing to love, easy and willing, at least, to find it on the floor where we left it.
The ice in my glass never melted, still romantic in water, free at the end of the bar - saving me headaches, saving me money w/ my friends w/ my friends. I can’t believe how much I’ve spoken of hurt and heartbreak this week, the world in every state of it. He who is missing her still. She who is proud and fearful and in love w/ her own potential. She who holds all the guilt in a home built on comfort and disbelief. They who lost a future so quickly. He who has to forgive himself over and over, at the same bar every night. He who calls it anything but “love”. She who feels unworthy of goodness like me sometimes. They who are only trying to help. She who will burn out sorry and unexplored. They who are changing their minds every day, their heart gone all quiet. They all who thrive through the rage of their personal shame, wondering if love chooses blindness or surrenders to it after all.
What are we worshipping here? The bartenders are sick of us when the lights go up and the doors open w/ a cloud of smoke, a new day all black and evil. We are huddled together, evil and laughing, singing sweetly, sometimes it lasts, sometimes it lasts, sometimes it lasts a long time.
The dough hook struggles this morning, whipping dough around in a fitful dream. Jim calls out to himself over mechanical whines. M is dropping by to grab her valentine while the sun is still out and I am free from work’s clock until noon.
No one said there wouldn’t be resistance along the spiral - a battery that burns while it spins flour and water into skin, screaming screaming. I am silent while I wait, having nothing to say to this crying thing. What am I a symbol of now? Sweatpants and madness, madness in my noisy kitchen and all the parts of me that feel impossible to clean, the parts of me that keep feeding stretch into my otherwise empty home.
A Saturday in the saddest month. The record skips before and I’ll say it again, I need a brand new friend. I pull out the dough and knead it by hand like wedging clay, living changing things gone all soft w/ water and earth. I knead my neck and breasts, always tender this time of month. Tiny pleasure from tiny pain, the ways we slouch out of place and find our way back home.
I need a brand new friend, The End. When Jim sings, I imagine him reaching. Every tone, every song, but Hyacinth House especially - soft and overgrown as he was, finally learning to play w/ blues and Truth. This last line could easily be the song concluding itself, but I prefer to think that Jim was looking for a friend in life rather than his only friend, (The End) - Life is someone who doesn’t need me. We chase life as death chases us, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Life in the yeast that rises and blooms. Death waiting hot hot in the oven. Eat me and give life back, give it all away, let the music play. Life in clay, life in dirt, life in roots that reach all the way down. Death, the devil’s thing, all fun and games, generous, like leather and ash, like war and war and war, like OK my friend, I’ll see ya when I see ya.
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2/11: My dreams got lost on their way to me this morning, off to find someone who will listen. I’m too tired now to take note. Sunday before a busy week, I am almost behind, eyes wanting to close for a little while longer. Yesterday, I listened to metal on metal, hangers scratching and screeching, people shopping. Day job. I will hear it again today, will let it drive me fast and slow towards impatient insanity, will make sure the lights are off and the doors are locked before I go.
What does fate turn into when we stop thinking about it? Just something that happens to us. The future needs no love from us, no excitement, no worship. The future comes anyway. But isn’t everything made better w/ love? Am I confusing love and control again? Hate when I do that. What I mean is, it’s about tenderness and attention, this future. Transformative action, transformative devotion, transformative intention, love steadfast and tending the soaked soil. W/ water and manipulation, life is formed again and again. Perhaps the universe isn’t paying attention and I am wrong in believing so, wrong and selfish and stubborn, but from what I’ve felt and what I’ve seen, something immaterial is tickling the ivories of time, creating songs w/ each of us.
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2/12: I just got out of the bath, in my filth, in my filth. I bathe in my filth and tell my filthy truths. I hear my heart beating fast below the water.
The black cat is in the yard again, chasing something in the grass, in the mud, warmer today. A few little pounces, tailing this thing, a mouse I imagine, nose down taking shorter and shorter steps. I watch it get distracted and lose track of itself. I want to help but I sit here, not sure I could. So I watch and I root for it. It’s a few minutes of this before it sits down perfect between two trees right across from me in the G room. All black except for tiny star of white on your chest, I know you. Looking at me and back around, never sure where your eyes are but can feel them. Then we are only staring. The sun shifts like it was never in the sky at all. The day tying its shoes by the door. I figure what the hell. I trot down the stairs, throw on my Carhartt and grab a fistful of the cats’ dry food. Step out to the garage door still left open from the morning. There’s nothing in the grass now but I throw some food down anyway.
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2/13: * UNDER MY CLOTHES IS MY SKIN AND UNDER MY SKIN IS history, history of how I have seeped out of my body and into your world. My body is not life but evidence of it - what I eat and how I move, how often I eat, how often I move, what work and love and living w/ the questions shape me to be. For under my skin are the only answers & they change w/ every exhale, praying again. Each inhale is followed by a release. I listen to Fearless in the bath and it saves me, it saves me - could I ever be?
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2/14: To my city dressed in paper hearts, the wind is whipping and frigid. You and I wear red anyway. Today is not the day we learn what love is, it is not a day of proof, it is simply a day spent w/ love. Unavoidable valentines. Unavoidable airstrikes. Unavoidable flooding, flooding.
I wear the little boys’ suit I got for $8, wore it w/ old silk and strip of velvet. I go to day job and watched people shop to dress up. I roll up my sleeves and clean the airbnb in the afternoon after honeymooners came through. I spend the time in between reading my friends’ palms. I pick up eggs w/ headphones on listening to SOS. I wait in the long after-work self check-out line, in front of and behind men w/ chocolates and flowers, clearing the place out, in front of and behind two men who work together talking over my head. No one listening. OK.
At home, T has his denim apron on and the dough is in the fridge already. We make raviolis tonight, w/ kale and steak. We eat like kings tonight, just for Wednesday, might as well. I let happiness in so easily. I change my mind about going out dancing, listening to my body. Blood tomorrow.
Last night, I sat on my bathroom floor and let my palms tell me something, whether I was translating it correctly or not. Scraggly line of destiny, an affection line crossing through. The life line on my right is an ouroboros around my thumb. Venus plump, my lust for life alive. My head line an island, I laugh like I’m already going mad. My heart line the deepest on both - long, overextended, straight up w/ a twist, branches up. My hands are proof my heart is not just mine.
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2/15: Are you still wearing red like I am? The sun in our eyes and bellies full before bed. Meddle in the morning. I play music while I write to get a tempo and to pretend no one can hear me, like trying to talk in a bar - a bar of movement and company. I’ll be honest here when no one can hear me perfectly but maybe everyone will. It’s where I’ve been talking, at the gates of hell laughing it up. Who else’s heart is breaking before their eyes, clutching their chest clutching their chest? Something is growing here. I am patient, ready when you are. The Tower card in the right corner, on the right shoulder, where shame sits - our human shit brown like dirt, the missteps stomping it into the earth like some broken, twisted seed. We all grow a little funny, that is where we are beautiful (beautiful and so afraid). What do we do when we know we are all afraid?
Love used to be a private thing, a precious thing, and now she’s trampled on before our eyes before we get out of bed. What have we made of the world, what have we made of love? This towering thing coming down shot by shot. The Earth taking our beatings and it not being enough, we beat on, beat harder, beat on each other. We are cowards in the face of love! I say this as someone who has so much love they can’t believe it and is still a coward, still hurting from love, from my fear of love, my stoic imperfection of love.
A monument of myself that I am tearing down and a resurrection of something better, in my pages, on my soapbox, fearlessly the idiot faced the crowd, smiling. I am learning to love the magistrate and myself equally, honest and w/ all the shit. (I’ve said it before but I meant it. Whoever is reading, play Fearless at my funeral. You’re invited, come party sometime down the line). This song, the ending in the beginning and how much of it is bravery. How much of bravery is love?
What is my truth serum? Water, grass, company, rock ‘n’ roll, eyes at the same level and feet on the same ground. Give me a kind of ecstasy and I’ll tell you everything, you won’t like all of it or maybe you will. Make you free, make you free. Hold my heart until I need it back. We will all shape each other in ways never spoken, centuries of trying to name it and claim it only for it to be co-opted and sold back to us! Love, corrupted and unrecognizable, more agonizing than it has ever been (Everyone on Earth so afraid of hurting and being hurt (me too)).
IF WE ALL BELIEVE IN LOVE. THE WORLD SHIFTS IMMEDIATELY. I HAVE FELT ITS EVERY TREMBLE, AWAY FROM LOVE AND INTO FEAR, FELT IT IN MY TEETH AS MY SMILE KEPT CHANGING, AS I CHANGED HOW I ATE - AROUND THE ACHING! I KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT WHEN MY TEETH MOVE SO MY SCREAMS SOUND DIFFERENT WHEN THEY COME OUT AT ALL, UNPRACTICED AND DEAD ALREADY. THIS IS HOW THINGS MOVE, A BLINK AND A BREAK AT A TIME. WHAT IS DONE IN FEAR IS BORN IN FEAR IS GROWN IN FEAR, UNTIL UNTIL (AND WE EVOLVE TO THE SOUND OF WHALES).
LOVE HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE MESSAGE.
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