Recenter

Okay. I need some recovery time. I'm not going to disengage with the whole pile of ridiculous going on, but I am going to put in some solid support for myself:

I've been reaching out to people who have a sense of humour about the thing; that's key.

I need to get above, like, 600 calories a day. That will help tremendously but I'm not entirely sure how to go about it. Food is just Not On lately. Maybe I should start by just tidying my fridge, creating space for something to inspire me.

I'm going for these morning walks. That helps a great deal and I'll keep doing it at least 2x per week; once my bike is going I can take that up to 3, then 4.

I'll get my bike going. I have a friend in town who has offered her husband's help and maybe hers to do a once-over. I'm a little embarassed that I don't have the ability to figure out what needs doing right now and then do it, but I do not and I don't want to wait till I'm eating and sleeping enough for proper brain function. I suspect the bike will drive better eating and sleeping. Failing the friend's help I'll pay someone in town, though that feels sketchy? Not sure why.

I need to finish this thing at work so I can take some time off and put seeds in the ground. I'm really torn between just turning off humans for some days while I do that vs keeping support people around but possibly being dragged into distractions. I'm lonely right now so it's particularly hard to pull away from talking to folks. Call this three days off work.

A day spent organizing the house and the shipping container will help tremendously. Call this one day off work.

Hanging a second blackout curtain downstairs so I can actually sleep would probably help.

Taking out a duck to thaw and eat will help. Ducklings hatched so I should have a good duck supply this winter. Duck and veggies will be easy for my body to tolerate, and there's so much nice fat. Fat is great because it's so calorie-dense.

By the end of the week I might be able to try asking for what I need and boundary-setting and seeing if I can get some time being held. There'll need to be a boundary around sex and likely around the amount of processing I can listen to, but it's worth a try.

If I organize my house I could set up the pottery wheel... though seriously, my list of productive hobbies is silly at this point. At least I can eat food, what happens when I've made a hundred plates?

Ok. So first up is probably: keep reaching out to folks, bike, organize house, duck out of the freezer.

Three for the day

In the Desert

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;

“But I like it
“Because it is bitter,
“And because it is my heart.”

Stephen Crane


The Layers

I have walked through many lives, some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

Stanley Kunitz


Poem About Morning

Whether it's sunny or not, it's sure
To be enormously complex––
Trees or streets outdoors, indoors whoever you share,
And yourself, thirsty, hungry, washing.
An attitude towards sex.
No wonder half of you wants to stay
With your head dark and wishing
Rather than take it all on again:
Weren't you duped yesterday?
Things are not orderly here, no matter what they say.

But the clock goes off, if you have a dog
It wags, if you get up now you’ll be less
Late. Life is some kind of loathsome hag
Who is forever threatening to turn beautiful.
Now she gives you a quick toothpaste kiss
And puts a glass of cold cranberry juice,
Like a big fake garnet, in your hand.
Cranberry juice! You’re lucky, on the whole,
But there is a great deal about it you don’t understand.

William Meredith

Love note to myself

https://greenstorm.dreamwidth.org/1007500.html
https://greenstorm.dreamwidth.org/1007304.html

Web vs Atom

In the end I think the trouble with my entry point to Fort is the way monogamy sets up atomized social structures while nonmonogamy/queer culture leans heavily on an interconnected web of folks who have each other's backs. I mean, we might not even like each other, but we have each other's backs.

My understanding is the web of chosen family and mutual support comes out of not having traditional support structures, out of being kicked out of families and off jobs and needing to band together not to be attacked or killed. I don't think of myself as queer really, but I have that same webbed structure of support and I'm used to it.

Instead Fort has a typical monogamous structure, your married units and their blood family are the support. Folks outside those units might be nice but they're not there to have your back. It's probably especially entrenched here because there are so many big old families who take care of their own, and then transient people who just leave instead of establishing networks.

I do think it falls apart a bit in practice in Fort. I mean, a lot of those married units probably do not really have each other's backs. That's enough worse -- limiting your support pool even if it's not functioning -- that I'm not going to think about it more right now.

But here's the thing. I want someone to have my back here. Tucker did that for me while he was here, and now he is gone and I just... there's nowhere I can show up and be fed and just sit and be cared for if something bad is going down. I move my furniture on my own. I always, always have to figure it out.

I don't know. Hard times.

Filling Space

Deep dive this afternoon. Music and poem on poem. I'm looking for myself again. I'm bringing myself back here, to my body, to this container of joy and pain. I'm invoking my self. I'm feeling my self. Sometimes we only know we're there because we hurt? And I'm landing, cautiously, into this shockingly loud pulse and grind of flesh. My heart is beating. My stomach is-- that must be hunger? Ow. My lungs are stretchy, a breath in pushes itself out again instead of holding. The body can be so loud.

Love isn't here to be hoarded. It's a gift. It's always a gift, granted for a time and then passing on. I've been granted more than my share, always cobbled together in shapes few outsiders recognise. Always attenuated somehow. Always, in the end, so true to the person giving it. I always consider it an honour to be given something shaped from the giver, not squished into the expectations and templates we freight these things with. Tonight I've been left gifts: blessings on my garden, compliments on my corn, pictures of cats and of plants starting to grow, the lifeline of idle talk and checking in. They're left the way I leave gifts, dropped and run away, with the exception of Nicholas who seems to have taken the role of support crew these last days. I need support crew.

I have so many words. I've been writing about love here for twenty years. The last two years only have six posts tagged "love" that aren't really about the landscape, about plants, or about details of relationships, that are instead considering and probing and weighing and celebrating my heart where it overlaps with humans. I used to spend so much time on it. It's harder here, crumbs from afar really have been my only overlap with people.

I'm not here on this earth to not love people. Let's keep this focus for awhile. I suspect there will be things to say. First, though:


The Ubiquity Of The Need For Love

I leave the number and a short
message on every green Volvo
in town
Is anything wrong?
I miss you.
574-7423
The phone rings constantly.
One says, Are you bald?
Another, How tall are you in
your stocking feet?

Most just reply, Nothing's wrong.
I miss you, too.

Come quick.

Ronald Koertge


Lecturing My Body

Here's the deal: You
take care of me,
I'll take care of you.
The body's a car
Whatever's-not-the-car,
that's the driver.
Or the car's an animal,
the driver a zookeeper.
The animal's a ditch,
the zookeeper a wheelbarrow.
A wheelbarrow bringing
tobacco, whiskey
& even love because,
well, just because.

By Jefferson Carter

( And some more... )

humanity i love you

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you're hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you're flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shops and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

ee cummings