My philosophy around removing things from my life is: replace them with something better first. It's easier to go towards a thing than away from it. It's easier to displace than to carve out an absence.

So I've been reaching out to people.

I reached out to a podcaster about tomatoes. I reached out to my Uncle Dave about how his sending me science books when I was a kid meant a lot to me, and how I'm happy now doing sciencey stuff. They both answered, and I need to answer back. Emails are a demand, even when they're a joy.

I reached back to my mom, who's finally not mid-ocean and who sent me a "happy birthday, I love you, how do you feel about the turning 40 thing?" message. We're texting back and forth a bit. She says her life got significantly happier after 50. This accords with my sense of aging: I get better at doing life, so life gets better.

I reached out to the person I maybe click with best? my friend Kelsey, and we chatted online about a bunch of stuff. It was like the biggest weight possible off. We can talk about important intense things, social trends, suicide, mental health, crafting, the world as a provider. We share values and both really value each other.

I should return the emails; then I can get more back. I should put reaching out to Kelsey in my calendar. I should answer my mom.

This is the web I need and have needed, the one that gives me resilience when the operation to remove a lump on my side is a little more intense than they expected and they have to pump more freezing in midway through while blood runs across my belly (now my tattoo, which is ecclesiastes 3.1-3.13, has strikethrough across "to mourn" which I view as an omen) and then the trailer hubs overheat on the one day I have to get grain and I need to drop it off at the mechanic and find an alternate feed source for a week when all I want to do is sleep.

Just having folks in the background makes it easier.

I've been tapering my pills to one per day and although I'm sleeping a lot a lot more I'm feeling more calm and capable, more like myself.

The weather is bouncing, we're back to warm after a bunch of cold after a bunch of warm after a bunch of cold after a bunch of warm. We've been having rain.

I've been getting a big mixing bowl of raspberries every day and making raspberry shrub.

Tomatoes keep trickling in.

There's a lot more to write about, but the sun came out and I'm tired. This daily write isn't soaring like words sometimes do. Even so it remains here as a monument to my future self: the people I want are there. Make room for them. There's no need to waste mental space on folks who are a poor fit.

My mind is coming back.

It's time again.

The Love Song of the Square Root of Minus One (i)

I am the wind and the wind is invisible, all the leaves tremble but I am invisible, blackbird over the dark field but I am invisible, what fills the balloon and what it moves through, knot without rope, bloom without flower, galloping without the horse, the spirit of the thing without the thing, location without dimension, without a within, song without throat, word without ink, wingless flight, dark boat in the dark night, shine without light, pure velocity, as the hammer is a hammer when it hits the nail and the nail is a nail when it meets the wood and the invisible table begins to appear out of mind, pure mind, out of nothing, pure thinking, hand of the mind, hand of the emperor, arm of the empire, void and vessel, sheath and shear, and wider, and deeper, more vast, more sure, through silence, through darkness, a vector, a violence, and even farther, and even worse, between, before, behind, and under, and even stronger, and even further, beyond form, beyond number, I labor, I lumber, I fumble forward through the valley as winter, as water, a shift in the river, I mist and frost, flexible and elastic to the task, a fountain of gravity, space curves around me, I thirst, I hunger, I spark, I burn, force and field, force and counterforce, agent and agency, push to your pull, parabola of will, massless mass and formless form, dreamless dream and nameless name, intent and rapturous, rare and inevitable, I am the thing that is hurtling towards you...

The Love Song of the Square Root of Minus One (ii)

I am the hand that lifts the rock, I am the eye that sees the worm, I am the mind that strings the worm and throws the line and feels the tug, the flex in the pole, the key in the lock, as the root breaks rock, as sunlight streams across the plain to make the world visible again, foot by foot, I find the groove, the trace in the thicket, seed to flower to fruit to seed, a holy pilgrim moving through the stations of the yardstick, I track, I follow, a flashlight, a crowbar, I find the fulcrum, I hinge and turn, a simple machine, frictionless and efficient as an equal sign, I manifest, votive and incandescent, shrinking the space between here and there I become the future, as drowsiness overcomes the dreamer, as the eye of the archer is the eye of the target, I flip and fold, I superimpose, the letter delivered, the year decembered, I become location, plum pit and apple core, I am motionless and you veer towards me, the eye to which you are relative, single point, silent witness, there to your here, I decide and calibrate, magnetized for your revelation, the doors burst open, I am your outcome, the verb in the sentence, intransitive, end of the road, hook and bait, polestar and checkmate, time and space as I observe them serve me like gravity, lamp to your moth, dot to your map, home and heart and hearth, a selfishness, submit, surrender, I am your arrival, there is no refusal, we are here, you see, together, we are already here...

Richard Siken

It's time again. It's time for this poem which is The Poem and for poetry in general.

It's time to build my life again.

There's a video that goes around every so often of Eartha Kitt speaking to an invisible interviewer. "Can anyone live with Eartha Kitt?" he asks, and she says "that's not for me to decide. That's for someone who decides to live with me to decide."

He prods further: "if a man came into your life wouldn't you want to compromise?"

"Stupid. You must think about that one again." she pauses. "For what? For what?! A relationship is a relationship that has to be earned! Not to compromise for. [...] I fall in love with myself, and I want someone to share it with me. I want someone to share me, with me."

I'm searching for community in these fragments of people who understand.

We don't leave a lot of room for acceptance of self, for inevitability of self, in this world. There's such a strong narrative that if some part of yourself inconveniences folks, or yourself, you just change it. That is the part of you that's "holding you back."

I'm not trying to knock learning and trying new strategies and new means of expression and growth as a person. It doesn't take long for that mindset to become damage though. Changing yourself at the behest of other people instead of seeking a niche that fits better, it needs lots of careful self-examination to make sure you're not losing your self into what people want you to be. It requires a firm grasp on the self.

We do not teach, celebrate, or tolerate a firm grasp on the self for most of the huge diversity of folks out there.

Regardless of societal context I tend to have a pretty good grasp on myself and it's been wavering lately. I've been fighting my battles too much alone, I think. The way in is always similar: I want other people to feel comfortable, so I take up a little less space. Just witnessing me can be so uncomfortable, it seems. The antidote is time with people who actively enjoy me, who want to share me, with me-- and who in turn want to share them-actual-selves with me.

I get pedestalized easily. I overwhelm people easily. The remaining folks need to be nurtured in my life.

I haven't been making that a priority and I need to. I can't let my heart bleed this one away.

So: one way that I demonstrate my priorities is by devoting time to them. Another way is by devoting thought/writing to them.

Let's try that.

Ok, let's see if I can get back to some freewrites for awhile.

YChang's "The Struggle Continues" is gone from the internet, felled by the end of Adobe's flash player. I don't even remember how many years ago I found that, it was definitely before youtube, definitely before videos were a regular thing.

The struggle continues.

This morning I am unknotting my muscles one by one. I am breathing, in for three, hold for three, out for three, hold for three: like that. Lower my right shoulder a quarter-inch. Relax that side of my trapezius. Breathe again.

The sky is milky grey and dripping. Sometimes there's a single metallic drip sound from my chimney. There is a rooster out there calling the food call and a duck calling, maybe flirtily to a drake?

I am unknotting my mind a piece at a time. It's safe here. Without central heating the fridge is my usual source of background noise and it is blessedly quiet right now. I can hear the spaciousness of this main room, of the cathedral ceiling and out into the empty cluttered kitchen. A car drives by on the road. The highway is, for the moment, also silent.

I am letting my mind fall open like a mouse poking its nose out of a hole: twitching, waiting for cats. I am letting my mind fall open like a flower blooming in a jar: petals opening one-by-one to lie against the walls, a small bud eventually rumpling outwards to pack itself into the space.

It's cold here. My arms and thighs are tight with goosebumps. Yesterday I was too hot, too cold, too hot again, lightheaded, my arms had no strength. The latter is normal for me on and off, the former is not.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Put my shoulders back down a fraction of an inch; they'd risen again. Breathe in. There's resistance in my sternum, a prickling pressure that is only suffocating when I read it as physical. Breathe out. Breathe in.

The sky is dripping. I want to go lie between the rows of my tomatoes on the soil. I want to curl my knees up to my chest and feel warmth coming up into me from the ground, stored from the sun, but the ground is not warm right now and the sky is dripping. Once I've hauled a blanket out there to wrap around me it's just not the same.
( This is a long, stream of consciousness write )
My hands seem too heavy to move on the keys, maybe in part because of the cat on my arms. Maybe in part it's because I'm coming to the space that needs a pause.

It's ok. I'll still be here when I get back.

Yesterday was another appointment with the trauma therapist provided through work. The previous time I'd spoken with her it was pretty useful but this time was, if I'm honest, a bit of a shit-show.

I used the term partner. She talked about my "husband".

She lectured extensively about how women "like us" think about many eventualities at once, whereas men like my husband usually only take one thing into consideration when they're making a decision. Oh, and men are always more worried about financial things.

It honestly was too much energy to deal with it all so I agreed along but it was not comfortable even a little.

By the time she was shocked and worried that if I was thinking about buying property with someone I might want to discuss the exit plan before we signed anything it barely even registered.

The gist of what she's saying is, concentrate on actionable things and take actions, and basically don't think about things where actions can't be taken. Additionally maybe be creative about what actions can be taken because there's usually something.

We also got our "post-covid" flex info from work, we've known for awhile they'd be calling us back to the office Sept 7th but that something was in the works for some kind of remote flexibility.

Turns out their plan is-- I get it, but I don't think it's super well thought out. Basically there's room to work remotely 1-2 days per week for normal folks, then for folks who want to work 3-5 days remote there's a more rigorous process with approval from higher-ups (not that we have any higher ups right now, different story) and you are likely to lose your permanent office/desk.

On the surface that makes sense, right? Not using the desk much, might as well not pay for the space to keep it, and as I've noticed this year it's not really feasible to ride the middle line of a couple days from work and a couple days from home per week without paying for a second set of equipment out of pocket. But it super disincentivizes folks from coming in for a day a week to keep in touch with the rest of the folks in the office and I'm a little concerned about that. Forestry is 10000000% politics and relationships and maybe 2% science.

On the other hand it's probably not as bad for me: my town is in the bust part of the boom-bust cycle so our office is empty on the best of days. I don't think anyone's going to remove my name from my cubicle. And I suppose that in the summer folks are taking a lot of vacation (lifers can have 8 weeks or so of vacation, or sometimes more) and also a bunch of us are in the field pretty often. For relationship-building it might make sense to try to go to the field once a year with almost everyone rather than keep abreast of them in the office. But still.

Speaking of in-person, the parade of summer students is occurring. I took one out two weeks ago (I think?), another one last week, the same one this week, and each in succession next week. I think the following week or two I also will take out the third summer student. The first two haven't been in the bush before and-- I'm glad I checked before we left the office because the second one didn't have any water with him. He also didn't bring the water to the block, so we walked a kilometer and a half back for lunch and to the block again, but I think he's getting sorted out. They are both enthusiastic, polite, and friendly kids.

My ex-previous-job friends were talking about how much energy summer students bring into the office, especially back in the days when there would be 40 of them (I think our whole office is 30 people nowadays, and in the office they were speaking of there were 12 by the end?). I think it's true. Supervising or managing folks who have never had a professional job before, or who have never been to the bush, is sure different than handling someone who has some idea of what they're doing.

These daily writings were supposed to be exploring my emotional landscape but they're coming out pretty much like news bulletins. Well, like news from before the shock and disaster era of news. I guess I haven't felt spacious and energetic enough to really dive back into there. I've been working my way through a pretty great video (youtube https://youtu.be/diE7f6CKj6c ) by Sarah HendrickX called Hiding in plain sight: shining light on women with autism profiles. It's... there's a lot to unpack in it, and I'll no doubt write more about it in the future. It's an odd feeling to be seen in some ways so clearly, but to still have to accept such ill-fitting labels as "woman" to get that info. It's like cutting my arm off to escape a trap, but at the same time once I'm out of the trap I can't drive home without the arm. It's damage.

There are good things in the world too. I got my shipment of Ugandan vanilla beans, which smell truly amazing even compared to other vanilla beans. The tomato trial with seven or eight ripe varieties so far feels like a completion and proper fit of self into the world, more than I can describe it makes me happy. Being happy in that way I wish I had someone to talk about it with, but here we are. It's been cold and raining, below 10C at night and below 20C during the day, so my trial is going to be fairly representative of my conditions and I'm less likely to need to evacuate for a wildfire. The green cherry tomato I got from the grocery store, that I saved seed from, has ripened some fruits so it's early, and they taste amazing even though they're the first fruits off the plant. I am impressed.

I'm just putting off going out into the cold in fuzzy socks to do chores, though, so I'll go get the pigs their bounty of spoiled dairy and their grain and watch the baby geese and maybe harvest some more cucumbers for sunomono. It's definitely sunomono season.

It's good, out there, but it's not enough time to grow back after everything else.

So with the idea of maybe moving comes the question of what I need to move to. I have a pretty good sense for myself whether a property will fit me, but because my decisions are always based on a huge number of trade-offs and priorities that have different weight when set beside other trade-offs it's not easy to communicate them.

What would make me happy though?


Property has:
-Roughly an acre of basically level or terraced fenced garden for variety trials etc, I don't plan to use it all at first but I know I'll want that much at some point
-Space for at least 1000 square feet of greenhouse eventually, whatever that looks like and in whatever configuration, existing greenhouse can double for winter bird or pig space
-Ability to walk around near the house, at least out one of the doors of the house, without worrying about clothes etc. This could be created with privacy fencing, distance, or vegetation
-Root cellar or unfinished basement room, this can be added if the water table permits
-Own source of reliable water, either a stream or a well, or if on city water than some sort of nearby backup
-Orchard space for at the very least 8 trees (ideally standard size but hey), doesn't have to be level
-Small fruits space (raspberries, haskaps, etc) ideally an acre but flexible, doesn't have to be level
-Loop driveway
-Trailer storage, doesn't have to be covered but has to be off the loop driveway
-Bear-proof dry feed storage, at least 100 square feet, though this can be made or a sea can will work
-At least 600 square feet of barn/stall/shelter space, though this can be made
-Hammock location
-Absolute minimum 2 acres of pasture to rotate the birds through, can double as lawn etc
-Some organic matter in the soil, ideally lots, and at least some areas without swamp/standing water/pure sand
-Gosh fencing and standpipes would be nice

House has:
-One pantry room for shelves of cans and for freezers
-One brewery/wet hobby room with water-ok floors (concrete, lino, robust wood, tile) and ideally a sink or tiled shower surround with a detachable showerhead, though in a super ideal world the curing and brewing and pottery would be separate
-One meditation/yoga space, could be a loft or a room or even a small building on the property
-One dry hobby room with sewing machine and lots of shelving
-Either a big kitchen or an open concept kitchen/diningroom where the diningroom can be turned into a kitchen counter-and-storage extension
-Bedroom with enough room for a king bed and at least two dressers, ideally with a closet too
-Some sort of entertaining space, livingroom or something

Site has (these are more flexible):
-Within half an hour of a feed source
-Ideally walking distance to a corner store or somesuch
-Far enough from an airport that I'm allowed to fly a drone over it
-Agricultural neighbours or crown land surrounding, or very large property
-Far enough away from highway noise
-Safe, trailer-and-bike friendly road
-Wildfire buffers of some kind
-Local food hub of some kind
-Within twenty minutes or so of town or work
-Nurseries in the area
-A robust farm facebook site or similar
-People that say hi or wave when they drive past each other
-Not colder than -30 ever, or -20 most of the time, would be nice
-Some rain in summer
-Bike paths in the area
-Some nice restaurants in town
-A walkable downtown area
-An abbatoir within 30 mins (ha)

Exserted orange tomato has ripened, three on three different plants. It's surprisingly uniform for an outcrossing tomato. I'm getting regular cucumbers, I got my first tomatillo (amarylla, small but basically an eating-out-of-hand fruit when ripe), the gaspe corn (the short one) is tasselling.

Last week I had two vehicle incidents at work, I wasn't harmed nor was my vehicle damaged in either (I wasn't driving during one but I was involved in some of the decision-making). Those always leave me shaken.

Last weekend Tucker and I took a trip to Quesnel, evaluating it as a place to live. It has a little downtown that's super walkable, a nice walking track, and walkable bridges going into and out of the downtown. It sits at the confluence of two large and quick-moving rivers and it smells like river. It also has a pulpmill which definitely effects the air north of town and the highway north runs right through it; many country roads feed into the highway without a light and the left turns across a couple lanes of what would sometimes be heavy truck traffic was sketchy.

The rivers carve deep into the landscape where they meet. The downtown is near water level, in the V formed by confluence, while residential, farm, and industrial lines the surrounding steep, tall banks. There are a lot of switchbacks and limited flow up/down the cliffs. In at least 2 places there were impassable washouts into the surrounding area, where detours added 20-50 minutes. A couple other washouts were very rough drives as they repaired the roads. I could see why folks were selling their houses on the far side, and it definitely led to accessibility concerns. Last winter was very, very hard on roads but as Tucker pointed out the climate isn't going to get better and there's a lot more left to slide.

A couple years ago there were big fires around the town -- not close enough to see on a short drive -- and there were evacuations. Then the lumber industry tanked for awhile and the post-pine-beetle cut reduction occurred so Quesnel lost a lot of jobs. It had a plan to diversify the economy, more than many places, but it was still hit hard. This seemed to manifest primarily in a lot of infrastructure for folks in rough places: addiction centers, emergency shelters, outreach centers. It's also a very pretty town, hanging baskets, lots of interpretive signs, public art and lots of benches. It seems to be full of massage therapists, health food stores, and restaurants that have existed for over twenty years. I guess it's got a bit of a Vancouver vibe that way.

It's only really livable if one can find a place close in enough to bike or walk into town, maybe? Maybe the most livable place we could afford with some land still? But it was nice, and nice too to get out and try some good restaurants and poke around some streets. It was good to wander around a climate warm enough to grow grapes. The north does seem to have finished with masks altogether -- I suppose Quesnel is southern interior rather than north, but still.

I came back and my new surprise ducklings are still all ok, the pigs didn't break out, and the grocery store has 17 crates of dairy for the pigs. A good cap to a rough weel, all-in-all.

So I've been chewing on this PDA thing for awhile. It very clearly fits me. It explains so much, and at first it helped me with a bunch of workarounds and made me feel so much lighter: I wasn't failing at all this easy stuff, instead my experience was just so different enough that it wasn't easy. And I was a little bit relieved or smug that I'm in the 20% or so of folks with this thing that can still work and function in normal society (though honestly, awareness climbs it's likely those numbers will shift since if folks are in any way able to function they don't come to awareness of their neurotype etc).

Now I'm kind of crashing, though. I've realized that because it isn't just me there will never be a trick I learn that makes everything easier. There's no one simple thing that everyone else knows but can't verbalize that, when I figure it out, will just make the world fit me better.

I'm stuck here forever.

Don't get me wrong; I honestly really like who I am. PDA is a component of my personality along with many others and together they've all led me to be able to see things from many angles, to love deeply, to take joy in curiosity and unveiled understanding, to feel I fit into the actual earth if not human society, and to my truly wonderful relationship with ecosystems and the land. The things I can't do don't feel important to me most of the time; they feel like distractions from the heart of any matter. But.

But I don't live in a world with just myself, and I don't get to interact with just myself. I don't even get to interact with folks who really understand. That can be really lonely. The more clearly I understand myself the lonelier it gets. And there's no trick, no key, to take that away.

I don't consider my personality to be a liability. It's hard, but it's worth it. And honestly, all my life I've pretty much been able to normalize myself enough that other folks don't think I'm a liability either. Deep feelings are relatable. Striving is relatable. Feeling alienated is deeply relatable for a lot of folks. And when things aren't relatable they're manic pixie dream girl-style admirable, I guess inspiring is the word. Folks wish they could shed as many societal constraints as I do without fully understanding that I pay a price to do so.

But all during these interactions I'm an interpreter: I'm evoking other folks' feelings, analyzing for commonalities, reviewing what I know to be already-normalized or common experiences, and building bridges between my experiences and theirs. It's work. And I don't see too many folks doing the same for me, although I guess other folks don't see me doing it for them because I'm good at it.

With my growing understanding of PDA comes a growing knowledge that I'm an interpreter forever. I don't fancy myself an alien: I am an alien. The places I find meaning are just different from where other folks find meaning. The things I find important are invisible or inconsequential to other folks and I can't draw meaning out of many of their core rituals except through the consequences as they reflect back on folks.

The world is never going to fit me. I am never going to suddenly fit the world. Instead my daily practice, every day, is to carve out a space for myself. Some days it's like digging in sand and the hole fills back in. Some days it's chiselling rock. Some days it's like moving aside good garden loam with your fingers to plant a seed. Every day, the previous holes fill in a lot or a little and it starts again.

This is why covid ending is hard for me. I've had days where I haven't had to dig.

And so a lot of days lately I feel angry and defeated and frustrated and cast out and tired. No doubt I'll get back into the swing of daily work, and knowing me I'll make myself a place that fits me better where I don't need to do as much work every single day. But.

There's no trick. It's the work of moving the whole world a lot or a little. And in the end I am only flesh and blood.