![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Jul. 7th, 2025 10:36 amLast night was a bad one. I listened to The Waste Land twice, once with a very good reader from The Great Audiobooks I think, and then the original, Eliot himself reading.
Before that I opened a book I'd loaned on Vavilov but it turned out I'd somehow got the ebook copy instead of the audiobook copy(?) so I returned it and put a hold on the audiobook copy. Then the library said I'd had the audiobook copy out(?) so there's something glitchy somewhere there. It's probably for the best I didn't start reading it last night and instead moved to The Waste Land; on the first page of the actual book there was a picture of quite a young Vavilov in a group with many other young men, all looking fresh and hopeful. That, and the relentless invisibility of anyone who believes in inherent human worth, well. My heart hurts.
And of course when my heart hurts my biometrics get bad, my muscles do the spaghetti thing, my watch complains about my heart rate variability, etc. That's why I mostly stay out of it on the internet. I don't think I ever did fully appreciate how much energy I was spending so flagrantly and unknowingly on emotion, and looking back I feel more sympathy for the folks that chose not to match it.
In hindsight I should have gone in to town to the SCA event or the pride picnic instead of trying to nurse my body back, though maybe driving was an iffy proposition. Today I'll go out and spread mulch even if it hurts my pinkie finger even more I think. It'll be gentler on it than putting up trellises, or maybe I should prune the tomatoes instead.
I need to learn how to grieve within what people are calling "my energy envelope" or maybe I need to set times apart, a week or two, when I have no other energy demands upon my time. If spring is working with gardens above the earth and winter is working with clay and fire below the earth, maybe this long arc of summer-into-fall is the right time for that; the right time for learning how to integrate everything associated with loss. Loss of innocence, loss of humanity, loss of Tucker too. Loss of a lot of kinds of hope, or maybe just their temporary submergence.
It would feel good to have the clay under my hands again, to put my skin on the same thing people have been doing for millennia. I'm planning to sow rye and winter wheat too, since my experimental winter wheat plot is doing spectacularly. I may try to overwinter some barley, it should be fine if wheat is since wheat is generally less hardy. There's something about immersing myself in these human problems -- is this curve right? How do functionality and aesthetics intersect? If there's perennial crabgrass in this field how thoroughly do I need to get it out before I plant winter grains, since it's very hard to weed out once they're in? It reattaches me to humans, who I know would have many of the same other worries that I do and who also would have the same worries that are so confronting to me in others. Until my finger is better I can't do clay, but it's good to know it's there waiting.
I've written myself into remembering connection. That's very good. It's been a long time that our species has singled other groups out as being unworthy of life. It's part of us. Any true acceptance and love of humans needs to include that fact or else it's pure romanticism. Love what is, or else you're loving an illusion.
Time to go out into the garden with the wheelbarrow.
Before that I opened a book I'd loaned on Vavilov but it turned out I'd somehow got the ebook copy instead of the audiobook copy(?) so I returned it and put a hold on the audiobook copy. Then the library said I'd had the audiobook copy out(?) so there's something glitchy somewhere there. It's probably for the best I didn't start reading it last night and instead moved to The Waste Land; on the first page of the actual book there was a picture of quite a young Vavilov in a group with many other young men, all looking fresh and hopeful. That, and the relentless invisibility of anyone who believes in inherent human worth, well. My heart hurts.
And of course when my heart hurts my biometrics get bad, my muscles do the spaghetti thing, my watch complains about my heart rate variability, etc. That's why I mostly stay out of it on the internet. I don't think I ever did fully appreciate how much energy I was spending so flagrantly and unknowingly on emotion, and looking back I feel more sympathy for the folks that chose not to match it.
In hindsight I should have gone in to town to the SCA event or the pride picnic instead of trying to nurse my body back, though maybe driving was an iffy proposition. Today I'll go out and spread mulch even if it hurts my pinkie finger even more I think. It'll be gentler on it than putting up trellises, or maybe I should prune the tomatoes instead.
I need to learn how to grieve within what people are calling "my energy envelope" or maybe I need to set times apart, a week or two, when I have no other energy demands upon my time. If spring is working with gardens above the earth and winter is working with clay and fire below the earth, maybe this long arc of summer-into-fall is the right time for that; the right time for learning how to integrate everything associated with loss. Loss of innocence, loss of humanity, loss of Tucker too. Loss of a lot of kinds of hope, or maybe just their temporary submergence.
It would feel good to have the clay under my hands again, to put my skin on the same thing people have been doing for millennia. I'm planning to sow rye and winter wheat too, since my experimental winter wheat plot is doing spectacularly. I may try to overwinter some barley, it should be fine if wheat is since wheat is generally less hardy. There's something about immersing myself in these human problems -- is this curve right? How do functionality and aesthetics intersect? If there's perennial crabgrass in this field how thoroughly do I need to get it out before I plant winter grains, since it's very hard to weed out once they're in? It reattaches me to humans, who I know would have many of the same other worries that I do and who also would have the same worries that are so confronting to me in others. Until my finger is better I can't do clay, but it's good to know it's there waiting.
I've written myself into remembering connection. That's very good. It's been a long time that our species has singled other groups out as being unworthy of life. It's part of us. Any true acceptance and love of humans needs to include that fact or else it's pure romanticism. Love what is, or else you're loving an illusion.
Time to go out into the garden with the wheelbarrow.
