Greenstorm's Journal

I've finally used the eggplant emoji in natural online language.

Paired with a bee.

To describe certain behaviours I suspect a plant got up to last year.

This was a tomato that didn't ripen much in the way of fruit but has characteristics showing up in a lot of my saved seed, and had some pretty available pollen.

I do not suspect my conversational partner will fully understand but that's ok.

I guess I haven't hopped on okc anywhere other than the north for just shy of a decade? Set my location to the North Island the other day and gave myself a radius that just clipped the mainland and wow! Autistic folks, plenty of space outside the gender binary, lots of humans, it's kind of nice to see. Super interesting how people use specific causes to flag their identities/in-groups, too-- I'm inclined to be wary of that, but we shall see.

Anyhow, there are in fact new folks on there since I was last down south, but fewer new folks than you might think. We'll see where this goes. It would be nice to have some folks close by to connect with when I get down there, and doubly nice to have someone/some folks around compatible for sex.

I've been away from home and sleepless and it's pride month. I feel awful. I've been having some thoughts about queer, gender, and marginalization.

The ace spectrum is pretty marginalized. I'm discovering some really helpful language, the term megasexual. To quote: "the way it was explained to me is that megasexuals use sex to get to know people. So it’s not necessarily about fostering a romantic connection at all. It’s like, you meet, you flirt and have sex, and then you might become friends who never have sex again. You may or may not want to continue having sex with that person, but the information you get from the experience helps you figure it out." This rings lots of bells but there's barely even a definition on the internet for it, and ace visibility (and the name of the ace spectrum itself) renders this stuff pretty invisible.

Poly is marginal. Solo poly is a marginal subset. I'm domestic-leaning solo poly. Poly folks don't want me because I'm non-hierarchical, solo folks don't want me because I'm domestic. Queers don't want me because poly isn't really queer.

I would have expected queer folks to be a supportive community. That's not the case. Individuals within it are great (#notallqueers?) However. Queer people spend too much time gatekeeping (hello, pride month, when everyone proactively posts about why I'm not part of their movement! I see you! Go have fun, I'll be hanging out with my geese! I'm glad you have words and parties with people who seem like you!) for me to be happy with the term queer, so I don't really identify as genderqueer. I don't like the term nonbinary because I probably fall into various parts of the traditional gender spectrum a small percentage of the time, and I don't want to relinquish my internal sense of masculinity and femininity. Maybe binary+? Either way I spend a lot of my internal time outside the binary. Also everyone I know who messes with gender is super into ID'ing as femme. I'm really not part of that club. And I know a few people who are out about struggling with the real serious difficulties of living within some form of masculine identification, and those people save me. You know who you are. I don't have nearly enough space to engage and talk and have community on that front. Because even if I only ID in that space 2 or 5% of the time, I struggle with parts of that and you all help me feel seen. But yeah. Feels super marginal.

At least the word pansexual already sort of exists in people's conceptual space?

And I'm pretty ok with being mostly-closeted (this is a public post, after all) at work and in my community about gender and mega stuff at the moment, but I basically refuse to be forever closeted about my partners. I've been working from a new location a bunch, and the process of coming out carefully, subtly, and diplomatically to people at just the right time is exhausting. Self-censoring and deciding who I'll talk about as the legitimate partner and who gets deleted from my life is exhausting. Hearing people talk about their great inclusive communities that just need to keep straight folks out or poly folks out or bi folks who date cross-gender or how ace is ok but never a mention of mega or whatever is exhausting. I'm going home to play with my geese with a giant pouty flounce.

The end.

So, my plan did not involve canning or brewing up here. I brought my bow, I was going to practice, and I was going to work a lot.

Well, I'm working a lot.

There is such abundance of foraging foods here, though; I guess that's what you get when you're not really in a city. There are so many dandelions and spruce buds everywhere that I've got supplies to do a small batch of dandelion jelly, one of pickled dandelion buds, and one of spruce tip syrup or jelly (likely the former). The Amelanchier alnifolia is in full bloom, promising a great crop in the summer. I suspect I'll do something about that too. I'll need to haul everything back down to Vancouver when I'm done here, but it's good for my soul to make these things.

I'm also cooking meals a lot. I have a lovely source of local beef, there are lots of greens growing around, I'm stocked up on flour and butter and bacon and potatoes. I've been making myself the kind of traditional meals that have different parts: a meat component, a starch component, a veggie component. I've never really eaten that way before, since so much of what I make has been single-pot foods like stews or soups or casseroles. I think the grill helps with this, since I can grill my meat and bannock or potatoes, and then just make veggies to go on the side.

This was my first full week of bush work at work. That is, every day (it was a short week because of the long weekend, so just four days in a row) I put on heavy spiked caulk boots, headscarf, vest full of equipment, and hard hat and walked multiple kilometers in straight lines through a mix of underbrush, standing, and fallen trees. I am covered in sweat after the first ten minutes, which continues until I get back to the truck. The moose tracks never really went in the direction I was going. The work when we got to the plots was not particularly hard, though it too involved some climbing, but getting there is one of the more trenuous things I've done. There are tangles of trees that go on for great distances, so I need to walk on logs (thus the spiked boots) which is nice, or climb over them crosswise through spiky dead branches which is not so nice. There are swamps or thick underbrush areas that require high-kneed steps and have considerably more drag than walking through water. There are puddles of ephemeral orchids and green things unfurling and soon there will be flowers. Everything smells like pine and fir and spruce. There are so many bugs: flies that bomb past but can't get at me because I'm entirely covered except for my face, mosquitoes that make it hard to concentrate and stay away from my sprayed clothing so I just have to worry about them on my wrists and face, and these awful terrible bugs that fly straight into the eyes and stay there until they're pulled out. I imagine, awfully, that they are laying eggs. Believe me, it's a lot harder to walk on a log three to six feet up with no handholds when there are things shooting into your eyes. I don't walk on logs higher than that, or the really narrow ones, though I suspect that will come with time.

I am covered in bruises from the waist down, where I hit short sharp branch stubs while climbing over trees. I am full of thorn scratches. I have bug bites on my hands and to a lesser extent on my feet from when I take my boots off for the way home. I am tired a lot as I build strength. Last night, Friday night, I came home and showered and the feeling of being clean was astonishing. I am, however, very happy. I'm reminded that in order for my life to feel meaningful and fulfilling I don't need to necessarily do any particular moral thing, I just need to be outside for three to seven hours doing heavy work four days a week. I really miss people. I really miss physical contact. There are plenty of things I'd like to be doing but all I have time for is cooking, eating, sleeping, and working. But, I am happy.

I also have a feeling I haven't had much before: I feel completely unsexualized, but at the same time very pretty. I'm not sure how to describe this. No one is looking at me. I am covered head to tow in shapeless garments with equipment strapped over. Even my hair and throat are covered. My form, including the tan on my face, is a direct expression of the function I am fulfilling and is completely secondary to it. I do not view myself through the lens of desirability, do not think of it. When I look in the mirror I see myself happy, I am nearly always smiling (I pretty much only look in a mirror in the truck as I'm leaving the field and right after work to see how much dirt I need to scrape off each day), and I feel like a part of the outdoors I've been working in. That is beautiful. I really do feel like I'm outside the trap of sexiness.

I am not entirely outside the trap of surface though. I am meeting strangers all the time. I am careful what I say to them, especially in regards to poly etc. There are office politics. I do not feel completely comfy with anyone, and I am not sure I should. I am not always sure how to act. So though I am more comfortable with myself, I am also more watchful. This doesn't mean I don't enjoy the company of people up here, it just means I am always thinking, a little bit, about how I should be behaving.

It's hard and frustrating to be learning a whole new set of skills. I've been landscaping for a long time; I haven't had to learn a whole job from the ground up for a long time. I am literally learning from walking on up with this one. It's been thee weeks (admittedly only one and a bit in the field) and I feel like I should be competent. I am not. I want to feel productive and useful. Sometimes I'm not the one responsible for a lack of productivity -- a new GPS and software system mandated by the ministry for what I do is responsible for at least a week and a half of downtime as it gets implemented, other people forget to charge their equipment, etc -- but I like the feeling of making good progress and I'm not doing that right now.

It is beautiful here. I miss Dave. I get to eat outside. The earth is generous. So many feelings. Now, though, I will go make chimichurri sauce and pick dandelion flowers and stop thinking about it and just enjoy.

Tonight Andrew gets home, so I'll be living in my home again, full-time, hereafter.

I've been chipping away at it, and it's going faster than I expected; I guess I had forgotten what it was like for something to be done, then stay done (except, of course, the animals).

An incredible amount of garbage is coming out of this place. I wasn't doing much critical sorting in the last while, and so things that weren't immediately disgusting but were useless/broken built up. Things didn't get put away to the extent that I need to create places for them. And did I mention a lot of my plants died in that interlude where I wasn't coming home much?

It feels So. Good. to clean things. It feels amazing to see something wrong and just-- fix it. Immediately. It feels so good for my floors to be emerging. I do clearly need more shelves, I need to figure out how I'm going to force that into a budget. There is just not enough space for everything to go somewhere.

I continue to be careful about spreading around my attention; getting together with friends sometimes and lovers other, with any given person only once per week, making some solitude in there (which sure, I've been using to nap or clean house, but whatcha gonna do). I've also been enjoying time to chat online with folks; it really is a mode of interaction I appreciate. It feels like my native tongue.

I cannot wait to have people over to my place.

I love anticipating when I'm next gonna see someone now, instead of feeling anxious if they're not around for a bit. I quite enjoy that switch.

I discovered a program called Snapchat. It's a surprisingly intimate-feeling photo-messaging program, and I've been using it a fair bit. Somehow the impermanence, mutability, and control of my own image has felt really empowering. I'm learning to take pictures of myself that I think are pretty.

I have in no way figured out how to cope with my sex drive. Despite having maybe 5 people who could be considered lovers to some degree or another I am not getting laid a whole lot, and when I do it takes significant time because that's what happens when you see someone infrequently enough that you don't drop into routine. So I can't just up the frequency of those dates; I'd never get anything else done. I'm in pretty much my ideal sexual environment right now, so I need to come up with some strategies, or maybe it will settle over time.

The people around me continue to amaze me with their awesomeness, forthrightness, with the sheer fun or love or caring or interestingness of interactions with them.

My grief process peeks out around the edges once in awhile but is still pretty much in hiding. Not sure what it'll take for it to feel safe.

Going to bed alone.

It's less luxurious when you'll be woken at some random time after 1am by someone coming in in an indeterminate frame of mind, smelling like a stranger, and you need to get back to sleep again because you have a 9am meeting.

It's more luxurious when it's your own goddamn bed and you lock the door and you're the only one with the key, but hey.

There are tons of great places for rent. I'm... torn. I could start viewing in my copious free time (did I mention I don't have days off anymore?) but then if I liked something I'd likely have a month overlap and that's $$$, plus I'd be moving soon, which is a hassle I may not have time for.

Gah. What to do.

In other news, reaffirmed the you-don't-love-me-but-I-love-you status I have with Michael the other night. Just a warning, if you've dated me you should stop reading at this point, but:

why can I not meet someone who can make their own life so interesting that they give a fuck about it, can support themselves like a grown-up, and actually cares about me? I mean, seriously.

On the other hand I'm playing in a garden full of friends right now. Paul is in town, Michael is neat and soothing, Andrew is reliable (rarest of traits!), other people who I like and who are sweet to me stick their noses into my life to offer nice things from time to time. Kynnin didn't even wait six months before seeing if we could find time to connect this time! I may hang out with people from school outside of school!

Physical things are receding. My sex drive has almost completely shut down; my ability to playfully have sex certainly has. I don't have the money/time matrix to eat particularly well and tastily, and I hardly notice how my food tastes most of the time. I'm biking again, to and from school (it's about 20k per day, that's just about an hour of riding all told) which is lovely but probably the least physical exercise I can do. I am touched seldom enough that the instinct is burying itself and touching people feels a little foreign. I am never naked except in bed, mostly because I am never home except in bed.

This is an impoverished existence in many ways. So many of the things I value are absent. Independence burgeons, though, self-reliance and pleasure in my own companionship rise up. My shell is forming, smooth and seamless against the world. I think some people are entombed halfway through it, half in and half out, and I can go to the edge and visit them there, but no one is within it.

I am grown-up, single in the sense of one entity complete in itself. Don't think this means I'm not sometimes lonely, or tired, or needy: there's just no face in that void.

I don't know what else to tell you tonight. I want to write a lot more than I do, but I'm never in front of a keyboard with enough privacy, energy, and lack of school deadlines.

Pretty much every word in here is lonely in some way, said when I don't have a person to speak to, when there's no one who can just listen and understand. This is no different, typed at night in an empty house to avoid bed.

Oh, enough of this. Goodnight.

How to Write an Erotic Letter

You must empty yourself first. Erase
everything you’ve written. If you’re naked,
revise all your clothes back on. Anyway,
they’re all you have. What matters
is the taking them off. Begin with a title
“Concerning insatiable carnal urges.”
Attach a handwritten note that says,
Keep your hair down and If you come here,
I’ll tell you something awful about someone perfect. Scathing
and lovely to hear. Remember,

each time, each letter is an entire love affair, say
‘A’ is for almost. ‘B’
is the emptiness that follows. The letter ‘O’
is what the body believes.

If she writes in a letter,
Sometimes our bodies are too much for us,
quote her. How she turns you on
turns her on. You can
quote me on that.

I am remembering the sweep of your hair, the light
on your breasts, your beautiful eyes expanding;
I am remembering the slickness inside you—
how wet, how deliciously warm. I think
of your uncontrollable breath; I think
of your nipples kissing my chest; I think
of your mouth on my neck and the sweet taste
of your tongue in my mouth.

Set aside nothing for later. Call this,
I was kissing and sucking and wanting so badly
to fuck you silly, silly. And erase it. But enjoy it first.

Feel free to write a pretend letter to her father.
Quote from it: “Dear her father, Sir, we are sorry to inform you, sir,
of the mysterious demise of your daughter. It seems she was somehow—
sorry to say this indelicately—fucked to death…obviously
a scandalous affair. Ropes and long-necked bottles and,
oh, we mustn’t go on. A man was dead too, sir—exhaustion it seems
or dementia. With sincere regrets,
I am yours.”

If she uses the word fuck in her letters
you use the word fuck
but at the end of the letter only. This
is not prudery, it is teasing
and she will appreciate it.

I want my face in your hair,
your perfume in my breath,
my finger tips softly
touching the sides of your ribs, your waist,
your thighs, your breast, your face—what is important here,
in this letter, your hand must touch her, in this letter,
so she wants, over and over, what is not there.

If you’re foolish enough to write Oh God prematurely,
you deserve what you don’t get. As a cautionary measure,
delete all references to god: Jesus it feels so good and Holy shit.
Consider keeping: God, you are so slick; so goddamn delicious.
But you’ve already used slick once. Now three times. There is nothing wrong
with I want to hear your voice coming and coming
but admit, it’s a one-shot phrase.

Damp cotton will open caves in your mind.
Promise her: I need you
electric in my mouth. Write: Concerning the art of seduction
and leave it at that. Tease her: Truth or dare? End
before you’ve said everything. Realize

everything you are, in this letter, precedes you—
which is the loneliness of writing. What you want
is never now. That’s the essence of desire. What she reads is always past;

that’s despair. Think about how—
if she could—she would swallow the world
(pillow and all) take it all inside—
all of you—so it could come shattering out
again. But don’t fool yourself,

this letter needs to be filled with sorrow. Write:
Sometimes I wish I could be in your body
so I could feel what you feel. Sometimes,
I wish you could be in my body—your own name amazingly
on the tip of your new tongue, the smell of you
(I mean me) in your fresh mind,
seeing your old body arch away from your new body,
hearing seeing feeling what was once you
hold her breath; hearing her becoming, coming

apart all around you. And then your own foreign release
beyond your whole body. The cracking—
it feels so open—this desire, almost to weep. Then
weep. In the space of a letter you once were.

Anthony Farrington

These have been a number of the most unsexy-feeling days of my life, but there's a great thread at greatpoets for 'erotic poetry, preferably funny' so I'm going to stockpile:

2 A.M.


When I came with you that first time

on the floor of your office, the dirty carpet

under my back, the heel of one foot

propped on your shoulder, I went ahead

and screamed, full-throated, as loud

and as long as my body demanded,

because somewhere, in the back of my mind,

packed in the smallest neurons still capable

of thought, I remembered

we were in a warehouse district

and that no sentient being resided for miles.

Afterwards, when I would unclench

my hands and open my eyes, I looked up.

You were on your knees, your arms

stranded at your sides, so still -- 

the light from the crooknecked lamp

sculpting each lift and delicate twist,

the lax muscles, the smallest veins

on the backs of your hands. I saw
the ridge of each rib, the blue hollow

pulsing at your throat, all the colors

in your long blunt cut hair which hung

over your face like a raffia curtain

in some south sea island hut.

And as each bright synapse unfurled

and followed its path, I recalled

a story I'd read that explained why women

cry out when they come -- that it's

the call of the conqueror, a siren howl

of possession. So I looked again

and it felt true, your whole body

seemed defeated, owned, having taken on

the aspect of a slave in shackles, the wrists

loosely bound with invisible rope. 

And when you finally spoke you didn't

lift your head but simply moaned the word god

on an exhalation of breath -- I knew then
I must be merciful, benevolent,

impossibly kind.

Dorianne Laux



It occurs to me that the conventional image of sex, where the dominant partner is on top, is backwards in my brain. To my mind, it's the sub who does the work (the servicing?)-- and so often ends up "on top" in a literal sense, because that's frequently where the most physical exertion is required.

So there.