Greenstorm's Journal

The other day Angus messaged me to say he'd biked past our old apartment and it looked exactly the same. That night I dreamed about him and woke up with a fragment humming in my mind:

I dreamed of you so hard
My love
It did my heart good
And it was almost enough.

On the weekend mom came up. She's farmsitting while I'm gone doing pagany and pottery things and visiting Tucker. I had rested pretty much solid the two days before and was going to clean up on the day she arrived -- it's a 12-hour drive so I thought I'd have plenty of time to tidy up the house. Turns out she left at 4am, so she arrived when things were still chaos (I'd got about halfway through and then taken a nap, thinking I'd have time).

It's actually quite a nice visit but despite having told her about my weird body stuff lately I haven't been able to actually rest while she's here. I'm pushing through, and that just means I go through the heirarchy of symptoms: tired, then dizzy, then can't breathe, then headache, and then the next seems to be that my muscles alternately are too tight and too loose and my joints hurt. I could say, "hey, I'm going to go lie down for a bit" and she does that so it's not like there's not precedent, but I don't. The feeling of being a prey animal growing up is embedded so deep. The feeling of not being supported emotionally goes so deep.

That said, mom asked some questions when I was telling her about stuff, especially PMDD, and she seemed curious about diagnosis and supportive. I know she had some pretty intense cycle issues through her life, though I suspect they were mostly physical (?). Not sure she'd mention it if they weren't. It all comes from somewhere.

I'm worn out and I want to go somewhere safe and quiet and curl up in the dark and feel my feelings and be loved. And it's not-- it's just a wound and I can't imagine my life without it, nor what healing it would look like. I love mom so much but there's a level where we don't know how to be family to each other, or maybe don't know how to speak to each other about it. I don't feel like she doesn't love me. I see the things she does in her own love language, cleaning and coming up to farmsit and doing conversation with me and for so long trying to get me to exercise with her. I just don't know how to be parented by anyone other than myself, maybe.

And I don't know how to be someone's kid. This maybe hits one of those wells of shame around PDA I carry around: I'm not consistent, I can't do what I'm supposed to do, and I know that to mean that most people don't believe that I love them and can't feel that I care. I withdrew from my brothers more or less completely because I didn't want them to depend on me and then for me to not be there when they really needed me. Part of this is based on an old unhealthy understanding of what support looks like -- no one person really can be there all the time, and that's ok. Part of it is that I really can't be there in the same ways that most people can. And, yeah, I carry shame for that.

Anyhow, it's overcast and I'm sad today and my emotions are feeling tender and I'm at work looking like a normal person for all I'm worth. I'll spend time being tired.

"Play" is definitely generally the missing component. I suspect it's the missing component in handling both stress and transitions. Space where I'm not resting and not working, but have time to shape or co-shape the rules of engagement really help settle me.

Most of my co-play is verbal.

A lot of my own play is creative, where I'm "playing with" structures organization, and/or physical properties.

Oh goodness, put me in a group with other plant people, even just virtually, and I just light up. It's particularly obvious because I've been watching myself on all these work meetings, and now I watch myself on the landrace plant group meeting and I go from barely managing not to look completely bored to just glowing.

Ok, message received, data collected. What to do about it is the harder question.

The butcher was supposed to come today and do the biggest set of pigs yet; Josh and I did a ton of prep to set up. Turns out he's sick in the hospital (!) and will try to come in a week, when Josh will not be here, but in the meantime today and the next couple days isn't a huge absorbing rush.

Josh brought me up a sewing machine, a Singer 401 Slant-O-Matic, and I've been slowly getting acquainted with it. I've never used a drop-in bobbin before; I find it surprisingly hard to thread the bobbin. It's a nice machine; it runs smoothly, it has lots of ways to adjust everything and a everything is adjustable in very fine increments. It also smells like a proper sewing machine. It has a very weird pedal, not a lever but instead basically a foot plate with a button it it you press with your heel, that will take some adjusting.

The plan for the next couple days is now to tidy up odds and ends (put in the yard light, deal with the downstairs fridge that makes that awful noise, maybe shell some corn and cook some food) and probably also now to can everything in the freezers so they're empty for the butcher. Not that there's so much left in there, honestly.

I've realized how much of an effect being with Tucker has had on me. When something relating to a relationship is on my mind I don't bring it up anymore; I used to assume that folks I was in a relationship would want to hear about stuff relating to the relationship, and would be open to conversation about it. That has definitely been trained out of me. There are a couple things with Josh where the relationship has changed over the last couple years and I've been thinking about them when he's here but not mentioning them; last night once I knew nothing was happening today I mentioned them. It was hard? That's not normal for me. And now I'm nervous about it, even though it went well. That's... really instructive, and I need to remember this. It's a stupid and counterproductive way to exist and any situation which exerts pressure on me to not mention feelings and changes in interaction is not a situation I should remain in.

So I guess I'm slowly healing here. The cats are getting lots of brushing, the chimney got cleaned, the house is getting gradually put in order. There's space for me to exist here, and exist I will.

So, things are pretty bad, I guess I'm implementing The Protocol.

Make no decisions.

Have no conversations on meaningful topics.

Believe nothing my mind tells me.

Believe nothing people say, or any interpretations of what people mean.

Just do physical tasks as much as possible and wait it out.

I've been thinking about what I like.

That's not right. I've been thinking of what the world looks like when what I do is a straight-line expression of who I am. I have interests and values, and instead of trying to mediate that for the outside world, what happens when I just let it flow out?

I do animal things. I lie on the floor in the dirt. I make clothes. I make gardens. I transform meat into charcuterie. I write and write and write.

The guy who does the "Autism from the Inside" youtube channel has been working on his burnout cycle for awhile. Most recently, he's decided that what prevents burnout for him is not just more rest, but an adequate amount of play as part of the cycle: work, play, rest.

I've been thinking a lot about how I play lately.

A lot of my play is super autistic. That is, to observers socialized to this society, it looks like work and/or capitalist productivity. Kids line their toys up or sort them by category or think up situations so complex it can be hard for other people to follow them into that play. I line my spreadsheets up and sort my seeds by this category and then that, looking at the different patterns they make. I do projects that are environmentally-reactive, responding to surroundings so complex that other people have trouble following me into the game.

But.

It's not capitalist productivity. It is play. Every meme that said you need to rest chipped away at how I thought I was supposed to handle being tired until I didn't know what I needed. Performativity seeps in the smallest cracks, and even though I wasn't performing for anyone in particular I saw the template - neurotypical maybe, though I have a lot of autistic friends that follow it - where rest was equated either with doing nothing or with consuming.

It did not serve me.

Now I keep busy, but I'm busy doing things I like. I don't feel external productivity pressure to do these things and I work very hard at that, it's key; I don't feel guilty if I don't do them. I slip like quicksilver between activities as I need, my attention pooling long and deep sometimes and skipping across many activities other times.

Doing these things energizes me. It pulls me into the world, and then I want to live in the world instead of hiding from it as I do in burnout.

It's also just so opposite of all the advice I see. I guess I should be used to it now; that society and those recommendations are not built for me. It's weird to think they work for some people? But I guess it's just as weird for those people to learn that all this "work" works for me.

I'm sliding into myself as a 13-year-old. This is the life I lived then.

Aside from sewing, cooking, gardening, being really earnest, being enthusiastically idealistic, and having a mix of bafflement and impatience for most humans I am re-embracing my method for making friends.

It pretty much involves walking up to someone and saying "you look neat because of X. I'd like to do Y."

So far this mostly involves "you look neat on the internet because (you are PDA/you are a woodland creature/you do plants/whatever). I'd like to friend each other and watch from a distance for awhile."

It feels good to do. I learned a long long time ago that life is too short not to be forthright, and much too short to assume other people will do the work for you. Also it feels shitty when they "mysteriously" don't do the work.

TBH this is probably why I've dated too many people who want other people to do the work.

PS Hazard is staring transfixed into the flames of the woodstove, which I highly approve of but seems like a very ...human.. thing to do?

This is the kind of thing I really enjoy. Tap thawed, bringing everyone a last round of water, but not too much so I'll be able to knock the ice out of the bowls in the morning. Marvelling at physics, at the way the water freezes in the rubber containers from outside in, and expands as it does, so the bottom of each frozen dish ends up with a point of ice sticking out from the bottom. Peeling flakes of straw off the big square bales and bundling them into the wheelbarrow, not because they're heavy but because they're unwieldy and I don't have a calf sled. Carrying the straw into the pig houses and being surprised every time how warm it is in there, even with all the open holes in walls and at the top of the roofline for ventilation and even with the front of the A-frame broken off. Fluffing up the straw in the middle of the swarm of interested, excited, and sometimes even frolicking pigs as they gather to fluff their bedding and search for missed kernels of grain-- much tastier always than the grain sitting in their bowls right there. Digging out my beloved cordless drill and remembering so many nights of patching up pighouses in storms and snow while I put the front back on. They've been through colder than this, and finding the houses warmer inside than I expect it makes the whole thing less of a desperate bid for my animals to survive and more just a way of spending time together. I love the improvisation of sticking my toque on the faucet to see if that helps thaw it, or finding just the right piece of plywood so I can cover the straw with that so I can shift a piece of metal roofing down to go on the wood so I can... etc.

At one point I had the front on the A-frame and was cutting a wider door in it -- there were two open strips, but the biggest pigs could not fit through them. I was using the sawzall which is loud and vibratey and one of the extremely round barrows was inside the A-frame, didn't like the sound, and tried to squeeze through the other side. He got stuck and was squealing and pawing at the ground and wouldn't try to back up even when I stopped and went to help; he eventually got through (and the front didn't come off!) and I finished the opening on the other side. I have to say, it was pretty funny, even if he was not pleased about it (he's also one of the biggest bullies to the other pigs, so that might be part of my lack of sympathy; he spends less time being worried than any of them except Baby and Apricot, I think).

I like it. When I know my animals are safe and comfy, I like just the work part of it: setting up for them, providing for them, bringing them things they need and things that will make them happy. And I'd much rather a job where I'm out at all hours saving the day than a non-flex 9-5 (well, 8-4:30) like I have now. It's just that those jobs tend to reward availability with longer hours and efficiency with more work.

All that aside, I'm happy tonight and my house is warm and my animals are sleeping in deep beds of snow. the wind that was howling all last night and sending the house shuddering and the fire flinching has let up. The house is quiet, my teeth are brushed, and my life would only be better if, instead of going in to work tomorrow, I could spend more than an hour with the animals in the morning and then come in to warm up and cut out some more clothes.

Stolen from elsewho: "Access to me is a privilege and you have the VIP all-inclusive, all-access pass."

Caused me to realize that no one has an all-access pass currently, and specifically aren't doing things to maintain access, and I would like someone who considers it a privilege and seeks to maintain it.

drive through the night:
the feeling of morning;
vision before colour

I got up at 4 in the morning so I could give the stove a bit of a burn on fresh wood before turning it down. The road was dark but not snowy, frosty but not wet. Newly-painted centerlines stood out under my single aging headlight and my high beams had a long reach. Sometimes I had company on the highway, usually in clumps going to the mill, to the pipeline camps, to a town. Often I was alone and that was better.

The Highway of Tears is becoming familiar. The cell signal is much better courtesy of a political push; this is how we deal with missing indigenous women (though to be fair the men die at a pretty high rate too): we put money into a program, in this case into some company's pockets. They put a bus in down here too, though it's not tremendously useful. Meanwhile the folks north of me, in Middle River and Takla, apparently call the ambulence when they are in dire need of a ride to town.

There was a lot of dark this morning. When I woke up, when I pulled out of the driveway with my grow lights shining through the window behind me, the sky was the clear bowl full of stars that dominates our winter landscape. The moon was a sliver superimposed on a sphere, low near the trees, and it took a very long time for the sky to grow pale grey behind me as I headed west.

There's no snow on the fields. The word I associate with this open, windblown, waiting-for-winter feeling is sere, colourless-dun and patient. When the light came up I was in the Bulkley Valley as it opens up, as the mountains rise to shape a valley, as the trees retreat to the hills and leave even the patchwork of the previous valley. With the mountains it feels wilder; with the fields it feels cozier and more settled. I like it here.

When I stopped for gas I could tell it was light because the truck, still for the first time in three hours, started crowing. The ducks were upset, chattering away, and that's always hard on my heart.

Three days of especially hard labour, of angling the vibrating pressure washer to kick up a minimum of bird-shit-spray, stray, and feathers into my eyes and sinuses as the light fled; of rounding up the ducks and pulling out the keepers over and over as they kept running back to rejoin the main group; of hauling and pushing and pulling heavy carriers as gently as possible; of carrying bucket after bucket of grain to every group of animals so they'd have days of food for the day I was gone and for an extra day in case something happened; finally four hours of relentless driving in the dark until the light crept up behind me and a bright spot of sunrise showed in the south (why the colour just in the south? I have no idea).

Unloading was easy, having enough carriers is a blessing that way since the animals don't need to be transferred.

The morning was for errands, but first I passed a sign that said "Alpine World" on the highway. When I stopped, the man who ran the plant shop said he'd forgotten to bring in the sign the other day and gave me a two-for-one deal on winter-bare potted apple trees: a Gloria and a State Fair will join my collection. We chatted about apples for a bit, then I moved on. The feed store was less helpful: $22 for a bag of layer pellets ($48 for organic) and I figure I should just wait till I get home. Then the wholesale place, where I get my yearly bakery-quality flour to mix with my home-ground stuff and where I picked up hedgehog mushrooms grown by a small local company. Since I'm innoculating logs with them I might as well taste them, right? The "taste like crab" thing arouses both my suspicion and my interest.

I'm also somewhere I can replace the headlight that went out the day before, so I picked up one of those and some oil. I think she might be burning a little oil? Too hot to check right now though.

By that time it was 11, and my check-in at the hotel was 1:30. I borrowed their parking lot, right in downtown, and walked to lunch and to more errands and sightseeing: replacing insurance, getting soft pretzels and doughnuts for lunch on the road tomorrow, inhaling and looking for inspiration in the european deli/sausage shop, picking up beer from the local brewery, looking at potter's shops and bookshops.

Halfway through my plate of pierogies and sour cream I noticed a cat come to the front door of the restaurant and sit expectantly in front of the glass. After a nod from the owner I let him in and he stalked meaningfully into the back room; twenty minutes later as I was nearing the bottom of my London Fog he stalked back out and sat by the door again, at which point I let him out. "It's not my cat" the owner said, "but he can come in"

The most delightful part of the town was the little farm/craft hub. It had two walls of fridge and freezer cases, with each little section labelled with a different farm: this one had lamb, this one had pork, this one had frozen meat pies. I was badly tempted by another set of mushrooms, and by a mushroom grow kit, but my strategy of doing a full circle of the place before picking up a shopping basket paid off: I was over budget, but not as much as I could have been.

Beside the fridges and freezers were tables of storage produce, mostly garlic and squash at this time of year. There was a bunch of baking, dried mushroom powder and coffee and jerky, and then the other wing of the building was occupied by arts and crafts. All sorts of paintings were on one wall, glass baubles hung from the ceiling, and a blacksmith's display of hooks and pokers took up the back. Textile arts and cosmetics were displayed in two rows down the center, each arranged by artist as the food had been arranged by farmer. Here was a farmer that raised their own alpacas and spun impossibly soft scarves; there was someone who sewed waterproof canvas diaper covers and bags; on the other wall was jewellery and sweaters and round hats and pointy hats.

Altogether it was perfect: in effect a condensed farmer's market full of lovely displays closely side-by-side. The lovely variety and texture of goods was highlighted by how closely the displays could be spaced: unlike a farmer's market there was no crowd and no one was standing behind their goods watching. Lacking the budget to buy paintings I bought three greeting cards from one artist and four from another which will get clustered in frames in my two bathrooms. I chose three kinds of garlic because of course I did, music and spanish roja and marino, half of each to eat and half to plant. The music was notably bigger than the others. I also brought three chocolate bars out with me, half-sized ones (!) suitable for my way of eating sweets: sour cherry with light and with dark chocolate, and a peanut dark chocolate. The mushroom kit remained behind, as did the soft fingerless driving gloves and the frozen spanakopita and the blacksmith's towel hooks.

With that I checked into the hotel. When I reserved the room I asked for something on the top floor (I don't like people above me) with a bathtub and that's what I got. With a courteous "are you alright with stairs" I was given actual keys and headed down the long corridor, up the stairs, and then back the length of the building to find a big, old, worn, sparkling clean, comfy room facing a quiet back street. One thirty, time to collapse, to touch base with folks, to just enjoy the feeling of...

...there's nothing. My hobbies aren't here (though I brought patterns and books to read) and folks are still at work. These days of working my body hard (I was hobbling last night until I put on my muscle salve) and planning and keeping the pressure on myself let up into this evening of perfect release where I sit in a hotel room and contemplate the options of bath or nap, pizza or sushi, light from a bulb or an open window.

I love this feeling and I also can't get here without the buildup. A lack of demands is in itself a demand, and I can't experience it except when the cliff of necessary work falls out from under me and I'm left in midair, still trying to run and finding that instead I'm flying. In a good world I fly far enough to land on the next, carefully-chosen cliff and dig into another good run followed by another flight, and so on. Pacing those leaps and those runs is everything, is the difference between energy and burnout, is the difference between flying and crashing.

There's room in this space for all of me, for delight in the farm hub and deep sadness as the way the goslings' father called after them as I carried them away, for the texture of locally-raised beef jerky strips and lazy contemplation of dinner and the sideways leap of just sitting and writing instead of any of that. There's room for feeling capable and confident as I look up headlight replacement videos and for relief at being able to go home from a place where civil rights stickers in the windows are all in reference to vaccines and masks and wistfulness and envy and possible future thoughts about living somewhere full of small farmers and a little hub I could contribute to. There's room for my body to be tired and for the bed to come up and support it and for me to stay sitting up, typing, with the silvery feeling of exhaustion in my head and for that to be an ok choice.

Pizza or sushi? Bath or nap? I could install the headlights first, even?

Either way, I made it. I did all of it, on my own, and I am here fully filling up my space.

Vision first, but then: colour.