anywhere i can find to put words

i don't know. the streets are rife with violence, but it's no match for people's minds. i don't know. even when it's getting better, it all feels like it's so much worse. i don't know. is it just the evolution of my perspective? the kübler-ross model for adulthood?

i'm forty. weren't some things supposed to be getting easier? not all things. i accept that will never be the case. but weren't some matters supposed to be stabilizing, receding into the distance, at least not tying up as many resources as they once did? my post-adolescent itinerary has not yet cleared the landing dock. it’s all just piled up under this newer self.

i don’t know. those three little words that can’t be considered a long term substitute for the things i won’t admit to myself.

THINGS I WON'T ADMIT TO MYSELF

wouldn't it be terrible if this whole new psychology of adulthood just means we never get rid of our childhood shit, just slap over it with the adulthood business? press it in between the cracks, suffocate those few rare spaces that remain or that we’d managed to clear out, with the foam expanding sealant of our new damage, our reformulated nightmares, our latest and greatest failures all echoing back on our oldest ones like the relentless self-replicating karma machines we all seem doomed to become?

i guess it's possible that this has always been the case for everyone.

months ago, in sacred space, a spirit guide told me: see how we remake our old lives with our new ones? the materials might be different, the structures deceptively rejigged for changes over space and time, but basically, we tell ourselves the same stories over and over again. we make the same mistakes. we hurt the same people in different ways. we hurt different people in the same ways. there's always some rhythm to it, though, a cycle, a pattern being maintained. if the repetition is destructive and you can't break it - breaking it is often not your place - you must at least find some way to make the next repetition surrender a nuance, a deeper complexity. most of the time, for most of us, evolution is a pulse, not an earthquake.

it's exhausting, i know. but better than nothing, i guess.

i was given a relatively new scanner earlier this year; we've stalled out in a bit of a "hole in the bucket" situation with regard to the connectors. it's a situation i would like to remedy because some of the new work looks like this:



and snapping at it with my eleven year old nikkon doesn't quite do it justice. we have the port to route the thing into the computer, but the friend who gifted us with the scanner shipped it with the wrong kind of power cord so we have no way of turning it on. ben's pretty sure we've got the necessary cord in the big box of wires in the utility closet, but entering the utility closet is not a project undertaken lightly. maybe later this week.

i sent a terrifying followup email to the editor who accepted my chapbook in 2011 (who, as it turned out, was fully aware of my journey to the cancer underworld and was patiently holding on to my manuscript until i could enjoy it) and she is still on for publishing it; now just the cover art and, ush, "about the author," a smattering of text that tends to make my toes curl inward involuntarily. it's like writing my own obituary, except worse.

i lit candles all around the medicine cabinet shrine this afternoon and let the sun go down around them. the two butter lanterns from nepal, lit with tea lights. a black blessed herbal candle, crafted by witches for protection. flickering over votives of persephone and st. francis. i'd turn and look out the window, see the broadcast towers blinking in the distance, behind the tree whose yellow leaves keep blanketing my car, all of it trying to tell me something. i guess it could be said that i cast a wide net, spiritually. how else would i be?