Random Acts of Awesome

I hate it when I meet a woman who is almost as afraid of herself as she is of her partner. She hunkers down into her skin as much when she's alone as she does when he's near. She clings to kind others when he's not around, basking in the warmth of sympathy, comfortable in the knowledge that she doesn't deserve it. These women tend to be highly sexual creatures, underneath a very thick skin. They have roiling oceans creating maelstroms in their own and others desires, and they have crafted the best shields imaginable to hide that fact from a world that is terrified of them. I was one of those women for a while. Maybe for forever, but I didn't know what I was looking for until I found it. Found him. A blanket to be smothered under, a cage to be contained in. See, it's hard to fight yourself for so long. You've been taught to contain, to push your storms back down inside you, for your entire life. Then you meet someone who offers to help. Shit, who insists on...

I found an old poetry journal of mine yesterday. I'd packed it away in a box FULL of old journals and drawings, and took it with me when I left almost everything else behind. I keep debating the merit of burning old journals, the idea being that you're letting go of the past. But then I re-read my thoughts from when I was young, and I'm glad I haven't done it yet. This journal is from my very early 20s, between 21-23. It's a huge, red, hardcover journal, something meant to last. The paper is ivory, and thick. I filled less than half of it with writing. But it's some of the best, most evocative writing I've ever done. It's almost all poems, mostly short, very Emily Dickinson. An example: I am not potential I am not possibility I am not someday I am not maybe I am the here I am the now I am the present I am the how Reading these poems, I'm reminded of a time when I my life when I had gone from thinking to doing. I'd spend most of my lat...

I have been thinking about my proclivity for dive bars lately. I love a good redneck bar, a good old person bar, a good ethnic minority bar. Any place I can walk into and feel slightly uncomfortable at first but, with a little work, eventually blend completely into the background makes me incredibly happy. Places where people don't want to be noticed, or at least don't need to be noticed. Every now and then you get the occasional asshole who makes a fuss, but they tend to get shut down quickly by a complete lack of regard from the regulars. These are the best people watching spots. I enjoy spending time in bars that sell scotch you have to be wealthy by most of the worlds standards to buy. I enjoy watching well dressed people posture, and I enjoy good food and good drink. But those places don't call to me like dive bars. They don't make me happy, and they don't stimulate me. Watching people who don't give a shit if you're watching them because they're ...

Movement has been strangely difficult lately. Things keep popping up that make me sore, make it hurt to move. I have plantar fasciitis in both feet, because my calf muscles are pulling so hard against the band of muscle in my arch. This hurts like a motherfucker, mostly in the mornings, but also after I've been walking for any period of time. Which sucks, because I do a lot of walking out here. I got a new bed, a big gorgeous California King that I've so far shared only with cats. And it's firm as fuck, so of course it hurts to wake up every morning. I feel like I've been beat up in my dreams. I'm not gonna lie, I kind of enjoy that part. It makes stretching feel almost indecently good. I've always enjoyed a little discomfort in the morning, as a way to make the rest of the day a little more deeply beautiful. That is, of course, predicated on the assumption that the pain will go away shortly... which it normally does. It's been making me think about how I d...

I've been thinking a lot lately about three related things. Events, data, and stories. Events are things that happen. A thunderstorm is an event, a bird on a branch is an event, a date is an event. They are just random moments of simple or complex pieces of matter interacting with other pieces of matter. A person sitting on a bench and thinking is an event, if only in how their face moves and expresses things to those observing. Data is what flows out of events. It is independent of observation, but inaccessible without it. Data is uninterpreted, available as information in a pure form. Stories are data interpreted. They are what data turns into as soon as it flows through an eye, fractured into countless fractions by whatever filters exist behind any particular eye, and forever changed. Stories are necessary, but also easily and incorrectly mistaken for data. So, I've been thinking about my own relationship with these things. It started with my lack of faith in god, an...

Here's the thing about letting yourself need something. It means you're vulnerable to anxiety about its loss. I have pushed away anxiety about loss for a very long time now. I've recently started opening myself back up to it, by allowing myself to have things that I actually need. This is a terrible feeling. Any sort of threat to my need is this unfathomably dark, huge, stressful thing. Even if it's fucking tiny. Even if it's manageable, with just a little bit of intelligence and effort. Even if it's mostly fictitious. Even if I know all that, in my forebrain. None of that matters. The only thing that matters to my brain is the potential for loss. I hate this. I hate being like this. I was listening to a song that, in my youth, I would have drawn comfort from today. It was a song bemoaning the idea of being you. I wish I was young enough to have the luxury of not wanting to be me. Of wanting to be somebody else. But I gave that comfort up along with the will...

There are 3 baby goats in my bedroom right now. In the list of things I never thought I'd say, that's pretty high up there. Other things I never thought I'd say: Stop eating my work computer! STOP SUCKING MY TOES! Oh, thank god, this poop is sticky but not runny. I am hand raising 3 baby goats. Bottle feedings every 6 hours, training, protecting, keeping away from electric wire... They are awfully cute. They follow me around everywhere they can, bleating, hopping, and peeing indiscriminately. They are louder at night. They are currently, at this very moment, trying to eat my sheets. Thank god they can't hop on the bed yet. They'll be going to their permanent home in the barn soon, but for now they only spend half the day there. Between a pit bull who'd like to eat them and a Bull bull who is way too interested in them for my comfort, they stay near me and behind closed doors unless we are in the pasture together. I am... more than a little in shock...