i have been lost and away in a fantasy world, for once not of my own creation, engrossed in a land so rich with life and love and peril that i am so deeply sure it must exist somewhere, in some time, in some adjacent realm much closer than we think. this time of year as the spoils of the first blizzard lie undisturbed on every surface exposed to sky, it is a blessing to have somewhere to vacation, for the mere $16 it costs to buy a book.
yesterday, i felt good – perhaps not from the moment i woke up, but certainly after my shower. i tried something different which was not having coffee until after i’d eaten, and i’m still testing the theory, but the small adjustment seemed to benefit my brain space. isn’t it annoying when the wellness influencers are right?
it snowed all morning, just lightly, but steadily, and it wasn’t until i was halfway to work that my manager told me i could have stayed home. it worked out, though, because it was bagel and donut day; six different kinds of cream cheese is what tech money buys you.
the house, and thus my head, is feeling cleaner again, less cluttered now that we’ve moved things around and my old twin mattress is gone from the shit couch. (the couch where we throw our shit!) i find myself going back and forth about getting my own place – there are some moments i love this odd blue house so deeply, love the wifely bond A and i have honed. i fear what’s going to happen when i get “more space” is that i’ll actually get less; i’ve been spoiled in these houses with cellars and porches and garages.
i’ve officially dwelled in the same room for more than a year, which hasn’t been the case since i was 16 years old. it’s like my body is responding to some trained circadian rhythm – it’s been a year, baby, let’s pack it up and pack it out.
today, i felt good. i’ve felt good lately, alive. present in my body for all the things as they come up. i don’t feel the dread, the anxiety as i did. the rapids have spit me back into the river, and i can feel myself close to the mouth.
i am, however, deeply lovesick, and can’t remember a time that i wasn’t: a pleasant, dull ache as though hovering on the edge of sleep, tears, and laughter at once. however well inside my fantasy, i’m away from it all, withdrawn – time has slowed like music in an unusual way. i am present, yes, content to watch my life unfold exactly as it does around me, and still i shatter with the small things: one of two pink wine glasses i found at the thrift store. one cracked inside a sweater as i drove home, unaware. it felt pointed, like a spell cast, and i swore at the tragic sight of it.
i am heartbroken for the botched glass, with its ugly, jagged scar. i am heartbroken for the surviving glass – abandoned, alone, in its wholeness.
it’s during these irrational meltdowns that the pattern becomes clear: once things divert from the plan, i’d just as well throw the whole thing away. even if that means tossing the good parts? yes. a bruised apple? inedible. a stained shirt? unwearable. am i always just playing with my food, taking so long to decide whether or not to eat it that it grows bored and rotted or i do? if i had a baby, i would try really hard not to throw it out with the bath water.
the other day, i went to the hot springs with E and S. in the car they filled me in on the drama at the restaurant where only a month and a half ago, i was still an employee. it was comforting and sort of exhilarating as you might expect scandalous-information-that-is-ultimately-inconsequential-for-you to be. we shared a plastic reusable bottle of boxed white wine and ate jersey mike’s sandwiches in the car before going inside.
exhaling, i stepped into the largest pool, a cocoon of warmth engulfing me as i lowered myself slowly and completely. i felt each microscopic mineral like glitter burrowing into my skin. this and books, i thought, is how you learn to love the winter.
for $2 each, we purchased wristbands that granted us access to the two waterslides on the far end of the property, tubular and glowing alien green from the inside. cold and giggling, we climbed the covered stairway to the top, joking that, for a moment, it felt like we were at disney world.
“let’s race,” S smiled, and we took our places at the mouths of our respective slides. E counted us down and we were off, forgetting how much cooler the water was there than in the rest of the pools, maneuvering through curves and spirals we had no way of predicting, her cackling, shrieking laugh through the plastic casing eliciting my own like an infinite chain reaction.
it was otherwordly, a luminescient wormhole, and i imagined myself emerging into star-plastered elsewhere as i approached the bottom. still laughing and panting, we converged in the pool that collected us, agreeing we hadn’t felt so childlike, so free and easy as that, in as long as we could remember.
in the shallow grotto behind the waterfall, steam rising from the amber sheen of water like spirits in the night, we slithered around on our elbows like alligators. naturally, we played mermaids, and once tail colors were settled, S asked me what my power was.
“huntress,” i heard myself say, shocked into silence by my instinct. my whole life, i’d been the gatherer, figuring that was unchangeable, like my organs.
maybe this wellness is bravery – warming in me like an engine, and soon when the current flows freely, i’ll be able to spring into motion. there are days i just long and long and long, thinking of everything i can’t rest until i’ve tasted, and i can’t prepare for my gigs, because all i can listen to is melancholic jazz and fantasy instrumentals.
last night i finished book two: a court of mist and fury. i’m not sure what my standards for men were before, but they’re higher now. i feel a hunger deep in my gut to be fought for as fiercely as that. sensitivity meeting infinite power: is that a fair and normal thing to ask of someone?
i woke up late for work because i was awake into the wee hours, spinning words into images like a silkworm and happily gorging myself on a dream.
now through the freezing window i see my neighbor shoveling snow, her hunched body somehow glowing in the grayish evening light. unsure how or when she got there, i can only hear the sound: scraping, scraping on the pavement, finding the thing underneath.
obsession of the week
this song, during which i can only imagine i am on horseback, galloping alone through a wide open montana field at golden hour, my tears trailing behind me like sideways rain in the wind.
OOOF this paragraph “i am, however, deeply lovesick, and can’t remember a time that i wasn’t: a pleasant, dull ache as though hovering on the edge of sleep, tears, and laughter at once. however well inside my fantasy, i’m away from it all, withdrawn – time has slowed like music in an unusual way. i am present, yes, content to watch my life unfold exactly as it does around me, and still i shatter with the small things: one of two pink wine glasses i found at the thrift store. one cracked inside a sweater as i drove home, unaware. it felt pointed, like a spell cast, and i swore at the tragic sight of it.”
And this “spinning words into images like a silkworm and happily gorging myself on a dream. “ Brava, beautiful xo