The breeze on my neck

I remember several years ago I read that women tend to cut their hair during times of great change. At the time I was on a constant binge of hair dye, so I rolled my eyes at the statistics and went on my merry way.

Then my boyfriend at the time broke up with me. And then I shaved my hair off.

Again, now with a change of resolve, a closer realignment of the direction I am heading in and some still-yet hazy destination, the chopping of hair. No tangling, no shedding trails, ears clear, and the sweetness of breeze.

Library break.

It was getting hot for a moment there, and though I watched people bask in the sun it only brought a shudder down my back. Driest since 70-something, said a newsreporter, but it's winter, goddammit, I just want some fucking rain, some cold—it doesn't snow in the Bay Area, is that too much to fucking ask for?

We are lucky to have the ocean and the bay.

Yesterday clouds drifted over and in, like cotton combed over our heads, and though there are no sheets of rain to tuck me in to sleep, I saw earthworms this morning. I haven't seen earthworms since returning to California, most of it to do with living in the city completely last year through the rainy season, and here they are to herald what I can only hope is an oncoming deluge of water.

Working in this library is nothing but a dust bath, bad for the lungs. I see the last thirty years of the life of this organization tumble into my lap, faces of familiar staff long departed (and some still here) staring up at me; I even see my own squashy childhood face flash forward in the shuffle of photos.

So this is truly history, something inescapable. One may stand alone but we are all in it together, and in a few blinks you see what footprints you left behind. Or, if you a clever little thing, those footprints you have swept up as you passed by.

Story of your my life

You may know everything and still not understand anything.

In Waiting

Is it more terrible a thing to feel the eyes of vultures upon you, or that this feeling is merely paranoia unshakable?

But not in the living room.

She found a wall in the way of her path, where smooth paving had given way to loose chunks of gravel and the machinations of weeds.

Strange, she thought, placing her hand against the wall, one cannot end a journey this way.

The wall was warm to the touch, paper-husk rough with more cracks and etchings than baked claybed; it smelled not unpleasantly of pungent earth. With a gentle push it yielded with the faintest wobble, but did not give open. Scraping and kicking were to no avail, and when night came with its dark cloak, the girl curled up against the warmth of the wall and, perplexed, fell to sleep.

It was when the chill of morning crept in that she woke, and feeling the faint heat emanating from the wall, pressed further against it. This time it pressed back.

She sprang to her feet in terror, stumbling back from the fingers of dawn, rubbing her elbows in the cold. And then she began to laugh. For there before her lay the entire majesty of an elephant, whose neck she scratched at gratefully as she circled round it and continued on her way.

Get it right.

That's "ritual", assholes, not "routine".