And then what next?

This is what happens when you feed your head static: you slow down, not time. You think less, then want to think less. You may even completely withdrawal from society, or identifying with it. Or that may or may not have been just part of your personality in the beginning.

This is what happens when you analyze too deeply, with no safety rope tied around your waist (perhaps it is just tied around your neck): if you are in a positive frame of mind, you are enlightened. If you are in a negative frame of mind, regardless of source, you are completely mind-fucked, and want to feed your head static instead of thoughts.

Let us say, somewhat arrogantly, that you can understand multiple facets to a situation or an idea, understand different sides to the same story, understand enough that by this point you cannot tell what is "right" and what is "wrong," or at least, where you stand on a given situation because it makes sense whichever way you look at it, whether it be a million different perspectives, or two contrary ones.

And then one wonders what happened to that point in time where they were looking at everything in a positive light, or at least a light of peaceful amusement.

Ah, but if you were never down, how could you appreciate the times when you are up?

To instigate that turn in the cycle is my key obstacle. And if I do not love myself at this point, I do love a good challenge.

6am baking of a peach pie, late night chicken and dumplings, coffee with a hint of molasses, and I'm good to go again.

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.

And history is love.

The greatest thing about having your heart torn in pieces is the beautiful stitch marks that lace over and accentuate its story, and hold it back together. These flaws, these mistakes, or giving too freely—to remember why, and how or who and when.

Scars are a beautiful thing.

Emotional Weather

heavy combed air

and all I am is
cat-stretched lidded-eyed
slab under cloud-sweat slather