How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,

my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.

So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,

and over our heads the grey light unwinds in turning fans

Pablo Neruda

[I was dreaming of you but]
just then
Dawn, in her golden sandals
                               [woke me]
Sappho

Last Saturday (the one where it was approximately 1059857 degrees in the shade AKA too hot to be a person AND we didn’t have internet) (if it seems like I’m obsessed with the weather lately it’s because I am, THE HUMANITY, honestly) I was watching It (because it’s the only DVD we own) while folding the hot clothes that had just come out of the dryer (whilst softly sobbing at my lot in life) and I realized that we have the exact same sink as Beverly Marsh. You know. This one:

Source: Me. I took it on set. Definitely not Google Images.

If you can tear your eyes away from baby Seth Green, that’s mine and Beverly’s BFF sink. (My heart burns there too, gurrl.) Except that mine is covered in hair instead of blood. Usually.

Our last apartment’s shower had what I lovingly referred to as the “Scary ‘It’ Drain.” Before that, the foyer of the building I lived in reminded me of the scene in the movie where Richie goes into the school basement to get a mop and Mr. Marsh is DRUNK AS A SKUNK and then a werewolf comes. I’ve sussed out similarities to It scenes in every place I’ve lived since I saw most of the movie from my hiding place next to our couch while I was supposed to be napping. I also still have nightmares starring Tim Curry, which are terrifying but also impressive re: the caliber of Dream Tim Curry’s performances.

It’s so cute how our Reptar brains are sometimes like, “GAH SABER-TOOTHED TIGER ['Or scary clown,' I later edit in because I realize that I made zero connection between Pennywise and the tiger in my head or in this blog]” even though we keep telling them there aren’t any of those left. I keep forgetting to tell mine, actually, which maybe is why it seems to think that there’s one crouching behind everybody who says “hi” weird. Or that there’s one hiding in the middle of all those people over there, and as soon as I go over and stand with them it’s going to knock me over and poke me in the eye with its tooth. Or that one saber-toothed tiger that follows me around all the time, like, no big deal, everyone, this tiger just follows me around all the time, I’m fine though, this is fine. Everything’s fine. Except that it might bite my legs off at any moment and there’s no way to tell when it’s going to happen and there’s nothing I’ll be able to do about it anyway, so. Thanks! Thanks for asking! Her name's Maude! Anyway, by “it’s so cute” I mean cute as in how babies are cute, by which I mean exhausting and I get a headache after a while.

Here's what my brain did this week:

My days have been too long and too quiet, is maybe why. It's Friday now, I'm leaving work in twenty minutes and I'm going to eat my body weight in sushi and wash it all down with beers and by the time Monday rolls around I will have had a mental refresh (I'm saying that in my head like RE!fresh) and I'll have that tiger on a daisy chain like the lady in the cards.

It was only later that the map’s breath could be heard. Apart from lungs, from wind. A beating.

THE INTERNET, that strange and uncertain frontier, was the perfect kind of fertile. It occurs to me now to wonder if the seeds I was dropping in fact led me there, pieces of the secret parts of me as they were, minions of the map that lived (lives, still) in the molecules of my more malleable parts. It occurs to me to wonder, but at the moment this salivating and breathy map of mine wants us to focus on our presence before the vast expanse. On our expanding ribcage, the hot pressure of a rapidly swelling flesh balloon.

We allow the glass to dull the edges a bit, is how we keep going. I tuck my tiny rectangle away because when given the choice I prefer not to be a caricature and am rewarded with more opportunities to be horrified at myself. The man, for example, vigorously emptying the contents of his stomach onto the floor of the car I’m about to get onto only very slightly alters the trajectory of my evening. The following is a spoiler: I do not make sure he gets home safely. I do not make sure he has a home to get to, safely or otherwise. I only just now, at the time of this writing, hope that he had someone to make him rinse his mouth out before he went to bed. I didn’t hope it then because I didn’t have room to. If I let those type of hopes bubble up when they wanted to, I’d fall over. I’d overflow. Seated a distance I judge to be too far away for vomit to splash, I listen to two other men discuss in great detail and at great volume the ripped-ness of a third (absent) man. He works out a lot, has very little body fat. He eats only brown rice and vegetables. They repeat these facts to each other, over and over, in as many different ways as they can think of. It’s not a lot of different ways. Finally I have to look, I have to know the source of this inanity. But I don’t, really, because first I see that one of them has a wound on his leg that is openly bleeding. Another spoiler: I do not say, You’re… bleeding. You are bleeding blood. Kind of a lot.  I do not think, BLOOD. I am not moved to action. No. I think, THIS is what I get for trying to “be present.” This is what the present has to offer.

But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever.
Haruki Murakami

We had to take headshots at work, and everyone’s photographed selves turned out a little denser than their alive selves. So I didn’t mind too much about that, but the beginnings of lines around my eyes were unsettling. I’m not actually going to live forever.

I made this today while I was on hold (so, all day) (so, this is basically what I did today) (along with ruminate, which I just learned is the name of the thing I am sometimes doing) (I'm working on a post on compulsions, specifically mine because I know marginally more about those specific ones than about, you know, compulsions in general) (although it is possible to know more about a "thing" in the general sense than you know about it in the sense that it applies directly to you, I guess) (anyway it is specifically a "blog post" and not just regular writing because I want to put it on the internet because it turns out that the internet is directly involved in said compulsions, so, poetry and things - and that makes it harder because a lot of it is SHAMEFUL! like I already feel like I've said too much aah) (nobody cares, please see below):

State of the Union
Sunday August 14th, 2016
AC (Year of our Lord, the Air Conditioner)

After venturing out this morning to eat eggs Benedict (hold most of the Benedict) and procure dead sea creatures from the locals, I am able to report that today, friends, is slightly less revolting than yesterday. The internet is back on at Casa de la Floja, which is excellent news for everyone because not having it for one day drove us to DIY a projector for our iPhones. (Pictured: One roll of masking tape. Here's a tutorial on how to enjoy the luxury of the internet on a screen bigger than your hand even when it's 1000 degrees out: Don't have Time Warner.) We actually DI well enough to get through about fourteen minutes of Armageddon, which I for one will be carefully noting down in my Notebook of Feats. There's some room left on the page where I wrote down how we made it the 1/4 of a block to the laundromat without shriveling. We (Diego) had a list of fun musical/boozey dancey things we'd planned on doing yesterday but though our (Diego's) spirits were willing, our (my) flesh was unwilling to be burned to death.

It's been approximately two months since we moved in to our new apartment, and what we lack in kitchen tables we've been making up for in scented candles and impromptu anniversary bus trips. Somehow, most of the photos I took of that particular weekend came out looking like this:

I can neither explain nor understand, so I'll just glean from whatever photos Diego has when I eventually begin work on the scrapbook that exists only in my mind.

What else. I guess I thought, when I initially set out on this reporting of the state of things, that I could briefly discuss a few different areas of le life and in that way sort of ease back into writing here more frequently. What a stupid thought, you're thinking. Or not thinking, because you're not reading this, because why would you? I wouldn't. I wouldn't be caught dead.

The way to do anything is just to do the thing. So that's what I'll do. Also, if that's what I decide it means that I can be done with this for now (I don't know if you could tell, but I grew weary of this almost immediately. Sorry if you could, I did my best to hide it) and go back to watching The Office for the thirtieth time while my handsome boyfriend sings to himself in the kitchen (where he belongs.) (Also he's barefoot.) (#feminism)

(He's cooking in there. He's not just, like, standing in there singing quietly. I don't think.)

I’ve dipped the ends in tea, she grinned. In tea.

They don’t belong there but it doesn’t matter.

do you remember sleeping here because i don’t

Go early (there’s a man on the corner selling glass bottles shaped like seashells, like hips spread for childbearing, you’ll want to stop there for a minute but try not to look at his hands) so you can get a seat (jewel tones lined up on the alchemist’s counter, don’t say ‘glinting’ because that’s too easy find another way to describe the wanderings of light) should your legs fail you.

Sadly, she continues, this is not a madness that allows for the sinking of bones

or teeth, for that matter.