Here seems like a good place for a picture of my butt.

I can't remember the last time I shaved my legs, but did I let that stop me from shaving my face? No, I did not. There are a few cuts on my arm from where I practiced with Diego's straight razor (which several internet sources advised me NOT to use, but did I let that stop me? No, I did not!) but they sort of blend in with Griffon's handiwork so I don't think they'll alarm anyone. So far I feel exactly as neutral about this method of face-hair-removal as I do about any other method of any-other-hair-removal. Why yes, actually, I am perpetually disappointed that hair removal and how many pounds my body is takes up so much brain space. Thank you for asking. 

I lied, I can remember, it was Tuesday. Same day I washed my hair. 

I spent $100 on a juice cleanse even though we bought a juicer a few months ago and I could probably just make the cleanse myself. Or like, not do one at all, because they're stupid. But since when has anything being stupid stopped me from doing it? Never, is when! 

Yesterday while I was scrubbing away all evidence of the week from all the surfaces of our apartment, I was also thinking about which dress I was going to wear to dinner at the cute place with the curtain-y booths and about how nice it would be to put on lipstick and be in the world after a day of scraping wet cat litter (AKA CEMENT) off of the bathroom floor. What we ended up doing was ordering in a lot of garlicky carbohydrates and watching Practical Magic. I did put on my house dress to go get a bottle of Chianti, so like, I made it partway into the world. What do you want from me? 

Here are some miscellaneous pictures of summer that are sitting on my desktop for reasons I cannot recall:

Linking up with Becky even though BY HER OWN ADMISSION she has read HP fanfiction. 

I want to write you a poem every day until my hand breaks
and assure you that you’ll find your place,
it’s just
the world has a funny way of
hiding spots fertile enough for
bodies like yours to grow roots.
LUCAS REGAZZI

This isn't a confession, I'm just going to talk about my cat for a minute. Or ten.
He's finally, finally "adjusted." I think. He's gone from squeezing his big fat butt onto the shelf next to the toilet and growling while I feed him treat after treat after treat at 2AM and empty my bladder as quickly as possible to following me around wherever I go. He is my short and scratchy shadow. Like, here's where he is when I'm sitting at my desk:

And here's where he is when I sit on the couch (aka here is where both of us always are):

Et cetera, et cetera. I JUST LOVE HIM SO MUCH, YOU GUYS. And he loves me, too, or so it would seem. As long as I don't pet him for too long, or, goddess forbid, try to snuggle him. He really does not like that.

MOVING ON.

I'm a shitty vegan but an okay vegetarian. 
I just can't stop with the cheese. Also, did you guys know that not all beer and wine is vegan? I'm half a bottle in to a probably definitely NOT-plant-based bottle of white, okay okay three-quarters, I'm three-quarters of a bottle in, wine as we speak. As I type? Anyway if I'm waiting for Diego to finish work and somebody hands me a chai latte, I'm not asking if they made it with almond milk. I'm just drinking it. And hoping he finishes soon because it's Saturday and Full House is on Hulu now and I'm about ready to drop the "I Am A Person Who Gets Dressed And Goes Places" charade. And listen, if I'm going to eat a taco and it's not going to have pork and pineapple on it, then it's going to have fish and I'm going to be really happy for however many seconds it takes me to make it disappear. I don't miss meat at all. Not even fish (unless it's on a taco but we've already covered that.) But the rest of it is challenging. And you know how I deal with things that are challenging... by not!

The good gosh darn am I talking about? Cats and fish? I'm so sorry, everyone. Blame the meat wine.

I had an idea of what I was going to read next but then I realized there was a book I bought a long time ago that never downloaded to my kindle. So, sorry book about Actual Important Things - you'll have to wait, because I'm now very involved in this book that I cannot remember the title of/have the faintest idea what it's supposed to be about except that there's a forest and an abandoned town and a lovable dog and a sarcastic protagonist and some dead guys. BASICALLY EVERYTHING.

I'm in the process of trying to get back into college and it's the worstttt. It's more the worst than I am at eating plant-based.
It is actually not the worst, and I am quite extremely privileged to have access to an education. And a hard-working Mexican to pay the tuition I owe to the last college I went to so that they'll release my transcript - ba-dum, tss!

And in between dealing with that, I'm googling properties for sale in another state because I think I may be coming to the end of my tolerance of this city. I love her so much, but she's wearing on me, guys. I've got maybe three, four more years left in me before I start talking to myself on the bus. I mean like, loud enough that other people can hear me.

I love fall so much that as soon as the temperature dropped below 70 I ripped all the sweaters out from under my bed and rolled around in them. Pumpkin I could give a shit about, but clothes in earth tones that cover my chubby upper arms? HAPPY OCTOBER TO ME.

wherein i tell you about the last three books i read because math gives me a headache and i want to go home and i also am still recovering from an emotional hangover mehrr

You probably can’t tell, but I stuck these tile stickers to the floor myself. Yeah, really! That’s why it looks so professional. Want me to come do yours? 

“Hillbilly Elegy” by J.D. Vance

Mm, okay. Didn’t actually finish this one. OFF TO A GREAT START. Fun fact, I only realized that this book was A Thing when I stopped reading it to google a picture of the face of the man who was boring me to death. The only reason I bought it is because I thought it was going to be a memoir a la “The Glass Castle” and it is not. It is not so hard. Supposedly what it is is this great explanation about why poor people in the middle of the country voted Trump, and like, first of all, I don’t need an explanation about why ANYONE voted Trump because I’ve had a uterus for almost thirty years now and I have to go outside with it, like, ALL the time. So, okay, my point is not WOE IS ME AND MY VAGINA because you’ve never seen a happier pair of clams than me and my vagina (lol vagina jokes). My point is that if I had known that this book was going to basically be this guy yarning on about “personal responsibility” and how people on welfare shouldn’t buy cell phones while making NARY A PEEP about the shit the richest people in the world buy (WARS), then I would have spent my $12.95 or however much it was on yarn instead. (More yarn, I mean. I was feeling spendy that day.) Next.

“The Practice House” by Laura McNeal

This one I chose because I thought it was going to be about polygamists. (Note to self: Read book descriptions more carefully, and maybe disable Amazon one-click.) However, even though it turned out to only have monogamous Mormons and even though THEY were only in it for like twenty pages – I enjoyed this one a lot. There’s a dusty schoolhouse. There’s betrayal. There’s smooching. Eventually there’s a dirty old man, and juuust enough consumption (nothing worse than too much consumption in a story, am I right?) to make it a satisfying read. 

This is definitely one of those books where the characters are the story, if you know what I mean, so if you need a plot where there are A Lot of Things that Happen then you probably won’t love this. BUT. If you like depression-era stories about family dynamics and the complexities of how humans make choices and relate to each other and if you don’t mind a little dust and sadness, then – recommend some books to me, cause me too. 

“Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley

A lot of people read this one in high school, right? Well, I didn’t. Was way, way too busy pretending to read The Iliad and The Inferno. Also plotting elaborate ruses to skip Spanish and math. And gym. Anyway this book was suggested to me by Amazon and since I do everything Amazon tells me to (this post sponsored by Amazon), I bought it. Also because I think it was 99c, and also because, as we’re all well aware, old age has found me morbidly preoccupied with the fate of our poor sweet doomed planet. If you’ve read Orwell’s ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ WHICH YOU SHOULD, the main gist of it is basically like that except it’s set in the future and instead of managing the masses by exhausting them with long hours at shitty jobs, they use literal happy pills. “They” being the invisible others in relative control. And, oh yeah, nobody has moms or dads because everyone gestates in a tube and is conditioned to be happy as a clam (I feel like no one says that anymore, I’m bringing it back) serving whatever function they were cooked up in their little tube to perform. It was fine, whatever. 

Next up: “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome” by Joy DeGruy, as soon as I finish reading the copy of “Shrill” by Lindy West that my mom sent me. And then one about a family of hoarders. Yes, ANOTHER one.

Oprah tried to tell me. She did.
She said, "Lindsay. The universe is going to try, like, one more time. And then it's going to start screaming its cosmic head off and things are going to get uglier than your forearms after a 'play' session with Griffon." (Or something like that, Oprah says a lot of things.)

The rails, you guys - the rails. I went so far off of them that I couldn't tell what they were anymore. Just bones in my peripherals, that's all anything was. Last night I was driving a motorbike way too fast around some beautiful gardens, and then I went right off the edge into deep blue water. Then there were some broken pairs of glasses and a funeral parade of Scientologists dressed in Victorian clothing and also I didn't get wet in the water somehow. Or maybe that was the night before last. I don't know. What I do know is that right now, it's a little hot here by the window, but it's nice to watch the neighborhood do its Sunday things and know that Griffon is laying behind me with his feet straight up in the air digesting his first breakfast and that later I'll make tofu scramble and banana pancakes and go for a walk with a person who loves me even though sometimes I self-destruct for weeks in a row.

And I'm more than ever grateful to be a part of a universe that isn't afraid to raise its voice. I don't want to be either, anymore. My truth is just as valid as anyone else's - and if I violate some social rules, well then. I'll have interesting things to say to my journal.

You know who else talks to me is Allen Ginsberg:

"Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don't care who's listening." 

Adrift in a dream world, I came upon the carefully curated concept of a human person.

For a long time I allowed myself the diversion.

The siren song of illusion drew me toward its center by the pit of my stomach –

the closer I got, the brighter-lit specific neural pathways became

and I liked it because it was like finding new rooms in the house you’ve always lived in

and thought you knew every corner of.

It took years to separate life from the myth I’d written;

I dream sometimes now that I smoke cigarettes again

poison I quit in waking life –

it's the same feeling. 

30 before 30, brought to you by an impending birthday and morning traffic on the bridge

1. Get through the Tolkien books
2. Ditto some Russian novels, why is it so hard they have everything I like
3. Finish my Bachelor’s (maybe, if I feel like it)
4. Earn Griffon’s love
5. Learn how to knit more than one kind of stitch (stitch more than one kind of knit? Tie different kinds of knots with needles)
6. Learn how to use my sewing machine for more than making dresses shorter (although IMO if that’s all it did, still totally worth the space it takes up)
7. Take a vacation by myself
8. Go one month without spending money on anything besides groceries and bills
9. Complete Tarot meditations/exercises for every card in the deck
10. (I’m embarrassed to even write this one because SERIOUSLY LINDSAY COME ON) Learn Spanish
11. Fill a journal
12. Scrape together a respectable savings account
13. Cook my way through Thug Kitchen, which my mom bought us for Christmas two years ago. Oh did I tell you guys we’re in-it-to-win-it-well-mostly-anyway vegans now? And not like before when I was accidentally vegan because dinner was Swedish fish on the train home from class at 11PM and breakfast and lunch were nothing because I was poor. Man, and I was too tired to appreciate how skinny I was. Just goes to show. It just. Goes. To show.
14. Run 2 miles without stopping (or dry heaving, or crying)
15. When people say they’re “taking a break from technology” I assume that along with staying off of their phones they’re also not using wheels or ovens. So I’d like to be more specific, because I like my toilet and don’t feel like using it is impeding my connection to the universe. Although, I mean, I guess I’d technically be closer to the earth without it. Anyway I’d like to take a break from phones/computers/the internet for a whole day.
16. Let go. Allow. Observe. Appreciate phenomena. Actively practice compassion.
17. Stop farting on the bus
18. Find my shade of red lipstick and figure out how to wear it without looking like a kindergartener
19. Find a semi-regular volunteer gig (remember when I was young and tried harder, me neither really)
20. DIY the crap out of one piece of furniture
21. Get really good at uncorking wine bottles (I suck SO BAD – last night I broke an opener and didn’t even realize what had happened until - as I was digging at the cork with tweezers and a butter knife - I unearthed the screw that had broken off inside the cork.)
22. Write ten personal essays. Like, really write them.
23. Go balls-out at a fancy schmancy spa
24. Finish one cross-stitch project
25. Go a week without makeup
26. Go a day without looking in the mirror
27. Go to one of those BYOB art classes
28. Actually learn Quickbooks for real
29. Develop a workout routine that I’ll actually stick to for real
30. Plan something sweet for Diego because usually I’m a troll

The average cost of childcare in NYC, as told to me by Google, is close enough to a third of what I make in a year to make me choke on the eight-dollar green juice – I am bloated within an inch of my life, guyz - that I’ll never be able to ever splurge on ever again EVER if I commit to continuing the family line. I also just looked at what the premium and out of pocket maximum would be for one year of niño health coverage and now all I can picture is Diego and I and Baby Lineberry-Martinez shivering in the snowy London streets like a trio of matchstick girls. I don’t know how we got to London. We probably had to go there because we ran out of banks to rob in the States trying to pay for Griffon’s cat food, because the cat always comes first. Right? Surely a baby wouldn’t change that.

But I mean. There are a lot of rich people driving up these “averages,” right? There are always packs of children wreaking havoc on my street, how much could it possibly cost to get my kid into one of those? Can I just leave it outside and hope it’s accepted? Like a baby wolf? Note to self, research wolves.

Plus also, more and more lately I’ve been fantasizing about my little dream house in the forest. Diego would work and I would stay home and homeschool our brood and wear big sweaters and wool socks and use coupons and have a deep-freezer. And on weekends we would go on family outings in the city that will be conveniently located just a short drive away. But not so short that anybody bothers me in my little dream house. Or comes into my forest. Unless it’s because I asked them to deliver something to me. But then, it’s get in and get out, buddy.

There’s also my dream of changing my name and picking a new city and getting a job as a sassy waitress with a secret. I’m really into that dream, too.

Anyway I’m not sure I actually ever want to deal with buying a house (in a forest or otherwise), but I do want to make sure I’m investing my nickels in a smart way. And the more I look at “What can I afford to funnel into a such-and-such account?” the less sure I am that having a baby is something I really want to do. And by “do” I mean “pay for,” but I also mean other things too. I’m still working toward having a fluffy cushion of money between The Crushing Weight of Apprehension and the rest of my brain. But once I have the savings account I want (someday) (if I can stop blowing my paycheck on booze and shows and fancy food) (LOL okay), I just know I’ll find something else to fixate on. And I don’t think it’s fair for that to be another human. Plus what if I don’t even like that human? What if I give up wine and sushi for six months and it still comes out crappy? What are the actual odds that my kid will grow up and change MY diapers when I’m old? I’ll tell you something, that kid might not take care of me, but returns on a healthy portfolio sure will. (I don’t know if that makes sense. LMK, Suze.) 

I don’t know why I’m even bothering to give this so much thought. Whatever happens is going to be exactly how everything else I’ve ever done has happened – by accident. So whatever. I’m planning on re-enrolling in classes this spring, though, so I’ll probably get pregnant tomorrow. Right in time to not be able to drink at any Christmas parties. Amazing.

"Sometimes I think you don't like me very much, she said. 

Like? he said. Is that all you want to be? Liked? Wouldn't you rather be passionately and voraciously desired? 

Yes, she said, but not every night." 

M. ATWOOD, BODILY HARM

Monday
Everyone’s mad at me. Everyone in the world.
I have no friends.

Well I don't like anybody anyway.

But why doesn’t anybody like me, though?

Tuesday
Why are you crunching so loudly, aggravating human five feet away from me?
Why do anything if you’re not going to do it to obscene excess? That’s your motto!
What are you even eating that could possibly make that much noise? Bones? Are you eating bones?

Wednesday
I’m going to crawl out of my skin. It’s too hot with my sweater on but if I take it off I’m freezing, because Heat Miser and Mr. Freeze can’t keep their crypt-keeping claws off the thermostat.

Aw. But Mr. Freeze just apologized for that dickhead comment he made last week. I’m so grateful for all the lovely humans.

Thursday
I’m making coffee and thinking about a documentary I had to watch twenty minutes of in some dumb you-have-to-take-this-to-graduate class a few years ago, because why, what do YOU think about while you’re making coffee? A woman was interviewed about her time working at some sort of insurance agency phone bank thing, and her job was to interview the shit out of people who called so that she could deny them coverage, or some such terrible thing, and she would go home every day after work and cry and feel like shit. So then while I’m ripping open Splenda packets (I know I know, look, I tried to switch over to monk fruit sweetener but Whole Foods charges me six bucks a bag and it tastes like earwax, so)  I start grieving for humanity, and then I start thinking about how woefully ignorant and/or otherwise unaware so many people are and how sad THAT is, and how little I actually know about anything, and I’m not coherent enough to generate tears so I just lay down on top of the blanket next to a still-sleeping Diego and stare wide-eyed over his head into the darkness as I spoon him for dear life.

Later on I'm greeted in the bathroom mirror by Thing 1 and Thing 2, nestled sweetly together on my chin.

Friday
Inhaled a cheese-covered bagel with cream cheese over my keyboard just now and one hundred thousand percent feel it was the absolute best decision I could have possibly made for my body. Plan of attack for today is to finish the pot of flavored coffee I just brewed myself, switch to whiskey around noon, and google hysterectomies.

Later on, fueled now by both hormones AND Jack Daniels, I feel guilty and wretched and traitorous for writing a blog post that may be interpreted as hostile toward menstruation, so I buy a bunch of women’s studies books on Amazon and promise myself that tomorrow when I’m not drunk anymore I’ll sit quietly with all my new candles and embrace my cycle and commune with the moon.

Audible over ocean sounds, made out in dark or too-bright light.
Muted panic.

I haven’t written anything yet, not since I’ve been here, not ever.
You’re waiting in my softest parts to be made into something else.
Release me, you say. I’m trying.

I'll try.

currently, as in bodies of water, as in that's where I should like to be

I want to make a rhubarb pie. I’ve only ever made one pie before, and it was an apple one, and perhaps “pie” is a generous word for what I made. I used to make a lot of tarts, though, in school. Raspberry tarts and peach tarts and blueberry tarts. And then the teacher told me I couldn’t make tarts anymore, this wasn’t Tart School, I had to learn something else if I wanted to graduate. Joke’s on you, mister, I told him. I don’t WANT to graduate from Tart School. I said THIS ISN’T Tart School, he said. IS NOT. Anyway that’s why I have a desk where I keep cat pictures and shiny stones and a tiny clay pig instead of a cooking show.

Last night in my dream I was on a bus, a pretty full one. All the seats were taken and there was a little boy next to me in one of the seats that face into the bus instead of forward or backward.  He was holding a cardboard sign but he wasn’t looking at it, he was looking out the window at a man standing outside. The man was crying – like, a lot, like really really crying, like with his whole face. The bus started to pull away and suddenly I understood that the man was leaving the boy. Had some weird dream-thoughts re: the boy being the one physically doing the leaving since he was on the bus moving away from the space where he’d been staying with the man. Right? Write. Rong. I snatched the sign out of the boy’s hands and decided I’d take care of him, and then the boy’s mother was found and she took him from me and they were gone. Until they weren’t gone anymore, and we were at the front of the bus where the seats were more like school bus ones than city bus ones. And she’d decided she didn’t want him after all, and she handed him back to me wrapped up in a blue blanket. He looked more like a puppy than he had before. And then I had two kids that weren’t of my loins that I was taking care of, and they were kissing each other and I said “Don’t do that you’re brother and sister” and they laughed and said, “Too late!” And then someone I couldn’t see was asking me if I was sure I wanted to take care of them. Griffon woke me up with his old-lady yowling before I could figure out how to answer. I’m still trying to figure it out.

At the end of last year I got a really, really cute haircut. This year I learned that the cuter a haircut is, the uglier it will be to grow out. My hair is currently at my least favorite length and every time I pass by a salon (which is a lot of times) I have to physically restrain myself from running inside and screeching “CUT IT OFF CUT IT OFF” because when the day comes that I can put all of it up in a ponytail again without the aid of bobby pins, well. That will be a great fucking day.

For Diego’s anniversary present (Saturday marks our fourth year of arguing about how to fold towels and whether or not it’s okay to order Corona at an establishment where there is also an option of a fancy beer or cocktail; one of us doesn’t fold anything ever and so is automatically wrong about everything, so) I got him tickets to A Bronx Tale because he’s been dropping subtle hints like “I WANT TO GO SEE A BRONX TALE.” I picked a matinee on the day of our actual anniversary, because we’re leaving for Maine suuuper early the next morning. And thennn his brother went back in time, knocked up his girlfriend, and purposely planned the baby shower for the exact same afternoon. In Connecticut! So now I get to wear my pretty new dress to an anniversary day-date AND a baby shower for my new nephew. (I bet you thought I was going to complain about having to reallocate my theatre wine fund into a diaper/tiny clothes/othersuch landfill fodder fund and also about losing half a day/the only day I planned for packing. Well, joke’s on you guys (in addition to being on my high school culinary teacher, remember him from the beginning of this blog? Oh the places we’ve been) because I am choosing to see “inconveniences” as “opportunities” and being grateful to the universe for nourishing my growth.) Thank you, universe. You crazy kid.)

"True translation is not a binary affair between two languages but a triangular affair. The third point of the Triangle being what lay behind the words of the original text before it was written. True translation demands a return to the preverbal."
John Berger, "Self Portrait"

"In the end there doesn't have to be anyone who understands you. There just has to be someone who wants to." 
Robert Brault 

and if you can't sleep alone
be careful of the words you speak in your sleep
and
ask for no mercy
no miracles; 
and don't forget:
time is meant to be wasted,
C. BUKOWSKI 

- [Edit: On second thought, maybe swallow this one for now.]

- I didn't watch The Handmaid's Tale as soon as it came out because I was deathly afraid it would be terrible. It wasn't, at all. Phew. (Shouldn't have doubted you, Ms. A.)

- I thought I wanted to write a blog but I think I actually just want to drink coffee and look out the window with the cat.

"If I could I would keep this feeling in a plastic jar,

Bust it out whenever someone's acting hard.

... 

Every day that gets to pass is a success,

Every woman looks better in a sun dress." 

ATMOSPHERE

I "set intentions" toward the end of last year, and if I recall, my intentions were to be a non-smoking vegetarian who journaled. One out of three isn't bad (the tiny grandmother who lives in my brain slaps me in the knuckles with a wooden ruler if I even think the word "ain't") so now that it's hot out I think I'll do it again. 

SO.

- Read five books. I remember reading five books in a week. And now it's my goal for an entire season. Damn it, intention. It's my intention.
- Spend more time at the park. Astoria Park is literally my backyard, and we've been pretty good about going more so far this year but now that it's summer I really want to make it a point to spend more time there. That's actually our plan for today, after I stuff the crock pot with vegetables. GG (Grumpy Griffon) needs a few more months of adjustment before I'm going to risk going near him with a harness, so cat picnics might have to wait until next year.
- Do more in Queens in general. This includes all outdoor markets/any and all opportunities for outdoor day drinking, but if I just say that then it's cheating because I'm obviously going to do that anyway and don't need to include it as an intention. So, it also includes other Queens things. I'll make a list when I'm not rushing to finish this because I have to pee. I could get up and pee and come back to this, I guess. But I just want to be done. You know what, I wasn't asking you.
- Keep the closet under control. I did a big clean-out of my clothes a few weeks ago and getting dressed has been a dream-dipped, glitter-filled sunrise. I even put away the sweaters I won't need for a while - I HAVE NEVER DONE THAT EVER. My all-the-time, doesn't-need-to-be-said intention is to not spend money on stupid shit which includes clothes I'm not going to wear, so I'm adding it as a sub-intention here. The only clothing items I need to purchase are new flip-flops, which basically don't count because I still just wear the two-dollar Old Navy ones, and a new bathing suit because we're going on vacation and my nipples jump out of all the ones I have. Which, believe it or not, is not always an appropriate thing for nipples to do.

That's it. I'm not a machine.

Written over her face on an old photograph, in blue ink:

it’s not “tuning in” if you can’t “tune” back  “out” and also the word “tune” suggests an ability to adjust, which is misleading  

Blocking and burying are two activities that take a lot out of a person. Ask any video game character. Or crypt keeper. 

Don’t talk to anyone who says they’re a crypt keeper, actually. I don’t think that’s a real job anymore. 

(She had kind of a big face.)

The past week has felt tremendously, violently boring. I say “felt” because nothing has actually BEEN boring, not even me. Especially not me. I’VE been as delightful as ever. But that’s how everything feels in a fallow period, which I never realize is what I am in until I start to come out of it. My brain refuses to even feign interest in anything I need to do, and all the things I usually WANT to do get put off because the only brainpower I have left after a day of holding back the guttural noises I want to make at every. single. task. is juuuust enough to pay a marginal amount of attention to shows like “The Client List” until it’s an almost appropriate time for me to crawl into bed with a book. This is not depression I’m describing. It’s more like closing up shop for renovations. You know?

Anyway, I'm excited now because FERTILE follows FALLOW, so get ready for all the fruit I'm about to bear. Or like, I guess you don't have to get ready because I like to keep my fruit to myself. Just keep it and hold it and eventually use it to make hooch. (Sometimes muses feel like burrs at first, I'm realizing.)

I’m after a feeling, like incense and the blinds down and the air conditioner on. The chemical reaction of her shampoo and her hair. Shots in the distance – breath on my mouth. Grass in the half-light. Piano, flutes, the voice of a woman in her mother’s mother’s rings. Love spells sent through windows of wood-framed houses. My childhood attic, your secret faces through a screen. WANTED: One mapmaker, skilled in the topography of dreamscapes. Specifically, mine. Must be willing to work odd hours.

The first piece of makeup I bought that wasn’t from a pharmacy was a medium-fancy eyeshadow palette. (I still have it, six years later. Nowhere near finishing it. I also still have the blush brush that someone’s mom gave me for Christmas in like 2008. I justveryextremelyrecentlybecauseiamfilthpersonified got a new one, but she lives in the same jar as the old one. I know what you’re thinking – WHY, LINDSAY. WHY. ARE YOU SO FUCKING GROSS AND WEIRD. Well, friends. Isn’t it cool how I know what you’re thinking.) I bought it right before I moved to the city and way before I knew sheeeeeit about putting on makeup. (Now you’re thinking, YOU STILL DON’T KNOW ANYTHING and you’re right, but please. Stop interrupting.) So at first, I wanted to wear all of the colors. All of them. At once. And I did. And I looked amazing. Just kidding, I looked like an extra from American Horror Story. Like I got punched in both eyes by a fairy. Like someone who did know how to put on eyeshadow had done my makeup for me, and then I rubbed them with the vigor of a sleepy toddler.

Right. So, I’ve been thinking that boundaries are like that. When we’re excitable or vulnerable or some other –able and we find a new boundary, the brain throws up this massive fortress that requires an even more massive amount of psychic energy to hold up. A lot of our mental energy goes into keeping out whatever we’ve perceived as dangerous, is what I’m saying, is what I was trying to compare to the using of all the new eyeshadows at once. Which I’m now realizing doesn’t really make that much sense. Unless when you stumble upon a new boundary you like to test it out in a whole bunch of crazy ways that end up not being such a good look. So yeah maybe it does make sense. Great. It stays. So anyway, ideally, I guess, that shiny new boundary of yours eventually becomes a part of your emotional landscape and you’re able to go about your life without needing to keep constant vigil beside it. And hopefully if someone crosses it there’s a space to have a conversation about it, for you to say “Hey, this is what I need in order to feel safe” and for the other person to say “Cool man, I respect that, hey also this is what I need” and everyone can just be cool about each other’s boundaries.

But you know what? You don’t HAVE to have that conversation with someone if you don’t want to. I mean don’t like, get offended at Jane in sales because you think she looked at you kind of weird and then snub her then when she asks you if everything’s okay in a totally nice, normal tone say, “NO JANE I DON’T HAVE TO EXPLAIN ANYTHING TO YOU.” Don’t do that, poor Jane. And poor you, living that way. So exhausting. What I mean is, if someone has made you feel unsafe then you have the right to decide whether or not that person is deserving of calm discourse. You have the right to judge the integrity of the scaffolding of your own relationships, to gauge how they’ll react to a pointing-out of hurt they caused. And sometimes, especially when someone repeatedly crosses lines and disrespects boundaries, the wiser choice may be to disengage. Even if they aren’t doing it intentionally, or with hostility in their heart. Sometimes the best thing to do may be to batten the hatches, assign a sentry, and keep moving forward with or toward people who don’t send you running, feral, for cover.

From the balcony, open to the misty starlight,
A sad wind came, from invisible worlds …
And she, she asked me about things unknowable
And I answered her with unattainable things.
Juan Ramón Jiménez

Yesterday I spent a solid hour reading articles about the stupid Fyre festival. AN HOUR. In my defense, a large chunk of that time was spent working past the debilitating disappointment I felt at learning that the photos were not of cult scenery. (I just listened to like six different podcasts about Jonestown.) Then I thought, who would spend thousands of dollars to watch Blink-182 in a foreign country? My pre-teenage bedrooms were literally wallpapered with Travis Barker & co, yes. But like… Blink-182? Finally I thought, “Wow, I’m embarrassed to have allowed this to take up so much of my brain space” and ordered a copy of War and Peace online. I saw Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet a couple of weeks ago with some work people and it was so good! I followed most of the show without tuning out, which made me pretty confident about my ability to finally finish reading a Russian novel. I’ll let you know how that goes whenever I eventually start. I’m in the middle of The Stand right now, also some other one I forgot the name of that’s on the Kindle that I thought I lost but I didn’t. I am very very very a lot looking forward to the long weekend. We somehow wound up jam-packing all three days with plans despite my staunch refusal to Go Anywhere or Do Anything 98% of the time, but the first part of Sunday at least has been set aside for eating an entirely too-large breakfast and communing with the couch. (So like, what we do every Sunday.) One of the plans is to see this new play about immigration, so maybe after that I’ll order some law books. Or cook books. Who knows what I’ll convince myself I can do, next week on Lindsay’s Nonsense Life.

Where has this got to. What. Wh!

Once like a year ago I gave up reading a blog because the author of it casually mentioned that she thought abortion was “straight-up murder” (plus she was kind of a hate read anyway and like, #GOODVIBESONLY) and for some reason I feel like admitting that I think it’s gross when people say things like “fur babies” and/or “fur mommy” might be equally as divisive a topic as pregnancy termination. At the risk of alienating more people than I usually do in the course of a day, I’m going to say this anyway:  I think it’s weird when people refer to their pets as kids in a way that is even remotely serious. THERE I SAID IT. I think it’s weird. I do. The absolute worst is when people have a human child and then some dogs or something and they call them ALL “the kids.” BLUUUGH. It feels like someone planted feathers in my back and then vigorously rubbed them in the direction directly opposite to the one in which they were planted. BLAGH. BLURG. I just, blachhh, I can’t. It makes me think of a fully-functioning adult in a diaper and a giant baby bonnet. Animals are babies for like two seconds and then they’re adults. 

I’m definitely guilty of saying things like “COME TO MOMMY” to pets, or like “WHAT A CUTE BABY YOU ARE. YOU ARE THE CUTEST BABY. BABYBABYBABY,” etc. You know. As one does. I often greet adult humans in a similar way. But kasd;fbjhyiu  at people suggesting in a tone that even resembles seriousness that they are parenting a cat or a dog or a weasel. You are not. You are categorically NOT. Our relationships with the animals in our lives are their own thing. We can and should serve other living things, including other humans, and be invested in their welfare and love them, but that doesn’t mean we’re parenting that living thing. Of course it doesn’t. That is absurd. 

Don’t mind me, in grief I’m prone to pontification. (Also to being kind of dramatic and rude and making grand, sweeping statements.) (Also to being irritated at/resentful of other people’s behavior.) (Seriously though stop acting like that. It’s really, really terribly terrible.) (Also to eating three cookies before 10AM.) Saying goodbye to Arwen has left a cavernous space in the center my ribcage. We let her go before the worst of it, and she fell asleep for the last time on a sunny morning in front of an open window in our apartment (through which we could hear birds chirping aggressively) (her favorite) and she had her little princess face in the crook of my arm and Diego’s chubby fingers on her back. My baby. My little angel baby. Who actually is not an actual angel. Just so we’re clear. Because there’s no such thing as heaven. (ARE YOU GOING TO STOP READING ME.) 

I had dreams about white cats for days, and the morning after a particularly strange one about teeny tiny kittens under the floorboards I suddenly and powerfully wanted to adopt another cat. And then I showed up at Diego’s workplace with coffee (to draw him out) (it was really hard, he misses our stinky chubby furball) and tricked him into accompanying me to the ASPCA so that we could take home the biggest, bitiest cat they had. I never, ever in a million years thought I’d react that way – I assumed I’d mourn her, petless and tearful, for at least the next decade, until my teenage daughter brought home a scrawny feline that I’d at first mistake for a rat and then fall in love with and thus continue the cycle. Instead, we brought home a giant black and white boxer who was at the shelter for the better part of a year because they “kept having to put him on bite hold.” And he’s adjusting just beautifully. And if Arwen were around she’d think he was really, really handsome. The hoe bag. <3 p="">

But it’s been hard to watch him stalk around corners, smelling Arwen, waiting for her to jump out at him. 

I am too, little buddy. I am too. 

/drama

(but not really, not ever)