Week 48 of 2025

and the more i think about it, this all could have been avoided if they’d just let me be a girl in high school. it’s these two (it could be three) things or strands or strings; they’re tangled up together… and i can’t seem to unwind them. they’ve been threaded through so long in rain and snow and sun it might as well be one material, one strand. but they come from different sources, they are separate signals, multiplexed… and i can’t seem to demux, it’s too complex. misfiring, scruffy animals, sleeves pulled up so only the fingers and thumbs poke out. sparkle, tension, open, tense, intensity at tensile strength.

we sat on the couch eating adderall and watching romcoms for about an hour before he asked so uh you know billy? and billy came home and i met monica and i met ipa. and we got 40oz bottles of miller and budweiser and i couldn’t believe how fruity and delicious american beers were in america. “they taste like chemicals back home”. and later she was driving down a busy road. we passed a bottle of jack back and forth. she parked and asked me to watch her pee, and then we went into the store and she stole a tshirt. maybe i wish i’d never boarded that greyhound.

but

life is good now too. right? you’re a star; my trailer, your car. but i was there once. in chicago with an orange julius in my left hand (listening to freezepop), picking up red jelly dextromethorphan at the k-mart. playing sega on the sheet against the wall with the projector from best buy and i end up in the upstairs neighbour’s talking to the dog. but then i woke up in des moines, and then i woke up in denver, and i woke up in the desert on my birthday. and now home isn’t home.

i’ll be back. two years later i’ll wake up in des moines. two years later: chicago(mgs3), rockford, denver (crying in the cold over cigarettes), vegas (did we break up again?), san francisco they put me up in the tenderloin, bethany bridges, sydney, paris, portugal. we could have killed each other.

but. life is good now too. maybe better than it’s ever been? i cannot fuck this up. everything i’ve ever needed, i think. when i tell it to my friends they even say “oh so everything you’ve ever wanted? you should have been all along?” and i’m like yeah. maybe. maybe burning body fat releasing hidden chemistry; alchemy in the bloodstream. the ritual with the shrine still kept folded in the kitchen drawer. hermetic order of the frozen song — you have to let go, you have to let it go. field disturbances, september 2023, christmas party perfume baby belle of the ball — make no mistake it’s cyclical.

deerly behoovèd we are gathered here today to take an asprin, thin the blood. a pouch of powdered collegen; connective tissue from the blade at your left wrist to your face and your fat lip to that pinky finger that doesn’t bend to the “sid and nancy”, shifting angst, the broken sink in maida vale, the loathing, love and beeps museum.

it’ll never be the same. or, we’ll never be the same. it’ll be the same but we’ll be other people.

next week it’ll be a year since i last drank alcohol. a glass of red wine in florence in italy. remember when i dropped that bombay saphire and it smashed all little chunks of turquoise glass and marty asked “oh chee what happened” and i told him “she called me her little mango” and he understood. it was unavoidable. and drinking shards of glass is a small price to pay.

that’s not the last time i lost a bottle of gin after a long midnight walk like that trying to save the party: razzmatazz jumped up so excited i was home — that dog did not know how long she was… and she was so very very long. or was that tequila? anyway, alx put doritos in the microwave with grated cheese and pasta sauce and it tasted just like the nachos i’d eat 10 years later on the sleeper train.

and as the days go by in these long weeks and short months, this month (of weeks so long they lasted my entire life) is over. we made letters, everyone. drew them on canvases with mathematics. next week maybe we’ll even listen to them sing. “life’s incredible”.

what was i saying? oh yeah so that’s a year. a year since

it’s torture that nature made us love in different ways.

to expect love the way we show it.

to show it how we want it.

and love people who love different.

another year. and that was a year too, on pause. happy and peaceful. feeling lucky. i’ll say happy birthday next time.