2026/w4

are ye well? ‘cause you’re looking well.

restless night. an hour here, an hour there. the last time i woke up, i woke up smiling. so that time i stayed up.

monday was a classic md/cd. i sat in a corner. we completed some tasks. dns. good day. help in both directions and big smiles. and eggs benny with seasonal veg. there’s nothing else on the menu. gotta check thoroughly every time though. twoticks.

on tuesday i had a minor pizza meltdown. and a light went out. and it came back on.

wednesday was chill. a really good work day. a good friend day too.

i have a scar on the back of my left hand.

Vicki Firth told me it looks like two rabbits having a picnic. and it kinda looks like a rabbit’s face straight on too.

it’s from the top of a clipper lighter. i was doing a manufacturing engineering course at a kind of community college. a guy called McGirr asked if he could scar my hand with a clipper lighter and i said sure. he heated it up and stuck it into my hand.

not reacting at all when i am in physical pain has been a longstanding trait of mine. i don’t know if it has some roots in a fear of vulnerability or something, but it isn’t conscious. i point it inward naturally. maybe it’s related to how i experience music, standing still in the middle of the dance floor. maybe it’s related to the pain eating. it’s caused some minor trouble in relationships from time to time. i’ve learned that calmly saying “im in a lot of pain right now btw” can be a lot more unsettling and surprising than shouting “ow!!”. nevertheless, it’s how it comes out.

i really loved mcgirr.

we were inseparable for a little while, we looked up to each other. in a way i was kind of a mentor to him. but we were peers too, as always. i loved him dearly. i looked him up a few years ago and he’s dead. got on a boat in the middle of the night and the boat came back and he didn’t.

he’d sometimes say to you by way of hello “are ye well? ‘cause you’re looking well” and it always made my skin tingle.

sometimes a feeling creates a moving space inside your body that can be filled up by a word. a word that slots in just right can still the chaos and can bridge feelings that seem far away from each other, contradictory, orthogonal. timing is important, because stilling the motion too early can lead to misdiagnosis, denial. now there is a wide space in here, with darts of light flashing-searching about (like hest). and the space has expanded to encompass my entire interior. i could put it in my pocket if i knew what it was. words like boxes, forming jewels, making jewellery, lockets and pocket watches. no.

no, that’s not working.

let’s try another angle. a decade ago i saw a tweet that said “boys don’t sit around all day wishing they were girls”. and then there was a follow up that said some other words and “that’s all trans means”. and i said “hmm” and closed my laptop and took my lunch break and ate two spicy chicken sticks and decided not to think about it. but then i started thinking about stuff like how as a teenager i’d bought my parents birthday cards “from your loving daughter”. and over time i started to see that “trans” had never seemed like an option because it appeared to come with extra stuff that wasn’t me. but once i understood it only meant this one thing, i could define what else it meant for me. shortly after that there was hormones and thin skin and all these boobs and shirt dresses and torn leggings and “i am that bitch, chipped nails and chapped lips. batshit, ratchet”. but what i’m saying, sometimes you’ve known a word a long time and it doesn’t fit where it should because you’ve been using it wrong.

no, that’s not right either. let’s try again another time.

thursday night was the FoC event. it was really special. the energy was so good. look what we did. there’s an 80 second stretch of it that i keep replaying with a big smile on my face because it’s like, “that’s how it works”. the speakers were all so perfect, and the energy was so respectful and joyful. the FoC podcast and community kindly paid for the pizza and drinks. i am so grateful to the community, to jimmy and ivan, to lu, to mimi.

it’s a story. every day. remember when Snow said “I ain’t gonna fuck with nobody that don’t wholeheartedly fuck with me”? the wholeheartedly. it really matters.

really need to make sure i eat a meal before going out to events because i keep going kind of insane during. and by the time we’re at the chitter-chatter i’ve already fallen asleep internally. sleeping in there peeking out from behind my eyeballs like a mimir. there are a few people i like a lot who have only met me in that state and i feel like the version of me in their head is so strange.

saturday night me and sweet becky avery went out to see Josh Johnson at the Palladium. it was a great show. it was a good night. it was so nice to see Becky. travelling home i was glowing, smiling, dancing while i walk. smiling at strangers, and they smile back.

later i was on the train, and a drunk crowd got on. i heard them saying something about it being hot on the train, like a steam room. they nattered on a bit. i kept on readingmy book, slightly alert. 10 or 20 secs later one of them turned to me, made eye contact and said “that’s alright love you don’t have to take your clothes off— you don’t have to take your clothes off darling —”. i pulled back one ear of my headphones and inquired “are you trying to communicate with me?” and then he said “wait i think it’s a geezer” and then one of the other ones said “poor girl”.

next week (1st feb) i’ll be writing from belgium. or on my way to france. the next it’ll be from a convent in spain. and the week after that from another world.

thanks