blankey blank blank

it's been forever - sorry, pigeon-mistress.

i've been struggling with the way my blogging has changed. i feel like this is more a chronicle of my activities and less a collection of my witticisms and epiphanies. le sigh. i still have witty and mind-blowing moments, i am just too busy or tired to write them down. maybe that will be my next rebellion. i try and rebel at least once a week. sometimes i stay up late drinking whiskey and writing letters, sometimes i furiously clean the house and pile sir mans-a-lot's various tools back down into the mancave, sometimes i have an illicit bath while the dumpling naps and the dishes pile up (because dishes spawn when you let them lie).

i've been driving more recently. it feels empowering. finally. we've got snow, but it isn't crazy icy yet. just cold.

the dumpling is growing and eats a lot. a lot. also, frequently. it seems like i just got her up and changed her, and then after eating we play for a bit and she goes down for a nap. planning outdoor activities requires a strict "move along, nothing to see here" attitude, which seems weird and forced. but we usually make it out of the house once a day. and we play a lot.

i'm having trouble getting to the stuff i like doing, but i drew a little this evening - oil pastels on a paper bag. fun.

anyway. might as well post this; it isn't getting any more interesting. what am i doing?
parenting takes the lead, learning new skills comes next, then maintenance tasks (laundry, pasta sauce), then art, then blogging and letter-writing. minimum exercise.

okay, here's a tidbit: my favourite feeding is the late night feeding right before i go to bed, especially if i get there first with a ready-to-go bottle. after she guzzles it back she stretches waaay out (like a starfish basking in the awesomeness of the ocean), and while i'm pulling the blankets up, she grabs a hold of the wool blankie knit by my aunt and pulls it over her head. dreams are merely seconds away.

couches! running water! cat!

new orleans. wow.

we burned figurative rubber from north carolina to louisiana, getting here in two days instead of five. tired of trying to figure out where to park for the night, not knowing when our next shower will be; ah, life on the road. so now we're parked outside my friend pixie's house in the ninth ward, sitting on her bed drinking tea and hogging the internet while she crochets and her mimecat looks insatiably cute. this is very, very lovely. later, i will have a bath.

we showed up last night, in time to catch thanksgiving. there were several gluten-free guests, so i even got to eat more than two items! speaking of eating, the night we left the outer banks of nc, we first ate at the lone cedar café. fresh seafood, where the daily specials feature the name of the fisherman that brought the catch in. very tasty. also, the restaurant works really hard to only use local, pesticide-free and hormone-free foods. yay. and oh god, the food was so good. i had collard greens! long live the south!

well, sort of long live the south. i am also tired of feeling like a freak. yes, i am a pregnant canadian travelling on a school bus. and no, i don't dress like you. is that okay? yeah, happy thanksgiving to you too. in canada, it's called 'thursday'. there were so many people driving on the interstate on wednesday, it was actually shocking. the rest areas were swarmed with screaming children and harried parents and RVs. here in new orleans, in the ninth ward, i'm only a freak because i'm white. and i am okay with that.

holy crap - the ninth ward. there are still so many houses boarded up with spray-paint indicating the rescue attempts after hurricane katrina (date, team, number of bodies found in the house). while we were driving back from the thrift store (i outgrew more shirts) pixie and her roommate were commenting on how much nicer the neighbourhood has become; her roommate has been living in this house for two years. the piles of trash are gone, more houses have been reclaimed and cleaned up. the queen went for a walk this morning and told me "it's like baltimore out there" (context found in this post). i was all "really?" and he described the kids working the corners and guarding the drug stashes. wild. pixie told me that baltimore is apparently the most dangerous city in america. also wild, when you consider new orleans, new york, los angeles, detroit...

i am looking forward to spending some time here; not driving, not looking for rest areas, not having to strap everything down, not having to get up early every morning to maximize daylight driving. this is a well-needed rest. i need to slow down. spend a few days being less regimented. and it is SO NICE to see pixie. she is a special kind of wondrous being.

oh this one's exciting. better read this one.

oh yes, long lag, bad me.

worked, went out for the long weekend, met the queen's large irish family, worked through some things that don't matter anymore, failed on a set of responsibilities i had to an event. (much to the surprise of my ego, the event went off rather well anyway. smaller than last year, but also tighter and more fun.)

it was a long week. the week before that one was busy. a busy week followed by a long week sucks ass. so now we're all caught up. i haven't even journalled. the closest i come is staring sideways at the little book, sending it suspicious glances.

today was good. today i slept in, after 'thonning for hours last night. slept in the queen's arms and woke happy. he mentioned this. then when a shadow fell across my face, he questioned the source, and as usual, it was something i remembered needed doing. so i did it, which is a trend i hope to be able to keep going. the alternative is a life of backlogged tasks, which i swear is more deadly than a teenage mugger.

i wish that when i didn't blog, it was because i was doing all kinds of cross-country touring, or climbing mountains. but the best i can manage is hiking around beaver dams for an hour before driving back to the city to make my work shift. which isn't intentional slowness, it's lack of time. at least i am looking forward to the blues musician at the commercial this week. and going to see caribou.

maybe more exciting things do happen in my life, and i just forget them because i only blog every two weeks. who knows.

changes, subtle and gross

the full moon has been good to me.

working on the "main drag" during the olympic hockey game proved amusing and slightly frightful. i have never seen so many men with silly grins on their faces. grown men weeping, men in tights, men wearing flags, sidewalk-beer-drinkers high-fiving the cars that were driving by honking. the whole avenue basically exploded for an hour as everyone toured drunkenly around, then returned to the bars for more serious celebrating. after my shift ended, i snuck out to the gnome home to wait out the storm. when i went back to the dog house three hours later, there were three red-&-white-clad guys on the bus worrying about what their lives would look like now, how they didn't want to watch regular television, and how long could they live off replays before they had to face their lives again? i wonder if this sort of predicament hits newly married couples. "no more presents to unwrap? shit, now we just live together..."

it looks like my housesitting continues: a friend who lives three doors down from the gnomes is finishing up her thesis and wants to jet off for a number of weeks, it's looking like six of them right now. so that will put me to the end of april. her place is great: witchy, unusual (as in, the stairs to the second floor rise up from the bathroom, and the tub is in the hallway. i love old houses), warm and inviting. i will sincerely love being in the gnomal regions again. walking to work, sleeping with my cat (her cat and my cat actually get along. i'm not sure why, since my cat gets along with no other cats, and her cat is a wild beast that sleeps in bushes), generally being in a neighbourhood where i know people, the graffiti is about art and the trees wear accessories.

i've been unraveling a bit more - in a good way. stretching, exhaling, coming out of the horrible grey shadow i was hiding in. the weather seems to be hovering around the freezing temperature (it's funny how warm it can be even though you can still see your breath and you still wear a scarf. ah, canadian spring). this is really good for my state of mind - i find it hard to love the world when it's painful to go outside. it makes the whole 'universe is a friendly place' theory a bit much to swallow. the queen is home in a couple of days. it will be fascinating to see how we behave toward each other. we've talked a lot in a long-distance capacity.

i've really started to enjoy me-time again. just wandering around, looking at the world, drinking cocoa, exploring possibilities. slowly, drinking in the experience.

there will be cocoa

THE WOWNESS
i really do have trouble in the winter keeping my mood elevated enough to do more than just survive. but i also have these epic moments of wow, where i find a cue that taps me back into the wonder (or is it forward into the wonder?) of the moment, of the inherent awesome that lurks on the height of the waves and the flats of the plains.

BEWARE 'CASUAL' SEX
special friend and i have been exchanging a few emails that reassure me as to our mutual recovery from the ending of our romance (still hurts to type that, but the hurt is now sandwiched in slices of comforting reality - why does it feel so much better when you've both hooked up with other people?). i also let him know something that i was keeping from the blog world, knowing he reads my blog - that i have 'developed feelings' (can we find a less disgusting term for that?) for someone. that someone is my wife's roommate, the queen, first mentioned here, i believe.

it was, in a way, totally fluke that i went against my loose religion of not hooking up with roommates (i know, he's not my roommate, but i still pretend i live there). the queen and i have been decent friends for a while, since i jam with him and another old gnome on an infrequent but recurring basis. i felt horribly guilty that i could, despite my reassurances that it was casual sex, connect so deeply with someone so soon after special friend and i had broken things off - i judged myself as shallow for being able to do so. interesting how i judge myself based on emotions i don't control. i mean, if i judged myself for having casual sex, that would be ignorant, but it would at least follow the logic of judging me on my actions - something i do control.

i'm still kind of judging myself, but slowly letting that go. judgment, go eat grass or something. i am busy being a more honest self over here. oh, well, judgment, you probably mean well, it's okay. i'll hug you, but i won't let you drive.

honestly, i feel different since special friend. i feel like i am not seeking out broken people to fix. i am not throwing myself at someone hoping they might help me solve the problem of my childhood. i am not interested in roles, but rather, people. not that people don't terrify me as well, but whatever. in a traditional celtic tarot spread, our hopes and fears are depicted by the same card.

STILL WITH THE HEALING
i don't want to shortchange myself in the grieving process, however. so in an excellent twist of fate, the day after the night the queen and i shockingly discovered our hearts are opening to each other, he's off on a trip for six weeks. it's kind of perfect in that annoying way that denies desires and fulfills needs. there are states that work cannot bring. only time. letting go is a chaotic process.

i realize that although the majority of my change can be traced to my own work, both in therapy and out of it, special friend totally gets the assist. because of his excellent communication skills and steady tenderness, because of his honesty when we had those obnoxious couples conversations that predate the realization of different needs and different desires for a relationship. he didn't let it be all about me, my fault, my weirdness. he claimed his own weirdness, and the blame shovel got laid aside.

today's cue to bring me out of morose refusal to dress and wash the dishes? led zeppelin. ah yes. and none of this overplayed stairway bullshit. houses of the holy, thou are magickal.

dancing on the edge of the coin of readiness

HEY , IT'S BEEN SO LONG
really enjoying my life these days, which is surprising since i have scored yet another illness. at least this one isn't the flu. but i was reading some buddhism stuff, and it reminded me that my state of illness or health is separate from the human condition: what kind of human being i am does not change. the meaning and purpose i bring to my life does not change.

epic meeting with my therapist. really feeling whole with some of the broken past. not even sure how it is possible, just know that i am including parts of me in my decision-making process that i long thought were lost, dead, gone.

i noticed the pace of my life was ramping up a bit since the roommate had moved in. and i wish to slow it down again. slowness brings me more pleasure, and that is a good thing. also, then i drink less. again, a good thing. why do so many of my social groups still use alcohol?

WHAT'S REALLY HAPPENING
thinking about what it is that brings people to a readiness to be in relationship. i realize (through the course of listening to friends talk about their own processes) that i don't want to admit when my needs are not getting met, because i don't want to make the other person feel bad. i don't want to ask them to change, i don't want to hurt their self-esteem. so i betray myself? doesn't seem like an effective compromise. hello, ugly past! you're not that ugly. come here. let's meet...

instead of being honest, i just decide i'm done. and once i decide that, it seems pretty hard to reverse it. but i wonder how it would look if i shared? if i was brave enough to have said "i want to go hiking with you, not walking. i want to dance wildly with you, i want to throw our bodies, unencumbered by egos, to the wind." or if i had said "i miss your kindnesses, the ones you gave me before we started dating, when we were still friends." or: "i don't want to be the only decisive person in the relationship." would those relationships have progressed any differently?

still, i have trouble even with the idea of being that honest. i don't want to be the big judge, telling someone they aren't good enough. i have been there. it just makes you question every single thing about yourself. you second-guess all your actions. it sucks. why should they need to know? except i guess when i follow through on the path of not telling them anything, that doesn't work either. begin overthinking now.

i think there is something to be said about the delivery. i mean, it's not that someone isn't good enough. it's that they aren't right for me. but when is it a deal-breaker and when can it be worked out (is it a sliver or a bullet)? not to mention that if it's something like how they deal with their own body or their own past, something more abstract and slower-moving, how patient can i be? even if they agree that is something they want to work on?

also: can i receive that kind of feedback? i basically spend my spare time in self-development (okay, not as obsessed in the last few years, but it's still a theme), and i know part of this is defensive in nature: i will fix everything so that you will never leave, and i will do it before you even notice there was something wrong. how do i respond to the fact that this is a game in my head ? that i am as imperfect as the rest of us?

tourist in my own right

new music! finally named that track i heard at a club last year and loved instantly. swingy & dancy. exciting new music inspires me to listen to more music, so i wandered through the hallways of nightmares on wax, thievery corporation and quannum projects, and in a complete about-face, cemented the weekend with some old country. especially, listened to songs on the road to where gospel and country eventually meet. which is in the sweet hereafter, i guess.

ditching out on large social events is such a gift to myself. not like it leaves me alone. the drift of people that come through our yard anyway - sewing deviants, tribal bellydancers, sweethearted soul-questing djs, lady-loving long-boarding yogis, curious forest-dwellers, recovering misanthropes, sexy special friends - and meet me when i go for groceries - punk psychologists and their unknowingly hip daughters - repel any feelings of true solitude. i thought about it briefly this afternoon; the last time i lived anywhere there weren't people pretty much regularly dropping by was five years ago, right after i moved back from the coast to the city i call home for here and now. except now that i think of it, we had an influx of couch-surfers in that tiny basement apartment anyway. so, barring occasional periods of less than four months, i've lived in social milieus since the last time i lived on my own - twelve years ago.

it's interesting to notice aspects of one's life that have been a long time running. a friend who came for tea was noting the process by which we grieve the long-term past. that even if we don't want it back, we think about our old experiences often. our mind negotiates this for us on an unconscious level - bargaining, measuring against, playing the if-then game (if i do this, then maybe...). when i think familiarity, i think about habits, patterns, addiction. but then, there's the whole argument that stability breeds, i don't know, good things. growing long-term gardens, etc. or something. right?

clearly we see where my experiences have led me. same thing again = ruts, bad. immediately swerve.

so, slow change seems to be healthier for the most part. dynamic homeostasis slowly evolving and the like. where was i going with this? oh, the conversation we had over tea this evening. big changes in lifestyle habits, the sustainability of doing it at ones own pace, the inane distractions the ego comes up with when a momentary moratorium on chaos actually occurs. the ego is the giant corporation in each of us. are there any rules/guides it will follow, or is there simply unhinged sociopathy behind it all? so hard to all get along in here...

got distracted again. whatever. one thing i wanted to mention to my friend, but the conversation didn't go that way, is the risk of looking at a lesson as a huge energy-intensive experience. like, oh, i need to learn how to keep my own boundaries so that i won't let this happen again and tell all the people who regularly cross the line with me to fuck right off, and change my job and - no you don't. you can just learn the lesson.

have the light bulb go off and take it from there.

groping is for teenagers

new day, at least for some of us. for others it's the same old day. i stop for a moment to consider what my life would be like if i was forbidden to wear pants. it's difficult to imagine why someone would go so far. an indecent act? sure, if your conventional social mores include pretending there isn't anything between my legs. OHMYGOD, SHE IMPLIES VAGINA. SOUND THE ALARMS.

watching comedians last night; fascinating how different comedians use different skills to attract the crowds. some aim to be listened to by everyone (usually helped by volume) and some forego that immediately and craft their set around serving the people in the masses they connect with. i like both kinds.

had trouble grounding yesterday. on my way home from volunteering and feeling totally fractured. this continued through the evening, though mellowed out as i spent more time doing my own thing, in my fabulous home with friends who would check in on my wine and sugar level. the cat also did her part. sigh.

these are the moments when i stop to remember my own emotions and reassure myself with the promise of two solid weeks filled with reading and yoga sometime in february. i miss the solitude and slowness, even as i'm growing exponentially from the experience of august. and really, it's not that far away. the nights are already getting cooler. once again, we pack a sweater. welcome to the first whispers of autumn, fifty-three degrees north. i consider the shortness of summer and its effect on our style of celebration; my city has a festival for every single day from may to september, and desperately happy citizens flock out, spend days awake, cram experiences and sunstroke into every minute of it. i suppose desperate citizens are everywhere, but i still think we show signs of seasonal affective behaviour. i'm not going to classify it as a disorder, that's just silly. one definition of normal and hundreds of definitions for how we 'deviate' from this narrowly defined normalcy? might as well use the law to restrict perfectly acceptable clothing choices. oh wait.

re-visiting old haunts

i was gifted a link to an awesomely juicy and freedom-affirming blog of a woman who engages willingly and intelligently in casual sex. her mind and attitude resonate for me on a level of curiosity and openness. it seems like the reader can watch her sense of discernment grow, but not into a strict dichotomy of good and bad; the wealth of her experiences teach her about herself and her preferences as well as the interpersonal smorgasbord of 'what's out there'.

i've also checked back in with non-violent communication's sets of needs and emotions (scroll down), because i was having trouble figuring out what need i was meeting with a certain action. i start with an emotion, and then trace it back to a need usually, but this time one set of needs stuck out for me (the autonomy set, this time more specifically freedom, space and spontaneity). when i checked out the emotions that accompanied an experience of my needs being met, i identified with rejuvenated and renewed, as well as, to a lesser degree, empowered.

the reason i wanted to trace the action back to see what need it was meeting is that it's a potentially volatile action, and these types can often be sourced in a paranoia or delusion as opposed to honest expression of needs. and really, i'm sure there's a mix in there. i think i am also acting in this way to maintain space between myself and another person specifically. a person with whom i also actively try and spend time with. because being human isn't interesting enough, apparently now i must be human while falling in love. great. bring out the clowns.

in connection with all this, i've tried to lend this book to a special friend, only to discover mine's been out on the road for some time and requires tracking down. i could do with a re-read myself. experience has drawbacks in that one tends to think knowledge defies the likeliness of mistakes. over here in shared-experience land, experts fuck up just like the rest of us.

come forth with humility. know what preciousness we are risking with all this activity. act slowly and with integrity. factor in the unexpected (i love actually trying to do this).

stay to see the results.

a dry martini on a windy night

i thought i was just being lazy, then i noticed i had a fever (when a thermometer seems like a fun way to pass the time, wonder). 101.

so i took me back to bed with my roommate's herbal fever blend, and found a playlist on youtube of all the different versions of "fever". the cramps' version wins out. wow. cool. special mentions go to ann margret for most amusing dancy version, ray charles for hottest, and a live version of elvis singing and meeping for most improvement. i think i've run across elvis the way many people first run across the grateful dead: studio-recorded songs are less impressive, seek out the live albums.

or maybe it was the fever?

today i feel host to a sore throat. ahead of me, lying in wait, is the weekly farmers' market trip for household groceries and a major event to be very active ('thon-style active) and supervisory at. i have to admit, i wish i was happily anticipating more of it. i would likely feel that way if the day held only one or two of those things. i have nothing to say to the sore throat i'm not already saying in herbal format.

each of the wild moments and adventures of the past three weeks floats back through my active memory: training a new person at work to prepare for my leaving, taking a solo journey on the train, hiking up a mountain and letting go of a relationship i've held central to my life for more than half of it, roadtripping to a wedding and acting as maiden of honour, engaging in exploration i'd been fearfully ignoring for a few years, leaving my job... and curating an art show before all of that... i see why my immune system might need to reset. better now than at the wedding.

what does love look like? slowing down. focusing. touching the heart of the matter. in this case, my own heart. slowly, with focus, touching my own heart.

coast and roll

the ups and downs have been the flavour of the day. in my health, i've noticed feeling alternately crappy and fantastic - signs of detox in motion. a regular customer at the restaurant my roommate works at commented on his favourite cross-country skiing weather, between zero and minus ten degrees celcius, as having been extremely rare this winter. other examples that aren't mine to offer seem also to indicate that the rollercoaster is a good symbol to be aware right now.

an internal grounding mechanism is vital in navigating a tumultuous external space.

right now, the grounding tool i am practicing is being embodied willingly. there have been times i have regarded my body as a prison. other times i become the prison guard resolutely crouching into a tight little ball, hunching over a computer screen, tolerating pain like it's some kind of endurance contest. even the 'healthy' things i did, i did to my body, not with it or for it. sudden dietary changes, hiking for hours without stretching, fasting, hardcore yoga, continually stretched beyond my body's boundaries; empty activities.

i've been doing some really mellow yoga recently. it's hard to feel upset or uncomfortable in these soft, resting poses. there is a list of supportive props they want you to start each session with: bolsters, pillows, three blankets, an eye pillow... and the people pictured doing the postures all look like they're sleeping. yes. this is the vibe i want to cultivate. i've had enough of 'the edge', thanks much, i'll take the hedge. and a hammock. and do these poses for an hour at a time. that will be my day, "whew! put in a hard day on the mat - eight hours, eight different resting poses. i am ready for my evening!"

fuzzy slippers, early morning

the i ching has been fair with me. for years i used three coins to tell tales to myself. i think they came from a coin shop via an old friend and teacher. they hung together dustily, magnetically operating as some kind of unit; it was great. but i was attracted to tarot cards, enjoying the imagery that was, initially, easier to understand. so i gave away the book of changes that was in my possession and picked up a standard rider-waite deck.

but the tarot cards, even when i did readings, felt like someone talking who was far away, through the wind: hard to hear. the i ching, when it was gifted to me again, felt less and less like a translation of an ancient text, and more and more like what no one else would tell me, that i desperately thirsted to hear: the simple truth. not my interpretation. (although one time, when the suggestion was to 'seek help regarding the argument', it took a few days for me to realise the argument in question was internal. it had less to do with the situation i was asking about and more about how i couldn't even word the question properly without scribbling it out several times.)

then i read about the yarrow method again and suddenly it made sense to go the extra mile. it used to seem extensive: fifty yarrow sticks?! shuffling around, manipulating sticks between fingers, laying them out in obtuse piles, then doing it all again and again and again and again and again. the process takes maybe twenty minutes or so, instead of the ninety seconds of tossing coins. i love it. the ritual serves as more than a quick reassurance - it becomes fulfilling in and of itself, regardless of any message.

this is how much of life seems to be flowing these days. the slow, ponderous weight of recurring events are starting to feel like love. problems aren't solved by solutions, they're clues to brewing changes in lifestyle. slow and steady doesn't so much win the race as say 'fuck the race'. not vehemently or anything - casually. with a definite "oh, that fire? that's not fire, it's just orange," attitude, a blasé sense of wonder about everything other than the frantic pace of racers.

this morning i woke up at four-thirty and hung out with the i ching. i was reminded that the outer adornments are simply that: houses, jobs, romances. endless attention could go to the "measurables": am i doing what i'm supposed to be doing? if i move cities, will i find my path? will this person love me for who i am?

uh huh, uh huh. sure, do it, quoth the i ching. but remember it is external.

time again

it's so easy to become distracted, especially when new toys cross one's path. the reminders, however, are nearly as frequent as the distractions, and today i was reminded again.

the important point isn't what kind of relationship i am forming with someone, it is whether or not i can be vulnerable in front of them.

imagine laying gentle waste to the soul-draining methods of yesteryear. imagine growing according to permaculture, not linear false perfection. imagine listening to the wind and actually being able to understand.

i was getting caught up in the action of a vacation, another land and a fat severance cheque. i was reveling in distraction. beauty has been bubbling up through the cat's shapes on soft surfaces.

and now? and now?

>>attention!<< huxley's birds call. is this ominous? or enchanting? unemployment rolls away the days. painlessly i relax, with wonderful journal entries and trips to the pool shaping the drifts and hollows of almost two weeks.

when i slow down, information comes out through my pores in a way that efficiency invariably avoids. their natures oppose each other; silent saunas and by-the-second management: don't seat them near each other at parties.

heatstroke is like drugs

folk fest this weekend. such a kickback to childhood. 22 years since my first, and i still revisit all of them. some are better than others. imagination market, three dead trolls in a baggie, back when the tarps at the bottom of the hill were still isolated from the tents of rowdies at the top... bill bourne with dark hair, rolling down gallagher hill, sliding in the mud. negotiating seeing my mom while in a teenage social milieu, volunteering in the beer tent, sneaking in (only one year, swear to the folk gods). different moments float up to conscious memory, recall feeling good or crappy, and the experience was a bit of a 'coaster. this weekend i also definitely felt the sheer number of people present. zow. mostly in the present, a few in the past, and maybe one or two in the future. 

it's funny, but i have no sequential memory (only a few isolated events pop up, and that's how it's been ever since i remember checking) previous to being seven. is it a coincidence that was the year everything changed? parents divorce, and a lifestyle shift inevitably comes along. who could bother to remember when i was learning everything anew?

and i liked that change. most of the interesting things from that vicious cycle of naivety crashing around a room full of mirrors came about because the circumstances were deviant: poverty, latchkey kid, isolated parents, frequent moves... ya know: new neighbours, interesting neighbours, free (unsupervised) time, more responsibility. 

i listen to bela fleck and jim white, i think about dancing to the carolina chocolate drops and broken social scene and the release that comes with all music (even while i savour an emotion, somehow it's already going gone), especially outdoor music. i try and come back to the intense sensations and minor epiphanies, but i am already in a wholly different place. all i can recall is the decision to try slowness again, but this time, without caution. it hadn't occurred to me to separate the two, and thus, self-directed life til now has tended to be either crazy or boring. 

imagine: a day-to-day life that's slowly and sincerely risky. kind of a thrilling feeling. 

cue the crescendo. at 80 bpm.