i cut off my hair

Or should that be I cut my hair off? Or i just cut it? anyway whatever it is, I did it. and it was looooong and now it is long and gone. And hair is probably way too symbolic for my voodoo aesthetic but i must say sometimes things have to change. and so you change them.  Whatever. Hadee, my dog didn't mind. I think he liked it.


This is some random sculpture I saw in someone's yard. I kind of love it.

Beloved

Easter Sunday I visited my grandmother's grave. I don't know if other people take photographs of graves but we do. I have a photo of my grandmother laughing and sitting on her tombstone  -  she bought it years and years before she died. Anyway she had a wicked sense of humor. I miss her tremendously. She taught me to drive a car. She pierced my first boyfriend's ears. She showed me me how to do long division.

Mourning rituals. He said I was grieving, I drank vodka. My aunt she built little shrines to her dead daughter all over the house. I wore Donna's clothes for two weeks after she died. Sister says the pain never fades you just get used to it...grow up twisted around it like a vine. My dad says wounds heal on their own.

I can't imagine your pain and I don't want to. But secretly, I do. Grief is sacred. No, it isn't. Its as universal as dirt. but not like this. Yes exactly like this. I dream her all the time. I don't want to do this again. I will have to do this again. It's not the same for everyone.

I Post Pictures bc one day i am going to forget. and i am going to look back and say oh, i was there. and you were there with me.

Me, My Sisters and My grandma, 1984

The Con

Today was a Wednesday

Yesterday i came home and fell into a deep sleep full of nightmares and woke up in my clothes all confused at 6 this morning. It was another day. I gathered up my dog and went to the park. On the ground beneath the giant old live oaks that are dripping with curly gray moss, this little cardboard heart cut out was waiting for someone to find it. I did.

When i stopped to photograph it, Ellie calmly laid on the dew covered grass for a few minutes....then broke out in a mad dash of snarls and barks and tried to attack a friendly retriever who was coming to say hello. In her animal protective fury she pulled me over and my coffee splashed everywhere. The guy with the dog was looking at me like I was an alien. In a crashing confusion of leash, dog, coffee-mud, and grass I managed to not smash the camera and not get hurt except for my knee which now has a nice bruise. Good morning world. Good morning park. Good morning, cardboard heart in the grass.

My dog is looking at me all proud like she just saved us both from a dragon or something. "Are you effin kidding me?" Yeah, I said this out loud to the dog.

I wish she could learn to tell the difference between friend and foe, but I wish this for myself as well. The friends I have made here may as well be enemies, but that retriever was pure gold. Maybe i should have been a non-human, then maybe my species would make sense to me. So, we go home both wet and muddy and climb back into bed. I start drawing my foot.

At lunch, I walk down the street to be in the sun. There is a hospital nearby and I walk past. I hear water hitting pavement. Glancing to my left, I see a nurse squatted down peeing beside her car. Seriously.

There is birthday cake at the office later and i eat a small piece. I am struggling to be normal. Afterward, I want to throw up. I don't.

Today was a Wednesday. Life is funny, but I am too tired to laugh.
The End.

Me at Work

This is me at work. I am saving an endangered mantle. I wish I was saving an endangered species... but oh well.

I have a cool job. I am not sure why my internal and external worlds meet in tornados....keep it together, girl. We got miles to go before we sleep.