hi thanksgiving

• stayed at the hotel san jose and it was SO AWESOME, just really — the best. was a (forced) extravagant treat, but worth it in the long run.
• drank a delicious smoothie
• sarah made eggnog for thanksgiving
• not enough time with anyone
• got a B on my grad school research paper, which is cool (real standards!) but also infuriating (i hate this class)
• saw a marriage story = devastating
• had my first well woman exam in four years and all is well except doctor thinks i have nodules on my thyroid, which is no big deal, but why is me body so EXTRA?  just all kinds of extra stuff growing of their own volition (fibroids, fatty lump, nodules). is it cuz i have so many feelings and worries about everything and that manifests as interior growths? i have diagnosed it as YES. also i read somewhere that shoulder stands help the thyroid, so here i come shoulder stands

against the odds

holds up

afro muses

Chris Ofili (b. 1968—)
Untitled (diptych from Afro Muses series), 1995-2005
Conte crayon on butcher paper 72 × 48 in.
The Studio Museum in Harlem; gift of Anne Ehrenkranz in honor of Nancy L. Lane 2006.22.1
Courtesy of The Studio Museum in Harlem

good things

good things:

• turtlenecks, specifically the three i bought in a retail therapy fever
• reading lemony snicket to third graders at marfa elementary
• just poetry, man
• the occasional manicure
• the impeachment hearings, mostly just because it’s fascinating to hear about the inner workings of the state department and to see government creaking along so visibly

sad things:

• my cataloging class, which is practically incomprehensible
• dry clean only items
• how every news outlet keeps lumping ambassador kurt volker in with the “three amigos,” despite volker saying “I’ve never used that term and frankly cringe when I hear it”

again, in love

dr. fiona hill
(screenshot from impeachment hearings, via ny times)

the one who wants to love you, but often isn’t good at even that

(courtesy of poetry foundation)

discovered via the paris review’s poetry rx, my very best discovery of 2019 (calling it now), “readers write in with a specific emotion, and our resident poets—Sarah Kay, Kaveh Akbar, and Claire Schwartz—take turns prescribing the perfect poems to match.” OH. some words about “wife”:

I think a lot about how hard it is for people to see each other. How very often when we look at someone, even someone we love, what we are actually seeing is our memories of them, or our projections upon them, or our expectations, or what they represent, or so many other things, but not quite them.

but this is cute

glad things like this still exist

couldn’t sleep

woke up at 4am and got up because my heart was racing and none of my sleep meditations could soothe me. been having terrible social anxiety lately, which has put a strain on everything. ross and i have a fundamentally different perspective on marfa — he believes the success or failure of navigating it isn’t merely about personal preference for small towns or big, it’s whether you can truly be part of a community and embrace its weaknesses and strengths and live in that imperfection and ultimately see it as beautiful. i see his point, and i’ve really tried, and sometimes it works, when i just focus on work and studying, and limit my interactions to that. but then going out becomes more fraught and everyone asks ross where i am and i get this reputation as a hermit and an introvert, which i guess honestly is true these days, but it doesn’t feel like the “real” me (whatever that is), because i still love scrappy rock & roll and trying new things and exploring and having friends and being part of things. i think the problem is that i like to select my experiences instead of constantly field unchosen ones (at the store, at an event, at the PO, on the street, etc.), and for ross, that preference reads as something of a failure. and maybe it is. at any rate. clearly i need a poem for this. 

everybody knows i’m a motherfucking monster

LIFE IS A (GENTLE) MESS