#uncoffeed...

Were I capable of taking my own life, I probably found the place where it's done.  Now that the darkest dark seems to have passed, I'm telling you what I found. I'm practicing reaching out. If you didn't hear from me, it's because I'm wary of your intentions. I know you care, and I believe you want the best for me.  A hug can become an extra burden.  Questions and empathy bruise when my answers aren't received the way I gave them . I'm afraid of being smoothed over. The standard response to things we don't understand is to disregard or re-frame, fit into something more comfortable for us; it's natural. The knee-jerk reaction is to drop everything and address someone else's problem. We instinctively seek a fast resolution so we can go back to tending our own. Please note I never used the words "someone needs help."  Needing help is frowned upon in our culture, and nobody wants to be needy. We don't want to believe it ab...

I'm not sure how I got here - yes, I am. I'm searching Facebook posts for a reference to entangled photon pairs or Lewis Pairs from a conversation I know happened - but I got distracted. I love this picture. It is so very me. Even if you haven't met me in person, well you did now.  On my middle finger is the 5-year Anniversary ring I bought for myself - a battle trophy. One of the necklaces was a gift from a friend in 1988. The shirt was a thrift-store find I wore in Istanbul. I did my own hair - cut and color. And here it is, sort of inception-style, because the Facebook post was written four years after the photo was taken. At the time of the writing, I was studying The Art of War by Sun Tzu and applying it to the divorce process. It worked marvelously. I remember this day well. I was angry; I wanted to leave my husband and this life even then. I didn't want to go to a fucking birthday party of three people in this [ redacted ] town, but I did, and I made s...

Today is the birthday of one of my soulmates.  I say it like that because I never think there's only one, but this one I had the good fortune to meet. We shared 12 years, a home, and many adventures. He was a father to my baby girl twice - first when he took us as family, and then later when she ran away from me as a teenager.  In 1995, he was diagnosed with a slow-growing Astrocytoma . He died in 2002, after we'd broken up 4 times by phone. He was living with another of his soulmates by then - I make assumptions, but I'm probably right, because even I knew she was the first girl he ever had a crush on.  I remember he used to tell me his mother thought she should get a gift on his birthday, for having given birth to him.  He also believed that she was a 15-year old virgin when he was conceived, and his parents were responsible and used a condom in 1954, and that obviously the condom broke because he was born. I only laughed at him once when he told this story;...

I've been exposing my authentic self by working on art in public. Recently I took a booth at a restaurant so I could eat and keep working. People stopped intermittently to compliment my work, and I said, "Thank you!"  And I meant it, and I didn't get all awkward, even when someone wanted to discuss further. I Advanced the Discussion. Gimme a patch for that. Sunday morning I checked into Beanetics  for a French Press, a pastry, and a table to work. This is where the magic happened. The little Barista-chick who likes my illustrations is leaving; next Saturday is her last day making our coffee. We - she, I, and the other regulars - joked about getting matching coffee bean tattoos on our wrists. The Scottish guy doing genealogy work at the next table was polite or uninterested, but a dancer named Heidi leaned in close to check the detail of my work. Her mom appeared later and asked whether Heidi had seen my work; yes, she had. Heidi's mom is named Margi, h...

Taking a selfie with Frank Zappa "...I think I just want to sleep for a year or two to get my energy back," says my friend Earl. I totally get that. Since moving to Annandale, since divorcing, that's pretty much what I've been doing. It's more difficult than I thought, recharging, but I'm getting the hang of it. There are still bouts of anger and frustration over time wasted, and mourning over that which was lost and will probably be unrecoverable. I'm sure you know this one. Fresh starts aren't really fresh, and they aren't really starts, either - more like picking up a knitting project and trying to remember where you wanted to go with it. Remembering how to knit, even.  Deciding that some of those dropped stitches can just stay dropped and unravel later, because I'm old and no longer care about the competition. Let there be holes in my armor. I don't believe anything can kill me any more. One of the books I'm currently n...

This is something you need to know about me: I am my own law of physics when it comes to dancing.  I can't lead, either - I just spin.  Okay, maybe it's not just dancing.  Yeah, pretty sure it's everything.  Having arrived here several times in my life, I am no longer interested in trying to adjust.  I'm good with spinning. Each of us, if we were paying attention, has lived several lifetimes in the skin we now own.  Maybe it's better to say we're leasing it - we will give it back.  The skin, the bones, everything will ultimately return to ash and dust; no chemicals can stop the process forever.  See this map on BBC: we have millions of years to work on it.    Nothing is permanent. Take a few minutes and sort your history - not into chapters, but into the lives you have lived.  The easy way is to note each allegorical death.  Less easy is to realise that each death is followed by a rebirth, messy, painful, embarrassing....