You can only be offended if there is something you don’t want to be seen. But the first requirement, is that you have to believe in whatever offense it is that they’re selling.

I filmed a butterfly in my garden the other day.

My local hummingbird Daddy sang me a song on Monday. I was laying in the bathtub, outside, soaking. I was processing the life change that is coming.

I wish every legitimate artist could be unaffected when someone calls their artwork “AI generated.” That they could shake it off like an invisible male mosquito (they don’t bite!). As if it never existed.

The things we fight the hardest against, are the ones most like us anyways. They’re the lessons we have to learn but refuse to acknowledge.

I think about a stubborn old man who goes on saying something he knows isn’t true anymore. Takes it all the way to the grave, losing friends and family in the process. False-dignity demanding they hold up a sense of false pride.

As a kid my sisters teased me relentlessly. To tears, and beyond them. The more I cried, the more they pushed. My mom taught me to ignore them.

And then they disappeared, as if it were never a thing.

I can’t bring myself to knock down the spider web outside my front door. It’s a work of art. It’s not hurting anyone.

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I also grew up learning from the examples around me, to be cruel for no good reason. To people and pets and livestock alike. Cruel in “nice” and justifiable ways. To teach a lesson, to train, to “refresh” them. I tried it on but the clothes didn’t fit. They chafed me up something unbearable.

Cruelty shows up in insidious ways. Normalized ways.

Our lives are more violent than we like to believe.

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Millie is sprawled across the sofa and foot stool. Back legs in the air, tummy bridging the gap. Fast asleep, and strangely alert. One ear doing sweeps of the neighborhood.

Free time is a most dangerous venture. 8 hour workdays aren’t the norm to optimize for productivity. They’re the norm to optimize for a controllable society.

I bought some garlic, used one knob in a pan of pasta. The rest got shelves above the stove next to the onion starters that have been hibernating since the spring. The garlic is throwing off green shoots already, it’s only been a week!

Everyone does what they want. You can’t tell them a thing.

Some people really do change. But most don’t, and it’s a damned shame.

Again?

Again.

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I’ve had a lot of thoughts about things.

My emotions are up, some days, in only good ways. Heart open and feeling ways. Genuinely empathetic ways.

I’m finding compassion for people I’d once labelled as enemies. Seeing more of their own humanity as I crack open parts of myself that I’d refused to see.

“Oh…” is a frequent verbal visitor these days.

Two years ago I was saying my eyes are open, now I see. They may have been open but it was because I was still blind as a goddamned bat with a broken sonar system.

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I have seen less than a dozen bees this summer. Now I’m feeling concerned. I had to pollinate my own melon vines because the pollinators have gone missing.

And then the ground squirrels at the roots out anyways, and now my self-pollinated fruits are dying on the vine. Sometimes you can’t avoid the crash, or stop the movie from coming to it’s natural end.

The ending has a purpose.

I made my own electrolytes today, and they’re freaking delicious. It’s a citric acid-free Ultima dupe.

Whatever character we’ve decided to play, we’re always casting supporting roles to keep us in the play. If you’ve decided you’re the victim who people abandon, you’ll force your cast and crew to victimize and abandon you.

I’m painting and drawing. Creating and creating and creating. I stopped making excuses for staying up late, and ended up with insomnia anyways. You can’t always avoid the crash, there must be a reason I’m supposed to stay up too long each night right now. Things always change when they need to.

I’ve stopped fighting the little things. Worrying about what this or that might mean. I sit and watch the wind blow around my favorite tree’s leave. It’s an elegant dancer, like me.

Finally organized my kitchen. Just need a few tambour doors.

I wonder if I need to raise my own bees.

On a horse farm. You didn’t always do horse chores. Sometimes you stacked wood for the owner’s ski chalet, to keep the winters warm.

You found ways to be useful when you had a minute of free time. If you didn’t, you weren’t invited to stay long. No free rides. You’d get stuck with the old nag that could barely hobble. You were too young to ask why they were riding lame horses to begin with. You’re just a horse crazy kid emulating the adults.

My toes are brown with dirt. It’s been a long time.

I keep paying the same fees and still can’t get the damned month to arrive.

Alice’s rabbit hole was bigger than a monk.

Red lights and bug bites. I moved the firewood and found a snake’s old overbite. If snakes had wings, I found six of these.

Only one old widow looked at me sideways. Hugging and holding her egg sac tight. I didn’t want to kill Joe, but she had to go.

Even if two people don’t want to hurt each other, their unspoken distrust can mean letting one of you go.

I remember again and again, oh that’s right -- that’s life, and lakes, and sin.

I hope the snakes like the new home I built for them.

Listen to this on repeat. Minced, mince meat.

You could say I’ve been busy. Buzzy little bee.

Now, if only I could find me a damned banana tree!

Lord Lazarus didn’t understand my reference. I’m ready to rise from a death buried underneath what everyone says is heaven’s chest.

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What a universal joke, the nerve. Imagine if we moved through life without pain sensors.

Of course, we'd also be unable to control our muscles, just like sitting on the toilet so long your legs fall asleep.

With every great invention comes potential pitfalls.

There's no milk, without the curdle to follow.

I ate a burger patty with cheese and butter for lunch.

It's amazing we worry at all about doing things badly as small-time individuals. Look at how badly the people making at-large decisions are operating. Our entire food system makes us chronically sick. If you were that bad at your job, you'd have been fired decades ago, but they're holding strong.

More confidence.

I told a team member of mine the same thing. If the risk is low and you have the information needed to take the next step, no reason to ask for double/triple confirmation. Just do the thing.

Act as if you are already an expert.

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Most people don't know the difference between an actual expert and someone who's just fluent in jargon. It takes minutes to pick up jargon and sound like you know what you're doing. Then the real experts are heming and hawing over pulling the trigger and doing the thing while the smooth-talking idiots have no such weak bravado.

There were famous philosophers I could quote who'd said about the same. If I fail to quote them does it make my sentiments weak?

I scheduled an appointment with UCSD, and the elevator music playing while I sat on hold was the instrumental version of Monsters Inc. It did cross my mind to worry that their secret motives in the health space might be harvesting energy from the sick to power their monster town. I decided not to hang up and take the risk anyway.

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My house is becoming a home. Artwork is filling the walls, the nooks, the crannies. I looked around this week and for the first time thought, "Oh, I have enough work to have my own show if I want."

What a wild turn of events life really is.

Did I ever imagine this? No, not even once.

If you’re in the majority, your life and death will pass completely without witness.

Almost nobody becomes a Benjamin Franklin.

So what if somebody gets you wrong?

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I had my quarterly review yesterday, it wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t great. It was largely inaccurate. I voiced a few points, and left the rest wash away like water falling on a roof. For now it’s wet, with a little time it’ll dry enough you won’t even remember the rainy day that interrupted your picnic.

Old me would have fought vehemently. Overachiever needing their acknowledgments. Current me thinks I have worse reasons to be happy.

That’s not a typo.

I remember the docked pay I suffered 7 years ago that felt life altering (and it was), but already today it doesn’t even matter. Not in that way. I’m where I am supposed to be — always, good or bad.

This “bad” thing may just be the seed I need to grow better things. To grow what would not be possible without a bad seed.

And the need to be seen accurately? It’s a fool’s fecundity.

Even if we lived the exact same life, we wouldn’t see eye to eye. It’s fine for someone to get me wrong. I’m sure I get them wrong, too.

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Some of us are just better at fooling themselves into believing they do.

I received 5 calls from Highland Elementary school. Call, ring once, hang up. Call again. I answered on the 5th repetition.

Hello, is this Mrs. Lindy?

No, I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong number.

So many people are convinced AI knows everything. But every 3rd response it gives me is an apology for having fucked something basic up again.

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It’s good to think you’re kind of a big deal. Human tinctures really are. It’s also good to see nature in person and up close to remind you just how small, insignificant, and fragile you are as a body of one.

Two pieces of my art were accepted for an August group show. I’m elated, but more as an excuse to see close friends, than to see my artwork hang again.

It’s not an insecurity around what I create. Instead, my values are revisiting a younger version of me. 21 year old me. When getting the friend group out for a costumed Halloween of hilarious fun was more important than the actual holiday.

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I don’t need celebrating. I need community.

That’s probably true for more of us than we are willing to say. We’ve perfected the art of the capable individual, every one of us miserable for having lost the plot.

A single cell from my body can do a bit of this and that. A whole host of cells can birth a new life into being. Make something’s out of what appear to be nothing’s.

The weatherman predicted a miserable 98°F day. It’s hot before it’s hot if you convince yourself it will be.

I’m so cool in the sun I’m wearing long pants to keep the chill off.

I haven’t bothered to confirm via thermometer. Whether measurable by science or not, the weatherman is wrong either way.

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Gallery Deets

These two pieces will be on display at Shift Gallery in San Diego from August 12-29th. If you make it out on opening night, say hi! I’d love a chat.

I’ve always gotten shit for not being visibly excited in advance of big things. It’s been a thing, apparently. I’m slowly letting that guard down, but there are still times I’d prefer not to let excitement creep in, because disappointment feels less harsh when you are pre-deterministic.

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I’m celibate. I understand better now why the women in their 40’s and 50’s were telling me as a kid to just be abstinent. They weren’t willing to say the why, only the what, of their opinion, so it was easy to dismiss it as religious fanaticism.

I’m drinking white pine needle tea. It’s supposedly high in vitamin c. I was curious about it last year but wasn’t brave enough to pull the gun.

Two steps forward and three steps side-to-side. I made it successfully through the Mercury retrograde in one piece this time. Only friendly ghosts showing back up from once-upon a time.

Reminding me what a crazy life I’ve lived in just 16 years’ time. Shiit.

I’d spell it all out, in a big long list, but people are people and judgy as 💩.

I am too, though. I can see a person doing the same things I used to and have all kinds of opinions on it. I’m really trying not to. The hardest part is by the time you can see it, you also understand there’s nothing you can do to stop another person from having to go through it. If it’s on their timeline, it’s gonna come whether it’s nice or unkind.

Be Where Your Feet Are

stand in the rain the same way you stand in the sun.
don’t rush. be still. patient. and listen
for whispers of thunder before the sky opens.
relish in how the ground softens under the touch
of a spring storm.
curl your toes into damp earth and learn how it gives
freely,
unpolluted by ‘what ifs’ and ‘if onlys’.
be where your feet are: a reminder that you
are as important here
as rain drops and robin eggs
blades of grass and birch trees
be where your feet are
because the clouds will still move
the rain will still fall
& life will still happen all around you
whether you worry about it or not.

MrB Poetry

I put a rock in each of the pockets of my oversized pants. They’re a size 16, with a drawstring band. Cotton, linen, something something nature-made. They’re cozy and that’s all that really matters to me now.

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There was a version of me that once wore really uncomfortable things. On my feet, on my legs, around my waist, around my chest, on my head. Miserable for hours or days at a time, just to show up as some kind of charicature who didn’t even fit in!

Just leave me with the rocks. One in each hand.

How many times this week have I heard the name Bernice, Bernice, BERNICE!

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Black beans are rich in molybdenum and manganese.

Three James’ in a row this morning demanding to be fed. Geez.

New work falling in my lap like baby geese.

Artists saying hi hi hi. I want to collaborate all the time!

“Lunch this weekend at the Yellow Deli?”

Yes, please. I won’t even bother checking the menu in advance like old me.

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I’m learning, and learning quickly.

Time to organize the unorganized. If the world showed up tomorrow I wouldn’t be ready. I appreciate the early stress test eddy.

My past is trying to come up from behind me, say hello. But this time it’s doing it nicely. Good, wholesome, fond memories.

The one person all these years I’ve still been able to say, “yes, he was a genuinely good man.” I may not have loved him like that, but he was a man worth loving like that.

I didn’t know it at the time — I had to find a way to where I now am.

They say there are no straight lines in nature. The closest thing you’ll get to organization is the golden ratio. You spin it enough and it becomes spaghetti and chaos.

I forgot to get Mary’s bagels.

Big black drips down a big white van.

I didn’t forget to make chicken, boiled in bacon.

Time to shower Millie again.

When the full moon comes you’ll find me in the labyrinth.

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Used to be? Oh, you mean, before I got sick?

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“Yes, do you remember?” my neighbor once asked me.

And I do, vividly. Today, I remembered a little more. I didn’t sleep until 3am, woke up “late” at 8:30. Felt a bit dehydrated, but otherwise in good order. Packed it up and took my ass to the gym, just like the old me would have done.

I walked in and just worked on the heavy bags, intuitively. Old muscle memory. Instinct. I need to bring my gloves and speed rope out of storage. Glad I didn’t throw them away thinking, “that’ll never be me again.”

That’ll never be me again.

I’m chasing some old versions of me, but not all of the old versions. There are other systems I’ve upgraded along the way.

Yesterday was Millie’s first birthday. We stayed up and binged a whole series on the outside projector screen. I haven’t looked forward to a movie night since the time I was 21 living in my first apartment on Blueberry Lane. I had a tiny 19” screen tv. Netflix DVD delivery service was just barely a thing.

My girlfriend and I would plot how to maximize the 3-DVD allotment to limit how many work-nights we’d have to come up with alternative entertainment.

That’s the only time in my life I loved to cook.

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We won’t stay up until the butt-crack of dawn tonight. Back to some semblance of “normal” life when Monday rolls in to say hi.

The last month I’ve been kind of fucking off. Testing the limits of whether I really cured MCAS overnight. Staying up late, spending as much time in the sun and heat, eating crazy high histamine foods and a bunch of other “no-no” foods. Went cold turkey off all supplements and medications. I woke up this morning looking younger than I ever remember, not even the slightest hint of swollen eyes or rashiness.

The waters are tested, so now it’s time to get back on some goals. I made a little web app this weekend, Erica Eats, which plots my general nutrition goals each day of the week. I’m not swinging the door back shut, but my body also isn’t a dumpster and filling it with the most nutritionally dense foods is going to pay off in long-term dividends. Take the constant brain-think out of rotating my meats.

Finally stopped procrastinating and professionally framed 5 pieces from my Anatomies of a Lie collection.

I don’t always know what I’m doing, but this approach felt right — using a National Geographic repurposed for the job.

Okay, that’s all. Night night.

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When was anything I was chasing ever actually my real dream? I keep doing the things I'm supposed to. Trying on other people's ideas to see how they fit. No great surprise, they don't.

I bought a stack of wood trim to make my own canvas frames. Bought my own miter saw to cut them with. Can't bring myself to actually do the thing. I love it and I hate it. I've heard that's a normal feeling, for artists anyways.

I'm going through an identity change. A loss of identity. That's kind of a big thing.

I've healed my lifetime of chronic illness. I have no excuse to be sick every day. After almost 35 years, who the hell am I now?

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Who the hell am I now?

It's Millie's birthday, she's one year old!

A tortoise tabby stalked through my yard, on the hunt, after hiding under the house for a while.

I made a flytrap out of a plastic orange juice container. Cut my toenails. Washed the dishes.

Built a web app for the nose to tail diet I'm venturing back into. Eggs, eggs, eggs, and organ meats!

I'm excited to eat pickled herring.

I could just wake up tomorrow and become anyone I want. Who the hell do I want to be?

I’m glad I left my house this morning before the full work load hit me. I’m a rabbit on a track, I’m a mouse in a house, I’m a hamster on a wheel. Good golly, look at me!

Millie has a stomach flu. Slept on the floor downstairs with her last night. You can’t tell me I’m not a mother hen in the flesh right now.

I’m chelating, because for now I’ve decided it’s my placebo mechanistic proxy. It’s a jump round, which means I doubled my dose all at once. You’re really only supposed to increase by 50%, not 100%. Good lord, look at me go!

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If it wasn’t for two nights up until 3am tending Millie’s tender tummy, I don’t think I’d have a single symptom to complain of. I’m a bit mentally slow at this point, but it’s the late nights and not the dose.

I did one-dozen burpees yesterday, in sets of 3. Look here, I’m a certified weakling, but I still did it anyway. Not quite touching my former habit of 700 burpees in a day, but there’s strong potential I could reach that level again.

After 3 weeks of eating like a goddamned rat, confirming to myself that nothing bad could touch me, I’m finally ready to get on some future-stack. A loose meal plan. I fried 3 eggs in bacon grease this morning, topped with a spoonful of sauerkraut.

Lunch/dinner was a nice little NY strip steak floating in butter.

I have canned sardines and proper Italiano anchovies on the way. Looking forward to eating calf liver again, and pickled herring. There’s a U-Pick farm nearby offering as many oranges and figs as my delight.

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Maybe tonight I’ll find a reason to turn on my projector and watch a little show. A place you can watch it for free.

Au revoir! Goodnight.

I'll keep repeating it until I'm blue in the grave, but the point of life is to be the butt of the Universe's jokes.

There was a time I wore high heels in my life, as if it meant something. Now the entire premise cracks me the fuck up. PEOPLE WEAR SHIT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY AND MAKE A POINT, y'all…

Think about that for a second — we are barely more than apes playing dress up every day, and as a society we are struggling to find the something to laugh at?

What do you meeeeeeean?!

That's fucked up.

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I’m laying out under the moon and stars and the crickets are singing so loud I can’t hear my own thoughts. I’m waiting for my tiny water softener tank to finish flushing. I can’t hear the water running either. I’m walking around barefoot in the dark (unnecessarily, mind you) replacing a water softener and there is nobody else around to laugh at this cosmic joke with me except for Millie.

I’ve taken to barking at my neighbor’s dog. She leaves him outside on his own for hours, ignored and alone. Sometimes he’ll bark for hours, so now I just bark in return. I wonder what conversation we’re actually having.

I told my best friend to bark at her daughter’s teacher one time. If I recall correctly, she did. I came up with the idea from when I used to go out partying. When men wouldn’t take no for an answer, I’d just bark at them.

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Have you ever really looked at an old politician, the “elite”, any royal family member? Now flash back to looksmaxxers, fitnessmaxxers, or really any influencers. And you’re not instantly cry-laughing?!

I’m laughing about the time I felt bad that someone didn’t like something I’d drawn. I’m laughing at the peanut butter sandwiches I ate at school from grades three to eight.

There’s a goddamn short-spined racoon named Jimothy blowing up the internet finally letting people breath for the first time since 2019, but we can’t somehow see that Jimothy is just a version of you and me?

I must look like the town idiot when I venture out from my home now. A permanent smile plastered on my face. Impossible to be bothered. A man at the post office complained about having to wait in life for a single postage stamp, and paid the 82¢ with a piece of magic plastic you can tap or swipe. “At least you’re not having to stand outside,” I replied and he laughed like I was the most beautiful woman in the world.

I bought a tiny watermelon the other day. We need to be carrying more watermelons everywhere we go in life, don’t you think so?

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The moon is waxing again, little one.

I never seriously wondered what pregnancy would feel like. Sometimes I believe I'll never have to experience menopause. Not for taking HRT, but that it will simply overlook me.

I did spend a summer wondering what it would be like to become a legitimate nun. I'm glad I moved on, they aren't exactly known for having a genocide-free reputation.

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Why do we grow up trying to claim a favorite color? Most of them aren't even visible to us to begin with. Half blind, deaf, insensitive alien creatures. Mongrels, if you dare to believe the Annunaki double features.

I imagined I would marry my partner in crime. I imagined I would find a partner in crime. I imagined I would grow up to be an opera singing ballet dancer. Never considered the improbability. Went everywhere in a pink tutu before the age of 8. Unbothered that I'd convinced my mom to shave my head before entering kindergarten.

I want a day off from work. I could take a day off from work. I haven't taken a day off from work. I continue to clock into work.

I want to grow my hair out long and wear it in two thin braidlets down each side of my neck. Pocahontas, except I'm too white. I learned medicines and dance growing up in pow wow circuits, but it's also a place I don't fully belong.

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I still might buy a unicycle.

I need to do a quick wash cycle.

My ideas moved a mile a minute and it was hard for others to keep up.

When I spoke it sounded all kinds of manic.

And after being admonished over and over by the adults in the room, I learned to slow it down and adopt a quieter attitude.

But after decades of moving the way I was told is right and polite and acceptable, the only thing it has done is stopped me from acting on all the great things I had the chance to be a part of.

I’ve been taking baby steps back to the former version of myself. It’s new and strange, and when I hear myself out loud I think, “my god! I sound absolutely crazy!”

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Except I’m still not certain those are my own thoughts, or just the ones implanted by all those adults when I was a child, bouncing around my brain as if an echo reverberating down an empty hall.

If I fill my brain back up with my own ideas, maybe there won’t be any room left for reverberations. The ghosts of people too afraid to live their own damned lives will be forced to move on and take up residence somewhere else.

There was a good reminder today though, be careful who you share your ideas with. Everyone is tightly attached to their specific set of limitations, and will unconsciously fight you at every step in order to reinforce them.

We’re only ever living in what has already transpired. Even “living in the moment” is a conscientious lie. Mental processing does, in fact, take some measure of time.

I wrote this a while ago (e.g. 2 years and some months’ time), and couldn’t land on what or why:

But it’s making more and more sense to me now that I have additional context for it to share.

Our programming is always working double, triple-overtime to protect it’s existing set of limitations. And those limitations are quite often a big fat fucking lie.

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We once thought it was impossible to sail West across the Atlantic because we’d certainly fall off the side of the earth. Humans can’t fly. Electric cars can never be a thing. A sub-2 hour marathon run is humanly impossible. The list goes on and on and on.

How many times as a kid were you told “that’s not possible,” and then you either accomplished it yourself, or saw it accomplished in your own lifetime? Yeah, exactly.

But now, we’ve grown into the adults who pass down the tradition. You can’t do that!

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In every stupid scene. Relationships, careers, hobbies, politics, the environment, medicine, yada yada. When did you make the decision to grow impossible and old?

Our first gut reaction being, NOPE, instead of listening.

I think I’m over letting other people’s small minds become my small mind.

Millie helped me find my feather this morning.

I laid out on a blanket in the grass last night, eating BBQ and listening to a live band. Like traveling back in time, not a single person had their cell phone out.

A friend’s circular thinking grew obsessive as the night went on, I let her ramble for most of it. Around 8PM I said it point blank, “I know you say it makes you miserable, but you must be getting some benefit out of it or you’d have stopped doing it a long time ago.”

Crickets. I watched the gears moving in her mind for a few moments before the programming doubled down with spitting out carefully practiced reasons for why she must keep doing the things that are making her so stressed out that she’s now practically dying.

I probably sounded a lot like her not that long ago, really. Funny how we can’t see the thing until it’s a certain distance behind the current scene.

So we normally believe that the past is at our back, and that the future is at our front. But what they describe is that the past is actually at your front, and your future is at your back, and so we’re kind of walking backwards when we are going into our future.

And we don’t have eyes at the back of our head, but we have eyes in the front of our head, and so we can very clearly see the past, and we can contemplate the past, and we can process the past. But when we walk into the future, we are walking backwards into the unknown, which is really opposite to how we have been trained to see time.

Earth Mystery School, “What if we split the 7 chakras in 2 categories?”

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Earth Mystery School

What if we split the 7 chakras in 2 categories?

Free Root Chakra Class | 1.5 Hours | Watch today…

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2 months ago · 9 likes · 1 comment · Earth Mystery School

My bestie and I call our exes “honey bees,” and if you knew you’d agree it’s quite fitting.

They’re honest and dishonest. Manipulative, hyper-controlling. Overconfidently insecure. All of the things, and also none. Choosing always to hurt the ones they become most intimate with, using such a finely tuned blade that they cut down to the very soul. Then demanding their partner get back up and heal around a festering wound they keep kicking dust into.

They’re always the victim on the run, if you try to have a direct conversation one-on-one. Frustrating to everyone.

But we can’t find reason to hate them. Because they did actually help us to grow and become better persons. Not in the nice gentle therapeutic ways. In the get back up and take the life you have left if it’s what you say you really want! kind of way.

If humans really do have soul contracts, and that’s the reality they’ve agreed to, holy hell what a gift they are giving the rest of us. Because watching how they move is exhausting all on its own. That life looks sad and sick and shameful. I couldn’t imagine having to carry such a burden for my entire lifetime.

I think they must love us more than the average person.

Hands down, I’d give up. I couldn’t clock in every day, being that intentionally cruel to the people I say “I love you” to. Even knowing I was helping them to grow, I’d want to stop at some point and stick it out fully with someone.

To suffer so greatly.

Now I think, every demon is a guardian angel.

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I close the door again and again on my habitual route of distraction. Old lover.

I want to twist up inside myself, the most elaborate pretzel.

We’re always reinforcing our own cages.

None of us really wants freedom. We’re the freed bird who refuses to leave.

Blaming our self-imposed slavery on anything else, except ourselves.

The skeleton key is burning a hole in our own pocket.

Just count down from three.

1, 2, 3.

Busy busy little bee.

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If we stay busy enough we can pretend not to notice. Go to our graves oppressed, happily. DON’T YOU DARE FUCKING TAKE that FROM ME, our shriveled up old person mouth will scream.

The other day, I woke up healthy. That was what I kept telling myself was really stopping me, and now I’m the bird perched in the cage looking at the wide open door. Feeling the piping hot air of fear rising up in a way I never felt when I was safely locked away.

We do it with all of the things.

Just takes one socially acceptable space to place blame.

The job you’ll quit to chase your dream.

The money you’ll earn to fund your dream.

The family you’ll finish raising then live your dream.

The habit you’ll overcome to focus on your dream.

The depression and anxiety and toxic relationships and physical ailments and woe is me the list goes on. Something somewhere will always find a way to come up.

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I was blocked from an Instagram account this morning, and my comment deleted on a reel highlighting how our government is funding war. Because I said none of us are actually that upset about it, because the most we’re moved to do is publish reels online about it to turn our own version of a profit from it. We’re the same as the bad actors we’re complaining about, maybe worse. They’re steering the ship, and we’re the ones willfully funding it.

Maybe we’re worse for it, because we’re acting like we’re somehow the good guys. We’ve perfected the look of shock and horror on our face, good little actors and actresses.

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I’ve had to think long and hard on that one, coming out of toxic relationships. It’s the same, in microcosm. The obviously bad actor in the relationship is an easy target, but they were just steering the ship. I was the one who continued funding it, while claiming inncence.

None of us are as ignorant as we claim to be.
Some are just better at fooling themselves.

I ate a raw egg yolk this morning. I shouldn’t be able to do that without negative ramifications. I think I’m deciding I’m no longer Mercury toxic. This one feels more challenging than the rest of the decisions I’ve made this month. Baby steps, but I’m on the downward slope of the slip-n-slide.

Made bratwurst for brunch. Ate so much sauerkraut, I grew up German, this is like going home for a little while.

Millie is chewing the button off my sleeve, and I’ll let her. What’s the harm and foul of it? Her enjoyment is more important than the organization of my lounging shirt sleeves.

I said goodbye in my ways earlier today. And immediately started in eating all manner of chocolate things. An ugly kind of compulsion, maybe this is what we share in common and I just never let them see it. Took a nap, glorious thing of it. Woke up to resume it again. But I see it, “oh, you really want me to stay in the birdcage huh? Afraid of that freedom...”

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I have all manner of sympathies for anyone I once said I hated. Even if I know there’s no place to be close with them again. They are me in so many ways, that’s the discomfort of it, let me pretend I’m not that manner of ugly won’t you, pretty please?

My god, we’re all grotesque little things.

Can I go to bed committed to waking up and changing another person? If they are only a reflection of myself anyways, my ego really wants me to try try try. Probably a different kind of psilocybin mushroom for that I’d need to grow.

Nobody is coming to save us, because we’d bite their heads off for it anyways. Little birds want to stay locked away.

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I bought $100 worth of groceries today. I’ve stocked my fridge. This is so new and foreign to me, such a trivial everyday task for anyone else and I’m fawning over it like I’m the first person to discover the Americas.

I bought bratwurst and ground beef and a variety of cheese. I bought a few snack cups of chocolate-covered things. One of them contains peanuts. 🤯

I’ll go to bed and wake up in the morning without a single symptom of chronic illness.

I went to the gym, and had PRs on every lift. PRs for my entire lifting history, which really says something because I used to be fit as a mfker. Just ask my California dad, he met me at my peak and still reminds me of it. I spent all day mentally prepping, telling myself out loud, “I’m the strongest I’ve ever been,” and again when I picked up the weights, visualizing every muscle cell in my body working cohesively.

Here is the idea I keep returning to. Every version of you already exists. The version who built the business, the one who healed the relationship, the one who is physically strong and mentally clear and spiritually awake. These are not fantasies. They are timelines, suspended in the universe the way books sit on a library shelf, each one fully written, waiting to be read. Destiny wrote all of them. Your free-will is the hand that reaches for the shelf.

Dr. Baloch, Quantum Jump: How to Choose the Version of Yourself That Already Exists

When I was a kid, I would make lists of things I wanted. Material items, personal accomplishments, life experiences. I didn’t paste it up on a wall to look at every day, it got shuffled away somewhere seemingly lost. For years, sometimes a decade. And every time I’d reconnect with the list, I could confidently mark every item off.

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Anyways, I plan on making bratwurst with saurkraut.

Millie got stuck under the chair today. Wrapped up in fabric, she just laid there for hours in silence. I need to teach her how to vocalize better when she’s trapped by her own silly antics.

I want to get a proper camera. Again.

During the pandemic, I would wander the coast in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep. Taking random photographs. It was lovely being able to see a different perspective of the city, without the chaos of people around. When it was resting.

I bought a proper camera for way too much money, and it sat in my office closet for years. When I moved out, I brought it with me. I packed it into my SUV when I hit the road, and it even had some time in the ambulance. But I always shot things on my phone, because I never thought ahead to bringing the camera along.

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But I think I would like to get in the habit of going places without my phone, and only a camera. How would my vision change in that situation?

Stack, stack, stack.

I’ve been sitting on what the next move is with my artwork. If you pose the question and patiently wait, some kind of sign will show up. My sign showed up yesterday, my god what a blessing.

Fine, fine, fine. Universe, you’re right, I’m ready to go.

Since the last time we coalesced, some major things have happened for me.

I texted my neighbor last week, she reaches out regularly inviting me to things. “I really want to, but then I get right up to the point of pulling the trigger and get overwhelmed with fear.” I just told her straight out. No more, “maybe if I feel well enough,” type excuses. I let myself be open and honest and it felt far more vulnerable than just, “sorry, I don’t feel well enough today.”

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And she replied back telling me she feels the same, and maybe we can help each other pull the trigger. There it is again, trigger finger.

Anyways, I was out walking Millie last night and ran into her at the dog park. We had a riotously good time. Another neighbor joined us, and we were folded over gripping our sides in laughter together.

I think I’ve managed to recruit one of them to my recent way of thinking — just wake up and decide today that you’re whoever the hell you want to be. Healthy, strong, smart, funny, sociable. And I’ve planted the seed for one other… maybe.

Sold my car, it was only listed two days. A few low-ballers, and their responses saying “you’ll never get what you’re asking for it.” But I heard the same thing when I was selling my Ambulance, and I still got what I was asking for it. Just be patient, things happen the way they should.

It was weird to see it be driven away this morning. I literally lived out of that car for a little bit, while I was waiting to close on the tiny house. Me and Dora would curl up in the backseat bed I’d made. She had the routine perfected, and if I was even a little bit late she’d get started without me.

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My realtor was super bothered by the fact I was living out of my car. “But where do you park at night? Is it safe?!”

She’d mother-hen me a little bit, calling me up at 8 or 9 to check on whether the neighborhood was okay or sketch.

My life might look very different than the white-picket-fence, but I have zero regrets. I even had the fence, once, it was brown but still. And it never did bring me happiness. Not like this.

I just realized, technically, I sold my car for a profit over what I bought it for. Damn. That’s nice. What a lovely surprise.

I ate leftovers yesterday, and woke up like it was nothing today.

Don’t take simple things for granted. I spent decades unable to touch something that sat in the fridge for more than 24 hours. Do you know all of the incredible things this new power unlocks?!

I’ve been fantasizing about travel. Roadtrips for me and Millie, just don’t tell her ‘cause she’s still deciding if she likes being in the car to begin with.

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I was on a real high from socializing last night. Curled up for bed I remembered an event flyer I’d saved last week. Texted my neighbor, “how about we pull the trigger on this together?” They’re serving BBQ too, I can’t fucking wait.

Elevation 4000 ft. Hair pin turns, only enough room for the lane you're in. The shoulder is a boulder.

Turned 21, went out for a piece of cake or an apple pie. Ended up on a 6 hour desert drive.

I’m newly obsessed with Shaun Finn, so I play this track on repeat.

Cried out my little eyes at the natural beauty. Passed through dozens of microclimates, eschewing human vice.

100°F. If you've been to the desert you know what a blessing it is to miss out on even a speck of dust-filled breeze.

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It's my life habit to drive without a destination in mind. No gps, just whatever makes my heart say, "yes!"

This isn't even the longest accidental detour of my life. 6 years ago I drove south out of Seattle looking for a touch of sunlight, and ended up in California ever since.

This won't be a permanent relocation. I love the visit, but I'm not built for this type of desert living.

I park someplace random, get out and start walking. There's nobody anywhere, completely deserted. They know better than me, it's high noon near the Salton Sea.

I hadn't anticipated the briny things. Skeletal remains pave the way, one-time baby barnacles. Of all the things I do not expect, is to find a random tiny button mushroom poking out.

I take my shirt off and fill it full of barnacle baby skeletons. Something something creative motivations. I leave the mushroom growing. The heat is extracting everything from me, but my brain knows I'm healthy now and it's nothing to sustain.

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On the drive home I pass a couple heading back from the dunes. They're pulled over on the shoulder of the road. 5 miles later, I pass them again. I'm not driving in circles. The universe will play games if you take the time to notice.

I got my birthday cake, red velvet cake. My lifelong favorite. Pairs nicely with the bacon cheeseburgers I have planned and schemed.

She stuck out her tongue at some moment while flirting obscenely with my boyfriend, showing us the deep North Dakota winter layers of white scum coating it.

I left with so many questions, my brain is still trying to sort, order, and file away under case closed status.

Why was there so much? Does she know about it? What is it from -- bad dental hygiene, candida overgrowth, all of her pre-birthday fucking, or a combination of the kitchen sink and then some?

It's given me the permanent ick. I've seen enough to know most men would have lined right up. Soap scum be damned.

Meanwhile I'm flossing my teeth twice a day, and checking my tongue religiously. Chinese medicine practitioners got nothing on me.

Later tonight I'll write journal entries. My best friend in grade school and I made up our own codex to obfuscate messages we'd pass during class. Secondary protection in case they were intercepted. I still write in it fluently. I wonder if she does.

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I read the book Dirt To Soil straight through today. Reminds me of my younger self. Reminds me of growing up in the Midwest to farmers and the familiarity of conventional farming.

It's a book about converting a conventional farm to regenerative practices. Basically, a change in mindset from growing crops to growing soil.

Healthy, diverse soil can't help but produce healthy abundant crops. Take care of the land and it will take care of you in return.

There were interesting layers I'm still chewing on. The hyper-focus on plant-based lifestyle to fix climate change, improve the lives of food animals, and improve the health of people, falls flat when it's built on conventionally organic approaches.

The book doesn't talk about veganism et all. But i couldn't help but see the relationship to it all.

I learned interesting facts about how application of fertilizers breaks the proper cycle for fixing carbon in the soil, growth of the mycorrhizal layer, and the plants own access to the full spectrum of nutrients available in the soil.

Like a person put on liquid nutrients by stomach tube since birth. We cannot properly emulate natures diversity and complex relationships between nutrients, besides other detriments to such an approach.

And our failure in commercial agriculture practices mimics our failures in other areas. Our healthcare system doesn't seek to heal a person, but only to prevent death. Any suffering between those two points is considered acceptable and just a normal part of the human experience.

And who decided that, when and why?

Put a band-aid on it, cut it off, medicate it. Problem solved. Until it isn't.

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And commercial agriculture is failing financially with these methods. Same as healthcare in the United States (unless you're a CEO), but humans are so easily stuck in the "this is what we've always done" principle. Something terrible but known is better than something great but strange.

I should have known a book on soil would go deep into the earth.

I already knew I needed to do a better job composting for my fruit trees. I can confidently displace the unopened containers of fertilizer I'd picked up along the way.