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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22 days 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.

Chelating, hard up from unintentional fasting. Fantasizing about all the things I’d eat when I was finally free.

A woman came in, chatty and lovely. Shared her Pollo Loco with Millie, in between her meowing.

Should have came prepared for a nap, big sofa couches for me to park my ass on.

I’m ahead on work, and behind a little too. No great disservice, time is what you choose to make it.

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Blueberry bagel and a burger is what I settled on. I sat too long overthinking the menu options, I could have picked anything under the sun. But my big brain actually has a lot of food anxiety. I didn’t realize, I hadn’t given myself time and space to listen to it’s complaints.

Can’t have this because XYZ. If I eat ABC I might LMNOP.

Ce la vie. Fuck me.

Thought I put disordered eating to bed a decade ago. Hard to unlearn what you grew up emulating. I look more like my mom than I ever thought possible. I finally understand her obsession with big fat butts.

Millie is always grooming my armpits. It bothered my neighbor once. I don’t have the heart to adminish her for it, just her way of showing she cares about my cleanliness.

We’re stress-testing the system and passing with flying colors. My god, how many years did I waste as a bum?

The amaranth can finally flower without being chewed back to the roots by the deer or the squirrels or the rabbits or Millie. Imagine my surprise when I first discovered her indignity!

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What happens if I buy enough food in one go, to have a fully stocked fridge? Enough to feed me through one full week? I’d forgotten a person might make meals that require a recipe, it’s been so long.

Stayed up late launching new art prints. I hope they sell. I hope they make someone smile, or gasp, or rage like hell. It's nice to have hope again when I'd set it aside for a little bit.

And then it turns out not to be. Instead, the weather rolls in gloriously. In the low-gentle 80's, soft breeze to prevent stagnation and grease.

This has become a consistency since I moved to California. Whatever I've been told things will be, turns out to be wrong.

I think I exist on another planet, mostly.

I talk to a friend in the same timezone, but her location it's dark by 8pm and mine the sun has only just finished peaking.

Red meat is supposed to kill you. But it's the only thing that healed me.

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Too many days I'd turn to my ex and say, "it feels like we're still tripping."

I realized today that I can now make chicken soup and something about that also heals me.

Supposedly I caught swine flu back when that was a big deal. Long before covid. Two weeks on the couch sick as hell. Ended up with pneumonia, had an asthmatic reaction to the prescribed inhaler, and couldn't stop vomiting.

My mom made me homemade chicken soup. Hers is the best, and I couldn't tell you exactly what the magic is, just that it's her magic in that soup.

And I barfed that up too.

Funny, because it was an important thing at the time and now completely irrelevant. I've lived through other experiences in order to generate other stories. You have to evolve with the times.

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Driving home yesterday, an old woman walking down a hill of a driveway to her mailbox. And she looked just like every hunch-backed old lady I'd ever seen growing up.

Except, back then she would've been the age I am now.

There's strong potential I'll become the hunch-backtress too one day.

We're all more alike than we are dissimilar.

Still thinking about being an eyeball trying to look at itself.

No wonder we're all looking for ways to consider ourselves broken. Contortionists can get arthritis too. Funny enough, they probably all have Ehler-Danlos.

Consciousness is like the eyeball trying to look at itself.

Must be why we project ourselves onto other people and use them as a mirror to experience the world. Vis-à-vis.

Would be nice if they taught us that in primary school, instead of the proper etiquette for eating Elmer’s glue.

Drove 45 minutes to have an appointment cancelled last minute.

Hmm'ed and hawed over what to do. I feel stuck lately every time I try and move.

Get a burger? No. Korean BBQ? Also no. Stop at the grocery store, regret my decision. Checkmate.

The good days are great, but they don't solicit anything I can use to later create.

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There are lizards in my yard. I also saw a dragonfly, I'd thought they went extinct from the widespread pesticides. I let the friendly spiders spin their spidey webs.

When I first moved to Washington, I was warned about black widow spiders, and brown recluse. For how much it was mentioned, I thought it might be a serious threat. Nobody talked about the widespread mental illness.

I can't even get mad in arguments. It's just me arguing with myself, and you arguing with yourself. How fucked up is that?

A friend says, I have a hard time telling anymore what's legit and what's parody on the internet.

My response, I just assume everything is a parody straight from the Universe.

That's my new guiding light. This doesn't make sense? Must be the Universe playing a joke at my expense again.

I miss you, I want you, I need you.

Words I'll never press send on.

We always grow up to be our parents in the end, huh.

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I grew up watching old movies of women who took lovers. After sex they'd lounge in the bedroom giving witty banter until it was decided, urgently, that it was time for one of them to flee the scene.

That's a damned strange thing.

You are what you eat. Your life becomes the thing you obsess about.

I learned this before I could drive, when I was learning to ride horses. The more you focus on not riding your horse into something (like a tree), the more likely you are to run straight into said tree.

Target fixation is when your brain becomes so intensely focused on a hazard that your body subconsciously steers the vehicle or your movements directly toward it.

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Great, but we’re not talking about driving cars or riding horses. We’re talking about the human body, and probably a whole lot more. There are lessons to be learned in what Bryan Johnson has openly demonstrated to the world.

Retrocausality in quantum physics is the idea that an action in the future can change something in the past. In our daily lives, a cause always happens before its effect, like dropping a cup before it breaks. However, some quantum physics experiments suggest that choices made today might actually change how a tiny particle behaved yesterday.

Christians will say God gave us freedom of choice. But the longer I live the more convinced I am that the script is only being played out. The Universe already knows where we are headed, and “freedom of choice” is an illusion. We take the actions needed to arrive at the predetermined destination. Which could look a lot like retrocausality, too.

Haven’t you ever experienced a moment in your life when you knew better but you couldn’t seem to make yourself change course to align with that knowledge? I know I shouldn’t call my ex, but it’s like I’m possessed and there’s nothing I can do to stop my fingers from dialing.

We label it with fancy names. Obsessive-compulsive disorders, maybe we say the person “disassociated.” I think it’s the immutable code1 in our operating system preventing us from acting on that supposed free will to ensure we arrive where we’ve always been intended to go.

Maybe Bryan Johnson’s soul contract2 detailed a particular struggle with chronic illness and death. I’ve always questioned his real motivation for swinging so far to the opposite side of his previous lifestyle. Never trust the media-friendly print outs.

He didn’t just wake up and say, “maybe I’ll stop eating junk food and get a solid 8 hours of sleep.” That would be reasonable for any person to do when they experience burn out, weight gain, and depression. Even with his existing diagnosis of hypothyroidism, he’d known about that since age 21 and didn’t go all crunch-mom for another twenty years.

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If I get a blister on my toe because my shoes are the wrong size, I might go buy a pair that fits and wear a blister patch until it heals up. I wouldn’t cut my toe off or make it my life’s mission to put every shoe manufacturer out of business. See what I’m saying?

Here’s what I’m really saying — I’m not surprised at the news of Bryan Johnson’s autoimmune diagnosis. It’s as if he already knew it was coming (super-subconsciously) because he’d previously agreed to experience it, but forgot somewhere along the way.

The longer I live the more I recognize how much we are constantly making choices that determine our current state. Where you are, you chose to be.

Maybe it didn’t seem to matter what year school I was leaving or entering. By the 5th grade I was testing out at the 12th grade of every subject, and I’d end up dropping out anyway.

When I first saw Gwen Stefani, it was an instant crush. I wanted to be her, I wanted to be picked by her — within reason. I’ve never been a true fan girl to any celebrity.

She seemed strong and smart and fearless.

An empowered woman who didn’t mince words and demanded respect.

And then after leaving a marriage rumored to have cheated going on, she began dating a married man. I prefer to be confused much less.

I keep seeing people argue on the internetz about how important it is to bring awareness to issues. That complaining in dramatic reels is vital to ending injustices.

Except we’ve been bringing awareness to issues non-stop for decades that continue to persist. Remember the War on Drugs? D.A.R.E. Program? Let’s hold hands around the world and sing Michael Jackson songs while sipping a Pepsi to restore Peace and harmony.

Talking a good game doesn’t mean 💩 at the end of the day.

Output ≠ outcomes.

And I check myself at the door every time, because I’ve opted out from direct action in many ways myself. Feeling somehow superior most days because, at least I didn’t waste 4 hours on the internet bitching and complaining.

The irony isn’t lost on me of the song that randomly followed Gwen singing Take this pink ribbon off my eyes / I'm exposed, and it's no big surprise / Don't you think I know exactly where I stand?

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The Universe keeps trying to walk me towards the end goal. Universe, I’m listening.

The greatest men I’ve ever known, only ever existed in my head.

Get naked, climb into bed.

Linen sheets, a down pillow to lay my head.

Slept a deep little sleep. Woke an hour ago but couldn’t bring myself to reanimate. Lay like the dead in a coma listening to Miles Carter orate.

Candles on the stove.
Fans on high.

Front door open, let the breeze fly by.
I could almost imagine being back in the ambulance.

Fan in the skylight, like the fan in my roof.
Humming away, trying to keep cool.

Lights on the walls dancing around.
Not unlike my past lives at all.

What a beautiful thing.

I'm okay not looking through the looking glass again this time.

I'm okay knowing I've done my part. Let the Universe use me for its bigger purpose. For its great big grand Pillsbury doughboy-esque scheme.

I said what I said, from a knowing that's unseen.

Confirmed today by breaking a this glass item, I'm not a clumsy being.

Now it's up to them whether they heed the thing.

If you've ever been told something by someone before the main event, then you'll know what I mean.

Spent the day navigating internal-things. Good to feel the storm water calming.

The cool night's breeze.

I'm gonna sleep and sleep and sleep.

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