what a strange week this continues to be.

down goes the follower count in the wake of heightened personal rambling (sorry, not sorry). down goes the half-hearted keeping-up-appearance lurch re: Easter dinner (“do we really still care about Easter?” i questioned, judgment eyebrow raised to the wind. “i’m willing to cook,” replied my mother defensively, apparently expecting an award for it (the actual answer is: no, we don’t, but i still feel obligated to drag us into pretending we do)). lines of communication snarl at the slightest lapse in diligence. the ocean yesterday was all fitful chop and ripping tide, apparently roiling in response to an approaching storm. no body-surfing. absolutely freezing. Derps and i both balked at first, decided to force ourselves to remember why we LIKE doing this, sprinted in, splashed splashed splashed, swam, jumped, etc, ran from river to sea and back again. i felt more grounded than i have in weeks. rooted, liberated, quasi-hypothermic, miniscule. and then sang my face off in last night’s concert. this morning all of that innate rhythm seems to have swayed off to elsewhere.

it’s been forty-five minutes since i uncurled from my cove of comforter and kelp-strand sheets.

isn’t it sea otters who nest within our Pacific Giant Sea Kelp as an adaptive measure against night tides? they’re still terribly endangered, and we’re to blame, but bless them for clinging to whatever provides succor against even more primal a force than human insatiability. i’m not ready to be hurled into my open ocean either (nature, not nurture). so i too swaddle myself in anchors. 

the little things got me through it today.

• little cousins, big laughter
• little port sippers, big yumz
• little kindnesses, big white flags

i know the third is temporary, but i’m sure the Allied forces didn’t mind the Germans playing nice on Christmas Day, either. i have found my peace for a short while, and i welcome it as long as it will stay. trust me when i say it takes work to keep my mind suspended in the balance necessary to keep that ephemera close. who knows if it’s worth the effort, long-term, but today is Christmas. today i treated myself, despite fervent doubt that i’d be able to do anything but anguish (#verbed). merry happy instants, indeed. even as i write this, i can feel somber reality rallying, and i already remember how sad feels (how miraculous it is that i ever forget). i hope i can remember why today worked, come morning. what i need most is to be held as i completely melt and then coalesce anew. but this may help until that takes place.

baby sister visits from college tonight.

how happy i’ll be to see her will depend on which face she’s wearing when she walks in, flushed with freshman-level hubris, the Prodigal Daughter completing her first Coming-Home. (she’s more excited for a reunion with my cat than with me, and maybe even than with our parents, whose doting thinly veils worry and fists ever-ready to yank leash). i’m nowhere near ready for the bone-on-bone grating of a splintering family playing whole around a barbecued turkey called “cajun” because my mother’s version of history seems to indicate that Louisiananites spearheaded the use of garlic at dinnertime. or, beforehand, Giving Thanks for our material plenty that ring far truer than the requisite obeisances to familial unity and love-bound ties (maybe i’m still the only one who hears the overtones of lip-service).

i’ll do whatever i’m asked in the interest of expediting the evening, and i will enjoy the corn fritters and pie, as always. otherwise? i look to a year in which i can spend this feast day truly feasting with a knot-free stomach.

it really just sucks to sit dumb in the face of the various denizens causing me emotional pain.

what color does their wrath turn the air? is the pain of collision dulled by instantaneity? exponentiating through time; a pathos-parabola? wrenching? enervating? a catalyst of heat, or chill? a shadow cast into hyperbole by light’s careening ricochet, or a form cast into shadow by necessity?

it’s not that i’ve forgotten how to write. i just have come to contain an amorphous mass of converged thought-entity/state/time that defies, or transcends, or stifles my language. which murmurs maledictions to tunes like “you’ll have to break yourself down deep to expunge this.”

i don’t know.

i don’t know.