Pig and farm report

Last night something terrible happened to someone I love it was neither my son nor I but I had to go to a hospital in Seattle to see this person and that’s all I can write about it

Last night I had a sex dream about Tom Cruise and in the next dream I was driving the wrong way on the freeway into oncoming holiday traffic

This morning I baked a pumpkin pie then I had to go to the grocery store for baby spinach and a red onion

I have been well but deep quiet in my guts

I kept seeing photos of dead animals i.e. meat on Twitter today so I shut my phone off also I feel shook over the news of yesterday and I can’t deal with any more news at all

I do not give a fuck for this gorge fest of a holiday though I will put cinnamon whipped cream in my coffee tomorrow morning

I’m reading book after book I am reading like a starving person eats bread

Love from my corner of the forest

Pig and farm report

  "You do not understand pigs," said the bird, whirling. "Pigs have an angel." Whereupon she whistled like an express train and a small cactus rose out of the earth and slid into the bowl which the bird had left at her feet.

 She said: "Piu, Piu, Little Servant, cut yourself into bits and feed yourself to the pigs so they become inspired with Pig Angel."
  The cactus called Piu cut himself into little round bits with a knife so sharp and fast it was impossible to behold.

A Mexican Fairytale, from The Complete Stories Of Leonora Carrington

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All I have been doing is reading my depression is gone but my brain is slow moving and thick though I cleaned the house top to bottom I am sleeping at night though each morning I wake at 2:30 AM the milk hour and Jupiter comes in and leans her heavy silken weight against me and purrs and that allows me to go back to sleep

I haven't talked to my neighbor since our first encounter but yesterday I went out and cut all the snow berries the long bendy branches as many as I could carry because she wanted them to make wreaths and they are all over my forest and I took them to her house and knocked but she didn't answer or wasn't there so I left them on her step with a pot of raspberry jam that I made last summer I suspect she is shy in the way that I am shy

three nights ago I went into the pitch black forest to fetch the mail not even a star to see and there are no street lights here I thought I knew the path by heart I thought I was fleet footed but I stepped on a large rock with my right foot and crashed down onto my right side feeling first to make sure the lens hadn't come free from my glasses then sitting on the rock then standing and as I made my way back down the hill to the house I thought I had a concussion because I could not see out of my left eye but it turns out I had drastically bent my glasses frame so I was only seeing out of one eye I have a bruised cheek and a goose egg on my left shin and a goose egg on my right shin and a banged up right knee and an appointment with the next town over optometrist next week

this morning the sun is out and it is cold and I made the graham cracker crust for a cheesecake and my kitchen smelled like Jesus's baptism day and then realized that I have no sour cream for the batter or strawberries for the coulis so today will be a store day which I dread 

Leonora Carrington is kicking me all over the place such rich and fantastical writing that and the safety and comfort of this house and my Animal Gods keep me afloat these days waiting waiting for my feathers my fire to return

Love to you Darklings now that the nights are stretched into days pray for me and the two turkeys who live next door to Jack the Egg Man where the Andy Warhol chicken lives one gray one black everyday everyday everyday I check to make sure they are still alive this is a version of hope

Pig and farm report

yesterday I woke and my depression was gone just like that like that like that though last night I dreamed people had kidnapped me and were piercing me with foot long needles and my body still aches it is hard to tell the uninitiated how powerful depression is on my body the actual physical exhaustion the aches the diminishment of joy is a terrible strain and fog

today I woke and ate an apple and went to the store and saw a deer leap across the road and saw a flock of snow geese fill a field with their white

I am tired through and in and in my spirit

I baked a beautiful complicated bread with sun dried tomatoes and gouda from a farm nearby and basil I made brown rice I folded the clothes that were all over my bedroom and put them away I changed my sheets

one important thing happened

as I was coming back from the store I saw my neighbor who lives a country block away walking near my house my son knows her (he knows everyone his ease with people astounds me) she was recently in a bad car accident was wearing a neck brace she lives in a small trailer in the lot of a big fancy house I can tell that they are poor and I understand poor deeply I suspect her husband or boyfriend drinks as his car has new dents on it every week and also the bad car accident I pulled over and got out of my car to say hi because after all next month it will have been two years I said hi I introduced myself she said she knew who I was that she was waiting for me to come out of my house my son told her I am reclusive she said she wanted to bring cookies she said she wanted some cuttings of some of my plants and came over once and knocked on the back door and my heart broke wide open and I wondered if she saw me sobbing on my soft gray sofa I wonder if she saw me ghost wandering in my holly and ivy nightgown

a stray black cat walked between us I asked if it was hers and she said no that it was her mouser though she said I'm a dog person and I said one of the best of the Animal Gods and she made a sound with her breath and she hugged me hard and said yes and yes some people know the Animal Gods instantly be they cats or dogs or chickens

then we talked a bit about books about how the plants grow so strangely big here in the forest where it seems shady so often and my heart broke wide open and I told her to come over any time that I might be ghost wandering in my nightgown if she doesn't mind and she said she'd wear her jammies over

tonight I watched the final episode of Parts Unknown with my son watched Anthony Bourdain thin and drawn and worried and beautiful as he and his most amazing film crew explored the lower east side the section of New York I am hardest in love with and both of us wept seeing the end of Anthony and that's all I can say about it right now

writing this has exhausted me all of it exhausted me I am weak but hopefully I'll get an even stretch at least through the holidays which arrive faster and faster and hopefully when I come back here I'll be a writer again

love from the blacktail forest

Pig and farm report

it seems I am once again not getting email notification when one of you posts a comment grrr though I have changed nothing in the settings this here today is a placeholder a tracker this here today is to say that my disease my bipolar 1 disorder is kicking my ass all over the place this time depression my peculiar strand of the disorder brings its clouds and storms and race cars without triggers for the past week I've stayed in my holly and ivy nightgown binged watched television and other shows and wept but I would have been weeping in front of the television even without my disorder the way things are fortunately I've been able to read too Leonora Carrington's Complete Stories as well as Down Below in which she writes of her disorder and a book of poetry by Shaindel Beers Secure Your Own Mask which is stunning I am pretty much at zero right now but here is a quick binge watching review revue since I can't think of anything else to type

I Love Dick, Netflix
my second time watching this series about Chris Kraus's book directed by Jill Soloway I love it and I love Kathryn Hahn in it a really funny put down about an artist colony in Marfa Texas as least that's how I read it

Homecoming, Amazon
I probably should be embarrassed by how much I love Julia Roberts excellent scary story

Outlander, Showtime
I watched the first two seasons which was two whole days thinking it was a time travel story but it really isn't and by the end of the second season I noticed cringy racism colonialism and rampant misogyny so BIG no it took me eleven tries to spell misogyny and just now I misspelled spell

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Netflix
it turns out I am no longer nine years old so I only got through one episode

Mad Men, AMC
maybe for the eleventh time and I still loved it all the way through


it is a goddamned miracle I haven't burned my eyebulbs out from all the cathode or whatever rays emitting from my telly and computer screens it's a goddamned miracle my neck and back and entire body doesn't ache from so much non-activity with sporadic panic baking and it's a pure goddamned jesus miracle that I didn't die on Monday from eating an entire box of Blue Box Mac 'N Cheese while watching politicking on the telly but it was after I took an Ativan then smoked about one third of a joint it was not a cry for help either I ate it straight from the pan I cooked the noodles in with no shame whatsoever also with no one watching

well there you have it I'll be back when I can and when I can

Love and here's Hal on my beach towel

Pig and farm report

I baked some honeycomb and cornflower sugar cookies other than that I am flattened by the news in spite of everything the season moves forward my Christmas cactus is blooming my house plants grow Findhorn huge I got a hair cut I made applesauce I survived DOGNURSE once again sending love and sugar for now I'll be back when my brain comes home