Our cat overlords have arrived

Pig and farm report

In the end-of-summer garden everything becomes wicked and rich and wild and death moves in as curling winter squash and pumpkin vines choke the last of the wild flowers it’s heady and it’s important it’s  my religion I think that’s a fair assessment I think if you tend a garden you pretty much know what’s going to happen at at THE END

Pig and farm report

I have written deeply about my panic attacks that occur whenever I have to go to a store or be around actual meat people any time ever

this morning I drove to the store for a leek and some celery as soon as I started my car I felt like it was bubbly knobby halting rocky weird hesitant maybe like a reluctant pony even though my car is only three years old even though my car still has a thousand miles to go before it needs an oil change even though yesterday my car was perfectly healthy

I drove it anyway but this kind of crazy makes me terribly sad because my car was fine but I was

a.paranoid
b.panicky
c.a reluctant pony
d.all of above


something else happened as I was waiting in line to pay for my groceries

the woman behind the woman behind me an older woman with jesus helmet hair said to the woman behind me YOU SURE ARE TAN HOW DID YOU GET SO TAN YOU DIDN’T GET THAT TAN HERE

the woman answered this is the color I am

o god

the date on this post reads August 17 Saturday because I posted this quote then unposted it yesterday this post was actually written on August 18 Sunday sheesh note to self :: probably not a good time to wake up and watch Awakenings on the telly


The storyteller is the man who could let the wick of his life be consumed completely by the gentle flame of his story.
— Walter Benjamin 

I have been gripped by a new breed of depression one I kept reading as anxiety one I kept reading as panic I didn't recognize this depression because it is a new flavor it is different than before my head doesn't feel like a heavy dirt iron rock and there it is my plastic brain that wet stupid salad of tissue and electricity and desire I didn't recognize it not even tears all the time and seventeen half read books and opening my computer every day to write here then not being able to clued me in I missed or dismissed all the big signals so now that I know now what now what now what wait for it to go away as always and here I am this morning tumbling into autumn digging in the dirt driving around the island here I am writing here to say hello to say hello Darklings here I am and it feels a little bit like healing like health like normal

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAHAAAAAAAAAAA

(that normal was a little joke)

is my anxiety being helped by the half dose of Doxasozin I'm taking at noon

I have no idea but it is surely helping me sleep and I am taking half of the benzos I was taking before and New Nurse is just a spectacular human being who acknowledges my person which Dog Nurse never did

(once I told dn that I was practicing and she said oh that's right you used to be a violin teacher this was after I had been seeing her for three years and while I was still teaching W) 

New Nurse actually remembers my name and asks me if I am going outside if I am driving if I am functioning as a human she asks questions about my writing about what being homeless was like about my education or lack thereof I brought her poems to read she is interested in me as a human 

I feel incredibly lucky to have found her

one thing that is important in this blathering nothing post

this depression this not writing not reading helped me finish editing Queer Wing-ed because editing is a left brain activity

big joke universe funny haha

*

last week I called a septic service and made an appointment to get my septic tank pumped which needs to happen every three years it was due in November and I was so worried about it mostly because I imagined it would cost thousands of dollars (it will cost $400) and because of nightmare stories my son told me about his father having to dig up the orchard to find his septic tank then accidentally puncturing the tank during the digging and yes the septic tank itself lurked wet and terrifying and creepy in my brain when I called I told the receptionist that I had no idea where the tank was but I saw two little PVC thingies sticking out of the ground when I first moved in and it turns out I did know where the tank was easy access from the street no foraging through the forest to find it NO DIGGING ON MY PART etcetera and so forth and I felt so grown up

that's it that's my whole life right now except today I feel like some light has got into me

here is my garden harvest this year everything took its sweet time then exploded at once

the days are cooler and shorter which isn't saying much for a summer that barely felt like summer at all but I am grateful for the lack of wild fires this year for the ability to breathe outside and for finding where all my crap goes all by myself with no help from any real adults and I am thankful for you Darklings every single one of you and for the three year anniversary of finding Summer's End and navigating all the red tape involved in buying a house not to mention going to NYC to read and I am so goddamned glad "she" died and left me enough money to move out of the velvet ghetto of Seattle

while I am here while my brain is still working please watch a new Netflix documentary called THE FAMILY from the investigative book by Jeff Sharlet it explains so many things about why so called Christian voters i.e. powerful men want to keep the tiny pig fucker king in office it is absolutely important please watch   with the lights on

today I am making corn chowder with fresh corn as I do every year at this exact time which is probably a good thing since it's not exactly healthy but it is truly delicious here is my recipe one of my favorites

Love
Pax
Peace

Veggie (not vegan) Corn Chowder from The Becky Crocker Kitchens

**WARNING: DO NOT PUT CLAMS IN THIS CHOWDER. IF YOU DO I WILL KNOW.**


1 late summer thunderstorm after a long dry spell, hail if possible
2 cobs of really fresh corn not frozen or etc.
1 or 2 regulation sized Yukon gold potatoes or 4 smallish sized (this chowder should be more corny than it is potatoey)
1 medium sized onion
1 cup of dry white wine
2 cups of veggie stock
1 cup of heavy cream
1 leek
1 onion
2 stalks of celery
1 sprig of fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
cumin
salt
pepper


Dice the celery and the onion.
Wash the sand off your leek, dry it, then slice the white part into thin rings.
Heat a blob of butter and a blob of olive oil in a heavy-bottomed soup pot.
Sauté the veggies until they are clear.

This would be a good time to dice your potatoes to a manageable smallish size.
Leave the peelings on unless you get frantic about stuff like that.

Shuck the corn and cut the kernels off with a very sharp knife. I usually break the corn cobs in half then cut the kernels off in a bowl because they make a mess and go flying everywhere. After you cut off the kernels, scrape the cobs with the back of a knife to get out all the sweet milky corn goodness. Don’t cheat on this part. It’s what makes this chowder so yummy.

REMINDER: NO CLAMS

Add 1 cup of dry white wine to the veggies and let it reduce by half.
Add the veggie stock and bring the fire up until it boils.
Toss in the potatoes and corn and corny milk stuff.
Lower the fire to a simmer.

Once the potatoes are tender, about 15 minutes, add the cream, a teaspoon of cumin (you just have to trust me on this), a bay leaf if you have one, and a sprig of fresh thyme if you have one of those. Salt and pepper to taste. Turn the fire to low and let the chowder simmer for at least a half hour.

Once you're ready to serve this, drizzle it with a wee bit of very good virgin olive oil and sprinkle it with chopped flat parsley for looks.

Serve with a good crusty piece of bread.

This is good even if the sun is out.

I don’t know what makes this a chowder and not just a soup. 

I’ve never had chowder the other kind with *SHUDDER* clams in it. When I imagine it I imagine there is lots of sand in it. If there is indeed sand in clam chowder and you’d make this recipe but for the longing for the sand part, I guess you could forgo washing your leek. Then you’d get sand, the clams would be alive, and they all lived happily ever after.



ps. I didn't have a leek so I just put in a little more onion. I didn't have any thyme though it's struggling in my large and cumbersome herb pot that is on a garden chair by my front door. I don't have any flat parsley either. So what. It smells good in my house and I feel like I've accomplished something.

*

Hannibal Lecter: You still wake up sometimes, don't you? You wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the clams. 

Clarice Starling: Yes.

Temporarily out of words

Last night knives bloomed like lights in my hand I chopped two gallons of fresh picked tomatoes and peppers and onions and cilantro from my garden I chopped until my wrist ached and all that was left of my angry horns were bones in the arena and the burning walls of Rome I was afraid to run in the slippery dark so I chopped instead intent as women bent in potato fields as hens stopped at their chalk lines as fortune exploded the earth I am responsible for the battles I fight for alien faces I have not seen for immaculate issue and the damp hidden places underneath the single road into town last night I was an occupied country and knives my mortar one easy whistle from fruit to jar when I am in my kitchen I live forever a day of bees serpentined over complicated grass I stood in tomato juice like the blood of generals until my eyes became opaque I canned six pints of pico de gallo six pints of peeled and roasted tomato confit with sliver thin sliced garlic and bright red bird peppers and olive oil I made marinara enough for an army or my own shrive winter I stuffed my angry puffed nostrils back into my stupid head and summoned the Animal Gods the cat under the bed the fly on the ceiling the frog in the marram grass I will stand on the marble steps of Terrible America in my navy blue nurse cape and starched white cap where our forgotten broken orphaned terrorized children crouch on sand or in salt caves or on the streets or in schools children in cages children in dark forests I will tell them all I have loved you I love you 

I don't know what else to do

a small post with swears

Mary Moon makes the best goddamn pickles I’ve ever tasted in my entire life ever period

Queer Wing-ed

Dear Darklings

I am done
I am done
I am done

It was ten years going this May
134 pages

I started the endnotes last night and went through to this afternoon just a few minutes past high noon it was finished then I printed it out put it in a brand new thesis binder then put it in my library

Then Page took me to the fresh corn stand in Mount Vernon where I bought 4 ears for $1.00 then we got jumbo bean burritos at Taco del Mar to celebrate because I was famished and now I am exhausted

Ten years

And Mr Darger has left the building

Love and more when I can and when I can

This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

— Toni Morrison 

1931–2019

Pig and farm report

The rhythm of a long line is also an animal cry.
-- Allen Ginsberg

I have so much I want to write so much I want to tell you but each day brings more horror and hatred and racism and death in the news and that stops me though I am writing writing I'm still sending bodiless messages to my own email I want to try again here today even though my heart has left the building even though my meat sack carries such worry and sorrow for all of us

I want to write about some magic that happened to me

it may seem like I didn't celebrate my birthday it felt like that to me too that I failed to celebrate myself for the first time since I was four years old when birthdays became magic because they were part of summer because they were the culmination of summer's ripe desire and deep rot and brought a promise of freedom and a sense of change and new school supplies even though I can only remember having one birthday party and it was dreadful and drunken and loud and probably involved screaming and possibly handguns

all of this lack of party (even though I made myself an angel food cake) (even though I had two pieces of angel food cake for breakfast that day) (even though the breakfast cake made me feel kind of sick) (even though it will be a while before I eat angel food cake again) I rallied that night when I had dinner with my son at the Mexican restaurant near his job and I realized that I am happy not hahawheee happy but deep down happy with my life right now many of the birthdays I spent at the Oregon coast were in times of unhappiness a way to escape what always felt like imminent danger

none of that is important because I want to tell you what happened the day after my birthday

my hairdresser for a billion years Mandy finally quit and decided to travel the world with her husband last I heard from her they were in Vietnam which is splendid but here I was with a literal giant wad of hair on my head over a year's worth of hair so I made an appointment with a hairdresser across the street from my favorite ever greasy spoon restaurant in Stanwood a little place called Wash & Wear I got there at 2 pm and right off the bat an infant guinea pig was inexplicably thrust into my hands I held it under my chin where it chirped and clicked or however you describe guinea pig sounds and the little girl who handed me the pig was at a large divided cage which held the mama guinea pig on one side and a giant rabbit on the other the giant rabbit belonged to a young boy about ten or eleven years old who was getting an emergency haircut because he was taking the aforementioned giant rabbit to the Stanwood Camano Fair which began the next day I didn't mind the wait because if I am handed an Animal God right off the get go I know I'm in the right place after Sarah (she is the sole owner and hairdresser of W&W) finished cutting the boy's hair she made him sweep it up himself and then three other little girls probably seven and eight years old came into the shop and they were giggling and putting on the sample creams and singing into hairbrushes and I was in the chair by then getting foil attached to my white hairs and then the girls put on quite a show with acrobatics including handstands and headstands and cartwheels and splits and one of the girls did a backbend called the table after which a bottle of water was balanced on her stomach all of this in this tiny shop my hair was completely done by then so I clapped and cheered them on and wildly applauded the girls who went on to do a complicated hand clapping routine and Sarah's husband came in and asked the girls if they wanted ice cream which of course they all did so they trooped across the street to my favorite ever greasy spoon where it turns out Sarah's husband is the cook and Sarah and I talked and talked and she put more foils in my head enough to keep out all alien rays then eventually the girls came back Sarah's daughter she of the guinea pigs and the other three girls who turned out to be their neighbors and by then I could feel steam rising off my hair as it got lighter and lighter and it was 97 degrees and I think my head was on fire by then but oh jesus it was fun and those girls were funny and sweet and Sarah is simply an amazing person and by the time she started pulling the foils out of my head the girls had all gone home with their dad in Sarah's truck and I got a perfect haircut then it was over but the whole day was incredible and fantastic and funny and full and I am now very very very blonde think Marilyn blonde

the battery on my computer is at a dreaded 5% so I'm about to sign off it is the beginning of August the time of Great Winding Down and of course those new school supplies and now that I have chipped the ice off of my dark guts I will be back sooner

Love to you Darklings who find me here when I can and when I can