Chocolate pot

Pig and farm report

Not getting out of bed today.
























Ps. Yes, yes I did cut my own bangs. Thank you for asking.

Day 55

I’m considering suspenders to hold up my sad men’s pajama bottoms from Sears days into quarantine

also I drove to Mt. Vernon for absolutely no reason this morning and got stuck behind this guy so it took me a year to get home

in other news I ate a Boston cream donut that I did not make myself  it tasted like jesus heaven

tomorrow is instacart shopping day again making the list is more stressful than normal panic attack shopping because if I leave something off I don’t get another shot at it because I have to get up by 6 in the AM to get a shopping slot plus it is expensive because of the instacart charge plus the tip last week I got some paper towels but no toilet paper hopefully tomorrow I’ll get lucky 🧻 was there always a toilet paper emoji or is that new to the plague?

I made a pretty good mask but the elastic is wonky I took a picture of myself in it but my eyes looked like cry eyes even though I was smiling sort of it’s hard to get an authentic smile in a selfie so I deleted it

I saw three baby goats and a bunch of red cows today

Mt. Vernon which is the largest town still close to me is a ghost town it is entirely strange to drive around all the empty shopping palaces everything is off except for that Boston cream donut

a conversation I keep having with my son is that everything is going to look extremely different once this is over the way we shop and consume and entertain ourselves is all going to change none of the small restaurants and bars and bakeries and cakeries and shops and museums will survive the cost of closing and laying off their employees for any length of time they won’t be able to pay their rent and we are going to be shut down for at least a year in order for scientists to find a vaccine once we do “open up” people are going to be more cautious we are going to travel less and homestead more baking and canning and gardening will become more important we will wear our clothes longer and take better care of our toys bartering will come back into fashion giant companies like Amazon will overswell teeter then fall women’s hair will grow unruly and natural and their acrylic fingernails will reveal the soft nails below leg and armpit hair will come back into fashion and men will realize what women actually do but we are survivors we have sense memories of how to bring joy to ourselves writers will write musicians will play painters will paint chickens will lay and cows and goats will give milk we won’t be going back to crowded theaters for a long time and our children and grandchildren and unborn children will be stronger and less dependent on video games and electronics to entertain themselves and they will be spectacular humans who value the elders in their society something that is glaringly missing from our current society and the whales and giant turtles will return to our seas bumblebees will thrive and we’ll all learn how to change our own damn oil

corona 17.

corona 17.

dog gods tied goose feathers to their ears to sing with wren tongues in the scribbly forest there is always a chance of betrayal there might be a quest monarch butterflies and bees hum straight up through the cloud layer tomato vine perfume on my elegant hands cat on the windowsill taking note animals as protectors animals as rippling safe spaces animals as letters and songs yesterday I found my childhood copy of Charlotte’s Web moth eaten rat chewed from my time in the known world and dog gods tied seaweed to their ears to sing with trout mouths and tomatoes clapped their green hands this morning I rinsed my hair in apple cider vinegar today I’ll scrub the floors and sing and thank my animal body for crawling out of the fire 

Pig and farm report

we drove to the state park gates and on the way back this fire engine came tearing down the road toward us in our lane lights blazing sirens bleating we pulled over then this guy jumped out and sauntered up that path he scared the crap straight out of me I don’t know why he was there but he wasn’t running and I couldn’t see where the other firemen went it was deeply unsettling though

we’ve been watching a Pacific wren build a nest in the eaves of our front porch she is a tireless worker who takes a break at noon then gets back at it one twig and piece of moss at a time this pic is the beginning of the nest those smart little wrens usually build on the ground and never much higher than six feet and they also build decoy nests which I think is amazing

today the tide was so low that the salt sea wood fire kelp lilac grassy smell was such a strong perfume I wish you all could taste that smell right now

corona 16.

corona 16.

on a scale of one to ten describe your wristlet your shrunken paps your crushed toe your shredded pancreas your questionable meds have you ever been in a psychiatric ward do not do not answer yes do not cry or laugh or move your mouth or eyes the pain tractate here is a chart with cartoon faces from pale to fire ant red and growl point to the cartoon pain picture on the scale of one to ten that matches your experience inside the hospital machinery excuse me excuse me eat the contents of this paper cup is it not the communion of the body of Christ point to the cartoon face that matches your face equally is this not the face of Christ describe the contents of your purse point to the cartoon face on the pain scale that matches the contents of your purse pain equally take this cup in remembrance of me take this cup let this cup pass from me today is the last day of lent Spy Wednesday commemorating the day Judas sealed the fate of Jesus with his spittle point to the cartoon face of Jesus on the pain scale that most closely matches Judas's sorrow 

Day 45

I went to a place of rewilding at the Stillaguamish River this morning thinking I would earn the sun and I was shocked at the desolation I felt the sudden dark sky and the sad abandoned doll mirrored my mood I took two of my books to John the Carpenter and left them on top of his goat house in a blue sparkly Christmas bag I warned him they were coming I have been fighting depression which makes its own rules outside the day to day survival grab I crave anything from a restaurant anything that I don’t have to cook last night I dreamed someone cleaved an axe straight into my head dreams and more dreams every night into the new webbing of dreams so many of us are having it is Saturday but it feels like Sunday as the days smash one into another

corona 15.

Such extraordinary light from Los Angeles in the shape of burnt angels and Kentucky in the shape of red eyed Jesus and from the mountain where the grapes and dogs lie side by side I don’t know who you are but I love you there is no poetry in me today I am a dry spigot on an elephant’s trunk a gold bee dying on the windowsill

corona 14.

I discovered your artifacts
sprawled across my map
the autistic child
flamingo inflamed face
colitis any child-
hood disease even polio
to keep the train moving
in an eastern direction
this morning I folded
towels warm from the dryer
found a letter with oddly
dotted eyes a girl’s eyes
a girl with a crush
making her way backward
from cloth to paper to lint
I barely twitched
wished you calamity
and ill fortune

coil your scaly tail right down the street brother I am tired collapsing burning damping burning damping my window open for the world to watch if it kneels if it crawls low enough it can see clear to the meadow rabbits ears pressed back building their Easter diorama their vinegar hole

empty head empty head empty head
the truth about New Orleans
is I had history there too
you denied my bared breast
in the elevator the river’s brown stink
as Napoleon counted spoons at St. Helena
we sought lesser saints
Saint Diphtheria
Saint Eczema
Saint Genital Herpes

you stuffed newspapers into your shoes stuck with a boy’s milk-voice I never really wanted to know you I could have been your mother in a gravy-spattered housecoat but I lack the instinct that keeps us from devouring our children their pink pink meat sweet as decay or an infestation of bedbugs any illness that mimics a hillside covered with sweetpeas

a letter twisted in the tide pools
among jellyfish spider crabs and sand fleas
bees hovered over the woman’s body
I don’t forgive
I have as much forgiveness in me as a cat

the godhead pushed deeper than you imagined and we could not stop eating you were the noise maker in the monastery only my kitchen betrayed me water sprung from the tap as bees hovered over meat gone bad

I found a poison that slapped you down
don’t say a thing was key
I am diminished for having known you

Pig and farm report

the first picture is a horse I met on my stroll around the island today I named the horse Horsey in a not imaginative way befitting my frame of brain the second picture is a terrible shot of some of my blueberry vines and the third are my lilacs in their greenly green dresses that are growing right onto my deck those shameless hussies so I no longer have to bend over to inhale their fragrance and worry about my glasses falling off of my face into the deep down below I also planted chives basil and oregano on my deck and dug up one third of the garden and I spoke to The Egg Man who is not Jack he is in fact John an old hippie carpenter who not only raises goats he also has bunnies and peacocks who live in what he calls The Peacock Palace and a wee tiny dog he held the entire time we were speaking John builds sheds like the gorgeous cedar goat house I wrote about a few days or years ago (I put the picture back up plus another) he builds sheds as a business but they are not typical tool sheds some are like hobbit houses some are in fact miniature palaces he calls his business Grateful Sheds John was not a chit chatty type of guy he seemed very reclusive but he took to me right away and told me about the new baby chicks he had and the elder hens he loves who are in their very own palace and I promised him I’d leave him one or two of my books in the ice cooler where he sells his eggs the next time I stop by and that I want to meet his goats and learn their names when ‘all this’ is over and that I used to raise goats in Northern California I guess we were both lonely all of this is only interesting given the fact that I could not roll my behind out of bed before 11 a.m. after crying through the movie Hilary and Jackie when my son returned from his terrifying trip to the grocery store with a four roll pack of toilet paper thank bog I can’t think of a good solid end to this post so I’ll borrow one from the brilliant Michael O’Donoghue’s National Lampoon essay How to Write Good

Suddenly, everyone was run over by a truck. 

THE END.

Pig and farm report

blueberry muffin with a  Clonazepam chaser free lunch for everyone here at the house of zero light I was in the kitchen baking in my happy place when my son came in leaking news and I said SHUT UP for the first time ever because I had hit that joy spot where I was just and only just thinking about butter and sugar and using the last of my vanilla and my sugar but my castle was stormed then my son told me I was having a panic attack and asked if I had taken my meds no I told him I’m saving them for when things get really bad and he informed me that things already were really bad and therefore this diorama for your afternoon enjoyment

corona 13.

corona 13.

finished with clocks my time stopped morning shook its gold fist at my sloth ticktock Rebecca now the parable of Night Nurse and Bitter Angel crawls sideways across the blue carpet howl yes make your god blasted noise at gravity’s sweet lack ticktock Rebecca where are your steady shoes opaque yellow stockings run now run Rebecca calla lily collided her thick rhizome through your mouth into your lung as you slept rise now now drink from the trumpet spathe the basal leaf cleaved against your whelp heart now is your time run Rebecca run across the sea salt meadow through the bullfrog palace the blown cattail the blackberry thicket the blackbird’s bright underwing wake up Rebecca wake up run against the world’s cold brass mouthpiece its last frozen spring

100% full

This is the Old Rodeo with an Illegal Smile  moon

RIP John Prine

I literally slept all day then woke to the news that John Prine died due to covid 19 which is heartbreaking on so many levels of deep fuckery a man I first heard in 1971 who has provided the sound track of my whole damn life a night of big emotions and tears

Angel from Montgomery

I am an old woman named after my mother
My old man is another child that's grown old
If dreams were lightning, thunder were desire
This old house would have burnt down a long time ago

Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery
Make me a poster of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing that I can hold on to
To believe in this living is just a hard way to go

When I was a young girl well, I had me a cowboy
He weren't much to look at, just free rambling man
But that was a long time and no matter how I try
The years just flow by like a broken down dam

Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery
Make me a poster of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing that I can hold on to
To believe in this living is just a hard way to go

There's flies in the kitchen I can hear 'em there buzzing
And I ain't done nothing since I woke up today
How the hell can a person go to work in the morning
And come home in the evening and have nothing to say

Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery
Make me a poster of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing that I can hold on to
To believe in this living is just a hard way to go

Pig and farm report

I made English muffins yesterday the first bread we’ve had since forever? two weeks? I’ve lost track then I made spinach and tomato Benedict with insane hollandaise that I literally have only made once a year up until today and it was every bit as delicious this morning as it is at Thanksgiving I just happened to have a lot of eggs Jack The Egg Man’s chickens have been busy

no filter on that picture the sauce was just that yellow on account of happy birds and a shit ton of butter after breakfast we drove around the island and I met a pig an actual gigantic pot bellied pig who stood in her driveway as if bolted there and chewed as she made eye contact with me her driveway was connected to a tiny house which made the pig look even bigger my son swears the pig was eating gravel but I told him that pigs are smarter than dogs and they are and you could see the intelligence in this pig’s eyes as she gave me a stare that told me trespassers are not welcome not that I would dare touch even a toe on that driveway she was glorious the kid spent the rest of the day working on his ‘57 Chevy a never ending pastime and I played in the garden because it’s 55 degrees out the warmest day of the year so far and my tomato babies are yearning to hop into their beds

I really just came here to tell you about the pig because she was so outstanding  and I think this is my first Pig and farm report with an actual pig

corona 12.

corona 12.

my son has the second apocalypse dream
he is going to the store when a chair
falls from the sky he turns
to run as an airplane wheels
down in flames around him
I ask him to remember
deer in the yard
the tender wild rabbits
a flatbed truck full of fresh
picked corn at the edge
of the Skagit River
he asks if school
is now extinct
will children ever be
children again
we watch the Queen
on television spectral and watery
as a World War II newsreel
telling us everything
every little thing
is going to be okay

Pig and farm report :: whining edition

so far this shopping delivery system is bonkers first I had to wait all day you know like waiting for the cable guy and now BRIAN S WILL SHOP FOR YOU NOW started texting that they didn’t have this could they replace it with that on and on and on





and on






no offense BRIAN S but you are a crappy shopper still probably just a kid and he’s barely started on my list it will be much easier and cheaper and faster and more efficient for me to go during Elderly and Infirm hour and get the goddamn right canned tomatoes and take my chances against the plague ffs I wonder if BRIAN S has got to the ice cream portion of my list yet I wonder if he will get the right mayonnaise or try to substitute it with the olive oil mayonnaise or worse the eggless mayonnaise





it turned out to be a Sunday Sunday after all








I should probably apologize for sounding so pissy but I won’t












in other news Boris is hospitalized and why isn’t the insufferable ignorant pig in the White House there with him

corona 11.

corona 11.

on palm sunday I ask
crucified Jesus to bring
me a bag of flour and I know
the sins of my father
a sodden sorrow man
who stood in the rogue
river to die alone
who held christ like cake
in his drunken bloat heart
on palm sunday I ask
crucified jesus
to bring me a bag of flour
a girl carries a box of food
to my porch I tape
a twenty dollar bill
to the window and I know
the sins of my mother
who hoarded food
and sweaters
and television jewelry
and shoes
and budgies in cages
and filth and rot
and money
on palm sunday
I ask crucified jesus
to bring me a bag of flour
I eat the sins of my father
I eat the sins of my mother
frantic and afraid I ask
crucified jesus
to bring me
a bag of flour
a father who swims
a mother who loves
in the hour of my wealth

Pig and farm report

today was gorgeous but nothing happened much I have felt sick but have been reluctant to write about it here because I am wary of people offering advice especially now during the plague I have a juicy cough the same damn juicy cough I get every year when the trees explode I am taking Mucinex which I had left over from the last damn time I had the juicy cough I wanted to walk down the hill to the new place where they’ve murdered some trees and are now burning the murdered trees in a giant bonfire but I knew that if I coughed even up here a half mile up the hill the tree murderers would hear and let slip the dogs of war and just walking around in my woods tasting and smelling the giant bonfire smoke made my throat dry so now I have a dry throat plus a juicy cough and I didn’t get to watch the giant bonfire and all of this makes me want to get naked and wrap myself in yellow police tape and stand out by the road as a kind of religious icon a triple pronged relic of the catholic church signaling Old Person + Cough + Dry Throat BEWARE!

today’s mood:  WE’RE ALL DOOMED

I ordered some groceries from town things my darling son thought I didn’t need like stinky cheese and ice cream and potato chips and pickles and mayonnaise I also ordered some bread flour which their site seems to have but I don’t know for sure if they have any of it or if they’ll just bring what’s there a big red flashing sign near blinded me when I typed toilet paper the sign read WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE TRYING TO FOOL WE KNOW YOU STILL HAVE FOUR ROLLS LEFT IN YOUR BATHROOM CLOSET so apparently no toilet paper yet the groceries are  supposed to be delivered tomorrow it was stressful as fuck because I’m not used to ordering by brand and I felt new and weirdly disconnected and discombobulated trying to get my order in before the site crashed (again) and angry at the thought of how lucky I am to be able to throw good money after bad as my dad or someone posing as my dad or someone who maybe played my dad in a movie used to say what with the delivery fee and the tip then I thought about the people without internet access who really need this service who can’t get it not even at the library because of the cost and lack of internet then I thought if I actually do get flour I’ll make English muffins because the kid likes them and they make good sandwiches so I spent the rest of the day searching for my English muffin rings to no avail they have gone missing along with the table runner I wanted to embroider the house has suddenly developed a random appetite for whatever I need at the moment and haha the potato salad item I forgot to put on the list?


potatoes.



I did manage to remember that tomorrow is the anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s suicide though



I’m exhausted

Page doing the shopping as per the CDC

Pig and farm report

my son braved the store again today he wore a mask and left early enough not to run in to anyone else except for one woman who mistook him for her husband because of the mask and he reached up for the vinegar for her anyway because that’s what tall people do he did find one roll of paper towels and a bottle of olive oil but not half the items on my list I tried to sign up for the store’s delivery service but I think their website must have crashed because of so many people doing the same

I made us good old fashioned fried potatoes and onions and scrambled bright orange yoked eggs then we went for a random drive all over the island and found a strange mad hatter artist bit of property with goats and a gorgeously built goat house (it’s in the second picture I didn’t want to get too close no closer than the eggs) and yard art and an abandoned Greyhound bus and several pitched tents in which people appear to be living and an honest to bog circus tent

this is not my egg man but I did buy eggs from the new egg man who seems way more I Am The Walrus than Jack this place is very close to the Free Little Library in a Ma Bell phone booth I found last fall and now that makes more sense when the plague is gone I aim on making the acquaintance of The Walrus of learning his goats’ names and scritching between their goaty horns and taking a closer look around

I also saw a horse rolling on her back in the spring grass with complete joy and abandon

today has been an excellent day taken as it must be apart from all other days before and after

Pig and farm report

tonight I felt a tiny hole open in me and I realized that if I relax my bearing for one split second if I stop cleaning and cooking and doing laundry and watching the sky or looking at the television or looking at twitter for even a breath the hole will rip open and I won’t be able to stop crying

today for the first time ever I thought I am going to die alone

because this is what is happening no visitors in hospitals people are dying alone

this is the first time I’ve ever wanted to speak to a psychiatrist and now I don’t have one but I still have hope that tomorrow will be different because each tomorrow every single tomorrow will be different

it’s almost Palm Sunday then the palms will be burnt and the ashes used to draw crosses on the foreheads of believers










I wonder if I can draw a cross on my own forehead if it will count if I will be forgiven or redeemed


















I wonder if I have everything I need to make potato salad

The owl’s nest in my tree

I went to the beach but didn’t get out of the car we are all wearing masks now when we go anywhere everyone though I haven’t been anywhere I planted some wild flower seeds in a planter on my deck this morning and stared at the sky then it started to rain

I have watched no news today but my son just asked me to watch Rachel Maddow with him so I will the other day he asked me to watch something with him and I said no then he said please I’m so lonely and it broke me

we are all lonely together in this brave new