this is how much we use the guest bedroom.

so i'm in a panic because i just remembered that tomorrow is liz's birthday, on top of everything else. i did what i normally do in these situations, which is to go up to the neglected and somewhat smelly guest bedroom that gets used maybe 3 times a year, but which is where i keep all of my treasures that i don't like to think about very much because i like to be surprised sometimes when i wander up there. it's also the room with the inappropriately dubbed "crafts closet" which is where fabric and remnants and yarn tangles and thread and all the associated pointy instruments go to die. maybe twice a year someone worth cleaning up for comes to stay, and i try to shove/organize/destroy the amorphous pointy mass that it has become, the result of countless drunken or hurried frenzies of inspiration and related rummaging. "i know it's here somewhere -- i just saw it last year" type diggings occur on a fairly regular basis and it just gets worse and worse and the pile spreads out until it looks like an art installation about mass wasting and the slope stability of the mind.

so i go up there, and i'm looking around, half thinking of liz, half thumbing through boxes of old art and being nostalgic and trying to remember who painted what, when i look at the closet.

there, on the top shelf, it appears that something has been growing. a cloddy mass of moss is protruding from a tangle of white cotton remnants that haven't been touched since halloween. i edge over to it, half driven by that lovely what-the-fuck? flavor of curiosity, half worried that my slovenliness has given some horrifying swamp moss creature the perfect environment to evolve in. i reach up and tug at the cotton, which has been swirled around and seems to be holding the mossy clump in the vortex of its folds, and as i swing it around a bit more, it hits me.

birds have been nesting in the crafts closet.

i guess bo opened all the windows in the house at some point without me knowing, probably when the weather had that weird nice streak somewhere in january. i've been a little confused about the fact that the air conditioning hasn't been penetrating the upstairs, but i figured it was just another one of those things that sucks about this house. nope. open window. happy little bird family, safe in the comfort of jesus-costume-castoff cotton, building the coolest damn nest i've seen in a long time. i don't know if they've gone -- there're no eggshell bits in there. probably just some little avian bachelor pad that had a resident until i started keeping the door open in there and the dogs scared it off.

maybe liz's present is a birds nest.

pretty little time suck

hair, meet the future. future, hair.

i'm off to the earth day celebration at the tea house. probably no prizes for best fucking hair, but who knows. today i'm feeling spiky and optimistic.

and frankly, kind of bad-ass.

Later that night....


The show was great. awesome to see the tea house blossoming into this regular venue... awesome to be a regular somewhere again. hair was met with much enthusiasm and delight, and it was fun to play the "no, we've met" game with a few people who i'd only seen once or twice before.

feeling like a colorful, whole person. it's amazing what a radical cut and dye job can do, sometimes. i had forgotten this feeling, though i don't think i ever embraced it with so much gusto when i was a kid. i feel unexpected again, changeable, intense. in a word, spiky.

i also feel like my stomach's about to implode. bo decided to come out, but at the last minute, and on the condition that he be allowed to get shitty instead of me. that was cool, except that i drank about a dozen coffees and didn't really eat much of anything. driving wired and shaky on a saturday night is almost as bad as driving with a slight buzz. the paranoia has a different tone, but it's definitely there. DDing fucking sucks.

now bo's passed out, and i'm completely wired. ran through all of Coupling yesterday, and I keep falling asleep halfway through Buffy episodes and I'm in the last season so instead of missing something I keep rewatching the same episodes over and over. I'm about to go watch half of "Never Leave Me" for the third time.

the coffee tension in my neck is giving me the weird sensation that my head is going to fall off.

it's definitely time for bed.

right before head falls off and stomach implodes
friends don't let friends DD.

and yet later...


okay. i went 6 hours without thinking about all of the work on my plate. fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. combination coffee stomach plus bedtime epiphany anxiety means that despite snagging the late shift at the WATR table at the street fair tomorrow, i'm probably not getting any fucking sleep tonight. i can't keep doing this. the lack of decent sleep on a regular basis is probably going to drive me completely insane soon. this is not hyperbole.

god, why did i drink so much coffee? why do i wait until i'm finally falling asleep to start thinking about how badly i'm failing at doing school properly this semester? why in fucking fuck do i volunteer to do things for the department on my weekends?

why aren't there any fucking sleeping pills in this house?

ugh.


WELL into the next day at this point:


exhaustion, jitteriness, irritability and lopsided body pain are all jockeying for loudest fucking sensation ever at the same time, all in the fuck-you-world sensory area of my brain. this is the most crowded, cacophonous, annoying bed on earth (and i'm not even referring to bo snoring and/or farting here).

i think my ankles are taking turns being broken, i'm having sympathy pains from some poor unknown bastard who is somewhere being stabbed in the kidney right now, and i might have invisible lice. all of these things are extremely unlikely, but i haven't really convinced myself that they're impossible and not all happening to me right now.

apparently i am a very weird bird when i am this tired and stressed out and cannot cannot cannot fall asleep. i told you that going completely insane soon thing wasn't hyperbole.

i hope to god that this has been an entertaining read.
also i hope to god that i'm done writing it.

likely not.


last time.


i am batshit fucking insane. that is all.

this is how it goes.

feel like life may be returning to normal. this is a good thing, except that it comes just in time for me to freak out in earnest about the amount of work that i have to do to finish up this semester. right now, that involves writing a paper and studying for a test in geophysics, both tuesday deadlines, both probably going to have the residual suck. at least it's cheryl's class, and she seems to have some understanding of how close to the edge i've been lately. not that she's going to view that as an excuse, but i definitely have daddy issues in the don't-let-down-your-academic-superiors camp... "disappointing" is probably the worst word in the world to me... especially in light of/in the aftermath of receiving a pretty damned impressive award this week.

i don't know. it feels like the light is starting to shine again. i spent hours cleaning the house today, something that i haven't done in months (literally). i'm cooking dinner, i'm talking to bo about normal logistical things that wouldn't have been possible for me to talk about even yesterday. i've lost the acute yearning to be any place but here.

this all probably seems a little sudden, and it is, and because yesterday was the first time that i really vocalized any of this in a post, it probably seems like i've just been overreacting to something finite and insignificant, but this last month has been a real struggle for me. i've been waiting for the clouds to part, and i guess it did get darkest before the sun started to rise. so fuck you, audience, if you think that this was minor, and fuck me, future self, if you read this years from now and you've forgotten. march and april sucked. most of this semester sucked. this is the closest i've ever been to the edge, and i hope to god that it's followed by a period of feeling lighter and happier than i've ever been in my life.

if not, i'm sure we'll all be hearing about it soon.

Edit: fucking fuck fuck fuck. burned dinner. i guess this is normalcy, after all. luckily there were porkchops in the freezer. luckily bo rallied and made dinner. lucky lucky girl that i am. dinner was fucking delicious.

all of that grey matter

it might be because i was raised by hippies, but i've never really bought the idea that depression could solely be linked to chemical imbalances in the brain. stress? yes. generally being unsatisfied with your life? sure. could these things cause chemical imbalances in the brain? fuck, i'm not a neurologist, but it seems like it would make sense. so when i finally realized this morning that i'm depressed, i didn't go straight for the "drug me up and knock me out of my misery" approach. i am closer than i ever have been to considering getting therapy and taking drugs, but i really, really don't trust doctors and medicine, and the thing is, i know that i've been depressed before. i know that i was depressed because shit sucked, and when things eventually changed, i got better. this has happened over, and over, and over in my life. it usually doesn't last this long, but it always feels this bad.

the problem is that i can't really change anything right now without changing everything. the problem is that it's not just depression caused by stress -- it's that the depression is preventing me from conquering the things that are stressing me out. if i make it to the end of this semester, and somehow finish all of the work that's before me, things will start to feel better. but part of me isn't really convinced that it's just the stress.

depression is a damned tricky beast, because you can't tell what's a symptom and what's a cause. it's all just one crushing block of fear and anxiety, and you can't tell which demons came before you were feeling trapped, and which ones are just shadows. they all feel real, and the fear just builds.


my mom has borderline personality disorder. her solution to feeling shitty was always to upend everything that she had and start over from scratch in a sad, manic manner that ruined everything for her and eventually left her without any real connections. this week, this month, i've been feeling like burning bridges and running away, because that's how i've seen this coped with before -- it's the only example i have. but today, after i broke down to cheryl and excused myself from what's probably shaping up to be an amazing petrology field trip, i came home and i did some research and i started to feel better. i don't have to run away, i just have to fix the things that i want to run away from. if i get sane and i still want to jet, then so be it -- that was a real monster. getting out from under this mountain of sadness is going to take a lot of epiphanies like that, and they may be slow in coming, and i may miss the point, and i may fuck up a lot more stuff before i accomplish what i need to.

that's just the way it has to be. all these smarts i was gifted with aren't doing me much good right now -- in fact, i'm pretty sure that it's their fault that i feel this way at all.

alone.

do it again, and again, and again,

and never, ever stop.

last night before raleigh. i don't care. it falls somewhere between a chore and a homework assignment, and i haven't been much motivated about either of those things since somewhere around thanksgiving. 

is this all it is? working my ass off, getting pretty, traveling, explaining things to people who don't understand and probably wouldn't do anything different if they did? and am i supposed to like it? i can't tell; no one seems to be able to explain what the whole point is. everyone can't possibly feel like this all of the time, this isn't alaska.

i don't know if this is senioritis, or wanderlust, or SADD, or what. i wish the house were clean. i wish i still lived out of a backpack. i wish that tonight there was another concert to go to. i wish my new boots were broken in. i wish i lived in a city walled in by water, steeped in the filth of the centuries, sweltering, freezing, all cold grey edges and breathing brick. i wish i could walk forever on these feet. i wish i could live on air.

some day soon, i'm gonna cut all my hair off. 

the title of the blog entry

the bile and the stress have subsided, slightly. there's still a mountain of work, still a packed schedule full of driving and dressing and smiling and talking, but this morning it's not scary. right now it all feels do-able. granted, i'm putting off working on a couple of assignments that have looming deadlines to write about this, but that's okay too.

when i walked out the door this morning a wall of warmth and humidity hit me, and i was sweating within instants, smiling, at home. i needed coffee, and i had to drive to get it. that made me a bit sad. wished i could have just hopped on the old bike to go grab it, sit down, enjoy it and be productive. couldn't. miss living in railroad square, sometimes -- waking up at 7 because it was already 85 degrees in the warehouse loft, slumping down the makeshift wooden stairs, padding across the cool concrete floor, opening the garage door and blinking in the sunlight. those were good days. days like today when the wet in the air just pulls all of the spring smells right into your nose and softens the sounds in the distance give me such as strong sensory memory that if i closed my eyes i'd swear i was back at the lake. except the coffee at black dog is better than what i'm drinking now, and the breeze has a brighter quality than these mountain hollow wisps. it's still, and muggy, and just below 80 degrees. this weather stops time.

i hope this feeling lasts forever. i can deal with anything on days like today. maybe some of this calm is due to the fact that i have a new suit case, which really shouldn't put a dent in the stress scale, but there's something really comforting about leather heirlooms with sturdy zippers and proper handles. now i don't have to live out of the amorphous umbro-teal duffel with mysterious stains and dubious origin when i travel.  the suitcase is solid, clean, smells slightly of starch and has a fly little stripe down the front which says "i am not samsonite. i am together, but cool. look at my owner's shoes -- does this look like a cookie cutter professional to you? no. my owner is a quiet genius, composed, but stylish." i love you, suitcase. you hold everything i need you to.

2 shows tonight, to mark the middle of the cultural part of the last little while. my neck is still sore from the pogo and the dance at gogol bordello thursday night, and i don't know if i'll ever take off the new shirt i got there, and my pants are ripped in new places from all of the movement. the blisters i got in wilmington have new baby blisters underneath, my sides are sore and my driving muscles hurt.

i feel so good.

fuck you, asheville.

i thought i would miss this place when i left. not that i went far, but i've only made the ~1 hour drive a couple dozen times in the two years since i've been gone.

asheville may be the hub of culture in western north carolina, but it is also the mecca of asshat hippies and scene idiots, possibly the only one like it in the world. if shows didn't come here, neither would i.

and there are plenty of shows this week. destroyer last night, which left me wanting a sledge hammer and a megaphone to pummel and yell at almost everyone in the house with. since then, i've had maybe 4 hours of sleep, 5 hours in the field, 2 hours TAing, and 2.5 hours driving, plus or minus whatever i've forgotten, because lack of sleep seems to have shorted my memory a bit, which is not a comfy thing to realize when you're driving through asheville rush-hour traffic and can't remember how you got there. i should be asleep right now, but i'm not; i'm blogging disjointedly about why i hate asheville because it's important that i don't forget.

must never forget the hatred of the drunken dancing girl and her glaze-blue eyes. such a terrible waste of a body. also hugh jackman man. what the drunken hell were those sideburns about? also soft-spoken guy who wanted to hit on me but was too shy. he'll probably end up with some batshit scene girl with poor self esteem who treats him like shit daily. i hate girls. all girls. double dollops of hatred for asheville girls.

***

so we're probably going to move back to asheville in december.

i need to go to sleep so i don't think about that again for a while. luckily i will forget thinking it, because i am so unbelievably tired that i don't even care to spellcheck this motherfucker.

gogol bordello in 3 hours.

hyperstition

when i was a kid i was probably certifiably depressed and definitely edging on paranoid. fortunately for my track record i'm also pretty smart, and i've always been good at covering up my tracks, and playing reasonably aloof. the last weeks of overwhelmaent and school stress have certainly got me in a funk, and i'm remembering what it was like to be 14, but i'm all growed up now so i'm going to try to find something positive about that.

of the things i've been remembering, (happily) just short of reliving, the sub-sane set of rules and superstitions that i lived my young, weird life by are probably the most colorful. i can't remember all of them, but here is the short list of favorites that used to govern my days:

1) when walking late at night, stick to the middle of the road. the patten and color of the lines will guide and elevate your thought process and get you farther in life.

2) never wear any article of clothing backwards or turned inside out. ever ever ever ever. if you do, the fae will fuck up your day at the very least, and may get pissed off enough to shut off your sight forever. yes, this includes socks, and yes, this one i still stick to. it's that deeply ingrained.

3) don't touch iron objects. see fae reaction from number 2. also, avoid running water from pipes (this second one definitely makes hygiene a tricky and confusing issue).

4) don't step on clovers with your boots. i got this one from tyggwr, and didn't understand it well, but it stuck to the point that i still apologize under my breath sometimes to the ground.

5) four leaf clovers are very potent magics, but most people don't believe this because it's only true under the strictest of circumstances:
          - the picker of the clover must not be spotted by the local guardians. you may need to wear a disguise, and you will definitely have to run.
          - the magic only works once the object has been forgotten. so it has to be placed somewhere stable, out of sight, for a long time.
          - giving it as a gift reverses the luck, but only if the recipient knows they've got it. see hiding it above.

6) dusk is magic. but, you should never make decisions at dusk while within earshot of running water or a fountain of any sort.

7) if you listen closely, the trees will talk to you. this is really fucking terrifying, actually, and it sounds crazier than all the other shit above, but there are places i simply would not go growing up because i knew the trees there were pissed off. on the flip, though, there are some trees which will forever feel like family to me. you know how sometimes you have nightmares about family members dying and you wake up and have to call them just to make sure they're okay? i have those nightmares about these trees, but they're all in florida, so i just have to check the news and make sure nobody's done anything they would regret to my tree people. holy fuck that is crazier than all of the rest of this shit.

8) video games will absolutely suck the soul out of you and deplete all of your stored up magical energy. tv does this too, and movies, to a lesser extent. the longer you immerse yourself into someone else's world through a screen, the longer it takes to recover your self and more and more life energy is lost.

That's the wrap-up of the short list -- the tried truths. there were a thousand other little things that would govern my life for a few hours or maybe days at a time, but if they didn't prove out, then they didn't stick around.

looking back over this list, i'm amazed that no one had me committed. of course, this is probably the first time i've ever said any of this in any detail to anyone, much less all of it together in one big burst of crazy. like i said, i'm good at covering my tracks, and the older i get the more pissed off my expression tends to be, so probably nobody thinks that things like this are rolling around in my head. most people are really insecure, and assume that i hate them and leave it at that -- which isn't too far from the truth, but it's certainly not what's fixing a sour expression on my face. granted, it's not the trees anymore, either -- if a tree talks to me these days, i'm more likely to break down and cry. it's just been that kind of month.