I’m not receiving my own content, as a subscriber, to this blog. Something broke, somewhere, and I can’t figure out what.
Are you still receiving this? Send me a line catastrophe.jones@gmail.com or post a comment below so I can see if anyone’s still out here with me in the vast wilds of whatever the fuck the internet’s turned into.
I pull it from my lungs,
from the seat of me,
the floor, the places
where there shouldn’t be
places of something
to accumulate. I want to be
grounded, want to have
roots but then again
I don’t want to be
tied down.
Peel myself out of the layers
and set them all on fire.
Then set all Them on fire
who tell me that I
cannot have both,
that I cannot
have it all
so what if I am Light and Air
so what if I am Spring and Blossom
and Bloom
so what if I am Death Eternal
and the Blackness of Rot that takes it all
so what if I am,
bitch
I contain more
than you can comprehend
and I can be both
beauty and destruction,
both joy and rage,
both accomplishment and lackluster despair.
I can be both
worm and bird,
larva and butterfly,
egg and fucking dragon
don’t believe for one moment that you could
contain my multitudes.
Too many cobwebs cluttering up BrainTown for the last year. A year ago, I was in isolation, riddled with COVID, miserable and sick for Mother’s Day and my birthday. Everything was bullshit.
A year later, I can still feel the after effects of having contracted the plague; my lungs are close to, but not 100%. I feel like I aged 10 years in the last one.
Spring’s often a time where I sort of shake off the dust and feel a little less hollow; there’s definitely something to that whole “Winter makes some folks fucked up in the head” — it me, reader; some folks is me.
I have a lot on my plate, these days — the day job got infinitely busier, the house we bought shortly before the plague is much larger and requires lots more maintenance. My better half tricked me into suggesting we get chickens (I maintain it’s entirely not my fault — I would never have done such a thing like leaping into a massive endeavor without ever fully grasping the consequences, no, not me) and my descendant tricked me into getting them a dog after our first one passed away. Said dog is sleeping behind me in the office, in the only place she ever really wants to be during daylight hours: with me.
I am beset on all sides by conspirators, truly.
But I have also chosen to try new things like auditioning for voice acting work, or dusting off manuscripts and actually shoving them in front of other people for judgment. I’m renewing some old things too, like my rock choir, and Friday Night Meatballs, and firmly settling in to my kitchen witch self.
I make a lot of soup, let me tell you.
The point is, I noticed I’m still alive, and in true ‘I really miss LiveJournal’ fashion, I’m going to scream into the void that is the internet, and fill it up with whatever kind of noise I can think of that feels good. Stick around, watch this space, and come along with me for the ride.
…and I hadn’t been able to access the dashboards for this website for quite a bit. It pissed me off, but I couldn’t figure out how to fix it (you have to get to the dashboard to disable the plugins, but you can’t access the dashboard BECAUSE the plugins are fucked), so I’d get frustrated and just leave it. Then I’d go to write something and realize it was still broken, get pissed again, and just leave i.
Finally, I’ve now fixed it while procrastinating about something else, because that’s how we adults with ADD roll.
Or at least that’s how MY feral goblin brain rolls.
Happy Friday, you gorgeous goblins, you.
I’ma try to finish the 823483293 other things I’m supposed to get done today, and then maybe I can see about putting my brain on display again.
I kind of liked that, while it was working, didn’t you?
Friend of mine recently mentioned he’d gotten addicted to the instant feedback one can get, while putting writing up online, and honestly, I have to admit to a hard same, there, but while he’s quit doing it, saying that part of him is done, I think I need to re-start mine.
Not for the stuff I want to submit, but for the everything else, to iron out what’s in my headmeat, which has grown increasingly weird over the past few years. Maybe it’s just age? Probably.
Jason could feel his heart in his throat again, tight and hot and pounding. He remembered the things his therapist had told him he could do, when he got that feeling. Ground yourself, Dr. Moon had said, by counting the things in the real world around you. You can start with things you can see, or things you can touch, or things you can hear or smell. Pick five things and list them.
It worked whenever he was scared before a baseball game. It worked whenever his grandmother made something that was too slimy to eat. It worked when the noises and lights at the mall were too loud and he wanted to go home, but Aaron wasn’t ready to leave yet.
So… he counted.
He counted the things he could see from where he was: one, the trees right outside the window; two, the window itself; three, the seats and their five-point safety harnesses; four, the red vinyl duffle bags; five, his little brother’s fishing pole—
***
The warmth of the day was ebbing; after sunset, the impossible heat had bled away into impossible cold, and the wet from days and days of rain had rolled up from the coast, rolled down from the mountain, and settled heavy on the shoulders of the forest. The night’s fog had come in hours ago, crept in on little cat feet, licked into every corner, stolen the breath of every living thing, and left the world quieter than either Aaron or Jason had ever seen it.
The first night the fog came, Jason had teased his younger brother mercilessly, about how the dense rolling blanket of it could come down so fast, so thick, you might not even be able to see your own hand in front of you, and when Aaron had lifted his own hand up to check, Jason grabbed his little brother’s wrist, and made him slap himself in the face.
Aaron’s indignant howl of betrayal was easily drowned out by Jason’s roar of laughter, and they’d gone back and forth slapping at one another in sibling love and murderous intent until their father shoved them both in a canoe and said, “Come back when you’ve caught enough fish for dinner.”
That was four days ago.
Three?
***
Jason could feel his heart in his throat again, tight and hot and pounding. He remembered the things his therapist had told him he could do, when he got that feeling. Ground yourself, Dr. Moon had said, by counting the things in the real world around you. You can start with things you can see, or things you can touch, or things you can hear or smell. Pick five things and list them.
It worked whenever he was scared before a baseball game. It worked whenever his grandmother made something that was too slimy to eat. It worked when the noises and lights at the mall were too loud and he wanted to go home, but Aaron wasn’t ready to leave yet.
So… he counted.
He counted the things he could see from where he was: one, the trees right outside the window; two, the window itself; three, the seats and their five-point safety harnesses; four, the red vinyl duffle bags; five, his little brother’s fishing pole–
Wait.
No.
He was dreaming again.
Was he dreaming again?
The fishing pole was still in the canoe, and he was in the third row of the rescue helicopter. A Sikorsky S-92, by Lockheed Martin. An all-weather SAR craft. It said so right on the little metal plate riveted on the passenger-side of the cockpit wall.
Jason remembered reading it when the crew strapped he and his brother into their seats.
Don’t worry, he’d told Aaron. This kind of helicopter can get through the fog, no problem.
And Aaron had believed him.
That was four days ago.
Or was it three?
***
Jason could feel his heart in his throat again, tight and hot and pounding. He remembered the things his therapist had told him he could do, when he got that feeling. Ground yourself, Dr. Moon had said, by counting the things in the real world around you. You can start with things you can see, or things you can touch, or things you can hear or smell. Pick five things and list them.
It worked whenever he was scared before a baseball game. It worked whenever his grandmother made something that was too slimy to eat. It worked when the noises and lights at the mall were too loud and he wanted to go home, but Aaron wasn’t ready to leave yet.
So… he counted.
