Field Notes, #38, December, How To Exist With a Wound (the same title as last time they could all be called this everything could be called this but not in a sad way or whatever)

It is December 31st

basically just what i wrote^

All weekend I roamed the forests near the house where I grew up. The water has receded in winter, revealing secret channels, little rivers, pockets of stones and smooth tree stumps. The mud was frozen and cracked, the whole landscape aliened from itself only a few months prior. My favorite little island, usually surrounded by water, was easy to walk to, not an island at all. The underwater slopes were now visible boulders, not shadowy or unknown, blatant in the sun. When I was younger I spent hours alone out there, laying on the rocks and waiting to grow older, playing games with time. I had my favorite spots, the tree that grew through an old tire, the island, the edge of the water that faced all the far away trees, the top of the mountain where you could look out and see the reservoir and the cars going across the bridge. I was very lonely. I sometimes regret those times of being so frustrated in my loneliness, just because I spent so much time on it, but it did feel maddening because it wasn’t a choice. Part of me knew it was important to be alone because I would not always be, (sometimes i knew that) and sometimes I didn't care about if it built character or not. Yeah  the land was enough to sustain me sometimes...and I did not get bored easily, but yes, it was when I was reminded that even if I wanted someone to be around, I didn’t have many people in my life. I think the loneliness then came from the same place as the not caring about loneliness, it was because I thought that place was so beautiful and I wanted to turn to someone and say can you even believe it? Sometimes it was just enough for me to believe it. Going back to these places is sometimes like shepherding grief, checking to see if I have all my lambs. 

I felt so happy there actually, this past weekend, I don’t know if I am conveying that so I will just tell you. Happy is not a word I use often, not because I don’t feel it, but because I am cautious with declarations, the outright. But when I looked around I was thinking about the loneliness and the waiting, and all the time spent there, and how incredibly lucky I was to be seeing such really beautiful things. Five deer scattered when they heard me walking.

Last night I had a dream about a woman made of water who was born from fermenting Kimchi, she could travel in time. She saved my life after watching me die many times. She told me that she liked to talk to Sophocles and that most of "history" is usually wrong, like the hundred year war was more like 95 years of war and the other parts were not really "war". We were on a planet with beaches and hot springs, she brought me there from space. Before she'd saved me, I was training to be an astronaut and the men in my unit had grown violent and mad on the space station. They always kill you, she told me.

I have been thinking so much the year of the Fire Horse. Right now we are in the year of the Wooden Snake. I am picturing us, on our stomachs, traveling through this grassy knotted valley, and then looking up to this ridge and seeing a giant horse on fire, and we have to meet it, we are headed right towards it, and our body is shedding itself infinitely over and over this whole time, and it feels like we keep losing something, but then we look down and we are still there, and then we lose something, but no we are still there, and we are just headed to the fire horse who is stamping and shaking its mane and we are worried, because we are made of wood, will this warm or burn? What is going to happen? Going to happen, is true, it’s going to happen, and we have to go and happen.

Does it happen? Do I die every time? (Until a woman made of water birthed from kimchi saves me?)

I want to say I’m getting closer and closer to something, but I was probably closer to it when I was born. 

I’ve been really wanting to forgive everyone for everything, I just think that life is really hard. I get this overwhelming feeling where I can’t believe that some people just want to be angry till the day they die, or can’t help it, I just have seen it so many times. I just want to forgive everyone, myself too. But then I get mad because I see something, or I remember something, or I am something, and then that makes me feel like oh god c’mon like wow this fucking body is so brailed. Like we get all these marks all over our brains that you can rub your hands over and read all that shit, no matter what you want to transmit, and it’s in your bones, how do you clean your bones? You have to just go into the mouth of a horse on fire. Well actually, what has been helping me is everytime I think about anything that has to do with “supposed to be” or “want to be” etc. I just cross it out and replace it with just act in accordance to the value of life. Am I supposed to be good? Or forgiving? Or angry? Or productive? Or anything? Just act in accordance to the value of life. Oh okay. Because sometimes that will mean being angry, because of the value of life, and sometimes that will mean to be forgiving, because of the value of life, and sometimes that will mean getting out of bed, because the value of life, and sometimes it will mean laying in bed or basking on a rock, because of the value of life.    If you don’t have a baseline for the value of life just examine any animal like a cat or a squirrel and watch it go, its driven by having been born.

um   I know life can be horrible, it can be other things too. One time I freed a squirrel from where it had been stuck for hours, maybe days judging by the scratchmarks gouged into the side of the tree it was desperately trying to pull itself out by . It was caught right at its midsection in a jagged hole of the lid of the recycling can. I had to lube it up and pull it out by its hind quarters. It took forever and then it just ran off and went back to living. My ex was there and helped, it was one of our first times hanging out. I said, I have to do this squirrel thing right now, you don't have to help if you don't want to, you can go, but I'm gonna do this for awhile. I stole my roommate's hair oil to lube the squirrel. 
and i was thinking i wasn't sure if the squirrel could explain what happened to it, like to its peers or family, it just smelled really good and looked shiny.

I saw this woman made out of ice

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Hello. x Thank you for coming here,
really thanks.

I also included a video be from Christmas Eve. I wanted to investigate this old parking garage I used to hang out at, it was closed now and the office building was no longer operational. When I was standing right at the top this car started doing donuts. 

Humans are really contradictory, and I think a lot of anxiety comes from freaking out about that feeling, but it just makes sense to feel different ways. We live in a world where everything is happening at once, right?

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Homework:

um act in accordance to the value of life 

P.S. They keep trying to get me to correct that ^ to  “with” the value of life but I like “to” better, because it’s almost like referring to a doctrine or something, which it kinda is.

if you have a letter to the editor please leave a comment or you can put it HERE hello? seriously hello? letters are anonymous.

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