But damnit I want it to be true... I want him to desire me the way I desire him.... I want there to be a way through.... I want a happy ending to this story....

And it kills me to even consider the fact that all of those things could just be fantasies not realities and something that only I want and he doesn't give a damn about. And if it's going to hurt no matter what, I'd rather get it over with to start in on the healing because the longer you believe in a lie the worse the hard truths hurt.  If you have to rip a bandaid off just do it, don't agonize and tear out every hair one by one.  So if I'm going to have to face the hard truths, I'd rather just do it because at least it will be honest and real and the truth. 

But damnit I don't want my head to be right. I WANT my heart and my intuition and my instincts to be in the right. I want that so much. 

And it's knowing how much I want all the yearning and needing and the love in the bond to be mutual and how much I want a way to work everything out is what makes me feel like I cannot trust my self and my bias. If I wanted it less, then it wouldn't hurt so badly if it turned out untrue, and then I wouldn't be so concerned about my desires of my heart making me biased away from truth. 

It's like confirmation bias -- but it's a distrust of myself when I know confirmation bias might be in play. To (over?)compensate against the known confirmation bias. Is there a name for that?

But o I want so much for all the synchronicities and all the love and need and dreams and wyrd to be real!!! I want it so much more than I've ever wanted anything for myself in this life. I want it so desperately, I want it to be true selfishly for myself and for him. And I want the bond to be a source of joy and happiness and healing and goodness for both of us.

That's what I want. Even when I don't believe in it and I question it and doubt it, still it's what I want and always want. Doesn't matter how much I doubt or question or rationalize or have a bad premise under all my logic -- through it all I still want the same damn thing. I still want the love and the pull of the bond to be mutual and I want us to find a way to our life paths being share din THIS life and I want that to be where the happiness we both seek is found.

If I wanted him less, I'd be able to look at him when I'm trying to accept letting him go. The reason I don't let me look is because of the yearning and the need and me knowing that if I let me look I won't be able to look away or say no. It always makes me happy when I see him or look at him, but only when I don't let me look at him can I make myself let him go,,,, When I look at him, all I feel is shining with joy and love and how much I want to hug him and watch him light up like it's Christmas morning and he got everything he wanted. And I know he lights up with that sort of joy, especially when he's full of hope, because I've seen it.  

Things were much simpler before I got it in my head that maybe I'm not what he's seeking after all and maybe I'm no part of his happiness and maybe his life would be much better without me and the messiness my honesty caused. Back then I could just love him and radiate that love and want all the best of everything for him and believe we'd figure out our way. I'd not even considered the possibility that maybe the price of that would be me sacrificing my own selfish desires and need of him and the love shared down the bond. Now my head is just too full of overthinking and questions and I can't recognize what is in his best interests or what he truly wants. 

Still I want what I want and that's the same thing I've wanted all along. No matter how much overthinking and questioning makes me lose faith and pull away and try to make me let him go. My head may explore all over the place questioning everything, but my heart is unshakeable in what it wants. 

Sunrise is past and I'm heading home now I'm overtired because I went into work on Sunday for like 15.5 hours straight. I'm not (yet) so tired that my hair doesn't even have the energy to defy gravity in curls, see? 

Yeah, why my hair curls differently on different days is beyond me..... Curl patterns have a mind of their own and nobody will ever convince me otherwise. Respect the curl beast, always, or you may find yourself inexplicably in first year Hermione hair territory. 

But home now. And bed before I do get that tired. I'll have to go back into work tonight (Monday night) for at least doing the end of month deposit. So must sleep before that.

 I'm sure things will look less confusing and tragic after I get some rest. Things always look more hopeless than they really are when a person needs sleep. I'll be back at work tonight (Monday night) to get end of month deposit done. 

Also. I really think everything could be fixed if we could just hold each other in person. Of all the things that can lie (including one's own brain while overthinking) eyes and auras never lie. If we just looked in each other's eyes and hugged each other, I think all the important truths would be obvious to both of us. I really think it could all be solved that easily.... Don't you? I swear that's not just my tiredness and desire to hug him speaking, I really do think that.

I shouldn't let myself give in to what I want to believe true just because it gives me all the warm fuzzies, statistically improbable as all the synchronicities and alignments, because it's still not something real. It's still not foundations building. It's still just fantasies and castles in the air and wanting to make truth where there's nothing real and objective just my wishing. And I know that. I do. I still have nothing solid at this time to even be certain that he even cares about me at all.

It's just like I said, it's hard to try to ground yourself back in reality when the fantasies and your heart are aligning. 

But I still won't move any closer (nor any further) without anything concrete from him. Because I don't have anything tangible.

And anyway. He's probably better off networking as a single man for...whatever it is he's trying to do in NYC. Maybe he'd be better off being left free for the sake of his career or careers or networking or dating or for whatever reason he moved to Brooklyn. 

I'm overthinking again aren't I? I am. I'm sorry. But also I have nothing real to anchor me so I don't go banging off chasing every stray thought and uncertainty and unanswerable question. That's why I said I need something that's certain that I can use as a foundation because without it it's all just the whims of whatever questions most recently crossed my mind. And I ask a lot of questions. I need a way to be able to separate truth from falsehood, blind hopes from false fears. And I don't have any litmus for that winnowing right now. I have only disconnected events, what I want to be true, and what I fear I must accept at some point so better to do so sooner to get on with the work of acceptance/healing.

I have nothing real. And how can a girl invest her heart where there's nothing real at the root of it? Or at least. Invest anything further. I can't dis-invest what is already his. But you don't keep investing where you have good reasons to expect a deep loss. At least not unless you have reasons to expect something better might come from the investment. 

Because it's all such a mess now. And I feel I can't trust my head with all the questions it asks and I know my heart to be biased. My heart has always been biased in his favor. So if I feel I can't trust either to guide me at this point then I want something real, something objectively external to the both of them. Something that is clear and honest and straightforward not up for interpretation.

So. I just. I'm not going to do anything impulsive. I won't let me. I'll not move closer to him or further from him without something solid and tangible and that I can believe in. Something clear as to what it is he wants (or doesn't want) for himself. Something real. I don't need it right this moment -- but I do need it before I'll let me make any move closer or further from him and before I'll extend any further faith or trust.

 O mon bon dieu!!! 

I was just now years old when I realized that after I articulated on Thursday how much I wanted music I can listen to I'm his voice without the issues of the ostra, especially when I have bad migraines when music is the only thing carries me through the pain, and it was not even 26 hours later that his email was sent with the song that's just him and his guitar. Just exactly what I wanted. 

I hadn't realized that timing synchronicity until just now. (Migraines make my relationship with time even more tenuous than it normally is. I use music to anchor me into a measured flow of time set my dance trained inner metronome rather than my otherwise normal state of flow in the eternal now using the flow of time like a fidget spinner.  Things tend to fracture around that punctuation mark in time into "before migraine" "during migraine" "after migraine" rather than normal measurements of timing.) It's been hard on me these recent years that when I'm hurting and looking for comfort in music to help me through the pain I couldn't turn to his voice. his songs. It's just, like a lot of things that hurt/upset me, I've kept it to myself because I didn't see anything anyone could do about it and why burden other people with my sufferings they can't help ease?

O but that's ridiculously sweet and perfectly timed (even if I didn't see it until yesterday) to have shared that. And it literally just went right over my head the timing of that.

Awwww..... 🥰 Now I'm feeling sheepish for all my doubts and overthinking recent tempest in a teapot. I don't regret any of my truths I expressed, but I'm seriously thinking I must be the blindest girl in the world to question what should be obvious. Or at least, what's obvious to the heart but the mind insists on overthinking....everything.... and question it until it makes sense.

Also. I have a thing about the power of speech and silence, especially for women in myths and legends. It's something I spend a lot of time thinking about and writing about (I wrote numerous essays about it in college.) I'm fascinated by the power of silence and the power of speaking one's truth.  It's one of the important cross-cultural timeless tropes of fairy tales, that the tangling of the worst situations occur in the silences and the untangling of every difficult situation is found in realizing the power of speaking truth. Scherezade, Seven Swans, The Goose Girl, Little Mermaid, the second half of the original Rapunzel.... Those are just the first examples from fairy tales and legends that comes to mind. It's a powerful timeless truth. In legends and in philosophy. So I find it interesting that this was such a beautiful example of "Speak your truths. Ask and thou shalt receive." Whether he did it intentionally (but how could he know?) or whether it was just another synchronicity coincidence, still it reaffirms to me the power of speaking rather than silence. 

But realizing the timing on that gift actually does make me deeply soul happy. Inner fire shiny happy. And sheepish over my overthinking and the knots it has entangled. But far more happy than ashamed of myself.

 I had the most vivid dreams last night..... 

Not otherworldly, not surreal, not vision dreams, not past life memories, nobody was represented in spirit animal form, no magic or supernatural elements. Just intensely vivid and real feeling. They were all just ordinary type moments in the present milieu. Nothing particularly happened. They were just sweet and feeling at home and right. But intensely vividly everyday, not in a place I've ever lived. And even though I woke up to watch the sunrise, when I went back to sleep, I was right back there in the vivid dreams.

Incredibly vivid.... But it was their vivid everydayness and sense of rightness that was so striking. 

Still a bit in awe of the vivid realness of the dreams last night. Even after getting up and taking the dog on our morning walk, they're still sitting there right under my skin waiting for me to reach the right way and return to them.

Shit! Gotta flip eggs now or I'll be a very disappointed puppy when those yolks are cooked all the way through.... I didn't have anything else to say here other than the dreams were vivid and good. And now I must brunch. Ciao!

P. S. No worries, the eggs are still runny yolks but not runny whites over easy. Did not overcook. Crisis narrowly averted! Served perfectly cooked over pan seared veggies (carrot, broccoli, bok choy, green beans, scallion, and garlic - basically the "what's in the crisper that I need to use up and how shall I combine them today?" game.)

 O. Curious. 

I hadn't looked in my emails since I got all caught up on them Thursday. I just saw that right when I was stressing myself out yesterday afternoon about not seeing a path through where I'm not a cause of hurt for Eric and also maybe he's feeling like I don't want him which isn't it at all and I got so upset, he was writing and sending out an email.  I double checked the times on both of them. And I still genuinely don't know where or how my brain started in on the "but what if he thinks I don't want him" track. But it did yesterday. And it completely derailed me into deep feels about how that wasn't what's been going on. 

But I only just now saw the email. Reading his email was no part of last night's existential breakdown. Promise.

I really loved the stories and songs from the email and the link to his Instagram post. Both of them made me smile! (yeah, I clicked through the links in the email. I've told you, I have a bit of the martyr in me that you should watch out for, but not the saint. I never promised not to give into temptation, I said that I'm not going to do anything to shift the balance unless I know definitively whether me moving closer or further from him would hurt him worse. I never said I wouldn't look if it was put right in front of me. I will fall for that every damn time.  I said I'd not give in to my desire to follow him just so I could see him regardless of if it might increase hurt if I did.) I particularly appreciated the idea that perfection is an illusion not a real goal. Especially since part of the logic I'd used in telling myself that he'd be better off looking for other options is because I recognize that pick any adjective and put more in front of it and there's another woman out there who is more any of them than me so he could certainly find someone objectively better than me by almost any given set of metrics. But if it's not perfection he seeks, then it all depends on what it is he does want. I still don't know what that is for him, but there is reassurance to me somehow that it's not perfect. And I found it interesting and important that it's not the perfect he's seeking but moments when he feels he has "the right place at the right time with the right song." That's a man who knows what he wants, even if he doesn't know exactly how he's going to get it, and isn't going to settle for "almost right."

Also. It was very strange to me, but the song No Need seemed as if I'd heard it before. I have a good memory for songs I've heard, by the time I've heard a song three times the lyrics are indelibly in there and I'll remember it forever. And the part of my brain that remembers songs INSISTS I've heard this one before. But I have no idea how or when I would have heard it. Makes no sense. No sense at all. But my brain is so INSISTENT about knowing it already.  And my memory for words set to melodies that I've heard is never wrong. I just wish I could figure out where I know it from and where I've heard it before.

I don't have an answer for that. Neither my brain's insistence it's heard that song before nor the synchronicity of that timing yesterday.

But I do know that the stories and the songs in his email made me happy. Very happy. Even if I didn't check my email until a couple days after he sent them.

 Sorry I was a lot yesterday. There was just a lot of anxiety and turbulence inside me about things. 

It upset me to think that he might feel rejected by me the way things are now -- because that's not what's going on or what's ever been going on.  And the realization that could be how he understands what's been going on had me really distraught. I don't know why it was bothering me so badly all of a sudden. It just suddenly was bothering me so much I couldn't think or feel about anything else other than fixing that misperception.  It's not that I don't want him, there's never been such a time. It's that since October 2018 I've considered myself to be an option made toxic for him. It's not his fault and it's not his choices that made it happen, but I don't see how me being in his life doesn't create tension and disappointment and rejection in him given the difficulties raised by the ostra and my strict adherence to respecting boundaries of that sort. And it's not something I can do anything to alter or change or make better -- I can't remove the ostra and it's a deep level instinctual response in my soul that you don't transgress a boundary someone else puts up. Their boundaries are a matter of their free will, and free will is sacrosanct. It's not without consequences, but it is sacrosanct. It doesn't MATTER if the fear and defensiveness was rational or irrational, if it's determined that you're a danger to them and someone chooses ostra as the means of protection then you obey. You go into exile or you take the cup of hemlock because it's not for you to determine if you're actually causing the damage they claim, it's for you to accept that the individual or community feels you are a threat to them. Rightly or wrongly, they feel threatened and have chosen ostra as the way to deal with that. It's like, if someone tells you that your actions hurt them, it's not for you to say 'well i wouldn't be hurt by it" or "no sane person would be hurt by that" it's for you to acknowledge you caused them hurt and to apologize and if it was accidental tell them so and then ask how to avoid such hurt in the future.  I get that my response to ostra doesn't make sense to a modern perspective, but I don't know any other way to respond than polite wary distance and being careful not to transgress the boundaries others have made. And that doesn't provide support and growth to someone when it's his own sister and everything he creates with his best friends and passion project that you can't have any response except polite distance. I don't expect or ask him not to care about his own sister or about his band but I can't feel anything regarding either of them due to the ostra. And anyone would be hurt when people/things that they love intensely are rejected and not appreciated. And I can't alter this because it's a boundary that isn't mine and that I can't now cross. It's why his sister's choices and actions in 2018 put him in the middle and make it his pain and his suffering that is the price of her choices. 

And it's because he gets caught in the middle and hurt by those choices and the consequences of them  that I have viewed myself as a toxic option for him ever since October 2018. It's not me rejecting him, it's that I don't want to be a source of pain or hurt to him. And it seemed to me that if I removed myself from his options then the risk of him being hurt that way would go away, he can't be hurt by my polite distance and indifference to people/collectives he cares dearly about if I'm not in his life. And that made sense to me because he's not the sort to lack for options, he's good looking and talented and smart and funny and there are plenty of women out there ready to date him and give him needed ego boosts and be besties with his sister and love everything his band does. Women who don't have this complication created by a defensive response to a truth someone didn't want to hear that can only hurt him being in the middle of it. I didn't think he'd miss me given he has so many potential options. I assumed that. 

Maybe I shouldn't have assumed that. Maybe I should have understood that the bond and the memories and the longing and all the deep love runs both ways. But I didn't realize or think of that when I assumed the kindest thing for me to do was to let him go completely and that would be the best way for me to be sure I wouldn't hurt him with my enforced indifference respect for boundaries other made. I didn't realize at that point that the tension in a string is a force felt equally on both ends it is secured to and that he would hurt as deeply as me over any separation or absence or inability to reach me.  I genuinely thought it was only me I was hurting in trying to let him go and that for him I was giving him a freedom to take any other opportunities he might desire, ones that weren't already known to be complicated by things that would hurt him. I didn't ask him what he desired, I assumed that whatever he desired he could more easily find it if I were not a stumbling block that could only cause him hurt by my presence.

It's only fairly recently, since early Sept 2021 when I was watching the video for No One Will Miss Me, that I realized that in trying to save him from being hurt by choices he never made but which have consequences that put him in the middle I had caused him the much deeper hurts by making me unreachable and absent from his inner self and taking away from him every avenue he'd finally found this life to reach me in the real world. I genuinely hadn't realized until then that my absence and not being able to reach me and not getting a response from me could be hurting him and upsetting him far worse than dealing with the mess made in 2018. My conscience still weighs on me over having hurt him and I don't know what to do or how to make it better.... The obvious answer would be that if my absence upsets and hurts him, then it is my presence that can make things better and help us find paths toward healing. But is that really a good answer or is it just what my selfish longing WANTS to be the answer? How can I be sure that's an objectively good answer as opposed to a subjectively biased whim of what I WANT to do? And how do I handle the fact that my presence will still make tension that he's stuck in the center of because of the choices made in October 2018? How can I decide how to act if it seems to me that both my absence and my presence are going to be a source of hurt to him in present circumstances? How do I choose which will upset him more and be harder for him?

And so I decided that the third path was that it isn't my choice. That if nothing I can do can keep him from being hurt caught in the crossfire of other people's choices, then I want him to have a say and a choice about what it is that he wants and needs and desires most. Because he can know what cuts him deepest and hurts worse in a way that nobody outside of him can know. And it's his life path, not mine or his sister's or anyone else's that is at stake -- it's his happiness HE seeks for himself and his life that I want him to be able to make his. And I can't do that if I try to assume and guess and make choices for him without asking him what it is he wants. No more than me assuming that removing myself from his options could be beneficial for him reaching the happiness he seeks. Which is when I decided that if I can't trust my own choices not to cause him harm, then I'd stay put and move neither closer nor further until I understand what it is HE desires and what HIS choices are and what matters most to HIM. Because knowing that makes all the difference to me in how I can choose a path to cause him the least hurt and the least harm that it's in my power to choose.

Yesterday, I was just really upset all over again that I can't seem to see or find a way for me to be a source of goodness in his life. All I can see right now are ways that I can upset or harm him whether by my absence or my presence. And it seems like all my absences hurt him far worse than my presence ever could but I'm just not certain that's true and he's already been hurt and upset and sad enough that the last thing I want to do is assume something that would would selfishly make me happy but would make things harder for him.... And I hate feeling stuck and that I can't do anything right no matter how hard I try to find the way through to cause the least harm and create the most good. 

If I listened solely to my own heart and my own desire and my own needs, I'd just say "fuck everything else. I just want him in whatever way I can have him in my life" and I'd add back his social media accounts so I could see him whenever he chooses to share anything and I'd take every opportunity I could make to be wherever he is and to see him again. And if given a chance, I'd hug him tightly not let go until I was certain he understood that as far as I'm concerned there's nothing about him that I reject, nothing about him that I don't want, nothing about him that makes me anything but happy. That's what my heart tells me to do and keeps insisting is the only right way out, to choose him in any and every capacity and way that i can have him in my life.

But I don't know if that's even something he wants or would choose. Maybe acting on the impulse of my heart's urging would just be acting further on my own assumptions, a course of choice making that hasn't gone well in dealing with him. Every time I run on a choice because of my assumptions, I seem to accidentally hurt him and so I've decided that in anything that affects the both of us it's important we make choices together -- it's our bond not my bond. The choices are about both of us and need to be made by both of us and take both of us into account. Which is why I'm waiting to learn from him what it is HE wants for himself and his own happiness in this life.

I know there's a way out or through, there always is. I just don't know how I should act given I can't tell if my absence or my presence would cause more hurt to him and that I don't know what it is he truly desires. I need to know that answer as to what it is he truly wants for himself for me to figure out my best course forward regarding Eric. 

 I guess that does put a huge onus on him expecting him to have the courage to cross that unknown and being unwilling to do so without certainty. "If you had faith the size of a mustard seed" and all that..... 

Is it fair of me to ask for certainty from him without giving him such certainty? I. No. It's not fair of me to ask for what I can't give him directly. I mean I can say here, "I would choose you and always you for any possible time I can have you so long as that's what you want. I'd rather a handful of moments with you than a lifetime with anyone else." That's my truth, but I'm not going to speak it to him to affect his choices or desires, to influence him with my needs and my desires. And I can affirm that's how I feel down the bond that all I want is him for however many moments I can have a shared path with him in this life. But it's not giving him tangible affirmations or a real world foundation for him to act upon. Not without me telling him to be certain he knows.

But. The thing is. The choices of his sister and the choices made in the name of the entire band in October 2018 affect things in his life that matter dearly to him. I have no relationship with his sister, she's not my sister, and so I don't give a fuck if I ever do. I'm fine with accepting an ostra of never having her in my life and never crossing the line myself to be in her life or know anything that happens in her life. That's about her boundaries, her choices, what she needs for her life - ain't shit to do with my boundaries or choices. But me being in his life puts him squarely in the middle of things, because she's his sister and it's his band -- they are important pillars of his life and his passions and his love. The only thing that makes it hard for me with moving on to other music about the band is that it means letting him go and that's hard hurts me to do. But as far as his sister is concerned? Why should I give a damn about her or wanting to disrespect her boundaries she created? I didn't lose any relationship with her because we didn't have one in this life outside my admiration of the music and what I knew of her public persona. None of which is an actual personal relationship - respecting her boundaries she created to behave as if she doesn't exist doesn't cost me any real emotional investment.  Not being able to enjoy the songs anymore does cost me, it costs me the joy I remember they gave me and they would still give me if not for the imposition of the ostra - but there are other bands and other songs out there to love and to being me joy. The loss of joy created from Delta Rae's music no longer bringing me joy is an easily replaceable loss, there's other music can bring me joy and as long as the ostra stands nothing created by that collective or involving Liz or Britt's creative input will bring me anything but wary distance and distrust that I might overstep the boundaries of the ostra.  That's the price I pay for their boundaries they created in 2018 when I spoke a hard truth they didn't want to hear that the country music caused me nerve pain due to my synesthesia so it would stop me from attending future Delta Rae shows. Trying to sell out to fit country radio may be a thing of the past, but the consequences remain from their choices and their ostra they created in response to being told the truths they didn't want to hear.

And the thing is, it may not matter to me too terribly much to have no relationship with her or to not have the band's music touch me in my life any longer, but they are both integral to his life and his emotional/mental health. It doesn't affect me to respect the boundaries Britt created, but it affects him and it will hurt him if/when it puts him in the middle of things. And it means that because of the choices Britt made in October 2018, for herself personally and in the name of the entire band,  I don't feel I have any fucking right to put him in the middle and hurt him by the estrangement created by her boundaries and her choices. How can you ask someone to take you into their life when doing so is a source of tension and pain with someone who is woven through his emotions and experiences of this entire life and whose happiness and place within his life matter to him?  I can't ask that of him... I can't put him in the middle of the cross hairs of her choices.... I can't knowingly demand that I be a source of pain and anguish in his life by my presence and the tension that creates with his sister's choices and boundaries.... I just.... How could I ask that of him? What sort of person would I be if I cared more about my selfish need of him than the mental/emotional distress having me in his life would create given his sister's choices and boundaries? 

I just. I can't do that to him.... I just can't.... I'd look at myself in the mirror and grow to hate myself for the responsibility of pain that I knowingly demanded he take on..... I know me and I know that I would... I'd blame myself and my selfishness for every time he was hurt caught between this. I can't ask him to be in the middle of the consequences of the choices his sister made and has defensively stood behind since October 2018. 

Which is why I can't let me influence his choices and his needs by giving him certainty about my own desires.  His choices should be his to make, not based on my needs.  If it's about me, about my wants and my desires influencing him toward choosing something he could otherwise live without, then I will carry on my conscience every scrap of pain he feels at being caught between my strict honesty adherence to the old laws of ostra and his sister's chosen boundaries and the consequences of her defensively standing behind maintaining them. Every time he hurts over my painful politeness without warmth to her, every time he feels caught between choosing one of us, every time I can't give a damn that she's hurting over some loss in her life because to care is to cross the ostra she created and a boundary she set - I'd blame myself for his pain. Every time he makes something beautiful with the band and it can't reach my emotions because there's that glass wall of the ostra in the band's name, it's going to hurt and disappoint him. And all that hurt inside him generated by me respecting the ostra I wouldn't blame him it exists and I wouldn't blame her or her choices - I'd blame me because it's me being in his life that creates the tension and the pain.... Rightly or wrongly, I will blame myself for that pain in him. Which is why I can only bear that path if it's what he wants and needs and it would cause him greater pain to lose me than to be stuck in the middle of these choices from 2018 and their consequences. It can't be about my selfish desires a..... If his choices are based on my selfishness and my wants, then the weight of my own guilt over me feeling I'm a source of greater pain than joy to him will break me. 

Which is why it's now about his choices and his desires and his needs - not my own selfish wants. Because of the choices his sister made in 2018 and because she's his sister it has consequences of him stuck in the middle of it. I don't give a damn about having a relationship with her, that is what it is and she created her boundaries. They're hers. I'll respect the letter of the law of ostra from her choices. Only.... I do care a fuck of a lot about hurting him by him being in the middle and being hurt about the lack of any relationship or affection from me toward his sister or anything he creates with his band..... 

Her choices in 2018 are what fucked over me willingly approaching him and encouraging him. Her choices in 2018 are what sent me running and made me try to take the bond away from him to protect him from being caught in the middle of it. But it's me I'll blame for the pain that he feels about my obvious polite distance and lack of warmth and disinterest in events of her life.... It doesn't matter that the boundaries are hers and the choices were hers - me being a source of pain to him is something which I will blame myself for..... And it means my selfish desires and needs are something for me to keep to myself rather than tempt him with them knowing it requires he be caught in the middle of this.  

That's the battle inside me to try to let him go that I've been waging since 2018. That's what's keeping me away. Not that I don't want him, it's that I don't want to be a source of pain to him and I don't see a way for me not to be since these choices and these boundaries were made in October 2018. 

So maybe it's not fair of me to demand that I have certainty it's what he truly wants before I'll allow me to come back any closer to him - but to knowingly come closer with this hanging over everything and to entangle his emotions because of my desires/needs would be an act of intentional cruelty on my part. Especially if it's not something he sincerely wants/needs for himself. Because if it's my desires and my needs that motivate things, then I'm buying my pleasures at the price of his pain.....and that would weigh so heavily on my conscience....

P. S. On the drive to my parents house to watch figure skating with my maman, I turned on the car and Tiny Dancer started right away on 92.1. it ended, I started station hopping, landed on 105.5 for the end phrase of a Lumineers song (no words, I just recognized the instrumentation and melodic/rhythmic lines) and then Tiny Dancer started. So that was the Universe's answer to my anxiety. Elton John's Tiny Dancer. You know: 

"Pretty-eyed, Pirate smile.  You'll marry a music man. Ballerina, You must've seen her, Dancing in the sand. And now she's in me, Always with me, Tiny dancer in my hand... Piano man, He makes his stand, In the auditorium. Looking on, She sings the songs The words she knows, The tune she hums . But oh, how it feels so real.  Lying here, with no one near, Only you and you can hear me. When I say softly, slowly:Hold me closer, tiny dancer. Count the headlights on the highway. Lay me down in sheets of linen.  You had a busy day today." 

So if you believe in signs, that's what the Universe gave me. Two doses of Tiny Dancer for my drive to my parents house after I over thought myself into that mess once again..... 

"I know a place where no one's lost. I know a place where no one cries. Crying at all is not allowed, Not in my castle on a cloud."

O I stand by what I said before - I can't know what he actually wants except by him telling me in his own time and his own way. And me assuming has caused me to fuck things up worse - so to avoid any actions based on assumptions not truths, I'm not willing to take any steps closer or further from him until I get clarity from him as to what is truly in his best interest, what the happiness he seeks is composed of. That hasn't changed. 

But I'm also not going to lie or pull my punches as to where we are and what choices/actions got us here. Not to assign blame, but just because only in acknowledging the reality and how it happened can you effectively alter things for the better.

Also though. I do think it beyond tragic that I can't just hug him whenever I want or have him hold me wrapped in his arms just because he wants to. That's never going to feel right to me and I think we need to rearrange the world and reorder our lives so we can hold each other any damn night we want. In reality. With our physical arms. Not just psychically using the bond to hold the other in love, I want to physically be held by him and wrap my arms around him and feel against my skin the realness of him. We've somehow fucked things up royally in any life we can't do that..... Including this one so far. 

But maybe that would never have been in this life. Because maybe that isn't any part of what he wants. Maybe I'm no part of what he wants this life. So maybe even if things hadn't gotten so fucked up, that still would never have come to be. Because maybe....

And so on and so on is how I get tangled up in the maybes that break my heart, the maybes that I can neither accept as his Truth nor can I dismiss as baseless fears that have nothing to do with his reality. And only in being able to assign all those maybes and what ifs into one of those two categories can I ever deal with them and dig them out of my brain. But I can't do that with clarity and certainty because they are all predicated on me knowing what it is he truly desires in his life this life - and at this time that's an unknowable for me unless he tells me. Sure I have the love and reassurance down the bond and everything that comes down it, but that deeper knowing needs foundations in reality so it's not solely in my head. Those foundations are the answer to all the pernicious maybes and what ifs that drive me to question him and his desires for his life and if I belong among them. 

As Thoreau wrote "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." That's what I need most, the foundations for the castles in the air, to have confirmation from him that I am something important to him he wants in his life. So I know whether I should be fighting like a hellcat against any and everything that would come between us or if I should be accepting his choices letting him go and getting out of his way so he can find the happiness he seeks this life. Because I can do either one of those, one more passionately than the other since it's buttressed by my own desires but I can do whichever course I am called upon to do for his sake in his best interests. I just can't do both and I honestly can't tell which of them represents what he wants for himself this life, which he would have me choose if he were given a say in it. I don't know which of the two helps him and which one hinders him and so I commit to neither fully, just swing wildly back and forth like some some fucked up game of badminton played between the maybes....

Which is why I decided I can't just keep swinging between the maybes and assuming about his heart and thus sometimes helping him sometimes hindering him from what he wants. I don't want to fight against him keep him from what his heart desires - I just don't have certainty or clarity what that is. So I decided it's better I not assume, that I wait for him to let me know in his own time and way what his truth is as to what he needs for his happiness he seeks. And since moving closer or further from him without that knowledge is once again choosing one or the other set of assumptions about his desires, I am instead going to use all my energy to make me stay put and wait for something from him that can be used in the foundations, that isn't built of my assumptions or my wishes or my worst case scenarios. Something real and from him directly that can be the solid cornerstone on which to build. 

And I know I may never get that... I could grow old (well, even older) waiting on ships that never arrive if I intend to wait for something solid and real from him as to what he desires for himself. Especially if the insidious maybes that insist I'm no part of anything he wants or is looking for this life are the maybes telling me truths. But what else am I to do? Acting on my own assumptions rather than waiting for him to tell me his truth has caused me to break a lot of shit and to do hurtful things like make me completely inaccessible to him via the bond and to take away hope that there's a way to fix this get things right.... I don't want to destroy things that can't be mended just because I listened to a maybe that broke my heart but which I told me I had to accept if I wanted to move forward. And I can't stop me from potentially doing that unless I make me hold still while I wait for certainty directly from him rather than listening to assumptions. 

So I'm doing my best to hold still, not to move any closer or further out of his reach. At least until I know for certain, and that I can only gain from him whenever he's feeling his strength and courage to tell me his truth. So I won't close down the bond or turn him away from it when he reaches me that way and I'll read all his emails and what paths of reaching me he still has open to him - but I won't be seeking him out to reestablish following him on any social media contacts and I won't go running to his shows in NYC like some rom com heroine on the Hallmark channel. I don't know that that's the storyline we're in, no matter how much my heart wants it to be our love story. I need to know what he wants for himself, I need to know his truth, so I can distinguish among all the maybes which ones are real before I'm willing to act in ways that could either lead to further heartache or lead to healing. 

And. When your heart is so deeply invested in the outcome, it's REALLY fucking hard to wait and do nothing even if you recognize that it's the best of your courses until you get better intel, something solid you can cling to know is real and true. The brain wants decisive action so it can move forward, making yourself wait in non-action until the time you have greater clarity is much harder where your heart is rooted. Because the stakes are higher the more you care. And I do care. Very intensely and very deeply. If I didn't care, I could have said, "fuck this bullshit" and just moved on, forgotten him, and turned to other people and things to fill my time in this life. The very fact I can't do that is testament to how much I care which of the maybes is his truth, how deeply it matters to me to get this right and to do right by him. 

[Post title: lyrics to the song Castle on a Cloud from Les Misérables]

 Sometimes, he's very intense down the bond with his love and I never quite know why....Right now is one of those times. Perhaps he's just gone to bed or something. Je ne sais pas. I have not gone to bed, I haven't even gone back home. I'm just finishing up this stack of alphabetizing/filing then I'll rinse out my cup and tea strainer from my oolong tea and head home. (Unmedicated ADHD, so caffeine never keeps me up. It actually calms my brain so I focus better instead of having shotgun scattered associative thoughts about everything all at once. Often I'll drink coffee and if I have too many cups of it, it will make me curl up  get sleepy. Especially if I haven't slept in a long while. Many times I'll make a pot of coffee and fall asleep before finishing it if I've not been sleeping regularly.)

Had a surprise visit from Mikaela today. The 16 year old got dropped off by her mom around lunch time and then she hung out with me and the animals and the fire and got caught up on some math assignments.  There's some things right now in her life that aren't so great, her father is mentally unwell and has been her entire life, and she needed some quite peaceful time at my flat.  Which is basically a combination library, art gallery, tea shop, plant nursery, lol. I don't have as many plants at home as at work because my condo only has east facing windows so I only have sunrises and morning light for natural light AND my cat likes to chew on my plants whenever he's being an asshole or passive-aggressive angry at me for not being home often enough so I try not to have plants that would be highly toxic to him.  Weirdly, he doesn't try to chew on my African violets -- they're the only plants that are consistently safe from his munching.  (Also I have some massive plants at work, a lot of them I've inherited from people who didn't want theirs anymore and I was too kindhearted to let them die. Including fiddle head ficus and rubber trees that were around when my grandfather was alive, we have customers who have asked if they can just come sit on the couch in sales hang out with the happy plants. And there are employees past and present who find it strange that a computer repair shop and IT managed services doubles as a greenhouse, lol.) But anyway, Mikaela came over to join me and the dog and the cat on our cozy day with the fire in the hearth and George Winston music and lots of cups of comforting tea. She brought lunch for us and everything to make s'mores (including vegan marshmallows -- I can only have vegan marshmallows or ones labeled kosher or  more specifically made with beef gelatin. Kosher marshmallows are harder to find, but they do exist. Also, while you can roast vegan marshmallows and they turn golden burbly or catch fire just the same so they make great s'mores, they do NOT melt the same so except when I can find Kosher marshmallows, I'm sol when it comes to rice krispie treats without Kosher marshmallows.)  And we had a good talk about things she needed to talk about and she got caught up on her math assignments she was behind on. I also told her that once she has her license, i can give her a copy of my keys so she can come over any time she needs a quiet peaceful haven with cuddly animals and a large selection of tea -- as long as she doesn't mind that I sleep whenever the mood strikes my fancy as opposed to on any normal schedule. 

And then also, my grandma is not doing well right now. We're trying to figure out why. (Her brother-in-law passed away day after Christmas. I've told you, I should never be allowed to not have snow at Christmas time -- every time I have no snow for Christmas someone on the Jewish side of my family dies. The first time it was my grandpa on Christmas Day in the third grade, the second was my great-grandma on Christmas Eve in college while I was in Florida visiting other family, and this time was my great-uncle Mike the day after Christmas.) She's been unwell and very disoriented ever since and doesn't even know that one of her closest friends since kindergarten died this week.  We're not looking forward to giving her that news  But right now, she's physically unwell and having a lot of cognitive issues and very dehydrated and we don't know why. I may have to take her in on Friday for some labs and to see her doctor and such. Depends on when they can get her in and how tomorrow (today?) goes.

Today was rather rough, with hard news and difficult life things with people I love dearly. I'm going to finish up these last few things then take my dog home. And once I'm home probably dose myself with chamomile tea head to bed and curl up into the comfort of the bond right away. (I'm incredibly sensitive to chamomile unless I'm very VERY well rested. Like taking the batteries out of the robot physical "and I'm done" response to it.  I actually don't even let me drink any tea with chamomile until I'm home somewhere I can sleep -- I don't even let other people drink chamomile in the car if I'm driving because just the smell of it has a soporific effect on me.)  May be sleepy enough to not need the chamomile tea.... Stayed up all night last night through the bitter cold feeding the fire to keep my promises to the crows so they'd have somewhere to sleep and stay warm. They may just be birds, but they're my friends and they protect me and give me gifts and a promise is a promise is a promise. If I'm home and it's bitterly cold out below 0F, I keep a fire going for them until the temperatures are above 0F so they can curl up in the warmth next to my chimney to sleep.

*yawns* Time to layer up and head home and then to bed with me. I am le tired. And I have every intention of curling up into his love and staying there until I get out of bed. Because it's there and it makes me happy.

I can make me accept I have no place in his life due to his sister's choices made in the name of the band he built his life around - I won't claim to like accepting that and that there aren't times it makes me so sad I feel I could drown the world in my unshed tears or times it makes me so angry that I'm tempted to destroy everyone and everything that gets between him and me, but I can make me accept it is necessary in the name of his happiness this life. After all, I have a streak of the martyr in me, not the saint. Make me believe that it's for the best for anyone or anything I care about and I'm willing to sacrifice my own lives as many times and as brutally as it takes for the sake of something I believe in - but I never promised to do it gracefully or without cussing at the fates that demand it of me. But unless he himself gives me the ostra or I start getting inappropriate overlays from him of him intimate with other women, I can give him up in my life but not in my heart or soul. And I can be brutal with my heart in the name of his life's happiness, but it numbs my soul to try to deny the love that exists between our souls or to deny myself the comfort of his love when I'm tired or sick or hurting or just heartsick. Trying to deny myself the warmth and comfort of the bond and the love that  bridge is forged from, it brings me to the hollows with a sense that there's no way out of them and I'll be hopelessly helplessly stuck there where there's no emotions just numbness and emptiness and loss for as far as I can sense and see. An eternal endless Tartarus within my soul with no hope I'll ever find my way out again. That's how it is inside me when I try to make me believe that he doesn't love me or try to carry on while denying myself the bond between us. It doesn't matter the reasons or how I try to hide that emotionally from anyone knowing, inside me is all just unending emptiness and numbness and purposelessness if I try to deny myself the bond between our souls and the light of love from which it's forged.  And after all. Across all my lifetimes, I'm known for my stubbornness not my cruelty, my honor not my pride, and my ethics not my ego. So I can accept that for his sake I can't have him in this life no matter how intensely I have always wanted and still want him in my life as much and as deeply as I can have him -- but I can't deny myself the comfort and healing in turning to him via the bond and snuggling into that connection. Not without sending myself to the hollows without any promise or hope there's a way out of it....and I won't do that to me again without a damn good reason. And the only reason good enough is that it's what he wants and that somehow my reaching for him via the bond hurts him or harms him and he's better off somehow with it severed and only silence in his soul where the energy of me and my love flowing into him always has been. And tonight, I'm too tired and too mournful over hardships in the lives of people I care about for me to even consider that sort of self-denial. Tonight I'm going to curl up into his love and delight that he exists, that at least we have the bond to reach toward each other regardless of distances between us. That's my plan. Bonne nuit.

Next morning update: 

Somehow after posting this, I went back to edit it and reverted it to a draft. I was very tired and it was like 3am. But I'll put it back now that I've realized. Just took my dog out on short walk, should make me something to eat at some point. But I have a weather migraine threatening in its early stages and I don't really want to eat something then get myself to the point I'm throwing it up...  And this high pressure system before it shifts and the intensity of this front is a bad one for my migraine triggers..... I'm just going to curl back up in bed listen to music until neither movement nor light stab my brain with such intense pain it makes me dry heave. Food can wait until after this front passes through.

And the physical pain of my migraines is bad enough, please don't ask me to endure it without music that reminds me time is still moving forward I'm not stuck in a place where there is only complete stillness and intense pain - music through my migraines reminds me time is still progressing and there is healing and light that doesn't hurt on the other side of this time of pain. I always turn to music for comfort - lately just instrumental. Mozart today. The choices of his sister to invoke the ostra on anything involving her or the band and to deny me the comfort of his songs and his voice since October 2018 is harder than anything else when I'm in a migraine.  Because that's when I would give anything for the comfort of being able to listen to his voice singing anything, just to listen to it for the pleasure of the colors in it's timbres and for my selfish personal joy that he is and I can at least have that little touch of him in my life.  Mostly now since late August 2019 when I accepted his choice that he stands by what has been done in the band's name and the system of injustice and ostracism, I just listen to piano or strings when my migraines get bad. There's nobody else's singing voice but his I want to hear, and I can't have that now. I still have the Delta Rae songs, they didn't stop existing, but there is no comfort nor joy for me in listening to them now. As soon as there's any vocals from Britt or Liz, even backup harmonies, there's only wary distance like a wild animal before it runs away and my respect for an invoked ostra requiring I keep myself from anything that would cross that boundary. And so there's no comfort for me in any of the recordings I have of any of his songs, nothing for me to cling to in defiant joy that it is and it exists outside my current pain and that it can carry me through these long moments of electrical storms and nerve pain inside my brain. At least they can't take from me piano melodies and strings arrangements even if their ostra has taken from me all joy in the band's songs and all comfort when I need it most in what I have available to me of his voice and his songs. 

Mozart today though. That's what I'm in the mood for right now. Mozart. 

 It's not that I don't ever play dice with death and Texas hold em with the Fates - I have plenty of stupid life threatening driving choices amongst my "I should be dead" stories I've made in this life. I have more I should be dead stories than anyone else I know and far more than anyone who loves me should be comfortable about. For most people's sanity, it's best I don't talk about them. Plenty of them are miracles, not just minor ones, that I'm still alive -- and that does not include times where I personally intervened used my gifts to avoid dying yet.  Frankly, you should not take for granted any future moments with me given how many "I should be dead" stories I have - I've already lived longer this life than I have in many centuries of short lives and I personally know all of this is already on borrowed time bonus round of my reward life.  The paths that see me reach old age this life are narrow and few, but they do exist. They just depend on choices, some of which aren't mine to make. Beyond whether or not I decide to play another hand with the Fates and hope I get a good hand on the river.

When it comes to stupid choices I have made to play dice with death around driving, I am guilty of the following (some as multiple occasions): High speeds in excess of 120mph, including going over 130mph in pouring rain, driving in deep snow and whiteout blizzards that upon hitting a patch of slush have required a friendly guy with a plough truck to pull me out of the ditch past the shoulder, spinning out on black ice roads and having to bend space and time so as not to crash through another car or into the barrier, deciding to off-road the Prius up a muddy hill that trucks couldn't get over and van bands were braking trailer axles at the festival grounds, broadside high winds that have nearly caused the vehicle to roll over and made other drivers fail at lane positions.... And other driving situations that weren't weather related stupid, just wrong place wrong time with other drivers. But with the risky weather driving choices, some of those times I had reasons I thought were worth the risks and some of them were me running on sheer stubbornness not stopping to think. It's not a lack of courage, it's a deep respect for winter weather conditions based on a thorough knowledge of how treacherous winter weather can be. Especially extreme cold and ice. There are potentially deadly choices only southerners and Californians would ever make in winter -- people accustomed to living in winter just shake their heads wonder, "why the fuck would you think that a good idea?!" And I live where people cut holes in deep water lakes to sit in shanties drinking beer and hoping a fish will bite for fun. And when not sledding and man made hockey rinks at every park and skiing and snowshoeing and ice skating on frozen lakes/ponds and snowmobiling and climbing frozen waterfalls for fun, ice fishing is legitimately something people look forward to here. Yes you play in the snow and the cold and roads were cleared so snowmobile trails at state parks were opened by 2pm after the 4.5-6 inches of snow we got Saturday night - but you also avoid dangerous drives hunker down in respect and don't do unnecessarily stupid things when there's heavy snow, black ice, raw temps below -10F, or windchills below -25F. And in winter time, in addition to my normal first aid kit, Maglite, tire pressure gauge, spare tire with jack, and battery jumping pack, I also keep snow shovel, extra snow boots, cat litter (as grit in case the car gets stuck), extra blankets, extra gloves/hats, and often hand warmer packets. Just in case.  

You can make reckless life choices if you feel you must or you're just in a state of damned cussedness about things, but you go prepared for dealing with potential consequences and you never lie to yourself about your worst case scenarios along the route you'll be taking. And in general, unless it's something that you are willing to potentially die for or be the reason some innocent other person dies because of your choice, you don't ever play "fuck around and find out" when there's black ice and/or raw temperatures below 0F. Anyone who has ever lived through any real northern  winters knows that. 

Also, I'm very happy to not be in the midst of a gen ad crowd (a thing I haven't done since covid became so prevalent in the US -- the few shows I've been at have all been in seated sections with masks and proof of vax both required) and to instead be at home having a hygge night with a fire in the hearth, George Winston playing by the cat's choice, tea, books (currently reading the Autobiography and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr - put it in my purse to read on MLK Day while hanging out with the 16 year old but didn't get to reading time that day so I decided I'd read it after finishing Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year) - and a snifter of whiskey to go with my very belated dinner of chili cheese tater tot casserole. Didn't even think about starting dinner until 8:30, lol. Whoops. Sometimes ADHD be like that even for very food motivates puppy person's like me  Currently waiting the 10mins for it to set before playing. And since I haven't eaten since brunch, I have decided no whiskey for me until after I eat something. But also, tonight is a snifter of the good Redbreast whiskey sort of hygge night.

 Oooft. Even expecting Packers to lose tonight because Rodgers never plays well against 49ers (his childhood idolized team) so our lack of gains on any drives in the second half were exactly what I expected from him, I didn't expect special teams to make two such stupid mistakes on kicks to allow them to deflect first the field goal attempt them the punt which allowed them their touchdown.... Embarrassing..... That said, Bengals still in it. First away game playoffs win in the history of the Bengals franchise. EVER! And it is the Chinese Year of the Tiger. So it would be perfect time for Bengals to want it and win it and fuck over everyone's expectations. And, after all, who isn't a sucker for an underdog win?!

Dinner was super delicioso tonight from Glass Nickel Pizza, their current pizza of the month (well, January and February) is my favorite of their specialty pizza of the month pizzas. And their Thai Pie is always amazing.  And we went with wine tonight --a bubbly sweet red from Italy that even my da would drink but wasn't so sweet that my mom and I won't drink it and then the cranberry red from Minhas which is also light and effervescent. AND!!! We've had the most beautiful snowfall!!!! All night tonight!!! I've had the window shades open so I can watch it, lol. This snowfall started right after my da and I got the firewood packed up in my car right before da went up to bed/to read and kickoff on the Packers game followed by catching up on dvred figure skating. (Still at their house watching figure skating, lol.) It's a mix of the super fine sparkle ice snow with super huge fluffy flakes and it's just beautiful!!  And I took care of ordering teas from Churchill's for my niece (who ADORES her pink tea, the apple strudel tea) and some surprises that I hope my sister and Jon will like and a couple fun colorful ones that my nephew may even like. But I had my sister specifically ask Monroe if she wanted more pink tea by mail, without Aunt Dani coming to visit and drink it with her.  And she said yes she did, she loves it. And then I spent way too much money retail therapy a second Churchill's order for myself, lol. But also, sparkle fluff snow and tea!! And bubbly effervescent wines and happy pups and more figure skating catch up!!!!! Look at these happy donut pups!! 

Audrey woke up and decided to turn around lie on her other side just as I decided to try to take her snoozle picture, lol.

Going to have to take away her Packers jersey now or she'll make everyone sad reminding them of tonight's game.  She'll get switched to either her Badgers or her Bucks jersey now, whichever she prefers. Without an undercoat, even as a long haired shaggy little bear, Wisconsin winters are too cold. And she prefers her tomboy sports jerseys over any dog coat that I've bought or had her try on.  So Badgers or Bucks jersey it is after today, lol.

O right! Being all up in my picture roll reminds me! I promised to share my best attempt at getting my phone to document my exhausted hungry vampire with aquamarine colored eyes aesthetic last night, lol. Although no matter what I did, I couldn't get a picture to save with my eyes in focus and not blurry. And the more you try to look at them in any of these pictures, the blurrier they get.

And then as soon as I changed into my pyjamas and my dog was snuggled in bed waiting for me to take out my contacts, wash my face, brush my teeth, etc. my eyes turned an incredibly pale nearly translucent celadon jade green-grey with almost no blue. And I couldn't get a good white balance on my camera to save my life no matter what I pointed it.... Phone was fried and staticky so I set it aside for the excess charge to dissipate by morning, lol.

See what I meant about my hair being too tired to even try to fight gravity in its normal curls? Hadn't even brushed it out or anything, just that exhausted my hair was too exhausted to curl.  The closest you can ever get it to straight with my hair is always in the dry air of dead of winter when I'm overdue for a haircut so the ends are questionably split AND on a day I'm tired. But even a midwinter use of a flatiron and products, my hair will still curl at the temples and at the nape of my neck within about 10mins and I'll have at least light waves through my hair an hour of flatironing it.  So why bother and cause damage to my hair? I just let the curl beast do whatever the curl beast wants tbh.

 

But even today, the end of my braid is back to curling as soon as I braided it out of the way and the braid is starting to corkscrew around itself as it always does after an hour or so in a braid, lol. (And my eyes are a pretty typical for me forest green-grey-blue deeper ocean toned.)

Also. Given that we're getting 4-t inches of snow tonight, another 1-3 inches of snow tomorrow night across Monday morning, and then getting back down to stupid cold which means black ice that neither sand nor salt will melt, especially on certain curves of 94, AND Tuesday is like a low of -12F here AND Minneapolis is currently projected a high of 0F and a low of -17F, Crissy and I have decided we will NOT be heading for the Minne for the Punch Brothers show that night. Even without covid related hospitals overwhelmed issues, standing outside for a gen ad when it's stupid cold is miserable and honestly even sitting by the roadside waiting for AAA for like a flat tire issue is unsafe given how quickly hypothermia and frostbite happen when it's that cold. Before even taking potential windchills into account. There are risks worth taking, but if the car doesn't want to start after stopping for gas or if a tire blows out or you hit a patch of black ice, that type of cold is just miserable waiting for roadside assistance and it's life threatening or at least exposed skin risk of amputations.... You can only have so many blankets in a cold car when the raw temperatures not counting windchill are that low.... That said, the venue needs the money so we'll just have the tickets and be no shows that night. Unless we can figure out someone already in the Minne area who would go to transfer the tickets to -- don't want to encourage anyone not in Minne to make a drive we consider unsafe after all.  We will make the call later in the week once we see the weather profile after Tuesday is past about the Chicago Punch Brothers show on Thursday and if we feel like we want to deal with crowded gen ad in Chicago we'll go.  The roads and the drive will at least be safer than Tuesday which is unsafe by standards that don't even factor in pandemic overwhelmed ICU beds and understaffed ERs.

*yawns* I haven't slept for about 41 hours atm and I'm so exhausted even my hair doesn't have the energy to defy gravity by curling, I look like a famished vampire and my cell signal keeps vacillating wildly between 1 bar of 5G, 2 bars of LTE, and no signal at all -- but my eyes are the most incredible shade of aquamarine since I let me collapse into this chair and just breathe in the George Winston I left playing for my cat all day. 

I shall attempt to take pictures (though so far I can't get the camera to focus on my eyes, even in macro setting, and when I tap the screen where my eyes are for it to focus on them specifically, when I then click the button to take the picture, the half my face with my eyes saved as crazy linear pixelation like an old analog tv that can't get the Sega Genesis input to read. Weirdest shit. And I don't feel like breaking my camera phone trying to force it to focus on my eyes while I'm too exhausted to control my energy chi fluctuations from overwhelming electronics..... My eyes and my hands are usually where my energy leakages are most intense when my control is slipping. So you'll probably just have to deal with slightly blurred eyes in the pictures of intensely aquamarine version of my eyes that change colors like the oceans - sometimes they even flash purples not just their normal green-grey-blue shades. Usually purple flashes in my eye color when I'm annoyed or angry. And whenever I'm sad my eyes get the most brilliant intense cornflower sky blue. Deep greens or dark grey when I'm tranquil or serious. Bright greens and silvers when I'm mischievous full of laughter. A transparent celadon jade color when I'm about to sleep.  Aquamarine usually means a really intense but dramatic mixture of emotions and too tired/overwhelmed to control my emotions/energies/gifts.  But also, they'll reflect the colors of whatever I'm looking at (very green when under trees or in a summer garden, very bright blue looking at sunny clear skies or gazing at large bodies of water, silvery bright under snow skies) or they'll refract back the auric energetic colors of whatever I'm looking at - so the color can shift subtly depending on who I'm looking at.   I wonder if the colors shift to show the auric colors I experience from music with my color timbre synesthesia.... That might explain why they went from green-grey earlier tonight to aquamarine like the green-grey layered on the bright colors of moonlit waves when I came in to the piano music playing.  But it could also just be the relief and relaxation in the joy of coming home to George Winston already playing. Some day, I'll have to experiment to see if my eyes shift color based on the color-timbre synesthesia color auras I see reflecting in them.... Not right now though. I'm exhausted enough to look like a hollow cheeked circles under my eyes pale as death vampire - with brightly aquamarine eyes that right now fuck up cameras and electronics if I stare into them.

Pictures of my intense look are taken. Just says "Loading...." in a random black bar above my keyboard that I've never seen before when I try to use the upload pictures dialogue. So that's a no. Best I hit post before the fluctuating energies in my hands completely eff up my phone and it starts spitting out non existent errors again.... I am my own Faraday cage and my own fluctuating EMF currents generator when my control weakens on keeping in line my gifts and energy light.

So yeah. I'm an intense look atm, but I can only promise the raw unfiltered photos tomorrow. When my cell signal and wifi signal are more stable because my prana/chi is under my conscious control not overloading electronics because I'm too tired to control it right now with anything inside my personal auric bubble. 

So I'm going to bed now. Before I fry my phone circuitry with my unruly chi.  But I'm leaving the piano music on to fall asleep to, damnit! Because I can.  And it makes me happy! And I'll sleep better/deeper with the music on. And I'm so far past overtired that my body is questioning my priorities in life and threatening to shut down my consciousness for my own good, whether I'm in bed or in this dang chair, lol. 

But also. You have no idea how brightly intense my eye color is in my hungry vampire exhausted pallor tonight!!! Photos don't do justice for their green-blue Aegean Sea brilliant hues right now.... They're so much more startlingly impossibly bright in person right now.

 On the scale from 1 to things only I care about, I FINALLY added the French keyboard back to my new phone and it's such a relief to have my auto correct recognize les mots français et ne cherche pas à les changer.... Sometimes the suggestions would be entertaining, but mostly it was just a constant nuisance battle having to verify and retype and reverify until it got it right. Should have done it immediately. Life is so much better when I may think in French and write en franglais to my heart's content!!! 

Also.

On the scale from 1 to hygge, after taking the dog on a walk during the warmest/sunniest part of the day (which was also overlapping the golden hour) I came home to make a cuppa tea, put on George Winston songs, make some home made veggie lasagna (noodle and sauce weren't home made but the onion, carrot, radish, bok choy, and ricotta filling was), and laid a fire in the fireplace. The cat is very pleased with the fire and I was very pleased he was more intent on basking by the fire than trying to thwart the guard dog to enter the kitchen to sneak lasagna while it cooled. (The house rule is they're not allowed to cross into the tiles of the kitchen unless invited to help clean up a mess and then they're very hesitant to obey the invitation. But cat is gonna cat and he's been known to sneak into the kitchen and thieve things off counters when all humans and tattle tale dogs are in other rooms. So leaving something to cool unattended is a risk if you don't know exactly where he is, lol.) I will likely make some sparkly rainbow snickerdoodle cookies later. If not tonight, in the near future. Ian put the idea in my head on Monday when I brought in sparkly rainbow chocolate chip cookies to work and I've been craving snickerdoodle cookies ever since, lol.

I promised the crows when we got back from the walk to keep the fire burning in the hearth for them tonight. Their nests are in a small wooded area along the boundary of our buildings and then there's a tall tree at the end of the walk in the open area by the other door which they like as it gets the first rays of sunlight and the last rays of sunlight in the top of it from which they can both guard their nests and watch my door and my balcony so they can follow me on my walks with Audrey. So that tree is often full of crows and it's where I leave snacks for them (or the chipmunks. Whoever finds it first, lol.). Anyway, I do have an arrangement with my crows that they may warm themselves by chimney and I'll try to have a fire going whenever it's stupid cold outside BUT they're not allowed to try to come down the chimney, let anyone build nests inside it, or gift me things via the chimney instead of left on the balcony. They got very cold last night/this morning while I slept rather than having a fire going so I promised them to keep the fire burning for them to warm up throughout the night and morning. It's very cute -- you can see them snuggled up and fluffed all around the base of my chimney when I have the fire going. Sometimes they'll caw down the chimney (but not enter it) to ask me if I could please put their heater on. I can also hear them rustle and happy caw chatter to each other and to me sometimes while my fire is going. 

I had pictures to share of my hygge-ish evening keeping "house at hame" but upload dialogue box isn't loading properly. Perhaps I'll remember to share the pictures later. (But also I may ADHD brain about it....) And I'm done messing with trying to get it to work getting irked by it not working. My inner peace is worth more than sharing pictures right this moment. Also, I wish to return to reading Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year now that I finished the Vignaux. (The chapter on John Duns Scotus and William Ockham were better than the other chapters.)  I've never actually read this particular Defoe novel before, though I found a used Penguin edition of it several years ago. The 18th century fictional account of  the great plague in London was brought up as a secondary account of what London was like during plague times in a book I read not too long ago on the black death. It's fictional, it swept through London when Defoe was 5, but it was meticulously early journalism researched from his living primary resources which we no longer have. So it's fictional but full of statistics and real life experiences/anecdotes of what people went through. So it's been on my mind I should read the Defoe novel. I had packed it for my Seattle area trip in December, which made my brother-in-law laugh at my gallows humor in that choice when he was looking through my stacks of books I had with me. But in the end I felt it too dark and gory visceral détails for my time I had with them all. So I promised myself to tbr stack it not put it away until after I read it.

 Anyway. Even without pictures, I had intended to include. There's a happy hygge post for you all about me spending my evening cozyed up with a crackling fire in the hearth, home cooked comfort foods, piano music a very large mug of tea, books, snuggly fur babies, and happy crow friends kept warm while protecting me. That's exactly the image you should have me throughout the night, lol  

P. S. 10:10pm addendum: 

Just got back inside from taking the dog out. O the waning gibbous is gorgeous tonight!!!! 😍 Just a few days past full, and all the stars are so twinkly blue in the purple-black skies, extra bright because the air is so clear from the cold!! But also, I love having a fire in the hearth waiting to greet me and warm me up nights when it's -1F outside! Time to open the glass on the fireplace (I close it whenever I need to take the dog out and have a fire going, in case of sparks and/or the cat getting too close) and relight the candles (also in case of cat accidents, open flames and felines in the same room when you leave the promises are a bad idea.)  Large moons in clear starry skies, happy animal familiars, little tame flames in hearth and wax, a still hot mug of tea, piano music, and a book to get lost in. *happy sigh* I do love a good cozy introvert recharge night at home!

 O. It's been most of a week since I last wrote here, hasn't it? Sorry. I had no intention of causing concern or distress from my silence. I've noticed I tend to get more silent as Mercury enters shadow period and then write very rarely while Mercury is retrograde. Which probably shouldn't be surprising as Mercury deals with communication and that's why misunderstanding and misinterpreting and fighting is more likely under Mercury retrogrades (as well as issues with travel and technology.) But it's not even that (after all unwonted silences can also lead to misunderstanding) or even a conscious thing about watching my words to be careful of likely perceived intent. It's just that in Mercury retrograde I get more observant and I don't feel the need inside me to communicate ideas as much as usual. Libra sun and Libra Mercury so most of the time I'm full of ideas and thoughts and creativity (and overthinking every possible side of an issue beyond anyone else's patience to listen) and it's all so many words tumbling about bursting at the seams to escape all the time.  But I've noticed that starting in the shadow period and throughout Mercury retrogrades are when the words get still and when they do come they feel spare and intentional like Chinese/Japanese brush work.  I spend more of my time observing without theorizing, feeling without intellectualizing. It's when I have the greatest tranquility of simply being in each present moment as it unfolds. 

I actually find Mercury retrogrades a relief and a joy and a stillness of the everyday Zen. Which isn't how it is with most people, who find it a time of chaos because nothing is going as planned. But if you don't make plans, or if you hold your plans lightly ready to change them as needed, if you exist in a state of flow, observing and doing the necessary but no more, it is a very calming and healing and renewing time. It's when you fight the pull of the tide back out to sea that you exhaust yourself.  When you learn the tides to work with them not fight them, everything is easier and more natural and less effort. Mercury retrogrades don't have to be a battle or difficult, just pay attention to how the tides are flowing.

Don't worry, all tides turn. It's the nature of tides. In a few weeks all my words demanding to be given concrete form and voiced will come rushing back tumbling over each other in their haste to convey ideas. And then you'll start to get absolutely sick of dredging through all the thousands of words trying to separate the important from the unimportant. 

I really am doing well. A bit bored with Paul Vignaux's Philosophy in the Middle Ages: An Introduction at this precise moment but I should have expected as much before I started it. It's very theological and Trinitarian centric take on understanding the philosopher-theologians of the thirteenth century. Which is an important aspect of that milieu, but it spends more time talking about how the theology needed to subdue the Aristotelian works that entered Europe via Islamic and Jewish thinkers than talking about the ways these ideas profoundly shook up the socio-political structures of strict control exerted by Catholicism and feudalism.  Vignaux also has a lot of unexamined premises rooted in a fundamental belief in Christianity and Christ the Savior that leads to conclusions as illogical as Kant and Kierkegaard whose premises don't add up to their conclusions unless you have an implicit bias of accepting as truth everything inherent within the doctrine of Paul's interpretation/version of Christianity.  They frustrate me as philosophers because of that implicit bias leading to completely left field conclusions from the logic they constructed. Once you add in the invisible supports of the implicit biases of their form of Christianity it adds up to the conclusions, but the text itself does not.  So I'm not particularly fond of either Kant or Kierkegaard. I'd rather read Medieval theologians - their Christianity is at least one of the most visible premises they're working with because it's intrinsic to their dialectic approach toward the fundamental questions they're examining.  Anyway, Vignaux is much more boring than reading the original twelfth/thirteenth century theologians themselves. I don't recommend this text, even if you like philosophy. 

Almost done with it though! May not finish before I head to work. Will depend on the lunch plans at work for when I go in. Today is too cold for my grandma, so her pt is rescheduled. But I do still have some hours to get in. Then home before it gets stupidly cold and my plan is to have a fire in the hearth for all the hours of tonight through Friday afternoon that I'm at home and not sleeping, lol. It's that sort of winter weather tonight through Friday afternoon. Friday evening I have symphony tickets. Guest violinist, should double check her name.... And then Saturday night is the Packers-49ers playoff game.  Not very excited about that matchup tbh, our track record for wins against the 49ers is bad and we just lost to the Lions the last game we played.... So yeah... On verra. My mom is more optimistic than me that we're playing the 49ers.

Next week I also have tickets to see Punch Brothers in Minneapolis and Chicago. Which I've been really excited about those concerts until omicron behaved as expected.  The thing is, I live where there's ice for much of the year and where it gets cold enough that neither salt not sand can melt the ice until temperatures warm up.  And icy is tricky no matter how good a driver you are - everything moves faster and your options are hampered by what happens due to physics if you break or swerve too suddenly on ice. When there's ice, if a semi jackknifes or another car cuts in too close in front of you then spins out on the ice from moving too suddenly, or the car behind you is too close to safely slow down, you have very little you can safely do at highway speeds. I have more options than most because I cheat and play with time, but even then ice makes everything more reckless and fast moving and other drivers less predictable. And this is true every winter in the north - and I know it. But, what isn't true every winter is that if I end up having to choose the best of not great options, there might not be a hospital bed or blood bank reserves for me and/or my traveling companion(s) and anyone else involved in a potential crash involving icy road driving options.... And right now, hospital beds are overrun everywhere in the US and blood banks are incredibly low (seriously, if you can give blood, mask up and go do it. It's needed badly enough some ERs are being forced to shutdown not due to staffing or covid patients in ICU beds but because they are too critically short on blood supply to perform emergency surgeries. Blood donations have hit some of the lowest levels since the 80s since covid started due to fewer blood drives and people not thinking to go donate without a blood drive reminding them. If you can donate blood right now, you should.) Crissy and I have said we have the tickets no matter what but would wait to see how worst case scenarios for the drive hospitals are looking before we decide if we're actually going to drive to the shows or not.... But we do have Punch Brothers tickets for next week, and I do miss Chris and all the guys. On verra.

But anyway. I really am good. Just in a still phase without all the swirling noise of words that can only be stilled by writing them out. There will be more words and even more overthinking when the tides turn again. Enjoy the stillness while it's here - I always find it peaceful when the words stop demanding expression and I have space to simply be and feel without having to intellectualize everything. 

P. S. I totally forgot to hit post when I wrote this at 11am and then got distracted by having to figure out my North and South brisket bowl lunch order. Then headed into work for lunch and took more pictures after lunch but then got distracted by coffee with Kahlua and Baileys while filing invoices and playing fetch with the dogs.  Then getting together everything for mulling wine in admin for 5pm wine o'clock.  Whoops! 

I am absolutely on Team "Wait I have the option to pretend I'm a duck and start off every interaction by people internally smiling and laughing" NIOSH certified surgical N95.  I also have Powecom KN95 masks in both white and black  for more serious/formal moods/occasions. Those look like chicken beaks on everyone. (Hard to unsee once you notice, lol.) But duck bills are far more entertaining even than chicken beaks! They make me laugh at myself and then pretend I'm a duck every time I walk past a reflective surface - so that's a win! 

But don't worry, as always I'm still on Team "Sparkly Eyes, Voluminous Curls, and Disneyland Resorts Pirate Mickey sweatshirt over ridiculous Jessica Rabbit boobs that make it hard to see the sweatshirt design." Now with a mug of mulled wine. 

See? I'm doing fantastic right about now, lol.

And gave the dogs their dinner when they realized the mulled wine didn't have lamb roast or chicken cooked in it. They were terribly disappointed it was only good smelling flavored wine with bourbon in it - even my booze hound pup who love whiskey and scotch.

Now. Back to filing and inputting until whenever I head home tonight. Should check with my maman if she wants me to come watch the game with her or if I'll watch it on Saturday while working I guess that does rather affect how many hours I get in tonight, lol.