It was really lovely to see Rhiannon Giddens again in Chicago on Friday -- there's just such a glow at her shows. Not always happy, but when it's not happy it's honest about the hard truths (past and present) in this world and there's a light in facing the hard truths straight on acknowledge them that always appeals to me. She's also doing this tour (and her most recent album) with Justin from Carolina Chocolate Drops (how she first crossed my consciousness as an artist I love and see every chance she's driveably close.) They actually had a full proper reunion with Hubby as well recently at her first inaugural Biscuits & Banjos festival down in Raleigh (which very much tempted me to go because adore her and I would have loved to see the Carolina Chocolate Drops reunion since they are my favorite Carolina band even though they're generally broken up pursuing their own projects separately -- it used to be a hard choice between them as I told Hubby when I ran into him at a late night restaurant after a Delta Rae show in Minne but for me Carolina Chocolate Drops (even broken up) have been my easy hands down favorite Carolina band  since everything got fucked up by the girl's choices in 2018 blocking me on the Delta Rae insta account. Delta Rae is dead to me because they have made it so clear they don't want to exist to me and nothing they can do this side of fixing the mess they made and unblocking me and acknowledging what happened being honest is going to stop them from being dead to me. I don't listen to their songs, I don't read their emails, I don't wear any of their shirts I own -- and I have no intention to do so unless or until they're willing to have honest communication about what was done in the band's name and maintained across all these years. nothing else they do will matter or do anything toward healing the distance without being willing to be honest and address the mess and make things right. I don't give a fuck what they do or don't do without them exhibiting the integrity to be honest about the choices the girls made and the messes they have made -- without honesty there's nothing worthwhile or good they can do as a collective or that will reach me with anything other than immediately putting it back into the "this band is dead to me and I can't even listen to any of their songs recorded by the band or involving either of the girls in the recording at this point." They're a bit on my mind because they sent out emails over the week that I read then deleted as a "Nope. I won't be there. I want nothing to do with this.  Zero chance of me spending money on that where I'm not wanted or welcomed."  But anyway, back to my actual favorite north Carolina artist/band Rhiannon Giddens and Carolina Chocolate Drops, as tempted as I was I did not go down for Biscuits & Banjos last month because I had too many other plans around it to make it happen.) 

It made me so happy that she sang towards the end one of my favorite songs At The Purchaser's Option and even though she didn't go into the whole story behind writing it after seeing a real historical advertisement from a slave sale with the new born baby available along with the mom at the purchaser's option, I know the story of it from past shows storytelling and her intro that in observing the horrors in the current world we need to call on the strength of our ancestors who somehow survived to fight see our way through and then they went into the song.  And then they also did We Could Fly as the encore -- and that is my favorite favorite of hers, it makes my heart feel full of light and magic. They had to restart it because the cable on the guitar was problematic but the guitar actually sounded richer rounder tone playing it into the accordion mic rather than the direct feed. 

I bought too many shirts, but I didn't know how to choose between them and I've been needing to pick up the new album and  the book she wrote based on the legend behind the song We Could Fly for a while now. The bag was free at least, lol. Waffles approved of ital l, she kept rubbing her face into the shirts.

Also, nobody fainted right nearby that I had to bend space/time to catch so she wouldn't hit her head on the cement and the guy in front of me heard my mental call loud enough he turned around and interrupted the opener to say, "We need medical" and help make the path through to the back of the room so that medical could reach me where I'd caught her and was keeping her upright so she wouldn't choke on her tongue or aspirate if she started to throw up and medical could take her form me to pull her to the back area to take a better look (her friend who had freeze reaction went with her they were both very young) like happened at the Milwaukee Arcadian Wild show. Apparently it was all very cinematic and everyone was just glad I caught her and gently helped her to the ground when she went down so she didn't hit her head -- but from the stage the opener (a very young Christian couple, not even 21 yet, who look more like siblings than the married couple they are and are now in Nashville originally from Missouri) also had a complete freeze reaction didn't know what to do with it. The girl and her friend didn't come back (we were at the front of stage, like in the 2nd/3rd row of the gen ad standing. Not actually the first time I've bent space/time to catch someone as they fell, but it was interesting the way it happened at the Arcadian Wild show... Glad nothing like that happened at Thalia Hall for the Rhiannon Giddens show though, would have been much harder to get medical assistance even if everyone on the stage found my shiny bright light energy right away even though I wasn't right up front for Rhiannon Giddens because Chicago parking is awful and Crissy was driving her car (Spock's sudden medical decline derailed me taking care of the Prius sale/title/plates on the timeline I had intended) and she's not very good at parallel parking.

Um, in worse news, Spock isn't eating now... It's been several days now since I could get him to eat much.  The only thing I can get him to eat at all the last couple days is small amounts of butter. It's very much like Audrey's last short while. When I talked to Erin (my vet I've had since Audrey was a small puppy) she said that Spock's kidney numbers actually looked great but his weight loss is a major concern (he lost 3lbs since Nov and is now down to 8.5lbs) and she had a theory he might have thyroid problems as well so I approved checking his blood sample already at the lab for thyroid -- but she emailed me tonight that his thyroid numbers came back fine. Next steps would be full geriatric panel and chest/abdomen imaging for cancers but right now he's not showing pain but he's not eating and unless I can get him to eat, I don't see any reasons to spend the money trying to solve the weight loss. he's 16 years old, his body is failing. I'm going to try to pick up a soft food he might eat but I'm not very hopeful because he has never eaten pate style soft food and he's always preferred soft dog foods of shredded meat types... If I can't get him to eat, then it doesn't matter what else is going on because he will die from the not eating. And I can't get him to eat anything but very small amounts of butter... Mostly he just curls up in the reading chair or the dining table chair by the plants or in a patch of sun or on my lap or on the floor near me wherever I am (EXCEPT he won't sleep on or near my bed anymore, Audrey did the same thing as her life force was fading.) I've also been pouring way too much of my own energy into him to make sure he's not in pain.

He's gotten so skinny...You can feel every notch of every bone through his fur now... And these pictures are from earlier in the week, when he was having such a hard day on Tues and then following up on Weds.

 

He's gotten so skinny that even though he's not eating, he looks like a very young kitten now, not like an old man of 16 years old.

I will admit I set this to private because of feeling too much right now but not having words to put the feelings into form and I have been internally pushing the bond away again. Not because I don't want the comfort of the bond, but because I've been feeling for the last month or so very strongly that nudge/intrusive thought "you are no part of his life as he has chosen to build it and no part of anything he wants so the right thing to do is to cut ties and let him go to find whatever he is seeking with whoever he is choosing to be with and for you to go seek where you are wanted to build a life together with someone else." And part of it is because of Spock and the grief and worries around saying goodbye to him because he won't eat. And part of it is because it has felt to me internally like Eric is pulling away and his attention is distracted elsewhere in ways that make it so there's no place for me in his life and the choices he's making for it. I have assumed it is because he has gotten interested in another girlfriend, but I suppose it could just be that he's been working with the band and everything dealing with his band is a "you're not welcome here and nothing he does with this has any place for you in his life" conclusion I've been forced to draw since 2018. Either way, my internal intuitive feeling across the last  month has been that he is making choices that leave no place for me in his life and I must accept that. So I've been spending this time the last month or so making me accept those are his choices. 

I don't know if that's fair or unfair of me toward him, I'm just being honest now that I've been doing it over the last month or so. It's a mess that has never been resolved. And so without actually knowing his truth, this is something I tend to BELIEVE is his truth (or maybe more accurately fearing is his truth) whenever there's anything that reminds me of why I can't see the way to squaring the circle to find a place for me in his life given the ways things have been since 2018 as far as the band as a collective account has treated me. Or when my emotions get straining toward a breaking point and I feel I can't bear more pain/grief being laid on me as a surprise it's easier to choose the worst case scenario and be a stoic martyr force me to accept it because then it's me accepting truth as it seems to me to be rather than him rejecting me conclusively and I can tell myself I am doing right by him which makes it easier to force my heart to accept what it doesn't want to be true -- and once I'm in the hollows of grieving (which I will be soon enough again if I can't get Spock to start eating again) it doesn't even hurt to make me be so stoic and ruthless with myself because I go quite numb don't deeply feel much of anything when mourning/grieving and so what is a little more loss when you're already so deeply steeped in loss you can't feel it or anything at all? I've been making me accept that is his choice, whatever his reasons, and letting him go and not letting him reach me via the bond. I could be wrong, but that's how it's been echoing inside me recently regarding his choices and that I need to let him go.

That said, it's probably not good for me to be reading so much Cassandra Clare -- where the lines of good and evil are clear and love is the sort of thing that shines through despite anything else or the plot that gets in the way and the heart once set is always certain "this is my person" and love always wins out regardless any damn thing else. 

It makes me think of Eric with too much hope because how could I have been so wrong with what I saw? I haven't let me think on Eric these recent weeks/months (which is why I've not written here about him or the pull of the bond) and that has been deliberate. 

What after all is the point in thinking on someone you only see in dreams and who becomes so certain that every girl he dates and lists for is the one he's been waiting for and looking for? What is the point in letting him back in to reach me if he's only going to break my heart again when I have to shut him off and cut off means for him to reach me every time he meets someone he thinks might be the one? It's exhausting and it's been so long waiting and hoping and holding faith and I'm just so tired of always going through the same circles and the same patterns... I'm ready for a new story and if I'm honest I've been wanting a different story than the same patterns now for several years. If he has nothing to offer me but running the same tired circles and the same storylines then my life is better not letting me think on him and doing my best not to reach for him down the bond. 

O, I'm still going to keep reading them and it's a massive page commitment so I will be reading them for quite a while yet. I'm invested back in the world and after I finish reading the Edwardian trilogy I hadn't yet read before and I'm halfway through the second tome already, I intend to reread both of the two more modern series in the Shadowhunters world. I'll just need to watch myself or I'll be as bad as ever believing without any proof or foundations for it that there's a way for our life paths to twine together still and the pull of the bond is mutual and he recognizes it too.... I'll have to keep beating down my natural optimism and the spring of hope in me that always seems to bubble back to the surface no matter how hard I try to bury it. 

I'll just have to read some very heavy dark existentialist something to balance me back out remind me to look at things as they are not in the light of the ideal desired way you selfishly want it to be. 

The world knows enough ways to break the heart, especially right now in the end of an age before the dawning of the next -- I don't have to go lying to myself about things I want to be true and breaking my heart over reality bitch slapping me with cold hard facts again. 

Much better for me to go do something rooted in reality that makes me smile like rewatch the newer Onoir social media posts to love on Diarmaid's new black kitten Jean Claude and how sweet and adorable he is.

 

 

 And yet, in a very different vein from the ways I've been thinking/feeling that his focus is elsewhere and I need to make me let go for this life because there's no place for me within his life and the choices hes' making to fill his life with.... This is this week's Astro Poet Horoscopes:

 "Week of 5/11 in Libra: So much love is here. And when you take a bit it multiplies. The sun is sunning in its midst. And so are you. Let the words fall out over everything gentle."

 "Week of 5/11 in Pisces: It can be found in a night. And then again so can its hardest part. So it is with blue you know it truly. It can be found in just one night. Go there."