hippy shite

My sexuality is such a mystery to me. Maybe because it’s always changing, which is perhaps why I’m so drawn to polyamory. The wildness of it scares me, and I don’t know why. But there are certain aspects of myself which I have run from in the past, and this feels the same. I’ve never been in any sexual partnership that made me feel safe to express myself fully, and definitely not encouraged in that regard. Part of the reason I feel depressed is because my wilderness is dormant and has been for so long.

Much of that wilderness comes to life in nature—sex is definitely not the only outlet—but the sex aspect being unexpressed and untraversed definitely makes me feel uncertain and unfulfilled. Maybe a more accurate word would be “un-itiated,” since I have only peered into the psychedelic aspect of sex and erotica. I’ve felt intense pleasure but never consistently or for long. Even my sexual function is changing, and I don’t know why. Until recently I have never experienced multiple orgasms, just one overpowering one, and now it’s really the only kind of orgasm I experience, almost like I’m squeezing it out of a tube.

“No wonder why I feel so bored
Each day’s like the one before
I think I’ll run away

And climb higher than I’ve climbed before
Life should show me so much more
I think I’ll run away

And you can come (And we’ll be calm)
We’ll run away (Together, run)
Things will be so much better
Live as we die

High, high on some green hill we’ll be
Laughing at reality
Glad we ran away ”

— The Turtles

I walked around the Avenues today and visualized what I want my living situation to be a few months from now. I want to live in a charming apartment building in the Avenues, on a higher floor, preferably with a window out of which I can see the downward slope of the street, and the city panorama beyond. I want to leave my apartment for an hour in the morning and hour in the evening, walk briskly, look at the beautiful architecture and hidden shops, the tree-lined streets, the cemetery, and then come home and sit next to my window and write.

As I walked to the streetcar this evening at the close of my walk, I realized how often I go out to bars (and inevitably spend money) just so that I can be in an either stimulating or ambient environment. I’d go to those settings far less if I could leave my home and walk safely and enjoyably for as long as I want, and then return to a beautiful space, protected by my energy and with a view that brings me inspiration and warmth.

This evening as I passed a multiplex, I looked behind me and on the lawn a handsome guy in a dark brown fur coat was sitting in a lawn chair on the front lawn and waved to me. There’s a palpable whimsy and love of beauty that is present in the Avenues, and I have wanted to live there since I moved to Salt Lake City. A major part of the charm and attachment I had to The Triumvirate was the loveliness of being in their home and then the home we shared, the bohemian aesthetics, the antique architecture.

Another element was certainly the shared intellectualism, love of film and music, of the 60s, a shared bohemian and psychedelic academic aesthetic, the sense that we were building a utopia of free love and freedom from the constricting ideals of our parents (and grandparents). In fact that entire relationship operated within the groovy aesthetic and optimistic ideals of a 60s hippie. And even though I would never return to that particular unit to realize those ideals, they are definitely ideals I still want for myself. I want to be in a shared unit with someone (or a few someones) who sustain each other with our collective skills, who are stable and function in the modern world while also intentionally creating space and time alone and with each other to explore the worlds within ourselves, our psyches, our eros, our connection to nature and to ancestors, and the potentials of our artistic and intellectual interests.

desire

I’ve been feeling really bummed today. I’m not sure what it is, maybe desire.

In part it is definitely the impending major changes in my life, and the grief that is going to accompany said change. Stressing about money always makes me feel depressed in the sense that I feel immobile, or stuck. The Club closing for a week is definitely going to impact my wealth for the next couple of weeks, and I haven’t heard back from the other restaurant yet.

I also found out yesterday that my tuition is going to cost me $3,000 total for 2 classes rather than approximately $1,300. I should have looked into that earlier, but so much is going on right now. I need to lock down what my days are going to look like and how I am going to manage. Working 50 hours a week and going to school part-time is, I fear, going to suck the life force out of me even more than it has already been sucked.

In short, I have a lot of opportunities right now that are requiring me to show up and be a force of nature, and all I want to do is sleep. I am looking at the road ahead and fearing that it is going to drag on forever. I just want to be teaching now. I want my higher, stable income with summers off now.

Maybe what I need to be focusing on the most right now are the few things at once that I can, including mantras that help me stay optimistic, grateful, and empowered rather than fearful. And accepting that I can’t do everything I want to do at once. I won’t have time for making crafts or frequent socializing. I won’t have the capacity to drink really ever, because I know that will fuck my energy for days following.

Basically all I’m going to have energy for is work, school, my appointments, a few social experiences each month, and exercise. I am going to need to exercise discipline with my diet and exercise in order to pull all of this off, and that is stressing me too, because I haven’t shown a lot of discipline in that arena since getting long Covid.

I know this is going to affect my relationships too, since I won’t be as available to talk or be present.

Another major reason I’ve been feeling bummed is that I don’t feel sexy, and I don’t feel like my core self, which is a sensual, mysterious, art house girly. I never go on spooky walks anymore (because I live in a dangerous area), and now that I think about it, that was my main inspiration for writing poetry: the movement, the mood of the evenings alone. That’s also what I loved most about Laurel Manor, living next to a large spooky walking area.

Some wishes I have for my life right now are as follows: blonde bob, academic success, including scholarships and all As, walks in nature, living alone in a charming apartment building with Momo, and forming a community around myself.

I’m falling victim to nostalgia lately, remembering the times I spent with The Triumvirate in the Kensington apartments in late 2020, and the special way we brought in the New Year that year. I feel like I was so much wilder then, more chaotic, more free somehow even though I was broke.

sex dream

Like the title says, I had an intense sex dream ab0ut Wayne Coyne last night.

We didn’t actually have sex, but I was in his lap—he looked around 30 years younger—and kissing his neck. We were alone in a room together creating art.

I wouldn’t ever even touch that man, but the dream made me realize how deeply I crave artistic connection and how that is the primary quality in a relationship for me that incites sexual excitement.

I think the dream involved Wayne Coyne because he is from my hometown: Norman, OK, and has had a huge impact on its artistic growth. The Flaming Lips originally recorded their music in Norman, even though they are technically based out of Oklahoma City.

Anyway, I woke up this morning craving that kind of inspiration in my life. I wonder if that kind of partnership is really sustainable.

beetles and eggs and blues and bells

a handmade bonnet with reversible fabric

The Fantod Pack by Edward Gorey, “a bleak yet hilarious take on the classic tarot deck”

an amber and gold potion bottle/consecration oil necklace and pendant with pipette included

a pair of red lightning bolt lenses/sunglasses

a tote bag with a whimsical medieval design that says “fools for fromage” and depicts a group of jesters eating cheese

a spell jar with a tiny seahorse, scorpion and sea star

the fairest of seasons

I don’t know what it is about 60s psychedelic rock that makes me feel most myself, but I always feel right when I get on a kick.

I’ve been listening to a 60s-70s rock music critic named Abigail DeVoe, and she has mentioned a couple of times that the late 60s was a time of intense optimism even amidst war: optimism about the future, about humanity’s ability to change the way we think away from control, power and possession toward something with social solidarity where love is given freely and being in the present moment is one’s reward for being alive.

Unfortunately my generation missed out on that sense of uninhibited optimism. Anyone who is paying attention knows that stupidity and staunch individualism rule everything around us. A hippie lifestyle is frankly unsafe at this point, since anything artistic, anti-fascist, witchy—anything which disrupts the dominant social order—can be punished. I’m lucky enough not to have children, which puts me in a much better position in case I need to be used in the ever-forming revolution, or if I need to flee to another country. Still, I have incredibly deep emotional attachments to my niece and other family members who I know would not be willing to leave the land their children are buried in.

I guess John-John could be deterred and relocated, and we could just take Lairen’s ashes with us, but I know for a fact my grandparents are not in a place physically or mentally to start over somewhere else. Grammy has even balked at the idea of moving back to Canada, and that’s where Grammy and Poppy’s only surviving relatives live, apart from their children and grandchildren. Honestly though, Canada isn’t far away enough. And their Prime Minister is dating Katy Perry mid-divorce, so I know he is messy too. That’s mostly a joke, but I truly do not even want to be on the same continent as the current United States regime. I literally open my Instagram and am inundated with videos of the genocide in Palestine or of Latino families being attacked and ripped apart.

It’s also impractical for Golden and I to leave the United States while his papers are still being reviewed. He’s worked hard to get here and establish his businesses, and if we were to leave the country, I don’t think I have the motivation myself to be the cheerleader for both of us, especially considering it would mean me leaving behind my entire family and everything I know.

For now I’m watching and waiting to see what the Revolution does. I fear a lot more evil will occur before anything major is accomplished. That said, we must be close, because the entire so-called democratic system that everyone has grown up with has come to a halt and is crumbling. Cities like Chicago and L.A. are creating barricades against ICE, and perhaps that is where it will start. I think about if I saw ICE tearing a mother away from her child, what would I do? Or what could I do if I didn’t have a weapon? If I did have a weapon, would it be worth it for me to wield it against a federally-funded militia, after which I would be immediately jailed, my future destroyed?

Going back to school and getting my teaching certification, especially in Spanish, the primary language under attack in the United States (ironic, since Spanish is a colonizer language), is the best idea I have right now. To teach tolerance and the value of a multicultural, polyglottal society.

I am also seeing a lot of Revolutionary material right now that focuses on class consciousness, or a bottom-up approach to fighting fascism as opposed to a lateral one in which the people impoverished by the regime fight amongst themselves in a false binary of Left versus Right rather than attacking the few billionaires who siphon all of the shared resources.

Yesterday someone posted about an anti-Black Friday retreat with guided yoga and nature walks, and that gave me hope that as a society we are starting to recognize the tragedy of consumerism. Wanting to appear fashionable, clean, and expensive, laboring for money we are only going to funnel immediately into fast fashion and materialism when we really need to direct our energy towards serving within our communities and re-connecting with nature.

I did notice that I look very nice today, and everything I am wearing is either thrifted or gifted. I also went to Diabolical Records today and found a vinyl for $3 that Carole used to listen to as a kid. She named it as one of her favorites, a trajectory-forming one for her as a girl, when I asked her on our drive through Banff. I called her to confirm that it was the one and told her I was thinking of her, and I could tell it meant a lot to her. I needed that moment today, especially with her. I have a lot of anger towards her and Papa these days, especially as their conservativism becomes more rigid as their neural pathways do. It’s hard to love people who perpetuate some of the most evil and intolerant beliefs in the world today.

Now that it’s time
Now that the hour hand has landed at the end
Now that it’s real

Now that the dreams have given all they had to lend

I want to know: do I stay or do I go
And maybe try another time,

And do I really have a hand in my forgetting?

My heart breaks for the world, for my family, for myself, the children in my family who are growing up in a world that hates them. All I can do is maintain strength, create my art, and believe that the place I am currently planted is going to give me opportunities to create love, to give love, create and give from a fountain inside of me that never ends.

wine, guns, and ways of knowing

Tonight I hosted a 'cocktail class for the Women’s Club at Edison House. I wore a long-sleeve, boat-neck black dress, black heels with little black puffs at the toes, red hose, and a tall black witch hat with two kinds of fringe that I hot-glued to it.

I spoke so quickly that the entire presentation on glow wine was only around 10 minutes. But also … I had to make the drink before the class began, so all I had to talk about were the properties of the ingredients, for which I read the scientific name, the associated element, and the magical properties.

I also mentioned Bacchanalia, worship of the god of wine, Dionysus, and the original reason that alcohol was referred to as “taking spirits.” A super beautiful androgyne was in attendance who looked like Christine and the Queens. French queer vibes.

Accidentally pronounced Uranus like YOUR ANUS multiple times but recovered by making a joke about how one of the spices, ‘star anus’, held properties of inducing psychic visions and lust. Tee-hee.

I also had a weird day at work today before hosting the class because I found a fucking GUN in cello boy’s backpack.

Evan brought my rollerblades in today (I left them in his car after we skated down Bridal Veil Falls two Sundays ago) in his black backpack. I opened the front pocket of the only black backpack I saw, thinking that if it wasn’t Evan’s, then at least I would be able to quickly determine so by a quick glance at its contents.

Then a fucking capital G GLOCK. The only other people in the office were two of the managers, one being the bar manager, and I just instinctively said, “Um, why is there a fucking handgun in here?”

He ended up getting pulled into the office and spoken to, after which he was energetically so off toward me, which leads me to believe that the bar manager told him I had found it. I honestly hate the men on my bar team. They’re ugly and sexist. One has made blatantly racist comments about Black people. One’s breath smells like his tonsil pockets are filled with years of fossilized, rotten food particles.

But still, lest we forget, cello boy has drunkenly screamed in my face in the street downtown at 2am because I “ditched him at a party” that we didn’t attend together, then left me in the street with a dead phone to walk home by myself. He then told people at work that I played him and said we fucked when we didn’t. This all happened in the 24 hours following me candidly and kindly explaining to him that I didn’t feel as though he enjoyed my efforts in getting to know him and thought it best if we remained good work friends (i.e. he wouldn’t be authentic or open with me and wanted to make sure I knew that he wasn’t “easy” to win over, and that hurt my feelings and wasted my energy).

So the Glock owner is a smug Bob-Dylan-wannabe-genius-fallen-monarch-archetype with repressed anger issues who lies on his dick and continues to bring absolutely hot stinking garbage vibes into my space any chance he can. Not great. Not sorry I never fucked him, but he definitely tries to make that my problem.

Whatever. I’m going back to school in January, after which I will have 18 credits maximum (approximately 6 courses) to complete my teaching degree in Spanish.

Then at that point my primary source of income will make me more than I make now, provide me with excellent benefits and a consistent schedule, and it will mean that I am teaching a subject that I have been passionate about for decades and will continue to be passionate about for decades to come. Not to mention my classroom will be mine alone to instruct, and I won’t have to experience so much of the hideousness of the human ego when confronted with my witchy powers of discernment and seduction. Lol. Also,

WHO BRINGS A FUCKING GLOCK TO WORK! AND SETS IT ON THE GROUND IN HIS BACKPACK IN A HIGHLY TRAFFICKED SPACE!

merde!!

How I needed that. As I have said ad nauseum lately, I am full of so much rage. I’ve just experienced glimpses of being free, being present and tearful with joy. And these days I feel like the collective consciousness is putrid with the ugly philosophies of capitalism, patriarchy, control, power, dominion, ownership. Saying so in such terms sounds like an AI-generated leftist opinion editorial, void of any real meaning or poetry. But the effect that these philosophies have on our bodies—and by bodies, I mean the mind, the Spirit, the aura, the intuition and telepathy that binds us to each other and to Nature, all the aspects of the individual and collective “self”—is far too real.

I feel it in my own body as real tension. When I move my body and release the tension, the thoughts spill out of me like tears. I can understand which thing is being held where in my body.

Ohhhhhhhh, feel it, oh feel it, feel it, my love. See what you’re doing to me …

I’d like to lean into that understanding of the body, which is currently helped by not taking anti-depressants, and even soon be able to translate it into the understanding of the same in other bodies through reiki. It would be a great place to utilize the healing powers of touch and non-touch. I have avoided reiki seriously because I am still untangling the effect of hyper-rationalism and a highly academic upbringing. I am academic and sometimes even feel that I was, like Oscar Wilde, a queer, highly-educated and cosmopolitan dandy man of the Victorian era in a past life. Hyper-rationalism is the path that initially saved me from life as a cult devotee. * shiver * So I will always find value in those ways of thinking.

But in addition to those ways, and especially as I am magnetized to exploring the metaphysical, the unseen, the underworld, and all things which are up to this point entirely unknowable with any certainty, I lean heavily into philosophies which are more abstract, cosmic, astrological, or folkloric.

I no longer attempt to justify to the imaginary professor in my head why I believe in the placement of the stars, the meaningful and coincidental recurrence of symbols, sounds and words, and why I value these on a much deeper level than rationalism. Anyway Philosophical traditions are all essentially mythologies by which we seek to justify and untangle the impossible knots of morality, or individual and social values. The idea that one’s belief must be equally or similarly yoked to one’s knowledge in regards to truth is a familiar refrain in Philosophy, but the general arc of that approach tends towards defining the only “sure” knowledge as being a conclusion or solution found through logic puzzles, the math of language.

As far as my years in collegiate Philosophy courses have led me to believe, applying logic puzzles to metaphysical questions seems more like the mental equivalent of a caged dog chewing at its leg, rather than an in depth venture into what the underbelly of the soul wants to know. Maybe the biggest flaw in seeking greater knowledge through philosophizing is that it by nature exempts us from experiencing the “data” of the present experience, and that is an essential space for knowledge.

The body as a vessel knows both the past and the present simultaneously. It reaches sensible conclusions without thinking. Run away from that predator. That person seems trustworthy and safe. Animal bodies have done this for eons, even communicating with other bodies, enemies, lovers, children, bringing us to the point at which we currently stand.

Yet the Western paradigm wants to push us out of our bodies and into our minds right at the precipice of a new frontier.

Even right now I’m doing the MOST mental acrobatics, when I could be stretching or making strange shapes with my body in the woods.

But it’s in my nature to THINK MYSELF TO DEATH. And typing helps me to declutter my mind in the same way that stretching moves toxins out of the body. I’ve written enough here to finally get myself tired enough to sleep, at 4am.

XO,

Lady Baudelaire

my hysterical, wandering uterus

I’m off my meds!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! >:) >:( for now. Testing it out.

So far I’m definitely feeling extreme bouts of rage and much more emotion, which isn’t surprising and is a relief in its own way, especially considering the main reason I am attempting going off of my meds FLUOXETINE 20MG ONCExDAILY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! is because I can feel the effects of “not feeling” in my body. I haven’t cried more than a handful of times since 2022.

In 2023, I got married and started a tumultuous relationship which has sucked the life force out of me in many ways. I had an abortion, for which I took 1 single day off of work to undergo the physical process. In 2024 Lairen died, and we still don’t know the full truth about the circumstances surrounding her death. Then Emma betrayed and abandoned me the day after Lairen’s funeral. I also spent a traumatic night in jail. ETC. ETC. ETC. To say nothing of the fact that the United States has fully spiraled out of “democracy” and into a fascist takeover. It’s impossible to imagine a future here right now, especially with an immigrant husband. And I’ve only cried a handful of times.

Also I don’t even want a husband!

I’m over it! I don’t know why any woman would want to be with any man! Which just goes to show how truly jilted I feel in love.

And all of this has been felt by my body and never processed in my mind. Meds have helped me to survive but have also just kicked the can up the road for me, since the pain, shock, and repression of my ability to act freely still lives in me.

My relational skills toward my own psyche, intuition, inner child, etc. have atrophied. I feel like I’ve communicated to my own body that I don’t have the mental capacity to hear what it has to say … but I’m SO full of rage, sometimes it overtakes me. The other day I was rocking back and forth on the ground, screaming and crying like a fucking psycho because I was so angry, and it was triggered by something completely disproportionate when considered in a vacuum, but I know it was attached to the ancestral GRIEF of being born in a female-coded body.

To have been born without my consent an innocent shrieking pink blob with a barely-formed vulva and still be met with such cruel and life-determining curses like: “This child will be a wonderful WIFE!” And what that really entails in the heteronormative Christian worldview is cleaning up after a lazy motherfucker who manipulates you (with society at large as his henchmen) into believing that to cook, clean, birth and raise children, repress your sexual nature, your creative and intellectual nature, your bodily autonomy, your freedom to love and connect meaningfully outside of marriage and to do so with a spirit of gratitude, denying your rage, is the PRICE you must pay in order to have a husband, when in reality he needs you more than you could ever really need him.

I feel sickened in all possible psychosomatic ways when I don’t have access to my deep-seated desires. If I feel there is no possibility of acting out any of my deepest fantasies, I lose the will to live. In other words, I lose all libido.

But what queer woman in her 30s born with the planets of sex, romance, death, rebirth, taboo, and transformation in the sign of Scorpio wouldn’t lose her libido when met with the hideousness of modern humanity? Why is it so unusual to find a sexual context in which safety, curiosity, ecstasy, acceptance, respect and joy can take place naturally? I BLAME THE FUCKING CHRISTIANS. Or any religion that demonizes humanity’s Pagan values.

True creativity, connection to nature and one’s own intellectual, sexual, emotional and spiritual limits is a human being’s natural expression. For me personally, these are the aspects of existence that drive me to stay alive. Even from a purely biological perspective, being unable to express the lust of the body or the strangeness of the mind, unable to move and think wildly, is a major boner killer and therefore against nature. It’s no wonder that, since the origins of patriarchy, women have been accused of “hysteria” or of a “wandering uterus.” Even just owning a uterus in a patriarchal society that illegalizes abortion is literally living in the plot of a body horror movie!

How can sex be delicious and freeing when the only context you know is a gross beastly man who smells and sounds and makes love like a farm animal inseminating you with a parasitic life force that is going to torture your body all hours of the day and night for 9 months and leave you with permanent bodily trauma and little to no free time for decades? NOT SEXY.

I can’t wait to be infertile. Perhaps until that day comes I will only make love to women. I used to love semen, but what can I say except that living in a capitalist-AI-driven-techno-feudalist hellscape under which I may be forced to perform childbirth has ruined the thought of taking backshots for me??

Why am I horny all of a sudden though? LOL!!!!

I started my period today, which could be why I’m feeling so randy. But getting penetrated isn’t going to satiate whatever the fuck kind of sexual desire is creating tumult inside of my sacral space and making its way into my dreams, making me fantasize about crazy things. I fear I may not be able to find someone who can fuck me the way I really need. And I have been told so by a couple of men. But to be fair, I want to have sex that is so lovely and juicy that it lasts an entire day, and most men aren’t capable of that mentally. I have only encountered one and he was a total weirdo of a person. During sex he was authoritative, kinky, talkative, interesting, and dominant while still being respectful, and then outside of that a total weirdo. I don’t know. Maybe he used Black Magic.

I think it would be nice to be married to a man who is a gentle sweetheart 90% of the time, but turns into a Vampire beast with a tentacle dick and insatiable thirst for blood during sex. Or any dark-haired woman with a strap-on.

Anyway, that’s enough for today.

XO,

Lady Baudelaire

crying a song

Scorpio Venus, Scorpio Jupiter, Scorpio Rising, Gemini Moon.

Every priestess tells me I am destined for death, transformation.

How can anyone enjoy their life when there is so much grief, to be juiced from the body.

Freakish dreams which carry their vibration into the present and make me feel strange inside myself.

My great grandmother’s yellow portmanteau, which sits at the back of the closet, has a disconnected feeling to it.

But the object is too unique and elegant-looking to get rid of, and too the still puddle of energy it holds.

I worship the great god Pan (I panic)
I play the flute like a wild, angry devil.

My baby is afraid of me and doesn’t get it,
thinks I am am another emotional lunatic.

But I am more emotionally stable than he has ever been:
He is a haunted house,
and all he has to do is salt the corners
And let the energy shrivel into death,

Like slug powder,
and that goes perfect with most protection spells

But has to be eaten.

I’m full of jealousy, I’m full of loneliness.

The covens invented ritual
And sacrament.
And they weren’t evil or greedy unless it was natural.

These days men die a romantic sailor’s death,
and drown in the endless blue ocean of memory.

The most beautiful performance art is done by animals and pagans in their privacy:

Pay me and you can watch me remove the bits of glass
one by one
and seal the slits with red wax.

Dream girls don’t spill their secrets for free …

Long hair, long dress.
crying a song …

music + marriage

Currently listening to Nico’s 1970 album Desertshore. She is most famous for her collaboration with the Velvet Underground, or her album “Chelsea, girl.” Both are chamber pop/folk rock and of the distinct Summer of ‘69 feel. Desertshore is more experimental and witchy. The opening track, “Janitor Of Lunacy” has a bunch of synth and harpsichord, and Nico bellowing haunting poetry in minor chords. It’s kind of like a dark hymn.

Tolerate my jealousy
Recognize the desperate need
Janitor of lunacy
Identify my destiny
Revive the living dream
Forgive their begging scream
Seal the giving of their seed
Disease the breathing grief

I have a Nico autobiography on my bookshelf called You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone, which I have yet to read, but the title alone is gorgeous (and is a line from the song “Afraid” in Desertshore), and so is the Paris green spine of the book.

I did 30 minutes of stretch-intensive yoga and took a hot shower, and it pulled me out of a depressive mini-episode. I feel exhausted all the time and haven’t been taking joy in things. It feels like this is going to last my whole life, and sometimes I find myself mentally despairing big time.

“To despair is to turn your back on God.”

— Marilla Cuthbert

I started thinking deeply about how my ADHD and delayed circadian rhythm make routine especially hard. I naturally want to sleep at 5AM and wake up around noon. The only time I have ever woken naturally was during Covid, and I would go to sleep at 7 and wake up at 3, without fail. And that is the most rested I have ever been.

It seriously sucks so bad, because to be a Spanish teacher or to work in academia at all I would be waking at 7 and finishing my day at 3, so working through my entire sleep cycle, never really getting any restorative sleep. :(

Perhaps I can force myself during the school year to stick to an early schedule, and then during the summer work an independent artist’s schedule and work from wherever I’d like.

I’ve always wanted to spend a summer in Paris. Golden’s music production business is going well and bringing in a significant amount of money, even after a few months. I’m sure after a few years he could grow his business into something he could do remotely for a few months each summer.

Forming lifelong habits and maintaining discipline are not easy.

My habits will one day give me a life in which art, love, magic, intimacy, learning, and nature make up most of my days, and when I’m retired, all of my days. My ideal last 2o years of life involve me living in a small, self-sustained hut in the woods.

I wonder what Golden imagines for his life as an older man. He is passionate about Peruvian food, music production, and being a good son and husband. Those are the places that touch him most deeply and which form his core. He also loves to hustle for his money and accomplish financial goals, but hopefully that creates enough wealth in his life that he won’t feel the need to prioritize it more than his joy.

The fact that we are both artists and are deeply passionate about creating is a core value in our marriage. We will be in the apartment together working in separate rooms for hours, him on making and producing music, and me on writing, reading, drawing. I love that I have so much space to work creatively, as well as motivation, because I know he is doing the same. I’m super attracted to the quality of discipline and dedication to a craft or vocation, and I love that Golden enjoys his art so much and is already making money from it.

He also has the loveliest face, a cute accent, a personality strong enough to complement and combat mine, an intrinsic and ever-powerful sense of motivation, a strong sense of self, and a natural and deep loyalty and sense of humor. It is also nice to have a partner that doesn’t have a chronic mental health disorder. Horrible to say, but given how high-maintenance my own mental health is for me, I’m grateful that my partner is emotionally stable so that we aren’t exacerbating each other during cycles of mania, however small.

We’re both children born under Venus.

/

nostalgia

February 28, 2025

“I’ve overheard your theory; nostalgia’s for geeks.”

— Lady Gaga

The periods of greatest depression for me are always the periods with greatest nostalgia.

Maybe nostalgia is a symptom of depression. I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m never nostalgic if not depressed, but when I’m depressed—which is most of my life—I’m sick with it. I even look back on my time at BYU with intense yearning and romance, the innocence—not so much an Edenic innocence, since shame dissipated with the acquisition of knowledge and not the other way around—but something else.

Whatever it was, I truly believed that a protective, patriarchal Force was watching over me and would reward me for being obedient. The promise of peace and protection is a complete lie, but I certainly understand the devotion to the concept via residual infantilism. Kind of like how I still fantasize about having a sugar daddy who pays all of my bills while I frolic in Elysian fields and take opulent bubble baths, even though I would never be comfortable being financially dependent on anyone, especially a man requiring sex from me. Lol.

Getting accepted into BYU as a Mormon child-bride felt like infallible proof of my intelligence and virtue. In certain terms I essentially accomplished the ideal in my realm of conservative, gendered, scrupulous worship: I was obedient, educated, married, living in Utah and attending “the Lord’s university.”

Now the size of the universe overwhelms me and fills me with grief. On some level a pagan, on some levels a cosmologist, no matter which highs of worship I’m able to experience—via chemicals, love, intimacy, fashion, food, encounters with Nature, etc.—there will always be infinitely greater experiences out of my reach that are essentially dead to me. Like L.M. Montgomery said, “My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.”

The films, books, textiles, landscapes, sensations, human relationships, and animal friendships I will never know take a greater hold on my heart than the joys of my current experience, as of late. With everything I have going on, all the death and all the stress, the way I feel isn’t alarming I guess, but I am resentful. I am beautiful, intelligent, and full of passion, and the heaviness of my grief and my fatigue, and the financial strain on my life are all shackling me to my bed.

To sum up my current state: a dead weight of skull on a black satin pillow, passing from one sleep to another.

/