I did it. I cut my long hair.

 Here's proof.

I told a friend it must have been six or seven inches. They cried. One friend begged me not to do it. Women and hair. I said, "It will grow back." I got bangs, too. I am making that second big pivot (change) that I've been talking about since Covid appeared. Change is good. Experiencing new things is good. Leaving behind certain things is even better. Sometimes, a girl has got to cut her hair while she is doing all that. It's a statement of intent. It's a new beginning. I know I said no more selfies, but this is not one. It's not even a good photo. It just shows the hair. I am only posting this because I did swear never to cut my hair again. And I want it documented as a failure to keep my word. Laughing.

Despite everything, including myself.

 

My son reminded me that we have to change with the times. When I think back to family Halloweens, well, oh dear, looking at this makes me sort of sad. And yet, I am still able to do something to maintain one of our biggest family traditions. Celebrating Halloween. I've been under the weather so to speak, and this week, I had to be medicated for it, after three weeks of enduring some unknown illness. It turned out to be an allergic reaction to peanut butter. Allergic reactions are difficult to pinpoint if one does not have hives, wheezing, or anaphylaxis. I should know since I have had all three, more than once. But there was nothing like that at first.

It was not the normal. Only three weeks in did I start to have breathing problems, which appeared like sinusitis with intense pressure, but no congestion. Bizarre. That's when I began to suspect something allergy related. I also thought I might have Covid. But no. Once I began a regiment of drugs for allergic reactions, I began to recover. All the other symptoms, which were gastrointestinal, abated, too. It was too easy to be Covid. Besides you rarely have Covid for three and half weeks before treated.

No more peanut butter sandwiches, which I was eating almost every day while working. But I still feel lousy. I won't fully feel normal until I am off medication. Next week sometime maybe.

I hope I feel like making my Halloween cookies.  Everyone loves them.

And yes, eating peanut butter every day, that was new, the last time being college.

Haylee at the Orpheum Theater in Memphis this past weekend.

 

We all have people who come into our lives and change them in some ways. Haylee came into my life when she was just 17 years old. We were not always good friends. Now we are "BFF" as people call it.  Due to Covid and her hectic schedule I don't see her as much as I used to but we text and talk for hours on the phone. Now over 30 years of age, she has really developed into this beautiful human being, mother to Colin, Oliver, and Miles, wife to Joe, friend to many. Haylee understands me, which is a beautiful and yes, slightly a selfish thing on my part. But not many people get me for reasons I am never going to explain. Laughing. The reasons don't really matter. But when someone finally gets me, it's so welcoming. I can talk to her. She listens and I really listen to her. We don't always meet people we end up loving in some way, too. Love is hard these days. But Haylee is easy to love. She's smart, too. Bonus. Smiling, This photo perfectly captures her outward beauty, too. She's at the Orpheum Theater, one of my favorite places in Memphis. Joe must have took this photo.

Once again, TIME.

“We live in a world in which it is impossible to anticipate most of the contingencies that will arise. Neither the political context, nor the inventions, nor the fashions, nor the weather, nor the climate are precisely specifiable in advance. There is, in the real world, no possibility of working with an abstract space of all the contingencies that may evolve. To do real economics, without mythological elements, we need a theoretical framework in which time is real and the future is not specifiable in advance, even in principle. It is only in such a theoretical context that the full scope of our power to construct our future can make sense.”

                  —   Lee Smolin

The lie is a door.

 

Byzantium is a world of contradictions. Some years ago, a very smart man told me that the world spins on opposites. Some we embrace. Some we let go, but at other times, when stuck, we lie. The latter can become a psychological issue, because the lie is "secreted" away in the edges of our minds. The result is neurosis. And the long search for labels. Most people will go through their lives running from one label to another, one doctor to another, one psychiatrist to another. Others it is one drink or drug to another. But the lie persists. Labels are comforting, they name the hidden for us, they bring certainty where none really exists. The lie is a door.

"My life, my life, my very old one"

I know the trembling of being,
The hesitation to disappear,
Sunlight upon the forest’s edge

              — Michel Houellebecq

Journey - Don't Stop Believin' (Live 1981: Escape Tour - 2022 HD Remaster)

As I write this, I am smiling.

Pivoting.

I've made so many changes this past month, which was a brutal month. But I am feeling some joy at last. I have so many wonderful projects to work on. All research is done.

Pivoting

“I have been younger in October than in all the months of spring” — W. S. Merwin

Bruised and Wounded, I turn to Nature.

 

Painting: The Bird Table, Charles Walter Simpson

It may take me hours, off and on, to write this post. I am in a mood. But it's not temporary. I've been floating here for years now, in this strange space that I now call my home and my mind. By nature, I am optimistic, but I am also a realist. I live in contradictions. The latter is both a blessing and a curse.

I love birds. A crow nested in one of my trees earlier this year and we became acquainted. It talked to me all summer long until the end of August when it vacated the tree and departed from my life. I have felt odd since. I would go out at first light and water, before the heat settled in, right before my walk. Sometimes I would weed or spray plants and the crow would sit and watch me, occasionally making conversation. I fed it. Sometimes it followed me from the front lawn to the back and sat on a limb and watched me work and water the back garden. I lament its absence now and somehow when the crow left,  I felt a darkness come over me. Part of that darkness was exhaustion, both mental and physical. I had worked extremely hard in the gardens all spring and summer in extreme weather. I stayed dehydrated despite drinking water and gatorade. I suffered foot and leg cramps at night. My body ached from bending and then pulling things. All I looked forward to was Placebo coming to the USA and then Brian Molko didn't come, and September turned into a nightmare of people I love getting sick. Very sick. And then I was sick, too, at heart. And I had spent too much money wanting one thing or another.

My brother-in-law died Monday. I can't really remember not knowing him. He was a lot older than me, a Vietnam vet, a pilot and officer, even more than that. He was incredibly gifted and did things in the war that are not talked of. During part of the war, he lived in some Embassy in Cambodia, but we didn't know that then. After he retired, he and some friends created the airport at Destin, Florida. His death signals a strange ending to me. I don't like feeling like this. I don't like it at all. 

I always turn to Nature when I am bruised and wounded by life. If I can't touch it, I paint it. I write about it. I think about it. I look at Flower Magazines, I dream and plan. One habit is studying old gardens in history.

I wish my adult, shiny black crow was back. I wish for so many things. I wish. I wish.

Wishes are like curses.

Working through many issues since middle of September.

Without tenderness, we are all in hell. — Adrienne Rich