Up before the sun, that's my new normal. I well remember the many slides into sunrise from the other side. For so long, I've longed to turn The Devil upright into The Lovers. No one said in order to step into the light, I'd have to sever The Darkness. Walk away from the pit that holds all the zings. I can do it with a broken heart has never hit harder these days. Receiving acknowledgment and appreciation for my skills and achievements is so foreign, I don't believe it and definitely don't put my trust in it but something surprising is happening. In choosing me, this me, not the conjoined me.... my public life is undergoing some sort of renaissance. Yesterday, I was flooded with appreciative recognition. My friend said, are you able to hold your own head up right? Actually yes. No more feigned humility or deprecation beyond the joke "I don't know that I'm wise... even a broken clock is right twice a day".
Earned after years and years and years of the upside down, pulling myself upright, soul muscles straining and bleeding... twisting the inverse through tenacity, intuition and some days sheer will.... I am wise. And learning every day that my own instincts and perspectives are not only en pointe but also help those around me to ascend into the light with me. There's joy and power in that even while I carry my own storms and darkness within. So maybe I am still conjoined but this time balance might just be the twinkling light I see sometimes in the distance. Along with a healthy dose of fuck off if you don't understand the magic I weave. I can't have it all but actually? Realizing that I wouldn't want to.
The compass is pointing west more and more and Glitterfox is the soundtrack.
Four posts in a month (plus two drafts)??? What year is it... 2012??
But... but... this song is a must hear. It's wormed itself into my ears and soft crevasses with delicate nostalgic chords and riffs. I think you'll agree.... it's a yearner but also so sly synthy, smirk tickling, heartsy poptastic. I'm such a sucker for songs with peak pining whimsy. That easily belong in the past while careening into the future.
<3 <3 <3
Lathe of Heaven - Aurora
Oh and this one by Mareux has been making the rounds too when I bring my head out of my own doom spells long enough to remember that dancing cures all ills and evils. Listen, I'm trying ohh-kaaay.
Do you remember when you would find a song or a band? Back in the day, are we even saying that these days? Without digressing too much into nostalgia, which apparently is yet another marker of The Aged, back in the day, I would find music through people in real life by word of mouth or by situations.
In this era of isolation and remote work... that's a bit harder. Let's not even mention dating.
There's no point to this post. Truly. For now, I find myself living life because life has claimed me. No deep existential crises today. Not to worry though, Life is still wreaking havoc but the upsets are practical, not existential, which has rarely been this blog's brief.
My actual work life is an insane turmoil at the moment but that's not very romantic. So let's move on (delirium acknowledged). I'm just a person who is healing from the loss of the love of their life and a lot of trauma, loves music, deep thoughts and deep emotions, naughty and spicy quality undercurrents, hates fascism in all its forms, avoids shallow connections, likes cats, is wary of dogs, HSP, INFP mostly (though I like crowds when it means a concert or dancing), loves being at home, loves making a garden, loves cuddles, loves days when we don't shower and we revel in our lazy togetherness.
Yeah... okay.... I could go on but I get it... I'm writing a recipe for a dating app or a dating interview or a birthday candle wish, which I hate. I'm not that person... the one who jumps into a situation ready to trust and happy to have my expectations ruined. I will run them through their paces after everything I've been through and that's not for everyone.
No. Sadly, I'm a traumatized analytical romantic demi/pansexual with PTSD and certain anatomical preferences who actually needs to connect with you first. But, okay. I know myself better now than I ever have before. So much better that I'm typing this out fully aware that I'll publish it rather than keeping it in some journal. This is a beautiful testimony to these years of this blog and my weird experiences with social media! Exposure therapy actually works ... I'm laughing at the irony...
So... in terms of dating... is it weird if I just say The Cure Lovesong and Depeche Mode Strangelove in my bio? I mean... it's just the beginning so where's the limit?
For me there isn't a limit so besides my match, who is my match? You get what I'm saying right? The inferred sarcasm and resignation? The ridiculous pretend game je ne sais quois of even posting this but here we fucking are. I already know who knows me to my core and who can handle me but I guess we exist in a circus of our own fucking making.
That's not wholly true. There are others. Like my dearest friend who speaks to my emotional core, the one who I actually let see my soft underbelly. The one I send gentle and tearful voice notes to. The one I'm most scared to lose. Even in this relationship, there runs an undercurrent of pain. One that resembles a Bjork side eye... soft and undefinable.. but also wholly understood. The strange gripping and releasing as we allow each other to breathe and be. She is so soft and strong and yet I find myself too sharp for her.
This is so true for my relationships.
A new friend said in our daily video chat, "it's a new day" and I responded with "a new day is just another way of saying we exist and so do the horrors." She didn't get it or laugh but the other new friend kind of did and we giggled over the Icelandic history of necropants....
I need someone who gets it and laughs and says more in the way of the perfect song. I miss these dark songs with my entire being. Also, the dagger, the side eye, the cynical acidic velvet tongue, the sarcasm and the gentle.
Depeche Mode - Strangelove
Will you take the pain I will give to you
Again and again and will you return it
...... I also miss dry sarcastic humor laced with deep emotional unspoken understanding. The one I miss connecting with. The heartbreak I keep trying to heal.
But also, the hidden messages and jokes I plant everywhere. C'mon this is funny! Maybe not the consumer mainstream haha kind of funny but the intellectual wry dry witty recognition of the too smart in a too dumb world. Call me crazy, you wouldn't be the first.
Butthole Surfers - Pepper
They were all in love with dying
They were doing it in Texas
They were drinking from a fountain
That was pouring like an avalanche
Coming down the mountain
I don't mind the sun sometimes
The images it shows
I can taste you on my lips
And smell you in my clothes
Cinnamon and sugary
And softly spoken lies
You never know just how you look through other people's eyes
Ah the decadence of self indulgence... but this isn't chocolate boxes and roses... no it's more ragged and scummy than that. Oh well, I live in an estuary brackish with both the old programming and the new.
Only way through is through the storm, right? But there is something just over there, yonder and I can breathe more easily some days. Some days there's so much space that I vacillate between feeling the vast chasm, clawing and clamoring to fill it. Others, just reveling in the delicate elixir that is freedom of movement. Or so I remind myself to do on the days when the old programming wins. But today is not that day. Today is a middle of the sidewalk, sit your ass down and just nod kind of a day feeling the eddies of warm and cold waters - so like the gulf of our youth.
In the estuary, the old - salty and indulgent to the nth and the new? It's clean and equally indulgent but this time? Right side up and Wolf Alice is seeing me through.
A Perfect Circle - 3 Libras
Wolf Alice - The Last Man on Earth
Cate Le Bon - Remembering Me
Wolf Alice - How Can I Make It Ok?
Wolf Alice - The Sofa
I hope I can accept the wild thing in me
Hope no body comes to tame her
And she can be free
I'll be fine, I'll be ok
I feel kind of lucky right now and I'm not ashamed to say
So much has come up this week, so many messages and dreams. A dream with Him, filled with closeness and tornadoes and then someone new in sunshine. Strange synchronicities. Songs met with shivers.
My therapist and I run circles around this. Anger. So much anger.
She tells me He is Me. That all the love I feel for him is really all the love I need to feel for myself. That He doesn't love me the way I love Him.
I try to believe her.
But at my core, still... when I hear Lovesong... it's Him.
It was a secret for so long. This undercurrent beneath my life. I didn't understand that he became an archetype for my own love and devotion. It's so much easier to project that onto Him instead of recognizing my own holes.
Ok, fine, I honor that. But still, I remember the moment I first heard this song at sixteen years old, alone in my grandparents' home, watching the music video for the first time and hearing my future. I knew in my heart, in my being, that my person would understand why this song was so important.
And he did. Letting that go is both surgical and impossible. No contact, fine. Energetically? He is still there. My therapist's ire.
Letting go of an archetype and recognizing it was never about them but rather me searching for me ... it's definitely not as fun or romantic as an undying love for someone who desires you equally. But it's real and it lets me release myself from blame and place responsibility where it originated. A step towards reclaiming Me from Him. Separating the person from the archetype. My therapist reminds me that I am not a cruel person. This is a foreign idea for me. She tells me who I am and I am so perplexed by her idea of me. Because in my own eyes, on a bad day.... it's ... not ... good.
But here's the thing. We have Cancer Ascendants and conjunct Capricorn moons in the same fucking degree. We will always know how the other feels. Always. Even when we lie, even when we pretend. We will always be able to see through to the root. And I get it. I really really fucking do. My twin moon. You chose stability and lightheartedness and I chose freedom and intensity. But the root of us is the same darling.
You love that song by The Magnetic Fields: I Wish I Had an Evil Twin. Maybe you met them? Maybe you are them and I am them and we are we?
