april 12

8:55 pm, box canyon

Long time no flounder! Been so so busy, so much has happened

First of all, I got a puppy! He is a German Shepard and I named him Hank :) he had ticks which really spooked me but I treated him and it should be all good. I’m trying to do a really good job and am going to take him to the vet soon and there is low cost neutering in my town! I keep thinking about how he is a baby and just got here (feb 21st) and I listened to in my Tennessee mountain home by Dolly Parton and it made me cry when she said “life is as peaceful as a baby’s sigh.” His dad is 110 lbs and I think when he’s grown I will feel a lot safer out on the road and in the wilderness. But I think it’s sweet that I have to sort of earn that and protect him first

Went to El Paso for a dentist appointment at a special dentist and she told me I have the most severe tongue tie she has ever seen! Which can cause jaw issues, sleep apnea, digestive issues, tension everywhere, etc.

I think I would heal faster if I got this fixed but I don’t know if I would recover well from surgery and still be able to function at the level I need to. I’m still so reactive to mold that my lifestyle is very rigorous. There are a few other things I’m thinking about re: health and stuff but I don’t want to go on and on. Sometimes it is really moving to me how deep this stuff goes, how interconnected all of it is. There are endless things to learn and discover about it. I try to marvel at that as much as I can do as to stop myself from freaking out, becoming paralyzed

april 6

7:40 pm Quebradas backcountry byway

(I wrote this last night but am posting now bc I didn’t have cell service)

Just went for a hike that really revived me. On my drive here I saw calves running so fast I could hardly believe it. It’s beautiful back here and the sun is setting and making the rocks glow pink and the grasses glow orange. I saw a crane in a tall, dead-looking tree. There aren’t a lot of tall plants here so whenever there are any they look so dramatic. I don’t know if I’ll stay here for monsoon season but I can’t even imagine it now. There are all these supposed “creeks” that I’ve never seen, despite being here for months now. They only exist for part of the year. My favorite trees here are acacias and when I first read they grew next to streams I was confused because of this. They weren’t my favorite tree at first either. They’re not very pretty but their root systems are huge and elaborate so that they can survive without water for a long time. My favorite tree in Missouri was the catalpa, and I miss them all the time

april 5

9:17 pm, marathon parking lot

Breaking my silence! To answer princess-jesus’ question it was supposed to be a complete vow of silence, no speaking, texting, posting, etc. In my defense I think people typically prepare for this sort of thing and I made the decision kind of on a whim and forgot to tell some people I was doing it so they thought I hated their guts or were concerned about me bc the last thing I was talking about was a wildfire. Anyways I broke it because somebody in town is selling pit bull puppies and I have been wanting a dog forever. It sort of felt meant to be. Didn’t get one but I asked about it and gave them my number and I am considering

There are a lot of potential issues like vet expenses, not being able to be in hot climates in the summer, and me being historically slightly allergic to some breeds of dogs. That’s usually fine but we’d be in very close quarters. I think it would be so so good for me in so many ways though. I think all of my stupidest decisions have been due to loneliness and it would be so nice to have a little buddy with me. And all of the things that taking care of a dog requires would be really good for me as well. I can’t tell if this is another bad decision due to loneliness or if it is the solution to that problem. If you are reading this and have thoughts let me know if you think it is ethical and/or wise to bring a dog into my strange life in my 2003 Honda element

I did feel like I learned some things from my very brief silence. But in the spirit of the vow of silence I will be keeping them to myself. I will probably do it again some time soon maybe with a little more preparation

april 4

10:00 am, western motel and rv park

I am going to take a vow of silence for 1 week

april 2

7:45 pm, Magdalena public library

There is a 60 acre wildfire burning in Socorro so I had to leave town. A boy I used to be in love with just called me out of the blue and told me about the girl he is dating and how today he almost couldn’t take communion, found it suddenly disturbing

1:11 pm, John Brooks parking lot

I left church today in the middle of Palm Sunday. I walked back to Christie and John’s and hopped the fence and packed up my tent. I’m in a hole right now health-wise. This happens to me sometimes, and it takes a work, and a good long streak of being in good air to get out of it. No one can really help me because this is all about trusting my own perception and responding fast enough. I think I have grown a lot in terms of how much agency I have over my life through healing in this way. I used to just feel like things were happening to me, and I just told people what they wanted to hear all the time, which made me unreachable. I couldn’t ever access what I actually thought or felt or wanted, it was like that muscle had atrophied

I have been slipping into that lately. Partially because I just want friends so badly. I spent about a month including Christmas and new years not seeing a single human being for a week at a time, and never seeing anyone I knew. When I left church it wasn’t so much that I felt so bad I couldn’t take it. It was more that I knew I couldn’t stay around people and their influence without abandoning myself. I’m nervous all of this sounds crazy, and I am not wont to spill my guts like this online. I think one of the central projects in my life right now is to let go of my fear of seeming crazy. I think many (maybe all?) of my wisest thoughts and impulses have been things I have initially judged as crazy. I keep having this thought that if I carry out my commitment to play Jesus in the last supper play something terrible will happen to me

I think what I need is sort of a reset. I’m going to clean my car and get supplies and go be in the wilderness alone for a while. I think I need to feel more sturdy before I venture out again. I’ve been wanting to take a vow of silence. This might be my last post for a while

april 1

8:35 am, Christie’s kitchen

It’s April! I’ve been told it’s the windiest month. This morning is beautiful. I’m surprised at how green it’s getting

Christie is out of town so I’ve been hanging out with her boyfriend John. Last night we watched a show from the 60s called Prisoner about a village for retired spies. He jokes that that’s sort of the vibe of this town, and I agree. He keeps talking about how the Cuban missile crisis impacted his childhood. Tonight we’re going over to Cindy and Malcolm’s for dinner and I am looking forward to it. I think she might be the best cook I’ve ever met, no kidding. She’s making something with red chile

My notebook got contaminated and I have to get rid of it. I think I am going to mail it to punkreflex which will be fun like she is my archivist. I mention that because it feels like this is sort of replacing my writing practice and I don’t want that to happen. So I will get a new one soon

march 31

3:26 pm, Christie’s backyard

Yesterday I quit my job and it made me feel like that photo of recently divorced Nicole Kidman with her hands in the air. Once my mom saw Nicole Kidman in New York and said it looked like she was gliding across the ground. I’ll need to get an online job soon but first I need to recover. I am “sliding down the power curve” which is what mold people say which means feeling worse, losing resilience to exposures, etc. My jaw hurts and I am so so tired and my brain is sliding out of my ears. Sometimes when I’m doing well I think I am being too precious about my health but it’s really impossible for anything to even be tolerable when I feel like this. I cannot believe I used feel significantly worse than this all the time

I also found out the play is actually next week, which I should be relieved about but I really just want to flee to the wilderness and not feel pressured to return

There’s a truck being raffled off at the electricity co op and one thing that has been stressing me out has been the fact that I may need to replace my car soon so I am going to enter even though the odds are slim

I want to get a dog so badly. I’m going to take a nap on my yoga mat. I keep thinking about how I used to come over and sleep on punkreflex’s floor when I was doing bad. I understand what Joan Didion meant when she said her late husband was her boundary to the world. At first when I left Missouri I couldn’t write anything at all, not even journaling privately, I felt like I had lost too much context for anything to make sense

march 30

9:43 am, box canyon

Slept in a tent in my friend Christie’s backyard last night with the quails and the wild mustard. I sat with her and she expressed her doubts and concerns about what I’m doing, said it was unscientific. It’s occurring to me that maybe I should explain what I’m doing and why. I will at some point. For now it feels nice to just say things about my life. It gets tiring having to argue

What I ended up telling her was this. In ancient China people used to flee their homes thinking they were haunted. They’d get sick and lose their minds. They treated the “ghosts” with herbs. Today we know that those herbs were powerful fungicides, and that the houses were moldy. But does it really matter what the story is? What matters to me is knowing that I don’t need all the answers to act, that things can be mysterious, that I can know things before I have language for them, that I can trust that knowing. She understood, then, and she told me a story she heard about someone who had cancer and decided to swim a whole river. The cancer went away

This morning her friend Michael made me coffee and gave me cornbread (good and crispy, made in a cast iron skillet and had blueberries on the bottom, on the savorier side, but I could still tell it wasn’t made by someone from the south) and I had two eggs from Cindy’s chickens. I burned them and felt bad because she really loves those birds. The other day she texted me “I wish you were here with all these brilliant old ladies” while they were at book club. I love them so much, especially Cindy, but they were reading Brene Brown and I don’t think I would have been able to hold back from being a mean snob

march 29

6:13 pm, El Camino parking lot

Feeling so Lenten (suffering)

I cleaned my car today and used a man named Ben’s sauna and showered twice. It made a difference but not as much as I wanted it to. It’s possible I need to sell my car and get a new one

My sweat is different now, almost oily. It feels like something is getting out

I think I need to quit my job at the brewery because my health has steadily declined since I started. It feels impossible to assert myself when I feel bad and unnecessary when I don’t

I met a woman named Carolyn from north carolina and yesterday we ran into each other at Evett’s so she gave me a tour of her property. It’s tucked away on the side of a mountain at 7500 ft. She said it’s like a planetarium, their little pocket of cleared trees. Her husband is a Quaker

Tomorrow I play Jesus in the last supper play and I don’t know all my lines