thoughts and scares
the week
To my surprise, I had three good dates. It’s been a while since a man diverted from my expectations, but this guy was both kind and sexy and I felt something. I kind of want to keep it to myself for now, but the bitterness I’ve been feeling has been cut by a sweetness that was unexpected and welcome.
I find I’m craving the ocean. Packing a book, a journal, an umbrella, a giant sandwich, and splaying in the sand, in solitude. Finding a private beach and spending the entire day there. Staring at the water, running the sand through my toes, maybe getting a little sunburnt.
I awoke at the witching hour the other night with a pounding chest, having just lived through a series of strange astral images. In the dream, I awoke next to my sister, who was dressed as a flapper and had just gotten a tiny back tattoo, the letters, RY, the meaning of which I have no idea. Blood stained the bed beneath me, it was running down my legs and my nightgown. My sister was standing before the mirror, hurrying me to get ready for the wedding of a family friend. At the event, my other sister’s children were adorably making friends with everyone there. I sat at a picnic table, still bleeding, but no one seemed to notice. At the table a father and his adult son, neither of which I was acquainted with, ate corn on the cob, drowned in butter. The son made friends with another guest, a guy I knew vaguely, and the two of them left on a carpet gliding through the air. It was later discovered that the son was a serial killer. The wedding guests, myself included, trekked up a desert hill to the ceremony and my mother lectured me on choosing stability and kindness over passion and lust. I bled, she noticed but told me to ignore it. At a certain point I could not ignore it anymore, the blood was causing me to panic.
I awoke from the dream not long after. The full moon and lunar eclipse could be partly to blame for the strange images my brain conjured whilst I slept.
I try not to put too much stock in dreams, the brain has mysterious ways of organizing life that happens when one sleeps. But they can be unsettling sometimes. I awoke that morning with a stomachache that would not settle. I checked my bed for blood, thanking the stars that the dream was not some terrible prophecy. It was dark outside still, but I knew I was up for the day so I shuffled downstairs and made tea.
An indulgence that I obliged myself with this month was an unlimited pilates pass. To make it worth the amount I spent, I have been going five times per week. My muscles ache but the strength growing in my body feels absolutely luxurious.
Rewatching Billions, uncharacteristically one of my favorite shows as it’s about unbridled capitalism and billionaires, has reconfirmed that it is one of the best representations of bdsm in television.
Wednesday was an excellent day for many reasons. I began the day reading my dear friend’s newest screenplay, then went to pilates, the gym, home for a bit to gab with my roommate about her current crush. A prominent fascist died in a poetically just manner. I then went to said dear friend’s house to drink tea, do embroidery, and eat banana cake, with Bridgerton on in the background. I finished the day with the new guy I’m seeing, we scrolled reddit in search of memes on the assassination. They did not disappoint.
If you are a reader of this blog, it should come as zero surprise that I am not sad about the death of an evil man. A nazi died. Good.
The amount of people who are telling on themselves by mourning a white supremacist is alarming. Having empathy for nazis is not a flex of how moral you are, it is the opposite. I swear if we lived in the Hunger Games people would be whining about the fact that President Snow had a family. Most evil people do. It doesn’t absolve them of their evil.
Though I do not mourn the wicked I do fear the circumstances around the event. That, as of this moment, it appears it was carried out by a member of a group that is even more far-right. A group that makes the current administration look moderate. The conservative wave tightening peoples’ brains and constricting their hearts, the bigotry poisoning minds and shaping a monster even more terrifying than what we see in the White House. It has its own sentience, a momentum that is completely out of control, like a planet warming, a dragon stirring. And I don’t think we realize how big it is yet. It has a lot more to reveal before we’ll understand the full breadth of its danger.
I finished reading The Long Walk by Stephen King, in anticipation of the film coming out this week. I adored it. Very disturbing, very timely, even though it was published in 1979. Any realistic dystopian commentary on the evils of capitalism and I’m fucking in. I can’t explain exactly why but the story feels important at the moment.
On Friday I went to the beach with three friends and we lounged in the sand and watched a puppy chase seagulls all afternoon. It was soul medicine. We then went to a plant-based McDonalds and indulged in burgers and fries. No matter what is happening in the world, there’s always the beach, friends, and good food to be had.
