As per the usual birthday post, here we go…
Part One: A Searing Thing
The neighbor’s chickens have emboldened themselves with grazing around our house. They are all gray in tone and their sharp claws scratch at pine needles, the soil beneath moist with thaw.
I vacuumed up a spider who had made their home upon a bathroom GFCI outlet. They had smartly woven their web beneath the plugged-in night light, where insects would and did surely flutter. I, admittedly, admired the choice. All the spiders that had thus homed this bathroom had yet to choose such prime real estate. I’ve vacuumed a lot of spiders in this house. It wears on me, because I do feel bad. I stopped for a while.
One spider has made a home inside the open wastebasket by the toilet. I think this spider is partly trapped because of the plastic liner, but also stubbornly thriving somehow. This isn’t the first time a spider has become trapped in this bin, but they usually starve and die. Every evening, I finger-comb my hair and collect loose strands, drop them into the basket. The spider scurries into the depths. I often wonder if my hair has given them a way out. Maybe that is why I don’t bother tidying the strands that dangle over the rim. Will the spider leave if given the chance? They haven’t. Maybe they have, but a nest is a nest. They appear to my surprise every evening, every morning. It’s been weeks.
The GFCI spider was a bit much. They had molted and the old, hollow corpse hung like a puppet. I had sunscreen and deodorant below the outlet, and their fortitude was used amid the web design. I can tolerate spiders in certain circumstances, but I cannot, no matter how hard I try, tolerate touching or breaking their webs. My brain loses itself. Not only is it the feel, but it is the sound. Honestly, it is mostly the sound.
I can only describe it as a cross between misophonia and trypophobia. Misophonia: a strong aversion to certain, typically mundane, sounds; trypophobia: a fear of or strong reaction to certain patterns, textures, or holes that, in theory and to my brain, could resemble something sickly or dangerous. Sounds are not without the physical shapes that make them. A web is already eerily full of holes, but when it rips, it is a mass of searing things.
***
The crows are harvesting grass to nest in a tree nearby. I suppose spring is the time for gathering, for regeneration. Last summer, I had the pleasure of watching the family raise young ones. They grazed daily for insects throughout the leach field. They have chosen a tree on the boundary of this property and the next, which means nothing to them, of course, and I suppose it means nothing to me as well. There is no fence, no wall, just the forest.
Our neighbor is a retired wildlands firefighter, so he nurtures the grounds by collecting old pine needles and keeps the shrub oak from spreading too much. You can tell where his works ends and our lack of chore begins. Last summer, I raked pine needles into piles, but had no means of collecting them or taking them anywhere, so they sat there until winter flattened them back into the duff that they are. This year, I am better equipped. I wonder if the crows appreciate this kind of work. I imagine my neighbor’s chickens certainly do, for they don’t have to expend as much energy scraping to see what’s there. But, the hens are beginning to wander all the more into denser, unmanicured loam, and my neighbor has to herd them in daily. The crows have taken notice.
One of the crows swooped down at a hen. She stood her ground, unafraid, wings ready to lift claws in defense. This prompted the other five hens to start waddling back toward their coop, but they either forgot or are renewed the next day, unbothered, won over by the vastness that is east of home. I’ve seen the crows harass a house cat, one who I believe lives across the road. The cat likes hunting mice at our place, and we appreciate it. When the crows swoop, we know they have younglings.
There are many stories like these. The rituals. The trackings of desire and curiosity across the land. The way the cat appeared, days after we fell a tree that was too close to the house, finally curious enough to survey the changes in smells and debris, so cautious, as if calamity could continue. When a tree falls, everyone takes notice.
How do I write about myself in this way? I cannot see into my own bones. There is a burning crack in my fifth metatarsal. I don’t want to give it physical reality. I don’t want it to form more than it already, apparently, has. In all actuality, I don’t need to see it. The body swoops. The body has taken notice.
***
The wind teeters the trees like blades of grass. Something soft and pliable. My mind is precariously like this. It feels inflamed. Awash with circumstance. Tired. Sad. Unknowing.
My orchid buds are supposed to be thriving with newness. They are supposed to be beauty, a burgeoning akin to excitement, a realized prosperity. The orchid is set on the windowsill in my office, backlit by today’s spring gloom. The trees teeter with increasing force.
The orchid stems arc like octopus arms, each cup a complex orb of sensors and sustenance gathering. I imagine trees are like this, too, in their way. Even my own body. And if we are all similar in our desires to self-sustain, then perhaps I can lean into them for help, find whatever strands of faith they may have left strewn about. Use them to climb somewhere and call it thriving.
The wind outside is only audible because of the friction that is created with what it hits and the sound waves that are thusly made. Can you imagine all the miniature holes? Can you hear the sound waves ricochet against their holiness? This forest screams for me.
Renewed, unbothered — what a thing to scratch at the earth, to purple and cup with such realizations. The sky gently crumbles with sleet. I crumble in my inability to walk. I feel trapped, wanderless, a searing thing, appearing day and night to leave strands of myself upon a wastebasket I refuse to empty.
Part Two: Our Lady, Heroine of Grief
What do we do with our lineages of grief? In a story, with the heroine dead, this is what her tombstone will read. In this story, the heroine will have a tombstone but not a coffin. She will have been buried, soil upon bare body, so that the land may have the sustenance of body she spent 100 years navigating. Beneath the text on the tombstone, there will be a petroglyph of a braid. Upon her head, in the earth, her hair will be braided into a crown.
And there will also be a QR code. A passerby will scan it with their AI-retna implant. First, softly blaring trumpets and doves that scatter from a weeping willow. Rays of light will radiate forth. Then the heroine’s voice and a gentle roll of text from an apparent poem:
Even when in drought
or in the abyss of a sigh
this skin, mother, father, kin
you gave, and you remember
even when I do not
this skin, as always
as water, a curled sun
for the altar that was once
your womb
do I both succeed and fail
to emerge...
And the doves will have been gone for some time now, and the trumpets will have cascaded into rainy piano notes, and amid the gentleness that is this memorial recitation will the passerby realize what the heroine has done to answer her own question. And when the music stops, a prompt will appear:
REPLAY
or
EXIT
Part Three: Notebook
3.9.24 - Bees swarming, Merrick fell to ground, crawled away. LOR: A&Ox4, HR 84 reg strong, CSMsx4, BP - radial present, PRRLs, RR 20 reg easy. Feedback: Hand against neck for temp check, blood sweep, rigidity -> internal bleeding. Plan: not great, let's get you out of here. Inhaler in car. / 5.7.24 - Ojalá que yo pudiera correr otra vez. / 5.15.24 - BrownGirlsDocMafia. / "What do you need to be involved?" "Not informed by pain, or trying to prove something." - Dani / 5.21.24 - Merrell socials: All caps font with white background or black, music: "appropriate", hashtag: trailteamtakeover / 6.25.24 - running as culture, means to learn / Pacers:Chris O, Patrick, Liz H, Johnny T,Laura Cortez, Ti Eversole... / 6.28.24 - curanderismo / To do:OGL Spreadsheet finish,Email pacers/crew,Email Kody,check insurance claim online, Film,Moonbox Notes/ 7.9.24 - blare brave / 7.18.24 - "we are not just our trauma"...
8.8.24 - In the childhood home, she sits on the couch, cross-legged and as young as I remember her being. Brown hair to the shoulder blades. Straight bangs. Bowl of cereal. White ceramic, metal spoon. I'd found my collection of stones and the shriveled buckeye in the crack of the couch. I was upset that they'd been displaced somehow, removed from the Navajo ceramic bowl I keep them in. Suddenly there were other items in the bowl, now turned plastic bucket full of cheap plastic toys and fake toiletries, all purple. I picked them out. Ma kept telling me to stop it, leave it be, but I was stubborn. My mind thought about how I'd tell my friends I'd hung out with my mom. But then I remember: she's dead, so how is this possible? She's so real. I became self-conscious. Was I talking to myself the whole time? No, this is a dream. A place where she doesn't have to disappear and I don't have to justify why I see her.
8.10.24 - I dreamt Rene was running a race and I was helping her/cheering her on. I grabbed bags for her and was on the sidelines when it began to rain. I was trying to stock the bags out of the way next to this barricade. The dream morphed and a mother and her children were there. The kids wanted to play with the colored mats that I was now trying to collect and pile on the ground. She, the mother, then started talking about a woman her son was afraid of. I thought she meant Kamala Harris. And I assured the boy there was nothing to be afraid of.
8.11.24 - Dreamt about Rene again. We were staying at a house in Denver. I remember using the upstairs bathroom. An Asian woman was downstairs in an armchair and I could hear her saying "no te escucho" almost as a whisper, and I interpreted it as something that had to do with ghosts, or specifically the woman was trying to reach a loved one. I returned to the bedroom and Rene had somehow constructed what looked like a raft made of thin logs. She tied her feet to it and then jumped up to see if she could walk. The logs were no longer logs but long flexible sticks that bowed easily. She nearly tripped and it made her tumble back, bowing her back. I had to help her get up and was so mad at her for making this instead of letting me take her to Boulder in my Jeep. She'd tweaked her back now and her defense was about climate change and how we shouldn't be driving.
[September?]Brand Emails for L2H & Film:The Feed- NoMerrell w/ deck- No response
Fenix - yes (affiliate/gear)
HydraPak w/ deck - yes (gear)Raide- No
Gu Insta ask - yes (product)Hyperice- No response
LEKI - yes (product)Therabody- No response
11.12.24 - Trails conference: "want to move work forward," emphasize community context, combat erasure, restorative justice, healing, uplifting/recognition
*create campaigns to increase representation, let's edit signage w/ Indigenous visibility?
11.21.24 - Merrell contract meeting prep:
-shoes (men's? wide?)
-lifestyle shoots/modeling priority (& adding end-dates to their use of images)
-
Usually, these birthday posts are rounded off at the end in some poetic or lyrical or philosophical way. But, to be sparse about it (one, because I didn’t write very much this year, and two, I don’t really owe the world anything, if we’re all just being, maturely, honest), I like how obscure this year’s post has become. It is maybe more showing than telling. It is also both narrative and not. This is how my life feels right now, and this ending of 2024 leaves me in the very place my notebook ends: with blank pages, with the last entry its own, crossed-out void. Next year will be quite the re-defining, chaotic year…but, such is life, and such is the body…
Feliz Cumple a Mi
Stay tuned for the upcoming Moonbox Notes #26: Nov/Dec!
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