On my birthday morning, I woke up in a bed next to one of my very best friends. As I had the year before. I had an email that I had sent myself 365 days prior waiting for me. it said:

Hey you!

Shit is wack, you keep sending yourself emails and forgetting that you have. Today is your 22nd birthday and the first birthday you have been excited about in some time, a long time. Ellen is asleep in your bed with a cough and you just made coffee that is too weak and you feel like something is going to happen. this whole past month, two months: reckless, wild, feeling like something is going to happen. who knows what that will be, who knows, but something will. you are planning a trip. will it happen? are you in amsterdam now? where are you? are you alone, who are your people to have and to hold, are you wild enough? are you loving anyone?

remember that as much as you love a lot of people, a lot of people love you, too.

HAPPY 2-3!

That instinct was a good one. Something DID happen. 22 was the most traumatic, wild-eyed, rollercoaster year yet, I hope wilder than 23 by a wide, wide margin.

I ate some Eggo waffles, and I read some poems, and I wrote myself an email that'll pop up the morning that I turn 24. I don't remember what it says, but I hope I said something as valuable as  remember that as much as you love a lot of people, a lot of people love you, too. I always need to be remembering that one.

It was a quiet weekend, the opposite of

this lovefest

the year before.

I was so exhausted and high-strung and had tiny celebrations - a Thai dinner with Zoe and small cakes from the PCC each lit with single candles, a single voice raised in song by the water, two flames, hushed voices. A little catchup with lovely Megan, who showed up here just in time to do what we do best - unwind and trade smiles, and shake our heads at the wild world around us. Yesterday I got sick. Today I ate some chocolate ice cream, and crawled out of bed to look at a house that we might live in. It had a front deck, and bedrooms with Carl Larsson-style cubbies. A bathtub for planting in in the side yard. The Buckaroo Tavern, the most Pink-reminiscent bar I have seen here, down the road.

I have been reading a lot of Diane di Prima. Nightmares. Many days hungry laid out on table dish raw chopped questionable meat probably edible, hope so, and went for matches.

I love my work so far. A lot. I have worlds to learn.