JAGGED CAN BOY, soaking there.

Wouldn't you feel better if you were able to see white, milky dresses, a small curl of hair by the

forehead, that slow wake of that old music which is still clicking on the temple. It's all good. It's all about

breathing. Smelling like butter, like back skin, like dunking heads in water. That clicking, then the still

moaning that's all up in your head, like a sinky boat, all creaks and wafting motion and

swollen plump wood. The small hairs at your eye's level, touching your nose, attached to another

person's chest, and the breakdown of some song or another is gumming its way through. Through and


through and through.

Good lord what a long drive will do, all its pleasantness and promises and weeds, purple

weeds and green ones all flowing on, but thin as milk. Milk dresses, the heavy cream in French pressed

coffee. Small pieces of paper stuffed in harsh old screen doors say, "While in Pennsylvania I Will Miss",

(a reference to a simlilar note, left for a similar person, from a not so similar man),

not knowing why it reminds you of some summer at a beach, of soft morning hair and roughing faces,

the green film that crusts inside my eyes and the fingers that clean them out again.




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illustrations by i. Juan Chavarria and ii. Julia Kostreva
You may never have been here before but if you have you're likely pretty confused. I've erased some posts, mixed things up a bit, changed the name a few times and the format. You can detect traces of identity crisis. It's all over the map, seriously.

Last you checked, Andrew and I were walking through downtown Winston with Abbott in his stroller, foraging for fire kindling and living in a one-bedroom apartment without ("practical") heat. I'm pretty sure I was living on the internet. I only made friends through "Mom-specific websites" and usually not very well --with the exception of a new (hah, though it's been a year already) character, Claire, to whom and whose blog I'll probably refer to often.

So since all of that, these things have happened:

1. We did not move to Massachusetts like we'd planned. That is still the future, come hell or whatever...

2. I started working full time, at night, at a restaurant. Still with Abbott during the daytimes, mostly.

3.We left said ground-level apartment for a slightly-bigger upstairs (not fun) apartment in a house full of tenants with dogs that pooped in the front yard, the yard being the reason we moved into the place.

4. There was a cockroach issue, and also, mold.

5. We moved again, to a house. With a big yard and no dog shit. It's beautiful and we're smitten. I'm smitten. We're just waiting to break soil in the back and get started overhauling the yard's perimeter. Apparently, it used to be super lush with vegetable beds and we're going to tap that.

6. Finally, I'm back in school - also full time (I don't think I've cried yet, so we're doing alright...) This will get explained eventually.
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GREEN AND WHITE







If you can first identify the things about your personality that are true and not "put-on", and then if you can identify small every-day things that you simply enjoy --that make you happy on the most basic level-- - if you can do these things, then you can craft an image of what your life at it's most blissful and contented state would look like.

That gives you a small blueprint, easily followed, that can lead you to a satisfied and honest life that will allow you to be happy with yourself.