A light in the fog

Apologies to anybody whose calls I haven't returned this past week--paradoxically, the communication breakdown we experienced last week was, for me, followed by a more voluntary lapse in communication--to put it plainly, I haven't felt much like talking to anyone.

Half the roof blew off the building next door during a huge windstorm last week, and in so doing, knocked over our chimney, causing a big scary noise and a bunch of crazy black shit to fall down through our heating vents, making it unsafe to warm the place. I mention this, not because it's further evidence of what a shitty house we're living in (although it is), but because it seems like a good metaphor.

I don't know what the fuck but I guess that sometimes living in a strange town, depending on less than a handful of people for loving face time, and working on issues that more often than not feel completely impossible to overcome, I guess all that is bound to get a girl down. I mean, the world is going to hell in a fucking handbasket, and I'm in Baltimore (a town that got packed into the handbasket a long time ago), you know?

Point is, your girl has been adrift, but rest assured that lifelines have been tossed and gratefully grasped, and I imagine she'll be back to her old, more hopeful self within a matter of days. I know that there are amazing people doing amazing work even as I struggle to stop wallowing and do my own--I'm in contact with more and more amazing worker bees all the time.

And the love. Even as I have been at a loss, cynical and critical of almost everything, I get the sweetest notes and texts from my loving friends. Case in point, this glorious (as yet un-named) poem that Mr. Man wrote for me last week, at a time when I can only imagine I was wicked with anxiety, and sent me today, just in time to soothe the craziness:

This is something that brings me closer to everything else
at the same time it pushes me away from things:
and this not what I mean, but what I say.

And this is not what I say, but what I mean:
However strong you are, however hard you can push it,
I live for this, and so do you.

Those hands strong and working strength to bring
the things you want in this world to thousands of brilliant tiny lights
and it works so much as you believe they will
so fuck thinking of things as 1+1+1=3
because it's all going to happen
with leaves falling from your fingers as you type
while you are sipping your morning coffee just like any other day.

While we sit and wait for the world to catch up with us
while we sit and wait for something to happen
and all of the greed to fall, and all of the hope to be realisms
you are working it through fully knowing that it's been real
and is real
and happened while we were sleeping
and dreaming

While you are cracking your wrists and lifting your beautiful fingers and pushing ideas into real
I am watching you with my love for you
my soul for you
my heart for you.

Thanks for this, baby. Best bf money could buy.