Humanity

what i learned in vegas.

Spent five days in Vegas, no kids and a lovely bf.

  1. what happens in vegas stays in vegas.
    yep, because there should be a wall put around the area and all the money and greed and waste and environmental ignorance should be encapsulated, so that the rest of the world can go on and on without any of that. Lets move trump’s mexico wall to nevada?
  2. the world of human creativity is alive and well, my faith in human goodness and magic is restored. the engineering feats? the lighting technicians who found their niche? the armies of cleaning people in the mornings? the ways in which an entire civilization has been built where no people can survive? Astonishing. I was constantly astonished. Look up, look down, its everywhere.
  3. Addendum to 2: I saw two Cirque de Soleil shows, Love and Ka. And I cried because my heart was so full of the majesty of humanity.
  4. the scenery of the cowboy movies is real, and that blew out the walls of my small world, and i’m better for it. buttes, bluffs, red rocks at sunset, all just outside the city limits, visible from my hotel room in the Fremont area.
  5. i love moscow mules. probably way too much. way.
  6. drag show humor is one of those things that restores my faith in humanity. i laughed so much, and loved those beautiful performers and their catty ways. It should be required for everyone to watch one, every year, like a thanksgiving dinner, good for the soul.

AND. I haven’t even told you about my sister’s wedding yet, at which there was a QUEEN, but not in drag. That body was 100% booming, and 100% hers. I’ll fill you in next time. I haven’t even had a chance to talk to my sister about it yet. But holy love fest, guys. HOLY LOVEFEST.

Chihuly ceiling at the Bellagio. A flipping ceiling.
Humanity

Amazement, and what is pleasure anyways?

  1. I’m amazed by a lot of things, truly. like, comically almost. There are days I’m just stunned by the incredible luck I’ve had in my life.

My kids are freaking ridiculously cool.

Its been one of the real pleasures I’ve had this past year, spending all the time with them that I have.

(This is not to sugarcoat the exhaustion of having big kids home full time for ever and ever, hollah pandemica.)

2. I’m amazed that I can write and write and write, and highlight and its just all gone. and I just did that now, on purpose. It was just blather.

3. I’m amazed by how quickly my yard, and yours, has gone from simply sticklike, to lush, verdant- overwhelming in its pulse, and thrust.

4. I’m amazed by how much it means to me to have little conversations with friends.

5. I’m amazed that I live in a beach town and I rarely get myself to the water. This week was different.

6. I’m amazed that it took one smart person to make me realize the deep difference between respite and pleasure. And how I’ve been forgetting to get real pleasure, while my tools to relieve exhaustion, give myself respite care, have been wearing thin. Its the difference between maintenance. a bath to clean my body and give myself a hot 15 minutes alone? This is pleasurable, yes, and I dig it. I’ve got candles, and bath salts but its just maintenance, it is. And the reason they are wearing thin, is that I’ve got a significant deficit in pleasure. And, besides men, I don’t really know what my pleasures are, so it is a grave imbalance, my lovelies. so grave. (i’m laughing, kind of.)

But its not the same as joy. Its not the same as something which fills me with elation, makes me remember the light I have glowing inside of me. Are joy and pleasure the same? Related?

its been a year. we all know it. longer than a year, if truth be told.

The weather has turned, the yard is wild, and I’m pretty damn ready for some pleasure.

bring it, dogs.

lovelove,

me.

Humanity

There is nothing wrong, January.

“The pleasure of abiding. The pleasure of insistence, of persistence. The pleasure of obligation, the pleasure of dependency. The pleasures of ordinary devotion.
The pleasure of recognizing that one may have to undergo the same realizations, write the same notes in the margin, return to the same themes in one’s work, relearn the same emotional truths, write the same book over and over again – not because one is stupid or obstinate or incapable of change, but because such revisitations constitute a life.” –
Maggie Nelson

This quote. This thing settled down on me like a net, slicing through me in geometries.

Its not, repeat and repeat until you finally learn the lesson, its not ‘cycle after cycle of the same lesson’ because you just cannot get it, you are so thick you fell for another addict…it is the revisitation that constitutes a life.

i’m not stupid, i’m just living.

JESUS. Pleasure, not trial.

PLEASURE.

I mix my hedonism with practicality, i do. but i wish more people could lighten up. get earthy with themselves.

there is so much in there, and i don’t even know how to begin to dig it up, to unearth it for you.

PLEASURE.

go find some.

i’m going to organize another raised bed for myself this spring. I might go wild and plant all flowers again. my kids don’t flipping eat vegetables, so what is the point of spinach? Maybe a pepper or two? I’ll have lavender to sell this year, barring pestilence.

Sigh.

Pleasure. run your hands through a bowl of rice if you have to. climb under the weighted blanket, or lover, or dog. whatever you got.

that quote. man, i am sliced.

slices of red orange on white background
Photo by Any Lane on Pexels.com

there’s nothing wrong with you. you’re just living.

sigh.

-me