Wyoming, 2023

***old videos

 

Montana, 2023

 

---

 ***an old video

generosity

I started growing my hair out again.  I died it a few months back, because everyone else was dying their hair and I guess I was being included ?  I did it and then did it again and then again until finally I tired of the time and effort and vanity in being someone other than myself.  In other words: I missed my gray hair.  

It's different this time around, the streaks of grey are almost white along the right side of my scalp, and I can see where the dye grows lighter against the fuller grey beneath.  It feels like what I expected my hair to be like the first time around, what I was slightly disappointed to uncover last time.  

I wonder how I'll be treated differently this time, as my hair grows more grey.  I love women with white hair, people like House (Minority) Whip Katherine Clark.  It creates excitement about the future that I am happy about.  

//

I was thinking about my old boss, from the part time job that was... actually... scary with the explosive man who sat 12 inches away from me the entire 6 hour shift.  I've been thinking about the fact that this man, the other non-explosive man, was happy in his apartment, in his life he seemed to live in a way that was hidden from the women he was romantically involved with, the mothers of his children.  There was something about his lack of a house that was fascinating to me, the way he seemed to intentionally avoid this prosperity in order to keep it from people he professed to love, staying decidedly ungenerous.

I watched and listened as he explained what I saw as his pattern.  Having a child and then leaving, having a child and then leaving.  Fine, we're allowed to do that, but it was the children's presence in this equation that bothered me the most - the idea of knowing he needed to create a space for them, but only long enough to realize he needed to abandon it.  Jumping from one mother and her child to the next.  One time seems forgivable, but twice doesn't.

I remember coming up to it, as if it was a wall, face to face and feeling the weight and heft of it, maybe even the coolness; it was not something I could move.  

Did I want to move it?  Yes, honestly.  Even though I didn't want - maybe still don't want - a house, but I knew instinctively that I would need this eventually.  "This" being generosity.  Not just duty or obligation, but the generosity of comfort and space in all the forms these things take.

//  

This feels like a carryover from past relationships, this guiding sensation that things were impassable.  It's slightly surprising that I can look behind me and see that I knew what I wanted, even when I felt I didn't know what I wanted.  I think I interpreted this as a lack of negotiation, some sort of void or lack, but maybe it was a space so deeply occupied by what I wanted that I couldn't recover, fallen so far from me that it was, that this space was usually empty for other people - and that it should be empty for me too.  

...

***an old video

me.

I came across this pictures on Canva, when I went in to work on elements for this blog.  I can't believe how long my hair is, how good my skin looks, how plump and juicy and healthy I look overall.  My hair is still so dark.  I did this when I moved back to Michigan - set up my camera and take pictures.  There was a certain artistic license about this process that I relished, drunk deep from.  I felt deeply, fully me, myself.  

I haven't taken pictures in such a long time.  I feel beat up here, in South Dakota, my skin, my spirit.  

A maintenance guy, someone I really like actually, asked if I was taking a selfie as I took a picture of something at work.  I was caught up in texting my supervisor, trying to figure out why I was taking half the house on an outing alone, snapping a picture of the schedule to show her, although I wasn't sure if this happened per her instructions, a ration of 6 people supported to 1 worker - surely unsafe.  His question made me laugh for a second.  He stood close by as I spoke softly into my phone, the sounds becoming text.  I don't use that voice at work often, it's usually reserved for friends.

It's funny to me how grounding reflections are, getting caught up in the puns, which betray a sort of familial relationship, a hidden connection between our inner and outer worlds.  I started my last blog, which has since become, I'll admit, an poorly executed anonymous blog, as my hub for fashion and beauty, a dairy to femininity actually, after feeling like I had to turn so many part of me down, tucking away my breasts, my hair, my hips - the things that told the world I was a woman, the things that told myself and others I didn't belong in the logical, emotionless business world.

Here we are again - heading into a scary world, and here I am again - finding space along the margins.  I love this journey actually, even if it is quieter, less dopamine-y.  It's a quiet street in a college town during the summer, when all the students are away doing internships, working summer jobs at the beach.  

And that's the way I like it.  

(For context: Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Sprint to Remake Meta for the Trump Era by Mike Isaac, Sheera Frenkel and Kate Conger)

reflections

mirrors // collages // religious freedom // & avoiding the algorithm

I do because I can.