I have to talk on the phone to everyone today. I’m already running late but I didn’t want to not post anything. My parents are about to arrive. I am worried there’s going to be some kind of interrogation about my mental health. I just want to be able to respond with the generosity and calmness and reassurance that will make them less anxious. But maybe they don’t care. Maybe I’m just projecting onto them.
The dog seems to be getting this whole “come when he’s called” thing and, best of all, he seems to really enjoy it. I know it can’t last or be counted on, but I’m enjoying it.
Also, I love this afghan so much. I feel very fortunate to have hit a string of afghans that give me great pleasure.
Jessi Zazu has cancer. The hits just keep on coming this year, I tell you what. I was watching her video where she talks about her diagnosis and shaves her head for her next round of chemo and I couldn’t help but feel like this is offensive, this cancer. Zazu is really trying to make the world a better place. She works so hard for her community. Her music is amazing. And she’s so young. There are so many old sacks of shit in this world. Let cancer take them.
I know I’m not alone in feeling this way about this year, but I feel like the things that are supposed to make us happy–a very wanted baby, for instance, or our friends and mentors–have been shown to be so easily stripped away. And that we’ve lost many of the people I would have turned to in order to make sense of our current moment as a nation and as a world. We’re going into this next year, these next four years, without the people I’ve counted on to make sense of this stuff.
To find beauty and meaning even in very dark days.
I feel like all these massive floodlights have burned out or are burning out and it’s just left to those of us who still have matches to light the way. As the song says, this little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine, but fuck if I know which way to shine it. Or if anyone can see it. Or if all I’m doing is giving away my position.
Tiny Cat Pants 
Oh man, that last paragraph…yes. I feel this.
On days like this, I think of CCR and “Long As I Can See the Light.” And of the injunction to Jews to put our hannukiyot in the windows, so they can be seen by passers-by. I think it’s important to let others see your light. If it turns out that it’s a problem that enemies know your position, well, they were going to come for you anyway, so no matter.
It’s Bizarro World, for sure. Some mornings I start reading news and feel vertigo. My stomache cramps and wobbles when I see the name the first time every day.