living through

sometimes the slivers of joy
the little bits you try to collect
just don't feel big enough

sometimes the weight
of disappointment
and displacement
make it difficult to hold
those little slivers

here's what i say:
keep chasing those slivers.
keep working at finding them.
the dark will always be there;
it does not need to be chased.

Blue skies and clear thoughts.  Or is it blue thoughts and clear skies?  Clear, blue thought skies?  You see the struggles?  But when there's calm, when your back is flat on a sun-warmed piece of cement and your children are speaking to each other in their own, youthful language, you feel deeply connected and relaxed.  The trees are beginning to green, the scent of lilacs are everywhere and it does seem possible that although nature does it much better than we do, there may, in fact, be some fresh start.  Make goals, imagine the fruition of those goals.  Words are just small pieces of yourself that you give to the page.    

A whole new world

incognito:  as hazel woods

there's too much catching up to do here, my strange friends.  

what has happened to our world?  what has happened to us?  

in addition to resisting and protesting, my advice is to go deep.  

radical transparence is not just something we should want 

from our government.  

ask it of yourself.  

i will go first:  i sold out.  i published a book i was proud of

under a pseudonym.  why?  long answer forthcoming.  

short answer:  fear.  money.  inertia.

no surprise:  it didn't go so well.  poor hazel woods' p&l

numbers are as disappointing as as meg mullins'.

guess what?  i finally don't give a fuck.

but, i did take an entire year off from writing.

and i did something on my bucket list.

i started a handmade napkin biz.

i loved it.  the napkins are dreamy. (please, don't order any)

turns out, i'm almost as terrible selling napkins

as i am selling books.

so, now what?

i've circled the wagons around 

the boring, predictable, sensitive part

of myself who thinks about success

as some kind of balmy, palm-treed place one reaches

instead of a daily pursuit of kindness and creativity and utility 

and i'm writing.

and i'm trying to laugh at djt.  because i'm guessing

that's what he hates the most.  being taken seriously

is part of the con.  his policies and atrocities are serious and

must be opposed.  but the man?  what a joke.

be soft. do not let the world make you hard. do not let pain make you hate. 
do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. 
take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, 
you still believe 
it to be a beautiful place.

-kurt vonnegut

I'm thinking a lot about time. About the green hills from my childhood summers. Those horses standing atop the hills, whose immense bodies and warm breaths made my smallness smaller. Where do those moments live now? Intuitively I know that they are not gone. Nothing disappears. They exist in my mysterious brain until they don't. And then?  The world vanished with us.  We take it, piece by piece, to the silent place.

When you sit on the park bench in the middle of walking the dog, and a strong breeze tumbles a load of crisp, papery elm seeds at you, have you just interrupted fate?  Have you become that terrible accident of nature that prevents some tender unplanted tree from becoming its intended self? 

why do you look at me with such disgust every time i try to actually parent you?

because it's exactly what i'm supposed to do.

why do you have to do exactly what you're supposed to do?

it's programmed.  or you taught me to.

when i was parenting you back in the days when that didn't make you mad?

pretty much.