Up betimes and out in the garden; peas and radishes coming along. The new batch of chickens is utterly indifferent to my presence and the old ones still cleave like burrs. It’s amazing what a difference handling a batch of chickens to the point of smothering makes. It’s fun to walk around with them. It’s like wearing a giant pair of fuzzy slippers that makes cross noises. Components break off and stop to eat bugs or peck at a spot before rejoining the ankle entourage, Voltron-style.

I am thinking the last days of new computer approaches already. I seem to be the 1337 Widow when it comes to computers since about November. I have that disoriented feeling where I don’t know where my files are or what’s on a box at any given time. I am constantly redownloading software, reformatting, rebooting, whatever needs to be done. I think I have lost years of photos and music files but I am unsure; they could be two machines ago on the laptop that just lost display capabilities. Half my novel is on there as well. I just don’t want to make time right now. I’m starting to think the lesson here is about halfassing things or looking for an easy fix, but that would imply the universe makes sense somehow and there’s a plan to it. HA.

I am being challenged because there is this part of me that loves starting over, releasing whatever I have made into the wild and forgetting about it. The challenging part is putting my money where my mouth is on this and being able to live in this advanced state of disorientation for however long it lasts and to still retain some kind of functioning. I think I am a different person than I was in November; it’s kind of sickening how symbolic all this computer mess is. Breakdown, restart, repeat. I need to decide now if I want to be more organized and have things like external hard drives and sensible filing systems. Destroying paintings and erasing writing is different than this, somehow–that feels discrete whereas somehow my hard drive feels like a more complete mirror of what’s in my mind.

Everything we create is an expression of what is happening internally, our past, and our thought processes; what does it say about me that parts of me, the reflection of me is a complete tangle right now? Once I was trying to figure out where the old stopping point is and where the new one starts, but I don’t believe it’s at all that simple anymore.

When I was in college I was obsessed with the Western mutilation of the idea of wabi-sabi. I think a tree that has a dead part is most beautiful. Things like perfect gardens or anything that implies there is nothing left to be done is completely uninteresting. I like people with an edge who have figured out how to be nice, to function. People who can take the dark parts and the good ones and put them together. At the same time I was surrounding myself with chipped pottery and domestic work with a repetitive nature I was squeezing onto myself so tightly I almost cracked. The asymmetry would be that I was perfect somehow and my external world was not. What a load of crap that was.

Now I guess I have to accept that I am wabi-sabi everywhere. The change now is not the shame of being brought to my knees several times, rendered mortal repeatedly. The change is balance and growth. I am taking it a little at a time.

Could I be any further up my own ass? No, I could not. I can tell this is one of those notes to myself for six months from now, when things have shifted again.

Tomorrow on I, Asshole: vengeance puking. Have a good day.