When water gets caught in habitual whirlpools,
dig a way through the bottom
to the ocean.

I am tongue-tied, recently.

Having the direct experience of emotions rather than being able to place them at a remove is disconcerting, to say the least. I find myself stuttering when asked questions, unable to place the force of these feelings into words, unable to say exactly what they are and what they mean to me.

Things are starting to settle down and sort themselves out, I think. It's frustrating not to have the words to talk about this, but through perseverence, I'm managing to acquire a few.

I've been going through parts of my relatively recent past that I once thought I could bury and never have come to light. Going through them with a new eye has made me appreciate all the more that I was never the innocent in any of the pain that was inflicted on me; much of what I went through required my permission (and, occasionally, active participation) to happen. Sometimes, I'd like to shout at my younger self, "Do you expect this time to be any different than the last twenty times you reached your hand out to the hot stove and got burned?", as if I were a character in a horror movie, watching the hapless (and dumb) monster-bait wander off into the scary woods all by herself with her shirt unbuttoned.

I can see myself going into situations with exactly the wrong attitude, making the same stupid mistakes over and over again, making promises I shouldn't have made and then holding myself to them. I see myself paralyzed with fear and so out of my head that rational relationship decisions were entirely beyond me. [though I managed to make rational decisions in the *rest* of my life...]

I am a co-conspirator in my past. I have never been blameless.

Last night, I went out for sushi and then to see Gorey Stories with K. As we were sitting and munching, I noticed that the rain outside the window looked weird. It was too slow.


"It's snowing! Weird!"

We walked through it on the way the the theater, the flakes falling big and fluffy from the sky. After the show, it was starting to accumulate--I was immensely glad that I'd chosen to wear tights and my duster, though my skirt and my little flats weren't the best choice of snow clothing.

The bus ride home took about an hour and fifteen minutes, mostly spent waiting outdoors. My shoes were soaked through in the first fifteen minutes, so my toes were very cold, but most of the rest of me stayed warm.

As I was waiting in the U District for the 75 to come take me home, I watched a bunch of college-age girls shrieking and laughing in the median of Campus Parkway. They were throwing snowballs at each other and catchnig snowflakes on their tongues. Had I been wearing better shoes, I might have joined them--it looked like they were having a great time.



And as I walked down the hill from the bus stop to my house, everything was silent--no cars were out and about, the snow muffling everything, just me and the soft crunches and squeaks of my feet in the snow.

I woke up this morning, expecting to find not much accumulation, and discovered that not only was there a couple of inches outside, it was still snowing those big fluffly flakes. When i went outside, I discovered that it was heavy, wet snow--the best for making snowballs. I threw a few against the side of my house and at a couple of trees, and then went inside and sent email that I was going to be working from home today, so I didn't have to deal with the bus system.

I let the cats outside this morning, as well. Kallisti went out, poked around unerneath the pine tree, and came back in. Juniper took one look outside and refused to go out. [the cat is a Maine Coon. He is *built* for this weather. He has all of the nice long fur and the foot and ear fur and the long tail. But he hates the cold, hates the snow, and wants to be *inside*.] Lilith had never seen snow before, and it was clear that she didn't think very much of the idea. She say outside on the windowsill for a while and then came back in with a disgusted look on her face, and then followed me around for a while, meowing. She was not happy with me having ordered snow without her permission, evidently.

About noon, the snow turned to rain, and it's rapidly melting. I'm hoping that the stuff on the roads melts quickly, as I have places to be tomorrow that icy roads would complicate travel to.

But for today--snug and cozy in my house--I'm happy to see all the white stuff.

Snow day!

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