this draft has been sitting in my river blog stack for a little over two weeks now. the writing is from those two weeks ago, and i have interjected photos of the thing i was anticipating. (also - notes in parentheses have been added on the day of posting.) funny how drafts lets you play with time like that. as @roman has pointed out, time is a big knot and all the moments sit aside each other at some point or another.

anyways, here is two weeks ago, before i knew i was going to meet someone:

end of november...

i feel jumbled and a mess. not a bad mess, not an active or chaotic one either, just a calm, sitting mess, like a heap of stainless steel on a construction site, unmoving, messy looking but sturdy and useful. it'll all get sorted soon.

my thinking with this blogpost is that if i freeflow it all out, the needed stuff will rise to the top and i can pick and choose where to go from there. (it worked.) the big pieces can slot in, like tetris, the little guys will click into place and the rest is decoration. the magic will become clear. this is a sifting process that i like to come to when i start feeling like the steel pile.

i am picking up the guitar wednesday – tomorrow – in van nuys. i'm so so excited to have my stuff back. you have no idea. laila will be so happy, she was upset when i sold it. (i sent the guy who bought it from me on facebook a hypnosis meme that said "ooh u wanna sell me the guitar back so bad" and it worked. i took the red line to north hollywood for 30 minutes and then the bus for 20 minutes and then walked for 20 minutes to get there, upon arrival my phone died. gus made me a coffee and i sat in this stranger's living room while my phone charged in his room. my energy was wide open and sunny that day. i walked for 20 minutes and took the bus for 20 minutes and took the red line south to downtown to get back.)

back to november...

the cat is at an unknown place but i promised to pick him up sunday. (it turned out to be in monterrey park. i met someone that previous wednesday night and roped her into picking up the cat with me. we got him on a street corner outside the Noodle Cafe. she's really good with him. my life isn't so different yet but i do feel a bit like i hopped a freight train by myself. i don't want anyone to join me, not even her.)

saturday i am at laila's. i'm so sorry. i don't know about christmas, my mom doesn't want to do it. it's okay and every year i am challenged to rethink the holidays and every year my heart breaks a little that we can't seem to figure it out. it's okay. dani said i can come to hers. that means i will see subin and adrian and we will road trip it to the desert, if my cat is good. (my cat is very good. this is still the plan, if adrian isn't working.)

thanksgiving i am at claudia's. yzzy and i will take the train to her house, then claudita will drive us to her parents'. (her cat peed in the car on the way there. yzzy brought her switch and played animal crossing and she let us each make an outfit.)

(waiting for the adults)

liminal thanksgiving time between arriving at someone's house and doing dinner, feel like a kid again every time a little different.

how lucky. there it is, we have uncovered the first piece of magic. how beautiful to have so many names floating around, golden string connected all over LA and all crossing paths through my heart. i am so grateful that i have the family i have here in my friends. how lucky to have been to so many thanksgiving dinners and welcome at christmas, and to cook with my friend's mothers and joke with their fathers and swim with their siblings. to lay on the ground in their childhood bedrooms and look at the stars they stuck up there when they were 9 and we didn't know about each other yet.

last christmas i spent the week at the family home of someone very special to me. her father made lasagna on christmas day and i insisted we walk the dog all together and the neighbors had decorated the whole street and it should have been completely heartwarming and it was but i still felt reservations – just your typical other-shoe kind of holiday flutter in the chest. but slowly, this family and this dear friend untangled this thing for me. for that i am forever changed.

this year her father is no longer with us and there is no way to understand it. (tomorrow is his memorial and there is no way to understand it.)

today, december 12th:

i am wary. in holiday '22 my heart was swung wide open with abandon. and it worked. i was 20 years old and anything was possible and that was amazing. now anything is possible and it's daunting. anything possible means loss is possible, something coming out of the blue, something that can hurt me, something that can be love or that can be trouble, or both, which i cannot grapple with in the current moment. i can and will again, but not yet.

i keep running into a hard time and just grinding the gears out. metal on metal, shrieking, leaving marks. i think i need to be gentle again. december feels already over, but i know it's not true. i still have time to be gentle in this year. i will try.

cover: christmas in 2023 with my family, joshua tree.