Drought

I haven't had sex in a really really long time. If I were to calculate the exact length of time for you, my eyes would well up with tears, and none of us wants that. (They might anyway, 'cause that's what's going down these days. Don't say I didn't warn you.)

I hadn't even had sex with my damn self, which is weird, because I'm a pretty easy lay. My life situation right now is such that people are pretty much always around me, none of whom want to see or hear me sprawled in my bed, wantonly having my way with myself.

But the other day I decided I should probably have a damn orgasm--for health reasons, if nothing else. I locked the bathroom door and started drawing a bath. I slid down to the spigot end of the tub to angle myself so the water stream could go where I needed it to go.

I don't know if you've ever had sex with a water stream but if you're a woman, it's kind of a sure thing. Usually this would have been a two-minute and out kind of deal. But for some reason, it took just... so long. Perhaps it was because I was slippery and kept sliding away from the water that was supposed to be fucking me. Or perhaps it was that I had become so divorced from my passion that I actually was doing this "for health reasons." 

I finally came for no other reason than I was determined, which, for the record, is quite low on the list of arousing thoughts. I don't remember if it was even good or not. It was just something I needed to have happen that did. Check.

The next day, I woke up and my legs were completely sore. Probably taking a long walk in flip-flops, I thought. Note to self: wear more supportive shoes. For health reasons.

Later I realized, Crap, it was the bath fuck. I had been clenching my legs so desperately, for so long, trying to have that lame-ass orgasm, that I, like, hurt myself.

For the next few days, my sore legs reminded me of several things, none of them horribly pleasant:
1.  I had sex with water.
2.  I had unsatisfying sex with water.
3. Though I consider myself to be in fine shape (Mighty fine! How it is that am I sex-less?) if there were ever a situation in which I had to do some sort of under-spigot competitive clenching, I would not end up on the winner's podium.
but worst,
4. During one of California's worst droughts in history, I had wasted water.

I'd like it think it wasn't entirely wasted. But if you want to report me, here's the web site for the Long Beach Water Department. There you can find several categories of water wasting such as "watering (with potable water) on a day other than Monday, Thursday or Sunday." I'll leave it up to you to figure out my specific violation.

xoxox
jill

(photo source)

Things Fall Apart

I recently suffered a loss. My loss was not a major loss. In the hierarchy of losses, mine was more a second runner-up kind of loss. 

We all suffer losses all the time, but some are sticky. This one is like that.

The center could not hold and now everything feels too bright. I am too open, too raw.

I'm doing what we call in our house "free crying," when you are overcome by tears anytime, anywhere. I have cried in the shower, cried in downward dog and cried upon hearing songs that are embarrassingly not cry-worthy.

Bad feelings come in unbidden and I want to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind it all out of my brain. When they're not there, it almost feels off, and I let my thoughts edge towards/around/near the area in my brain where the Bad Feelings live to see if it still hurts, like touching your tongue to a mouth wound to see if the sore is still there.

When someone dies (which did not happen in this particular case), my mother says that for a period of time "the veils are thin." I asked her what she meant and she said, "the cosmic spiritual communication is more open than usual." She says things like that. I take it to mean that the boundaries of reality don't quite apply as they normally do.

Right now the veils are thin and the world looks different. It's all just more. More sad. But also more moments of awe. On a recent walk, my eyes filled with tears when I saw the neighbors whose dog who died on a sidewalk right in front of me a year ago, then again upon beholding the insane beauty of some tree bark. This was in the space of like two blocks.

Being so fucking open to both the beauty and deep sadness of life all at once is not pleasant, exactly, but it’s not entirely unpleasant. It doesn’t feel sustainable to feel this much, all the time. But I can live here a little bit.

Maybe sometimes it’s good to get the world rocked off its axis. Because the last several years have been a fuck of a lot. Reading about a good five or six completely horrific things before even finishing a cup of coffee is just...I mean, what are you supposed to do with that? It's too much. At some point, I went numb.

Finally feeling again--even feeling weepy and sad and that everything is almost unbearably beautiful/terrible--is still feeling and I've missed it.

If you, too, are inhabiting the Land of the Lost (sorry, man), I will pass on some advice from my friend Sandra, "Feel, but don’t dwell." 

It'll get better. Or better-ish. My particular brain chemistry is such that I have a natural equilibrium towards a solid state of meh. If things seem too good, I reel it in, so that I'm safely back at meh. When things gets too bad, same deal, back to meh.

The status of meh will return soon enough, I expect. But it feels okay to linger here in this tentative space, being way too open and feeling too much. While I'm here, I'm gonna to take the time to have a look around. Maybe see if there's anything I want take back with me when I return to the state of meh.

I think a lot about that picture of Johnny Knoxville up there at the top of this. In it, he's been shot out of a cannon and is hurling through space. He's clearly scared out of his wits and is desperately trying to ride forces beyond his control. But for one brief and glorious moment, he arches his back and just fucking nails it. Perfect form. 10/10.   

The takeaway? I guess if you, like me, are hurling through space and don't know where you're gonna land, take the moment to throw back those non-functioning/for display purposes only set of wings and fucking nail it.

xoxo

jill 

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