"We Are Ugly, But We Have the Music"

Seven things that made me burst into tears in the past seven days:

1. Esperanza Glass is in her 40s.

2. High school bullshit never stops, even when you're in your 40s.

3. High school bullshit dogs one to the assisted-living facility, if one isn't lucky enough to keel over on the 18th hole before that point.

3. High school bullshit actually starts in elementary school.

4. My daughter is not after all showing signs of being as big a social tard as I am. She is also, entirely objectively speaking, beautiful, and she has a naturally long, lean physique. These gifts may allow her to glide past the high school bullshit present and future like a mermaid over a sewer pipe. Beauty generally frightens bullies (who are usually ugly, if you look hard enough, and who as unfair as it is nonetheless sometimes have the music).

5. Amid the deafening silence of the week, I heard from an old, old friend. And a new one.

6. My Hot Friend E left a wise, two-call-long message on my phone that I want to try to save forever. Or at least as long as the high school bullshit lasts.

7. I ran Billy Goat Trail B and C today through blazing trees and a river just high enough to talk. I've been in a low-boil depression for a while, doing the things I need to do to roll through it to the other side. One of those things: Working a ritual with Oshun, Orisha of love and beauty and in a deeper sense, renewal, and running by the river is part of that, as she is a river goddess. I have always been moved by the story of Oshun and Ogun. Ogun, the maker of tools, and in a deeper sense, perpetual creator of what humans need to live and keep going--he works unceasingly--became disillusioned and exhausted, feeling as if his constant work was for nothing. So he quit. He went to the forest to hide. For a while, no one noticed, but soon there was fear and chaos. People and Orishas alike called through the forest, telling him how much they were suffering, how he couldn't behave this way. Oshun quietly slipped into the forest, wearing five yellow scarves and carrying a gourd of her sacred honey. She wandered silently until she sensed Ogun behind some brush, watching her. She didn't say a word, but began to dance. Ogun crept closer, watching her dance. She dipped her fingers into her gourd and quickly reached out and brushed his lips with honey. He came closer, and she fed him again, wrapping him in her scarves.

He agreed to come back to work.

So I run into the woods, but have to send a part of myself after me, must gather my own honey, must try to tempt myself back to work, without any of her conviction that it's worth the effort. The answer to that is always the big, brick-wall question: What's your alternative, hon?