a blog of

Women sleep so soundly they seem to be dead. Who knows? Women may live in order to sleep.

Do not believe that because you are a revolutionary you must feel sad.

And then it is another day and another and another, but I will not go on about this because no doubt  you too have experienced time.

A man is having terrible dreams. In them, he is being chased by a demon. He seeks counsel from a therapist, who tells him he must turn around and confront the demon or he will never escape it. He vows to do this, but each night in his dreams, he runs again. Finally, he manages to turn around and look straight at the demon. "Why are you chasing me?" he asks it. The demon says, "I don't know. It's your dream."

A woman walks into a dentist's office and says, "I think I'm a moth." The dentist tells her, "You shouldn't be here. You should be seeing a psychiatrist..." The woman replies, "I am seeing a psychiatrist." The dentist says, "Then what are you doing here?" And she says, "Your light was on."

She tells me that her phone was stolen and she's been using a really old one instead. She won't get the newest model, she's decided. "So I just go at a slower pace. I know I'm missing things because I can't respond quickly enough to what people say or show me, but that's okay. It gives me more time to think," she says. I am charmed by her. She seems practically like a transcendentalist. I take another sip of her grass drink and think maybe it is giving me some kind of burst of energy. She takes out her phone to demonstrate its obsolescence to me. It is exactly the same kind as mine. Mine is two years old but still retrieves things for me in the blink of an eye. "Wait," I say. "Were you talking about seconds? When you said you were so out of step and living slowly, did you mean by seconds?" She considers this. "Yeah," she says, "seconds probably."

I've been thinking more about my doomstead. Choosing people for it is tricky. First, you must assess their character. Will they lead, will they follow? Will they dominate others the moment this becomes possible? Are they alpha? Beta? ... Second, you must balance the skills of the people you choose. Is one handy? Is one musical? Is one medical? Third, you must figure out how to tell them you have drafted them for your doomstead.

Anytime I think I am a semidecent person, I remember this story someone told me once about her ex-husband. He was always late getting home. He never came home when he said he would, and I though I knew this story before she told it, but I was wrong. It was just that he had a rule that if anyone asked him for help he would pause to see what the person needed. And then he would try to get them that thing if he could. Sometimes it was money, sometimes food; once a man needed a belt and he gave him his. The reason he was always late was that his office was next door to Penn Station. They broke up because he was a mean drunk, but still.

Young person worry: What if nothing I do matters? Old person worry: What if everything I do does?

A few days later, I yelled at him for losing his new lunch box, and he turned to me and said, Are you sure you’re my mother? Sometimes you don’t seem like a good enough person. He was just a kid so I let it go. And now, years later, I probably only think of it, I don’t know, once or twice a day.

Q: What is the philosophy of late capitalism? A: Two hikers see a hungry bear on the trail ahead of them. One of them takes out his running shoes and puts them on. "You can't outrun a bear," the other whispers. "I just have to outrun you," he says.

I originally went to see Bri because psychosis had made me fear my own mind. Since then, the sacred arts have given me some solace not so much through the beliefs they provide as through the actions the recommend. To say this prayer—burn this candle—perform this ritual—create this salt or honey jar—is to have something to do when it seems that nothing can be done.