Cold-Cocked by the Galaxy

I've had a shitty week. Car broke down, laptop broke down, I dropped my phone and shattered the screen, on-and-off migraines, and some super-stressful work situations.

I like when I can identify some external cause for my woes, especially when it's something over which I have no control. It allows  me to shake my tiny fist and just ride it out. Enter astrology.

So I started asking around, hoping to confirm my suspicions that the sky was to blame for my difficulties. Reports started coming in that I'm not the only one who's had a week from hell. And someone showed me this: the Grand Cross.

Basically, four planets are forming 90-degree angles in four cardinal zodiac signs, and the result is a cosmic shit-show. This has been going on since January and will continue into June, and we're coming up on the peak, where the cross is its squarest.

Oh, also a little thing called a blood moon eclipse. Apocalypse, anyone?

Haiku for the Solar System Being a Dick

Why is life a mess?
Stars and planets all aligned
Flipping me the bird

This is how planets say "Fuck you."

It's Love on Wheels

On Sunday I went rollerskating for the first time in 15 years, and maybe the second time in 30. I was really nervous. My knees already hurt when I climb stairs; I don't need to fall on them. But I didn't. In the two hours I was at Interskate 91 (warning: web page plays music you don't want anyone to think you're listening to on purpose), I went from wobbly barely-standing to fairly confident gliding around in circles. The memory of how to move was still inside me somewhere.

So that felt good.

I had a moment, too, one of many I've had over the last year or so, of feeling swept up in the romance of my life, of being in friend-love with this group of queers that had talked me into doing something youthful and silly and possibly slightly dangerous. Maybe it was the saccharine pop music blaring over the speakers at the skating rink or the memory of being 7 under disco lights holding my friend's hand as we spun around corners. Sometimes I think I'm missing romantic love in my life when I'm not dating anyone special, so it's nice to be reminded that I have everything I need and want if I just notice it.

Haiku for Rollerskating at 38

Bodies remember,
Then the heart can open up.
Mind comes in last.

Trying to skate backward (looks a lot like standing still).

#allthefilters #allthetime

Yesterday I downloaded a certain popular photography app so I could show off sexy knitting pics to my friends. So I'm gonna get really cross-platform on you all and haiku about my knitting Instagram post.

Ready?

Haiku for "Valencia"

I want a filter,
An "awesome button" for life.
Oh wait, that's called "art."

This heart is half full.

Stay tuned for my tweet about the Facebook post for this blog entry.

NaPoWriMo

Seems like, for a blog that claims to produce a haiku a day (at least in theory), national poetry writing month (NaPoWriMo) would be no problem.

Seems like.

Except that shit's just been kind of all over the place lately. March went out like a fire-breathing, kickboxing, face-eating lion. A beautiful boy went away forever. I worked two jobs, was in a play, practiced with my mystery band, and had a bunch of doctor's appointments for chronic pain (yeah, that's still happening).

April and poetry always make me think of T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland." Looking at it now, I think that he is calling April cruel because it is so full of renewal and reawakening and hope, and yet all this life springs from death: "breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire."

I don't know. I'm so tired.

Haiku for Cruel April

So many undone.
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
Broken images.