i am obsessed with this decemberist’s song right now, with this lyric.

so loosen your shoulderblades / this is your hour to make due / ‘cause there on the timberline / deep cold november shines through / soft and absolute

it is so northwest. everything about it screams home to me, and for that reason it splits into me, reminds me to center myself, calls me towards something anchoring and real. shoulderblades, mountains, horizon, cold, now, here. i have been listening to it on repeat and dreaming of the misty mountains back home. i do not want to be there, but i want to be able to *go* there. to drive, hike, camp, wake up in mountainy mist.

“The sea roads, they’re drying up.”
“The sea is drying up?”
“Not this sea, Stupid child!” Her tail slapped, sent up a fountain, exploding and drenching me. “The sea in the minds of my Ginen. The sea roads, the salt roads. And the sweet ones, too; the rivers. Can’t follow them to their sources any more. You must fix it, Mer” 

the salt roads, by nalo hopkinson

there’s nothing quite like waking up with a much-loved book on your mind. this is my favorite way of knowing that it’s time to reread something. i’m an avid re-reader: in my childhood i read certain books every year (the saturdays and the mists of avalon, notably). in my adulthood it has been skin, bastard out of carolina, and trash (noticing a theme?). this year is new. it’s been the gravy essay by dorothy allison in eat, memory, a book of poetry called twigs and knucklebones, now the salt roads, and i think the next up is autobiography of red (which i red twice the first time: as soon as i got to the last page i flipped back to the first, unwilling to let it be over).

what i like about rereading is that you’re no longer just reading for the story. you already know what happens, so you can pick up on the one hundred million other interesting things that are happening. how are the characters? what do you feel? how does the language of the text work? where does it sit in your heart? the books i reread are the ones that have a place in my heart and the rereadings help be figure out the why and what of that place. helps me find whatever it is that my heart is reaching out to as true. these readings are often more important to me even than reading it the first time, because it’s these readings that help me findmyself, whereas the first reading, it’s about me seeing myself in a new way in that text (or, really, feeling seen by the text and its author). it is are amazing, powerful magic.

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): Holy guacamole, Batman! On Thursday (May 27), Uranus the Great Liberator (a.k.a. the Revolutionary Up-Ender, Chaos-Creator and Shit-Disturber) is moving across the starting/finishing line from Pisces to Aries, his first sign-change since 2003. And as if that weren’t enough, big-boy Jupiter joins this hit-parade and also shifts into Aries a week later (Sun Jun 6). This is a flashing-neon-light telegram from the celestial message-center that a specific area of your life is currently due for massive reinvention, on behalf of your radical individuality in that area. For you, Virgo, this emancipatory firestorm hits your interpersonally-complicating 8th house, a planetary statement on the timeliness of taking scary risks with how far ‘in bed’ with certain other individuals (sexually? financially? psychologically?) you’re willing to go. Virgos typically prefer clean borders and independent responsibilities to a confusing mass of mutually merged mess… a tendency that both (1) keeps you in careful charge over who does what with which thing and (2) limits your impetus to stretch relationally, by eliminating awkward negotiations that come from radically sharing vast zones of life with other individuals, up close and personal. But guess what? It’s time to throw what you’ve got into the shared pot, and risk losing something in order to gain something else (and learn more about your concealed motivations in the process). This moment in history calls for nothing less than a willingness to get dirty, in the act of working together (undeniably a pain in the ass sometimes) in intimate surroundings with folks who, as much as you may care for them, vary from you in more ways than you can merely theorize about. When in doubt, then, get deeper into it. At the end of the day, the whole thing could well blow up in your face—or not. If you don’t go all the way, on the other hand, you’re only making a half-assed effort at living life to its fullest.

considering a strike against my own body. srsly.