in my dream, i help a woman give birth. i am eating a piece of candy and can't get it off my fingers, but the baby is coming out, the woman hunched and screaming, and it wiggles into my arms. i almost drop it, i am looking somewhere else but i feel the thud of the cord being cut, i hand it to her, what a beautiful boy and she says she hates it. her husband takes it away. my own breasts are heavy and aching with milk, but he won't let me nurse the baby, asks me with disdain if i'm the one who loves his child, and the baby lies wrinkled and silent and i know it will die.

packing. my mother had been hanging on to a set a dishes, silverware, and glasses for me, and today we put them all in boxes. went through the kitchen cupboards and i got the old one of everything we had duplicates of: cutting boards, rolling pins, flour sifters, pie pans, colanders, pepper grinders, orange juicers, ice cream scoops, serving platters, lasagne pans, casserole dishes, and one wooden bowl from the set my grandfather made. ceramic wine glasses my mom bought for her first apartment. big glass jars for "bulk hippie food" and a bunch of tupperware. slotted spoons. chopsticks. two corkscrews. mixing bowls.


"i'm giving you some dishrags," she says, "because some people use them instead of sponges. i never did, but some people do. my mother never did, so i never did, so you probably never did. that's how those things work." and it is. my grandchildren will wash dishes the way my grandmother did.


a box for towels and bathmat, a box for comforter and sheets, a box for photographs, a box for my cds and a box for journals. i can feel the seperation anxiety beginning: i can't bring all my books. which almost means i can't bring any, because how could i choose? better to start with tigana, ishmael, a good dictionary, and an empty bookcase to fill. my cookbooks, of course, and gardening books, and harry potter y la piedra filosofal, because i haven't finished it but should. maybe the lord of the rings and neruda, a writing book or two, maybe some rushdie and dillard and and and see? impossible. but as adam put it, i could at any time be in desperate need for any one of my books. and though the library will almost certainly have lolita and one hundred years of solitude and the bell jar, i don't feel confidant that they'll have the tale of genji or consilience. but maybe they will.


all my clothes in one huge duffel bag, except my fancy dresses and my giant winter coat. and as much as i have far too much much crap, it doesn't seem like enough to be My Life. and yet. two days.

so. tired. of it all. but with just enough joy to keep me going. countdown at five days 'till explosion. i'll do what i can.

on the side-effect warnings for my birth control pills, it says that "women may experience vaginal bleeding."


i'm glad that none of the men taking birth control pills have to worry about vaginal bleeding.


right.

it is a day for fires and blankets and curling with books. proper monterey summer has descended; weather.com tells me it's our classic 55 outside, but the fog and the wind make it feel colder. the sky has gone flat grey and i'm glad i woke early enough to have time for tea and lazing about before work.


yesterday was one of those days that just feels good for no particular reason. i woke early, stretched, cleaned up my room, had breakfast for the first time in months. work was busy and i love work when it's busy. i closed by myself, rocking out to some cd i didn't know, and then matt and i sat in the grass in the sun for a while before he went to work. i called adam and we went to point lobos for a hike and picnic dinner and snuck around for an hour after the park closed before a ranger caught us on our way out. i came home and worked on a book i've been making, talked to silke for a bit, and eventually slept like a rock. i think the fog makes everything a little bit more okay.


the end of things is coming; my already-scarce entries will become more so as july and august slip past - i'm going to be doing a lot of slamming, a lot of traveling, and hopefully spending time with the people and places i love here before i go for good. or at least, for this time. we'll see what happens once i'm settled in september.