Rooting around for the truth like flared-nostril truffle pigs, looking for that one specific aroma and none other. The truffle is definitive and delicious.

Your truth. My truth. His truth. Their truth. Are they different?

If you smell garbage daily, that scent becomes familiar. Familiarity becomes one’s truth. Garbage becomes truth.

Opportunities to smell more than trash arise. What draws some to experience inhalation anew, and others to fearfully burrow back into the sulfurous depths?

Wild and tame, wild and tame. Wild and tame.

Sometimes I have to be any card in the deck. I don’t think it’s denying my authentic identity. After all, the joker remains the joker. The trickster. The coyote. They are mostly boys, and a little devious, sometimes mean, but usually trying to upend perception with an outcome that somehow becomes beneficial. Maybe a female trickster can start out kind. Who would suspect?

52 cards. A hierarchical configuration, numerically and socially. Where does the joker fit it? Less powerful than the king, yet the joker can be a wild king, and ridicule the king with impunity. Is a joker zero? The sum of all card? Or uncountable, permutating on the breeze. Ruffling feather, caressing a silky cheek, tossing an ill-fitting hat straight onto the ground.

I can fit with you. I am liquid, I am accommodating. Is it hard to see what you cannot feel? I speak up, assert myself in ripples and silence. Are you listening?

Ensconced in my warmth, unaware that I surround you, love you, protect you, nourish you, you. Sometimes I think you forget I am with you. Is it my fault you forget the air that you breath sustains your life? Can I become more than air? Solid and immobile hurts.

I do not seek to evade, but I do not seek to impose, either. Sharp sticks with flags of dominion fluttering above pierce the skin of my mother and pain me. You don’t see this. Can I fault you? The words attach themselves to the passing breeze, they float right past you, around you, through your hair…yet your imposition outweighs this lightness.

Yes, I am there, too. I can be heavy. I prefer quicksilver.

On facebook, I read a post that said in Iceland they celebrate Christmas Eve by reading books in bed and eating chocolate. https://www.readitforward.com/essay/article/jolabokaflod-meet-favorite-new-holiday-tradition/

I don’t know if the chocolate part is true, but I didn’t hesitate to fully embrace the meme and include that confection in our day. Chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. Chicken enchildas with molé sauce at La Indita. M&Ms and peanut butter cups and Leonidas and Lindt for our evening. Sweet.

My idea. What better way for an introvert to spend Christmas eve? Everyone is happily reading, or on their computer. It’s quiet. I’m not cooking or catering to anyone in any way whatsoever. Yes, I put in the effort to plan for this evening, but it was easy.

I think the chocolate paved the way. Cocoa coated truffles smooth the path. Tongues kept engaging in small talk and banter, but quieted as they became chocolate coated. I felt a bit restless, but settled into the night. My book is Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye. I’m reading slowly. Romeo slips and struggles on the tile, attempting to stand up as his front paws splay and his weak, diaper-encased hind end strains to rise, like a non-believer’s Christ. He needs a little help.

My commitment to writing has been lightly fulfilled. Back to my reading. I could get used to this.

I started this post once already. It disappeared. It’s the holidays. We have kids visiting. Three out of four, which is wonderful. Yet, here I am in my office typing out words. Hiding. Recuperating. Restoring.

I came home after a massage and shopping today and made myself a sizable Martini with Bombay Sapphire. Delicious. Then I had some wine. I threw ingredients for a ground turkey chili into the crock pot . It was delicious.

What I really wanted was to go out to the horses this afternoon, but what I guess I wanted more was to see my family, at least all of it but one girl. I am suspended between the desire to be with those I love and the necessity of my isolation.

Thrice I have started this post. It is the next day and I continue to type out words. I left this morning to take a short horseback ride. The rest of the family went out on a hike and should be back soon. So I have a few quiet minutes with the dogs and cats.

Festive ferns. My spirits are not nearly as festive, but they are fine. Pounding out a few words at this moment is proving to be more challenging than I expected.

There is anxiety in the elusion and anxiety in the inclusion. Maybe the place where I need to make space in inside myself. Room for myself. Deep breath.

Oh, dear. My obsessions have gotten me somewhere in the past. This is frequently a by-product of my literal mind. The 4-H handout said work with my dog 15 minutes every day in order to train her in obedience, and damned if I did not religiously work that pup for at least the allotted time each and every day. Thank you for you patience and unwavering devotion, Apache. The trophies and ribbons were fun. The connection I had with my dog was even better.

I completely forgot about my wildly nascent blog and my equally embryonic commitment to write every day. Because that is what writers do, and this is what I want to do. Yesterday, I had a symphony concert. Before that, well, practicing and riding the ponies. Hiking. Trying to get in the holiday spirit. Or spirits, however the mood may be striking me.That same commitment I had to my Apache, I had to my flute. For years I practiced every single day without fail. I knew I had to put in double the effort of many of my compatriots because of my background. Years down the road, that commitment rewarded me with playing opportunities and major issues with my hands and tendons.

Two years post retirement, and my hands are much better. I’m practicing, but without the paranoid fervor that drove me previously. Would I have gotten as far without the hours and hours of practice? Probably not, but I might have been able to practice in a less harmful way.

Right now, I am searching for a way to excel in the things I love doing without driving my body past the point of actually being able to perform and still attaining a level of mastery.  A huge part of this mindset is confidence. Yes, I have to put in the time and effort, but confidence lets me know when to stop.

After our extreme divergence of intention a couple of years ago, I never would have thought my beautiful mare La Roca and I would again be on the same page. Since we moved from Pusch Ridge to Beth’s she has been nothing but a wonderful ride. Will I ever sort out the mystery of her disobedience?

Perhaps my inclination to insist upon obedience was part of her problem. She’s a beautiful, opinionated creature with a lot to say. I wasn’t listening carefully enough. My expectations of her actions were outweighing my listening skills. No wonder she looked at me with resignation and stepped away with zest and definitiveness when I tried to mount. The owner at Pusch Ridge said she saw that we had rapport, but we just weren’t going in the same direction. That’s a pretty good explanation.

My assumption was that my direction was all that really counted. Her job was to carry out those directions, no questions asked. Poor pony! What a place in which to exist for her. I had moved her to a new environment. She didn’t know anyone, she was in a pen all by herself, with neigh-bors, yes, but I was the only friend she really knew. Everything she was trying to tell me, I didn’t quite get.

I still don’t always get it. I do get that our fellow creatures have a lot to say and that they appreciate it greatly when we actually listen to them without the filter of our inane human chatter. Boy, that’s hard to do.

I swear my cat, Fuzzara Lee Lilycat, used to communicate with me telepathically. It might be my imagination. She would come to bed with me when I was a kid, growing up feral in Wyoming. She was so snuggly and warm and purry, but then she would tell me that she had to go. I would beg her to stay, in my mind. I didn’t grab at her, I implored her with my thoughts. She told me she had to hunt. And away she’d go. I’d drift off to sleep, but I knew the next thing that would happen would be Fuzzy jumping on my window screen to be let back in. I would get up to let her in. The challenge was to let her back in without the mouse or whatever else she managed to capture because I wasn’t fond of mice under my pillow. Once, I kept a mouse she brought home in a small fish tank which I used as a cage until it recovered, then I set it back out into the night.

People are kind to each other. They take each other into consideration and their actions are motivated by a sense of responsibility to our environment and to our selves, in the most positive sense. Fear falls away as love and kindness become guiding forces in happy lives.

Well, it’s a dream.

Writing on the phone is not the easiest thing in the world to do. I want to keep writing, though. 800 words. I think not.

Today was a 7.8 mile hike through the desert, which I marched with two friends. My legs are falling off now. It’s been awhile since I’ve hiked that far.

See, the problem with writing on the phone….autofuckincorrect.

Here we go:

This will likely bee nowhere near what I’m marrying to wary. Autocorrect changes things with small consideration. When it b gets a, sentence right I’m shocked. I’m. Glad to have an alternative to writing with own and perky since mutt hands have been acting up, but weekday nth phoned sauteed, wads! Maybe I need stone kings of pad. Ipad. Maybe I can sneak one into the ghost. I asked fort a laptop but I’m not sure rusty would harken.

Posed strings. To have three money, three power. I can’t imagine. Weekday a different mindset inner midi have, knowing three recordings regarding money can need made by yoh. Unilaterally. Pet! I don’t knitted they I really wasn’t eat, though. Swimmers I think I do🦁. Rhythm I reconsider.

Ponies of my dreams are palomino and bay and chestnut and appaloosa. Ponies of my dreams come in all colors. Ponies of my dreams listen to me; we are synced up. We support each other. Wild ponies have minds of their own. Eyes roll whites in my direction, manes stutter above arches necks as hindquarters balance quick movements away from me. Wild dream ponies visit me in the day.

Black piano. Black cat. Framed silk scarf from Shanghai. Plastic plant. Sunlight.

The darkness dominates.

Would the darkness be as prevalent were not the light illuminating it?