05.13.23 [on the J train]

the digital ads on this train are explaining how to prepare cherry blossom cookies, which feels like something one would definitely go home and do after a rudimentary subway tutorial. i had a magisterial run of mixed berry crumbles on winter weekends this year and have a solid dessert in my back pocket if we have anyone over for dinner ever again, which is not impossible. we flew home from iceland on may first, which is our newyorkaversary (observed) and maybe even the actual day we flew to new york from san francisco in 2003–my blog posts then aren't explicit about our arrival, though it would be unlikely that the seat-back TVs on the plane from california were covering bush's flight-jackety MISSION ACCOMPLISHED appearance on that aircraft carrier in such detail if it had happened the day before? i wasn't quite the bottomless news pit then that i am now, so i lack tasting notes.

i spoke to my therapist for the first time yesterday since our icelanding, and i think my anecdotes–of landing after a redeye and spontaneously deciding to run the national first-day-of-summer 5k that same morning, stalking the one antiquarian bookseller in reykjavik and then bonding with him, after securing two new-to-me editions of nineteen eighty-four in icelandic, over the fact that both of us needed to start writing poetry again, &c–might have disappointed her a bit. she's a wonderful person and i have no doubt that she wants me to be well, but maybe the fact that my sobriety is starting to feel a bit old hat and i'm not feeling gaslit by erstwhile old friends means we can redirect our respective resources a bit? i'm not interested in being the gal who gives up a practice that is working because it is working, but i do think we've plateaued in terms of those initial tribulations and might need to move on to something else. i'm reminded of the time i got locked out of our san francisco apartment and asked the locksmith, after he'd sheared through the deadbolt joe had so carefully installed on the back door, if he'd show me how to pick the lock on our front door. i am ready to break new houses! (ask me about lock picking with a two-liter soda bottle sometime, it's pretty boss.)