Emerald moment

Standing outside in the rain yesterday, listening to the roar of the pre-show party, feeling strong in my thighs and stomach, I suddenly had a moment --

-- of feeling I was made entirely of emerald.

I could feel what it was to be wholly myself.

Our northern skies look like Tibet's. Washed with rain, charcoal-limned, piles of thundergrey and brilliance, purple against yellow-green, sun glinting off raindrops. Rainbow skies.

one clear word explodes
all contradictions -- "diamond"
and the world sunders

our mud puddles are
full of white petals from the
flowering trees, drowning

I am interviewing for program manager jobs at Microsoft, and I come away from each one seeing only from the manager's manager's perspective. I have grown two sizes.

I keep thinking my tickle-box has broken. Or perhaps my terror-box.

One day, my father said, his twin older brothers held him down and tickled him until his tickle-box broke. It never worked again -- he was never, after that, ticklish. This story stayed with me all my life; a story of rape, and of choice; of magical costly escape.

I need a crucible that can handle the fire I can summon.

"Wealth is an income stream," says The Weekend Millionarie's Secrets to Investing in Real Estate, "Not possessions."

I feel like someone who has laid in bed for a year, and keeps discovering weird new superpowers and losses.