jaq honey

well, we didn't get the house mentioned in the previous post. our landlord cannot be reached by phone - when you dial the number, you get an AI answering machine that sends you to an answering service, where they can send a message to the landlord through their "portal".

I'm pissed that they took "portal" and turned it into some evil corporate jargon. portals are for wizards!!!!! and science fiction quantum leaping!!!!! not this waking nightmare of making a new account with ALL my personal information in order to submit an application that won't even get reviewed because twelve other people looked at this apartment today. sure, let me accept your TOS where I trade you all of my personal data in order to apply to possibly be considered eligible to live in a house.

all of this is exacerbated by the fact that we're in the lower class, and the only apartments we can afford are in such high demand because everyone's broke, and most of the apartments available in our bracket are not maintained well.

here's a sampling of the places we toured last week:
-a two-story townhouse with wobbly stairs, the deathly smell of deep mold, and a basement that was, as one fellow house-tourer described it, "juicy"
-a house with a literal hole in the floor, right in the middle of the hallway between the entry/living room and the kitchen. when I brought it up to the guy giving us the tour, he said "yeah, the owner knows about it, but it's the type of thing where if he was gonna fix the floor then he was gonna raise the rent."
-a house with roaches visibly in/around the fridge, living and dead, and mouse droppings on multiple surfaces throughout the house (and this one was our *favorite*!!! we applied for it and are hoping we get it!!)

everyone we interact with is very nice, but we never get to interact with the owner. it's always "let me send them a message about that and get back to you", because god forbid the owner of the property have to deal with the street rabble looking for a place to live under 1,300/month. it's always some clean-cut grindset property management bro who is heavily incentivized to sell unlivable places to people who are desperate for adequate housing.

that sense of desperation is so powerful it's unreal. I'm working hard to release my attachment, and y'all already know the mantra is "what is meant for me will not miss me", but damn, I feel attached!! I want to live in a place with a little dignity!! we all deserve that!! I know I can bring dignity to any situation, but there's a minimum standard of safety that we're unwilling to sacrifice. and that we shouldn't be asked to sacrifice.

this is one of those big, complicated problems ("wicked problems" is the common slang for it) - the lack of affordable housing is a complex beast, formed of a multitude of issues that are both separate and deeply intertwined. we didn't get here through one policy decision or one powerful ad campaign - it was a near-infinite number of small decisions that did/didn't get made many years ago, that we are now the inheritors of.

when I think of the volume of that grief - my own frustration and resentment, magnified times the TENS OF THOUSANDS of other people in my same situation in my city (40,000 people on the public housing waiting list, how many more that haven't gone through the gauntlet of applying for public assistance), multiplied times all the cities in the country and all the towns being absorbed by urban sprawl and all the death, death, death and all the grief, grief, grief I feel

OVERWHELMED!!!!!!

so I get small again. back in my body. trace the breath through my nose---throat---chest---ribs---chest---throat--nose. feel the pressure of the seat pushing up against the backs of my legs, and my legs pushing against the seat. feet pushing against the floor, floor pushing against my feet. at home in my home. embodied in my body.

I can't even tell you how many times a day I do this. most times I forget to get small until several hours have been wasted in a fog of panic and stress. but I have to get small to remember: we inherited this, and we're responsible for what our grandchildrens' grandchildren inherit. this is why my tree work is so important to me - I want them to have the big trees we get to enjoy. I want them to relax in the shade, I want their houses to be comfortable temperatures and have stable foundations.

when I get very very still and deeply in my body, I can hear them singing to us. the same way I sing to my ancestors. thank you, thank you, thank you for the gift of conscious awareness. this world is beautiful and interconnected. I will work to keep it that way, and to make it more beautiful and interconnected for those who follow.

we've been living in our tiny apartment for 5 months and some change - at the end of May, our lease is up and we're headed to greener pastures (still in the area, just not in this one-bedroom apartment).

this neighborhood has been such a warm welcome into the area! I got to meet my neighbors, get used to public transit, enjoy a little strip of greenway, and walk to all sorts of good stuff around here. there's such a wealth of culture here - this town is one of the most diverse places we could have landed. the town's motto is "The Entire World In One Place" and it really feels like it.

we've found a house to rent that we think we can fall in love with - it's a row house in another little township out here on the outskirts of Philly. it's got a little patch of yard, a full-sized basement, and (my favorite part) a skylight in the bathroom!! we're still waiting on the paperwork so not putting ALL my eggs in this basket, but am feeling cautiously hopefully optimistic about it.

I'm feeling so ready to be settled. we knew that this place was temporary, and while I always try to act with a thought to the long-term future, I haven't been getting engaged in real local community the way I would without a 6-month deadline looming. there's so much to get involved with - the urban forest always needs tenders and advocates, there are always local community gardens (or space for one), clubs and activities all over the place. but if I'm only here for a few months, putting my roots too deeply would make it difficult to move lightly.

so I've been patiently watering the garden of my soul inside this tiny apartment, with occasional excursions out into the wide world (mostly via public transit).

it's interesting to go from a place where I couldn't go out without running into someone I know, to a place where literally nobody knows me or recognizes me. I've lived this before, but never have I left a place where I was so connected. I feel like I know the formula now - show up to the places where cool things are happening, do my best to be embodied and show up as wholly/holy my-self, and once I've got enough connections I can start making spaces where cool things are happening.

the new house would have space for me to leave my instruments out. right now they're all tucked away, because space is so precious in our home, so playing music becomes a whole ordeal with dragging out cables and bags and power cords and stringed instruments. I've been exploring more electronica stuff (reeeeally excited about the next new song y'all are gonna get to hear) but it's definitely limited my creative expression.

the laundry's almost done, so I'm off for now - more to come!

a few days ago, I took the dogs out to potty in the yard in front of our apartment, like I've been doing since the big freeze. I usually pop my headphones on - I've been listening to the audiobook of Cher's memoir recently, and it's amazing. she's severely dyslexic, so she starts off reading each chapter and gets as far as she can, and then a Cher impersonator takes over - sometimes it's hard to tell when they switch over!! ICONIC.

so I'm out there moseying along and as I'm turning and nudging them to hurry up, I catch the eyes of my neighbor standing behind his screen door with his son. "They're not supposed to do that there, you have to take them down the street. My son can't play in that grass!" I immediately apologized and took them on to the dog park, and then the mixture of defensiveness and shame hit.

I'd seen other neighbors letting their dogs use the front yard - off leash even! Brownie's elderly and can't hold it all the way down the street! I hurt my knee and am still recovering! This is my home too! and then, after the confrontation chemical signaling wore off - my convenience isn't worth more than somebody else's enjoyment of our shared space. I do my best to pick up after the dogs, but Rosie loves to eat trash and sometimes she gets a soft stool from scrobbling too many bits. people talk about the difficulty of herding cats, but nobody is brave enough to talk about trying to strain shit out of grass with a thin plastic bag.

anyways, I eventually talked myself around - this is part of living near other people, navigating our shared priorities. if I want to be involved in community, I have to be comfortable in conflict and maintain my heart and values throughout, even when tensions are running hot. I want every child to grow up being able to play outside. we know that if you don't give a kid a nature experience by the time that they're in 3rd grade, it's incredibly hard to get them to care about the environment afterwards. it would be the absolute height of madness to pretend like my dogs using the front yard to piss is more important than a child getting to play.

so I ordered a youth football from the bald devil, printed out an apology card featuring a good picture I'd took of the London Planetree (not an American Sycamore lmao) out front.* I wrote a little note inside apologizing, explaining that Brownie was an elderly rescue, and that I remember how much I loved playing catch in my front yard, and we're moving soon but here's my number if I can ever be a better neighbor to you. I tented my printer-paper card above the football and leaned it against their door two mornings after The Incident.

then, nothing. no text or anything - I just had to trust that the message was received in the spirit in which it was intended, and let it go. my side of the street was clean. well, covered in dog piss, but otherwise clean. and we started going down to the dog park instead of hanging out in front of the house, and it's been fine.

and then yesterday, as I was taking the dogs out before Em & I left to tour a new potential apartment, he passed by the dog park to take his trash to the dumpster. on the way back, he leaned toward me and said, "Is it Jay?" I was like "Oh, no I'm Jaq." and he expressed that he was so thankful for my kind gesture, and that immediately after telling me off he felt bad - that he's not a brusque guy, and he's not the grass police, it was just early and he was feeling some kinda way, and I apologized again and said I totally understand, we weren't using the space respectfully and I want his son to have a comfortable place to play! he told me his name is Kona and if there's ever anything I need, please feel free to knock on his door. I said, same to you, man!

the way that reaching out to take accountability for the way that I had harmed my neighbor transformed a distant nothing into a comfortable neighborly relationship feels SO good. like, direct reward for taking an extra moment to transmute my shame into action. I've been feeling a little scared, living up here with only Em. he's meeting some locals with school and work, but I'm just going to one-off events and having a blast, but it takes time to develop the depth of relationship we left behind in our last town. and the world is literally and figuratively on fire, and things are especially dangerous right now for trans and queer folks.

and also, here we are, safe. we know our next-door neighbor and our upstairs neighbor, and we say hello every time we walk past the fella a few houses down who likes to smoke on the stoop. I feel so much safer around people than I do in the wilderness. I know that if I hollered for help, folks would come running. that's part of the energy of this city, too - people are absolute assholes sometimes, but generally everyone's looking out for each other here. feels good, man.

*In case you're wondering, the differences between London Planetrees and American Sycamores are that in the Planetrees, the whitish-yellow reaches nearly all the way to the bottom but the Sycamore has dark gray bark at the bottom; the LPs have clusters of seed balls where the AS will only have one per spot; and that's all I can remember right now. but those are two pretty big clues. sometimes you have to look for the double balls but once you spot them, you know you're dealing with a pip pip cheerio London Planetree, innit.

anybody remember xanga? that was where I used to post both my poetry and my deepest thoughts - iirc, none of my irl friends had the link (maybe at some point I started sharing it), it was fully a space for me to process my life and play around with html.

in defense of a slower, more conscious internet, I'm trying this way again. there's no way for you to comment on any of these posts - if you have a response, you'll have to send me an email. my email inbox is a SWEETIES ONLY ZONE and I hope you will treat it as such!!!

we're living in Philadelphia now. I'm missing the Tennessee spring and the t-shirt weather and the private backyard with the Box Elder chandelier.

we have a huge, old Sycamore right outside of our front sliding-glass door here. it's keeping me sane. it hasn't leafed out yet, but I can feel it coming!!

my days mostly look like this:
wake up, fart around for a couple hours and try to get some coffee and food in my body. spend too much time on my phone. mosey over to the computer to work - right now I'm helping build some environmental education curriculum that I'm super excited about!! but the work is so locally-focused, and I'm so far away. work work work until I can't work anymore, then I take a lil nap and keep going. at the end of the day, I usually play some video games (I'm fully back on my skyrim bullshit *vaguely waves a staff of lightning at a bad guy and immediately runs away, leaving my companion to handle the fight while I loot containers*) and spend time with my husband.

I've barely started to make friends here yet - I've been blaming the cold, and that's definitely 80% of it, but I am also a serious homebody!! I love it here!! we had a bad case of mice that was truly driving us up the wall, and now the whole apartment smells like decaying mouse, but we don't hear the chittering anymore and Rosie isn't losing her tiny mind, growling at the walls.

it reminded me of when I lived in rural TN with my friend Thomas and his huge cat, and both his cat and my dog were freaking out at a few specific spots on the floor. both he and I were like "hello??? stop this???" and scolded them for being annoying about nothing, until I realized that we had feral cats living in the crawlspace beneath our house. we obviously apologized profusely to our house critters, but I could not stop laughing at the horrific experience of something living under the floorboards and your grownup (who ostensibly is fully responsible for your care and well-being) is like, "shut up and stop that"!!! I felt soooo bad but also - girl it is 2:30 am and we have to stop barking at the walls

anyways, I'll write more later and eventually I'll even share this link with y'all so you can go back and read it if you want. love you forever