Serra da Neblina is a Massif in Brazil that was unexplored until 1954 when an American Expedition led by Bassett Maguire successfully climbed the massif's northwestern slopes.

Sierra Neblina is a new age radio personality who claims to be an ex CIA operative, model, veteran, and discoverer of a small grey alien in her apartment in the 90s.

Sierra Neblina has a deep respect for my grandmother who claims to be the human host of an ancient lemurian shaman named Okamahia.

my family sends bad news in texts with as few words as possible.  my mother sends: "fyi: I might have melanoma." then she sends a picture of the dog in a sombrero.

i don't even know what melanoma is, i imagine little pac men eating away at her breasts before i remember the strange mole on her back.

some people see cancer everywhere. i might be one of those people now. other people say you can create a cancer in yourself simply by dwelling on it. I imagine a pure white light boring little holes throughout my body. go ahead and eat me out light.

at work i am moody and wanting to bask in it. my coworker explains in great detail how she burned out her planters wart using salicylic acid. she asked if her kids wanted to come look at it, they didn't. she thanks me for not being disgusted by her. she describes the experience using the words follicle and viral core which i do like.

a friend texts me "i have gonnorhea...can't believe from julio. we go to the library together n shit. damn"

someone left a pink gum wad in the drinking fountain and it looks like a spleen. as if to say "let me share with you the most abhorrent parts of me." 

blood lust

I recently heard that heroin addicts can be found eating their scabs because little bits of their vice preserves itself in dried blood. This is strangely intimate? This is profoundly sad.

A poet on my Facebook feed likened watching the electoral votes come in to watching a cancer screen of the nation. What we saw was widespread malignancy. This spoke to me not only because I fear malignancy of our collective soul as well as our corporeal whole, but because I spent the evening and early hours of the morning in the ER waiting room with my partner who had been having difficulty breathing as of late.  If this sounds to you like the birth of another metaphor, I mean to tell you that it is not.

It is not revelatory to say, but to love another with a body capable of failing is the most vulnerable thing. To hold that body and love every inch of it knowing it might be the cause of your undoing is a pure and sickening thing. I would do it over and over and over again. Absolutely I would.

Waxy, Camilla Grudova

In a cafe I met a girl named Ann who played the electric Hammond organ in a Bar to entertain the Men, jolly songs to help them relax. She was bulky and had a downy moustache and very thick legs, I think from sitting at the organ all day long pressing the pedal. She smoked very quickly, bringing the cigarette to her mouth the way a greedy person eats little snacks.

She danced her fingers across the table, her shoulders wiggling along, making a buzzing with her mouth to demonstrate the organ sound.

She told me she used to have the most beautiful curls but had to cut them off because intoxicated Men would grab them. She now had a closely cropped bowl cut. She wore a blue dress with a plastic corsage safety pinned to her chest and had sweat stains under her arms.

Here's one thing I've become accustomed to living in a city: the frequency with which I see people slumped over in their cars, sliding down the side of buildings, or laying on their porches mid heroin peak. That's another thing I've learned in the city: that horrifying state of falling down, slumping over, or going slack-jawed is not overdose, it is in fact the very best moment of their affliction. What to do when you see these people? I asked a friend in Chicago, "leave em, walk away they're fine."

Another thing I've learned: Minneapolis is not considered a city to those who live in New York, LA, or Chicago. We are a Junior city, somehow mimicking the vices of our older siblings. Maybe this explains the junkies in the CVS parking lot. I remember the horror I felt when I saw a man sprawled out on the floor of the train in Chicago and the cavalierness of other commuters. "We will see a man die today on this train and it will shock only me," I thought. You must sacrifice your humanity to live in a city.

The other day I was walking down my block and saw a woman on top of a man in the passenger seat of a car. She seemed to be looking for any sign of life from him, she was tracing the bulging vein in his neck and slapping his face. She did not look worried though, so why should I? 

Feeling very affected by ambiguous email tone

Funny Bone

The emotional physical dynamic is so unpredictable.  Say, how come when I hit my funny bone against the refrigerator door the very first wave of pain is emotional? I should think foremost "ouch," my funny bone. But instead it's "I am such an insufferable loser who could never pull herself out of the horrible averageness of her existence." Then on to the ache.

Why do we allocate love so unfairly sometimes?

Lots of important women named Jane

the way it woke the dog

today i heard myself say: "i aim to be helpful above all things," then i wondered "is that true?" the conclusion is no. i don't know what i aim for above all things, or if the things i aim to be even fall within a hierarchy. what i do know is that it is a wonderful thing to be helpful, but there is likely an even more wonderful joy i could experience. ok.

a woman is a womb

hands hands hands

It was not the hand that caused harm that I was scared of, but the fact that it was also the hand that held mine in the supermarket well into my teenage years. They were the hands that made fairy houses in the backyard, same hands that demonstrated with my shoelaces in rabbit ears, weaving one under the other to form a sturdy knot.

Re: Mother

In my favorite photograph, a teenaged version of her stands in front of a small clapboard house. She’s wearing a white scarf around her neck Grey Gardens style, a white lace Sunday dress and Mary Jane’s. She’s thrown her elbow up to shield her face. A violent wind picks up suddenly and scatters red sand across the frame. 

Really enjoying the company of myself today. Things I have seen: several extroverted deer, a taxidermy badger you could touch gently, 2 boa constrictors mating, teen geese, and a white dreaded stranger's opened arm embrace.

empathy switch is faulty

Bodies

Over the last 24 years I have spent so much time hating my body. Lately, I've found it hard to hate my body like I used to. I might even say I love my body now.

make believe fight

I take some kind of perverse pleasure in watching couples fight in public. Emily and I have never had a real fight, nor anything that could ever resemble conflict. Because we are new and in love we are hurdling toward "firsts" as fast as we can, even our first fight. At stoplights we make angry yelling faces and mouth hateful words with the windows up. I slap the dashboard to sharpen some imaginary point. Other drivers inch slowly forward so as to distance themselves from our pretend rage. This is a kind of make believe that can only last so long. We know that.

hairbrush

I got a promotion which means I should be able to afford a hairbrush, and I can. I just haven't gotten around to buying one.

so small

I work behind a circular desk in an office doing what amounts to simple administrative work but has a much more hireable job title. Bless us for the small triumphs. I am the youngest of my "colleagues," though I can't help but feel they are all my direct supervisors. They have meetings at long boardroom tables right next to my desk. Sometimes I am invited, in which case I sit silent, nod and coo when appropriate, my face pained from the plastered on "engaged" face I have come to wear so often nowadays. Often I am not invited, and I sit behind my screen reading articles or taping barcodes on new books. Today I am not invited, the clacking of my keyboard is the only reminder I am here at all. "My goodness Alyse, I didn't even see you over there," a colleague says. "That's okay, I am so small," I reply.