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Let's start with an acknowledgment that I simply don't have the ability to keep up with this daily journal the same way I used to any more. We've taken the opportunity to switch from wi-fi to ethernet along with our move, and so my laptop is now an $800 piece of junk (doesn't have an ethernet portal - crapification ahoy!). I'm writing on a very old laptop computer my brother put together from pieces as a hobby. It works fine, but it doesn't sit on a lap too well. And... I now stare at 2 screens for 8 hours a day again. I'd like to replace my evening internet screen time with paper, frankly.

So I will be switching the daily div to a paper journal, and probably will find that a great boon to my health and happiness :)

I won't abandon the blog all together though - I have a lot of Druid stuff to complete and I would like this to continue to be my permanent record of each completion. (Finally started a book on local flowers, yay!) But I will limit posting to weekends from here on out.

Having said that, I haven't yet gotten to Goodwill to pick up a notebook... so let's report, one last time, on the last few days of divination here.

Wednesday--

Me: I ended up with a sudden rush of energy (probably from the catharsis) and tried a lot of different things - simplifying the SOP down into a simple prayer, and trying to take my kid to the park after daycare, so that he could get some nature time. First one worked, second one didn't. My husband decided that he would keep taking walks around the daycare neighborhood with him instead.

Situation: I decided that if there was time this weekend or next, I would take my son with me and visit our old home one last time to say a proper goodbye to the trees and the garden, during the period when my father is at work. It would be easier not to take him - and easier still not to go - but I think we both need something to mark a proper ending of a period of our life. Fingers crossed we can get that done soon.

Outcome: I realized the situation I wrote about at the top of the page. Discussions... debates... halted! I'm sad about losing some of the community aspect of this place, but accept that it's for the best. All social-media-like things need to begone! from my life, and be replaced with as many human connections as I can scrounge up. I'm looking forward to the quiet... the blissful, healing quiet.

Thursday--

Me: King of Hearts - Let's just say that I had a day, er, oriented to my husband.

Situation: 9 of Hearts REVERSED - I did exactly the right amount of work on this day (as compared to the previous day).

Outcome: The Tower REVERSED - I'd been planning to take my husband to a local theme park for his birthday, but the tickets for the weekend sold out within 24 hours :( We were both sad, as we'd really been looking forward to it, but we figured that we could go to a nice local restaurant (Mcmenamins complex, so that the kid could run around and have fun too) instead.

Friday--

Me: Jack of Hearts - boy howdy did hidden feelings ever come to the surface :/ I had a pretty serious talk with my husband about how much mental energy he was spending on his art hobby, which... there's a lot there. He sees it as his identity, and fears that if he doesn't continually practice it he will "lose what he has", which leads to stress, which leads to anxiety, and so forth. He's been banging on about seeing a counselor about it, which I think is a good idea, but trying to get our address changed and signing up for benefits has just been one more damn thing on top of the pile of things for me lately. I asked him, for my part, though I would get the benefits in order ASAP (for a lot of reasons) I'd really like it if he could please take more charge of this personally and show less of it to me. I told him my feelings that we have a lot fewer safety nets that we used to, I'm 2 months pregnant and (hopefully) not going to get any less pregnant, I'm working full time now to pay for rent and benefits, and if I have so much as a pregnancy complication we are going to be in some trouble. We had a nice long conversation about a lot thin we've both been going through recently that ended well, with him agreeing to step up and help me with finances, which was something I'd been doing all by myself (just one more damned thing). In turn, I promised that his art stuff wouldn't become an issue again, so long as I didn't continue to feel like the one worried about all the "adult" issues while he worried about "child's play" (not really the situation, but it had sometimes occurred to me). He does a ton of work for our family too, of course, but the art issue has come up enough times that it had to be settled. 

Situation: 5 of Hearts - learning from mistakes, I believe this card is. I'm slowly coming to terms with my mistake about the best role of family in my life. It'll take some time, but it came up in our talk too. I'm moving forward.

Outcome: 3 of Clubs - I believe I had a relatively successful week at work that I can build on. Also, the conversation with my husband went well, and I believe that we'll be build the next phase of our marriage upon it as well.

Saturday--

Me: Queen of Clubs - me, being creative, with my little one :)

Situation: The Empress - pregnancy, fertility, food/nature

Outcome: 10 of Diamonds - family, security over risk

The rest of today looks like a home-and-family-focused day - I'm planning to get pots for my balcony plants and buy and cook a lot of food for a friend coming over later. What a lovely divination :)

This isn't the end of divination - just a transition. But, this practice has helped me get through some pretty difficult times in my life just since starting it last spring. I'm really grateful for what I've been given. And I'll post again about Druidry stuff next weekend! :)

 Back home after a long drive, I'll try to have this be short. 

My divinations sometimes hit accurate enough, I get concerned that I might have a future career in this stuff. Gods keep me from that...

I already knew that the Me card was me moving forward on my life path of spending vastly less money - we continued along that for most of the day, only spending money on one single meal out during this entire family trip. That might sound like we're still splurging (we are) but compared to the way we used to be?? This is practically putting on a habit and joining a convent! 

FUCK. I wrote a huge, bullet-pointed post about everything I went through today with the Devil card and the Internet ERASED it just as I posted!! OK, we're getting the Twitter version, goddammit!!

My mother-in-law threw every damn manipulative trick in the book at me to try and convince me to get the vaccine. I managed it, we got out the door. I'm so fucking exhausted right now. I am considering not going back to her house, ever, until I have the baby in my arms. She is currently a crazy person. EVERYONE IS SO FUCKING CRAZY RIGHT NOW AND I AM 1000% OVER THE EMOTIONAL LABOR OF DEALING WITH THEIR HYSTERICAL PROJECTIONAL FEARS. 

OK... I've taken a few deep breaths. I promise I had something written here where I was really sympathetic to her feelings, and to the fact that she has bet her entire career and her conception of herself as a Good Person on these vaccines working out in a really uncontroversial way. I swear. 

I was really happy to get back home, which feels like something to do with the 8 of Diamonds card. At least I still have the right to hang out here for a while, so long as I cook yummy dinners and don't spend money. And I'm definitely going to do that until the rest of the people in the world get their motherfucking shit together. I am so FUCKING DONE with people who insist that data that doesn't exist tooootally exists, and the potential future life of my child toooooootally doesn't hinge on it!! Maybe it doesn't. That would be wonderful, and I'm praying it's true. But I don't know that, and THEY don't know that, even if they're doing Olympic-level mental gymnastics to convince themselves that they do, and I'm fucking done with it. I. Am. Fucking. Done. 

I just checked a feed where a few of my friends still post and one of my friends drives a streetcar, and apparently today a guy just walked up right in front of it, yelled a bit, then PULLED THE ENTIRE FRONT SECTION OFF. There are pictures. 

Everyone is crazy and I am going to stay in my house until they all adjust to the world as it actually is, and not what they think it should be.

I did the divination for tomorrow and will offer it here without comment, except that it suggests a homebody type of day:

Me: 5 of Hearts

Situation: 8 of Diamonds

Outcome: Queen of Diamonds

 I was so tired two nights ago that I didn't even brush my teeth before collapsing into bed - and last night, to come back downstairs after a gnarly toddler bedtime and try to type on my mother-in-law's couch - but let's review and get back on track for tomorrow!

Me card: Yeah, I lacked focus - we packed a bunch of stuff but forgot stuff. I was nervous all day waiting for a call. NO CALL CAME. Imma live my life, the end.

Situation card: I don't think too much happened regarding my fertility - if I'm pregnant, I'll be surprised - but I did feel in my gut a connection with going to see my mother-in-law (we are staying at her house this weekend). She is the Ultimate Mother of the family, mothering all her stepchildren (she's up to 4 of those) and many of her kids' friends, too. She's the bedrock of family help for our hoped-for second child. So, there's a bit of a connection there. 

Outcome card: Nature was pretty spectacular both on our drive up, and on the boat we got to ride on that my father-in-law owns. I feel like I've barely kept up with my spiritual practices (I did manage the ritual, thankfully) but the land is beautiful, and a lot of people are (masklessly) enjoying it up here, which comforts me. 

Ok let's do a divination before my computer dies. 

Me: 5 of Hearts - Learning from Past Mistakes, Moving Forward

Situation: 5 of Clubs (The Devil) - Temptation, Attachment, Control

Outcome: 8 of Diamonds - Comfort Achieved through Work and Persistence

Hmm! Yes, the 5 of Hearts is already me - I have put an incredible amount of work this weekend into not spending extra money on anything (cooking, etc). I feel powerfully the sense of "moving forward" into a different life, one which I believe is better. It's really obvious when we go to a place where I used to escape to eat expensive restaurant food twice a day on every visit... the situation card, ouch! I wonder if my mother-in-law will corner me today and try to convince us to spend our savings on buying a house out in the boonies? They apparently worked my husband over while I was asleep two nights ago. I love these people, but their financial suggestions make me want to tear my hair out. I mean, nothing's off the table in these crazy times, but going in on a "100 acres" somewhere around Anacortes with their profligate friends sounds like a TERRIBLE idea. We'll see. I'm relieved to see the Outcome card... I think I will feel proud of myself and how much I've changed by the time we get home tonight. Well, we'll just have to live through the rest of this "vacation" and see!

 Today's not technically done... but I've got a few minutes, so let's review! 

The first two cards I drew yesterday were completely accurate - I spent the whole day in a pretty good state of flow, despite it being Father's Day, Mike recovering from vaccination and therefore out of commission, and taking care of my son and the house all by myself. I'm sure I don't need to explain "repetitive actions to maintain stability", lol! But... as if this moment (literally knocking on wood) The Devil doesn't seem to have raised its head. 

But my deck is kind of interesting - it "combines" minor and major arcana. So sometimes, I draw a card that on the surface is a major arcana, but it expresses in my day as... the minor arcana. I've been reading up on the "missing cards" in a tarot reference book. In this case, the card that's been subsumed into The Devil is the 5 of Clubs. It's about working together to achieve a goal, with perhaps a smidgen of underhandedness. 

I don't know enough about these "missing" cards yet to be authoritative, but Mike felt much better in the afternoon and we worked together to complete the grocery shopping and so forth. So... perhaps...? 

The Devil was so unpleasant the last time it popped up, I admit I was quite nervous about it all day...

Anyway, my husband continues to wait on me :) To the divination! 

Me: 5 of Hearts REVERSED - NOT learning from mistakes, moving forward

Situation: - Queen of Diamonds - A bond between the internal and external, mastery but not control of nature

Outcome: Joker (The Fool) - Freedom, Fearlessness

Interesting! My guess is that I'll do a dumbass mistake or two tomorrow (hopefully not too dire). I'll be in harmony internally/externally and kind of homey (the diamonds usually are). And I'll feel free - or free of fear - by the end of the day. Not too bad! Should be an OK day :)

Well... I dunno if the divination actually had anything to say to me last night. I guess I'm still too early in the process. Maybe I'll pick through this later and see if there are any connection, who knows.

I got the lovely present this afternoon of THE JMG telling me I was a liar for reporting on the level of danger antifa post to the average Portlander nowadays (i.e., none). I think I was prepared for it from every other source... Lord knows I've gotten it from almost every other source... but that one cut deep. I wasted 4 hours - dinner is cooking crazy late as a result - trying to compose a reasonable response to that allegation, leaning heavily on my personal experience from actually being in Portland, but... I think it's a coin-flip whether he'll even publish it. Fair enough, it's his blog.

But this is MY blog. So...

JESUS H. CHRIST. I'm SO tired of being gaslit on the Internet about what I can see with my own damn two eyes. Are the antifa innocent purity-pure victims of the big meany cops who do nothing but "protect protestors against fascists"? Obviously fucking not. They're blithering, coddled idiots who achieved nothing but a hollow victory for their Feelings (tm) and ended up killing a guy. The better-connected ones totally got a visit this winter in the family living room from a very nice gentleman in a suit who came to have a "conversation" about stuff 'n things. The less-connected ones are rotting in a prison cell which they'll never get to leave. Did they deserve it? Simply through the level of personal stupid, yep, they sure did. JMG is right that as they yelled their heads off about being "anti-fascist" they ended up precisely aping the fascists in dress and actions, in a hilariously chilling way. The establishment has handled them, though, restoring neoliberalism to its proper throne, and it would be a surprise to ever see their leaders in public again. The general public is in NO danger from them--not now, not then, and not ever again. And I'd just about come down on JMG's side, that however it was achieved, that's it's a good thing...

...and yet. A guy I briefly dated in college is possibly in that jail cell right now. Can I be happy about that? I can't - he was just a dumb kid. A stupid, stupid, reckless, underemployed little kid. It's so easy to try to be a hero. Not everyone got the memo that this age won't actually have any.

More to the point, this marks a new and menacing phase in the relationship between the idealistic Portland citizens and the police force which is tasked to protect them from themselves. Authoritarianism is on the march from all angles, bearing down on our society like a freight train. Last summer in Portland was a beautiful moment in a way - a brief moment of hope and solidarity, that maybe this inexorable process could be stopped or halted for a while, that we could go to the streets of our city and fight back against it, somehow... And then a guy died, and the whole world caught on fire, and all of the city's ideals choked and died in the smoke, too.

And - because it's my own goddamn blog - I'd like to specifically point out, here, that the guy who died? Was part of a group that DELIBERATELY ENTERED Portland, a city which was NOT their home, ARMED and BRANDISHING, to "face antifa," and "take back the city" - and didn't even utilize the element of surprise. He ended up being in the moral right, as do all who don't fire the first shot. But he absolutely played stupid games and won stupid prizes.

I'm not going to wave a flag that says "Boo antifa!" and pretend that Civilization Has Triumphed (tm) because the police chased down the antifa who DID shoot first, and executed him in a hail of 40 bullets in his front yard. Not even if he deserved it (he did). Because no matter what shallow take you have on what happened last summer (Antifa bad! Police bad! Trump bad!) the core problem of the age hasn't even been touched upon. And no, it's not fucking global warming, it's that NO ONE IN THIS MOTHERFUCKING CITY IS INTERESTED IN EVEN STARTING TO FIX ANY OF ITS ACTUAL PROBLEMS.

Bully for them, that they almost certainly yanked the antifa leaders off the street in white vans and took them to secret prisons. That was exactly the efficient solution I did NOT want our society to utilize, thanks! Whereas - reforming the police force's approach to minorities and the poor? Or figuring out soaring housing prices? Or adjusting our local economy away from its over-reliance on services? Or, maybe, something as potentially bipartisan as managing our forests correctly so fewer people die horrible deaths during our now-yearly fire season? Nope, nope, nope, nope, and FUCK YOU for CARING! That's the only message our local leadership has to deliver, though it is softened, I suppose, by all the layers of BIPOC differently-abled rainbow-colored rhetoric they can possibly pull over the top of it. And the people of Portland re-elected them all, despite the year's events, like good little sheep. As the children say nowadays... I can't even.

And... to make it worse... I actually tried to engage, online, with both "sides" at the peak of the event last year. Because I still believed that it mattered. Every antifa I ended up messaging with was both unbelievably stupid and frothingly anti-American. I mean, so am *I* most days, but I also recognize the reality of our current political arrangement! And there are worse things that remaining one of the more-favored territories of the empire... far, far worse things. Not that those idiots could recognize that. I backed away from those attempts pretty quick. The regular people protesting by their side, though, who were horrified that Trump had poured gasoline on the fire by sending federal troops either to perform an fascist military take-over of of our city, or haplessly blunder into a situation they could only inflame - I DEFINITELY identified with them. Honestly, I still do.

I also took on the right-wing - all those people, spurred on by that opportunistic weasel Andy Ngo, that crafted the narrative that what was happening in Portland was somehow The Beginning Of The Breakdown Of All National Order (tm), instead of a local group burning off long-standing tensions by busting up windows, spraying graffiti everywhere, and taunting the police with mostly non-violent but flashy actions... all of which was made super easy for them to do by the rest of the citizenry dropping their own city's public life like a hot rock, like it was always a luxury option for them. I guess it was. All the cute little restaurants and boutiques were replaced in a heartbeat with Etsy and DoorDash - shows you how much local pride Portlanders *really* have. People who would never dream of setting foot in a WalMart replaced every last household purchases with Amazon Prime one-day shipping, and virtue-signaled about it on social media, to show off what Good People they were - so CAREFUL not to spread COVID!! They still went to all those ridiculous marches across the bridges, though. Can't pass up the chance to virtue-signal, not in this town! All those people with the BLM signs in their window were happy to ruthlessly torture the local working-class people of color by forcing them to mask up in their own vehicles and do 24-hour delivery runs... but I doubt we'll ever have a city-wide conversation about THAT one, lol!

But, I tried my best, with what little platform I had access to back then, to tell anyone who would listen what I was actually seeing on the ground - i.e., the vast majority of Portland not actually burning, the problem really being the COVID closures keeping the adults home and leaving the punk kids alone to play - to help keep the narrative from being distilled into 24-hour looping videos of black-shirted kids setting fires in dumpsters. Not least because I was pretty sure that national public opinion was the only thing keeping Trump's federal troops from putting every last protestor in vans and "disappearing" them. If he'd been the Nazi most Portlanders were convinced he was, that absolutely would have happened. (Ironically--or is it?--I'm sure Biden wrapped up that particular job.) I couldn't march or protest with them - and in July, I desperately wanted to - because I had an actual family to support, I was the only one who'd kept their job, real shit like that. So I posted and posted and posted instead.

I don't know if I convinced anyone. I don't know if it mattered whether or not I did. I just know that I was never, ever, **ever** once in any actual danger from anyone or anything in the summer of 2020. And that KILLED me on the inside. Knowing that it's not possible to actually stand up for your own values - that you have to let them go, let them disappear from your own society possibly forever, because your responsibility to others outweighs them in the end - it felt something like the early Christians must have, when the emperors forced them to trample an image of their God. But I "ate bitterness" as the Chinese say and trampled on anyway.

And then two total fucking idiots got each other spectacularly killed, all that was potentially positive about the "movement" ended, the skies turned sepia as the forest mismanagement bill came due... and all these Portlanders I'd been putting my online reputation on the line for were just SO WORRIED THAT THEY MIGHT GET CANCER!!! To which all I could think was "Bitch... I've been to Beijing on a regular Tuesday... are you serious?" Fortunately the rural Oregonians know how to take care of themselves and they self-organized (while the state government did almost nothing, couldn't even keep us up to date on whether parts of Portland were currently in danger from a WALL OF FLAME or not) and mostly kept themselves and their animals alive. And my anger during that time was so black and so full of hatred that I stopped posting, because I was basically ready to skin alive everyone who DARED to post about anything, ANYTHING, that wasn't "How can we realistically and immediately change our forest management system to prevent this recurring living nightmare from destroying our beautiful home?" FUCK. GLOBAL. WARMING. AND. THE. THOUGHT-STOPPING. WAY. THAT. IT. KILLS. ALL. POSSIBLE. SOLUTIONS. IN. THIS. TOWN. I had to back off of my posting. I wasn't sure, any more, that people like this even deserved to be defended.

And then there was the election.

And then housing prices spiked to absolutely unheard of levels and the whole reason our family had made an incredibly expensive and difficult move to return here dissolved into smoke.

So... I moved on from that, more or less. I solved some problems closer at hand. I made a bid to move to Canada, which also failed, but I was OK with that. I've laid the groundwork for moving back to Seattle, which for all its (many) faults, has an actual economy and our more helpful relatives nearby. And I've come to terms with our permanent fall in class status. It's certainly not all bad! I've worked hard on reducing expenses and bulking up our savings and acquiring new habits and skills that will keep us in good shape as we face a different future than we originally planned. It's going well, I've generally processed the worst of it, and I'm just trying to enjoy one last summer in Portland - regularly visiting to patronize the local businesses that managed to survive their own city doing just about everything it could to destroy them. Trying to remember this moment, because this place will have too many painful memories for me to casually visit much after I've left the area. And... I'm not sure how much longer un-vaxxed poors like me will be granted this much freedom of movement, before we become the scapegoat for all the Good People's troubles. So I'm trying to enjoy the moment.

And then... an authority figure who I deeply respect--one of the very, very few--who hasn't set foot here in a decade, told me I was "lying" about the antifa, and that Portland isn't safe to be in.

I wouldn't dream of telling JMG that he was wrong about anything whatsoever which I hadn't SEEN WITH MY OWN GODDAMN EYES. I was here. He was not. I am here now. He is not. The antifa were idiots who posed no threat to anyone except the local and federal police who were required by contract to keep them from setting trash fires on the steps of the Justice Center, a few of whom ended up blinded by lasers (which the antifa SHOULD have been put on trial for, if the world was sane, and discredited *that* way) and the morons who publicly announced they would be showing up from out of town at the protests with guns to "take back Portland". Everyone who suffered due to anything antifa cared about *volunteered* to suffer - and it was damned easy to choose NOT to suffer (unless you had a police pension). The janitors, delivery truck drivers, construction workers, utility guys, street sweepers, and small business owners went into this city every day over the past 18 months and the worst that ever happened to them from antifa was some broken windows (buildings only). Nobody just doing their regular damn job needed to bring a gun to it - or if they did anyway out of an abundance of caution, they've never had to use it. I went on the train into the downtown every weekday morning and evening, walked several blocks to get to and from my office, walked around in various directions for an half-hour every single lunch break, and tried to report what I was seeing in forums every damn day, countering idiots from all parts of the political spectrum. I patronized Powell's books online when it was closed, and walked past their building to get tea at least once a week. Now it is open for customers again, and I have enjoyed browsing there several times, even with a mask on. "Too dangerous to visit" my out-of-shape ass. There's usually a line around the block from the door!! I have casually taken FOUR HOUR WALKS as of LAST MONTH right across the very middle of downtown, with garbage blowing every which way and the homeless restlessly wandering about the boundaries of the parks. It was fine. IT, IS, FUCKING, FINE, HERE. Especially compared to what it's GOING to be like - this is the motherfucking golden age!! See it now, see it quick, before the river of time sweeps it all away! That's all I wanted to say. But instead... even in a forum overwhelmingly populated by the last remnants of the sane... I got gaslit. Even **JMG** took the narrative he liked best from the national news, and just blindly assumed it was true.

I defended the city to him - one last time, I went to the ramparts for Portland - but I'm just... so, so, so... tired of it all.

Such is the Year of Our Lord 2021! Wheeeee!!!

I'll stay off the forums for at least a week, I think. I'm not going to throw a fit and permanently waltz off because one guy was rude to me - that would be dumb. But... if it wasn't JMG... at this point in my life, I'll be honest, I probably would do that. Because... this is just too hard to deal with any more.

It's doubly hard because I've blocked so much of the Internet already. Facebook, YouTube video essays, Netflix, the news sites I once read, the video game forums, most of reddit - all gone, for the sake of my mental health. And I know that everything online isn't real, and I'd be more than happy to block out even more. But... I have so few friends here, and so few options for real social contact. I can't just go off to a gardening group and chat about plants with other human beings, or whatever, like some plebe that has the right to enjoy their own damn life in a balanced and healthy way. Everything is being done over Zoom right now - EVERYTHING. Church, political meetings, gardening groups (!!), everything. (I fucking hate Zoom, I'd rather cut my own flesh.) Most Portlanders aren't even doing as well as me (such as that is) in psychologically integrating everything that happened last year. Everyone in this city is fucking traumatized, mostly by our garbage-fire media which screams FEAR FEAR FEAR about things that aren't dangerous, and provides less than zero solutions to what's ACTUALLY going to take us out, creating a constant background buzz of cognitive dissonance that gets covered over by every more FEAR FEAR FEAR. And as long as they all live in fear, I have to live alone. At least until I can get the hell out of this region. But... that's going to take a very, very, very long time.

I wonder, how many ways can a city betray someone who loves it? I'm hard-pressed to think of an aspect in which Portland hasn't fundamentally disappointed me by this point, but - the citizens here seem creative in that way, at least. They might yet think of something.

And I won't lie - when the pied piper finally comes to Portland, and the people on the edge of the city the Good People have constantly antagonized and overtaxed finally decide to gin up that Proud Boys caravan once more, smash in the Good People's windows, grab all their fancy slave-made electronics, and drive right out of town while it *actually* burns down behind them - part of me will be vindictively glad. But I will also weep and weep for this city. The news will break my heart. Portland was - is - *so* beautiful. Even if every new building they've thrown up in town over the past decade is hot steaming diarrhea from an architectural standpoint. Even if all ideas that might threaten the neoliberal Establishment's power in any way are fended off with a claim that the idea isn't "inclusive" enough, ruthlessly using the sacrosanct LGBT BIPOC etc. to make sure that that nothing ever meaningfully changes at all. Even if the people who are still allowed to live here are all wretched hypocrites, talking BLM out of one side of their mouths while they count their rise in home values out of the other. There was a dream that was possible in Portland for a long, long time - a deeper and more meaningful one than what Portlandia mocked. There was a community here that believed in their right to stay in this beautiful place, and their freedom - even if they couldn't define that term to save their lives besides ORANGE MAN BAD - and was willing to fight for it. But... they lost. They lost so completely that everyone here who didn't move in yesterday from California is still trying to work through how much and how fast everything has changed. And they're clutching as tightly to whatever they can still control as possible... and destroying the last of what made Portland great in the process.

And I'm working so hard to change my own way of life, and to leave behind past strategies and worldviews - no matter how I once cherished them - that aren't going to get me and my family through the coming age, and I was relying on JMG to guide me there, at least a little. And this just feels like such a low blow. Never meet (or exchange messages with) your heroes. Sigh.

You know... after all that... perhaps this is why the Me card for today was The Devil. I have too much attachment to Portland, a city that has betrayed me over and over again. I want people to see Portland the way *I* see it - the deep flaws, but also the heart-rending beauty. But I don't have that power, and never did. And Portland has all but kicked me out on my ass for all my troubles, being the worthless non-virtue-signaling poor that I am. I covet being truly a part of Portland, and have since I was a child - its why I moved here! - but Fate has already answered that desire with a very, very hard NEVER GONNA HAPPEN. I'm trying to let it go and move on... but it's hard. It's so, so hard.

Stability, from the Clubs card... actually, I see the connection to this one too. This morning we took a walk and had a delightful chat with a local volunteer who is sweeping our tiny downtown business districts, on her own time. She was making stability happen herself <3 She doesn't have time to roll the shopping carts that got left there all the way back to Fred Meyer though - but I do, and I'll take them there tomorrow myself.

After this mess blasted the majority of my afternoon... I did force myself to go shopping (late), and cook the meal I had planned anyway, even though it was finished an hour behind schedule. And... the family loved it <3 Perhaps that's connected to the Hanged Man - I was finally able to find some peace through self-discipline - I didn't just collapse with sadness, but met my obligations, even though I was barely able to focus. So the day, thankfully, wasn't a complete wash.

Hmm. Can it be, that I have some sort of talent for this after all?