-Allēna
Tag: Xavier
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“thirsty ghost”
you lived thirsty
you wanted to set yourself on
fire – and in the end, you succeeded
in glorious, standing room only effigy
planned to the last detail
as only you could do
I sang at your funeral
but it never quite felt like the end
I carried all the crushing weight of you
when it felt like the sun went out
and I’ve been stumbling through the dark
for the past ten years
when it seemed like the rest of the world
couldn’t wait for both of us to die
I’ve persisted
a devil’s bargain but one I’d take again
and again
just to get to spit in their smug fucking faces
(or on their graves) and tell them that in the end
even you didn’t get to define me and
they, especially don’t get to twist your memory into
a weapon to cut, sear, break, or peel me into their
image
I did that myself
I shattered myself into the form I desired
my body became a war torn land the rest of the
world forgot
I swore to make them remember
I peeled layers upon layers of self
from this soul
I added more and removed them again
I fit seven lifetimes into these twenty eight year
old ancient bones
I broke the fuck out of my slowly failing heart
if you had truly known me
would you be proud?
or maybe I joined you in the afterlife
maybe this is hell
maybe all the devils are here
maybe I’ve always been empty-Allēna 3/15/2026
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Hi, I (Allēna) am back in front and low-key panicking…
I know that the people who know me will probably be like “what else is new” but I’ve honestly been so hung up on the fact that it’s been ten years since Xavier died this month that I forgot that all of the albums that I wrote and recorded in the wake of losing him will also be turning 10 as well until I saw a video of my Painter Guy headmate playing my arrangement of “Heroes” by David Bowie on a piano he found in the hospital we go to??? So that’s kinda fucking me up.
I honestly didn’t think I would live this long. I know a lot of people when I was 18-19 certainly didn’t think I would live this long (I was a hot fuckin mess and it took me years to get out of that tailspin) so while I’m none too happy about having to figure out how to promote a metric fuckton of albums on what is soon to be the ten year anniversary of their release, I am also trying to be compassionate toward tiny grieving past Lēna and keep in mind that I didn’t have a blessed clue that I would live to see 28-29, my depression was so goddamn bad and I was constantly trying to blot myself off the face of the Earth and writing albums instead of doing worse dumb shit. As badly as I want to go back and kick Past Lēna and to some extent, Past Eight in the ‘nads for writing and recording music like they were running out of time in 2016-17, they really didn’t know what the fuck else to do and had just lost Xavier. So I can’t really be all that angry. That being said, a bitch is fucking tired and I don’t have anything close to a promotion strategy for any of this shit. I don’t even have regular access to a piano anymore.
So yeah. There is all of that to contend with.
Wish me mother fucking luck.
-Allēna
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Object impermanence thoughts..
When we were younger, Xavier would often help us clean up our room and things because we would find it extremely overwhelming due to the sheer amount of crap we had (and frankly didn’t need or want in hindsight) and the fact that we would forget where we put the shit we did want five minutes later.
So he’d have us make up our bed and use it as a staging area, gently but firmly guiding us through sorting our things into piles of shit to throw away, shit to file in certain cabinets, and generally keeping us on task as a body double. It was much easier to clean that way.
He wouldn’t yell, he’d crack jokes and tell stories, he was a great person to clean with. He himself was neurodivergent to shit and his office was quite often a wreck, but the man was a goddamned genius and he was one of the only people who could motivate me in particular calmly.
Memories of cleaning with him are some of the only fond memories of doing chores we have. Most of the rest are very traumatic and unpleasant.
I got to thinking about cleaning with him because I just dumped my afternoon dose of meds out on my bed to see what I was doing better, using the bed as a staging area like he used to do with me..
I miss him.
-Allēna
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Damn it, River.
My fucking headmate thought it was an excellent and hilarious fucking idea to schedule a neurologist appointment on the day our father died of brain cancer nine years prior and then make me handle it. At least Lazarus had the fucking foresight to get it switched to a virtual appointment several damn days ago so I didn’t have to go anywhere.
I’m never letting Mr. Batshit For Brainholes schedule anything ever again. This wasn’t fucking funny.
But at least we have that out of the way, and an EEG is scheduled for February 18. They might strobe the fuck out of our brainhole during that, so brace yourselves for utterly batshit post seizure posts from us truly. 😭
Fun fucking times. Thank you, Lazarus, for your excellent harm reduction work. At least you didn’t try to punk me for once.
I somehow summoned the energy (likely due to sheer irritation at River’s bullshit idea of a joke) to put clothes on and then shave my face later, so have selfies in honor of this most dubious occasion.
My left hand does whatever the fuck it wants, I guess. But at least this was a nice bit of gender euphoria today.
Once more, with my entire ass, FUCK YOU, RIVER.
-Allēna
Fediverse Reactions
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We might not be super active today.
It’s February 5th here, the day our dad, Xavier, died, nine years ago. I woke up a few hours ago, blinked, realized what day it was, thought about all the bullshit going on in the world, thought “Nope”, and went right the fuck back to sleep for another several hours.
Xavier was known for both hibernating through the winters, trying his damnedest to get me to rest, and treating himself and everyone he loved. I think this is what he would have wanted.
Sláinte, Dad. This day of rest is for you. I’m trying. I really am.
-Allēna
Fediverse Reactions
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A message to anyone learning a new skill:
From Tumblr user mushroomcaphat. This doesn’t just apply to cooking.
Xavier used to always tell me before he died that you have to learn the rules to anything before you can break them. And this man was a certifiable genius across the board – brilliant cook, chaos programmer, astonishing writer, ruthless editor. I swear he did everything by his intuition, too, but only after learning the rules of a skill enough to break them.
Damn near everything I can do, I first learned to do from watching that contrarian bitch of a man do life. He was a wonderful, terrible, grumpy, hilarious, Renaissance master of multidisciplinary batshittery, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. And I had to fail my way forward first until I found a way to do things that worked for me.
And I will never stop learning about everything I can get my eternally bored hands on, learning rules, breaking them creatively, rinsing, repeating, and having a whole lot of fun while I do.
So please, experiment, fail your way forward, break new ground. This is how you learn and find ways to do things that work for you. But also learn from the masters. There’s nuance in everything. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
Happy learning, and stay curious!
-Allēna
Fediverse Reactions
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Well, shit. We do take after our father…
Do you ever have one of those moments where you just sit back and go “Jesus Henry Christ, I’ve become my father!”
Well, my system is having one.
The fact that we have a chaos blog itself, the articles and thoughts we’ve begun collecting and sharing under the UsPol tag, or even the fact that we write, occasionally create visual art of all kinds, and converse pretty damn prolifically should have been our first clues, as to our Xavier Behavior, but I had a pretty fucking big one last night over something relatively minor.
The fact that we sleep on nights where it’s not cold as a witch’s tit in an iron bra with nothing but a heavy duty top sheet over us.
Xavier would do that constantly. He’d get too warm otherwise!
Shit. 🤣
-Allēna
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Episode YES: Insomnia Strikes Back
Hello, cherished mothers and fuckers. Lazarus here once more with your daily Des Moines Cropduster (context below, thanks, Theo).
I’ve started calling posting on here or sharing a link to a post I make a “Des Moines Cropduster” because of my eldritch headmate’s masterful nonsense. Ergo, you’re being Cropdusted as we speak…. I thought this prompt looked interesting and I have a few responses for y’all.
If you had a freeway billboard, what would it say?
Here are my favorite contenders thus far:
Ashley Halliwell’s Brainhole, New and Improved, Under New Management. NOW WITH MORE INSOMNIA!
Got questions? We have answers. Believe them or else.
The speed limit on this freeway is 80mph. But we bet you are not going as fast as MY BRAIN CAN PROCESS EVERYTHING…
How many sins have you committed today? Not as many as This Motherfucker. [photo of my face] If you can commit more Christological heresies than This Bitch in a 24 hour period, YOU get a free cardboard box.
Got Lore? We Sure Do. Follow For More.
All of the potential billboards would include a link to Open Sorcery for the bit, of course.
And simply to up the ante, I would place the billboards in and around the Cleveland, Ohio metro area. What can I say? I know my audience.
In case y’all can’t tell by the above dastardly suggestions and the post title, insomnia is STILL kicking my ass. I am beginning to wonder if it’s because of the fact that, on top of the vitamin B supplements I’ve been taking, I have started taking ibuprofen and Tylenol every 4-6 hours when I don’t lose time to deal with my chronic pain further. It’s working wonderfully for the pain. However, there’s been one absolute motherfucker of an unintended consequence. My brain has come completely, exhaustingly alive again, just like it did before my now-integrated headmate Allēna came down with mono when she was 16.
It doesn’t shut up. Nothing helps it. Not sex (for very long, anyway), not getting stoned off my ass, NOTHING. Zilch. Nada. The only thing that even remotely helps is letting myself pursue whatever idea has fascinated me until I’m so thoroughly burnt out and exhausted that I see fucking double and finally pass out. And even then, I sleep maybe 4-6 hours a night. It’s very, very rare these days that I get more sleep than that, and the sleep I get is absolute garbage. My dreams are vivid. I toss, I turn, I’m up every few hours… I swear I’m more delirious than asleep.
Am I simply a husky in human form?
This shit has made me intimately and acutely aware of why my strictly enforced bedtime was 8PM for most of my youth. I didn’t fucking sleep! I COULDN’T fucking sleep!
I’m realizing as well why my dad, Xavier, and my late grandmother, Rose, were always doing projects, as well, and I am more grateful for this blog and my myriad other projects and interests every day.
Rose was a chemist by trade, ran every damn social club in her town, was a former art dealer with a glorious collection of beautiful art, gourmet chef/baker, read books backwards, and I never saw her sleep more than four to six hours, either, before she got very sick in 2010. She was an indisputable genius whose brain was also fucking ALIVE, and frankly I can’t blame her for having so many interests and being constantly on the move. If I could handle it physically, I would be, too. Lord knows I am mentally at this point.
Fuck.
Well, that’s enough bitching about my blazing fast brainhole from me for one day. I’m probably gonna watch some TV and scream into the void or something, also known as every DM in existence. Emerson and Zelda are spending the night together and going out to a Fancy Restaurant tonight which means that your gremlin gets delicious leftovers, hehe. I live for tasty leftovers. I’m also calling my cozy partner in Michigan, Autumn, later. They were the suitor I mentioned a bit ago in this post and things are going so well! So things aren’t all shitty in my brain.
But before I go… Memes.
Stay tuned for more magic, lovely entities! I love y’all.
Cropdusting complete. Lazarus out.
