@rosa i used to be a bike messenger so i couldn't avoid sunlight during those years

but i exfoliate up to twice daily, use olive oil, and drink a lot of water. idk, did you see my selfies over the weekend… did i look old

@patience you certainly do not look old, and i did not mean to imply that, it was merely a vampire joke

@rosa yeah i know it was a vampire reference :)

@patience ah, :3

@patience honestly, more than my skin, the sun hurts my eyes. going out in high california daylight never fails to induce a headache

@rosa that's a lot further south than anywhere i've lived in over twenty years. even places like eureka are well south of my southernmost limit. i can completely understand how california sun would be overwhelming for sure

alas, i lack sunglasses and i realized this weekend that i should try to save up for a Rx pair

@patience i have lived thirty-few degrees north of the equator my whole life and i nevertheless feel alien to this latitude

@rosa i grew up at 29 °N and lived south of 31°N for the first 23yrs of my life. i never looked back

@patience i should try Vancouver some day, perhaps

@rosa vancouver's pretty and the climate is very nice. winters are hard north of 45 if you're not used to it because there are so few daylight hours

the people of vancouver, unlike the topography and the climate, are not very nice. there's a long (canadian settler) history behind this, and it's the a thing discouraging me from moving out there (since at least i'd be close to seattle again, where i used to live)

@patience (not that "looking old" is bad either but you look younger than you are, as is common among our kind)

@rosa i guess that's fair. ageing is weird

@patience it is, even to the extent i have experienced it. i am often started momentarily by the way my body is different from a decade ago, though most of those ways are positive. imagine it, i gave up on this world and awoke years later with soft skin and bouncy breasts and a few silver hairs starting to come in.... but my neck hurts all the time and walking a couple dozen kilometers in a day leaves me sore and foggy the next

@rosa i'm glad the world — or the folks around you — didn't give up on you during that decade. what woke you up?

that much exercise will probably come with some soreness. i have chronic lower back pain (inherited), so i've learnt exercises and habits to mitigate the flare-ups. but then there's actual body-ageing which is hard to side-step

things went a lot more slowly with my body, so it i guess afforded me the chance to acclimate to changes, but in so happening, the pace was maddening and at times spirit-breaking

@patience the birdsong before the dawn. a blanket of sparkling lights over the city like fireflies across a holler in the dead of night. a few familiar notes in sequence on an old piano. the login prompt challenge for a long mothballed email account. the clarity of a brain unpolluted by testosterone. the markings on a long-forgotten orchestral score. the sound of my own voice echoing back to me in an empty room. sheer force of will.

@rosa this imagery is washing over me right now and it is kind and pleasant. thank you

@patience it felt kind and pleasant and powerful to write. thank you for asking <3