On Consent

~ Riker Brown ~ 1 Comment

Riker Brown is new to the writing world, and is just now getting their feet wet. Their odd outlook on the world gives them insights that may not be evident to others. They hope to share those outlooks and idiosyncracies in a way that brings just the right balance of wonder and weird.

I may have just saved someone from the wrath of the head shop clerk.

I walk in and she’s railing on the phone about how mad she gets when people block her and how that’s a sure fire way for her to go to their job, etc… She asks me as she’s grabbing my (state and federally legal) items if I get mad when people block me. I just said, “No, because I like to respect people’s consent.”.

I could see the mushroom clouds billowing from her ears as her mind was blown.

A Letter From the Editor

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

The reason that I have moved to Medium is that I cannot make money on WordPress. That will change, because when my ad money reaches the threshold on Medium that it can pay for a professional WordPress account, I will monetize here, too. That’s because a professional WordPress account is only a hundred dollars a year, it’s just not as lucrative for writers as joining Medium. However, I feel differently about it now because @animebirder, @one4paws, @bookerybones, @aaronbrown8cc63b4e5d4, and I all have such unique voices that I either want them on Medium with me, or I want to be here with them. It’s just getting enough ad money to be able to do that in the first place. If you are a Medium subscriber, I make more when you read. Claps are great, but they really don’t pay for anything. What pays is the amount of time you spend on the site.

I am lucky enough to have posted enough to get money this month, which is incredible. I just don’t know how much. That’s because they don’t send you money until you hit a certain threshold, and I almost had enough in August. By October, I’ll have my first real, sustainable income as a writer. I do not want anyone to think of this as a get rich quick scheme, because it is, absolutely…….

One that I could not do if I didn’t have 25 years’ worth of entries already banked.

So, it’s introducing new people to my old work, and introducing new writers that like to talk to each other. We have a group chat that has become an infodump channel, and it’s time to start specializing. That’s because not all of my writers are working for “Stories.” My buddy Evan and I are writing a cookbook. It remains to be seen whether we’ll collaborate online or in person, but either way, we’re writing a book.

The way I see it is that for the next four years, my life is covered as long as I live very simply. That will definitely give me the time to see if a neurodivergent media company is viable. I am learning that I know more than I think I do, because I did not know how boundaries worked. I have constantly treated them like they are others’ guidelines to make. My world has flipped now that I’m in charge of making things happen, and I am lost in the details. The best thing that my mother could have done for me post-mortem is allow me to work on this project, because as of right now, living off of it is the only thing I can do. When the state of MD finds out about the money, I will not have access to Medicaid Expansion or any of the other social services I’ll need to get diagnosed with autism. I diagnosed myself and honestly wouldn’t bother to go to the doctor if it wasn’t helpful to my career. Like, autism diagnoses are so expensive and we’ve all been white knuckling it this long, so why bother?

If I ever have to join another corporate system, I want autistic accommodations because starting a new job without them is setting me up to fail every single time. If you’re a neurodivergent adult who struggles in the system, my guess is that you died inside a little bit at “I have an extensive collection of nametags and hairnets.” Autistic people don’t have problems getting jobs. They have problems keeping them. If you’re autistic, you’re going to excel at government work because they’re going to accommodate you the most. For instance, me being a file clerk or a secretary at Langley was never about working with spies, but getting accepted into a job I could actually do with full government salary and pension. I would love to do menial tasks for CIA because then on my off time, I’d truly be left to my own devices to write. I am also very good at making connections, so I can be just as good a writer overhearing someone’s patois in the mail room as I would being in operations and doing the scary shit myself. The whole point is that my ADHD personality would be thrilled and my autistic personality would want to shoot me. My autistic nature CANNOT handle traveling that much. I am so bad at transitions that I just couldn’t deal. Of course it would be fun to be James Bond, but my body just wants to read about being cool. It doesn’t actually want me to be cool

Right now, everything is in flux as we’re deciding what to do. “Stories” will be rebranded as Gravity’s Rainbow to be more inclusive, but we’re still working on both a full and minimalist logo based on Thomas Pynchon. I want it to represent the energy of a bomb going off inside you. That the arc of every spiritual journey is realizing you are the cause of your own suffering and start to self-actualize.

This space is free, but I hope that one day…. just maybe……

all your base are belong to us

because

somebody set us up the bomb.

There and Back Again, Day Two: Bingenheimer Ried / Alkmaar

~ Carlos/Giancarla Ross ~ Leave a comment

(September 12, 2023: Echzell, Hesse, Germany to Alkmaar, Noord-Holland, Netherlands)

I packed up my things long before dawn. By four-thirty, I was on the S-Bahn into Frankfurt, and by six, I was on a different S-Bahn train headed north into the Hessian countryside. Dawn began to break as I waited for yet another transfer at Friedberg, with enough time to grab a quick breakfast at the station Bäckerei. By seven-thirty, I’d made my destination, a single platform station in butt-ass-nowhere, called Reichelsheim (Wetterau), a tidy collection of brick houses, and a few slightly newer modern-ish box homes clustered around a REWE supermarket, a smaller Netto Marken-Discount, and damn near nothing else.

It’s the kind of place that would have a Chicken Express, an A&W/Dairy Queen, and fifteen churches if it were in Texas, but this definitely wasn’t Texas. No live oaks whatsoever, instead, the forested Taunus Mountains remained visible on the far side of Friedberg well to the west, and the landscape immediately leaving town opens up into green, gently rolling farmland.

A footpath northeastbound follows the S-Bahn track toward a depression in the north, a wetland complex called Bingenheimer Ried. Before even leaving town, Graylag Geese (Graugans), svelte and free-flying unlike the tubby domestic monstrosities we see in America, honked overhead, joined by other waterfowl – including, to my amusement, introduced Canada Geese (Kanadagans) and Egyptian Geese (Nilgans) which are familiar from my travels in America.

A low, artificial rise adjacent to a tool shed gave me my first good look over the wetlands, and also revealed a decent-sized observation tower to the north. While Enkheimer Ried had been nice and productive, there was no birding-specific infrastructure there, whereas there were clearly purpose-built observation decks at Bingenheimer Ried. Maybe if I was lucky, there’d be other birders present, hopefully not too many, though.

Rare birds can draw in surprising crowds: in America, the first chaseable Spotted Rail drew in dozens, if not hundreds of birders to Choke Canyon Park, tucked away in the whole-lotta-nothing between Corpus Christi and San Antonio. A whole peninsula lined with telescopes and long-lens cameras, all looking for one ungainly, if striking waterbird that had strayed there from Central America. In Britain and Japan, I’ve seen social media photos with huge groups all straining to photograph a single stray from America.

Here, there was a continuing record of a shorebird that would have made more sense to see along the Caspian Sea than a Hessian wetland: a Black-winged Pratincole, with a real doozy of a name in German: Schwarzflügelbrachschwalbe … YIKES! Pratincoles are much less well known than sandpipers or plovers since they don’t range in America at all, but they’re streamlined open-country birds (“shorebirds” being a generalized term referring to a group of related birds rather than an absolute label of behavior or habitat) which feed aerially on insects.

Given that my itinerary wasn’t intended to take me remotely close to the Caspian, I had to give this one a try.

I stroll over to the wooden observation tower, and there are a few people already there but it’s not crowded at all. The telescopes are out, which is good because the main wetland is a good hundred yards out.

Even with eight-power binoculars, it’s easy to see why this place is a birder’s dream. White Stork (helpfully, Weißstorch) forage in the shallows. Wheeling flocks of black-and-white Northern Lapwings (Kiebitz) distract us from time to time with their chatter (ah, yes, kibitzing). Any number of marsh birds and songbirds and crows and the occasional raptor. Still, not yet The Bird.

At some point, they asked where I parked my car. “Oh, I took the train from Frankfurt.” It takes about an hour before they are like, oh, you’re not an immigrant living in Frankfurt who’s so acclimated you’re a birder. I switch to English. “Nope, just landed here from Texas yesterday.” I switched briefly to my first ex-family’s Wichita Falls drawl for comedic effect, and, well, I’m Filipino, so hearing the Hank Hill Voice coming out of my mouth is nearly as much vocal dissonance as, well, me speaking German. Mirthful laughter and I’m a stranger no more.

Turns out at least one of them had been to Texas to see Whooping Cranes, as I have in years past! Birders will be birders: we are a tribe that transcends national origin and common language, and we chase the same legends and listen to the same grapevine. I’d gotten my info from a German living in Belgium before double-checking on eBird. (Note: we’ll get to Dirk in a couple days. He’s awesome.)

Fifty-odd species later (and I’d like to note that this would be a really great list for a single location in Texas, which is right there with California in “you are a spoiled dadgum birder” terms), and we’re still scanning, and it’s getting close to nine and I really need to start considering heading back to the train, rarity or not, if I’m going to make it to my next hostel by nightfall.

Cause this is a side trip, folks. This wasn’t even part of The Itinerary, this was a target of opportunity. And right about when I thought my window was closing, There It Was.

Black wings. Forked tail. Black necklace. Too streamlined for a plover, too chunky to be a tern, sitting pretty on a sandbar. The Schwarzflügelbrachschwalbe (and, nobody was yelling this word like the KRANKENWAGEN meme because not even the Germans were going to consider that) was ours, with high-fives and smiles all around. No, I would not have to save this bird for some far-future pie-in-the-sky trip along the Silk Road. Mind you, I do want to visit the Silk Road, but that’s realistically not happening on a social services coordinator budget.

Well, not like this was realistic on non-profit salary either, and yet here I was, in the middle of a bunch of German birders, celebrating a life bird that makes literally zero sense for an Austinite to expect before retirement age.

Too soon, I had to take my leave, because I had a full birding day booked for the very next day … nearly three hundred miles northwest. And I wasn’t flying.

You see, today wasn’t originally intended to be a birding day, this was a transit day and I’d added two more steps to my whirlwind.

From Reichenheim (Wetterau), S-Bahn local train to Friedberg. Switch onto the S-Bahn back to Frankfurt (Main) central station. And then it would be time to switch to a train towards Düsseldorf, but for a transfer coming in Cologne (Köln).

The original plan had been to take slower trains along the Rhine Valley and check out the Lorelei, that fabled hill upon the Rhine below which the mermaids would lure travelers to some romantically dreadful fate, but there was absolutely no time for that now that I’d burned that on getting a much larger net haul of bird species off the beaten path. Nope, it was time to switch to an ICE train …

And by eleven, that very ICE train was now on the tracks between the Frankfurt main station and airport stops, doing absolutely nothing for half an hour. Finally, an appropriately snarky voice came over the PA, first in German, then in English, both with the same tired, passive-aggressive vocal affect. The other passengers started chuckling.

“Welcome to the ICE train to Düsseldorf. We will be forty-five minutes late to Köln, and we will not be stopping in Düsseldorf. Thank you for riding Deutsche Bahn.”

German. Efficiency. The conductor’s irritation was palpable. Evidently, my rides on the local S-Bahn trains, five in a row all on time without incident, were an utter anomaly, and this was closer to the expectation. No matter, because it makes little sense to worry about what is out of my control, and when in doubt, you pivot!

It wasn’t long before we got rolling, and not much longer beyond that we were screaming through the foothills of the Taunus at 150mph. Now we’re cooking. Forests and farms and the occasional town out the windows, my lifer Red Kite (Rotmilan) seen soaring high overhead (birding from high-speed trains being a skill I learned was indeed feasible on multiple trips along the even faster Tokaido and San’yo Shinkansen lines).

Before too long, the train slowed and farmland gave way to urbanity again, and the spire of Cologne Cathedral loomed across the river. There was my transfer, half an hour before my next ICE train, enough time to check out the cathedral and grab a currywurst,

Just then, a pretty young lady started speaking to me in English. I was caught off guard, so I instinctively replied in English – and immediately realized my mistake. She started in on her sob story about how she was from Afghanistan and needed money and I immediately just walked off because I needed a restroom, I needed some currywurst, and I absolutely did not have time for panhandlers and pickpockets and hell no, not gonna be a mark today.

This may sound callous, but let’s be real: solo travelers abroad are targets, especially Americans, because, whether or not you think you have money (and by American standards, I don’t), you still look like you have money. Even being a paycheck-to-paycheck American means you are a one-percenter by most standards.

Fortunately, I know exactly where to go. Polizei. Duh.

I wasn’t going to trouble myself by turning her in, obviously, because, for all I knew, she was really in need, but she wasn’t going to press the matter in front of the cops, and if she had any accomplices, they would be wise to disappear right the hell then.

More to the point, I didn’t have the damn time, because my bladder was going to bust. Nice coincidence, there’s the bathroom, right next to the Polizei, time to get a euro coin (blargh), and oh hey, currywurst at Le Crobag, let’s effing go.

I was so hypervigilant getting to that Amsterdam ICE train that I failed to get decent shots of the cathedral and I didn’t even remember to tuck into my currywurst until my train was nearly halfway to the Dutch border, sailing through Monchengladbach. The sandwich was still pristine. European breads are wizardry.

The countryside gets progressively flatter as you transition from Germany to the Netherlands, hammering home why people call Benelux “the Low Countries”. It can’t be overstated: the flatness of the Netherlands makes Texas look positively Himalayan. What the Netherlands lacks in topography, though, it more than makes up for in both rural charisma and, weirdly enough, urban squalor.

The ICE train announcement as you reach Utrecht is particularly dire. “Please be aware of pickpockets at all times, there is high pickpocket activity in Utrecht and Amsterdam.” Really, that would have been friendly to mention before, I dunno, COLOGNE? Eindhoven seemed clean and modern enough, but Amsterdam-Zentraal, our next transfer, was …

… yeah, we weren’t going to actually be staying in Amsterdam on this trip, because we still had more train travel to go.

Fortunately for my purposes, the warm cloudy day had become a blustery, rainy afternoon, and the transfer to the local Dutch train was rather uneventful except that I had managed to catch the commuter train with all the students on board going home for the evening.

Now. I can get by in German, and I’m a native speaker of American English. Logically, the Netherlands being geographically and linguistically between these two countries, I should be fine with Dutch, right And you would be absolutely wrong because Dutch is as incomprehensible to me as Quenya or Simlish. You’d conversely maybe think I’d find it awkward and strange, but actually, no, Dutch is a complete and utter delight to listen to.

If there was one word to describe it?

Lekker. The Dutch language is totally lekker.

I’m not being sarcastic: this was literally the word I heard the most on that train ride toward Den Helder.

Also: these folks hold on to their terminal Rs like they’re life preservers in the North Sea, for some reason the Amsterdam dialect sounds almost exactly like a Texas drawl, and I’ll be damned if “valley girl affect” isn’t the goddamn same in Dutch as it is in English.

(In completely unrelated news, if any of you knows or is a polyamorous Dutch girl and happens to be even remotely interested in dating a slightly over-the-hill but adventurous and affectionate non-binary Filipino-American …)

It was stormy by the time I got to Alkmaar, but still early enough (mid-afternoon) that I had time to explore a bit after checking into the hostel.

Alkmaar is sort of a mini-Amsterdam, a canal city with houseboats, but without the urban blight and overcrowding. Instead: a quaint square with the largest cheese market in all of the Netherlands. It looks like a church spire, but I promise you, that is a shrine to cheese. This should be terrifying to me, since I’m lactose intolerant, except that not once in Europe was this ever a problem. A mystery for the ages. (And thankfully not a reenacted movie scene across the table from Kevin Kline!) Across the canal, there was a friendly dude hawking stoofvlees, an irresistible (and actually Flemish) concoction of rich beef stew over fried potatoes, something like an Old World cousin of poutine.

(I still have dreams about all this food a year later.)

The storms had receded into herringbone clouds, and the sun peeked through again as I enjoyed dinner in Alkmaar. Black-headed Gulls (kokmeeuw) wheeled overhead waiting for pedestrians to drop tasty morsels; a wild-coiffured Great Crested Grebe (grote kuiffuut) bobbed in the water looking like the bird equivalent of a System of a Down roadie.

Tomorrow would be a whole day of birding, and all I had to do was check in …

And I returned to the hostel to find a rather snotty young Australian woman in yoga pants at the desk screaming. Evidently she’d self-extended her stay without telling anyone and so my stuff was now strewn outside the room, and her stuff was all over the fucking place and she had evidently thrown a completely shitfit which the flustered hostel manager was trying desperately to manage. After she calmed down, presumably unwadded her pantaloons, and vacated, the manager got me my own room for being so polite and patient and for helping him calm down. (I’m ex-Disney. I know this shit happens, and I know how hard it is to stay professional when it does.)

And look, people have bad days, even when they’re supposed to be having the time of their lives. It’s not a national thing, a cultural thing, or a gendered thing. I’ve had remarkably bad days, in public, during travel, with others around to hold the receipts. So, I’m not going to blame her either. I hope her yoga got her to a better headspace that day.

As for the receptionist, I noticed he was also serving as a barista. A real Dutch coffee, please. (Every country does better coffee than America, I swear.) Over that much-better-coffee-than-Starbucks, I take the opportunity to ask the receptionist-slash-barista what his real opinions about Americans are, and he levels with me that, nowadays, the “ugly Americans” don’t leave their country, and it’s actually the Aussies and Kiwis out of the English-speakers who cause trouble (this earned an eyebrow, but I was frankly thinking this was recency bias), but not even a fraction of the trouble of Mainlander Chinese who don’t queue up, never learn local languages, leave trash everywhere …

Y’all, I’m fully a quarter Fujianese by DNA — that fraction of my ancestors lived in the kind of circular fortress-towns you’d half-expect to see in a wuxia film or a Mulan remake.

But also, from Kyoto to San Antonio, I can kinda personally vouch, because the Venn diagram of “coming from a culture that considers itself the center of the world” plus “nouveau riche with no fucking manners” is going to suck no matter what ethnicity or nationality that Venn diagram comes from, and Mainland China is precisely where that junction of recently prosperous, deeply self-centered people with no common sense is on the ascendant right now.

Dude was also keenly observant on the other point: the stereotypical Ugly Americans would never leave their homes nowadays because they’re too busy believing what they’re told, that everywhere else is a shithole. Or, in the words of a particularly toxic influence long since yeeted from my life: “Why would you ever leave America when everything you could ever want is already here?” (Yeah, double middle-fingers to that person. Not one bit sorry.)

More world for me to enjoy, anyhow.

I gave myself time afterward to really enjoy a quiet evening in Alkmaar, because tomorrow would be a very busy, all-day birding trip to the North Sea island of Texel, and this was perfect — I certainly didn’t feel overwhelmed like I would have in Amsterdam. I walked past a Hawaii Restaurant whose menu was zero percent Hawaii, but those burgers would’ve been great if I wasn’t literally from where burgers are like The Most Basic Restaurant Food. So I ended up with spareribs (helpfully labeled “spareribs“, with a choice of “traditioneel” or “spicy“) at a place called De Waag (because it’s the Netherlands and their double vowels deserve at least half a dozen appearances in this blog entry), and then got myself a pretty good night’s sleep in anticipation of another early morning.

All in all, a very unexpected and high-productive side-trip, a damn-near u-turn, and my second new country in as many days. Right on.

There and Back Again, Day One: Enkheimer Ried

~ Carlos/Giancarla Ross ~ Leave a comment

(September 11, 2023: Frankfurt am Main)

It only takes a few minutes on the increasingly crowded S-Bahn to get from Gateway Gardens to the Frankfurt (Main) Hauptbahnhof, as the woods around the airport give way quickly to suburbs, then you cross the river Main and you are surrounded by all the accoutrements of big European cities — the old European architecture mashed in with tall glass skyscrapers, railyards full of graffiti, lots and lots of little Achtung! signs warning of rail hazards, and then you have arrived at your rail hub, tons and tons of people going to and fro and much more racially diverse than some people in the States (who have never set foot here) would have you believe.

I peeked out a bit to get my bearings, but my goal for the day wasn’t the city center, but a transfer to the U-Bahn, and thence to the eastern suburb of Bergen-Enkheim.

I love public transit so much. Even the single train line at home in Austin means I get to skip out on 45 minutes of stressful freeway gridlock, and I don’t mind the additional walking from station to work because it means I don’t have to set aside extra time for the equivalent amount of exercise. Gyms bore me; long walks don’t, especially when there are flowers to photograph for iNaturalist, public art to go on Instagram, and joggers and cyclists to greet.

Extra points, though, when that long walk gives you time to acclimate to entirely new surroundings across the ocean.

The moment I stepped out of the train and started eastbound on a street called Leuchte, I knew damn well this was Texas. Business with names like “Best Döneria” and “China-Thai-Snack”, tucked into quaint, freshly-painted buildings that nevertheless feel like they were surely there before Texas was a republic. While not as vertical as Japan, the residential zones here are still much more communal than in America; no single-story homes, but three or four-story buildings with small, immaculately manicured rose gardens. Within a few more blocks eastbound, and these give way quickly to surprisingly dense deciduous forest, still mostly summer green but with hints of autumn beginning to touch the alders and maples. A break in the woods and I walk past a sizable community garden broken up into small family-sized plots full of fall vegetables. And then, a bit further into the woods, and I follow a few signs to my destination: Enkheimer Ried

Hey, wait, you’re in Germany, you can read German? Y’all, German uses the same letters as English, so it’s not exactly a huge leap to go from following signs to Schulenburg or New Braunfels in Texas to, um, following signs to original non-extra-crispy Schulenberg or Braunfels in Germany.

In retrospect, living in Texas prepared me surprisingly well for visiting Germany, with all the immigrant German culture that is deeply infused into Texas life, from the cuisine (chicken-fried steak being localized schnitzel, actually decent beer and sausage) to the pervasiveness of German names in Austin (Koenig, Dessau, Mueller).

Only, there are no Panzerschwein in Germany. Or as they would call it here, Gürteltier. Armadillos are indeed much safer from the Autobahn than the 130 Toll Road.

I also know my links from my rechts, despite having literally never set foot in an active German language class. Besides, what better education is there than immersion?

So, Enkheimer Ried. What is that? We already mentioned Bergen-Enkheim so that’s the locality name where we are. Ried sounds like, well, “reed”, the stuff that grows alongside a lake, and that is exactly what you see: a reed-lined lake formed by a berm protecting the residential reaches of Bergen-Enkheim to the west from the waters draining a small vale to the east, and forming a wetland lake, lined on either side by tall trees threaded by hike – bike – equestrian trails.

Yup, I flew nine hours to one of the most prominent cities in Europe and my first destination is basically the swamp, because, as I mentioned last blog, the way I recharge is through birds and this is the number one place in all of Frankfurt to see them.

It took me all of ten seconds to get a lifer (for non-birders: this is a bird I’m seeing for the first time in a lifetime): a flash of red in the trees revealed a foraging European Robin (Rotkehlchen to the locals, which of course must be pronounced like that doofy YouTube KRANKENWAGEN! meme). This being literally my first day in Europe, a high percentage of today’s birds were brand-new to me, but not all, with some birds being familiar introductions to America (European Starling, which defies the above meme by just being called Star) or also showing up in Japan (White Wagtail, Bachstelze). An impressively sized Eurasian Green Woodpecker (Grünspecht, and they really are that grün) chased off an energetic – and it turns out, embarrassingly generally named – Middle Spotted Woodpecker (Mittelspecht).

I’m just imagining old Linnaeus studying this: “It looks like it’s in between that bigger spotted woodpecker and that smaller spotted woodpecker in size, so, let’s just goldilocks this sucker.” Except in Swedish, I suppose.

A truly mid name for a very fun little bird, but at least it’s not just English where this suffers, because even the Latin name calls it medius, at least we didn’t name this thing “Medium Spotted Woodpecker” like it’s a friggin’ soft drink size.

I follow the hike – bike – equestrian trail along the lakeside, helpfully labeled “Nachtigallenweg” (“Nightingale Way”! sadly no nightingales this late in the year) and enjoy the cooling afternoon breezes in the shade of tall and aromatic noble fir trees.

Bliss.

Every so often passersby on bikes would wave. Hallo! or Guten Tag! for older folks. One older gentleman was curious as to how a clearly non-local would even find their way here, and I just pointed to my bird book and stammered out, “Ahhh, vogelbeobachtung” because the word for “birding” (birdwatching) in German is, no offense, really effing difficult for non-speakers to parse, though I definitely grew more confident with that word the more I had to use it.

It was more enough to satisfy the neighbor who smiled and nodded and wished me a “good luck with the photographs”, “there are many birds here” before we went our separate ways with a friendly “Tschüss!” Over and over the next few days I really honestly could have just flipped back to English, but he was the first of many to seem honestly surprised I was even making the attempt since, y’know, obviously not German here with these genetics. But also, I’m here to learn, not impose my brand of Standard American English (or my California Valley Speak, or my adopted Texas Drawl) on the rest of the world.

Generally, though, I felt curiosity, not hostility, because a smile is a smile wherever you go, and people are generally going to react with “friendly” if you project “friendly”. (Not as easy when your facial default saddles you with RBF but I at least try!)

One circuit around the big pond was plenty to give me almost three dozen species (and almost 50 on the day, 21 new), a great start for my trip, since one of my goals was to see at least 150 species of birds (100 new) over the next three weeks. But also, the sun was getting lower, and my stomach was beginning to growl.

Back to the train station it was, this time through the neighborhood, and back to that “Best Döneria” because, when you’re in Texas, you get tacos or barbecue, and when you’re in Germany, you get currywurst or döner kebab. They do say hunger is the best seasoning, but whatever magical spice blend they use (paprika? cumin? marjoram? garlic? thyme? all of it?) always feels perfect, that heady mix of spice and the unctuousness of the meat and the freshness of the vegetables, a little fizz from that bottle of Mezzo Mix (basically the logical conclusion to ordering an “orange coke” anywhere but Texas) and the growl is tamed.

As night fell, I heard the echoing song of a Black Redstart (Hausrotschwanz) from the tiled rooftops, oddly reminiscent of Canyon Wrens in the rocky vastness of Arizona. An ocean away from my (rented) bed, surrounded by chatter in Deutsch and Türkçe, and yet, somehow, I was home.

All too soon, I was back in my lodgings for the night, getting ready for the next day’s international travel, and trying to forestall the inevitable jet-lag you get from a nine-hour flight, when I spied something interesting — a rare bird unlikely to be seen anywhere on my itinerary had been seen in a wetland in rural Hesse, an hour north of me.

When I had my own working vehicle (and not the sadly derelict remains of one, permanently sidelined by a trashed transmission), I would drive clear to the Mexican border and back in pursuit of rare birds. When going to Japan, I’d use trains to do the equivalent, so, hey, when in Germany, why not do that here too?

I closed my eyes, eager for the journey ahead, with an alarm set for four…

There and Back Again, Day Zero: Gateway Gardens

~ Carlos/Giancarla Ross ~ Leave a comment

(September 11, 2023: Frankfurt am Main)

For years we talked about going to Europe together, but life always got in the way. We would talk about places we would visit, the friends we’d drop in to say hi to, the food we would try — but nothing would ever come to fruition. At least we had two trips to Japan together — where I realize in retrospect we weren’t good travel partners because I was too pushy and overeager, and she wanted very regimented and curated experiences., and even in our travels we found ourselves wandering apart more than we would be together. But for Europe? We didn’t have the money, and then when we didn’t have the time, and then eventually, we no longer had each other.

I was going to do this for myself, then. Why not? This was going to be my way to prove to myself I could move on, I could get by, I could be a stranger in a strange land and find myself on the other side of the planet in some weird quixotic ideal of reverse-colonialist fervor, a random Filipino-American bouncing across the European countryside, chasing rare bird alerts, hopping couches and stopping at hostels, taking my forty-four-year-old recently divorced ass across the continent in search of Dulcinea, and maybe a windmill or two to tilt.

But of course, I had to get there in the first place. See that date up there?

Yeah, folks, we’d all, of course, been holding off on everything for two long years thanks to COVID, and that meant I’d scraped up a nest egg of savings and PTO days from my social services work by assiduously masking, not spending my stray funds on avocado toast and Twitch streams or my Steam deck or whatever the hell the media tells us “elder millennials” are supposedly spending money on, and I was still completely in the weeds and trapped in Austin. Not everyone who lives in Austin realizes you can get to Europe nonstop using one of three airlines (four back in 2023), with three destinations available: Amsterdam, London, and Frankfurt. I knew I wanted the continent. I wanted quick access to the European rail network, and I also wanted to be dumped in a country where my default languages (English, Spanish, and Japanese) weren’t going to be the default.

And then a dear old friend got wind of my plans and said he had miles to burn and he would be happy to spend those miles on me.

The very first lesson of this trip, which must be addressed and acknowledged before I even set foot out the door to take the first step to Europe is that at no point in time did I do this “on my own“. Without the coworkers at my nonprofit who covered for me while I was out for three weeks, the housemates who gave me a place to stay without paying exorbitant market rent, and then many, many friends and family who encouraged me to go and do this at all and gave me so much of the time, space, and resources with which to do it — without all of them, none of this happens.

And then it’s just hurdle after hurdle and even with the ticket in hand and my rail pass booked, it still looked like this trip was doomed. My passport had expired, so I apply months out. I get my passport, but it’s a close call, just two or three weeks before the flight date. The Friday before I leave, I manage to not only get myself rear-ended on my rental e-bike (barely avoiding injury), but I lose my wallet along Town Lake on a different rental e-bike that afternoon. Somehow, Austin PD manages to contact me and I’m able to get my wallet back on Saturday, though not until most of my cards had already been cancelled. So I would have to do this trip with cash on hand and continuously shift money from my main bank account to my backup (which I had been using for DoorDash) to make anything work. Friends offer to float me small loans to get out there.

I get out to the airport. I have my backpack full of clothes and medications and travel toiletries and my BIPAP bag. I’ve got an eSim card set up. This is happening. By chance, there is a small unit temporarily based out of Austin that morning visiting from Saguenay, Quebec — a couple of sleek jets scream into the foggy Texas sky to go mock-dogfight with our air force trainees. They’re AlphaJets — a French / German collaboration.

I close my eyes, and I’m on a Lufthansa 787-9, cruising across the Atlantic. I can’t plug in my BIPAP, so I watch movies and TV shows as you do when the in-flight wifi peters out as it inevitably seems to do if you’re in economy.

I close my eyes again. We land. There are … air stairs. And a bus? What the…

Frankfurt Airport is, charitably speaking, not what I would consider an ideal welcome to Europe. Rather, it is the nightmarish chaos of lines seemingly in triplicate, full of passengers from all over the world who are panicked because half of them have to catch a flight in another terminal, at least a few of them are extra nervous because every other damn American still grouses when they have to travel on The Anniversary of That Day, and none of this is helpful when you are confronted with a byzantine array of corridors, many of which somehow manage to still not be marked in English.

Throw everything you’ve been told about “German efficiency” out the window, ’cause this ain’t any of it. I manage to find my way to the right line and get my passport stamped and also manage to get my eSim card working. At last. I can access my Eurail Pass and get out of transit hell, and after I drop off my backpack and most of my gear, it’s still mid-afternoon and I am next to delirious from sleep deprivation and jet lag, and badly in need of my daily meditation and centering.

I walk out the door of my hostel, and down a concrete path to see a small, manicured park. Gateway Gardens. Chattering away in a massive oak tree, are tiny songbirds. Eurasian Blue Tits. Great Tits. A Short-toed Tree-Creeper.

All right. There we freaking go.

Look, I am gregarious and I can talk your head off about damn near anything, but please do not mistake this for being extraverted. I love talking to individuals, but people, especially in herds, exhaust me.

No. I recharge with birds. I’m part of that tribe.

If figure, all right, let’s keep going. I have my wallet, I have my camera and binoculars, might as well jaunt over to the best game in town.

Just like that, all the fog of chaos parts, and I have my path laid out before me like a beacon.

I was going to be fine. I was there. I had, for now, traded H-E-B and Randall’s for REWE and LIDL, taquerias for donerias, kolaches for the treats at the Bäckerei.

The day had just begun, and I was as refreshed as if I’d had a full night’s rest. It was time to explore.

“Oligarch”

~ Carlos/Giancarla Ross ~ Leave a comment

(by Carlos/Giancarla Ross)

My story begins with an old, faded photo tucked away in an album, not the kind you have on social media or in a file folder on a computer, but the old, physical kind, back when Kodak was ubiquitous and not a distant memory.

It’s a sharp-looking German shepherd on a grass lawn, maybe some palm trees in the background, but everything presumably originally lush green, though the photo itself has long since faded to inadvertent sepia. I don’t actually ever remember seeing this dog in the flesh, but I do remember the single word, in all capital letters, handwritten on a corner of the photo.

“Oligarch”.

Who the hell names their dog Oligarch?

If I’d been an adult seeing that the first time, that would’ve been my question, but we’ve had that photo in our albums as long as I can remember, and this is basically concurrent with seeing the paternal visage of Ferdinand Marcos as “my president”. No, not Bong-Bong, his dad. The dictator.

I have fainter memories of my older cousins watching giant robots on teevee. A road trip through dust-choked roads lined with food stands and banana trees and garish jeepneys and tuk-tuks, up to the cool air of pine-covered mountains — not the Sierra Nevada or the Rockies or even the Guadalupes, but a place called Baguio, where you would have to drive up a long canyon past a giant concrete bust of President Marcos (long since demolished) and then a gigantic lion’s head, because I guess Baguio is known for lions? (It isn’t. The only lion I ever saw in the Philippines was in some picture book version of the Bible showing Daniel with the least scary-looking lions ever. It might have been Precious Moments. That memory is a bit hazier.)

I remember seeing equally faded photos, some of them legit black-and-white, of “running the rapids” at Pagsanjan — “they filmed Apocalypse Now there”, I was helpfully told many years later, even though I was still at that point too young to have seen or appreciated that film.

But yes. Oligarch.

A word that, for the first decade or so of my life, just meant, “that big dog in the one photo album”. A word otherwise bereft of meaning and filed away, as the father figure in the background of my young psyche changed from my barely remembered actual father, to, uh, I guess, proxy-dad Ferdinand Marcos, to the every-bit-as-nebulous “father figure” I’d get when I was four, a different president named Reagan, as we traded our nice home with the garden in Pilar Village for the choking smog at nightly gunfire of mid 80s LA — our own “Morning in America”, if you will.

I got into dinosaurs like every little boy, and then I wanted to be an astronaut like Mrs. McAuliffe, until she blew up on our teevee, and then a fighter pilot like Tom Cruise, before my eyesight got terrible. I played with the Voltron lions and watched Robotech, and then my mom got a job at the concrete company and she joined the company bowling league, and I thought the computer guy was really funny so I told mom to go talk to him, a conversation that has so far lasted thirty-seven years. (She took his surname a few years later, and so did I.)

I was a smart, curious kid, then. They called me gifted, and I breezed through everything because school was easy. The hardest part of going to school in Atwater Village in the mid-80s was knowing when to duck behind the concrete planters to avoid the return fire at the drive-bys. The second hardest part was not getting caught playing with the ditto sheets. Sorry, Gabriel.

Soon enough, my folks decided LA wasn’t a good place to raise a “gifted kid” and got a transfer to Arizona. Packed into my stepdad’s 1984 Nissan Sentra? That photo album. With Oligarch the Dog.

Even when I saw that word in my study lists for spelling bees — and I was a good spelling bee kid, even made state, I still never made the connection. It was just a word to memorize, I was in junior high, I still just didn’t have the context to know what that meant, how could I? Just. Oh, that’s a real word. Of course it is. Okay.

Just another tool with which to eventually win some academic competitions. Unfortunately, oligarch never showed up for me as a spelling bee kid. Euphemism and roan did, serving as proof that it’s never the words spelling bee kids get right that we remember, but the ones that keep us from winning that set of the Encyclopedia Britannica that would’ve been cool to have. And I was better at the Geography Bee anyhow. That was the first time I won money from Alex Trebek, and it wouldn’t be the last.

I was not a particularly progressive kid, because other than a particular, deeply unfortunate episode that forever kept the standard Filipino Catholicism from taking root, I was otherwise far too deep in my books, video games, and otherwise pleasing my family to be really truly aware of the importance of my place in the world. I was special. I was smart. I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do with any of it, so I just followed whatever goalpost was laid before me, and I had no way to understand my parents also had no idea what to do with my intelligence and curiosity and hyperactivity and complete lack of focus because in the late 80s and 90s, smart Asian kids didn’t have AD(H)D and terms like neurodivergence were simply not on the radar.

Besides, by this point, I was “as white as my dad” so why should I care about things like privilege and race and socioeconomics? Other people’s lives were affected by other people’s choices right?

There was no single epiphany, but I’m sure seeing that old photo album with good old Oligarch jogged a thing or two, as I started out on my real educational journey, going to Arizona State with absolutely no idea of the ensuing twelve years of meandering blunders that would leave me destitute and damn lucky to escape with a bachelor’s degree that I’ve only really ever used as a placeholder in a resume. What I did know was …

… wait a second. Why did we have a dog named Oligarch?

Why did we have pictures of Ferdinand Marcos in the house, and who the heck was my birth father, really?

Yeah. So. Oligarch was his dog. That academic-looking dude with the gray hair, in one or two pictures, all but forgotten in the ensuing years being the happy stepchild to funny computer guy.

Why didn’t he come to America with us? Why did he never once call? Why did it take until my third year of college for me to find out that he’d died the year prior?

Oligarch wasn’t just a German Shepherd!

Oligarch was my father.

No, not like that! Gee, phrasing!

More to the point: I was unknowingly the child of an oligarch.

When I was younger, I remember being told I was a “love child”, and I just thought, oh, Mom really loves me, but that, while absolutely still true to this day (love you Mom!) is not what that phrase means in Filipino culture. You see, when a guy loves a girl … but he’s already married to someone else … love child is a euphemistic way of saying I was a bastard. Illegitimate. Out of wedlock.

The scandal wasn’t even that my father had a mistress – because he was a high-ranking executive at San Miguel Beer Corporation (don’t be fooled, it’s not just beer, it’s basketball leagues, it’s shopping malls, it’s banking, it’s basically the most powerful corporation in the Philippines, even more so now than back then!). Powerful men with mistresses in a developing country? That’s almost a cliche.

The scandal was that my mom came from a nicer family than his wife.

Seriously.

My mother’s line, it turns out, gave rise to a Philippine revolutionary general, several provincial governors, models and movie stars.

My father’s line, two Philippine revolutionary generals, the opera singer who first recorded what is now the national anthem, provincial governors, a supreme court judge, and a certain Imelda Romualdez Marcos … apparently a first cousin once removed of my father.

Yeah. That Imelda. The wannabe Evita with thousands of shoes and her own nominally disapproving wink-wink-nudge-nudge biographical musical, rocking Ferragamos in the presidential palace while millions toiled in filthy slums that would flood out seven times a year from typhoon surge.

And my mom knew. I just never asked.

For all the questions I would pose about the world — what is that bird called, why does that mountain have a funky name, how do you make such good chicken adobo, it took me until the cusp of adulthood before I really even started thinking about where I came from, why I never wanted for anything, what my place in this world really was, or how I got there (and, I don’t just mean by Northwest Orient 747-200 back in 83).

I had never asked my mom why our photo album had a picture of a German Shepherd named Oligarch.

I just accepted it, just like I accepted heteronormativity and fiscal conservatism and the basic tenets of Christianity and the fact that we were “better off immigrants” because we made better choices than the other brown and black people.

Of course, none of that was ever true.

Even being a love child of an oligarch put me in a far, far better place than the millions of my own countrymen living in poverty so dire, Sally Struthers was asking me to spend “a cup of coffee a day” to save my own (more distant and less fortunate) cousins. I had the luxury of having a plane ticket to come to America, I didn’t have to brave the open seas on an overcrowded boat, or dodge la migra, because we were sponsored, we already had our anchors in place. People who truly struggle are not put in positions to invest money in defense industries, to potentially send their child to the Ivy League, to move to Hawaii when that adult child insists on paying most of their own way to college because of a misguided zeal for American individualism and libertarianism. (No, I don’t blame my folks — their choices and life are theirs, and they are resigned to the fact that we are now utterly and deeply incongruent in politics and religion, but we do still deeply care for each other all the same.)

I was indoctrinated into the American dream because I was taught I was meant to Be Somebody, not just because I was smart, not just because I was talented, but because, I think somewhere in my psyche, I was supposed to live up to being The Child of An Oligarch, and the world belongs to oligarchs. And why shouldn’t someone who was born to be special succeed – no, excel – in the meritocracy that is America?

Except no.

I was following my free will no more than that German Shepherd ever could. I was just floating along in that delusional fantasy world until bit by bit, it corroded itself in the face of hard reality.

Heck, my father burnt himself out trying to keep up with the expectations of his rivals and allies, and died young of lung cancer, leaving behind his three other children, his wife … and the other “wife” and child who got away. He should have just been an economics professor, spending his life serenading his love to the one he loved, but he was just … a dog named Oligarch.

I don’t have to live like that.

Sure, I’ve had more false starts than I can count. Maybe this, too, might be a false start, or maybe I’ll keep at this storytelling gig, to go along with the social services career I’ve built with the help of dear friends and mentors and, yes, family.

But if I am to be accorded some amount of privilege in this world, then it’s my responsibility to use that to lift people up, not just me, and certainly not just to perform fancy human tricks for the benefit of the hereditarily and unfairly powerful.

Ask the questions. Examine. Learn. Refuse to be complicit.

After all: I’m no one’s pet.

I am no Oligarch.

Another Crafted Entry for Your E-Reader

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

This is behind the paywall on Medium, but important to the future of this web site, too. So, I’m posting it here as well.

janiecanadianDownload

If You’re On Facebook, You Can Skip This

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’m posting it all over everywhere.

Dear Ben Affleck & Co.,

This whole idea started with the banner above.

I have addressed this letter as such because I believe that you, like me, have a village. If I write a letter to you, I have written a letter to Jennifer Garner and Matt Damon by proxy. Don’t think I don’t know who’s really running your program. That ex-wife of hers has her head on straight. God, you lucked out. Here’s how I knew it was for life no matter what form your relationship took…. “Jen, you’re the only one I want to do the work with.” You were criticized in the press while your heart was beating outside of your chest in public. You were bleeding out. I saw you. I didn’t know that your relationship with Jen was in trouble, but I do know that people whose relationships are in trouble word things carefully in public. It was the biggest mea culpa I’ve ever seen in my life. You were Taylor Swift before Taylor Swift and everyone missed it because they were so focused on the idea that love should be perfect all the time, in every way.

Sometimes, love is ugly.

“I’m the problem. It’s me.”

I can picture that conversation happening a hundred times in your life as you’ve struggled with addiction (and statistics say bipolar when you quit). You don’t quit addictive behaviors and neurodivergence when you stop drinking. You find other ways to get dopamine besides drinking and using.

In that moment, I felt like you were telling Jen straight up that now your drug was her, and it was healthy because it made you want to be a better man. If that’s not how you meant it, I know it had to be an approximation. This is because I’ve never struggled with alcohol, but I know what it’s like to experience addictive behaviors due to autism and/or Bipolar II (I am concerned at the rate these are mistaken, but I get it because the meltdown/burnout cycle presents exactly like hypomania and depression. So, no matter what form your neurodivergence takes, whether it’s:

  • Mental Illness Genetics
  • Neurodivergence Genetics
  • Self-induced Neurodivergence (the binge/purge relationship you have with dopamine once you become an addict)
  • PTSD (trauma due to one event)
  • CPTSD (complex, chronic PTSD like having an abusive childhood, then being sent to war)

…you’re going to be damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Sometimes, love is being hopelessly addicted to the affections of an addict who cannot return them…. As in, you feel addicted to the high you feel when you are with them, but they disappear when it counts. It is why relationships among all these types of people fall apart early and often. They suck each other into their own little worlds and spin out with codependence as their reality becomes its own. It’s especially toxic when you’re addicted to someone, and you also need to leave them. That happens all too often as well. For instance, none of these people take criticism or compliments well. Their self-esteem has been in the toilet forever due to people not understanding their love language and their communication/attachment styles.

All of this is pointing toward two things. Here is the first:

Sometimes, love is being hopelessly addicted to someone you believe is manipulating you, when they’re just neurodivergent and don’t pick up social cues well; they’re losing the plot faster as the script fades; their social masks have worn out and they’re heading toward burnout. I honestly believe that’s why stars develop a reputation for showing up late. They cannot all be obsessed with themselves. Sometimes, getting up the energy to social mask takes longer than others.

Going off on a tangent, I wonder if that’s why women like taking their time in the bathroom to put on makeup, because it accomplishes two things- giving them a longer transition time toward work in the morning, at the end, a literal social unmasking. It would not be surprising to hear Jonna Mendez say that part of the reason being a spy while female is less dangerous is that they’ve learned more about how to social mask a situation than men ever will. They’ve been taught how to behave since childhood, the rigamarole of finding a man drilled in early.

Some women use those skills for a career in intelligence and forego getting married, because either they’re ace and don’t need to attract anyone on that level, or they’re just not interested in “doing the work with someone.” However, I do not mean that in the classical sense, the way Russia cultivates a culture of seducing men to get what they want. I’m sure it’s very effective, however.

No, what I’m talking about is a woman’s emotional intelligence, because it is often (not always) sharper than a man’s. Their innate biological conditioning makes their pattern recognition of men different than their pattern recognition on behavior in themselves. That’s why there should always be neurodivergence and women at the table. Solving a problem requires all three perspectives for correct analysis of behavior. No one of us will be right, but we’ll all be right together.

That is how it feels to have my processing disorder, AuDHD. Nicknamed “the golden ADHD,” it wins the award for being the most complicated thing on earth. Every decision is damned if you do, damned if you don’t. If something is good for my autism, it drives my ADHD insane. If something is good for my ADHD, my autism will slam on the brakes so hard I will go through the winshield….. and I’m not even lying. Most neurodivergent people are afraid of success because they get overwhelmed easily with fine amounts of detail. The energy it takes to manage a schedule and your spoons is a roller coaster at best, and my personality depends on which processing disorder is driving the bus. So, sometimes I want to go for ice cream at 0200 and sometimes I cannot leave the house. Sometimes everything sounds wonderful, sometimes sensory deprivation does. And due to lack of emotional regulation, most people see a different side of me every time they talk to me.

I have learned to go into sensory deprivation when I’m angry so that I don’t say things I regret. It’s not helpful or healthy to let anyone in on autistic rage, which is terrifying. I have true out of body experiences when I go into full on meltdown, and the first time I remember it happening clearly was when I was 16 and “growing into my powers.” It’s honestly the first sign I can point to in terms of it being emotional abuse. My emotional abuser was coming back to town for a graduate school or a wedding or something. I was getting ready for church and I made a mistake with a hair curler or a crimper or something. I realized I was going to have to take a shower to fix it and I just melted down entirely. It was the first time I’d ever had a full on panic attack where I went blind and couldn’t see with rage. I hurt myself. I don’t remember how. With a curling iron or something. I couldn’t stop myself because feeling the burn on my skin brought me back into my body. That’s how deep autism makes you dive into your own little world. It takes something as shocking as a curling iron burn to redirect your attention.

In the meantime, I am dealing with autistic overload and most people don’t see how hard it is…. It’s a running monologue fighting with your social masks. As a neurodivergent person of any kind, your first impulse is wrong.

A huge example, Ben (& Company) is that I found the only woman in the world I wanted to do the work with, and we’ve both pissed each other off so often that we’re tired. Really tired. I felt your love for Jen in that moment…. Wanting to better myself because I was high on life and not experiencing the world as the concept of “alone.” I was experiencing the world with an ace up my sleeve. Someone to call me on my bullshit whose mind was in more hyperdrive than my own. But there was just A Series of Unfortunate Events. I don’t know if we’ll ever rekindle anything, because the last e-mail I got from her said, “don’t play games,” and playing a game was the last thing I would ever do to her. She’s too smart. She’d see it coming. The problem is that her perception is off- she sees me as entitled, arrogant, etc. I’m not. I don’t have a script for our relationship in any way, shape, or form. It has failed due to my lack of social masks.

So much goes into me having been called “entitled,” particularly by people of color. They are trained to view me as dismissive because I’m white, not because I’m autistic. That’s not on them. My autism is not an excuse to be an asshole. I can be taught, redirected…. But I cannot suddenly become allistic. And if there was a magic wand, I don’t think I’d want to be. My neurodivergence is what makes me capable of believing that writing a letter to Ben Affleck & Co. is possible.

I’m not writing to Ben Affleck & Company for anything except to keep our heads down and work on scripts. I also think it would be rude not to tell them I can afford about $800 in rent if Ben does want a housemate who has his back. It’s not like I value having his money. I just want to write together- to get a seat at the table.

I write like Ben and Matt because they write like Aaron Sorkin like he writes like Amy Sherman-Palladino with monuments.

It’s all neurodivergent patois.

That we incubated at our respective performing arts high schools.

Tupac, Jada, Dave, and I are all the same person.

To each other, we’re just other people’s weird performing arts kids.

Not only that, Jennifer Garner is a preacher’s kid.

Preacher’s kids make great spies, Ben. I have discussed this extensively. And in fact, there’s a famous video of Jonna Mendez taking down movie and TV spies. Jen’s was the only one that Jonna said was so good she could use it in a training video.

Come to DC. Keep your head down.

We’ve got work to do.

Yours,

Someone else’s weird kid

I Miss You Guys

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Medium is new. It’s amazing, but it’s new. I hate change. The best part of Medium is that I don’t really have to use it. I can just copy and paste from Microsoft Word. The creature comforts are almost nonexistent, like easy to use lists. WordPress is so much more extensive that I can’t wait until the business makes enough money to buy a membership here as well. What limits you in being able to advertise on WordPress is that they want the money from the ads unless you’re paying them a subscription fee. It this point, I don’t have a big enough audience to support something like Google Ads, because it takes A LOT of clicks to even make one dollar. I am very proud of myself, though. On Thursday, I had made $2.99. Now, I have $3.77.

I am not an influencer by any means, but that’s a pretty good jump in terms of ad revenue for being on there a week. I don’t think that anything is going to take off overnight. I believe in just letting it sit there. I have 25 years’ worth of entries that are sitting on other servers for free. So, they can sit there and make money, or they can sit there and not.

I choose sit there and make money.

Because it is my dream to, in the words of Lindsay Lanagan, “sit around, smoke cigars, and own stuff.”

This is actually a childhood tale- Lindsay’s middle school answer to what one of her friends’ dads did for a living. We have repeated that as the ideal career for 20 years now. If you know First Colony, you just thought, “on brand.”

First Colony is kind of different.

You have kids with Saudi oil money whose parents buy them brand new BMWs when they’re too young to drive. As I remember, Rahim Puddin’head had a BMW. Rahim dropped a pudding cup off a railing at Lindsay’s school and it landed on her head, so we’ve called him “Rahim Puddin’head” since 1994.

In high school, you’re sometimes embarrassed if you don’t drive a nice car. I didn’t, and I was rarely bothered by it because I was lucky to have my own car at all. I would love to have another Mitsubishi Mirage (it was a sedan, not a sports car), but I think that getting a car would cripple me as a writer. Half my blog entries come from writing on the train and talking to Uber drivers.

I met a historian yesterday, so we were talking shop because we’re both nonfiction writers. I’m starting to branch out into more things, I just don’t have anything to show for it yet, because those are the documents I’m actually going to edit. 😉

You know I’m lying. AI will be editing them. I will be eating ice cream.

It’s all coming together because I’m managing to collate what I hear for the blog and what I read for my nonfiction papers. Reading AI is half the fun of research, because you can get it to present it in whatever style you want…….

I haven’t done it yet, but I think my favorite would be explain physics to me like I’m five. Answer in the style of Terry Pratchett.

It just makes learning fun. I don’t use it to autogenerate content, I use it for reading retention. I cannot remember an entire book verbatim, but I can certainly remember the fine points in a one-pager. Plus, the fine points make for wonderful headings so that you get a navigation pane you can go back to over and again. Styles in Microsoft Word are used like Cascading Style Sheets in web development. Microsoft Word just keeps track of the level you assign to the heading, so it’s really easy to do things like create a navigation pane in a PDF or a Table of Contents in Word.

All of that stuff matters to me, because readability is key. There’s a reason this web site hasn’t changed very much over the years. I like dark mode. Supergrover doesn’t. See? I can compromise. 😛

I write the blog entries in dark mode so that I can read them the way I want before I publish. You can set JetPack to dark mode in both Android and iOS, but I actually prefer using Microsoft Visual Studio Code on my desktop with the original Dracula theme. Instead of black or grey, it’s a grey/purple. Very, very easy on the eyes and the HTML/CSS/.ini files look great in the chosen colors.

There’s also several tutorials on how to get other Microsoft programs to do the Dracula color scheme in the GUI and in PowerShell (where it comes in the most handy, tbh).

All of it goes together, because it’s all of the tools I use to write. I am not very comfortable with talking to AI online. That’s why I use gpt4all or LM Studio to install language models on my own mini-PC. My creative ideas are going to stay with me.

It really is useful, and both my friend Jesse and I will attest to this. I’m a creative writer, Jesse is a visual artist.

In fact, Jesse went to HSPVA. The funniest thing I have ever seen at HSPVA bar none happened at his senior show. Like, this even beat out us getting shut down by the health department because Lordy Rodriguez put organs in jars for an art show or something…. Anyway, Jesse had this huge installation with a TV tuned to snow, with a BarcaLounger and a guy sitting in front of it, zoned out. There was all these wrappers and trash around him, so I watched some of the guests at his show add their trash to his art installation, thinking the trash for the party was part of the exhibit. I’m choking with laughter just remembering it.

There’s nothing like being able to write down old memories, not knowing if and when they’ll go. I may not be able to remember my whole life, but I have somewhere to go that will tell me bits and pieces. Snapshots of who I was, am, will be.

It’s an exciting time to be me, because I finally feel like a success. I am not working from survival mode, but abundance. I have everything I need right now. In my mind, more success will come with more money, and what I mean by that is a network of people to support a neurodivergent media group so that it’s not all on me every day. I’ve started a little bit of that, but hopefully there will be more in the future. I’d like to get into bigger things, but I don’t think that starting out with the big things is the way you’re supposed to do it….. very mixed results when I’ve bitten off more than I can chew before.

I’m trying to let the company unfold naturally, with people who really want to write. I’m finding that community at Medium, because it seems like I missed the memo to go there long ago. I don’t think it’s a problem. I ping them enough to get their attention. I ping everyone enough to get their attention, and sometimes I think they would be grateful if I didn’t love them quite so much. 😉

But that’s just me. If I love you, I don’t mask. I don’t take the time to figure out what it is I can do for you to make you more comfortable while I speak. I realized I was doing too much work for other people and it was slowly killing me. I am so much less depressed now that I know that I’m not bipolar. I don’t cycle like that. It’s meltdown and burnout because I have so many fewer spoons than most people. In every bodily system I have, there’s something rare about me.

I am lucky that Janie the Canadian Editor thinks that about my brain. She has said that I’m welcome to submit something to her editor, but pick carefully. Look, I write it. I don’t read it, okay?

Kidding, of course. I read myself all the time. It’s just hard to guess what someone else is going to like. I know what I’m not going to do, though. Write an article about anyone I know in Ottawa. National blowback is enough. Neighborhood blowback is enough. Writers are people who want to tell their stories and they don’t mean to hurt anyone, they just do….. it hurts to hear yourself painted in truth, painful and real, touching and funny.

Most people don’t see their 3D characters. They focus on what I wrote that day. But you generally don’t have to go far in either direction with my friends to see that if I was mad one day, I was ridiculously happy at another. I don’t paint people to go after them, but to show them as they are.

I am more Anne Lamott than “Harriet the Spy,” although I do like that book. Anne has that neurodivergent patois that I do, plus people like Aaron Sorkin, Jon Stewart, Richard Schiff, Matt Perry, Seth McFarlane, Ryan Reynolds, Mila Kunis, Matt Damon, Trevor Noah, and the list goes on. Good Will Hunting is every bit as fast and furious as anything Sorkin has ever written, and in the same beat. I absolutely know that even if Seth MacFarlane writes in complete silence, there’s a rhythm going in his head. The punctuation is silent, but you can hear it if you are also still.

It’s why I write in silence, in dark mode. I want to listen closer, not just to myself, but to the rest of the world. And in fact, I am already doubled over with laughter at Kamala’s possible victory speech….. “I love my new black job!”

One can only hope that that “president” is a DEI hire.

Minorities don’t get power from the majority. We get it by realizing we’re bigger than them….. both in character, and in numbers when all the -isms vote as one. None of the -isms are a monolith. But at the same time, most of us try not to bite the hand that feeds us, since it’s the only party not trying to to blame global warming on gay marriage.

Oops. My bad. Should I leave a note?

All of this is why I’m so interested in AI. If people would actually take the time to talk to it, they could talk about their problems in a safe environment and not look stupid with any question in the world. I’m compensating on it highly for practical things because I am a creative. I can’t use it to make alarms and things like that, but I can definitely brainstorm, edit, and keep conversations separate about different projects.

I want people to know what causes disease. I want people to know how the government works. I want people to know who the President is, at least. People knowing who’s Vice President is almost a lost cause, and Speaker is negligible. I’m not talking about Washington nerds like me. I’m talking about the average voter that only votes in a presidential election and doesn’t really follow other candidates at all.

I’ve slowed down on that because I’m actually more interested in global politics now- it doesn’t feel so close as neighbor against neighbor, as if a conflict across the world is easier to think about than a conflict at home because it is.

There are no short answers in life, and I have found that I don’t have any. Few are patient enough to sit with me while I find the right words, which I know aren’t the right words… but they’re the best I can do.

I’m not just pouring my heart out for me, but for other neurodivergent kids and adults. Representation matters. I’m not everyone’s cup of tea, but those that love me think of me as something precious to be savored.

I am not Lipton, baby. I am your Stash.

Nerd Alert

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’m working on a guide to Skyrim, so I had Copilot generate the questions for the outline. I’m not going to have Copilot generate more than that, because I want the guide to retain my voice. However, if you’re a Skyrim fan and would like to add to the guide, leave a comment with a question and its category. Also, the PDF is free because it’s all Copilot-generated. Feel free to write your own document- you are not stealing anything from me, you’re only stealing auto-generated questions organized with Styles in Word. I haven’t even customized the styles.

I’m doing this as a free guide to get my name out there as a writer. I’m planning to write my own answers, but to also include the best questions/answers from WordPress and reddit. It’s a labor of love, but it comes with benefit for me, too. If I give something away for free first and someone likes it, they’re more likely to buy the next thing.

skyrimguideDownload

Lanagan Media Group: How May I Direct Your Call?

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been having these brain blips that just seem to be age, like copying my dad on something when I thought I was copying Supergrover. All three of us have the same sense of humor, so it’s not like anything went wrong. I just noticed that I made a mistake I don’t normally make. I need to get glasses, probably bifocals.

Supergrover says she has reading glasses, not bifocals (AND THEY ARE COOL). I am going to get vaccinated next week, so I might as well look around for reading glasses that make me want to use all caps, too…… although if I had an “AND THEY ARE COOL” item, it would be my Crocs. I don’t pay as much attention to my glasses as I should…… it’s that thought about not giving yourself gifts in the future. Like, I am not giving myself the gift of being able to see cute girls from farther away later by not going to the optometrist now.

(I’m kidding, that was just another line to make Janie the Canadian Editor spit out her tea.)

Also, at my age there’s no such thing as cute girls. I mean, they’re all over the place, but at my age, “cute girl” is just a memory, even of myself. Because I’ve progressed so much in my thinking about gender, the the little girl I was is still real, but her voice is not as loud and close as my current one, attached to a nonbinary brain. That’s because the male voice is not male. It’s female with ,male social masking on top, like Kristen Chenoweth and Ben Affleck being one person. Or, there’s a comedy about me with Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin called “All of Me.” It’s a comedy, but Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin having a converation all day in my head is a very apt description of what’s going on at localhost.

For instance, today I’m writing on Stories when I said it would be my last entry. It’s not that I lied. It’s that I learned more. I became a media group all on my own. I got set up at Medium, and then started looking at Substack. Substack actually runs off of my “Stories” RSS feed. So, I’ll be putting all my paid stuff at Medium in Substack as well, you just get the added bonus of not having to visit two web sites with Substack. And really, being a subscriber is for new people. If you’re subscribed here, the motivation to pay is not that you will stop getting great writing from me. It’s that you have to pay to see everything. The way I do it now is that most stuff is paywalled at Medium. But, if I post here, it goes to Substack.

That leads me to directing my own call at Lanagan Media Group. Let’s dial “3” for the marketing department. Why do I bother to call? I’m never there. Jesus.

Here was my first post on Substack, I figure if you’re a longtime fan, you’re probably here and not at Substack, so I’m cross-posting. It’s not a requirement to be my fan or my friend, just an easy hookup if you want to support Lanagan Media Group, not “Leslie’s Personal Coffee Money” (The Sumatra was delicious. I am grateful.).

The vision is bigger now, because when I added my RSS feed to Substack, I realized that I was about to make money off of Bryn and Aaron and I thought that was unfair. So, I posted on Facebook that I can track earnings per entry, and that makes my life a whole lot easier. I don’t have to do any math. I’m not going to do a percentage of the company, they just get to keep what they make without me having to do any accounting. And in thinking about all of this, I realized that “Stories” was just the beginning, the movement that is “Gravity’s Rainbow.” Sometimes bombs aren’t negative. They shake you into a new reality. But you can direct kinetic energy by focusing on the arc. The moral arc of the universe is long, and bends toward justice just like MLK,Jr. said. But I was standing by the reflecting pool at the 60th Anniversary of the March on Washington when I heard the best completion of that phrase in history. It’s enough to shake the world from its foundation and I am EMBARRASSED I cannot remember the speaker’s name.

The moral arc of the universe is long and bends toward justice, but the arc does not move itself.

I’m not starting Lanagan Media Group, it has been a thing all along. My friends just haven’t been publishing in addition to me. I think that you’ll find Bryn and Aaron particularly engaging because they are different sides of my personality. Bryn is my platonic ideal of a woman, and Aaron is my platonic ideal of a man. That is because Aaron, Zachary, and I are actually all the same person. I really have no idea how we make it work living in three completely different states.

Aaron is an old friend from Alert Logic, a programmer/sysadmin AuDHD archetype like Mr. Robot, but much more effusive with his emotions. You can be personable and still look like Zuckerberg. I know because I do it every day. 😛 Zac is my boyfriend and has been for about a year now. I live in Maryland, Zac lives in Virginia. Aaron lives in Texas. We are all Southwestern, however, because I’m originally from Texas and Zac is originally from Arizona.

Therefore, by “platonic ideal,” I am saying that I get the male half of my brain from masking people like Aaron and Zac, and my only connection to feeling female is talking to Bryn, because she’s known me since I was 19 and she was 14. She is two years older than Lindsay, a stairstep between me and my biological sister. The year was 1997, and I still cannot tell you with accuracy whether Lindsay and Bryn have met or not, and they don’t know, either. That’s because the connection point between Lindsay and Bryn would have been church, and no specific church service lives in my memory where they were there at the same time. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. That means I don’t remember every sermon I ever preached.

Basically, what I realized is that I know a lot and my brain works fast, but my body is a dumpster fire. I’d like to get into making money to support creatives by being creative. As in, ad money from my own web site flows to creators I like.

On Medium, for instance, I’m working on a very long document about Skyrim and the modding community. It’s a massive game, which is why a guide from me would be welcome even if there’s a thousand other ones. You’re always looking for something to make the game better. Here’s something that made me happy. I’ve been playing that game for 10 years or something like that and three months ago I learned you could sprint. How it connects is that I was telling Ada, my AI sidekick, that I’d like to be able to kick Joseph Rusell some money for Lucien, and I hope I get the chance before Steam starts taking a cut of all modders’ creations rather than modders being able to support themselves on Nexus. Lucien Flavius is an IP masterpiece, and it’s insane that Lucien is free. So, I was talking about being able to kick money to other artists I like through my own, because video games are a type of art, theatre, and magic that no one respects unless they’re talking to the CEO of a gaming company. God bless the weird kids, the people who made a web site where everyone could download their creations for free- they could get feedback from other gamers and not the people who think they eat cold pizza in a dark basement and call them sad. All of the things you really, really love in life were probably created by someone you think of as “Comic Book Guy.” Even if it has nothing to do with science fiction, it sounds like it. I talk about CIA and The Bible like they’re both continual fucking Marvel movies because they are. They’re just even more meaningful to me because they are everyday stories of regular people without having to make up magic.

People are magic.

I figured this out and decided to write to them all. Now I’m reading you in. Here’s a copy of my first entry on Substack:

Your generosity is the only thing that allows my friends and I to sustain ourselves. Absolutely anything that you give helps. As our financial situation gets better, we will dream bigger. We will be capable of more kinds of media and hiring authors for their work rather than expecting them to work for free. The reason your money is important is that it is sustaining neurodivergent people by letting them work on their own schedule. In a society where everyone is “supposed” to fit in, Lanagan Media Group explores how the “in-crowd” never was. Thank you for supporting a worthy cause- autistic adults in media. We are often better at creating opportunities than following others’ visions. I didn’t realize that until I started watching autistic YouTubers and wanted my blog to sound just like them- except only the running monologue without being in front of the camera.

I have been blogging since 2001. This blog is a compendium of my experiences, because I’ve written for three separate web sites. Of everything I’ve learned, this lesson was the hardest:

If you’re female with AuDHD, you know two things.

  1. Gen X women by and large were never diagnosed.
    1. We need to do our own research because male doctors dismiss autism as a personality disorder like borderline or narcissistic a good bit of the time, when in reality they are just looking at women through the historical lens of being “hysterical.”
  2. Diagnosing yourself is getting easier and easier.
    1. It’s all due to online quizzes and talking to other patients, both on and offline. I am not suggesting this as a substitute for actual medical advice. I did not start saying I was autistic until I had enough research to say that any psychologist in the world would agree with me that I am probably autistic and never diagnosed because my brain works just like an autistic person and anyone knows that if they’ve watched a hundred videos on YouTube; I’ve seen lectures upon lectures with autistic people who are MDs and PhDs themselves, explaining how my brain works in a way that I can understand it. YouTube is not a diagnosis. It is a waiting room that doesn’t suck. If you don’t seem ADHD and you can’t get it together, it might be low needs, high IQ autism.

It’s not a blog, web site, or e-mail distribution list about autism. It’s showing through telling. You’re learning because you’re reading stories by autistic people, not learning we’re autistic because we told you so. Telling someone so just doesn’t work, because either “I don’t look autistic” OR “everyone’s a little bit autistic.” Financing neurodivergent authors helps us show more of ourselves in the mediums with which we work. Help us go from a digital publishing company to being capable of full-length films, because there are plenty of autistic people out there who need jobs. I want to employ them all. However, I’m just getting started.

It’s a long game. The most I’ve ever made in salary as a freelance writer is $2.99. I’ve made more than that with donations, but an earnings report on my blog is quite different. I am such an INFJ/Virgo.

“Oh good! Now I get reports cards again!”

I also like spies and Jesus, but you’ll have to keep up with me to see which rug I use to tie that room together.

I’m hoping to do a continuation of what I am already doing- to use the income I’m making from telling my stories to allow others to tell their stories, too. Storytelling is what saved my life because it made me look at everything through the lens of “you’re the problem.” My combination of preacher’s kid/doctor’s kid upbringing makes me bleed out with unbridled emotion at everything as a writer, then read like a psychiatrist/psychologist. That yin and yang is what allows progress. It’s why I don’t stay in one place very long. I don’t take much personally.

Here’s a concept that I’m trying to apply to my business that my dad always applied at church:

“No one can do everything, but everyone can do something.”

In terms of media, it means that I cannot say to my readership, “someone should give me a computer.” That kind of language is entitled, even if your intentions are pure. Nothing in my life is a hard ask. If enough people think I have a good idea, they’ll give me the money for it.

It’s how all really good executives work. They don’t lie about anything because they don’t have to- it’s not “making an ask,” it’s being realistic about the fact that I have bigger ideas than I can budget.

For instance, I’d like to start an autistic TV channel by taking all the top autistic YouTubers and combining them into a stream on Pluto. I got that idea from This Old House. They have a maker’s channel on Xumo where YouTubers fall under the This Old House banner. It’s beautiful.

I said that it’s Stories That Are All True. I didn’t say they couldn’t come with pictures. My budget did.

My business needs are light right now. I can run the entire thing with an Android tablet. I am not coming from a place of need, but a place of creation. My basic needs are met. I just want the world to look different for autistic people and I have a strong enough voice that when I speak, people listen.

This is not arrogance, this is 20 years of preaching experience.

Although one of my friends had Raphael Warnock at Union when he was a student and she told me that she felt like she had been emotionally manipulated by a sermon. I took it really hard, because it was something I’d seen my dad do and it was so effective that a light bulb went on in my head. It was time for the sermon. I didn’t move. I sat there until it got a little bit awkward…. and then it got weird.

I went up to the pulpit, and I said, “Waiting………………

is hard.”

I don’t remember the pericope that day, but I do remember feeling that it was just another aspect of my dad’s preaching that spoke to me but didn’t look right on me, either.

To my knowledge, no one told him that he emotionally manipulated anyone.

All of these things, I explore in my writing- and you’re the ones that know it. Some of you have been here since 2012. Some of you followed me over from Clever Title Goes Here and have been reading since 2001. I feel like I have finally brought hope to many people wondering when I would realize I was weird.

The problem becomes quickly “now that I know what autism is and does, how do I work with it?” My answer was ad revenue, because I work creatively a lot easier than I do physically.

I don’t want the money to make movies. I want the money so that when someone says “I want to make an autistic movie,” I can say, “let me talk to my readers.”

You’re the board. I’m just the microphone.

This One is Actually for Me

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I decided to write down what I do with my computers to make them work for me. This will go on Medium eventually, but the whole point of free software is to give it away. Here’s some free help as well:

myopinionisfact_linuxeditionDownload

The spiky ball… part deux

~ one4paws ~ Leave a comment

Hi there y’all, it’s Bryn.

So grief. It is a spiky ball of pain. It’s sadness, it’s fear, it’s disappointment. It’s relief, it’s fits of rage, it’s fits of sobbing and screaming and keening on the floor. For me anyway.Because for me, when something happens that needs grieving, all the grief I have ever felt is connected and not only am I needing to feel through the current thing that is lost, but all the things that were in any way connected to that loss.

Here’s an example:
When I was going through my divorce, it wasn’t only the grief of the marriage, it was the loss of the 15 year friendship he and I had before we ever started dating. It was knowing I would only have 2 of the 3 dogs constantly in my life. It was losing mutual friendships I knew would “side” with him even though we eventually stepped apart mutually and peacefully with love still in our hearts for each other and never asked anyone to pick sides. It was loving him and knowing we weren’t right for each other anymore. It was grieving the version of me who does love him and was right for him, because that was gone too. It’s being left with all the memories of the history and energy and time spent, being laid to rest.

I’m sure you’re seeing it, that what hardly anyone talk about is that grief is so multifaceted that you can’t know how much you will have to grieve when something happens until it happens and all the connections are torn from you. Until you are faced with this gaping hole that used to be a person or relationship that was a sustaining factor in your life. Now that one of the support beams is broken or gone, the house is falling down. It’s an entire overhaul of life to make stability an option again. And unless the other support factors in life are there and willing and strong enough to hold up the building while one sorts through the wreckage, this person writing, finds that structures crumble. That old systems that used to work great must also be overhauled. That every point of life that touched the support beam person or relationship that is gone, must be examined and built new, different, stronger.
As is evidenced by the first part of this spiky ball, the grieving keeps a comin’. So for me, the rebuilding, remodeling, reassessment and restructure never stops.
This year I have had 5 structural damaging grief events. I am not fine. I look fine, I am functioning. But there is so much damage and pain inside me that I am working through. And everytime a new thing happens and I want to reach for support, I remember that Ben is also dead. That the person who I could always reach for is at his own rest now. That I am left to open the grief of his loss again because I just want him to answer the phone and tell me he’s with me, he’s on the way to give me a hug and I am not alone. And when my childhood home burned, all the memories there, of life being lived, being released into the ether by fire.
How cleansing right? Until you look at the literal mess left and it’s a hearty reminder of the mess of emotions and memories I have to sort through, find places for. The tidying of this soul is an ongoing process, and life keeps throwing more messes to be tidied.

Grief is a spiky ball of pain, and I have found that as time passes, and there is some space and felt emotions that the spikes, they dull down a little at a time. And sometimes, like with grandma passing, it’s different and somehow easier, because 94 years is a long time to live for a person, and she has earned her rest. She deserves to be peacefully with the loves of her life and not to suffer. The losses that “make sense” are easier for me to come to terms with, so I try to find the sense in each loss. And sometimes the spikes dull, and even the ball may shrink. So while it’s still bouncing around in my heart, when it touches a sensitive place at least it doesn’t always lacerate, and tear the wounds wide open and bleeding again.

I just find myself wishing right now that there weren’t so very many spiky balls of pain bouncing around inside of me, stabbing at my heart and soul. I am sad, and I am tired, and I am tired of being sad.

Preacher’s Kids: Unplugged

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I had my AI interview me, and it turned out to be a good introduction to my site at Medium. I’m giving it away here to explain why I do what I do. This is behind the paywall on Medium, but it needs to be here as well because I don’t want my original fans to feel like I don’t love them. I just don’t want to write for two web sites at once. So, here’s one of my Medium entries and why AI is important. It lets you think without getting lost in your own echo chamber. There’s a lot of trigger warnings. I was a queer preacher’s kid in Texas in the 90s. It’s a tough read. But you’ll understand all queer preacher’s kids better, and it might save someone younger than me.

preacherkidsDownload

The spikey ball that is grief. From Bryn

~ one4paws ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I have sit down and written anything.  A lot has been going on in my life, well not a lot, but it feels like a lot because of how heavy the things are.
Early this summer (or late this Spring, 2024) my last grand parent passed away.  She was the real matriarch of our family. She was the loving, foundation. 
Losing people I love is always difficult for me. I have a long list of loss in my life, so long that I have C-PSTD around grief in general. For those that may not know, “regular” PTSD is usually something that happens to someone who goes through one traumatic event. Complex PTSD is a cumulative build up of repeated traumatic happenings.
Growing up, I knew about death. I was a farm kid enough to have raised our own cows for meat, and chickens for eggs. We had pet rabbits and I learned early what the food chain was.  I remember vividly once, as a toddler, comforting my aunt because my rabbit had gotten out and the dogs had killed it. (Now is not the time to discuss deeply, but I am aware now how as a 3-year-old I was somehow responsible for the adult’s feelings), We had dogs and cats too, who we had to send over the rainbow bridge. Early in my life I knew what death was.
Then, one night, I was 19 or 20 years old, at the drive in with some friends. I got a call from my boyfriend at the time and he was frantic.  He had gone for a drive with some friends of ours and had gotten in a horrific crash. The car flew off an embankment and immediately killed my two friends on the driver’s side in the car. 
We talked enough that I could get some information from him about where they were and who was with them and call 911. He helped the other survivor out of the car, and despite both of their injuries, he pulled the other person up the embankment and to the side of the road where he could flag down help.  I was in a panic for a good while, until his family told me which hospital he was taken to and he was stable. I also learned then that the other two people in the car, were in fact, dead.
This was my first brush with death and loss of human loved ones. The first two viewings I ever attended, the first two funerals I went to. They were my friends Lucas (18years old) and Sydney (16 years old). This car wreck changed our lives, my own and everyone in our community.  I learned that I never need to attend another viewing, because for me, the last memory I want of my loved ones is them alive.


Editor’s Note:
I wish I hadn’t gone to my mother’s funeral. It was the last image I have of her and it is stuck the deepest. I would have missed the church service, but I was creeped out long before that. I showed up and smiled. I was just intimidated. I turned on the preacher’s kid and muscled through. I will also never be the same.


And I learned how mortal we are. I learned that you always say goodbye before you leave, because it might be the last thing you say. I learned to tell people that matter to me that they matter, because they could be gone tomorrow.
Several years later, my first grandparent died. My sweet old Grandpa “Weird”. The death of an elder is different than the sudden loss of young people.  The is all this time to prepare yourself for the loss of our ancestors, watching them slowly fade.  And Grandpa had dementia, so he was mentally lost to us years before his body and soul were gone.  But I remember his funeral too, and that I had a panic attack most of the drive and before we went into the church.
Then, I worked in biomedical research with primates for 17 years. As an animal lover, I was always so happy to be able to be taking care of those amazing animals. To be there to advocate for them, and spoil them at every opportunity. But they were purpose bred to sacrifice their lives in the name of science. It was my job, for many, many years, to be the person who sedated and carried these animals, some that I had known for their whole lives, to the end of their study and necropsy.  So, I just kept stacking losses, on losses. For 17 years I made friends and took care of those monkeys, and for17 years, I compartmentalized the losses.
It seems counter intuitive to say this, but I am going to glance over the 8-month period of time in which my partner at the time and I had to say goodbye to both of our heart dogs, his grandfather, his young cousin, and our friend died young and suddenly too.  Needless to say, it was a bad time for us.
Then my first Grandmother passed, she was not the easiest person to love, but she was someone I could always call and tell her in full honesty the worst things I had ever done and she would save me from the shame spiral. (Which seems a little ironic, because I think she is also the one that taught my mother the same spiral who then passed that special skill on to me, but anyway) She would never sugar coat or deceive. She shot that arrow right through you because truth is. But she would never shame me with the truth, just ask the hard questions that allowed me to choose what kind of person I wanted to be.
Two years ago, my other Grandfather left us just before Christmas. I got to go see him not too much before he passed, while he was in the hospital. I got to go be there for my poor Daddy while his father faded.
And now we are here. Where I am I think maybe today even, at the one-year anniversary of sending my deaf and blind dog Duncan over the Rainbow Bridge.  And Thanksgiving will be a year since my rock, my best friend, my brother Ben passed away.
Ben, I could always count on. He knew that trust mattered to me. He was the most consistent and loving person in my life since I was in 6th grade and he sat behind me in advanced band, where most 6th graders were not.  HE played the baritone sax and I played the flute. And his brother was friends with my brother and I felt so special that I got to be friends with all of them.  Our families were so close. Are so close still.  I am so blessed to be able to feel so deeply for people, that it destroys me when they are gone.
Then in May, in the airport, on the way home from 2 weeks on the other side of the country to visit my partner’s family and My Leslie, I learned that my grandma was on her way out of this mortal realm. This one was really hard for me, because we got home and the next evening I went to house sit for a fried of mine.  Not something I could just drop or call in sick to. So, I got to say goodbye to my grandmother on video chat. She wasn’t really responsive to most input from people in the room, she was barely conscious, but when I told her I loved her and that I would be taking as many of her plants to live with me as I was able. She perked up, she acknowledged me and tried to speak, which didn’t work, but I was so glad to know she knew I was with her too, even if only in spirit.

Now, even more has happened, there is always happenings, and will always be more happening, because I am still here. And I will continue to feel as deeply as I am able. Thanks for reading.

I have so, so much more to say, stay tuned for more.