How often do you say “no” to things that would interfere with your goals?
The thing about being a writer is that nothing interferes with your goals if you don’t allow it. In my particular case, dropping everything to do something for/with a friend adds to the richness of my writing, not a distraction to it. I think of my blog as one of those video games that you can get lost in, because even after you’ve finished the main quest, you have so many side quests that you keep returning to that world. In this case, the main quest will be over when I die. My “stories that are all true” won’t end unless I do. Therefore, my blog is entirely driven by the way the B plots of my life work out. Everything is a B plot when the A plot is just my time on earth.
The main reason I started writing every single day was just to see if I could. If I could be dedicated to such a thing. That I wouldn’t even take off weekends, that blogging was serious business not to draw people in, but to heal me. I have said this before, but this blog is almost entirely my therapy, because a therapist only spends an hour a week with you. You don’t get well on an hour a week. I began to view writing as important as my medication. I have to take my medication every day to make me feel better, so I process my feelings as well.
Sometimes I wait until the afternoon, but most of the time I wake up, fill my water bottle, take my medication, and start writing. It is now 0524. I have been up and down since 0300, and I don’t know why. Oh, yes I do. When I knock myself out with sleeping pills, I go so deep that I don’t need as much. So, if I go to bed at 2100, I’m guaranteed to be up at o’dark hundred.
Generally, when you get entries later in the day, it’s because Zac goes to bed a lot later than I do, so our day starts later when we’re together. It’s an interruption I’m gladly willing to make, because as a boyfriend, he is killing it. Our next date is going to the Kennedy Center to see Jason Moran, and I’m so excited. I’ve known Jason since he was a senior in high school, when I was a mere freshman. He taught me to listen to jazz and analyze it so that I could repeat it, but he didn’t say that. He said, “never take your headphones off. Listen at home, between classes, have a radio under your pillow.” Guess what. I can analyze jazz now. If I see which way the band is going, I can go with them…… and I got that phrase from Konrad Johnson.
Konrad Johnson was a high school jazz band director in Houston, Texas who made fame. Kashmere’s Jazz band is known all over the world now, because one of their charts is on the soundtrack to “Baby Driver.” The way I know Konrad is that he was my director at Summer Jazz Workshop. I cannot believe that I got to work with the two greatest jazz educators in the history of the world, because my jazz director at HSPVA was Robert Morgan.
“Doc” is directly responsible for Jason Moran, Everette Harp, Eric Harland, Robert Glasper, Jon Durbin (The Suffers)…….. the list is endless, because if you studied jazz in Houston, it was probably with him. Everette was before my time, but Robert, Jon, and I were all in the same band. I didn’t choose to continue with trumpet, but I sometimes wish I had. I enjoyed it, I just didn’t enjoy it as much as my dad did, because he didn’t have the same problems with pain in his embouchure that I did.
I could play for about half an hour at a time, and was pushing myself through every concert ever. I could have corrected it, but there was no time. I was either right before a concert, a jury, a something important I couldn’t miss.
My voice is trained much more than I ever trained as brass, and in retrospect, I should have gone the choir route. I think I would have gotten along with Mrs. Bonner, because I definitely did with Mr. Seible (who was my conductor at Bering UMC). That’s because Mrs. Bonner was also a Methodist. 😛
However, I still wouldn’t have been in class with Beyoncé, because my dad was transferred from The Heights to Sugar Land, and I chose to go to school out there. I was grandfathered in terms of the new rule that you had to live within HISD to go to HSPVA, but I didn’t want to commute. It would have been hell every single morning for two years. For reference, it’s about 27 miles, so half an hour at three in the morning and two hours at 8:00 AM.
It worked out. I had a best friend that picked me up for school every morning, in which we listened to the same tape every day. It was “Three,” by Blood, Sweat, and Tears. As a result, I still listen to that album all the time. “The Battle” and “Lucretia McEvil” are my favorite tracks, particularly Lew Soloff blasting the top off that trumpet solo in “Lucretia.”
I met Lew at a Jon Faddis concert in Virginia in 2002. It was great, because he assumed that if I knew who he and Jon were, I was probably a trumpet player. Good guess, but not currently looking for work. He told me I should audition at Manhattan School of Music, because that’s where he was teaching. It was sweet, but I told him that I just liked watching him and Faddis now. The great thing is that Lew was just a fan. He wasn’t in the band that day, we were just making small talk before we could get on the bus to see Faddis.
So, I was charming to Faddis, and the other guys on the bus started busting his balls because he had a fan. It was great.
So is “Into the Faddisphere.”
It’s all B plot. It’s all richness. It’s all side quests.
Nothing distracts from my goals. Everything is a new layer of complexity. I am aging like fine wine, which often takes on new character as the years roll past.
What’s a secret skill or ability you have or wish you had?
I love Skyrim. When you pickpocket someone, you get to see the inventory of their pants.
For me, pickpocketing would be about magic, not stealing. It would have been a hit at parties if I set it up in advance…. that someone will lose their wallet, and can claim it later.
I will have all the wallets in five to seven minutes, because that’s how long I’ve got. Take longer than that, the easier it is to catch you in action.
In real life, I’m not comfortable racing against the clock, even in a video game. The exception is the kitchen, because I’m not solo. This is unacceptable to my ADHD. I thrive on ironclad structure and the other half of my brain hates my fuckin’ guts. This is because when I create iron structure, I cannot maintain it. I am happy for a little while with rigidity, but the longer it goes on the more my ADHD can’t handle it. That’s why my energy levels for tasks are different all the time. My ADHD makes it its mission in life to ensure my autism is miserable.
I have demand avoidance down to taking care of myself. Yet, at other times I can be the life of a party. I’m sure depression and hypomania play a role in my energy levels, but now that I know so much about ADHD and Autism (through endless panels and lectures on YouTube), I am finding that maybe I’m not depressed. Maybe I have been mistaking depression for autism. Every one of my symptoms of depression and hypomania feel like what the psychiatrists and psychologists are trying to explain about how AuDHD works. To me, it’s a reframing, because it doesn’t feel like depression and hypomania all the time. Sometimes, I am very stable and still have demand avoidance down to taking a shower.
I am fairly certain that I have pathological demand avoidance syndrome, because it takes a Mt. Everest amount of energy for me to do anything. I’ll know once I go through the autism diagnosis process. Basically, they treat you and if it doesn’t work, then it’s pathological. “Pathological” is a scary word, but yet it’s not. It just means it can’t be treated. It’s more scary to tell someone you have something pathological because they don’t think “pathologist,” they think “serial killer.” Not a good look.
Yet, that’s still the name of the condition, and it’s already on the spectrum, just a major part of some people’s cases of autism. If you’ve met an autistic person, you have met one autistic person. For instance, I’ll talk your ear off about The Cold War, but I don’t have food issues and I don’t have too many sensory issues. I don’t have emotions like neurotypical people, but I do have them. I just process them quite a bit differently, and writing gives me an outlet to do it.
So, honestly, I don’t need some mythical power to be a “Super.” I’ve got my superpower right here.
I lived in Oregon for so long that my favorite weather had to be rain, because that’s what you get 280 days a year. It actually rains more in Portland than in does in Seattle. But now that I’m in DC, I have a new favorite kind of weather…. cold and sunny. I love it when it’s between 40-60F and the sun is beating down. Perfect weather for “the Portland uniform,” which is jeans, a t-shirt, and a fleece or hoodie. The only change in my Portland outfit is something they would hate. I now own an umbrella. Please don’t hate me too much, it was a gift.
Although it comes in handy here where it wouldn’t in Oregon because the type of rain is completely different. The reason that we say in Oregon that “umbrellas are for tourists” is that it’s not really raining. It’s misting. There’s no need for an umbrella because you’re never really going to get that wet.
Unlike DC, where the sky opens up and we get real rain. The first eight years, I was too proud a Portlander to break down. I’m still too proud a Portlander to break down, so it’s good I got an umbrella as a gift. Otherwise, I would still be walking around the city looking like a drowned rat.
But honestly, I still don’t use my umbrella unless it’s a thunderstorm where, when you step outside, it feels like buckets of water are actively dumping themselves on your head. I use my umbrella a lot more in the snow. It’s great when it’s dry, not so fun when it melts.
We had one huge snowstorm in Portland while I was there. I think we got 18 inches in a weekend or something like that. Still never saw an umbrella, but lots of cross country skiers and snow-shoers.
Oh, wait. We had another memorable snow storm in Portland a few years later, and that was much easier because by then I had a Jeep Grand Cherokee. In the first, I only had a Ford Focus. Now, the Ford Focus is one of my favorite cars, especially as a stick shift. It does not do snow well, however.
When I moved to DC, after a couple of years my sister sent me her old car because she was getting a new one and hers wasn’t worth much. It was a Toyota Yaris hatchback, and it was fine in all types of weather because it was a stick shift. The Focus was an automatic, so I didn’t have as much control. It’s also not the same kind of snow in DC.
Occasionally we get dumped on, but I can only remember two years that we got as much snow here as we got in Portland. Most of the time, it looks like regular rain, not ice blowing sideways. In fact, for the last few years, it has snowed, but there has never been more than an inch of accumulation, and sometimes it was an inch of accumulation across three storms, not all at once.
The first time I saw a blizzard of Portland magnitude, I was in DC. It must have been 2002, because it was after Christmas…. I think. But anyway, we were snowed in for several days, and teleworking was not a thing you could do.
Teleworking and Zoom have both erased the idea of having a snow day. Sorry kids.
I do like going out and about after it has snowed. It’s hard being out when the snow is actually blowing, but if you get out there just after it has stopped, the cars haven’t had a chance to make a mess of it.
The monuments in DC look objectively better with snow, or that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
The thing I hate most is summer, because the temperature swings between indoor and outdoor are LARGE. My autism freaks out when I wear shorts in the summer because I’ll be outside and having a good time, then go inside where there’s air conditioning turned down to Jack Frost and I’m miserable. I wear pants all the time, and keep a hoodie in my backpack because even when it’s 95 degrees outside, it’s still 70 in all the museums. 70 is comfortable for most people. I need to feel wrapped up like a burrito.
I have found this is true of a lot of autistic people, both hating the swings in temperature and needing soft and warm clothing/blankets every day. I wear silks or leggings from Uniqlo a lot because in the cold, it helps to have an extra layer when you sit down, like on a bus bench. Wearing jeans over them is for truly cold weather, but I like fitted jogging pants better. The kind with a waist and hemmed, open cuffs as opposed to elastic…. although Zac got me a pair of sweat pants from the Pentagon that do have elastic at the ankles, but it’s more of a sleeve that goes around my ankle. It feels nice, and I have running shoes so that they don’t look weird when I wear them.
I don’t run, but I could.
Since it’s spring, it’s a good time to tell you that I buy all my winter gear from Uniqlo. There’s a store in downtown Silver Spring now, but before that I ordered online because the company is from Japan. I have tried everything in their HeatTech line, and I won’t buy anything else. I would advise against getting long johns in white, though, because if you drop something on them, good luck getting it out. I need to get all my whites together and bleach them, but I’m very afraid of bleach and washing machines. I have never put bleach in the washer before and it makes me nervous.
I have had good luck with OxyClean, so thanks for that, Billy Mays.
Anyway, Uniqlo makes charcoal gray leggings and long-sleeved shirts. It’s what I wear 99% of the time. I have also found that gloves, a hat, and a scarf are just as or more important than your coat. If I am wearing my HeatTech gear, I just wear a hoodie. No coat needed as long as I have my gloves. The hat and scarf are generally stored in my bag, because if you are walking, you don’t want to start out with everything you own piled on top of you. You’ll go .3 miles and think, “I have made a terrible mistake.”
It’s why my favorite weather is cold and sunny. I don’t have to worry about dressing as if I am taking all my bedclothes with me.
I will say, though, that when it gets overcast, my memories of Oregon dance in front of my eyes.
Before we get started on influential teachers, Here’s a basicl life update. Colin has said that he really enjoyed meeting both Magda and I, and he promised to get back to us by next week. We’ve continued to taxt- he sent me a message saying that he enjoyed meeting Magda and her daughter, And I said, “I was on pins and needles waiting to see how it went, and I’m so glad you like her.” He apologized to me, as if how he got along with her was his responsibility to tell me. I thought it was sweet, and said, “no need to apologize, you said it would be a while before you made your decision, and I watned to give you your space.
He told me that he was disappointed I couldn’t come up in price, because that would solve all his problems, but that he’d run the numbers and see if he could take my offer. Because it really was me reaching out and asking about the house. He told me he wanted $1230, and I said straight out I can’t afford it and tried to walk away. He still wanted to meet me, anyway. So, when he said that, I went over and met him and his dog, and really liked the place. He also mentioned that there might be enough room to rent to two people, but he wasn’t sure because he thought three people in the house would be cramped.
So, the next day I asked Magda if she needed housing, and she said yes. So, I went back to Colin and said, “I have an idea. Do you have time for me to run it past you? He said, “I’m going into a meeting, so just leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can.” I told him that one of my housemates herre also needed housing and we love each other and want to stay together (she’s like my mother, she’s 73). Three minutes later (probably in the meeting 😉 ) he said to give her his phone number, just to make it clear he hadn’t decided anything yet.
We made an impression, and I can tell. I joked with him that he wouldn’t have to work so hard at keeping up the house. He said, “I thought everyone would just clean up after themselves.” I said, “that’s not what I meant. We’re both handy. If you want to turn the basement into usable space, we would help you. We also know how to do basic maintenance (Magda’s father was a carpenter and I’m a great assistant), as well as knowing what materials are good/worth the expense and where you can buy any brand. He said, “I hadn’t even thought about that aspect of it.”
By the time Magda left, she couldn’t say enough nice things about Colin and neither could I. If we don’t get this house, it will be sad, but not the end of the world. I have until May 1st to move out, so whether I have a place by April 1st doesn’t matter. I am best off prorating rent at both places if I do get the place on April 1st, because I want Zac to be able to help me move and he’s not free until the 13th or something like that. Plus, I told Zac that I never wanted to move into another place where he wasn’t welcome. He’s never spent any time over here becuase I wouldn’t let him. I didn’t want us to be on camera for shit, and there’s cameras all over the house. I don’t even know where all of them are. But this is a new development, and I’m certain it’s because they don’t want another fire. However, the fire was caused by an electrician drilling into a live wire in the basement. None of the housemates had anything to do with it, but for all of us it’s starting to feel like a jail.
So, it was a good time to move, because even though all three of us are freaked out beyond believe and feel locked in our rooms all the time, It wasn’t always like this. For me, the last straw was not getting any support in my quest not to clean up someone else’s pubic hair.
Then, I was cooking, and I heard them talking to a real estate agent in another room. I asked Samantha if they were selling the house, and she said, “I don’t know,” but it was very, very obvious that she did.
Not five minutes later, Hayat calls me down to talk to her and says that they’re getting the house appraised. She turned out not liking that guy, so called in another one. She told me that she wasn’t even sure she wanted to sell, she just thought that the house might be an easy way to fund her retirement….. she just didn’t know for sure because the first guy undervalued them so much. This was Saturday or Sunday, and the photographers came yesterday. So, apparently it was an easier decision than I thought.
I think it was Monday or Tuesday when she officially told me I had 60 days to move out, and we both cried together. It’s been nine years. It’s a huge transition no matter how I feel about the situation now.
So, anyway, I sspent a little of Tuesday and all of Wednesday preparing for photos, I was so glad I was done by Wednesday night, because I could go to bed without setting an alarm. I don’t, usually, because when I go to bed between nine and 10, I automatically wake up at five or six.
The photographers left, and I shut down. I couldn’t write, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t do anything but lie there. I am processing a thunderstorm of emotion, and it’s too much in its immediacy. I know I will feel more and more calm over time, even if we don’t get the house with Colin, because the shock will have worn off. I am so glad that they were talking loud enough that I could hear without eavesdropping, because I wasn’t trying to be intrusive. I was making dinner, and their kitchen is only separated by a wooden door from mine….. the real estate agent was especially loud.
But the reason I’m glad is that if I hadn’t confronted them, who knows how long of a notice we’d be given. I don’t think that Hayat would have left all this to the last minute, but at the same time, you’re never sure about things like that.
So, as I told Colin, Magda and I have decided that we want to live with Jack, who is a dog, and he’s just an accessory. He got a big laugh out of that one. I do think that Colin will come through for us because he’s alrewady invested in us….. and that’s a great feeling. It’s also amazing that my rent won’t change in the slightest. Since I told Colin I could pay $795/month, Magda said that she could pay $700 and I could have the bigger room. Colin said, “I think the rooms are the same size. I should get out a tape measure.” It’s the only appropriate neurodivergent response. I said, “it doesn’t matter. She thinks mine is bigger. Don’t take all of that upon yourself. We’re very happy with everything we saw and we like boht you and Jack.”
That’s because he said it wouldn’t be worth it to him to only get $1230 for two roommates, but he would consider it if it were $1500-1600. So, I found him another person who could get him up to $1500, because I’m so sold on the house. Then, so was Magda. Now the ball is in Colin’s court, but as I said, he’s really already made us feel welcome.
When Colin moved in, and I know this because of pictures on Redfin, the front of the house looked German, because all the wood that would traditionally be on a Tudor house was painted green. Now, it’s back to black and it looks AMAZING. It’s also a quiet street and only a 10 minute walk to the bus, with maybe another 10 or 20 to the Metro. I basically found a house two major stoplights from this one. It’s a miracle.
Plus, I hate moving. I really hate it. So does Colin. Both of us are interested in long-term, not six months. And because it’s possible that my futon won’t fit in my room, I said, “if we make a man cave downstairs, I will be happy to donate the couch.” I could sell it, as it’s worth a lot, but it was a gift from Hayat. I might tell Colin to take the bed out of my room so I can keep this one, but I’m not sure. There are too many possibilities to just concentrate on one.
My shutdown hasn’t been better today. I haven’t been able to do anything except lie here and think about all the moving parts in an actual relocation. It’s overwhelming to an enormous degree, and my reaction is to shut out the rest of the world. I’m not even listening to music or have the TV on. All I want is quiet.
My most influential teacher was Robin Stauffer (grade 11), because she taught me that my life was going to be hard. She invited me to do things with her, like put up bulletin boards or something, and then I came out to her. My grades dropped immediately and I was transferred into another class. There’s more to the story that includes sweet revenge, but it wasn’t until years later and I can’t really talk about it for privacy reasons. Let’s just say it was epic, but it’s not my story to tell because the comeuppance wasn’t from me.
In terms of love, I thought my grade four teacher, Jan Forrest, hung the moon. I was one of her stars because she was an English teacher. I won a couple of competitions for poetry reading that year…. not analyzing it. Getting up in front of the class and reciting them.
My father being a minister probably had nothing to do with this……. #eyeroll
I go back and forth. There are so many things I’ve wanted over time that haven’t stayed with me long enough to want to add more. There’s also the obvious. I got my emotional abuser’s favorite insect tattooed on my back, and I don’t know if it serves as a warning or whether I’d feel happier getting rid of it ASAP. Tattoos are supposed to tell a story about your life, so perhaps I will do something that integrates the design rather than trying to cover it up altogether. “Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.” Tattoos mark significant events in my life. I got that tattoo in Houston after I’d already left Portland because it was just for me. She didn’t have to know about it. Then, I moved back and I spent like eight years not wearing a bathing suit in front of said emotional abuser.
It was a long road. I met her when I was 12, I didn’t get the tattoo until I was maybe 30. It was saying goodbye, not saying goodbye, not “hello.”
I also wouldn’t mind having a sleeve of some of my favorite female spies over the years. Julia Child, Virginia Hall, Harriet Tubman, Mata Hari, Jonna Mendez, Valerie Plame, Tracy Walder, etc. And, in another place, Tony and Jonna’s signatures because you can’t have one without the other. I want them to have their own space and not have Tony lumped in with all the women unless I suddenly decide that Frank Wisner and Wild Bill Donovan need to be on it to round everything out. I also need to find out if my friends Stephen and Judy Johnson ever served as Chief of Station, because Judy was there when I was born. Her parents, Pete and Lillian Rhodes, were members of my dad’s church when I was a brand new infant (Emory, Texas). So, this woman from East Jesus Nowhere got a job in the State Department and her last job was at the Court of St. James, one of the most coveted positions at State because it’s in London.
I am not sure whether Steve or Judy were CIA, I only know that as a career diplomat, there’s a TON of crossover, so I don’t think he was ever truly an operative. However, I do believe that both Steve and Judy were on task forces with them, as I have learned that task forces here work. We even work with spies from Mi-6 because our relationship is so strong. I know because I tried to go on a date with one and let’s face it. I wimped out like a bitch. It just affects my life too much here. I haven’t asked him, but I believe that me dating someone from a non-American intelligence agency would be a straight up problem for him. I met her years ago, but the outcome is the same. I realized I didn’t want to know about a human trafficking task force at CIA. Those pictures, even in words, are unforgettable because what your mind makes up is eleventy thousand times worse than what will actually happen. Except pissing off CIA. Then you should feel free to shit your pants at any time.
That’s because CIA’s charter doesn’t cover the United States. They only work overseas. If you piss off CIA, you will be contacted by the FBI shortly….. if you’re an American citizen. If you’re not, you’re in a bigger world of hurt than I ever will be. If a case officer has promised an asset something and they don’t deliver their part of the bargain, they can say goodbye to everything that would get them out of their situation, like an ex-fil. Again, if you’re going to step in front of a bus for someone, you’d better know they’ll do the same for you. I don’t think assets feel that way, because they’re the ones that aren’t trained in tradecraft and get overwhelmed easily at having to remember covers most of the time. No one likes a mask that makes them look uglier, particularly men.
So, the way CIA works in the shadows, particularly the women who are becoming more and more valuable in the Middle East because no one cares what they have to say……………………… except us.
The quicker you make the connection that most spies look like Margo Martindale in “The Americans” is the closest you’ll come to getting it. Matthew Rhys is amazing, but invisible women run the world.
I have almost invariably found that the very feeling which has seemed to me most private, most personal, and hence most incomprehensible by others, has turned out to be an expression for which there is a resonance in many other people. It has led me to believe that what is most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very element which would, if it were shared or expressed, speak most deeply to others. -Carl Rogers
All INFJs are built to work in the world like this. They are driven by self-improvement because it leads them toward the utopia that lives in all INFJ brains.
My relentlessness in taking myself to the mat resonates with people because I take no prisoners. I will cut myself, over and over until I’m bleeding…… because if I don’t feel anything, you won’t, either. If I am an emotionless robot, that will be my writing voice, too. I get out of it what I put in, and art imitates life just as easily as it does the other way around…… because my art might not change you……… but the writing down of the world around me in my own voice so that I can look back on my memories differently than almost a hundred percent of the world? Priceless.
It’s more valuable than anything I’d make from this site, which is good, ’cause I don’t make much. I have a PayPal button where you can donate if you wish, but there’s no subscription fee or charge to look at the back catalog, etc. I don’t have a big enough audience to make that a sustainable reality. Being talented and being well-known are two very different things. Deserving money for art is valid. Having enough patrons to make it a reality is difficult, especially when few people know who you are (relative to Wil Wheaton, Dooce, and The Bloggess, my contemporaries). The reason I’ve specifically started saying things over again that readers who keep up with me would know is that I’ve had a huge influx of new readers.
So, I remember to say things like Zac is private intelligence during the week and Navy intelligence in the Reserves. That Lindsay works in Washington but lives in Houston. That Bryn lives in Oregon. That my family still lives in Texas. That Supergrover is, essentially, my castle on a cloud…. but in our story the last chord is definitively major.
To people who read every day, my writing isn’t all that confusing because they have context. For people who drop in and out, they don’t know the cast.
It’s great to have new readers, sometimes hard to gauge how much I need to back up because I do have a stunning amount of reader retention because I notice the same user ids popping up. For instance, purpleraysblog has come up for a solid nine or 10 years. They’ve been with me since the beginning. And they’re not the only one. I love OG fans, especially the ones who’ve been with me since “Clever Title.” They quote me to me, often in order to make fun of me…… it is both frightening and hilarious how much they remember of what they’ve read.
Like, I just write the blog. I don’t actually read it. Psh. Kidding. I remember a lot of what I write/read here, but not everything. So, when people quote me to me I’m often caught off guard….. because the way they quote me to me is not to tell me it’s me until the end for dramatic effect. So, the words sound familiar and I’m scrambling to figure out where I read what they’re saying because I know I’ve read it before……… and have never once assumed that anyone would quote me for anything, Jumping to the conclusion that I didn’t read it, I wrote it is just too arrogant.
Therefore, I am often surprised at how much I’ve learned, because I think I’m a wonderful writer when I don’t know it’s me.
From Zac, it’s saying that reading my writing inspired him to start writing every day. He says all the cute and funny boyfriend stuff, too, but this really stuck with me because I am not known for my consistency, much less consistency lasting long enough for someone to notice I’m doing something consistently.
From my readers:
“You sound like a 15-year-old boy……. and his mother.”
(On my marriage article) “I didn’t know the writer was gay until the end.”
“Thanks for reminding me that I’m not alone.” Said by many, but it’s my rocket fuel. How do I do that more effectively? How did I speak to them without knowing them beforehand? That’s the compliment. I did.
From Supergrover, it’s “I know you were authentically yourself and she took advantage of that.” The “she” doesn’t matter in this equation. The fact that SG! knew I was authentically myself was the compliment. That I am authentic enough that other people see it, because it’s one thing to hope authenticity comes across in communication; it’s wholly separate as to whether the message is received. Having someone who sees you is fantastic.
From Bryn, it’s that when she reads, she hears me reading to her in her head. She knows my voice so well that to her, “Stories” is an audiobook; she gets lost in her own memories (we met in 1997, and it’s been a few years since we’ve seen each other. She’s coming to visit in May.).
Margaret Cho and Martina Navratilova gave me a compliment just by giving me airtime on their Twitter feeds, but I also got virtual hugs, kisses, and hearts from Margaret when I said, “thank you so much for reading. Having you read me is like Goliath reading David.” I can’t remember if she’s religious or not. I just couldn’t think of a more universal illustration than that. Apparently she got it.
From family and church members- “that voice! Where did it come from?” I’m classically trained and don’t sing often, but when I do, I tend to raise eyebrows because I don’t look like a soprano (unless you mean little boy choir). I have a very large opera voice in a compact wrapper.
It’s always nice to hear after I’ve preached that I should go into ministry, that it’s literally my calling, that I was on fire that day, and every single thing that anyone has said to encourage me in that direction. Though it’s not really a part of my life right now, I’m glad I have that skill set. It has helped me tremendously as a writer, because a lot of the time what works on stage in front of a crowd also works in an essay from the first person perspective……… or as Lindsay would say, “Dad….. was that true, or were you just preaching?”
I am certain that there are a million others, but these are the ones that came up today. I’m sure this prompt will come around again soon, and I’ll think of 20 more.
The link is to me singing Rutter, because of course it is. I look like a little boy soprano. 😛
You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, car, or bike?
I have driven back and forth from Portland, Oregon to Houston, Texas three times, two of them completely alone. If you have never done it and road tripping is a thing you do, driving from Sacramento to Portland is just about one of the most stunning things you’ll ever do in your life and you’ll remember it forever, particularly the part where you have to go around Mt. Shasta. The day I did it, it was total whiteout conditions. I couldn’t see the road in front of my car. But then the snow let up and I was in this beautiful valley and I’d never seen anything like it. I was very lucky that I didn’t have to chain up that day, because it was late October the first time.
I have a soft spot for Oregon even still, because Bryn lives there and the first time Supergrover planned a trip with me, she wanted to go to Coos Bay. We didn’t get to do it, but when I think of Coos Bay, my heart does this cute little flip. I think it’s here to stay because that memory is so precious. Since I lived in Portland, I would have been “Driving Miss Supergrover,” here to take her where she wants to go.
Actually, that’s a dream and a half. As if Dana would have entrusted me to drive for that amount of time (laughing). She was the football coach driving instructor every time I was at the wheel. It was so ridiculously annoying and yet I did need help. Just not a Dana amount of it. I wrecked my last car and chose not to replace it, but before that it had been many years since I’d been in an accident. However, I did get three red light camera tickets in DC because I didn’t see the lights. They were only on one side of the street and not overhead. That’s what I mean about needing help. A second set of eyes. Normally, I’m fine. But it doesn’t take much to create a big problem.
It’s also been 15 or 20 years since I got a speeding ticket………….
While driving from Houston to Portland, Oregon.
So, nowadays I’d love to take a train on any trip imaginable. I would rather ride the train than drive anywhere, and DC makes it possible. Plus, since I’m moving soon, I’d like to see if I can get closer to the train station and cut out the time it takes to get there….. which is only 10 minutes now, but that’s by car. I’d like it to be a 10 minute walk, but that’s so desirable that I doubt I’ll find it. But I’m trying since I have such a wide net. It doesn’t matter which station. It could be SE Waterfront or Huntington.
The house that I’m looking at now is about three minutes from here (and three minutes closer to the Metro). It’s owned by a doctor, and the room has a glass door that looks out over the garden. I don’t know whether it will work out or not, but I’m glad that I have 59 days to find a place and I already have one solid lead, as well as others I need to call today.
But as of right now, my mind is thinking about trains. Because I’ve driven across the entire US (I’ve been from DC to Houston with my dad), I’d like to go from Union Station to Central Station, then find a train into Canada. Ottawa or Montreal, doesn’t matter. Then, I’d like to go all the way to BC, or maybe Alaska.
Ooooh, yes. Alaska, because I’ve never been through the Yukon and Denali is at the end. I also would like to see Nunavut after hearing about it for so many years….. and laughing, because “Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie” did a song about it….. “one fifth of my country….. is also Nunavut.” The jokes just write themselves, folks.
I love cold weather as long as I’m prepared for it, and mostly that just means “wear lots of layers, and keep moving.” I have to keep moving because I do not generate enough body heat for the layers to absorb otherwise. Sometimes if I have a drink it helps, but not as much as it seems to do for others (or they’re exaggerating).
I’d like to do a train trip around Finland/Scandinavia if that area of the world stays cool long-term. I’m afraid that Putin is in it to win it, however. Why stop with Finland when he could push all the way to the coast? So great that Sweden joined NATO, btw…………
My friend JL lives in Norway, and he’s told me I’m welcome to come and visit. He’s the type of guy that means what he says, so I know I could make it a reality because we get along so well online. It would be cool to just fit into his life for a little bit, meeting his family, cooking together, etc. I met him through my professional author’s page, so basically he makes me look good. See? I can hang out with REAL authors. 😛
Part of my train trip would invariably be turning myself into a real writer as well.
I think as you age, you realize that there is only one type of confident person. It’s the kind of person who thinks they know everything. The person that has a suggestion for everything, even when it’s blatantly wrong. It’s the person who can’t learn, because they think their ideas are already pretty great and need no correction or instruction.
Everyone else becomes confident in their subject matter area, and leaves the rest to other people who also know what they’re talking about. I tend to “jewel the elephant” in stories to make them flow, but it is a low-level “Southernization,” not a retelling. Everything I have said is true, but there has to be a tiny bit of poetic license so that a sentence actually flows. I could say, “she walked from here to there,” but it’s not getting to the heart of the matter even though it’s factual. In fact, I think I do less smoothing than I do cutting out the filler. You don’t need to see me driving for fifteen minutes, you want the conversations I had in both locations, for example.
There is a complete difference between telling a story to someone and having a conversation. In a conversation, you are expecting someone to talk back. In a blog entry, it is all self-contained. I have left out bits, but not because I’m trying to make someone else feel bad. It’s that their choice as to what to leave in is different than mine…. and they’re free to tell their own story, even in the comments so that it’s immediately visible to those who just read mine. People don’t, but they could and it would make my blog a thousand times more interesting.
There’s also a difference in my confidence when I’m writing and my confidence when I’m out here in the world. I am master of my own domain, literally. It’s like 20 bucks a year for theantileslie.com. But, when I leave this space, I am no longer in charge of anything. I do not treat the whole world as if it is mine, just this tiny little piece of it. I have to be the most confident person I know on this web site, because there aren’t any other narrators of my own story.
In my actual life, Supergrover, Bryn, and Zac (as well as my family) are also narrators, and I am responsible for listening to them as much as talking and letting them know how I feel. They don’t get the “God” version of me because I am not narrating my story in their faces, I am asking for their input. It’s just that Supergrover sees less of the conversational side with me because she hasn’t had a conversation with me in eight years. We used to chat where we were both in front of the computer, both paying attention to each other, so it was harder to get off track than always being async.
Not having conversations made me a narrator in my e-mails, when she was looking for conversation that wasn’t there because it wasn’t. The tautology is real. I cannot think of it as a conversation if you aren’t there. I will always think of it as a letter you’ll pick up in your future, whenever that may be.
I am very good at watching other people go confidently in the wrong direction because it’s not my place to say anything. It’s also my place to stand there and take it when I do tell people flat out “I think you’re doing something wrong.” That’s because it’s not my place to say something and I deserve it, but I also bear the responsibility as a good friend to stand there and take it because that person needs to chew on something. At the very least, they need to think about it and say “I’m going to do what I’m going to do, get used to it” or “you’re right. I didn’t think of that.” Then, it’s my job to sit on that answer, and to love people even when their answer is the worst possible outcome.
I’m not judgmental. I will still love you through whatever you’re going through, even when you’re a hot mess. That’s because I know there’s a difference between surviving and thriving. Survival mode doesn’t give you any higher function. You have to save yourself.
Some people do this by hurting others. Some people do this by hurting themselves. Some people do this by hurting others and not realizing how much watching that is going to hurt them.
For instance, I’ve never once been as angry at Supergrover as I have been at myself. I hurt her and I watched the fallout, because the hurt was unintentional and I felt sincerely helpless to “fix us.” I would if I could, but I can’t, and I have shown myself that for many years. She hasn’t held that wrong over my head so much as praising me for being an amazing writer and then holding my blog over my head. But even that could be redirection from what she’s actually mad at, and I won’t know until she tells me.
I am satisfied with not knowing, because I know how our relationship goes when she doesn’t want to talk about something. It becomes inauthentic, a shadow of itself, and it hurts me. I am sure it hurts her, too, but I cannot speak to that. I feel like we lanced a huge boil the other day, which has led me to believe that I’m going to be okay whether she is or not about our situation. The only clarity on her questions comes from me, and if she’s not interested enough to work on them, I’m confident enough to believe that there are other people out there who do want an authentic relationship.
She knew I was always going to be a blogger, because she was a fan first…. one that fed my ego and made me feel amazing about myself. Now, it’s the bane of her existence. I’m done, because I manage to piss her off and move her, but the only things worth mentioning are the things that piss her off and not what keeps her coming back. It makes me look mean and vindictive, when if I wrote that someone was an asshole to me that day, they probably were. That’s because if someone is glorious, I’ll write that, too, and my writing changes as fast as we do.
My dad has this kind of confidence, but I had to learn it from other women. He planted the ideas, but they made them blossom. That’s because women aren’t really taught to be confident in this society. We are taught that men are more capable than we are, why it was so devastating for my mother to find out I was queer. For her, that came across as me losing EVERYTHING. She couldn’t even have her own credit cards until three years before I was born. Of course that’s going to skew her vision of my future. And that’s before we start talking about AuDHD and physically disabled.
I’ve always been attracted to Type A people (mostly women) because they’re confident, and I’m trying to learn how to do that. And attraction covers an entire spectrum, because a lot of my partners have been Type A, as well as my friends. It’s not something I’m reacting to in trying to please/enable them. It’s trying to figure out how they work so I can get it together, too. It’s never happened, but there’s always hope.
I love what makes my people feel confident.
For Supergrover, I believe it’s her dogs and her books. She gets lost in both, taking her to a different world with its own language, an alpha dog who commands her pack while also inhaling an enormous amount of fiction.
For Bryn, it’s definitely animals. She can run a room of primates (including humans) as easily as she can have full conversations IN ENGLISH with her own dog, because her dog probably has the largest vocabulary I’ve ever seen in a canine outside of fiction. I’ve tried using how Bryn talks to Pippi with Oliver, who is a dog, and it works.
Zac, Oliver can understand English in full sentences, don’t let anyone tell you differently. 😛 I love saying to Oliver, “pick up your toy and lay down over here.” Yes, he can handle sentences with conjunctions. I wouldn’t have thought of that if Bryn hadn’t done it first.
For Zac, I think Oliver keeps him grounded. Oliver will tell him the truth when no one else will, and that truth is that he is beautiful and beloved and everything he needs all within himself. There is nothing that Zac could do that would make Oliver stop loving him, and he knows it. I hope he takes Oliver’s belief in him and uses it on himself, because Zac is indeed magic. I just don’t think he knows it. He displays confidence about so many things, because he’s intelligent and works in intelligence. Therefore, he knows more about the world than most people because he sees a bigger chessboard and is smart enough to analyze it. Being smart enough to analyze it breaks your heart.
It breaks mine and I don’t know a tenth of what he does, because I only read news articles and he’s been in the field since he was 18. He feels confident that he’s risen to the level where he wants to be, because he’s very good at his job and it allows him the time to think about other things. It also gives him enough time to be a writer, because he’s not stuck on a steep learning curve at work. He gets confidence in all areas of his life because his work is stable and reliably outstanding.
So, overall, if I had to pick the most confident person I know, it would be tied three ways. The people I know who are the most confident are the people I chose to do life with. I wouldn’t have it any other way, because we all have our own subject matter areas.
What strategies do you use to cope with negative feelings?
My childhood was a series of stuffing down emotions, both positive and negative, because I was in show mode. So, until I was about 17, I didn’t have any coping skills for getting angry. I didn’t have any coping skills for other people being angry at me. Sometimes when I’m in meltdown, I still don’t, but I have a better shot now than I ever have. Mostly because I’m old enough now not to react just because someone says I should.
Sometimes, when people are angry, I dissociate now. It is easier than feeling myself get upset because I don’t like me when I return fire. It may look like I’m not standing up for myself, but I feel like I get a lot more accomplished just by letting people say whatever it is they’re going to say and “holding my applause until the end.” That’s because even if the problem is me, the solution is not going to come from me.
The solution is going to come from letting them have their feelings out, making them feel heard, and validating that what they’ve said is emotionally, if not factually true. Emotions are not logical, yet none are invalid. It’s a tough road to walk, but easier than getting defensive. I have a fragile ego and a stunning vocabulary. I don’t need “short fuse” added to the list because no one needs my anger. It’s hard to get people to listen to you when you’re not angry, impossible if you are.
People don’t see passion about something if you’re angry. They get defensive and double down. It’s much easier to get what I need if I wait until they’ve had a chance to get whatever it is they need from me off their chests. I stay quiet until the yelling is over, because people are extraordinarily pliable after they’ve yelled at you. The emotional energy in the room feels lighter because their anger is gone. They’re in a space to actually talk.
A lot of people use this pliant stage to manipulate people into getting what they want because they know the other person feels guilty they got angry. I use it to be able to talk in the quiet instead of in the heat of the moment, because I’m not going to get another chance where your ears are this open….. at least, until after the next blowout I don’t want to have.
In essence, while I sat there and waited, you wore yourself out enough to be vulnerable with me and I know it.
It reminds me of Supergrover’s letter, honestly, because in the beginning she really let me have it. It was the best thing ever. My girl was back. She took me on like a prizefighter, and I let her because she needed it. She’d saved up all her negative feelings for years and just blew me away in one page…….. and then she started talking about why I e-mailed her in the first place, and all her anger melted into the woman I know and love. The velvet hammer. Outset Boudreaux has nothing on her.
So, was it more important for me to respond to the part where she was angry at me with fire? Or was it more important to realize that she’s angry and to let her have her moment? Be silent. Take it all in. As I told her in my reply, “I find that I have more questions than anything else- that it’s time to listen and not to talk.” I don’t know what will come of it, but I know I used the best coping strategy for negative emotions that I have- which is just to let go.
I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future because we both want the safety and security of knowing what’s going to happen without doing anything to help it along. We’ve wasted more time than we’ve gotten along and I’m so tired of it.
Our personalities are so opposite because I want to talk about everything. I want to know why my writing hurts her, because until I do, I can’t fix anything, thus limiting my ability to make her happy. It’s better that I don’t know how to make her happy, I think, because if I did, I’d lean toward it, perhaps even without realizing it….. convincing myself that this was my blog when really it’s “everything I do to walk on eggshells.” I’m not having that relationship ever again….. with her, or anyone else. I was able to pick out the pattern because I’ve been in it so many times. Nothing about this relationship is exclusive to her, because I know how I work in relationships and a lot of this is my fault.
We’re just not using our strengths. For instance, our age is nebulous. She does not see me as older than she is emotionally, but I am…. by a lot. I don’t see her as older than I am chronologically, but she is……. by a lot. It’s not a slam, it’s inversely proportional. I got emotional tools she didn’t. She got logical tools that I didn’t. We make a good team, but we’re armed to the teeth without any trust left at all.
Except there will always be a bridge where I stand and work on my negative emotions; I cannot think them through with the hope that my beautiful girl will see what I’m doing and respond. What I can do is recognize that working through all these things will prepare me for something else down the road, and who knows what that might be? I need her to listen to me. She’s dead set on that not happening. So, when she doesn’t listen to me, I do what I do best.
For $5.00, I can get lost for years. This is because $5.00 is about how much it takes to by “Droid Edit,” a full-featured coding notepad for Android. The free version of “Koder” on iOS seems to fit the bill nicely, but I would get the pro version if it was more like Notepad++ and Microsoft Visual Studio Code (my personal favorite because now it runs bare metal on all operating systems, even Fedora and Ubuntu. It should also be able to run on Android with those specs. Get your shit together, Microsoft. Do you think I like coding without the Dracula Official Theme? Monokai is not going to cut it, my friend.).
I use the term coding loosely, because really the only things I do in my HTML files are add italics and special characters, maybe a link. For some reason, if I do more than that, WordPress will scrub out the HTML and tell me it can’t recover the block. I need a real solution that’s completely open source, but I like WordPress. I made the decision 20 years ago to stop coding and only be known as a writer…. why my setup is simple and hopefully easy to read.
I end up using the WordPress reader included in the Jetpack app because it’s in dark mode. I rarely read my own work on my blog itself. I like dark mode. My fans don’t. They’re older and they have more insurance.
And in fact, the most sweet and vulnerable moments between Supergrover and me are when I need my Jessica Tandy, and Supergrover is absolutely as beautiful as she always was. It is not lost on me that I’m a preacher’s kid and she’s a Bee Charmer. In effect, we are “Fried Green Tomatoes,” because that movie showed deep companionate love without showing romance because of the time. Because they held down the madness with the romance, it actually fits Supergrover and me better than if they had. Of course Idgie and Ruth were best friends who ran a business together and not this torrid love affair that lasted a million years, which it absolutely was in “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café.” Just devoted and never stopped loving each other until they died.
But female friendship is absolutely that strong and resilient, so both the book and the movie are priceless to me. In short, I felt like Idgie when she was young, with Supergrover being every bit the power,grace, and style of a young, married Southern woman. I was absolutely just a lovesick puppy dog for a couple of years, and then I realized my place in the world. “Love her anyway. Help her anyway. She may not accept you in person, but she’ll always come back here.” I am not writing for her. I am not writing to her. These are all the memories I want to be able to read when I am 70 and nothing more. I want her with me, helping to craft the narrative, but it is not necessary. It is the process of letting go and letting God, my words for going into deep discernment. My personality divides and I argue it out with my rabbi, essentially. However, I know that it is me talking back. I do not think of a relationship with God as external, but the omnipotent third eye present in so many Eastern religions.
It’s why I don’t care about semantics, I just want the protein.
I feel like in a way, all of this has been me trying to explain to her why we need to open the Whistle Stop and move on, rather than her always feeling guilty. Just start working together and having fun rather than both of us being up shit creek all the time.
Without a paddle, obvs.
So many messages that didn’t get through. Me thinking about the future and throwing ideas out there to remind myself that this was grounded and real came across as being unwilling to accept the demands on her time. This is categorically untrue. I have dealt with the boundaries on her time since day one, and our relationship has lasted over 10 years now. If I really had problems with her priorities, I wouldn’t have stuck around this long. I also don’t think that I’m all that and a bag of chips, but 10 years is a long time to feel like this relationship is fake with her insisting that it’s not.
Now, I really believe it wasn’t. It was as real as a heart attack. But that’s because I’m not going to get that message through placation. I’m going to get that message through truth. The longer you put off telling the truth, the angrier I get. I don’t want to handle someone else’s avoidance, I want them to realize they’re being avoidant because I’m not an entitled prick who wants to tell you how to run your life until you’ve stomped on my feelings so hard that we’re going to have to have it out. Go drive someone else up the wall because I am struggling.
It’s one thing to be on the bottom of the totem pole for a year- two or three. But after 10 wouldn’t you be furious that you never got airtime? Especially when we have this strong pull towards each other that also has its limits? It’s a dramatic tension that could be solved in an afternoon. I don’t understand keeping that weirdness in place all these years. I think I could solve a lot of her problems with me in one beer….. most notably that our relationship might not translate.
We are not guaranteed to bond just because we like the same Instagram influencer. But thinking we are both sides of Fried Green tomatoes, the Idgie and Ruth and the Idgie and Evelyn is the journey we’ve taken. I don’t know what compelled her to come, but I think it was my thu’um. When a dragon hears its name, it is not bound to respond, but always will out of curiosity and competition. I should give her a word of power, but Snow Wing Hunter is better than anything I could come up with on my own, and she has definitely carried me to Skuldafn many times to meet my Alduins.
I get lost in the flight.
I only get lost in the fight when the adrenaline comes down. It’s not her responsibility to keep it up. I would like it if she’d take on the responsibility of telling me up front the timeframe with which I’m dealing so it calms my anxiety that she’s not always mad at me. It’s hard to feel secure on three words.
What I loved about her letter the other day was twofold. I fell in love with her prose about her family, the everyday life she leads while also being powerful, the dynamic that Lindsay and I have so I could relate on a spiritual level. What it takes to be superhuman at staying awake, because she’s on call a lot of the time (as is Lindsay- news breaks). What it takes to be a big sister in her family. Or, what she wants it to take and I can feel her emotions regarding it from a million miles away. I know the particular pain of losing a mother and finding yourself as the new matriarch suddenly….. especially not being prepared in any way to do so because I feel like it’s my responsibility to be providing for her. She’s the little sister that could. She’s just so sweet about giving me experiences I never would have had otherwise while totally cheering me on as a writer.
That’s been Supergrover’s role in my life as well. I think one of the pricks on my skin that won’t heal is saying that I portray her as a villain as often as I do a friend and rages about it……. while also raging that I paint her as a “Flat Stanley.” I feel that the ups and downs make her a 3D character. Everything she sends me that shows me a real feeling, I include it, because since it’s her real feeling, it’s my real feeling, too. I have said this line before, but I will remember it forever. I didn’t know who “Flat Stanley” was, but I told her that “Flat Stanley has a history of amazing topography.” She is a 3D character, but she isn’t if you take every entry individually instead of reading me like a book. Start in January of last year and read forwards and a 3D character will emerge no matter who it is in my life.
Most people trade the forest for the trees. As I have told her, I feel like my years are so much more important than my days. No one has ever loved her the way I have, and not in terms of depth. In the way that love is executed every day. I became a journalist from the day we met, tasked with telling my own story while not revealing my source. Any misstep on my part feels like a little betrayal, and Supergrover doesn’t talk to me about my writing, so I have no idea how close to the line I am or how I can protect her more in the future. She said that I mentioned something she wanted to keep quiet, but I have no idea what it was that she wanted to keep private, for instance, so I couldn’t go back and fix it.
I want to know what touches her, because everything I write about her is something I’ve gotten lost in, because it was kind of like meeting The Oracle and finding out I’m Neo. My mind went into hyperdrive, and I began to think differently, and on as big a scale as possible because all of the sudden I knew I was capable of it. I’ve realized that I would be happy in a think tank if that were a thing that could happen, mostly because I’m a “plant,” the employee who comes up with great ideas by synthesizing information in the room and building off what other people have said until there’s a consensus.
But I never would have believed that I belonged at that particular table until Supergrover told me I was too smart for my own good.
I get that a lot, but I didn’t believe it until 2013 (a typo when I said that the Argo message came in 2003, I remember). She’s not the president, nor elected to anything, nor can I tell you whether she’s private or public industry (except that she and Zac both speak “acronym.”). What I can tell you is that her compliment had a lot of power behind it. Her CV makes me constantly wonder who she’s met all over the world, especially movie stars.
I miss her pithy comments on my entries, because when she was an e-mail subscriber, instead of commenting here, she’d just forward me the e-mail and flip me shit. She can say so much in so few words, even better when they’re teasing directed at me or our favorite Instagram influencer. Speaking of which, we need to talk about that, too, beautiful girl. It’s probably nothing, but it’s a “how dead am I?” sort of question. Another thing that whether this makes her land on my desk to my thu’um is up for grabs. What is important is that I will remember exactly what this means for a hundred years because all of these feelings are burned into my brain.
The rhythm has calmed, but we still have to dance. I’m not trying to be her partner, I’m trying to be her co-author unless her husband also writes. Maybe she’d rather collaborate with him if that’s the case, and I don’t have any ill will toward that. And it’s not that I have this desperate need to write about her because she’s a powerful person. It’s not. It’s that she became a big part of my story personally, and not of her big shot mess ever mattered.
I love the absolute smallest part of her, because that’s the part I love about everyone. I like vulnerability because I can make accurate decisions on how to behave next. The only reason I spiraled out with her is that I was medically falling apart and I want to throw up every time I think of that time in my life because it cost us so much trust and time. To think that she thinks all of this is her fault is horrible because I’ve been trying to make amends for so many years and it has come across as accusation.
She did indeed throw a bomb over her shoulder and walk away. The truth hurts. But it wasn’t the bomb that hurt. It was walking away and not dealing with the fallout. It showed the ultimate disrespect to me because it was like “I get to tell you whatever I want and then not care how it makes you feel.” She says she’s not responsible for my reactions. No, she’s not, but if she wants to stay my friend she better well be willing to clean up her own mess, because I didn’t ask for it. I’m not guilting you (universal), I am holding you to the standard of being a good friend. How is it anyone’s right to leave the other person so much worse than they found them by listening so closely at first that we were breathing in the right direction……… then holding a wrong over my head for so long that we never moved back into safe space for her? She lost the ability to be a decent friend, her words, not mine.
Then she opened up and told me that my guesses about her behavior were right on target and also that it was too late while also saying “story for another day” while also writing me something so beautiful I’m still chewing on it days later. I don’t know what to think, but I know what I see, and it is a spectrum. We’re better writers as a team than we are alone.
It just depends on whether writing means as much to her as it does to me. It doesn’t have to be blog entries because I’m an audience of one, and the same goes for me- the safe space where I sandbox.
She’s not the love of my life where I get lost in her beauty, wishing like a lovesick puppy for just one hug or what the fuck ever. She’s the love of my life due to writing being the only real partner I have. And she’s the brain that comes with that package, because I feel like she whipped my ass into shape by editing me and giving me feedback on letters as well. I miss that relationship, because it exists outside of time and space. I’d be happy if it always did, but my mind sees so many futures that it’s hard to decide and I’m grateful to also have enough closure to let go. Just because she let her walls down once doesn’t mean she has the strength to do it all the time, and that’s what I need from her if she doesn’t want to meet me in person. I will never be able to pick up subtext if I don’t because I won’t be able to read it in her voice.
I take everything literally, and I’m a “get off my lawn” personality. I rarely apologize for it, but it’s an important flaw in my character in this relationship. But I’m not “get off my lawn” years old on purpose. I’m autistic and lecture as such. I become an overexplainer to avoid awkward silence, of which there has been a lot.
It’s not awkward silence anymore, because she told me she loved me in two different ways. The first was “if I hear your call, I will always come…. because I love my girl.” It was the ending of my letter to Michael writ large. I was right on the money, dear reader. I cannot believe it. Seriously. She swooped in with all the big sister badass no bullshit love I’ve come to know. She doesn’t have to say a word. She said that she was constantly overwhelmed because I was demanding, when I was dreaming. The second was letting me know she things about me all the time, the thing that would have calmed me the most.
I don’t want to be around anyone who doesn’t want to be around me, and I got my answer. Maybe. As it has been for 10 years…… and where I get lost.
What movies or TV series have you watched more than 5 times?
I have seen “Space Camp” at least 25 times since it came out. I was in love with both the camp itself AND Leah Thompson/Kate Capshaw. I don’t want to be an astronaut anymore, but I do still love women. Therefore, at least one lesson took. It is important to learn everything you do not want in adulthood as it is what you do.
Two or three years after “Space Camp” came out, I went to a science and math magnet in Houston called “Clifton Middle School.” I’ve actually spent time at NASA on more than a field trip. I was intimidated by science, fascinated by the way people have to teamwork up there. It’s all creativity whether or not you started with creativity in your wheelhouse or not.
Music gets under my skin faster than television, so I have not watched all of “Westworld” or “The Good Fight,” but I’ve listened to the themes on YouTube for days at a time. I feel that way about a lot of television themes. I have never seen Peter Gunn, but I have blasted the music at top volume screaming down 95. It’s especially fun hearing the vamp and inserting your own rendition of “Dope Nose” by Weezer.
I have seen “Argo” more than 25 times, but the difference between it and “Space Camp” is that by now, “Argo” lives in my brain and I can quote from it at will. The only lines I don’t know are in Farsi, but I still do the sounds and the hand motions. 😉 If someone starts a line from the dialogue, I can finish it. There aren’t any YouTube videos or articles I can stomach called “Things Even Real Fans Don’t Know About Argo,” because I could have made a better one and I know it. If that sounds too confident/arrogant of me, Jonna Mendez knows who I am, and Tony would have had I met him before he stopped doing public appearances (he once taught an entire room of people at The International Spy Museum how to forge Putin’s signature). It’s not Jonna’s story, but she did help write the book with Tony after the movie came out because there was such a demand for it. I knew that she was an uncredited writer on it, so I think she was surprised/pleased that I asked her to autograph my copy. So, my copy of “Argo” is unique, because it has both their signatures on it….. if I can track down Matt Baglio, I’ll have him sign it, too, because he’s the person that’s helped both of them on all their books. I think we’re friends on Twitter? I don’t know. Jonna hasn’t said where he lives, so I don’t know if he’s local or if they work together electronically.
For instance, I’ll bet you didn’t know that if you watch the busy airport scenes in Argo, Jonna and the kids are in it.
I told you I could make a better video. 😉
In terms of TV series(es), I do not have HBO. But if I did, my two comfort shows there are “Six Feet Under” and “Homeland.”
I was so shocked by the end of Homeland that I felt like someone shot me. My nerve endings just all went to shit. Now that the show is so old, I’ll just spoil it so I can tell you what I didn’t like about it.
Carrie was a bipolar mastermind working on the side of the United States. THEY FUCKED WITH THE FORMULA. She could always pull it out in the end. She could always make things go her way. And then all of the sudden she started working for Russia? GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE. Yes, I realized she replaced our Russian asset there, but that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. You don’t get to betray the US and then get a “get out of jail free” card after you’ve already screwed us to the wall. Saul’s face looked like he was pleased at the end. Why he didn’t burn that bridge is beyond me.
She self-destructed and shouldn’t have had any friends at the agency left. The great part about the show was seeing a bipolar person doing the work of five case officers because she could think outside the box. The ending was a shitshow and I will hate it forever because it just shows that CIA was right all along not to trust her, and it adds to the exact stigma that the show was trying to erase.
“Six Feet Under” still resonates with me because my family worked a little bit like a family who runs a funeral home (I was a United Methodist preacher’s kid). I remember talking with my friend Meg about this, because she grew up in a house with a funeral home like the Fishers and our lives were not dissimilar. It’s also my “Lindsay” show, the one thing that both of us are always in the mood to watch.
As she says, “Leslie, you’re David. I’m Claire……. and there’s a little bit of Nate in everybody.”
I have found over time that I’m actually more like Keith, uptight like a cop and also rushing in to take care of everyone. It’s an accurate description of INFJ/Autistic, physically reacting at people breaking the rules and holding taking care of people above all of them.
Wait. I have to say that to myself again. I think it’s one of the biggest truth bombs I’ve ever uncovered about myself:
I’m physically reacting to people breaking the rules, and holding taking care of people above all of them.
In order for me to love people the way they need to be loved, I have to keep my autism at bay. I have to keep physically reacting to other people’s problems the way I do my own. I physically reacted to one of Supergrover’s issues so hard that she thinks I’m out to get her, when I’m actually empathizing with her. I don’t know what I did to give her the message that what she told me was bad. She’s been having a fight with me that is in her own head, really, because she thinks I want to make her feel guilty when I am telling her the reality of how her behavior affects me….. and that we should talk about it.
She starts from the position that I’m out to get her, which means she won’t open up. That causes me physical pain, because I know that what she thinks is not true, and I cannot fix her problem for her. She accused me of wanting to rush in and fix everything in someone else’s life, when that is exactly what we both want to do to our friends because we’re both big sisters. She just does not like being the younger one. At all. In any way. That means she’s blind to the fact that I’m doing the same thing to her all the time that she does for everyone else. She thinks I’m out to get her while I’m trying to do the same thing for her that I do for all the people I consider brothers and sisters. It’s a fundamental breakdown in communication, the can we’ve been kicking.
Media helps me to understand all of this, but I learn about emotions through intelligence movies and TV better than anything else because they’re procedural, even if the procedure is completely made up. I can also tell you the exact moment I switched procedurals in college. I used to like detective shows, and then there was “Alias.”
I’ve watched “Alias” many, many times. I still return to it when I want to be with those characters- something about it won’t let go of you. Jennifer Garner is so cute, the perfect balance of sweet and “I can kill you in 57 different ways, none of them pleasant.”
I’ve been trying to find a new character like hers to love for years, so I have gravitated toward intelligence shows ever since. I know they’re fake as FUCK because the CIA cannot tell everyone their current methods and sources. I don’t care. Emotionally, they’re all written the same way.
The way you get an accurate depiction of intelligence is to write about it in a time period where those operations are declassified. Those documents will tell you exactly how they did what they did without sugar coating anything. Dialogue can be accurate because there’s no reason for smoke and mirrors 40 years later…. or however long it takes for your interest to declassify, which may be a lot longer.
It is why I like the founding years of CIA the most, their origin story. OSS/early CIA operations are declassified, essential for an author if I want anything to sound real. The easiest stories to make true to life are now science fiction, I believe, because there is so much more information on how those intelligence operations actually ran between Russia and the US in the 50s and 60s. The way we got to the moon first was largely due to a war between CIA and KGB, because we had real chatter they were going to put nukes on the moon.
Speaking of which, I got to see Vince Houghton at Jonna’s talk the other night. So good to see him. Vince was the host of “SpyChat” before Dr. Andrew Hammond took over. His non-fiction book about intelligence is called “Nuking the Moon,” which is what made me think of him. 😉 I don’t think Dr. Hammond was in the audience, because I would have known his Scottish brogue anywhere. And yes, it is like James Alexander Malcom McKenzie Fraser does Spycast.
I will be taking no further questions. 😉
Vince was actually on a PBS documentary about intelligence at Bletchley Park, and it focused on women. Of course Alan Turing is important, but he wasn’t the only operative there, either.
I find now that people’s true stories matter more to me than television and movies. I reference old media because I watch YouTube most of the time. That gets me Frontline and all the other PBS shows, plus videos about people making things. Live bootlegs are also exciting because they come in video now.
I just can’t think of channels that I subscribe to that would be that well known, and I’m always trying to use universal illustrations because my audience is all over the world.
I should start looking for an intelligence show to watch while Zac is busy, because I love “Slow Horses” and I could never cheat on him. That way, I will at least have some updated references and shows that aren’t 20 years old that still appeal to me.
I started one on Hulu that has so far been outstanding called “The Lazarus Project.” Go into it blind. It’s a rabbit hole with a great payoff.
I can already tell you that “Slow Horses” is going to be one of my new comfort shows. I’ll give you the basics.
River Cartwright blew up a bunch of people by not stopping a terrorist…… in a simulation at MI-6. It is taken every bit as seriously as if it had really happened, but they can’t fire him; his grandfather used to be “C” or something…. unclear, but a higher up (my prediction is that this is going to be Tinker Tailor and that the grandfather is a puppet master. I have only seen season one. Please don’t spoil).
Anyway, since they can’t fire River, they place him at “Slough House,” which is where all washed up MI-6 go. Then, it becomes a story about a team who everyone thinks is shit flipping the script. If I had to compare it to an American movie, it’s “Moneyball,” and the writers are just as good as Aaron Sorkin. They take everyone’s imperfections and they blend…… because River is every bit as smart as his grandfather and he is able to lead others. He made a mistake in a simulation, and Mi-6 isn’t prepared to accept the fact that River is the real deal, or they know exactly who he is and have to keep him out of the way. Unclear, and a brilliant plot device. Is his boss disgusted with him or proud of him? The audience knows. River doesn’t.
I love Gary Oldman, who plays River’s boss. If I had a picture in my mind when I watched the video of Jonna calling herself “a real hardass at CIA,” it was Lamb.
I also love Jack Lowden, as well. I’ve gotten to know him through watching Graham Norton. It was great because I knew who Jack was before I got into “Slow Horses” at all.
“Killing Eve” is another one of those shows I’ve watched over and over, but I haven’t seen the end. I just keep rewatching the first few seasons, thinking I’m going to rewatch the whole thing and giving up. The pilot is the best episode of them all, anyway. It is a fight within me over whether Carolyn or Eve is my favorite character. Oh, wait. No. There’s not. I love Carolyn. It’s my mother’s name, as well as her character being an archetype I happen to love.
She kind of reminds me of Jack Bristow in “Alias,” except Jack had a bigger heart. Eve Pulaski is a lot like River Cartwright.
I used to love the show “Whiskey Cavalier,” because it was a very lighthearted look at CIA that didn’t suck up all the air in the room with drama. It was often ridiculous and therefore, well, fun.
I don’t always want as much realism as possible. Sometimes, I just want to be able to let go and laugh.
I am not superstitious because I can read a room. I don’t do rituals to try and keep things from happening, because nothing can stop the random dice from rolling. I do feel all the emotions in a room at once, though, which feels like ESP. A lot of the time, I can pick up the undercurrent of a couple’s relationship before they announce their breakup publicly. I didn’t know it, I felt it. Energy swirls around me and it comes in the form of being able to see relationship dynamics while being in a crowd. I take in most information by sight, and my body reacts. My nerves can sense when I’ve walked into a room with a couple who is in an argument, for instance.
Those moments are when my autism blossoms. It’s not my pain, but my pain signals are going to tell me to hurt, anyway. This is also not license for anyone to walk on eggshells around me. I actually take Tylenol to turn that sensory input down. Tylenol dulls both emotional and physical pain signals, in case that is a thing you needed to know. It’s my responsibility to manage me, and I’m sorry for every moment I haven’t been able. Processing disorders and mental illness are so hard. This is not to garner sympathy, as if any of it excuses my behavior when it is genuinely bizarre. I’m saying it as a patient. Mental illness is so hard. It’s relentless. Every feeling I have has to be thought, then analyzed to see if it’s real or not.
As in, “is this my real emotion, or is this my depression telling me a lie and I’m falling for it?” This is when I am talking to me about myself. I am generally good at picking out what is going on with everyone else. Generally bad at saying anything helpful or useful because I’m autistic. Likely, you’re not going to hear what I say due to the translation layer…… and whatever it is I think you need right now, it’s not an autistic amount of it. Other autistic people will probably laugh at that, because we all know what it means to think about something “an autistic amount,” and how that is so exhausting for other people. We learn to laugh about it, but it’s yet another thing that makes me too much for most people.
I don’t have communication issues in terms of receiving the emotions under what people say and I can predict group dynamics early. What I cannot do is then imitate it successfully so that I can convey to you that I understand (or don’t). I know what’s going on by the way it makes me feel, but fail in the execution at describing those feelings to other people.
People get so, so, so angry at me for things “everybody knows.” All of the feelings that I should have had in advance because of the social rules I should know. I am not a sociopath, who doesn’t have emotions and just imitates them, my blog a slam book because I don’t care about anyone else’s feelings. I’m autistic, which means that I feel every bit as deeply as you, I just process it differently….. and the way I process it is to write it out. I often don’t know how I feel about something until I’ve had a chance to take a step back from my emotions and craft the narrative that is going on in my head by squeezing out all the noise to find pure signal.
I create my own future by looking at my past. I don’t know how to predict other people’s behavior, but I’ve got 10 years of entries telling me everything that made them blow up previously. If someone won’t take the time to explain the rules, I will explain them to myself. I’m often wrong, but I’m not afraid to be wrong. I’m afraid to be unheard.
I sent Zac a message asking him for a scenario I could work from, like, “take a real conflict and make it fictional by changing around the countries or something. Just bare bones………” I haven’t gotten it yet because I said “everything goes to shit in a paragraph,” and he’s 1350 words in….. apparently I sparked his creativity when I asked him to spark mine. However, he could come up with eight of these scenarios before breakfast, so I don’t think it’s a competition. I think I just said something that stuck in his head, and I’m glad to be there. It honestly means more to me that I said something I said really resonated with him. If this turns out to be his magnum opus, I want you to know that I am entirely responsible. If it doesn’t? Totally his fault for not putting the material in more qualified hands…… laughing….. we’re not competitive, mostly because we can’t be. The kinds of writing we do are so different that there’s no comparison.
It’s just nice to have someone in my life who is also dedicated to the craft and understands that push/pull. Do I want to be with my friends or do I want to be with my characters? You pull yourself into your own world and at times struggle to resurface.
I notice more of the worlds inside me than I do my outside environment- I only understand the former, with no ladder to the latter.
Which animal would you compare yourself to and why?
I have decided that I am a moose. This is because I have spent a lot of time thinking I was a squirrel. Yes, “Rocky and Bullwinkle” has fed my love of intelligence for many, many years….. as has “Inspector Gadget,” “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (I even have a retro t-shirt), and strangely, Jeopardy!. A lot of the time, the answers will contain intelligence operations that I’m interested to look up, because those questions come in lots of areas. Geopolitical, CIA’s affect on the United States’ reputation, etc.
You could have heard a pin drop in my mind when Jonna Mendez said MK Ultra came out of her office, and she walked past those drugs every day for 30 years because the refrigerator was from the 1970s, meaning it will outlive all of us. I’m sure that eventually, the science officer was made to destroy them, or the rest of the department was able to wrestle it away from him at some point. But, it was the first time in a long time that all the blood drained out of my face.
The truth is stranger than fiction, especially when it comes across in news spin and not data.
For instance, is it fortunate timing that we are now sending Palestine more aid, or did Biden specifically keep that little chestnut for the State of the Union address? I was telling a friend the other day that I think this whole thing revolves around having not to hate what Israel has done. That we really can’t stand what they’re doing, and also can’t afford to cut off intelligence from Mossad. It’s trickier than you think. Intel from Mossad is valid. Info from Palestine may or may not be valid because they don’t have government checks and balances. They don’t have a government because they’re not a state. It doesn’t have anything to do with “we don’t like the Palestinians.” It’s that they don’t have people in the room.
The answer is getting the Palestinians in the room. Most Israelis want this, too, because the neighborhoods are so integrated. Palestine comes across as a terrorist group because “they don’t have a flag.” It’s not that it’s not there. It’s that it can’t be recognized anywhere in the world as a sovereign nation because the Israelis absolute do not want that….. coming from the top. This is not a bottom up resolution, but top down. I swear to you, Netanyahu wouldn’t think twice about killing his grandmother if she was Palestinian. He also doesn’t care how many Israelis die because they’re just collateral damage.
And people think this is about Judaism and claim anti-Semitism when I don’t give a fuck what religion you practice, and neither does he. If he’s bombing integrated neighborhoods, he doesn’t care what religion you practice, either. Notice there aren’t many surgical strikes. It’s kill everyone.
They aren’t fighting over religion like they did in ancient times, they’re fighting to keep Palestine from getting an equal shake in things like NATO, or anyone else who could help them.
If you sided with the rebellion in Star Wars and you aren’t standing up for Palestine, you are not admitting what’s really going on here. Netanyahu and Putin are both trying to keep countries from recognition by taking them over.
Except Putin doesn’t care how many people he kills, either. So, whether you’re a Ukrainian fighting for your country or on the Russian side of things, you have an equal chance of dying, because Russia will just send in more cannon fodder.
It’s not about people’s lives, it’s about winning.
And now we want that kind of totalitarianism to come to the US by electing Donald Trump again, or at least, a huge minority that’s threatening to provide undertow to the fall off Rome. A good bit of the military is conservative as shit. What happens after the next election? We all of the sudden have two armies. January 6th will look like child’s play, because apparently the right to be a bigot is a huge ass deal here. Just like it is in Ukraine, and just like it is in Israel.
The only thing is that the Russian and Ukrainian people probably got along before Putin shook them up like ants. Finland is worried now, and it’s opening a very old wound. Sweden just joined NATO, so there’s something. We at least have one country over there in the general vicinity of Finland until they join themselves.
It’s all a mess. It’s all protecting the world from fascism. I don’t think we want it here, but if the Republicans win, it will be ushered in…. ballet service for pablum. Keep us occupied and we won’t revolt.
Reminds me of the old Apple commercial for the Macintosh (clever). Something about buying the computer is not making “1984” into 1984. And then they invented the iPhone, so clearly they didn’t mean it.
How much Facebook absolute shit do you have to wade through to see the few things you actually wanted to see? Who doesn’t respond immediately to their notifications unless they can disconnect long enough to put on “Do Not Disturb?”
“You can’t do that. We live here!”
Et cetera.
Suzy Izzard has the answer to everything.
I’m sure that relationships with countries evolve like relationships between adults. After all, it’s actually individual personalities and patterns move the same way as specifics. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but as a preacher’s kid I constantly noticed little things writ large.
Again, I grew up as a preacher’s kid and I’ve had lots of pastors as an adult. I have been to many, many committee meetings as an adult, just armed with a lot of back channels to be able to understand the bullshit games running in the room. I didn’t even have to call my dad, and most of the time, didn’t. I called friends who were either theological giants in their own right, or students who’d been taken under care by our church (what it means to be in discernment/seminary because you need a home church to be able to support you in some ways….. why it’s called “being taken under care.”
The Methodists do it differently than the Congregationals. In a Congregational church, like a Presbyterian or an Episcopal church, you are called by the individual church. With the Methodists, you basically function independently from step one, which is how my dad ended up pastoring two churches (called a “Circuit Rider,” a term created where ministers traveled by horse). Here’s the rest of the story. He was 19. I am sure some days went better than others, and he’s got more class than I do, so I’m not sure that he said “fuck” every day, but it wouldn’t have been a bad idea.
My dad could deal with enormous tragedies as he got older because he saw them all as a pastor.
My personal moment of pastoring was when we had a couple give birth to a baby who was only at 24, 25 weeks at most. She survived, and I became her babysitter. We bonded because I was eight weeks early. I was 14 or 15, and I wanted the parents to always ask me to come back because I’d imprinted on her. They called me often. I still remember her name was “Peyton.” Being up in front of people and preaching is 10% of the job at most. The rest of the time, it’s dealing with parents who have lost children, children who have lost parents, spouses who have lost spouses, and all the intimate conversations you have with a pastor leading up to it. If someone was going through a thing and at our house or church a lot, I got used to seeing them and took on all their pain by osmosis, because I don’t go looking for other people’s feelings. They come to me quite naturally, as if by a magnetic pull. I can open up to people, which gives them license to open up to me.
So, I feel like I don’t have the ability to stop caring about anyone, because those feelings flow through me all the time. I remember people’s stories from 40 years ago. That’s the two things that stopped me from starting a church. The first is that I burned out on pastoral care already. The second thing is that my mother died and two things happened. The first is that I needed her as my music director and she died. I didn’t want to work with anyone else at first. We were building a church. We weren’t to the stage where we can invite major musicians to play, and I assure you, my mother has sounded amazing with the best of the best. Google “Sylvia Danburg,” my concertmaster at HSPVA. They did a duet at my church when she was 14 that still lives in my memory…. not the melody, but the way it made me feel.
Being that empathetic and that neurodivergent cost me, because I’ve always been too intense for everyone. It’s why I spend so much time alone. I don’t have to hear it. If people think I’m too much, I am not threatened. I got shit to do.
I think bigger than most people because my personality type is very rare….. and all the comorbidities with my mental health make me astoundingly curious.
It’s a lot.
For instance, now I’m thinking about looking up the history of the moose. Because I am no longer a squirrel. I admit that I still have a “deer in headlights” look on my face a lot of the time, but at least I’m not tiny. I’m taller than I thought. More muscle mass. I can protect my brain from a lot of things, even rejection, because everything comes from me. I needed to develop a thicker skin, which I have now. I didn’t so much in the early days of my relationship with Supergrover. I believe she thought that she was more hurt than I was. We both overestimated our own pain and underestimated the other’s.
So, I hope that if Supergrover knows nothing else, she knows that this is not a cat and mouse game. We have both stopped playing, and it remains to be seen whether she agrees with me that getting real was a good thing.
I found it interesting that she said I knew nothing about her life, when everything I said about her attachment style turned out to be a double bullseye. I cannot speak to how she treats her family or her friends, but our particular dynamic was toxic at times, merely inauthenic at others. We’d reached the “merely inauthentic” phase long ago, and I could feel it on my skin.
I saw the writing on that particular wall, and wrote this weird letter in which I know I invalidated her feelings and I’ve apologized for it, because that’s not what I meant to do. What I meant to do was call her out on her bullshit so we could move on. Yet again, taken as an attack and swept under the rug so that my feelings were always invalidated and she thought that me telling her once or twice was a problem? How am I supposed to react when I open up to you and you say nothing, yet you have a shit ton of feelings about me and you’re telling someone else. I have never been wrong about that, either, until I sent her an e-mail on a related topic and she finally yelled at me……. and owned her shit like a boss.
I don’t want a relationship with someone who will string me along for years at a time. I want a relationship with someone who’s fiery and not afraid to stand up to me. I had that, and over time, I didn’t.
She said something about painting things as fact that I didn’t have the right to do. Yet, I have no idea what she’s talking about. It’s confusing, and not something we should avoid. The clearest way out is through. I just couldn’t convince her of that because she thought I was playing a cat and mouse game, or she was. Unclear.
What was clear is that we have such an incredible friendship when we’re not putting up walls that it was worth fighting for, even if I lost. That’s because the message I sent her was that I needed her anger at me. That her anger is so pure because she hasn’t been telling me what she really needs from me for a long time. Now, what she needs from me is grace and peace to think. Or, at least, I hope that’s what she wants from me. However, I did ask her if there was anything she wanted from me, including talking about our real issues now that we’re on the same page. It didn’t seem like playing games anymore.
And now I’ve explained the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Palestine has an anxious attachment to the world because they’ve never been given the safety and security of a two-state solution. Israel is avoidant because Netanyahu is not going to give up anything he’s not willing to give. It’s an impasse, and one that probably won’t get solved in my lifetime just like it didn’t get done in my mother’s. The conflict is too large, and the Americans shouldn’t do anything but send humanitarian aid to both people. Food. Medicine. Blankets. Doctors Without Borders (MSF). Those are the teams we should be sending, not military aid to a leader that will certainly unleash hell on everyone if it means he’s going home with a trophy.
This has nothing to do with Judaism. I’ve been to temple on Friday nights before, and it’s always been one of the most moving experiences I’ve ever had. When my grandmother died, I actually read The Kaddish through transliteration, because even though I’ve studied Hebrew, it’s in the context of dictionaries, not conversation. I’ve sung Hebrew before. Judaism is one of the cornerstones of my faite because just like “Little Mosque on the Prairie” (my favorite Canadian TV show), we had a church and a synagogue sharing space. The best part is the Episcopalian minister and the young Imam, because they do a kind of Denny Crane, Alan Shore thing by talking about their lives in pastoral care and they both have ALL the same problems. I could have walked onto the show and made people laugh just as much as they did, I assure you.
Here’s my favorite story in life. I will not tell you the name of the minister, because he has gone on to local television (and is a genuinely good guy). I don’t know if this story would make him laugh or make him mortified. My dad will know who I mean instantly, and that’s all that matters.
So, ministers, imams, and rabbis all have ways of marking someone as a child of God. For Christians, it’s baptism. In the Methodist church, this is not as extreme as a dunking in the river.
We just use a bowl of water and sprinkle it on the baby’s head…. what probably prompted me to wet all over the bishop, in retrospect. Sometimes it’s not easy to hear or feel rain when you’re about to burst. This is universal…… or at least, that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
So, the senior minister asked the associate if he would go and get the Holy water in the baptismal font. He was not specific. What he meant was, “get the bowl and bring it to me.” It was in a 3,000 lb granite sacristy, and he tried to drag it across the floor. In the middle of the service. Which may or may not have been recorded.
I’ve told this story before, I think, but one time my dad did the wedding for a retired New England Patriot and his fianceé. The boys got a little too drunk the night before the wedding, and all of the sudden my dad feels who is basically Refrigerator Perry to him start leaning forward. I’m going to leave you with that image because the imagination is even better. He was woozy a long time….. but frankly, I only remember that someone ended up throwing up at at the wedding, but I’m not sure it was the groom.
Life as a minister is, as you can see, so glamorous.
The funniest stories are about the things that went wrong, not right. For instance, this little old lady we all adored because she gave absolutely no fucks stood up in the middle of worship and said, “David, have you lost your mic?” That is because it sincerely made my dad wonder how to respond and the room went still. Finally he figured it out and said, “I thought you asked if I had lost my mind.” That joke never would have been as good had it not been the “no fucks given” woman. Plus, it wouldn’t have bothered any of the four of us to be accused of losing our minds every day….. with no idea how they ever participated in the crazy because it would have been inappropriate to tell them. You’re as buttoned down as any therapist. You cannot say what you know. You cannot say at 11 years old that you know why they’re mad, and it doesn’t have anything to do with me. It’s your whatever relationship that’s getting you in trouble because my bedroom was next to my dad’s office. Yet I’m as much of a lockbox as he is, or I was until I became a blogger. Other people’s secrets were weighing me down, because I stopped putting my own opinions out there. Pleasing other people was not a choice for me, because Show Mode™ is relentless when your parent is a public figure.
You don’t have the choice whether to emote or not, because you cannot trust anyone. Is this a safe adult to talk to, or is this a way for them to get information on my dad to create a “gotcha” question in a board meeting?
My dad and John Grisham told me the most about life early on. The first, from my dad, is that people who don’t have power anywhere else will unload their frustration with this in church meetings. Their ego comes out quick, and they perhaps get more aggressive than normal. From John Grisham, “the hardest part about being a lawyer is having to convince 12 K-mart clerks you’re right.” Being a mediator becomes an impossible task at some church meetings because tempers are all flying high and you have to be the one that sits back and takes it because you’re the pastor. It’s your job to mediate them through the middle of the mess. You don’t get to have feelings, because you’re impartial- even though those decisions affect your parent the most.
It’s honestly why I believe that a church cannot be run by committee all the time, and I’m glad that even the congregational churches have denominational support. There are reinforcements to bring in so that there are more neutral parties; the pastor can have feelings, too. They don’t have to be the strong one anymore because there’s someone above them to take on the objective role and mediate.
When pastors tell you how they feel about something and try to sway a vote one way or the other, that’s picking favorites and trying to get them to vote the way you want. It’s rule 101 of being a pastor as something that will not work out well for you. The people on the outside are going to notice they’re on the outside.
You become your own nuclear bomb in which the congregation schisms because you can’t find your way to objectivity with a map and a flashlight……. which is exactly why my church fell apart and the new pastor sweated through every stitch to put us back together. I’m not sure that she knows I think that, but she’s entirely responsible for the congregation being healthy because it’s welcoming of all and not your inner circle.
This also says a lot about world politics while describing very small things. It’s applicable all over the world to different conflicts. It also depends on how you react to the pressure. Are you going to compromise or double down?
Maybe I’m a moose and a squirrel. A moose’s personality in a squirrel’s body, at least. Between Bullwinkle’s ineptitude and Rocky’s smarts, it feels a lot like the spectrum I inhabit. But part of being a moose in a squirrel’s body is learning to walk a little taller.
We may not beat Russia today, but I do hope we prevail. They need our help the most in terms of world balance, because the longer the rift goes between the US and Russia, the closer they get to China. They decide to hedge their bets and go with the other guy. Then, we keep ourselves wide open to Russia bombing the oilfields in Alaska…… because we’ve never had to face Russia and China at the same time, but I’m not thinking we’d like it. Sounds like a crazy idea, but I’m not trying to invent a conspiracy theory. I’m trying to present that the United States is up against a superpower and a former superpower banding together against us. That’s because we’re not the sun, as much as we’d like to think we are.
It takes us so much to be able to stop those kinds of things before they happen, because even if I’m not right on the money, I know I am describing a situation that could potentially happen in the wide realm of possibilities. If we got intel that Russia was about to blow up our oilfields, we’d probably burn them down before they could get to them. You don’t like us? Ok. Here goes all your oil, all the projects in Sakhalin to bring you fuel, the Alyeska pipeline, all of it. Just try us. If we can’t use it, neither can you.
But that’s why conflicts move as slow as they do. No one wants to interrupt American industry….. even in China, for the most part. Another delicate balance until China discovers they don’t need us anymore.
They’ll realize it a lot faster if we put a Russian “useful idiot” (UI) in The White House.
And then team up.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
And that describes relationships between two people as well as it does war. Do you react more when you’re hurt, or whether your friend is hurt? When you hurt someone, they’re likely going to confide in someone else about it, possibly someone who didn’t like you, anyway. Then, the original person has two enemies.
Russia and China are talking behind our backs like bitchy little mean girls, while inviting Kim Jong WTF for tea. I know most Americans don’t see this, because they don’t work in systems like I do. They don’t create scenarios that are fictional, yet just real enough. I wouldn’t have included details that sounded a bit scary if I didn’t genuinely care how this election went. It is a disaster for CIA to re-elect Trump. Neither White House nor intelligence officials will be allowed to tell you anything real. We will continue living in a fractured society with two different realities for far longer than necessary.
No one needs your version of the Bible, where the line between heaven and hell is only a hair’s breadth, making your people live in fear. No one believes Jesus, that the message is power with, not power over. No one likes a God of promise at either end of the spectrum because one has poisoned the other. When atheists meet me, it’s at first like I’m some sort of mythical creature that I can interpret scriptures for them off the top of my head that doesn’t sound like an absolute lunatic story because I know everything in the Bible is figurative and not literal. It can’t be literal. It wasn’t written down until long after it happened. Mistakes were made.
Most atheists haven’t heard of feminine or queer theology, that takes the message they’ve heard their whole lives and flips it on its ear. I don’t evangelize, I just talk like I talk. I’m not trying to change them and they know it. I allow them to take off their armor because I’m a resource if they want to know something but not an entitled dickhead who thinks they ought to know it whether they want to or not.
Even Jesus didn’t evangelize that way. It was, “I have something people want. Follow me if you want it, too.” The modern interpretation of this is somewhat alarming. Basically, you just say what you want to say and if they don’t want to hear it, you move on. That’s why they traveled. They didn’t take anyone who didn’t want to hear the rest.
We of the United States have not had that policy very often. That’s due to Evangelical Republicans twisting the meaning of Christian so badly that I cannot stand saying I am one, because it instantly brings up all the wrong images. Everything I stand for is concentrated into venom towards the limitations that that sect has put on me. I am a very flawed individual. The teachings of Jesus help me deal with that. What they don’t do is tell me to bother my friends when they’ve already stated their beliefs, and the most I’ve ever said is “if you’re looking for a church, come with me.” She did come, but wasn’t ready for membership.
Now she’s the accompanist, and I told her that if I could play inside baseball, I’d tell her to do a jazz arrangement of “Joyful, Joyful” as the postlude. I once watched her play Janis Joplin on stage, and her band (Twisted Whistle) used to play at my pub all the time.
I think she can handle it.
My purpose is helping people to be stronger in themselves by laying out my fears and dreams first. It makes it easier to come clean with yourself when you’re already in a vulnerable place from reading. I lay out my fears. You lay out yours, to yourself. And we both allow ourselves to feel nourished. The writer/reader connection is as unbreakable as hearing Bullwinke say, “hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!”
I love cartoons, especially when they remind me of me.
I’m starting to think that we’ve made it. We lived eight years past our grandfather, which I never in a million years thought would happen. I thought I was too unstable to last this long. But, thanks to our emotional growth in our 40s, we gained the will to live and to fight back. No one likes blowback. No one. I don’t like it about my writing, my people don’t like it about anything. People in general get defensive at blowback. I know I do. But it hits different when I emote and get punished for it. They emote and expect me to lie down and agree with them all the time. They’re not the jerk for the way they behaved. I’m the jerk for writing about it…. as if they’re not affecting my life at all.
When they affect my real life, they affect my story. I don’t make shit up. If we work through a conflict, people will see it in real time. Sometimes I wonder if Supergrover thought I was stirring up shit. I never was. I was expressing my real feelings about how her actions affected me. She’s been gone for roughly 15 years now, because she hit 100, too. We had a hard road the entire time, but it was worth it. Just wait it out. Eventually, she’ll read something that moves her and she’ll be back on your radar. I thought for many years that I wasn’t loved, and then found out I indeed was, in a very particular way and separate from her “real life,” but it wouldn’t have lasted our whole lives if we hadn’t had an absolutely horrible knock-down drag-out in 2023-2024.
We stopped being polite, and started getting real.
It was the thing that needed to happen to get us back on the same page, and not the asynchronous relationship we had before. Reading and drinking coffee at different times affected the story as well. What kind of mood were we in when we read each other?
I also needed to stop thinking of her as a fictional character, which I did given how much she dropped in and out of my life. Now, I don’t. But what I said last year became true. “I’m going to pour the love I have for you into the character because I cannot pour it into you. You have said that you do not accept it.” So, my character and I went on a journey and left her out of it, because she said that’s what she wanted.
Come to find out, she did not, because she didn’t see what the fictional part actually was because she didn’t ask me about it.
In retrospect, it was “the very best bad idea we’ve got sir. By far.” There is an “Argo” quote for every occasion. (I mine Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, and Alan Arkin for lines all the time).
If I had to pick a favorite line from Goodman, it’s when his assistant brings him a telephone and says, “Kevin Harkins for you, sir.” He picks up the phone and says, “hey, Tony.” He’s smoking a cigarette and laughing to himself. I’ve never seen a chuckle like that before. It was great.
In 2003, Supergrover sent me a note that said “Argo” was on TV and it made her think of me. You cannot imagine what a big compliment this was, because she’s not an intelligence peon like I’d like to believe I am. 😉 Our relationship expanded to fit both of us. She will also listen to my overtures while trying not to yawn.
I am still a lot.
Admitting that the storyline was a bad idea is great. But we had to work for a long time to come up with the right one. One that showed us both after we’d come into our power and stopped nitpicking each other.
I’m proud of you. Desperately, enormously proud of you. You’ve had a lot to deal with while struggling through this world not built for you. If there’s anything you should keep in mind, it’s that you’re not irregular, so your friends aren’t, either. I loved when you learned to stop trying to placate everyone else and started standing up for yourself, instead. It gave you hope and a future, just like Jeremiah predicted.
Because when you look at the future, you have to look at the past.
Stories That Are All True 