Tag: England

In What Genre?

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What’s the oldest thing you own that you still use daily?

My oldest coffee mug says “SPY” and it features the Culpeper Ring, the men that won us the Revolutionary War because we didn’t win the war by outgunning the Empire. We won because we had better spies/scouts than they did. It’s a toss-up to me in terms of history what would have happened if we’d lost. In some ways, I think we’d be happier. In some ways, I think we’d be furious. If they hadn’t taxed our tea, we would still be importing PG Tips like it was more important than the water bill. They turned an entire population against something that would have bridged our cultures. So, go them. We drink coffee like the French.

So, if you’re wondering about a business that could have sustained you for centuries like Disney bailed out Doctor Who, you done goofed. You come to the US and complain about our tea, the height of entitlement over a problem you created. The British influence was so strong in the south during the Revolutionary War that it’s how iced tea became the house wine of the south. So, thank you for that. I think. It’s actually really interesting because to me the South is the strangest transformation in history. Savannah, Charleston, and Baltimore were just as English as New England and New York. I wonder what caused those two cities to diverge in the woods, and it only takes one answer. England abolishing slavery. There were about 50-60 years between when England freed their slaves and we freed ours, because the Southern economy would have gone to shit without it.

I have heard differing stories because African American culture is not a monolith. Some people of color blame the English and the Americans for slavery. Some blame the African kings who wanted to get rich and sold their ancestors to white people. It depends on who you ask, and a wide spectrum of brilliantly defended propositions. There is no way I can walk a mile in a black person’s shoes, but as I queer person I can empathize and relate. The institutional pain between black and queer people is similar, yet not on the same playing field. We’ve always both had problems with the police, except that now that history is in the past but we’re all still touched by it. There haven’t been enough generations where queer kids come out in peace.

I do not know if black people had a special shape in the Holocaust, but I do know I did- a pink triangle. There is no such thing as competitive suffering, so even though it’s not the same, I feel some of the same scars on my skin. I have only recently become a citizen who can get married like everyone else, and I am still persecuted by Christians who aren’t right, but they’re certain.

The older I get, the less certain I am about anything. Discovering at an early age how gender and sexual orientation affect me led me to end up believing that everything is a spectrum and not a binary. There are too many permutations of human behavior not to believe there’s a wider range than we are originally led to believe…. whether people tell others about it is another matter.

If you don’t tell anyone anything, you don’t realize how lonely you are, because you’re not giving anyone a chance to feed you. Part of being fed by your emotional support is feeling heard. That no feeling is invalid. You talk about the logic behind the feelings, but you don’t discredit the feelings themselves. You discuss why the other is helping you to feel one way or the other, being willing to compromise until we meet in the middle.

It takes an enormous amount of strength to talk through a conflict, and I know that I got frustrated with Supergrover early because I was so tired of everything that had happened before. Her being half in didn’t make sense to me, and created more turmoil in me than I wanted. Like, why do I continue to pour energy into this relationship when it’s clear it’s not wanted? I have learned that it is wanted through context clues.

We don’t have to work on the fact that we’re connected for life and cannot suddenly stop knowing each other, and I don’t want a relationship where she’s half in and can’t plan for shit.

When I mentioned getting together, she said, “I don’t think it’s a good time.” That’s fine with me. I’m not thinking about the up close and personal future. I’m autistic, so I have different ways of feeling out getting together with people. It takes a very long time for me to process that information so I don’t chicken out at the last minute. Perhaps she did feel like I was nickeling and dimming her for her time, but I hope she’s known me long enough to know that I didn’t mean anything sudden. She won’t retire for a while, and any plans I have that have to do with her giving of her time is at a time in her life when she’s had more bandwidth than she’s had in years. Getting her time right now is impossible, but it’s not impossible to work towards later.

That’s the goal that keeps me going- preparing for later. I don’t presume this is the end because the end never is. We repel and attract like magnets, because I’m a silver penned devil. 😉 My friend John gave me that nickname and now I want it in 18pt font up my arm, bigger if it fits. 😛

But what I mean in terms of friendship is that by working out our problems on my own here, they are often touched by what I say. I am attracting energy to me, rather than seeking attention.

I do hope that Supergrover finds something she does want to discuss with me, because it’s the highlight of my day. She’s not the problem. We are. There’s a big difference because we are both perfect, and I mean that sincerely. We are beautiful in all our flaws. Bad communication is its own thing, not whether either one of us are good people. We’ve been friends long enough to know beyond a shadow of any doubt that she’s good people.

My biggest fear is that she only wants to be a fan, and doesn’t want to be my friend. That’s why the pattern doesn’t change. It breaks my heart, because her criticism is more important and more impacting of the direction of this blog than anything else.

But if she’s just a fan taking pot shots from the peanut gallery, I can’t take it. She’s my friend, one of the great loves of my life because I fell into her charm and I’ll never get out. She deserves every bit of that love, but we don’t communicate well enough to be able to tell each other that. We did, and she decided that being vulnerable once was enough to her, and her next interaction seemed rule based and yet not. I do not know where to go, and so I’m resting in Zac because I can. She only means more to me due to the number of years I’ve known each, not because one is closer to me than the other. I was happier taking a break from thinking about the problem, because I hit a land mine almost immediately and she told me to go to hell.

It’s on brand, so I want to figure out how we are both contributing to that problem or not interact. I am overcoming a lot of feelings all by myself that I don’t know how to navigate, because I don’t know how to talk to Supergrover and as a result, I don’t know how to talk to me about her, either. It’s confusing because we are both entitled to our feelings and privacy. I also think our relationship would look a lot different if it wasn’t moving at the speed of the Internet- that it would take longer for us to be angry if you got a letter two or three days after you sent it, not immediately. There’s no time to calm down and absorb anymore, and you seemingly can’t reframe anything because someone else knows what you mean better than you do.

It’s hard letting them go because they’re right about you. It’s just that their perceptions are their experience of you, not who you are.as a human being. What someone interpreted you as saying may or may not be correct.

Because my second oldest coffee mug is one she bought for me.

The only books that matter are either by Jonna and Tony Mendez or they were presents from her. She can pick my books at any time, because our interests overlap occasionally and we’re both suckers for amazing prose. I am so glad that she has sent me books by Kindle, because they’re presents I’ll never misplace; she’ll always be with me in one way or another. I feel like that’s enough, because it takes two to tango. I do not want to cut a rug all by myself. I do not think I was impulsive to say that I was struggling with the odds on “happily ever after,” because there was no new information to take in. I have to just keep saying it over and over- I do not judge any friend as not worthy to hear my story anymore because they are not worthy as a friend. They become unworthy to hear my story when it’s not an exchange of information. It’s just me pouring energy into you without feeling it in return. I’ve been in that relationship with lots of women, and I’m done. That’s why I thought I’d found the one for all time. It’s really, really hard to break up with someone you’ve never dated. My joke about this is that her husband may not be at her next wedding, but I will. The reason it’s a joke is that I love Michael almost more than her because he’s the one on the ground taking care of her. I don’t have to worry as much as I would if she didn’t have that kind of support. I’m the kind of friend to call if you need support in absence of a partner because I’ve been doing pastoral care a very long time. I am not going to be offended at what you tell me, who you need me to call, what you’ve taken, etc. This is because I’ve been single for a very long time, and you need your friends to step in for you that way. But that doesn’t mean that I want to be the conductor. I just want to be in the orchestra somewhere. Maybe one of these days she’ll let me play lead. I just don’t think she thinks I have the temperament for it because I am so shy and retiring in writing.

“Custody over Supergrover” is my favorite thing in life. The hardest part of having a pet monster is dropping her leash. The other hardest part is not joking that each of us are the oldest thing we own. We’re both in that nebulous age where a group of people is a “no, thanks.” I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I actually get more time with her when we’re just e-mailing than I would on the ground, because her diary/schedule is so full that I’d wait months for anything on the ground, possibly years. Just e-mailing each other allows us to be together no matter where the other is.

I have also said that the silver lining of the pandemic is that now everyone has friends they’ve known for a long time without meeting in person, so there’s no need to explain so much. Emotions run higher because you’re more brave with the wall of anonymity. You don’t say things with as much social nicety as you would in person and there’s no way for anyone to hear your tone or read your eyes for context clues. And still, emotions persist.

The way I feel about my relationship with Supergrover over 11 years is that it is very much akin to having dated and decided we didn’t work as partners, but we worked as friends. The only kink in that logic was that Supergrover is straight and in a relationship, so she wasn’t dealing with the same issues as me. I could stop wanting her, but I couldn’t stop being programmed to protect her and give her everything she wanted that was within my power. I say it just that way because we’re the same person. When we have power, we use it responsibly because we really don’t want it. She’s the type boss I respect, that she doesn’t give her team anything she wouldn’t do herself, and I believe that she’s an excellent trainer without even really having to think about it. Instructional design is a theme in both our lives. Nothing in our lives is transactional, either. When I say that there’s a lot in here about what she won’t do for me and not a lot about what she will, I am not saying that from a narcissistic perspective. I am letting you lay out your bandwidth, I lay out mine, and we meet in the middle after conversations.

At the very least, this should have been a deescalation and not the end, but ultimately that’s not my call, either. One of my readers talked about Supergrover ghosting me or being half out. I want to talk about that here, because she didn’t ghost me or say she was half in at all. She explained her reasoning perfectly, and she would have been spot on in her analysis if she’d gotten my actual intent and not what she thought I meant. She reads through my words and picks out the worst possible interpretation she possibly can. It weighs on me, because I’m not villainizing her. I’m painting her.

I was reminded that I wrote on the blog that she lives in my ink. I was reminded of that line when I was looking around Fahrney’s, an American pen/pencil shop. The back of the store was covered in bottles of ink in every color you can imagine. It’s why she pulls me in and repels me. All the things that we’ve written to each other come up in my mind when I’m doing other things. As I understand what she’s said more, I try to guess what she’s saying more. Then that goes wrong and I’m alone again.

But not truly alone, because since she lives in my ink, it is a communion only we share. I feel her presence in the room when I’m writing, so my writing leans toward her whether she’s the intended topic or not. I would like to make friends where we could also be that close, but there’s no way to duplicate this connection and I’ve stopped trying.

She doesn’t feel creepy to me. The fact that I want to know her like every friend would know her seems creepy, because I’m not pumping her for information. I am genuinely curious because she’s unique. I don’t know what she means about her not being vulnerable means deliberately hurting my feelings does not work for her. So far, not being vulnerable has always led to hurting my feelings because she’d rather put me off than face her demons and just tell me what’s up. She says she can’t say anything without immediately being tagged as avoidant. If your whole pattern is avoidance and has been since you were a child, you cannot see how avoidance hurts other people. They also don’t change when they’re not aware of something. I feel like calling her on avoidant behavior when it happens is better than keeping it all in, because it will come up less and less frequently over time. Her patterns will change to being used to being vulnerable all the time instead of going in guns blazing.

As I told her before, it’s not that she went guns blazing on me. It’s that she has CPTSD so the guns are always already out. Taking down her walls means getting vulnerable about how she feels in reaction to what I said. She said “writing to each other, supporting each other.” I get that. I really do. But I don’t feel supported when it feels like my feelings are going into a void. Like, I’ll write an essay about X topic, and no matter what topic it is between us, that’s not a topic she’ll discuss. It’s frustrating to an enormous degree, because if I bring that up, she immediately goes to “I’m not good enough for you.” It’s not a healthy environment in which to bring up problems, and relationships always have them.

Many things about friendship aren’t the good ones, and you have to go through the bad ones to get the good. I don’t want to focus on negativity. I want to focus on where we go from here. Most notably, what have I done right? I’m not fishing for compliments. I have heard all the complaints.

I think she also just. cannot.

That this friendship was doomed long ago because there are certain topics we need to resolve that she’ll never talk about, and there are multiple issues that fall under that category. I am a lot of things she is not. She is a lot of things I am not. Bridging the gap is enormous.

A river runs through it.

New Who (May Contain Spoilers)

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I asked Carol, my secretary, to search reddit and gather the top 10 questions that people have about the revival of Doctor Who.

Certainly! Here are the top 10 questions new viewers might have about “Doctor Who,” focusing on the show’s revival after 2000, based on discussions from Reddit:

  1. Who is the Doctor? – New viewers often want to understand the basic premise of the character known as the Doctor¹.
    • When I started watching, The Doctor was about 6 or 700 years old. I don’t know how old they are now, but the last number I remember is 1103, I think? The reason they’re old is that they’re actually immortal. The Doctor is every story that’s ever been told, a running theme in my life. Since they can travel back and forth in time, The Doctor is acutely aware of what points in history have to happen, even if they’re tragedies, and what can be changed. They try very hard keep aliens from attacking our planet without changing the nature of that time and place…. to hilarious results because you can only control so much. The aliens are often complete villains, and the show is scary for young viewers because of it. However, it is quite a kick to go and see The Doctor defeat an alien by outsmarting it. The Doctor, in that way, reminds me of Sam Seaborn from “The West Wing.”
      • Toby: When did you write that last part? Sam: In the car. The Doctor’s plans often come together at the last minute, creating the worst possible screams when The Doctor is in danger and the dreaded words appear…. “in the next episode…”
      • Famous people in history are often involved in The Doctor’s plots and plans. They accidentally married Queen Elizabeth I.
      • The Doctor does not work alone. He is the head of a British intelligence agency like “The X Files.” However, they are basically “C Emeritus,” while the acting head of UNIT, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, serves as his modern day counterpart on the ground, ready to step in militarily if necessary. Any story that involves her is my favorite. I would love to be her assistant just to watch her banter with The Doctor, because it would be a great decision to revive Torchwood (an anagram of Doctor Who and a show about the day to day operations at UNIT), and have 14th Doctor drive Kate up the wall five days a week.
      • The Doctor is half Time Lord, half human. He has the heartbeat of a drummer because he has two hearts, and in fact, the musical theme starts with the rhythm of his heart. The rhythm of his heart IS the show.
  2. What is regeneration, and why does the Doctor change appearance? – The concept of regeneration is unique to the series and can be puzzling for newcomers.
    • Regeneration was introduced by the show because they wanted to be able to recast the actor if something happened to them. William Hartnell was not young when he took the role. Regeneration is a way to keep the show going even if the lead actor moves on. In the beginning, The Doctor only had 12 regenerations. Now they are immortal, but it would be too big a spoiler not to let you see the scene itself.
  3. Do I need to watch the classic series to understand the new one? – There’s curiosity about the connection between the classic and modern series.
    • Absolutely not. You can watch the show in either order, just watch the shows in order for both series. However, what tends to happen is that the confused people who are really interested want to go back and explore the lore. Classic Who runs on TV all the time if you have Pluto. You will quickly get into the culture and the fandom because it’s exciting to talk to fans. Some people have been watching it since the day Kennedy was shot.
  4. What’s the significance of the TARDIS? – The Doctor’s time machine is iconic, and its importance is frequently questioned.
    • The TARDIS is a sentient spaceship in a relationship with The Doctor. She always knows where they need to go, and they are a little bit in love with each other, when the TARDIS transferred into a human body for an episode (written by Neil Gaiman) and beautifully played by Helena Bonham Carter.
    • Because it is alien technology, it looks like an old British police box, but when you step inside, it is huge. It also regenerates when The Doctor does, so it will look a little different every time the actor changes.
    • The TARDIS is stolen.
    • The Doctor trusts the TARDIS to take him where he needs to go, not where he wants.
    • The reason that The TARDIS always looks like a police box is that all TARDIS have what’s called a chameleon circuit. On The Doctor’s, it’s broken. This leads to hilarious results, like a full on British Police box landing in the middle of the Oval Office next to Richard Nixon.
    • Because of UNIT, you get to see a lot of cool spy stuff because it’s MI-6 and sometimes CIA. You also get to see an entire armory of Time Lord weapons. I think the TARDIS likes trying to avoid all of them. It’s her show.
  5. Who are the companions, and why do they change? – The role of the Doctor’s companions and their turnover rate is a common inquiry.
    • Because The Doctor has so much extensive scientific knowledge, companions were originally designed to be the eyes of the viewer… to understand The Doctor from a lay person’s point of view. They have all sorts of endings, from death to just wanting to go home. No two stories are the same. However, the ones that are living and want to go home usually end up working for UNIT.
  6. What are the Daleks and why are they important? – As the Doctor’s arch-nemesis, new viewers are interested in learning more about them¹.
    • The Daleks are The Doctor’s nemesis, because it’s personal. There are only two Time Lords left in the galaxy because time would have collapsed if he didn’t let The Daleks destroy his planet.
  7. Can I start watching from any season? – With the show’s long history, viewers wonder where to begin².
    • You will enjoy every episode, and a guide will tell you which episodes are standalone. However, the rest of it will not make sense to you because in the early days, there were a lot of references to previous episodes that few Americans watched unless PBS had it in your area. However, Doctor Who doesn’t talk down to the audience. If you want to know, look it up. There’s over 60 years of history.
  8. What are the key episodes or arcs I should not miss? – Fans often share lists of must-watch episodes for those new to the show².
    • The most unique episode is “Heaven Sent,” It was a monologue delivered beautifully by Peter Capaldi.
    • The episode that makes me cry is “Vincent and The Doctor.” It explains mental illness by using aliens as a metaphor for depression. It’s masterful. There’s plenty of clips on YouTube, but go in blind. You will need two boxes of Kleenex if you don’t go into it knowing how it ends. I believe it’s one of the best two or three minutes ever filmed in the history of the BBC.
    • My favorite episode next to “Vincent and The Doctor” is the 50th anniversary special The dialogue is so clever that you just want to watch it over to laugh again. Because of time travel, a few of The Doctors all got to be in the episode at once.
    • In the end, I really can’t choose any more than this, because I’m a writer. There are things I like and don’t like about different aspects of the show. Few episodes are all or nothing for me. I criticize it lovingly, though, because I’m so eager for it to continue. I was relieved to hear the show runner say that their viewer numbers were beyond expectations, so they’re free to keep making it. The BBC has almost canceled New Who twice over the budget. No matter the budget, the storyline is so good it keeps me coming back. They don’t have to have this high a production value to have an enormous fan base. Doctor Who was originally put together with spit and rubber bands, or something like that.
  9. How does the show balance standalone episodes with overarching plots? – The structure of the series and its storytelling approach is a point of interest.
    • They do it by not telling you which ones are connected and which ones aren’t. You are waiting constantly to see what happened with what. It’s time travel. They can add and drop storylines at will.
  10. What makes “Doctor Who” different from other sci-fi series? – Viewers are curious about what sets the show apart in the genre.
    • No show that I know has kept a country together like Doctor Who. Doctor Who is a national treasure in the UK, so when you are tapping into Doctor Who, you are tapping into a fan base that goes back to 1963. Billions of people have seen an episode by now, because it spread to the other commonwealth countries and broke out into America. I think I speak for all of us when I say it’s frustrating that Disney and the show runners are dumbing it down to make the learning curve easier for new viewers. Most of us are neurodivergent. If we want to know something, we will take the 384 hours to find out. Doctor Who appeals to neurodivergent people because it’s a world where everyone fits in.
    • No show has such a wide variety of topics because anything anywhere in time and space can be a conflict for The Doctor to solve. I really liked the Shakespeare episode, of course.
    • There’s so much love and acceptance that it spills over into the fans, because we fight like cats and dogs, but we’d rather be doing that than not talking about Doctor Who. Again, we’re neurodivergent. We can all research for hours and we all have strong opinions. There’s no one way to be a Whovian because the number of fans is so large it’s unquantifiable.
    • Generally, at first you’ll hate the new Doctor because you’re grieving the old one. By the end you’re ready to hate the new one again. Every actor brings something different to the role…. and the two most important regenerations to fans across the world, the first two questions you ask a Whovian, are:
      • Who is your Doctor?
      • Who was your first Doctor?
    • You will remember both answers for the rest of your life.

The Rite of Spring

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What is your favorite season of year? Why?

As a preacher’s kid, I have always loved spring. Mostly because for Christian kids it’s a much tamer version of Christmas. You’re not focusing on death, but on new life. It’s a party atmosphere. There are generally tiny gifts. When we didn’t live close, our grandparents sent us small amounts of money in the mail when we were kids. One year, I talked about getting a goldfish nonstop for months and I woke up to a trail of marshmallow eggs leading to a bowl containing Othello, the aptly named Black Moor goldfish with the cutest little bubble eyes I’ve ever seen in my life. He looked like the fat Buddha baby of fish.

As an adult, the magic of springtime is not as much in Easter, but in the changes to the land in DC. I love the cherry blossoms, and cannot thank Japan enough. Walking around the Tidal Basin at the Jefferson Memorial is a singular experience in beauty.

My singular experience in beauty moved about a year ago. I used to go sit next to the giraffes in the spring because the zoo is a great place to write when it’s nice outside. You just need headphones because the internet’s biggest competition in DC is a sunny day when the flora is blooming around the Potomac and the Anacostia. In Silver Spring, I get a smaller amount of beauty at Sligo Creek. It’s an actual creek, but also a hiking trail head that takes you from around my house to the White House, which is close, but not that close. I have moved closer in than I was, which means that the White House is about 15 minutes to an hour southeast from my house, depending on traffic because the speed limit is 25 mph.It is probably faster during drive time just to hike. That was a joke, but it comes with prime sideye.

We just don’t have the infrastructure to support getting anywhere fast because you can only retrofit so much. DC was designed to be hard to navigate for troops. It’s a defense mechanism, and the proof is in the pudding because we live here and we get lost.

That reminds me of Jonna Mendez saying that she developed a shorthand so covert that not even she could understand it.

The opening of the new digs of the spy museum was in the spring, and the view from the “patio” is singular as well. You’re high enough up on a bridge that the view to The Capitol is clear. It’s beautiful at any time, but you don’t want to leave it. Well, I don’t. I’d rather sit outside and have The Capitol behind my computer when I’m writing. It makes for an excellent “desktop wallpaper of the mind.”

People think of DC as buttoned up and staid. That’s true of the federal government. The locals, left to their own devices, are “Keep DC Weird” evangelists. We could very easily have our own version of Portlandia in Takoma Park.

Spring is a great time to be a music fan in DC, because it’s nice to sit outside and there are free concerts all over the place, in all kinds of genres. To me, the most fun is hearing the jazz and classical military performing groups outside. That’s because they’re large, and I like a big sound. I came unglued earlier because I learned that Marin Alsop is conducting Beethoven 9 at National Cathedral. That is a once in a lifetime opportunity and I highly recommend getting tickets. It’s not just the music and the conductor, it’s that piece of music in that space. It gets deeply personal in National Cathedral because the entire congregation will be struggling not to sing.

Yes, it’s summer in DC now, but National Cathedral has air conditioning. I’ve checked.

Speaking of National Cathedral, I went for the first time when I was eight. I went to Westminster Abbey when I was nine. Over time, those two memories meshed together, and it was great going back as an adult and picking out which thing I remembered belonged at which church.

(I have a fondness for London, too… but like a side piece. I married DC. DC is my partner. London is my girlfriend at best.)

Spring in anyplace is my favorite season because I would rather sit outside than be in the water. There are diminishing returns on how pleasant it is to be outside if you don’t like to swim. I love it once I get in the water, but I’m not particularly motivated to put on a bathing suit of my own accord. I don’t have body image issues. My first thought is always comfort, and the temperature swings in getting in and out of the water while the breeze tickles my skin sets my nerves on fire. I am much more comfortable in jeans and a hoodie, on a sailboat or on a riverbank. I don’t know how to sail, I’ve just eaten it up every time I’ve been because I don’t feel like it’s dangerous. I’m a good swimmer, I just don’t.

I do like that Zac has a community pool, because we can take beer, soda, and stuff to grill and talk to the people in our neighborhood. I don’t know whether David and I do or not. We probably do, but because we’re in the middle of a city and Zac is in the suburbs, I doubt it’s the same vibe. I’ll just have to check it out. I know that other neighborhoods in Silver Spring do have them, but they’re out past where it’s easily Metro accessible…. as in, there’s enough space that it looks like Virginia again.

I do have several neighborhood parks around me, part of the reason that moving was difficult. It’s a further walk to public transportation. It doesn’t bother me, though, because I get most things delivered and I am building up strength by walking the dog every day. Walking to the bus is a hike and I’m here for it, because it is keeping me young and fit. I don’t have to have a gym membership if Im building exercise into my day, and it’s a 15 minute walk with *lots* of incline. Walking to the bus is one thing. walking home is quite another.

Ask Bryn.

This has probably been my favorite spring in DC, having my people around me at the Spy Museum in May. Zac said that he’d go with me to hear Jonna Mendez, and was looking forward to it when he was called away on temporary duty. So, it meant a lot to me that I got to go back with him, Bryn, and Dave later on.

Being able to share DC with Bryn was the best thing I’ve experienced in years. We have a deep, rich history in Oregon, and we are just beginning our mid-Atlantic chapter in terms of exploring the land together. I hope that she gets here often enough over the years for us to hit the highlights. For instance, we didn’t see a quarter of DC and none of Baltimore.

I’d like to sit by the Chesapeake with her, too.

I Don’t Care How You Feel About the Royals If You’re Tracking With Me

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

If you’re tracking with me, I feel that The Firm is in a crisis right now, because King Charles hasn’t been King for all that long and he’s been diagnosed with cancer. I’ve already posted about this on Facebook, but I have way more international fans here than I do there. I want input from English fans, and I know I have at least one. She’s not impressed with the royals, so I don’t know if she’d comment or not. I’m not impressed with The Firm because they’re important people. I’m interested in their family dynamics because I read the ghostwritten autobiography that Harry wrote in collaboration with whomever (sorry, not going to look that up) was an intimate portrait that is every bit as important as anything Richard the Lionhearted ever said…. not that it was so good (it was) but records of the royal family have proven to be eternal so far.

Plus, I loved where I could pick out the parts in which I sounded like him, as if it’d borrowed style from me without ever surfing here. It was great. Even if I don’t have everything about Harry’s personal style (I do believe he wrote parts of it because the ghostwriter had to know what Harry wanted to say, I have the style of one of the most famous ghostwriters in the world.

But there’s just something so universal and so specific about this particular situation.

Losing one parent is devastating. Losing both is losing your anchor to the world. For a moment, you don’t even know who you are in both cases. Actually, not a moment. About three years. The first year, you walk around in a fog of grief, finding your diary in the freezer and constantly forgetting said parent is dead and it shocks you all over again.

Nora Ephron gives the example of not being able to throw away her husband’s shoes, because she thought he might need them.

The fog of grief is universal. One of the things that Bryn pointed out is that there’s a possibility that both boys could lose their dad almost as quickly as they lost their mother, because unless you catch it early, there’s only a 20% chance you’ll survive it, anyway.

So, while William is grieving, he’s going to have to constantly reassure the public that the monarchy is stable… even though it’s not. But I’m not saying they’re hiding anything. I am saying that grief is so consuming that William is going to constantly have to stuff down his emotions just to get through the day. But the monarchy still won’t be unstable by the nature of anything that William would do, just by the nature of the quick change.

It remains to be seen whether Harry and William will end up needing each other or not. There may be too much bad blood…. that sometimes gets worse when both parents die. Sometimes it doesn’t. Most of the time tragedy drives people apart, and both boys have PTSD. How could they not? The trauma for Harry was twofold. Grieving because he’d lost is mother privately, and in front of an audience so big you cannot take it in. His trigger is the flash of a camera.

And that was before he went to war.

They’ve both been to war after the tragedy of losing their mother in a horrific accident. Both boys have had more days now with trauma than without, because it stays with you your whole life whether you open up about it or not.

Losing a parent fundamentally changes you, because there are parts of you that belonged to them. In my experience, this presents in two ways. The first is how much they’ve changed you. The second is how much time you were spending with them. What are you going to do to fill it? In the beginning, there is nothing that will fill that space because there’s nothing interesting enough to stop you from dwelling on it constantly, especially in the first few months. It is shocking whether you’ve known long in advance or lost them in a moment.

Especially when people get old enough where you realize it was just time, you’re still shocked because it’s the loss of not being able to drop by or call. You try because you forget, dialing or driving by, and remember on the way or right before you’re about to hit the icon for “call.” You might have a lot of car accidents during this time because your brain will blip out at inconvenient moments….. very much like they tell you not to drive under the influence. Your attention is every bit as scrambled as the rest of you.

Because again, you’re rewiring your nerves to the point where you will no longer recognize who you used to be before. Both in the liberation of not needing their approval because you can’t have it anyway, and the absolute abyss-deep process to get back up to the new normal.

People who seem functional are the ones hiding it well. They’re not getting over it any faster than anyone else. As time goes by, there is an expectation that you’ll get back to your old self, and it’s much too fast for my liking. First of all, there is no old self. I am not software you can roll back after a traumatic event.

No one is. Whether you know it or not is whether they want to open up to you, because most of being in public is just armor. They’re dying inside, trying to compartmentalize while their brains are spinning out like a tornado with memories. You spend a lot of time trying to hold back tears- even more pretending that you’re not crying all the time when you’re not with people.

Just because people don’t see grief doesn’t mean it isn’t happening to all of us. Losing a parent is in some ways universal, in some ways as individual as a fingerprint. What is universal is that it takes a long ass time, not just when the casseroles stop. People don’t check in after about six months, in my experience. This is not malice, it’s because they think you’re okay again now.

But the reality is just like the moment when Elizabeth realized that she was going to be queen. It’s just as jarring for the monarchy as it is in everyone else.

But most people don’t see their own grief writ as large as a change in the monarchy, and don’t take it seriously. They begin to act as if, rather than really focusing on what matters- their mental health. They feel fine, of course. They’re not being snappish because they’re overwhelmed with grief, they’re stressed at work (when before it was nothing). They’re doing things they wouldn’t normally do, like my own example (finding my journal in the freezer). Even that is written off as forgetfulness, even when they haven’t been like that in their whole lives.

You absolutely lose your mind for a little bit, no matter what your relationship with your parents was like. This is because it’s losing your tether, your protectors. You’re your own parent now, and therefore an “adultier adult” just by the nature of hierarchy. You’re the new generation, the changing monarchy in which you have to resurrect yourself, whether you use the analogy of the Christ or the phoenix.

You will definitely feel mocked in some cases.

One woman compared my grief over my mother to her grief over her cat. I was offended, but I’m sure she meant well. I don’t know what her relationship with her cat was like. I’m just not the kind of pet owner that would compare losing a mother to losing a pet. The worst part about you feeling mocked is that you know everyone means well, so you just have to let it roll off when those comments are impossible to forget……

I showed someone my ichthus necklace that has my mother’s fingerprint pattern in the middle. He asked where I got it and I said “the funeral home.” He said, “well… that’s really creepy.” Where else would I get something like that if I couldn’t ask her for it and the funeral home thought to do it when I didn’t?

That was a comment I’m still not over, and it affected my life in a big way because I never talked to him again.

I couldn’t look at him anymore, because I was so hurt every single time and it wasn’t worth working through it because he’d never been the most respectful person I’d ever met. It was just the last in a string of one-liners that were “jokes.”

It was not something I liked tolerating at the best of times, and this was when I couldn’t even see straight. Grief that deep is heavy and exhausting. You don’t learn to live with it all at once because you can’t. You’re basically in a shock blanket at first.

It comes over time, when there are fewer and fewer moments where you deny yourself happiness because of what they won’t get or what you promised that didn’t come true. You don’t heal from grief so much as sit with it until it doesn’t hurt anymore.

By thinking about it, over time you remember more and more good memories. It makes thinking about their death less draining and more about the things that make you smile. At first, I could only picture the open casket at her funeral, and it’s still the first picture that comes to my mind when I think of her because it’s etched in a way that my other pictures aren’t.

(I don’t mean I literally took a picture. Gross.)

If there is an open casket at King Charles’ funeral, there will be billions of pictures of it. In the newspaper. Can’t hide from it.

So specific.

So unique.

Like grief.

Writing a Letter, Part II

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Dear Mel,

I thought you might enjoy a food post since you’re in “learning a new kitchen” hell right now. I hope you’ll think of me when it’s time for your shiftie. If you don’t get this, I completely understand. See you in three years.

Love,

Leslie

When I think of food, I think of Mel, because she has jumped on the bandwagon of telling me to write more about it.

Because I am not up on current trends, I pick her brain looking for inspiration. I ask her food questions, she sends me pictures of Bletchley Park. It’s an even exchange. This is because asking her questions about food gives her energy. Getting the pictures is just a bonus. I don’t remember what food we were talking about at last interaction, I just think of her in general, the chef who can tell me about food culture in England and yet we’re tracking together like white on rice due to Escoffier’s meticulous detail.

If you have worked in a professional kitchen, you are beholden to him. The entire system was made by him. That’s why Julia Child was a tough motherfucker, and my language skills aren’t good enough to tell you how much of an understatement it is when you go through a program like that while female now. She was the first.

Working for OSS in Technical Services carrying around highly classified information is way less dangerous, but she did that, too. The reality is that there’s probably more sexual harassment and rape in kitchens/culinary schools than there is at OSS. I could be wrong. Those things are everywhere. Men do not like competition, and when their words fail, their fists come out- with other men. There’s a special hell for smart women, because few men truly recognize female brilliance when they see it. They’re programmed to be annoyed.

This is not any less true in the kitchen. It’s harder for women to speak up in all fields, but the kitchen is its own kind of hell because when you’re working that closely, you can’t help but touch each other. Assault happens every day of your life if some guy decides you deserve it, and some guy will. It hasn’t happened to me in every job consistently, but it has happened to me in every job. Every male line cook who has ever stood next to me saw me as his assistant. Every goddamn one.

We were paid the same, we had the same rights and responsibilities, and every day Daddy Knows Best. Nothing changes, whether they’re shit or fantastic. Male line cooks won’t ask women for advice unless they’re so young we have a matronly vibe to us- because they know they’re both screwed and scared and they can’t talk to anyone else. Men will not ask women anything until they’re afraid they’re going to lose their jobs and they have no choice but to be vulnerable. To be vulnerable to another male line cook is deadly for all kinds of personal and professional reasons….. one of them being that they’ll start treating the vulnerable kid like they treat women. Sexual harassment is real for men at work, because the amount of towel snapping and ass grabbing is highly regulated….. amongst each other.

Food isn’t worth it if you’re female. It’s just not. Those misogynistic French bastards took the thing women had been doing for millions of years unsung and decided it was valid when they learned. Just one of the many things women regret teaching men because thinking that women are the way they are (intellectually more stumped yet emotionally intelligent to the prehistoric) has so often come from theft. I can’t even imagine the numbers on an intellectual property lawsuit covering all women everywhere.

I am not saying women should quit (go on strike, really). I am saying that if you are female, you pursue this job because you can’t fucking do anything else. This is your passion, your drive, your coffee, your cocaine….. when you are high as hell on adrenaline after a rush, it becomes as primal a thrill as can be had legally. You dream pars and food cost. You have no idea what to do with yourself before 5:00PM. Days off are a story they tell little kids. Your family is a distant memory.

You didn’t come here to win. You came here to own the whole fucking thing.

And that’s what I’m thinking about when I think about Mel taking on a new kitchen. She can handle herself just fine. But I hope she has a me on the line, because there comes a time in every young man’s life where he will not accept female authority and needs to be disabused of the notion. This is probably best done by a chef barking down. But when they don’t, there’s safety in numbers and laughter in revenge.

I hope it’s going well for her. At least well enough to get a “heard.”

A Precious Hour -or- A Long Way to Go

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

As you can imagine, now that my grandfather has lost my grandmother, he is quite lonely for any kind of companionship. My father told me as much, and said that the best time to contact him was at 0900. So, after staying up late last night doing crossword puzzles, I dragged my happy ass out of bed and went downstairs to get a Big Gulp of black iced coffee.

[Editor’s Note- you might think that going to a coffee shop and ordering a quadruple espresso is where you get the most bang for your buck…. not so. Because regular coffee sits in the basket so much longer than espresso, a simple large drip packs almost 300mg of caffeine. You’re welcome.]

Because I knew he was lonely, I did everything I could think of to keep him on the phone, and we talked for an hour. As much as I enjoyed talking to my grandfather, I was also proud of myself. Not only did I reach out to another grieving person, I called someone. When he picked up the phone, I could tell that he’d been crying, and I wasn’t about to try and get him to stop. I told him right away that although it was not the same losing a spouse and losing a mother that I could definitely feel his pain. I know, darlin,’ he replied… and I was grieving with you when it happened.

As time wore on, we changed to less loaded subjects so that we could both relax and enjoy each other. I learned a lot about my family history, and his own. For instance, I did not know that before he worked at Lone Star Steel as a public relations manager, he was also a copy editor and photographer for a daily newspaper in Longview and a weekly magazine in Greggton. There were two funny stories about that.

  • His editor told him that for every writer, eventually their ignorance was going to show… but don’t let it in my newspaper.
  • His editor’s other advice was never to use three words when one will do… write it tight. I told him that I had not mastered that part of it. Ever. It seems as if my personal motto is why use one word when a thousand will do?

After we talked about writing, we delved into genealogy, and that is the moment where the hairs on my arm stood up.

No, seriously.

My grandfather’s side of the family originated in County Tipperary and moved to Boston, eventually settling in Bristol, Rhode Island. I can’t remember exactly how many great grandfathers this was ago, but the year was 1847. Originally, my grandfather wondered how in the hell he got his wife and six children to America. Thought he must have stolen the family silver or something to pay for passage… but no.

Most of the land was owned by absent Englishmen. Eventually, the Englishmen were worried that the peasants were going to die off due to disease and/or famine… and honestly, didn’t want the responsibility of taking care of the Irish anymore. So, the whole famn damily was offered passage to the United States in exchange for indentured servitude for two years in the lumber industry. I said to my grandfather, that’s not bad. Most of what I’ve read about indentured servitude was more like seven years. He said, well, it might have been seven, but his legs were cut off in an accident.

“Lucky.”

I am really bad with names, so I think it was my ancestor John Lonergan (no, I didn’t misspell that), who settled on a plantation in the wilds of North Carolina and raised a rebel militia to fight with General Washington.

In short, with the exception of my family being Irish and not Scottish, Diana Gabaldon could have been writing about my family. Talk about the things I dinna ken…

It really took me a minute to recover after that.

My grandfather also told me that another one of my ancestors, I think his name was Thomas, was murdered by a gang. I asked my grandfather if Thomas was somehow involved with the gang, or whether he was just an innocent bystander. He said that in those days, the Irish were treated as awfully as the Africans, and after becoming somewhat wealthy, gained a target on his back. He was an Irish immigrant who managed to buy a house for $300, and, of course, was stealing an American job… so he had to die.

It’s amazing to me how much Thomas’ story is so relevant today.

Perhaps it’s not as far from Tipperary to Sheboygan as we think, and I feel lucky to be a part of the people of faith that are rising up to fight injustice against immigrants, because my own past is full of it. The border is different, but the mental walls that have been built are the same.

We don’t need a physical wall to reinforce horrible treatment of immigrants. Those walls are already eight feet thick in the minds and hearts that need to tear them down.

Looking deep inside ourselves is the only way forward, and I can’t think of anything more introspective regarding the treatment of immigrants as learning the hardships encoded into your own DNA…………..

Amen.
#prayingonthespaces