To Young Women Who Fear "Getting Old"

We must change.

It's true, when you've become older you won't turn as many heads.  You also won't get catcalled, followed on dark streets or grabbed by strangers - or at least not as often.  You'll notice that men have begun to actually listen to you, have stopped making jokes at your expense, and have even begun take you seriously, but you'll also notice that the men who used to catcall you now don't see you at all; that (to the worst of them) you have become invisible.  All this will be disorienting at first. 

But embrace it, because the world needs you to change.

For one thing, your biology demands it.  As in all of nature, transitions happen for important reasons.  Many anthropologists now believe that the human race would not have survived without grandmothers; if all women in a tribe are of childbearing age the tribe is too vulnerable and would probably starve. Because of grandmothers, cultures remember medicines and stories and fudge recipes and many other important things.

So, never reduce your experience and value by saying you've had less time here on earth to gather it.  Do not demerit yourself in any way.  Your knowledge is too valuable.  True, in a meritocracy where cookie-cutter education is equated with intelligence, this will often be invisible knowledge and have invisible value.  But when you are older you stop being fooled by collective biases, and superficial contempt will not throw you off track.

You will notice as you get older that there are men's rules, and there are natural laws.  Men's rules say you don't correct a customer on how to hold her baby even if the child is clearly in discomfort. But natural law compels you to speak up.  If a child or animal or other innocent is in danger you'll find yourself even more prone to smashing social contracts into cookie crumbs.  Your increased freedom to break social contracts comes partly from having thrown off the shackles of the beauty contest.  Your value is no longer chained to your looks.  When you're older you are more aware of the value in your heart and soul, your compassion, your insight.  Having claimed the stature of your age you will become much more aware of others, of the world, of what matters. You will see what needs to be done and your part in it.

Oh, and bonus: everything gets funnier.  People become walking reruns and you'll often know everything about them including what they are about to say before they even speak - but when you're older you are good at keeping this to yourself.  You can enjoy a joke privately and you can be kind even when it's hard.

You've survived being a child, becoming a woman, being a young woman of childbearing age and many, many other things.  You've traversed many hazards and healed from many injuries. Then it's time to evolve, to transform, to become "older".  And stick around for a while longer, if you can.

Though the "man's world" world may never admit it, the world needs old women.

The New Age Health Promise

Everyone's experience is unique.  Everyone's body is unique.

New Agers cannot admit this.

They're as dogmatic as any other religion that way.  Any evidence that you "Just weren't praying with a pure heart," or "Not focusing with pure intent," or that your karma is bad (and how can any human being judge another human's FREAKING KARMA?!) means that the promise that Anything is possible! still follows, as long as you are doing it right.  It's a lot like women who believe diets will make them beautiful.  Diets can make one downright ugly-but don't tell the dieter that.  She's in pursuit of her dream.  She doesn't want to hear that starvation will not pay off with a Cinderella moment.  It's another one of those Satanic contracts, those promises that everyone is in love with.

I've talked to two people this week who saw documentaries and decided they knew stuff.  One guy had seen "Food, Inc" and now believes that everything is about cleansing, and that no man should ever need Viagra if he's healthy enough.  I told him about my vegan, mega-yoga practitioner ex who couldn't do without it.  He was flummoxed, offended, and doubtful.  Why trust the word of someone who had seen The Promise fail?

Another guy was telling me that my migraines just needed a chiropractor.  I told him about sinus migraines.  He was flummoxed, offended, and of course, directly after, doubtful.  Then he segued directly to, "But how is your diet?"  Oh, BOY do people say this delicately when you're overweight, but when you are it's a license to take that tack because you clearly deserve it.  Your weight is your fault.  You got yourself into this.

Illness is unique and often mysterious.  In EMT class I remember talking to a number of paramedics who would witness that fact with story after story. Healthy people die for no discernible reason.  Obese chain-smokers often live deep into their 80's, and that's the worst thing of all to a New Ager-how dare people who live wrong live well?

New Agers frequently are rude, unsupportive and unkind to sick people because they've got a lot to lose if they are wrong about The Promise.  But in the Universe I dwell in, there are no easy answers and most importantly, there are no promises kept.

Magic and Responsibillity

You don't always get the cool pointy hats in witch movies, but you usually get women coming to terms with power.

For so long it was denied many women, and it can be a great challenge to manage.  I've mismanaged it, as have many women in lifetimes full of various work environments.  You learn that power can't be used to get even, no matter how badly you may have been wronged or suffered.  You learn that the only proper use of power is support of those who need it most, and in the interest of the greatest good.  If you hold yourself accountable for your actions, power is especially fraught with the perils of shame, regret, embarrassment and the rocky climb to redemption.

Buffy fans watched Willow, who begins as an outcast and geek, then becomes a very powerful witch, turn into an addict, a bully, even a murderer, all from the pain of having once been treated the same way.  In the movie Practical Magic the overuse of power results in a murder and a rat's nest of trouble; even used against an evil guy, murder is murder.  The film Bell, Book and Candle features a powerful witch protagonist who wants to give up her power because, as she says, "I won't let it destroy me as a person,".  The Witches of Eastwick find out that power has an almost uncontrollable destructive quality, and in The Craft the introduction of power tears friends apart.

Men also suffer from this problem, but they seem to wrestle with it differently.  Very powerful men seem to be marked by an absence of empathy.  Women who rule nations and armies have displayed all the faults of character that men suffer from.  But in the common woman, I believe there is a difference.

In a documentary on the Israeli army made years ago, the women who had fought on the front lines were interviewed.  Women no longer fight on the front lines because the atrocities committed against them rendered the risk intolerable.  But the ones who had fought all said they knew there was a difference between women and men fighters.

"When a man fights," said one former soldier, a middle aged woman in a long skirt and scarf, sitting with her legs crossed as her hair trembled in the wind, "He sees his enemy.  When a woman aims a gun she can't get certain thoughts out of her mind.  Who's son is this, who's father, who's husband?  It's not as simple for us,"

She was speaking for herself and her friends; who knows what the Syrian women fighting ISIS right now feel when they are in battle?  It might be a very different mind set.  Also I would imagine that any man who had lost loved ones to ISIS would have all the same feelings women have.  But men, historically, have held the most power, and for the longest time. It has been their birthright.  It's much less so for most women, and magic is the perfect metaphor for exploring the issue.

For my money the clearest and most genuine portrayal of witchcraft as a feminine representation of power is in Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching series, beginning with "The Wee Free Men" and finishing with his final book, "The Shepherd's Crown".  There are a million wonderful quotes, but this is one of my favorites:

“...Granny Weatherwax...walked nightly without fear in the bandit-haunted forests of the mountains all her life in the certain knowledge that the darkness held nothing more terrible than she was...”

If you want to see a brilliant portrayal of power as handled by a mature woman, watch "Penny Dreadful" season 2 episode 3, called "The Nightcomers" - a beautiful illustration of the passing of power, bravery, hard truth and wisdom from one generation of women to the next. 

The theme that resonates for me in witch stories is complex, and also at times terrifying: how do women handle power?

Pumpkins

I don't hand-deliver my organic heirloom pumpkins to my neighbors anymore.

That first year our garden was huge; the soil had been prepped by a long-lost goat pen in that area of the yard. I had 31 massive pumpkins that year.  No fertilizers used at all, heirloom seeds.  I was bursting with pride about it, too.  I was proud because where I come from, that's a really big thing.

I grew up in backwoods Maine in the 60's, when the "store-bought" food was mostly limp, anemic and tasteless.  You only bought food at the store as a last resort.  You gardened hard and your neighbors did, too. Through a complex and delicately balanced barter system we kept each other fed through the long, vicious winters.  It was a joy to knock on a neighbor's door (at a decent interval after dinner time) with a basket of potatoes or strawberries or greens and beg them to help you, because "We've got to much of this and I can't put it all up,"  This was always met with broad smiles and jokes ("Can't put it all up, eh?  What's wrong with you?"), and invitation inside for a visit, and usually within days afterward a visit from that neighbor with the one thing you couldn't seem to grow that year.  This system was based primarily on graciousness, but it was practical.  Food didn't get wasted and we almost always had a nice variety.  Home grown food was a connection that transcended petty disagreements.  It was survival, it was our way to nourish each other, and it was a source of thousands of deep conversations, elaborate private jokes, and a way to check in on a family with a new baby or an elder without violating their pride.  It made us a town.

I walked down my street, orange trophy in hand, ready to make a deeper connection to my neighbors.  I had no expectation of reciprocation-just a friendly exchange.  It would be a start, maybe.

A knock on the door brought the man of the house, who clearly was annoyed at the disturbance.  I said I lived up the street.  His expression changed to alarm.  Was there a problem?  No, I said, I just grew a lot of pumpkins this year and thought you might like one for Halloween.

He gaped for a second, then gave a laughing snort.  He took the pumpkin, puzzling over it.  Then he shrugged, said, "Well, OK," and closed the door.

Well, that was just one neighbor.

I went another door down with a carefully grown prize.

The door was answered by a teenage boy, breathless.  "Why?" he said, when I made the offer.  I explained that it was a gift.

"Huh," he said, took the pumpkin and closed the door.

So I left off for a few years.

Last year I was walking down my street when I ran into the teenage boy, now towering over me and with a brand new baritone and a brand new vocabulary.

"Hey, remember when you brought us a pumpkin?" he said.

I laughed.

"Well, I'm trying corn this year.  Ya know.  We need to stop depending on Big Ag,"

"Wow!" I said, "Well, I'll bring you one!"

"Cool.  And I'll try to get you some corn,"

"Deal,"

That October I knocked on his door.  The younger brother answered, breathless.

"Your brother told me I should bring a pumpkin by," I said.

"Why?" he demanded.  "He's in Germany,"

I save pumpkins for friends who are thrilled to get them.  And I harbor no ill will to my neighbors.  But when I cut the lovingly tended fruit from the vine I have a moment of hollowness, of loneliness.

It would be nice to have one neighbor who cared.

Sticks and Stones and Printing Presses and Microphones

"I know you are, but what am I?" Pee Wee

I oppose using ad hominem, or personal attacks, in human to human exchanges.  Personal attacks lower the IQ of everyone listening, because that's what stress does to the brain.  The ad hominem attack is the last resort for sloppy thinkers when they can't stand on their crumbling arguments.

To challenge someone on a point, to tell them about your anger or your sadness or to seek the truth of an issue through argument also stresses people's nervous systems, but it doesn't lower the timbre of the discussion or switch off creativity and intelligence; there is never a need to debase anyone.  It's possible to debate or even to tackle difficult topics without tearing anybody down.

As any mass-murdering dictator could tell you, the first step toward genocide is to devalue and demoralize a population in the minds of the dominant masses, starting with verbal insults. Words can hurt, and words can kill by greasing the way to atrocity. Start calling people names, and keep calling them names so it catches on. When the majority of a population is using insults as casual greetings on a minority, then you've just brought an entire group of people down a peg.  Then you can start taking everything else much more easily: their legal rights, their culture and religion, their humanity, and finally their lives. But it all starts with the words.  Words create beliefs.

Landmark advances in mass media have always been accompanied by atrocities.  The printing press was exploited by Heinrich Kramer, an "eccentric" priest who, after attempts to establish himself as an "inquisitor" without much luck, released The Malleus Maleficarum ("Hammer of the Witches"), a handbook for spreading fear and hatred of grandmas. Previous to the "hammer" the church denied the existence of witchcraft, but after 1400 the panic and suspicion spread by the Malleus caught on with the broader public. Then the church merely made the most of an opportunity to grab some lands, but for around 9 million people over  4 centuries who were tortured and murdered, the "hammer" brought forth hell on earth-yet, it was just a book written by a weirdo.

The reign of the Nazi party would have stalled and perhaps even died without radio. ”What the press has been in the Nineteenth Century, radio will be for the Twentieth Century,” Joseph Goebbels said, and he was right in more ways than one.  Radio broadcasts had been controlled by The Postmaster General’s office in Germany until March 1933, when Goebbels himself transferred this power to the "Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda"- in effect, to his control, and he kept that control until the end of the war.  Hitler's hatred and megalomania tore his vocal chords on their way to the airwaves, and in the climate of economic despair at the time they took root-yet these were just bloody words spewed by a radical weirdo.

When you talk for a living you learn just how powerful words are and that you will be held responsible not only for what you say, but for how it's heard.  Someone can always misinterpret you and attack you for their own reasons (though you'll find most intelligent people don't attack before at least asking for more information) but even if it's not your fault, it's still your responsibility to make the communication the best you can. 

The printing press changed the world, as the man who started the witch burning craze could tell you, and the microphone is mighty, as Hitler could tell you.

Names do hurt.  The sword follows the pen.

Trajectory

When it came to a Plan B for radio, I dwelt between blind panic and false assurance.

"I'm not qualified for anything else!" I'd whine, but then when asked I'd reply that master control departments at Comcast and other TV companies like to hire on-air people because they understand basics of broadcasting that it's very difficult to teach people who may have degrees in communications, but have no experience with dead air and what that really means. So, without checking the landscape much, I relied on that idea-plus having a friend in the industry who would grease my entry.

As it turns out, jobs in master control are thin unless you speak Spanish.  Well, even those are thin.

But, there are lots of call center jobs.  Some even pay 15 bucks an hour, only a buck less than an hour that I'm making on the air.

I'm not qualified for those, but I have some qualifications that are quite good:

"Excellent spoken and written communication skills,"  It may be arrogant of me, but I feel pretty confident in those skills.

"Excel, Outlook, Word,"  AH-there I've got a part-time user's grasp.  I had to learn what I could on my own as I went.  I missed all the classes in the last 20 years because they all were held while I was on the air.  So it's time to do some serious catching up.

Also, typing.  I'm well beyond hunt and peck, but not advanced. I need to be advanced if I want a job.

So I take Excel tutorials on line, I will practice when I get to work today, and I also practice my typing several times a day.  40 wpm, with high accuracy, will give me a lot of confidence.

At least I've got goals for the real world.  That's kind of exciting and it's kind of fun. 

The Clock and The Calendar

They're tyrants.

But they can be hacked into bits and laid out for their families to find. 

Dropping the George RRRRRRR Martin analogy, I'll just say that it helps to parse out your day when you're adrift in a darkling sea.  Set yourself a schedule. 

I like typing sites, because my typing has never been great and it's kind of soothing to practice.  I force myself to go to free computer learning sites to fill in my blanks; decades of radio saw me working on the air while the free computer labs were given by the various corps I worked for.  I did not have time to take the classes, so there are gaping maws in my fluency and I'm trying to patch them up.

This while I'm trying to be gentle with myself so I can heal right now.  And then, to a call center job.  I should try to find one that pays a little more.  But I'll take what I can get for now, after a few more weeks.  Once I've got a job my UI disappears, and why not ride on that while I can and get a good break before I'm back on the chain gang? 

Do Overs

Despite the ear infection and sore throat, I was able to enjoy a nice epiphany this morning.

Call center jobs are fairly plentiful.

That's a revelation because I don't have to be on my feet, I can employ my dazzling charm and phone manner and compulsive attention to detail, and some of those jobs even pay 15 bucks an hour...which is only a dollar less than I made on the air.

This is called HOPE.

Starting with that kind of job, I can take Adobe N and other CompuSoft classes and others at Denver Free University and actually get to the business of starting over.

Nobody talks about the practical business of starting over in terms of sequence.  There is a sequence.  You don't pop the truck into fifth gear before putting the key in the ignition.  Wait-do people use keys now? Does manual transmission exist anymore?  My 14 year truck and I want to know...

When you start over, you start at the bottom.  This is the natural order of the universe, according to every flight of stairs outside of Hogwart's.  Starting over means starting from the beginning.  I need an entry level position, I need to do it well and then I need to move up from there.

It's just more stairs.

Twistin' the Night Away

I sleep like a food processor on Pulse anyway, but presently it's more like Puree.

It's not that my job prospects are overwhelming in scope; the field has been pre-narrowed, you could say.  For my pleasure.

Sorry.

Anyway, it got to me a bit last week.  I relived my horrid academic experience of failure upon failure, which I tend to do when the stakes are high.  If I wasn't me, I'd make fun of that.

Wait, I SHOULD make fun of that.  *scribbles note*

At this point it's unthinkable to go back to school, even if I still had the Batman lunchbox.  I have debt, bad teeth and a vehicle that will only make it another year, possibly two. Even if the cost of reeducation was paid for, I need to work.

Being without a degree in a meritocracy, I'm pretty much only qualified to do the thing I've been doing for 26 years.  I'm of the certain age that can limit my prospects a bit in mainstream media (Shut UP.  I've heard the "Don't sell yourself short!" chorus to DEATH).  Studios stand empty all over town and beyond as radio dances its final death spirals.  And I am tired of talking to myself alone in a room anyway.  I do that at home.

And in the truck.

ALL THE TIME, OK?

I thought about being a 911 dispatcher.  I could train for it.  But the migraines are even more severe and more unpredictable in the winter.  I can't be hurling into the office waste basket when somebody's baby is choking on the other end of the line.  And even after the migraine pain is gone the hangover lingers, turning words into cats and making the acts of speech and comprehension like herding them, and my vision becomes kaleidoscopic.  I can handle this when I can revoice a track several times, but in an emergency I'm afraid my thwacked comprehension could endanger somebody.

At this juncture I would not be able to do any landscaping.  In fact, I can't be on my feet much at all.  They're banged up from wearing high heels for decades and I'm so heavy right now that a two mile walk makes me limp for a couple days.  Waitressing is out, as is barista-ing or even a nice factory floor job at Coors where I could sing about Hossenpepper Incorporated after my shift.  I don't think you're allowed to sing that if you're not skipping.

The not-for-profit universe looks promising because it's primarily a sit-down job, lives aren't usually hanging in the balance, and I have a lot of the "soft skills" that could be useful, like communication, an understanding of events and promotional campaigns on multiple platforms and the ability to bounce around between departments to facilitate and manage projects and freak people out just enough to keep them entertained.  I have NO IDEA of the actual likelihood of this happening.

But I figure, hey, who really needs credibility?  Not even Presidential candidates need THAT.  And you know The Donald isn't losing any sleep.

Don't Touch People

It's a bad habit.  Certain little moments make me cringe like a spider on the stove.

I touch people.

I'm not a disgusting perv or a smothering mommy-type.  I just tend to touch my fingertips on a sleeve or an arm. It startles some people.  It puts others off as if I've farted on them.  It's a violation of many people's boundaries.

I used to be much more allergic to touch.  My parents were pretty mainstream Yanks, and Yanks will actively avoid touching people as if a casual touch could lead to a big blazing red letter A stitched into their epidermis.  I had the same hesitations before I left Rangeley, Maine.

Then I met lots of other people in a big, wide world.  The first time I got hugged by a friend was a revelation.  I've hugged many, many people and there's a pretty open social contract for that now.  But the casual tap of fingertips on wrist is not in the contract.  More people than not will recoil, or stop themselves from recoiling, which makes me wince at 4:00 in the morning.  Well, it's ONE of the things that makes me wince at 4:00 in the morning.

How do I cure myself of this?

I'll picture that poor little lost spider on the stove-lost in a hostile territory.  Human beings feel that way a great deal of the time, since we are a species that often turns on our own.  Some people are not safe company for other people.  We all have to have boundaries.  And I've got to draw the line.

The Job Ride

It's like any whining, rattling ride at the fair you strap yourself into, your pulse pounding and stomach fluttering.  It's the job search.

This time I strap myself in without the overwhelming greed for the brass ring.  I don't need to stand up on a shuddering machine at 150 miles an hour and try to grab any rigged "prize".  I want to land where there's a good spot for me.

I want progress in meaningful work, ideally, but in lieu of that a paycheck that doesn't cost me my health or my soul. I'd love to have a desk, a title and a bit of respect-but I won't do it if it makes me hate life.

There are costs I won't pay, this time.  I won't bear any abuse.  I won't overwork to my own detriment or stay in a toxic environment.

If that means driving a shuttle bus for a mundane cause, if it means simple phone work or something else "menial" but I get to keep my healthy nervous system and have a life, then I won't balk. I've got nothing to prove to anybody.

I've got hopes, of course.  But I'm ready for the rough parts.  It won't be my first ride and I won't throw up this time.  I'll keep my fingers and toes in, keep my seat belt on tight and scream when I need to.  But this time I know I'll land on the ground and even if I do a dizzy stumble at first, I'll recover.   I will walk straight again.

It's just a ride.

Other People's Words

I've made my living with my voice for most of my life.  Not just the sound emissions from my vocal chords, but my very means of self-expression.  That's another meaning of the word voice:  to express.

My voice has been sold many, many times.

I just heard from a friend who told me about possible voice jobs, and my immediate visceral reaction was "NO!"

What I actually said was, "Thank you for thinking of me,".  But my entire body screamed, "NO!  NONONONONONOFUCKNO!"

I'm no longer interested in making my voice the conduit for other people's words.

That's nearly over now.  And it needs to be over.

A Messy Yard

I used to be a little bit neat.

Just a bit, though...certain things on hangers and in rows and other things usually wiped off and swept clean most of the time.

I grew up in rural Maine and spent lots of time in the woods. Then I spent nearly all my free time for years backpacking in the desert in the Four Corners area.  For years I washed pans and myself using only 1 cup of water, packed out my poop and went literally weeks without a full shower.

I also saw LOTS of back country that was not swept or tended or landscaped, but being untamed it was vast and mysterious and so beautiful that it sucked most of the tidy from my soul.  Tidy seemed not only less important than ever, not only trivial and pretentious, but insulting to nature herself.

I grow weeds. I don't let them all rampage. But I do cultivate dandelions and lamb's quarters and wild sunflowers.  I knock down the mallow, but I leave the bindweed alone.  Bindweed only flourishes when you pull it, and the roots can reach as deep as 30 feet; it brings deep minerals into the top soil.  Sunflowers break up this tough Colorado soil and aerate it.  Lamb's quarters when striplings are tasty in omelets, and dandelions feed early bees and other beneficials.  I also plant wildflowers between my crops.

So, though I have garden beds and water and weed and I cultivate pumpkins and beans and tomatoes and other known vegetables, I keep weeds.  I protect them.  They provide diversity, strengthening the local ecosystem and feeding bees, of which especially now we can never have too many.

My yard is teeming with bees and wasps and butterflies and goldfinches and chickadees and doves and crows and magpies and blackbirds and sparrows and mice and snakes and spiders and beetles and grasshoppers and slugs and squirrels and hawks.  The wild threads are woven throughout.  It's a diverse home for plant life.  It's a happy place for lots and lots of wildlife to feed, find water and shelter, and to rest safely.

But it's not neat.

Bob

School started, the tomatoes are heavy on the vine and for too many days and nights, you didn't come home.

Intraspecies affection is forever unrequited-it's like the agony of the first crush, yet also like the love of a child, that vicious devotion that makes people fight off mountain lions and alligators, bare-handed, to save their dogs.

This is a burning heartache, but despite conventions I remain devoted to your wildness and your happiness. I watched you perched atop the eight foot wooden fence-the one you scaled with liquid ease, a mere speed bump between you and where you wanted to be-tall and magnificent and proud as any king of beasts, surveying your domain.  I watched you stalking prey in the garden and the fields, free as you were meant to be, living the purest realization of your creaturehood, the truth of your feline nature, and realized that keeping you from it was a far crueler thing than keeping you safe from it.

The moments I had with you at night, laid out across my chest and belly with your cheek jammed against mine, your whiskers twitching in my nostrils, your purr making my teeth rattle, your little heart pumping an inch from mine, were infused with magic and a half-giggling, half-weeping thrill.  I worshiped you like a groupie does a lead singer, lost in fruitless devotion and shadowed with the knowledge that you might not come back ever again.  I lavished you with the priciest and tastiest food, dragged you to the vet, kept your various perches and sleeping nests the way you liked them.  I always asked you to come to sleep with me and we did well, snuggling but not crowding each other.  We had agreements, and we kept them.

If the vet hadn't told me about your breed, that Maine Coon cats sometimes show up in his office with patches of their own coats torn out from the sheer frustration of indoor life, I would be punishing myself even more now.  After our own busted-out window screens, endless attempts to keep the sliding glass door secured and the application of earplugs and blasting sound machines to drown out hours of yowling, I gave in. I would again.

BUT.

I won't do this again; any cat I have from now on will be strictly an indoor cat.  And of course I have a searing regret that I will carry to the end of my days.  But I will not regret that I gave you as much of your freedom as you asked me for.  I won't regret that I respected your need to be who you really were.  It felt right then, and despite suffering on both our parts, it feels right still.

You and I understood each other, and you and I were able, for a time, to love each other.  Part of that love was allowing you to make dangerous choices.  I will live with that.

In The End, Freedom

"This song is over...
I sing my heart to the wide open spaces
I sing my song to the breeze,"

Just three lines from the Who song, The Song is Over.

With certain endings there is a rush of intoxicating freedom, and then the gifts start pouring in like cool, clean air through a long-unopened window.

Holy mama, I like music again!  I mean, to listen to and sing along with.  I'm listening to things I like without a mind to how I must process it.  I like what I like and the rest can fuck off.

Speaking of which, my singing voice wants to come back.  I can't stop myself from wanting to sing now.  I'm not saving myself for anything anymore.  My voice wants to soar out of a speaking contralto-maybe just to sing in the same contralto, but it's for me.  Fuck show biz.  What do I want to sing?

My mind is free!  This I'm still getting my head around *rim shot*.

Robbie Knight was SO CLAUSTROPHOBIC.  I can BE the cool chick on the bar stool, but I am NOT a chick who is on bar stools; I played her.  I was raised in New England; I got the essence of a liberal education, or the sensibility of one, just by osmosis.  I love Shakespeare, I love opera, I read literature.  I use vocabulary that is way beyond 6th grade and I'm tired of dumbing down everything I say for the mic.  I don't have to anymore.

I'm off the rails of the career track.  I work to work, to make money.  I write to create.  I don't need my entire purpose to come from career. 

My mind is free to be mine!  I love science and music.  I love to grow and make food.  I love to tell stories...maybe.

We'll see what happens from here.  For the moment, I'm just breathing deep from a wide, blue, sparkling sky...

Too Much Effort

Most of the worst things I've ever done have resulted from trying too hard.

I take on too much, refuse to give up, pursue too hard, pile up efforts and then I can't keep all the plates spinning.

This is why a little rabbit died a horrible traumatic death.  One of my two French Angoras-Peaches, Plum's mom.

I was treating her for a wound on her foot (and got it healed) resulting from moving the cages to the floor to make it easier for both of them to get outside (which was much better quality of life) at which point she scratched her foot on the edge of the cage.  I took her to the vet, got the ointments, applied them and duct taped the edge of the cage.  I thought I had I had it dialed.

I didn't sleep well this afternoon; I wanted the bunnies to be outside on this beautiful cool day, and I knew they were sheltered under the tree and the grasses, but I still had nightmare visions of the hawk getting to them.

The dog was dying to be outside in the cool weather, too.

She has attacked the rabbits before.  But she also hates being splashed with water, and runs.  So I turned on the hose.  It kept her away from the rabbits when we first went out.  I thought I had the best of both worlds.  I got to throw the ball for the dog while the bunnies hopped around in the fresh air.

Then the squirrel ran over the roof.  Sunny bolted.  I thought I could head her off from the bunnies with the hose, but Peaches bolted in reaction to Sunny's squirrel charge before I got there.  Sunny took a hairpin left turn, crawled under the fence and was shaking Peaches in her mouth before I could get to her.  I had Sunny pinned on the ground.  Peaches was contorted, panting faintly.  Plum saw an escape route and wisely sprang for the back field.  I had to keep Sunny pinned until Plum was far out of sight before I sent her into the house.

I lifted Peaches, still panting, as delicately as I could, laid her in her cage and ran into the house to call the emergency vet.  They don't take rabbits but they agreed to euthanize her to end her suffering. I ran outside with a pet carrier, and found her still.  No respiration, no response when I touched her eyes.  Her beautiful, big eyes.  Rigor mortis had begun within minutes.

I checked Peaches' injury (broken back) wrapped her body in calico and put her in a box and smudged her and sang to her.  Then I sat a wept and thought about how I had allowed this to happen.

I take on too much. And a little rabbit, an innocent little animal, paid with her life.

It's time to simplify.

On Asking

There's much being made about the "art of asking" and crowd funding.  It works, because some people enjoy giving and others enjoy taking.

I've read a lot of metaphysical philosophy about it.  It's supposedly of great karmic benefit to the giver as well as the recipient.  Giving is a great thing to do, in metaphysical terms-and taking is as well.  And this entire living world is built on exchange, there's no doubt.

I don't believe in karmic debts or past lives.  I was raised to believe in earning your own way, in independence, in self-reliance.  So when I read a blog full of pictures of a great life and the author asks me to donate, or a successful podcast announces a European tour and then asks me to donate, my hackles go up.

I DO donate, plenty.  I've been tithing to Greenpeace for decades.  I make monthly donations through Patreon to one of my favorite writers in exchange for a monthly short story, and to the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast-David Barr Curtley isn't a world traveler and if he's recently bought a new truck that needs financing, he doesn't belabor his listeners with the brag.  He asks for donations to support the podcast and delivers excellent, top-quality work with illustrious guests, deep content and thoughtful, insightful and respectful exchanges.  He has earned my donation.

I suppose that's my age showing.  Self-respect, independence and even a living wage, the way I was raised, were earned.  Not donated.

A Carrot Sermon

I pulled a carrot out of the ground this morning.  Deep orange, crooked, its hairs tangled in dirt, its floppy, ferny top dangling crystals of last night's rain. 

Carrots from the store taste like semi-sweet fiber.

A carrot from the garden tastes like...eternity. 

It's got a hint of bitterness that gives way quickly to a hint of intoxicant, like liqueur.  It's got a deep earthiness that is released under the tooth, a taste of the soil and the rain and the hard sun.  It's made of the universe.

Religion loves to tell us we must go to the sky when we die, instead of into the soil, and that we must worship a man in the sky rather than a mother beneath our feet who holds us up, feeds us, catches us when we fall, draws us into dance, cradles us when we sleep, and takes us gracefully home when we die to give back the body we have borrowed. 

Like billions of gardeners before me, through thousands of generations, I am forced to ask, with my mouth full of the sweet-dirty-complex intoxicant of a just-pulled carrot:  "What is holier than this?"

Heroes Don't Eat

I have yet to add up all the scenes in all the movies and TV shows where the protagonist turns down food, but I believe it's the majority of scenes in which food even appears.  Our heroes always turn down food, and often because it simply doesn't look good enough to them.

In fact, one way you can tell a character is a protagonist is by the way they seem to subsist on air and attitude alone.

I understand the device, I think.  If our hero is too distracted or thoughtful or bothered to eat, something important must be up.  Something interesting is afoot.  We should pay attention to the story, because something is more important than food.

In fact, many of our heroes "Haven't touched their food," and can't be persuaded to do so.  They can scale tall buildings, defeat entire armies with one broken arm and save the civilized world on an empty stomach, unless they've been force fed by a loving lackey or grandmother.

I would love to see a superhero chomping on a cookie when the call to action comes, toss back the rest of it, brush the crumbs off the spandex costume and then leap out the window.

Penny Dreadful Predictions (and SPOILERS)

1.  Victor will recover from his drug habit, meet a nice girl, fall in love and get engaged.  Then he'll find out the creature is on a rampage in the frozen north and go after him.  He will barely escape with his life and return to his fiance, running to some country retreat, where the monster will find him and kill his bride, then him, then weep and destroy himself.  There's still so much to the story of Frankenstein they may even be able to get two seasons out of it.

2.  Lilly and Dorian will eventually come to the attention of the authorities and suspicion and drama will ensue.  Lilly also might meet one Dr. Jekyll.  Debauchery, terror, murder.

3.  Vanessa will wander again to the catacombs under the train station to serve homeless people, but might wander off one night and end up under a theater, there to meet a man some call The Phantom.

But also God is dead for Vanessa now, so she'll go in search of answers.  Some other spiritualist stuff?  Spirit cults?  Spiritualism?  Or will she travel herself?  Follow Ethan to America when she finds out what happened to him?  Or will she meet a skeptic who's also an illusionist?

4.  Speaking of Ethan, does his father have him in a kind of imprisonment?  Does he run away, maybe get captured by Comanche who want revenge?  Or will a shaman help him control the Wolf?

5.  Sir Malcolm might meet zombies?  Bring back a curse from Africa?  Or maybe a WIFE?

6.  Will a ship crash on the coast, her crew with their throats torn out, her only cargo boxes of Transylvanian dirt?

7.  Will there be an airship journey with a giant kracken?

8.  How about a poet from Baltimore who opens up a hotel called Usher?

How Great Thou Art

Watching The Matrix, having recently watched Avatar and the ads for "Bondathon", it's a point of culture fatigue for me-the male character who's every potential vanity is validated.

He's special and magnificent and admired by all.  He's the Chosen One, the Chick Magnet, the Hero, the Demi-God whom everyone should have believed in all along.

This theme is SO prevalent that there's barely room for any other in films or TV.

The greatest parody of it was done by the writers of Red Dwarf through the character of "Ace" Rimmer, the ultimate hero counter-character to Arnold The Jackass Rimmer.  Ace knows everything, does everything right, is always noble and is sexually desired by most people.  The show makes brilliant mockery of this, all the more brilliant because it's so rarely done in American shows and films.  In fact, Brits are far better at this, at the imperfect male protagonist who doesn't have to be all things to all people in order to be worthy of our respect.

It's one reason I love my British shows, films and literature.  It's also the reason I turn to feminist fantasy a lot.  I get VERY sick of seeing another guy who's SO GREAT that he Gets All The Goods at the end.  I'm very tired of that character, of the lowering of other characters to make way for his Greatness bloat, and the oversimplification of plots and conflicts to also deal with his Greatness bloat.  I'm tired of demi-god male protagonists.

It's just one reason I need to write.

Denouement

As we grind slowly to a halt on our full time gigs, I've heard several jocks say that they're "just cruising through" on their shows, doing "nothing" breaks, or "This-is-that-was" as we also call it, when a jock back sells a song just played and announces the next one with no added value-a travesty in radio.  Some people are feeling discouraged by the very act of doing a show that they soon will no longer have.

I'm experiencing the opposite feeling.

I'm relishing each break, wishing I had more time to really craft them (which is the problem with this gig-by overworking staff, under pressure, they are not getting the best product-but that's what Industrialists do) and I'm working even harder.  I want my last full-time weeks to be the best I can make them.  I want listeners to get the best I've got.  I want to enjoy the HECK out of my show.

I really love doing this.

I won't miss the pressure of being full-time, I realized with a thrill.  I won't miss the mid-week exhaustion from chronic lack of sleep.   I won't miss having to hang out for an hour just do do production while my animals have to wait to get breakfast and the cool prime-watering hours of the garden slip away.  But I love finding stuff to talk about and relate to and make jokes about, I love pulling bits off You Tube to punctuate those bits and I love learning from my own process as I go.

Weekends for this process will be perfect.  I should have decent material every weekend (I can get 15 breaks even from a slow week) and I'll have the energy and enthusiasm and rested brain to apply to it.

So I don't feel this is ending with a whimper...more like a relaxed coasting home...

I Got Me Some....Satisfaction...

This blog is for stories and thoughts on other people's stories, but part of the story of my life is growing food.

This morning I put in three hours in the garden planting fall and winter crops, and this evening I harvested supper, tossed it in a pan and we had an incredibly flavorful and satisfying supper.  My stomach is purring.  The earthy beets, robust greens and piquant eggplant complimented with fat and salt made for the kind of repast that remind you what it is to be Well Fed.

Eating like this makes you satisfied, peaceful, grounded and, to use again an overused word, grateful.  But I AM grateful.

Perfection and Death

"To be beautiful is to be almost dead, isn't it?  The lassitude of the perfect woman. The languid ease.  The obeisance. Spirit-trained. Anemic.  Pale as ivory and weak as a kitten," Vanessa Ives (or is it the demon?  Or Amen-Ra?) Penny Dreadful.

These lines were written by a man (given that they are about the Victorian standard), so they are only half true.  I've often gotten the impression that men envy beautiful women's ease in getting attention, admiration and sex.

I've been considered beautiful, and fat, and old, ugly, and many other things.  I'm very fortunate in this; my world view is not skewed by the privilege of beauty as it is for some.  Very beautiful women tend to ride the privilege hard, without even realizing it-a phantom stallion of expectations.  They often leap over the rest of us, but jumping too high lands them in gullies sometimes, just like the rest of us.  Sometimes, just sometimes, they are reminded that they are not as beautiful as they were, or as they hoped to be, or as they thought.  It's a painful landing.

There is, in beauty, "A peace of mind that religion is powerless to bestow," to quote Wilde.  But even supermodels are ragingly insecure.  The painful landing is built into physical beauty, first because we change; as Carrie Fisher said thirty years after her bikini scene in Return of the Jedi, "I didn't know I was supposed to stay exactly the same," But there's another pitfall as well: comparison. When your date sneaks a look at the waitress, you're painfully reminded that there will always be someone prettier, thinner, younger.  Beauty is a perilous track, not a languid ease.

But there is a bone-deep obeisance, infectious as cancer.  It sets up shop in a young girl and grows into an all-consuming disease of the mind that can spread to the body.  Obedience to the narrow male search image of "hotness" chokes the vitality out of the female population.  We'll never know what works of genius or what solutions to world problems would already have sprung from the minds of young women who are obsessed with their thighs or their hair.  Beauty is a virulent dictator.

But in the last few years, there are more and more glimpses of hope.  The "third wave feminists" are more outspoken, more uncompromising and assume more entitlement.  They assume the right to be valued apart from physical beauty and rail against sexism.  This is the latest rebellion against the assumption that a woman is only to be valued for some constructed idea of physical beauty, which is a variation on the idea that a woman is not a person. The third wave are casting off the dehumanizing obeisance, the spirit training and the spiritual anemia.  They stomp on the racist ivory standard and the stale pose of weakness.

Perfection is completeness.  A living being is only finished, only complete, after its final breath.  No living thing is perfect and beauty is a static measure of value; as living humans, we must not accept any static measure.

Mute

Watching TV on mute is amazing.

The preacher with his book is raging and pleading and bleeding for commiseration, he's pounding, he's resounding, he's clearly baffled by a world in which his book has so little power.  He cannot believe the evil around him.  He clings to his book, hating the world, and will go down with the book.

The celebrity is reveling in hir new show.  Shim has a New Reason to be Someone, and loves the glamour, but does not expect us to just love hir for the glamour.  Shim has decided that shim is now "The Icon for the Trans community"-and so is both glamorous and important.  Shim needs to hear this a lot.

The action star is serious, and surrounded by supporting players who can out-act him with one acting hand tied behind their backs.  But it makes the action star more believable.

The sportswives are working very hard at pretending that the camera is not there, and dying to fix their makeup just one more time.

The music star has rehearsed every hair flip and fish-face gape.  She is leaving nothing to chance or art.

The fighter contains herself; she is made-up and coiffed and wants to be poised for the camera.  But then, there she is in the ring and she does not care about the camera, she is a perfect killing machine, perfect as a lioness.  No move is wasted.  She brings her prey down.  Cut back to the interview and the fighter is staying in the frame, as if she were balancing on a very small platform-and for her, it is.

The comedy is full of screaming.

And now I want to watch Penny Dreadful again.  Sound back on.

The Disposal

I was talking to a coworker about the ending of this gig; he shares my sense of excitement at the prospect of moving on.  He calls the job "A drain and a grind,"

Of course we embraced this job and made the most of it when we had committed to it, but it's just as he calls it: both a drain and a grind.  When you combine those mechanisms, you get the scary blades in the sink.

Here's why it's a grind: imagine a stand-up comedian taking 15 stories from the media and crafting them into 40-second routines of staggering brilliance within 24 hours.  It's necessary to imagine it, since it doesn't happen in the real world.  It's too much for anyone to do and produce real quality.  Loathe as we are to admit we aren't equal to a task, when the task is unrealistic it becomes a grind.  It's arduous and there's very little pleasure left in it.

Here's why it's a drain: we have to do it six days a week. Twelve to fifteen stories a day six days a week ads up to around one hundred brilliant short compositions, executed with the best possible delivery and often with added production, per week-with a mere two weeks off a year.  It really does suck all the creativity out of you, and a lot of your mental energy.  There's simply too much being asked of your system to allow replenishment.

This is an industrial formula.  Since the companies owning radio regard it as a widgit, they grind out the product with mechanized efficiency and squeeze out the maximum from the raw material for their money.  As industrialists they are unable to hear the fatigue, the chronic stress, the controlled panic that underscores voices on the air with a mind to the effect on the listener; to them a stressed worker is as satisfying as the sweat upon an apple picker's brow or a demolished sacred mountain.  When they see some sort of destruction, they see success.  To move in and shoot all the buffalo or rip all the coal out of a vein or drain an aquifer and then move on, to them, is a reassurance that they control the known universe.  They must cause quantifiable defeat or see proof of destruction to know they have "won" and that they have gotten their "money's worth".

I'm resigned to my cog status for the rest of my working life in this robber baron economy, in this culture of commerce...but I'm immensely relieved to take my creative life OUT of it.

No Unfinished Business

I'm being laid off from my full-time job in about a month.

And I couldn't be happier or more grateful.

First of all, I was informed of this in a respectful way. "We love your work.  You've done nothing wrong. We'd love you to stay on part-time and when we have more opportunities in the future we'd love you to consider coming back on with us,"

In the past my firings were unnecessarily horrid.  This was not.  There was no "putting me on probation" to rationalize the decision, no ambush-meeting with 10 people staring at me to see how I would take the news, no "Say your goodbyes and be out of the building in half an hour.  I will need your security pass," as if I was a corporate criminal.  There was no prolonged period of gas-lighting air checks, no mind games, no predatory management practices, no obscenities shrieked at me in the hall, no thinly-veiled demeaning speeches.  This was done with class. 

Second, this is a layoff.  I'm among many others getting laid off.  I'm not singled out.  I'm applying for jobs and able to say, "Still employed and yes, it's OK to call my employer,".  I'll get a good recommendation or two and I can tell a future employer that my present employers have a high regard for my work.

Third: mornings is the best gig I will ever get.  I'm going out on top.  Any other gig will be a lateral move.  I'm not interested in that.  I am interested in keeping a weekend show, where I can enjoy getting radio out of my system on a regular basis.

When I got this gig it was a reparation for all the firings I'd had.  MORNINGS.  On rock stations.  A CHICK doing a rock morning show!  And while this is a trend, I got to be ONE of those chicks!  The very fact that I was chosen for this gig said not only that I belonged in radio full time, I belonged on MORNINGS.  This was the ultimate middle finger to everyone who had ever fired me.

And now it is time to move on.

I'm ready for a full-time job that doesn't need so much of my creativity, because I want to be a writer.  I want to be published.  I want a stack of finished novels and stories at the bottom of my obituary.  This means I need to get moving.  If I do get another 20+ healthy years on this planet, my first priority (other than loving my people and animals well and STAYING on this planet for another 20+ in a healthy way) is to write stacks of work that I feel good about.

And-a job in an industry that's a bit less volatile.

No unfinished business.  No regrets.

I'm ready.

Loftier Fruit Part 1- Speed and Empathy

Season 10 of Writing Excuses begins with IDEAS and how to get them.  I needed better techniques and I got them.  Writing Excuses keeps promises-it's one of the necessary commitments of good writing.

I need to be a more expedient comedy writer in order to be better at my radio job.  When you've got to come up with a dozen great bits or stories per DAY or more it's very easy to get bogged down.  It's very easy to get stuck in the middle of a show and have to give a break less than it needs. Valéry is right, even every time he gets misquoted-and I'll misquote again-that "great poems (or any writing) are never finished, but only abandoned".  Pretty much everything I write is finished by abandonment.  That's also from my years in production; the time pressure has you constantly looking at the stack that needs to get done by 5:00 and having to say, "That's good enough" before splicing on the tag, carting it up and throwing it on the pile (the verbs in that sentence are dead giveaways as to how long I've been doing this). 

Often I'll get into the studio with a dozen or more half-written bits, like a news story and then a clip from a movie or a TV show or an idea for a punchline, and then just hit the conveyor belt of the morning clock and craft the best ones I can in the time I've got.  The clock is a merciless conveyor belt, because if the breaks don't get into the system far enough ahead, the stations that are running my shows just get dead air.  There are two simultaneous pressures: to be great and to be fast.  It's like being Lucy in the chocolate factory.

I often do breaks that could have been better if I'd had more time to craft them.  But I want to be very topical and relevant, which means clinging to the news cycle and checking for trend updates on Fark, Mashable, Wired, Sploid and others to bring in relevant, compelling, fresh topics.  I also monitor Twitter for the latest music news updates.  But finding the right topics is just the first stage, the gathering of raw material.  The topics are merely the candy.  Then, with added value like audio clips, good writing and repeated voicing to get just the right diagramming and timing and delivery on the read, you wrap the chocolates as best you can.

I'm often haunted after my show by that should-coulda-woulda feeling. Sometimes I'm very proud of my whole show.  Most of the time I wish I had written better armatures for each break within the limited time I had and that my writing skills were sharper.  It's mostly in the writing.

The idea Howard Tayler talked about, which is really a writing technique, is one of "...going for the loftier fruit,"

Howard uses Twitter as a cultural watershed, which is an excellent idea.  You get a very good feel for the cycles of human thought and feeling on Twitter.  And here's how he, as a humorist, uses it:

"You will see something happen, and on Twitter 10,000 people will all tell the same joke.  It is fascinating to watch, and as a humorist I watch it and I ask myself, what's the fruit that's higher up in the tree?  What is it that I can reach for that's different?  Not the idea that immediately leaps to mind, but what's past it.  You have to push a couple of ideas out of the way or synthesize a couple of ideas and find something that hasn't already been hashtagged a million times,"

I want only current, fresh, relevant and compelling topics.  To be fresh, you've got to go for the loftier fruit rather than the stale stuff that's hanging low, rather than the joke everyone else has made.  But you can't go to high in the tree-then you are no longer relevant or relatable.  You need to be accessible, but just a branch or two higher on the tree.  Not out of sight.  

Dan Wells added that synthesis is a useful, to "Mash something together with something else," which is one of the cornerstones of my show. Though I cannot compare myself to John Oliver, he uses a technique of sequencing brilliant analogies to entertain, and to make complex and inflammatory topics conversation-friendly.  He's a genius water-cooler wizard, because his analogies are relevant, memorable, vivid-yet accessible.  I try daily to write brilliant analogies, but they take time, at least for me. When I can't do that fast enough for the conveyor belt I default to relatable.

To make any story relatable, you can use empathy to put the listener IN it.  Next are are three examples of how I crafted breaks from news stories or current events using empathy and relatability:

1.  A kid's science experiment proposal got an award from NASA, and the idea was this: send jumping spiders into space with their favorite flies and observe how jumping spiders would behave in zero gravity.  My punchline was, "It's a really cool idea, but would you want to BE in that rocket doing that experiment? If you sent me up there you'd hear lots of screaming and then there would be a huge, fiery explosion.  That's what happens when there's a spider in my bathroom,"

2.  Robotics advances reported by people at the Consumer Electronics Show were pretty startling.  In fact, it looks like we'll be using robots soon to do a lot of jobs people are doing now.  (Cue creepy "Terminator" music and SFX bed, fading up slowly).  So you'll walk into a fast food joint soon and there won't even be any people.  There'll be a machine to swipe your card and type in your order and then machines behind counters taking meat out of freezers and throwing it in the grease and then you get your sandwich from machines reaching out at you with big metallic hooks and claws and UGH!  NOOOOOO!  You're terminated, bugger!" (Cue metallic crush SFX)

  3.  It's the day after Christmas, so  in my first break of the day I talked about overindulging and just trying to get all the junk out of the fridge."... so I dumped the last of the eggnog in my coffee because that seemed so creative when I was half-awake.  Then I remembered there was rum in it.  Well.  If I start crying and then pass out you'll know what happened,"

I'm OK with these breaks.  But I'd love to take my bits to the next level, and that's in the writing, going just high enough for the just-loftier-enough fruit, and the fresh witty analogy.  I already put in as much writing time as I have for my show: up to four hours at home the night before and around two hours before my show starts the day it airs.

What I want is a toolbox full of shortcuts to better writing.

Learning Year

So, I signed up for David Farland's Story 101 course, The Story Puzzle.  And I am behind on homework.  Snowstorms, extra holiday shifts, etc., blahdy-blah, fuckmeI'mbehind.

My favorite podcast, "Writing Excuses" changed their format this year to "Writing Master Class". 

So now I'm taking two master classes simultaneously.

And I'm petrified.

I want this so badly that it makes my teeth ache and my heart jam against my ribs and my tear ducts scream.  I want to be an author so badly that I want to cry like an angry baby for it.

BUT doing the work for it is terrifying because What If I Put Everything Into It And I Fail Anyway, as I have so MANY things?

Anyway, back to my homework...

F**k Resolutions. But.

I don't do resolutions but as a veteran potty mouth, exclaimer and issuer of passionate, overbearing diatribes, I'm trying out a new script to replace all that yelling. 

Instead of my usual, top volume "What the Actual F**K?!?!" I'm going to try:

"Well. How about that,"

"Huh.  What do you know?"

and

"Ah.  I see,"

Like all previous attempts to "just shut up", this one will probably be hard to implement.  But even a bit of diplomacy is often the kindest route.

Here goes.