A Boxy Blog of (Dis)Comfort

When events beyond my control drag me down, many feelings can take hold. One, the feeling to retreat. My little voice, what could it say to make any difference for myself and my country? I have no grand designs on making things better. (Maybe I should run for office?) People want to feel safe, and art/artists can sometimes give this gift. A beautiful painting. A stunning creation. Music that lights a dark place, a song that conveys hope or makes a statement. Here, in this boxy blog, would anyone find a little comfort, like I do in the writing? I'm able to funnel the racing heart and anxiety of what ifs. What if I have to buy a gun? What if I lose my job? What if someone decides to ram a car through a march, and my body is in the way? That is fear speaking. We are a country full of fears. We fear violence, whether perceived or real. And, we should fear the real violence, too much this year. Peace seems unachievable. We fear lack of resources, that someone will get something that should be ours, or scarcity will rule the household. As millions file jobless claims, those are tangible fears. We fear death. The virus. Being alone in sickness. These are not easy thoughts to bend. Afraid can become a constant state of being. I'm reading the memoirs of black writers, and fear of brutality is woven into their very being. Those memoirists found ways to express the struggle in meaningful words with eloquence and new perspectives. They gave the searing steam an outlet. We might all need one. We need to learn to cope with the afraid and the realities of what produced it: somehow find a practice or method to examine it. We need ways to overcome, talk it out, be the light, let it go, and raise up something more positive for ourselves and each other. 

I Am Not a Scientist

I’m not a scientist. But I work among them. I see my job as interpreting. My words give a voice to the science that could be affecting you right now. And, it is. The world is changing, and I don’t mean politically. It’s about our atmosphere and the ocean and the carbon we’re putting and have put into both. This isn’t my attempt at a lecture. This is an essay about what I see in my everyday work.

I initially laughed a few years ago when a colleague of mine asked: “What’s a different way of saying ‘It’s the hottest ______________ (yr, month, quarter, day) ever?’” That description has been needed so much of late, it has become a cliché. You may have noticed it, too, where you live. Maybe not more heat. Maybe something is different than what it used to be: it’s drier, wetter, colder. Yes, colder. If snows are happening where they didn’t used to, it counts as odd to those who live there. The changes may simply dawn on you one day: This weather isn’t normal; it’s not what I remember.

Many of the people I work with study these changes. They monitor temperature and precipitation trends, soil moisture, or jet streams. They tally extreme weather events. Some focus on very specific questions and fields of study. They use language and calculations that ordinary people, me included, don’t really have a working knowledge of. What I do comprehend is that we’re in uncharted territory. In a nutshell, the planet is warming. We know because observations of the world have been recorded since before your grandparents were born, even before there was an America (https://bit.ly/3b7Z5ro). This information has been handed down and then documented, on paper documents and in computers. Now, we can look at the records and determine where we stand. Where we stand today is a hotter place—global temperatures in some locations are consistently above normal. Carbon levels are higher than they have ever been on record. Independent large scientific organizations across the world agree with these assessment. We are still learning what this means in the long run, for our future in a different climate.

But, what is normal? Well, think of normal as a span of certainty, when conditions fell within a range and didn’t veer too far off center. Except now we’re veering off center, and in same cases dramatically. One place in particular, Alaska, which I think of as the canary in the coal mine, is significantly hotter. It just recorded its hottest year in 95 years, the length of the state’s official records. Alaska’s statewide average temperature last year was 6°F above average; Anchorage recorded its first 90°F day in 2019. Think of this in terms of your own temperature. On average, the average human temperature hovers around 98.6°F (though science says this is also changing). If you were to add a degree, over a short period of time, you’d feel it. Your systems wouldn’t work like they should.

Another cold place that’s bearing the brunt: the Arctic. A scientist I know told a national news reporter this summer he/she wanted to get to the Arctic as soon as the pandemic ended but before the ice melted. He/she had just published a paper that indicates the Arctic could be mostly ice-free in the summer within 15 years.

People in my professional life aren’t full of doom and gloom; they are heads-down engaged in the serious study of changes going on across the globe and in our backyards. In many cases, it is their life’s work. They have been working in their specialties since the beginning of their careers and will keep on, mostly out of the limelight, until they retire. Some of the scientists study things you and I will never actually see: carbon levels in the ocean, drought in South America; or incidence we don’t want to see: unprecedented flooding along our coasts, coral bleaching. They would probably never write an essay like this, not because they couldn’t, but because they are concerned with the science and the exactness of it. My take on things would not be scientific enough. No one from my work endorsed this post; nor did anyone review it. I have to state that because of the nature of my job.

What they aren’t doing is debating among themselves about whether any of these major changes are actually taking place. I could send you to reports that have been a year or more in the making, or monthly charts, or data tables of temperatures and precipitation and ocean conditions, but would those numbers and figures and science-making make a difference to your understanding? I’m not sure they would. That’s why I wrote this essay. To tell you, unequivocally, change is happening. How good are you with change?

The Upside of the Downside

Make no mistake. We haven't hit bottom. If anything, these days feel like the calm before the real storm. When, similar to the autumn of 2008, the experts proclaimed the economy would meltdown, but we really weren't sure what that prediction meant. So, call this post the rose-colored-glasses or looking-at-the-bright-side version of a pandemic. First, let me clarify, the economic downturn is a tab in the file cabinet labeled: FATALITIES. For all the thousands (just in the U.S.A.) who have and will die, for the survivors, for the pain and suffering and the inability to succor and mourn properly, I commiserate in grief.

Here is where I find comfort: each day, the leaves have grown. The trees in my yard started six weeks ago without a leaf on them, and now they are full. I've watched the process every day, which I couldn't have witnessed had I been at my desk job. The leaves do not know the chaos undermining humanity.

And, my grass is mowed. Well, you might ask, isn't mowing something you always do? And, I will admit, not necessarily. I wanted to bring some structure to the chaos, and my yard guy was happy to take the job. He mowed the same day I called. In some ways, I felt a sense of duty to still use him. Give him an immediate focus and a check. He didn't say so, but the look on his face told me what went unsaid.

The sheets are clean on my bed. Again, you'll wonder again, is that any different than before? Yes, it is, because it was done out of a conscious need to nest. Nesting is the new overachieving. Clean sheets make the world seem better, even if it isn't. And, I've hung sheets and towels and clothes to dry on the clothesline. This seems appropriate. Because life has slowed down. I don't feel rushed. Haste is not on my calendar. The whir and thunk of the dryer may become a relic of the frenzied life of going-and-doing, and right now, those opportunities and obligations are far fewer.

Cat nap in a basket.

I receive a postcard now about once a week from a friend in Portland, Ore. We have begun a jovial correspondence. A distraction but a connection. The cards don't really say much but signal we are alive and haven't lost our marbles. You could easily lose them, you know. (Of course, you do.) Postcards are amazing at mental uplift. Would you like one? I'll send a few. Soon, you'll be waltzing to the mailbox in great anticipation.

And, of course, I have my three cats, Ollie (right), Fish, and Slayer. I won't wax on about my fondness for them. Anyone who has more than one in the house automatically qualifies as cat infatuated. And, who among us has not had a COVID nightmare? Well, this week, my dream was not a nightmare but a strange product of my feline domesticity. One of my cats spoke its first word: "Yes." Then I realized it had been speaking to me for quite some time. In full sentences, naturally. And in these unnatural times, odd has an entirely different meaning.

The Bane of Earnestness

Earnestness and writing may appear to go together, when in fact the opposite seems to breed success. Too many writers gyrate themselves in the public social sphere and succeed at selling their work. Do reclusive introverts, the loners at home with their dogs, make best-selling writers? Only the damn good ones -- the really damn good ones who spend the end of their lives in seclusion, writing backstories for all their famous characters, while hunched over manual typewriters in wooded shacks, down the hill from the main house where the fifth spouse does laundry. Okay, maybe that's a hair exaggerated.

Not happening for most of us. It's a new age. Get your platform-on, sister. Jesus, I hate that word. Platform. It doesn't really mean anything. I wrote a damn book, and then another, and a few other things, and by God, my brain wants me to write a few more before my wrists give out. But I'm freakin' earnest. I'm probably not going to crank anything resembling a marketing machine into something viral.

Ego is a good asset to have to market a book. When you have a big one, it doesn't matter if pieces fall together or apart because the next sales trick will work, and so what if it doesn't? You're a genius, or so your ego says. It induces a bolder-is-better attitude and license to TRUMP the message. BUY MY SNAKE OIL.

Dog in Space.

I'm sitting here writing poems between novels (poems, for God sake) because they give me a sense of accomplishment. I can finish one in a day, an hour. Novels are gangly and complicated. (I'm sure a few poets would argue with me.)

Ariel Gore, an earnest writer who's earned literary success for her memoirs, says after her books reach the 100-page mark, they become harder to manage. The story can't be read in one sitting. It can't be diagnosed and fixed easily. That means more time, more thought, longer stretches between publication, unless you write full-time like mad. Unless unless unless. Ego, madness, kinda go together.

My next project? I'm thinking sci-fi. Why? Because the story can be out there. It can have space monkeys. But damn my soul, my book idea is stricken with earnestness. The protagonist is left behind on a dying planet with a dog. Hmmm, life and art track oddly close together.

Fifty Shades of a Shooting Star

Today is my two-year blogging anniversary. Hip, hip, hoorah. Confetti, horns, balloons, assorted snorts and giggles. What better to write about on an anniversary than sex?

This is not a usual topic for me. But I had to write a blogpost with the word Shades in the title. SEO, you know. No, seriously, are you surprised that sex still sells? How does the quip go? "Even bad sex is good sex."

I'm not suggesting Fifty Shades of Grey is bad. I haven't read it. I may or may not get around to it. I'll likely not pay for it if I do read it. From what I've read in reviews, I'd be better off borrowing a copy. I'm not knocking the topic of sex or S&M here. It's just not high on my reading list. But, apparently, it's on many others'. Fifty Shades is listed 1, 2, and 3 on the NYT bestsellers list along with two or three other books written by romance writers. I don't have a leg to stand on if I want to stand against the tide.

Still. My sensibilities, as a woman and a writer, tread a little less salaciously. I found Edgy Mama's review of Shades more my speed. But, Edgy is writing books about beer -- not romance.

Shades is erotica, and there are plenty of good erotic writers on the planet. Shades won the lottery. I occasionally will read erotica for ideas (I'm not blushing; see The Erotic Writer or find your own source). It's true. Sex makes money. Romance novels hold a significant market share (somewhere between 10-13 percent of book sales).

I've written sex scenes. My first novel is basically a romance, although I break with genre conventions more than not. But I wanted my sex scenes to read like poetry. I tell friends: I don't name parts (of the body; at least, the most conspicuously sexual ones). Try it. It's harder than it sounds. Romance writers I've bummed around with admit that sex scenes can be tough to write. Even the NYT Book Review wrote a piece once about the big literary giants falling flat in that arena (no pun intended; see The Naked and the Conflicted, 01/03/2010).

So, let Fifty Shades have its day in the sun. If it burns a few asses (oops, I broke my parts rule), chalk it up to the shooting-star syndrome. A book phenomenon that's bright but brief.

My Ubiquitous Year-End List of the Inane

After such a multi-syllabic headline, of course you're burning to know what's top on my mind as we enter 2012. My intention was to avoid the list. The tube (the namesake, not the You version) mucked up my brain. Here goes:

Top 10 Useless Things I Learned From Cable TV Over Christmas

10. Shaq retired in 2011. He's got a dry sense of humor and an ego that doesn't get in the way of a ride on a pink plastic toddler's car for gags.

9. People are still trying to jump motorcycles (and snowmobiles) Evel Knievel-style. I think they drank too much Red Bull.

8. Most newscasters on local TV news stations are 20 years younger than me. Yikes.

7. Move over American Chopper. Hello, Sons of Guns.

6. A program called Live Sex is available on pay per view. In the Midwest. The rural Midwest. I'm talking at Grandma's. (Here's the address to write your congressman ... oh, who's kidding who?)

5. The New York Times was right. Lady Gaga can't dance.

4. The more reality TV shows are on the air, the less--I want to write believable, but they were never believable--they are.

3. Dick Clark is alive and almost looks younger than me. But he's not on local TV news.

2. David Letterman is married, has a child and continues to do the Top 10 every night on his show.

1. Cable TV still isn't worth watching.

Amusing Ourselves into Decline

Although my first novel is a romance (which may surprise those of you who know me), bigger issues preoccupy me more often than not. I may be writing escapist entertainment, but my conscience zeros in on issues of social justice, politics and culture. An article recently in the Sunday NYT affected me. The Elusive Big Idea describes the decline of "thinking." We don't want to think about much of anything. The author, Neil Gabler, a big thinker himself, blames in part the unprecedented amount of information available to us that pushes out all the important ideas. We happily (for the most part) ride this info glut and look for the cheap thrill. We find new gadgets or games or Lindsey Lohans to distract us. I find Twitter is a huge, useless distraction. What we don't care about are big ideas that shape our lives (movements and cultural shifts and science). We may indeed be amusing ourselves to death (ever heard of Neil Postman?), and I believe we are at the very least amusing ourselves into decline.

But besides the info glut, we do it by consuming, too. Fewer are able to spend with much gusto in this economy, but consumerism pushes us to work more to maintain our hard-earned leisure time and the stuff that fills it. I do it, too. I love to eat out and buy books and rent movies and drink wine and have a barista make me a coffee once and a while. Yours may be shoes or hot rods. Feeling like we need the new SmartPhone also puts a burden on us to work harder and skip or skim over the rest, and I mean here, the world. Who actually likes bad news? Paradigm shifts? Politicians? Sure, if they are your brother- or sister-in-law. Otherwise, tuning them out is just fine. Same with people with big ideas. The majority would say: "Sorry, Mr. Gabler. Nice ideas, but let me get back to my xBox." It's easy to relax with WiFi. Recharge the old iPad. Open up Facebook. Fire up the Kindle. And, while they're at it, read a romance.