It's a Life

So it's back to The Beast. I've missed you while I was away. But I've been troubled by a niggling thought that's been clamoring for expression. It feels heretical to share my forbidden musings, but I'm going to Hell anyway for suggesting that Mac and Barrons have a dysfunctional relationship, so here goes nothing: there's something rotten J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood world. Now I get that no one is perfect. And I also understand that Ms. Ward purposefully built her world in such a way that evolution was not only desirable, but inevitable as part of the story progression of the books.  Characters evolve, so why not worlds?  Thus, the misogyny of the Chosen (an elite class of women) being basically brood mares and feeding troughs for the Black Dagger Brotherhood has given way to newly unfettered women who are now free to explore and express their individuality. This is definitely progress and has made for an excellent story arc, so it's a win-win all around.  But there is another class of people in the Black Dagger Brotherhood world that has not been given any sort of emancipation proclamation. These are the "Doggen," the servant class of the BDB world, the butlers and cooks and maids whose existence allows the Brothers and their women to gallivant all over the place without worrying about little annoyances like cooking, cleaning and laundry. In this world, there is no such thing as a resentful housekeeper starching one's panties or boxers because they are unhappy with their lot in life. Not for the Brothers. Nope, these guys (and gals) have Doggen, a special sub-race of individuals who live to serve, and who experience deep fulfillment from vacuuming. Really?!  Hasn't Ms. Ward read The Remains of the Day?  Won't Fritz (the main Doggen dude in the BDB books) figure out that he's wasted his life playing chauffeur, butler, chief cook and bottle washer to a group of foul-mouthed warriors who should be picking up their own underwear (except most of them go commando)? Apparently not. And that, of course, got me to wondering whether such people actually exist outside of the pages of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Perhaps they do exist, and maybe they are even happy, despite my elitist bias. After all, it's a life. And a life is more than some of us have. 

I have a close friend who has a stepdaughter who is a couple beers short of a six-pack. By all accounts, she is a sweet, immature, and indifferently lazy girl who should be a woman but no one taught her how. It's not all her fault, but, like the rest of us, there comes a time to stop blaming mommy for all of our problems and take responsibility for our own actions.  Her time has come. And then some. My friend, her stepmother, and my friend's husband, the girl's father, worry about her, naturally (the mother is dead, poor thing). As parents, they want their child to have a life. Preferably, a life that exceeds their own (there are parents who resist the natural desire that our children should do better than we do, but that is the subject of another blog). But these particular parents realize, realistically, that the daughter/stepdaughter can aspire only to a small life—and they are hoping she gets even that far.  So they are hoping for an equally limited, but nice and decent man, maybe a kid or two, Friday night trips to the local bar, and Monday night football. Because, after all, it's a life. Not for me, mind you, but a life nonetheless.

Like the Doggen of the BDB world, there are those who enjoy knowing where the lines are so that they can color inside of them. The idea gives me hives, but I've had many years to come to terms with the fact that not everyone is like me, which is good news for the rest of you.  And not everyone would want my idea of what makes life worth living (which includes lots of time to read my beloved books and write about them).  My mother, for example, wasn't much for reading and writing, and she was never happier than when she could cook for someone, wait on them hand and foot, and clean up afterwards. I'd rather shoot heroin with dirty needles, but hey, for her, it was a life.

I know someone else who has painstakingly carved out a life for herself by spacing out her errands over the course of a day or a week, and taking a great deal of time to plan out every move, research every decision, and analyze every option eight ways from Sunday (where does that saying come from?  I've always wondered… but I digress). The progress of her days would make me yearn for the excitement of my annual gynecological visit, but she is rather content. It's a life. Lived on her terms and no one else's. 

Part of the reason for the lives we choose to lead is what we know. If we don't know any better, we won't know what we're missing. Part of it is fear—fear of risk, fear of the unknown, fear of being completely powerless and out of control. Life for the Doggen is very safe and very predictable. This appeals to many of us. And for many of us, that safety and predictability is worth the opportunity cost of spontaneity and serendipity. Not for me, but different strokes for different folks.

So maybe my apostasy was premature. Maybe I don't need to be burned at the stake as a heretical witch. Perhaps I was wrong about Ms. Ward being wrong.  Maybe, once again, there is plenty of truth in fantasy and Doggen in reality are as plentiful as dogs—those who enjoy knowing their place in the word and how they relate to others. And as long as there is an escape hatch if we absolutely, positively have to get the hell out of Dodge, it's probably just fine for all. In the interim, it's a life.

Notes from Underground

So I have to share. And crow. And toot my own horn. Just a bit. I just learned that an interview I gave for a podcast is now available. The podcast is called "Journal Talk," and it's hosted by a cool guy named Nathan Ohren. My interview can be found here, and I also encourage you to take a listen to some of his other interviews.  It's a great show, and Nathan's mission to help people explore the benefits and joys of journaling is engaging and worthwhile. In the interview, I talk about this blog as a form of public journaling, which it is. In this space, I ruminate on various topics that tickle my fancy, and I also work through my fears and anxieties, not to mention sharing my triumphs and joy. You guys get it all. And while I might pull my punches a very little bit out of respect to my family, really I just try to tone down my language (remember how much I love my potty mouth?) and perhaps leave out excessive references to my misspent youth. But beyond that, I'm digging for gold in the recesses of my mind, and dredging up these notes from the underground of my unconscious (see how useful that liberal arts education was… those literary allusions don’t come from nothin’).

And, in addition to journaling to excavate my unconscious, I also use this space to expand my horizons and perform thought experiments that challenge my everyday thinking. I believe this is an excellent use of journal writing—to explore the “what ifs” and “what might have beens” or that which could still be in a benevolent version of my future. I can take things apart and put them back together in different and perhaps more interesting ways. I can reframe a past experience and transform a painful memory into a critical lesson for later success. I can dig myself out of a deep chasm of denial through my writing, and realize what others may already know about something from my past or present about which was fooling myself. Like perming the front section of my hair to look like Joan Jett or Pat Benetar, but actually… well… not so much… in truth, I looked more like a poodle with a high top.

The other thing I get to explore in this blog is its topic—the truth I find revealed in fantasy novels of the paranormal and urban varieties. Through this public journal I can inquire into the realities of being human through characters who are not. I've examined aging and mortality through the lens of fictional folks who neither get older nor die. I've been able to contemplate long-term romantic and platonic relationships in the context of those that have lasted or will last hundreds if not thousands of years. There is nothing like hyperbole to spotlight its right-sized cousin, reality.

For me, fantasy fiction is a textbook for life, a handbook of suggestions and guidelines for how to live my best life—which I long to share with all of you. I prefer these stories as the raw material for the ultimate self-help guide that I'm writing so that I can learn who's who and what's what. Where else is it so much fun to work through my commitment issues, and my mommy issues and my daddy dilemmas?  I use this space to contemplate my navel based on the interesting themes I find in my fantasy fiction. I doubt JR Ward knows that I rely on her for insight into addiction, or that Kevin Hearne knows that he is my favorite therapist. Robyn Peterman makes me feel a lot less isolated when I think of my mother as being literally from Hell, ‘cause all of her heroines' mommies are of the dearest variety, which helps me know I'm not alone.

And then there is the endless joy I get from living in worlds where men do what we want them to do! When I read and write about these fantasy books written by women (mostly—apologies to Mr. Hearne and Mr. Hartness), for women and about women, I'm inspired and reassured that my personal fantasies are happily shared by many others. Women want alpha males who make love like thousand-year-old, drop dead gorgeous vampires who know a thing or two about pleasing women, but who aren't too overbearing outside of the bedroom. We can dream, can't we?

Through the discipline of writing and posting this blog twice a week, week in and week out, I've been able to grow and expand -- examine and probe and question. I've also been able to engage with you, beloved reader, and know with certainty, through your voices, that I'm in good company with my neuroses.

So, let me encourage you to journal and reap the many benefits that I've received through my private pages and my very public postings. As Nathan Ohren says, we should all write for life, and journal for passion, clarity and purpose. It really works for me – I hope that you’ll give it a go and see if it works for you… or at least sample Ohren’s podcast here.

Back to the Future

So I'm back to reading The Beast by J.R. Ward, after my brief sojourn through Katie MacAlister's short stories.  I can find blog topics in J.R. Ward's books faster than my kids can collect Pokemon with their phones.  I worry they will get run over while playing Pokemon Go and not paying attention to reality. And while it may seem like I'm digressing (as I often do), I'm not. Today's topic is all about anticipation (mostly of bad things happening—which is the definition of “worry”), and the feelings of anxiety we experience when we contemplate catastrophe. In The Beast, Mary contemplates the wound that almost took her mate, and wonders what would have happened if she hadn't been inspired to intervene as she had. She speculates that, "Sometimes the near miss is almost as traumatic as the impact." True statement. But, despite the positive outcome, her fear lingers.  I think that this is true for most of us. We keep seeing the traumatic event in our mind's eye over and over, thinking about what might have been in the dystopian alternative. Instead of the events in question being played repeatedly in our heads, though, this particular movie gets projected over our entire future lives, tarring it all with the same brush of stomach-churning dread. When one calamity has been avoided, we often look for other bullets to dodge.

When we've suffered a near miss, we view the world as a dangerous place. Despite having deflected disaster, we become convinced there is one around every corner.  This is the companion ticket to waiting for the other shoe to drop. When things are going well, we wait for the hammer to fall. The same thing happens when we experience a near miss. Maybe somewhere in our brains we think that if the lightning misses us once, it will probably strike the next time.

It's interesting to observe the almost universal conviction that random bad things are so much more likely to happen than arbitrary good things. We never "worry" that we'll win the lottery a second time. But many of us, myself included, obsess about having a second car accident, or getting the flu on our vacation, or our periods when we have an important sports competition (well, I'm guessing men don't worry so much about that one).

A near miss colors all future events with a dark cloud of pessimism. It's like we've used up all our luck, now we're cruising on fumes. We figure the good stuff will never reign down on us again, and next time the impact will be twice as bad as it would have been if we had experienced the trauma for real. After all, someone is out there keeping score, and making sure we don't get too much of what makes us happy, right?  Wrong. But we think like this anyway. Or maybe I'm just a freak.  Hard to know sometimes.

But the most significant crime committed by our brains after a near miss is that we cease living in the present moment. Just as the endless loop I discussed before kept us mired in the muddy rut of our pasts, the near miss propels us like Christopher Lloyd's DeLorean back to the future. We aren't moving forward into prospective possibilities, but back to the near death event that now overshadows the entire wreckage of our future.  The one place we aren't hanging out is in the moment, where the bad thing never happened (remember, almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades). The future isn't here yet and isn't any more likely to be bad than it was before the near miss. But our brains just can’t compute that.

Having said all of that, trauma is trauma, and apparently the mind can't always distinguish between truth (we're all okay, the sky didn't fall) and fantasy (where Henny Penny is running around like the chicken she is—although with her head still firmly attached).  And we need to honor our reality. So if fear and being like Eeyore is what we're about, then that is where we are.  The thing to do at this point is acknowledge reality … so that we can change it. So many of us, like Mary, discount our feelings because our life sentence was commuted to parole. We think to ourselves that we have no legitimate reason to be upset, so we convince ourselves we're not. And this works for you how? Yea, not for me either.

So let's come back to the present instead of back to the future or hanging out in the past.  Time travel never takes us where we want to be, and there is so much opportunity to screw everything up. We have no guarantees of tomorrow, so squandering today on a potentially empty promise is more traumatic than the near miss or the impact ever could have been.

With My Body

I took a break from reading The Beast by J.R. Ward to enjoy a short offering from Katie MacAlister, The Perils of Effrijim. This short story features Jim, a sixth class demon who is the servant/sidekick of Aisling Grey, the heroine of many a dragon shifter book by Ms. MacAlister. Jim is a hoot, and I enjoyed my foray into his world immensely. Jim is forced to surrender his preferred form as a large, drooling Newfoundland dog and take on the shape of a human male, which he hates (something to do with a reduction in the size of his "package," about which he is obsessed—like so many males). And this forced human embodiment got me to thinking about being in our bodies, and what that means to us. Or maybe just to me. But it's a topic that occupies my thoughts rather a lot these days. To my mind, we are embodied spirits with an infinite yearning for the part of ourselves that is divine to reunite with the rest of the infinite. But, while we are here, in this place on the space-time continuum, we inhabit bodies. This inhabiting comes with the limits of our physical beings, and also the incredible perks of being in a body. Remember all of those science fiction characters who exist as balls of energy or as human brains in glass jars? Even though they are "evolved," and presumably beyond the dictates of the flesh, they want to find bodies to inhabit. Why? Because being in a body comes with serious advantages. Like eating chocolate covered strawberries. And touching our beloved's bodies with love (and lust, who are we kidding?). And being able to smell the delicious scent of a baby's head. You can't do those things without the right equipment, like mouths, fingers and noses. Sensual perception is intensely pleasurable.

So while it's annoying to have to deal with the perpetual care and feeding needed to keep these miraculous machines running effectively (and some of us do a better job than others), it's still amazing that we can do all we can do and experience all that we can experience.

Except when it's not. Like when we take it for granted. Or when we focus on the difficulties of our physical limitations. Or when we are not appropriately appreciative. Then, being embodied is not such a great deal. Given the amount of body bashing we do, an objective observer might conclude that we actually hate our bodies. Just this afternoon, for example, I was berating my body for continuing to grow—I'm not enjoying the extra layer of padding that seems determined to gather around my middle like metal shavings to a magnet. I would really like to demagnetize myself and attract less fat to my midsection. But concentrating on my love handles and my spare tire misses the point that my magnificent body produced two human lives, allows me to practice yoga, which I love, hike up hills to see beautiful mountain lakes and does most of what I ask of it. Pretty remarkable considering the abuse to which I subjected it for so long, not to mention my ever-advancing age. Decrepitude cannot be far in the future, but for today, all systems are go. No need to break out the emergency dilithium crystals to get that extra boost of power quite yet. Stand down, Scotty.  At least for now (I'm on a Star Trek kick in anticipation of the movie coming out shortly—and I have eyes to watch and ears to listen. Yay!).

Our bodies are wise. They house every experience we've had in each and every cell. If we remember how to do it, we can draw out our somatic knowing, our bodies' knowledge, to help guide us to exactly where we need to be. You know those "gut feelings"?  We should listen to those. They are almost always right. When we feel our feelings and listen to our bodies, we tend to do the right thing and make good choices.

But what about when we are cut off from our bodies? What happens when that whole mind-body connection has some serious static on the line and we're missing every third word of the conversation? Bad things happen when we are bifurcated between our necks and the rest of us. My experience has been with living entirely too much in my head. But the opposite problem exists as well—those who are slaves to their bodies without a lot of cognitive direction. The goal, of course, is integration. Easier said than done, at least for me.

Being disconnected, though, is not as bad as being in a state of armed conflict with our bodies. Instead of our bodies being wonderlands, they become battlefields, where wars on cancer, cardiovascular disease and obesity are routinely waged. This is tragic, actually, because a house divided truly cannot stand. We are our bodies and our bodies are us.

And then there is the ultimate consequence of being embodied: death. The whole shuffling off this mortal coil business. The final frontier. That part kind of sucks, admittedly. As does the whole aging process, for the most part.

But that is the price we pay for being able to inhabits these marvels of complexity that are our human bodies. As a demon, Jim doesn't have these issues, and his preference for his dog form is baffling to me, but, hey, to each his own. Given the opportunity for a human body that didn't age, decay or break down, I'm pretty sure I'd take it. Although my dogs lead pretty sweet lives, come to think of it…

I’m grateful for my body in all its imperfections. So I'll practice groundedness—the effort to be and remain in my body, rather than letting my mind drift away to the far reaches of the galaxy—or at least where Ms. McAlister and Ms. Ward take me.

All I Need Is a Miracle

I'm just getting into JR Ward's newest Black Dagger Brotherhood novel, The Beast. It's as awesome as I knew it would be. I'm reading slowly so I can savor, savor, savor it. And because I know I'll find inspiration for multiple blogs from this one gold mine of a book, you, dear reader, will be with me every step of the way. For this first Beast-ly blog, I'm thinking about miracles—what they are, where they come from and what they look like. I'm trying to decide if I agree with Albert Einstein. Supposedly, our favorite genius (next to Dr. Seuss, of course), said that there are only two ways to live our lives: One is as though nothing is a miracle; the other is as if everything is. Mostly, I try to align myself with good old Albert. Because he was so smart, ya know. And I think I agree with him. And I also think that miracles abound, so I guess I fall into the second category of people. Which is a lovely way to live.

In The Beast, our favorite vampire-turned-dragon, Rhage, takes a mortal wound during an opening scene battle. As he lays dying, his mate, Mary, is inspired to direct the dragon to heal his host, who will surely die without intervention of the miraculous variety. Mary has no clue where the idea came from, and no one is sure it will work, but it does. Certifiable miracle, coming right up.

Clearly, saving someone from certain death qualifies as a miracle. I've actually seen one of those happen, up close and personal. Many years ago, my husband's mother was diagnosed with a lung tumor.  In addition to following conventional medical advice, which included rib-cracking surgery to remove the mass, my mother-in-law also engaged spiritual healers and energy medicine practitioners to work on her behalf. When the doctors spread her ribs (which is painful to even think about!), the tumor was nowhere to be found. The medical professionals were baffled, but my mother-in-law was not; she'd been granted a miracle based on the efforts of those who engaged a higher power to heal her. And while she would have been happy to be spared the difficult surgery, she was profoundly grateful for the miraculous outcome, as were we all.

Spontaneous healing definitely counts toward the saints’ yardstick for miracles. And there are other types of dramatic events that feel miraculous in the moment, and seem to conform to that metric with the perspective of hindsight. The end of temptation and addiction makes the cut. As an example, I smoked my first cigarette when I was fifteen years old. I was with one of my best friends and we smoked menthol cigarettes and thought we were too cool for school. I almost threw up that first time, and thought it was disgusting. That didn't stop me from trying again and rapidly getting hooked—line and sinker. My friend was more intelligent than I, and she decided that smoking wasn't for her (good thing too, because she is asthmatic; I never said we were smart teenagers). Anyway, fast-forward twelve years and I'm up to a pack/pack and a half a day habit, which was both expensive and unhealthy. And then one day, while sitting in a random hotel room in Vermont shortly after Christmas, it hit me: my smoking was a terrible habit and I needed to quit. Right then. And I took an entire carton of cigarettes—which didn't cost the arm and leg that cigs do now, but still represented a significant dent in my weekly budget— and I flushed every one of those cancer sticks down the hotel toilet. I have never taken a single drag since. Not one. That was definitely a miracle. I didn't do that on my own. Three months later, I met my now-husband, who has noted on several occasions that he would never have dated me if I'd been a smoker when we met.

Coincidence? I think not. Miracle?  I think so. Which simply validates another quotation attributed to Albert. E., that coincidences are God's way of staying anonymous. What better way to hide the everyday miracles that occur than to shroud them in the guise of coincidence?  But what if we all believed, as I do, that there are no coincidences? That everything happens for a reason and the way it's supposed to? Well, I mostly believe that, at least on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Kind of like the rules of Fizzbin.

And what about the miracle of my muse?  Surely the creative inspiration I receive from my favorite, if finicky, goddess, is nothing short of a miracle every time I sit down to put my thumbs to my phone's keyboard to write this blog (yep, I'm still doing that, strangely enough). As I've written about before, half the time I have no idea what's going to come out on the page or the screen. It just flows out of me, like ketchup that's been thumped on the bottom of the bottle. If that isn't a miracle, I don't know what is.

Other miracles include the fluidity with which obstacle disappear when we've found and followed the right path. That is such a great experience, to literally go with the flow of our lives, swimming downstream with ease and joy. I would call that an everyday miracle, but I can't claim that happens to me with sufficient regularity to label it a quotidian occurrence. But maybe someday I'll learn to live like that. That would be a miracle.

And I won’t give up. One of my favorite adages is, "Don't leave before the miracle happens."  It could be right around the corner. Or around the block. Or perhaps a greater distance away. But I know it's coming.  The miracle always does. And, if we look closely, pay attention, and inhabit the present moment , miracles proliferate. And far from being found only in fantasy novels like The Beast, we can live in truth and still find much that is miraculous. As the late, great Wayne Dyer said, "I am realistic—I expect miracles."  I'm down with that. Maybe Albert and Wayne are discussing it up in heaven and sprinkling all of us with some miracle dust. Every day.

High Maintenance

I just finished Darynda Jones's The Curse of Tenth Grave. Ms. Jones, please, please write faster. I'm dying to know what happens to Charley Davidson, Grim Reaper, god, and all around bad-ass. Charley has taken her place in the pantheon of extraordinary heroines, whose ranks include Anita Blake, Merry Gentry, Jane Yellowrock, Mercy Thompson, Sookie Stackhouse and, of course, Mac Lane. These women rock. Charley is a bit different. She's highly irreverent. She's also got a severe case of ADHD. And, as she described one of her clients, Charley has "turned high maintenance into an extreme sport." I love that woman. Charley has the attention span of a tse-tse fly. She is easily distracted by sparkly things, good-looking men, and the smell and taste of delicious foods. I can so relate. But the aspect of her personality that I find the most interesting is how difficult it is to keep up with her. While she is highly entertaining about it, she is incredibly demanding and very particular in her standards, which are a bit strange. These include a need to name every inanimate object she encounters—her car is "Misery" her shower is "George" and she named her breasts "Danger" and "Will Robinson." Enough said. She is a poster child for "high maintenance."  I’m not criticizing her for this. In fact, I think being high maintenance is highly underrated.

I have been called high maintenance my whole life. At first, I felt bad about it. Who was I to demand more than my ‘fair’ – according to some - share of attention, help, support, and, most significantly, accommodation?  Why should there be special exceptions for moi?  Why don't the rules apply to yours truly?  When asked like that, it does seem unfair, I must admit. Shouldn't rules apply to all equally without regard to race, religion, gender identity, sexuality, or fashion sense (muffin top, camel toe and plumber's crack would be outlawed in my world, but unfortunately, no one asked me)? I totally get that. Except I don't.

So many rules, social mores and others' expectations are just stupid. Further, while we should all be considered equal under the law and in terms of the value of our fragile and precious human lives, we're not all equal, and that is called reality. Some of us got extra helpings of brains, brawn, serenity, beauty, determination and perseverance, curiosity, resilience, imagination, etc., etc., etc.  And some of us got fucked in these and other ‘departments’.   Perhaps we're spinning on a karmic wheel, and if we got additional servings of the good stuff in this life, maybe it was to make up for the fact that we got hosed in another one. And maybe if the cards we were dealt in this incarnation were less than wonderful, it's because we were so incredibly blessed in previous stints on this plane. I have no idea. But the facts remain; we're not all the same. We are glorious in our individuality, and there is no way to aggregate us by any of the aforementioned categories; we need to be judged on our own merits.

And that is where the high maintenance aspect comes in. High maintenance requires extra accommodation. It requires putting up with, tolerating, accepting and actively condoning behavior that is outside the norm. In Charley's case, her friends and loved ones take her as she is, which includes her ridiculous naming habit, coffee addiction, and her propensity to get herself into many a sticky wicket. She gets away with lying, cheating, stealing and the occasional assault and battery, all in the name of serving the greater good. There is a great deal of relative moralism in Charley's world. And it's acceptable because of what she accomplishes with her shenanigans.

Many years ago I received an award for being in my job as a defense contractor for five years (no, not for doing a good job, just for doing it. For not getting fired or quitting the job. This says a lot about the state of our society, but that is the topic of another post). One of my party favors was a gift for my husband from my boss—a "high maintenance survival kit"—because, you know, I'm so high maintenance. And the whole thing would have been mean-spirited except for the point my boss was trying to make: that while I required tremendous levels of accommodation, time and attention, it was all worth it because I delivered so much professionally. I'm pretty sure my husband would agree with this equation in the personal realm too (at least I hope so). So, high maintenance, high performance.

And that gets us to the crux of the issue:  the rules were developed for the everyone, yes. But rules can be totally too constricting when we are trying to do extraordinary things. I'm not talking about rules like the Ten Commandments or the Golden one. And I get that chaos would reign if everyone had the kind of blatant disregard for law and order that I can sometimes have. I've always found that it is so much better to ask for forgiveness than permission.  I've also never seen a rule that didn't have an exception. Those of us who are of the high maintenance persuasion are going to make omelets. So, we're going to break a few eggs. And we're going to keep asking for accommodation. Of course, there are those who are high maintenance without merit, which is just bad. But we're talking about those of us who use our powers for good, not evil. Like Charley who breaks the rules –for the good of us all.

I Am an Island

In my last post, I explained why I am a rock. In this continuation, I am an island. I've always loved Paul and Art.  More than they love each other, apparently. But, onto the topic at hand; I'm still thinking about what it means to be self-sufficient and whether it's really all it's cracked up to be. My thoughts were inspired by Robyn Peterman's latest awesome book, Fashionably Hotter Than Hell, which features a protagonist (written in the first person point of view of a man—a different, fun twist ) who comes to realize that going it alone is not only lonely, but doesn't get him where he wants to be. Us either. In my last post, I addressed the underlying mistrust that motivates most of our unwillingness to lean on others for help and support. We figure no one can do it as well as we can, so we'll do it ourselves – the right way, thank you very much. It turns out that this strategy is not so good, as most things in life really do take a village to accomplish successfully. So many of us are specialists these days, that a group effort is mandatory for most general activities, both personal and professional. But there is another aspect to the death grip we keep on our self-reliance: we hate to feel dependent, and most of us value our personal freedom more than anything.  We are the masters of our own ship, and while we may take various elements, including others' opinions, into account, in the end, when it comes to making our own decisions, the buck stops solely with us.

The crux of the issue is that none of us wants to feel dependent; we want to avoid the example of the poor, pathetic souls who are still attached to their mothers' tits—at age 40. You know, the ones living in their parents' basement, waiting for mom to cook dinner, pick out their clothes and wipe their butts. Or the other type of poor pathetic creatures who've sold their minds and their souls to the televangelist with the great hair and the boyfriend on the side. You know who I'm talking about. We don't want to be dependent like they are.

And these are valid concerns. Unhealthy types of dependence are creepy. On the other hand, the illusion of independence that most of us maintain is about as real as the aliens in Area 51. We're not independent, and that is that. Let me count the ways we are all kinds of dependent: first, let's start with physical dependence. I don't know about you, but my skill set revolves around mental activities like reading and writing and maybe analyzing things I read about (like this blog). My list of accomplishments does not include building shelters, catching my own food or finding clean water. When the apocalypse comes, I'm hoping to be among the first to go. I would fare badly in a world without electricity, Whole Foods and cars. Perhaps you're different, but if not, we're all dependent on the grid, cell phone towers, and the people who grow, kill, manufacture and distribute our food, not to mention Amazon, without which life would hardly be worth living.

So, we're not so self-sufficient in the physical realm. How about our mental function?  Well, if you think you're not being manipulated by the marketing industry, think again. We're all Stepford Wives, being told what to buy and where to buy it by the folks who rule the world through commerce and advertising. At this moment, I'm clothed head to toe in Lululemon athletic gear, and both my kids are making Under Armor rich. My wallet is clearly being controlled by Madison Avenue. The media influences the information we get to form our opinions. A handful of celebrity doctors, financial gurus, and lawyers heavily influence our opinions. Oh, and the NRA, apparently. So, how much are we really in business for ourselves, cognitively?  We've all drunk the Kool-Aid. And while it's true that some may lead enlightened lives, those beacons are few and far between and don't have nearly as much influence as, say, Oprah.

And then there's our compulsions, addictions and habitual stupidity. Two thirds of Americans eat too much. Many of us drink excessively. We watch too much TV and spend more time with our electronic devices than we do with our kids (and vice versa). In short, we are anything but self-reliant. We all have our favorite versions of our mother's little helpers. And we're highly dependent on them to keep us on an even keel—or at least prevent us from going under for the third time.

So what does all of this mean?  It means we're hypocrites. And that’s without a discussion about our lack of independence from what other people say about us and do to us, and how much that upsets our apple carts. We hand over our personal freedom without so much as a second thought when it comes to falling into a depression when we learn others are talking behind our backs. Or we dive into self-righteous anger and vengeance fantasies when someone does us wrong to our faces. That's just another form of personal bondage.

But Heaven help us when someone suggests we should surrender ourselves to something bigger than we are. Oh, Nelly, that just won't do at all, now will it?  No way, no how, am I going to try to align my will with that of the Universe, or God or whatever Higher Power we subscribe to. Nope, not gonna happen, cause I'm an independent thinker, a self-sufficient entity. A rock. An island. I touch no one and no one touches me. I'm the head honcho of my own enterprise, and I'm not talking about NC-1701.

So let's just say "no."  Let's allow others in to help. Let's open ourselves to something bigger than we are and try to serve the highest good in all that we do, not just look out for number one (and perhaps the additional few who we love). Let's admit our deep dependence and lack of personal freedom and get over ourselves. Simon and Garfunkel were wrong, and John Donne was right. No one is an island, we're all part of a larger whole.  We're all living on Pangaea. Best to start acting like it.

I Am a Rock

Once upon a time on a winter's day in a deep and dark December... Nah, I'm just joshing with you. What I really meant to say was… once upon a time in the fertile imagination of the inimitable Robyn Peterman, I was inspired to think about the philosophy of self-sufficiency. I'm reading the latest in the Hot Damned series, Fashionably Hotter Than Hell. I love Robyn Peterman's potty-mouthed, Prada-loving heroines, and her ‘redonkulous’ plot lines. They’re silly, fun and fabulous. I love a book that can make me laugh out loud and all of Ms. Peterman's novels always fit that bill. Today, I'm thinking about Heathcliff and Raquel (silly names, true, but hey, they beat some of the other stupendously stupid titles and names in this genre). In the beginning of the book, Heathcliff works to convince himself he doesn't need a mate. Then, later he works to convince his mate that she does need him. In this iteration of a common plot trope, Heathcliff is called upon to weigh the relative merits and disadvantages of being self-reliant. Shockingly—to no one—he comes to realize that we all need a little help from our friends, particularly if we want our HEA. I understand. For me, self-sufficiency is a source of pride and deep comfort. I subscribe to the philosophy that if I want something done, it's always best do it myself. Particularly if I want it done right—meaning to my standards and specifications.

In Fashionably Hotter than Hell, Heathcliff tries to convince himself that he doesn't need any help, and that he's content to be alone. This is, of course, rubbish, and it's easy to see the stupidity of that stance when someone else is assuming the position.  But when it's me telling myself I can and should go it alone, it seems perfectly reasonable, logical and even noble. The level of my own denial can be stunning.

What motivates us to make like Simon and Garfunkel and desire island status? Probably lots of factors that would give Freud a run for his money, but the major driver here is lack of trust. Lack of trust in our fellow humans, and lack of trust that something greater than ourselves will catch us if we stumble or fall.

Our mistrust in other people leads to an unfortunate tendency to identify out of the rest of humanity. We can't trust others to have our backs or to provide effective help and support because most people are not like us—not as smart, or capable or competent. This is a (highly unattractive and regrettable) flaw in my own personality: I believe, mostly, that my way is the right way and everyone else's way is inferior. I believe this bullshit despite the fact that my way got me into some very dark places in life.  And yet, I've remained convinced that in almost all circumstances, I know best and I can't trust anyone as much as I can trust myself.  

Here's a sneak peak at the last page of that particular book—things don't work out so well for our distrustful heroine. She gets smacked upside the head by life and finally, after years of believing her own publicity, realizes that self-sufficiency is not only lonely, but also…wait for it… ineffective. It doesn't get her what she wants, and it doesn't ensure everything stays under control. Self-sufficiency, like control, is a chimera. It doesn't exist and we're fools to pursue it. But that's me, a fool for pride. Kind of sucks, truth be told.

When we distrust others, we make them lesser. Others become those who we dominate, not those to whom we open ourselves. We do this because we believe we are unique and better. But it's not true. At our cores, all humans want the same thing: to be loved for who and what we are. My struggles are your struggles, and your struggles are mine. We are not so unalike. We are all in this together and when we recognize that truth we can have compassion for each other, and for ourselves. We can trust each other. We can identify in instead of identifying out.

Eventually, Heathcliff comes to this realization too and avails himself of the help that he's offered. I am also beginning to recognize this truth. Slowly. But there is another aspect to this awakening process that involves our concepts of dependence and personal freedom. But alas, dear reader, my time on this page is done, for now. So, I'm going to try something new and continue this train of thought in my next post on July 8, entitled "I Am an Island."  So, please tune in for part two.  Same Bat Time, same Bat Station.

Hope Is Not the Thing with Feathers

I've written about hope several times. It's a topic that fascinates me, and one I contemplate often. I've written about the relationship between hope and fear, where, according to Karen Marie Moning, hope strengthens and fear kills. I've also written about the two faces of hope—the uplifting one and the one that crushes us under the weight of disappointed expectations. But Gena Showalter gives us a whole new spin on an old topic. In her Lords of the Underworld series, as introduced in The Darkest Pleasure, she depicts Hope as one of the scourges of humanity, unleashed from Pandora's Box, and hosted by the most evil of the Lords of the Underworld.  Hope is a demon who, "purposely raises expectations, makes people believe there's a potential for a miracle, and then he crushes those expectations, leaving nothing but ash and despair."  Wow. Harsh. 

In case you don't remember your Greek mythology or your nineteenth century poetry, we'll have a brief refresher on both. In the myth, Zeus gave Pandora a beautiful box (jar, actually, but it was mistranslated in the 1600s), as a wedding gift, and told her not to open it. But, like Lot's wife, Pandora couldn't keep her curiosity in check, so she opened the box, and unleashed death, destruction, disease, misery and despair on an unsuspecting world. Pandora swiftly closed the box, keeping Hope inside, as an antidote to the demons she'd released.  Now, this whole story doesn't make a whole lot of sense, as releasing the demons loosed them in the world to plague humanity, but keeping Hope in the box preserved this slight amelioration for all. Confusing. But the gist is clear:  that in the face of terrible things, where there is life, there is hope, and where there is hope, not all is lost. Check.

With respect to the poetry lesson, Emily Dickinson taught us that "Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul/And sings the tune without the words/And never stops at all."  There's more, and it's lovely, but you get the idea. Hope is a light and precious thing that elevates us all. Or so good old Emily wrote in the late 1800s. Check, check.

But what if they are all wrong, and Gena Showalter is right?  What if Hope is a demon from hell, discharged into the world to create the most evil of all? A particularly disturbing scene from the Game of Thrones series comes to mind. Theon, who has betrayed his foster family, the Starks, and committed atrocities beyond imagination, has himself bee captured and tortured. One night, a savior comes to rescue Theon, and lead him away from the house of horrors where he's been living. So Theon and his deliverer escape and ride for a couple of days. Theon is beyond relieved and grateful. He is full of hope that his escape will be successful and he will go home. But it turns out that his rescuer is none other than Theon's tormentor, who has posed as his rescuer to twist the knife more intensely. When Theon realizes that they've ridden back to the house of horrors and that his "rescuer" is his torturer, his spirit is irreparably broken. Which was the point of the exercise. It is so much more effective to crush someone's spirit after you've falsely raised their hopes. In this case, hope was an exceptionally effective weapon of total destruction.

Hope is a beautiful thing. Until it's dashed. Until we can no longer reasonably hope for anything good, when we cannot do anything but despair. Then Hope is the spawn of Satan, worse than cynicism, or being jaded or have low standards and lower prospects. Someone recently suggested to me that I'm afraid to become too attached to any desire, which is why I'm having trouble owning my shit and doing what needs to be done.  My friend said that I was taught at a young age that when I hoped for good things, those hopes were dashed so thoroughly that I lost my ability to hope. It's an interesting idea. And I hope it's not true.

My mother and I had a troubled relationship, as you know. To say the least, she did not encourage my hopes and dreams.  As a result, because I'm not an idiot, I learned quickly to keep my dreams to myself, and then to abandon them altogether. It was too painful to want things that were just for me, just for my joy and never get them.

But leaving aside my sad upbringing, it's also interesting to ponder the supposed sign on the gates of Hell, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."  What if that were wrong, and Satan uses the hope of salvation from the fires of Hades to torment sinners all the more. Then Gena Showalter would be right.

But I'm not ready to subscribe to Gena Showalter's view of the universe. I think we need hope, even if our hopes are thwarted. Hope gives us some time of happiness while we didn't think the worst. That might not, in the end, be worth the pain of disappointed dreams, but often it is. It's like Pascal's Wager:  God may or may not exist, but I can derive such comfort from believing while I'm on this mortal coil, that I might as well believe. If, when I die, it turns out I was wrong, well, then, that might suck, but I would have had the comfort while I lived. And if I were right, and this God cares about such things as belief, then I will have made points with the big guy—always a good thing. So, I'll continue to root for Karen Marie Moning and believe that hope strengthens and fear kills. I still like Gena Showalter's fantasy books, and her interesting premise. But I'm going to hope that in truth, she's wrong. 

The Blame Game

I'm still enjoying Gena Showalter's Lords of the Underworld series (and will be for quite a while, as there are at least 14 books, maybe more—this gal can write!). Today's contemplation comes from The Darkest Pleasure, although my thought experiment reflects the premise of the entire series, so it is not specific to any one story. In the Lords' world, Hunters seek to capture the Lords, enslave their demons back into Pandora's Box, and rid the world once and for all of Pain, Misery, Disease, Death, Violence, etc. The Hunters believe that once the demons are no longer able to influence the world, then all will be utopia. I first thought that this particular aspect of the backstory was a little weak, because, really, who would believe something so stupid and patently false?  But then I started thinking about the world today and even those in my own household, not to mention my family of origin. And while I cannot personally relate to playing the Blame Game, and making others responsible for my actions and my life, apparently, there are a lot of folks who can. Donald Trump supporters come to mind. Oops, did I say that out loud? In the book, Reyes and Danika have an exchange about the Hunters and the philosophy of those who seek to inter the Lords of the Underworld and incapacitate their demons. Reyes says, "As long as humans have free will, the world will never be perfect. We do not force them to do bad things, they do them of their own volition… Hunters are disinclined to consider that truth, however. It's far easier to simply blame all their problems on that which they do not understand." Amen, brother. You got that right.  

Before I continue, I need to disclose that I'm virulent on the subject of playing the blame game. There is no personality trait I despise more than not taking responsibility for our own shit. I hate excuses and I particularly loathe the idea that we are a victim of unlucky circumstance or other people's bad behavior. Makes me insane and reminds me of my mother, of whom I have few fond memories. So this is a topic near and dear to my heart and about which I have strong opinions (truth be told, I have strong opinions on lots of things).

So back to Reyes and his conviction that humans are disinclined to acknowledge their own agency in any bad behavior they exhibit and their tendency to point the finger at others as the source of any sort of unpleasantness. Kids excel at this game; in my house, it's never clear who's at fault for any given transgression. One twin will blame the other who will blame his brother in return. Reasonable doubt abounds and the little stinkers get away with murder as a result.

The most dangerous version of the blame game isn't the one we play with others, however.  It's the one we play with ourselves. And I'm not taking about onanism. I'm talking about the stories we tell ourselves about why we haven't succeeded or achieved or received. What we tell ourselves—and others—about how we got screwed out of the job, the promotion, the good grade, the championship, the girl, the guy, and the lottery ticket. Because it's always someone else's fault. It's someone else's stubbornness, or malfeasance or stupidity or whatever. There is no way that any of this was my fault or my doing. It happened to me, and isn't that grossly unfair?

And, as we know, the blame game leads quickly to a rousing round of the "If Only" game. If only that other schlub hadn't won the race, or dunked the ball or raised his hand first or arrived before me. Then, I would have won. I find this particular version of the blame game especially infuriating. As my mother used to say, "If only my grandmother had balls, she'd be my grandfather."  Quite. If "Just this once" are the three most dangerous words in the English language, then "If Only" are the two most dangerous ones. These two little works reflect one of the most tragic lines in cinematic history, when the late, great Marlon Brando said with such anguish, "I coulda been a contender."  Perhaps. If only. But it didn't, and you weren't. And blaming something or someone else not only means we're a failure, at whatever it was, but we're also a victim, which is the worst thing of all to be.

So, what's the solution here?  Easy peasy. Don't blame others. Grow a pair and own your own shit. We must admit our mistakes and learn from them. Nelson Mandela said, "Don't judge me by how many times I fell down. Judge me by how many times I got back up."  Ain't that the truth?  We all fail. And mostly, it's our own fault. And that is OK, because sometimes we need to fall down so that when we get back up, we can rise higher than before and we can become winners.  No one who plays the blame game ever wins. That's a game for losers. Reyes knows this, and his judgment of the Hunters is obvious. And I know it, and my judgment is the same. So, let's be winners. Let's abandon the blame game and leave it to the losers. They'll blame it all on us anyway.

Atlas Shrugged

I just finished Jessica Sims' novel, Between a Vamp and a Hard Place.  It's rare that I read a stand-alone novel and it was a lark. (I usually read series to know that there are other books out there for me and so I can hang out with beloved characters a bit longer, but I digress). This is an adorable book, and I spent several enjoyable hours with Lindsey, her best friend, Gemma, and their hibernating vampire, Rand. A good time was had by all. Lindsey and Gemma are antique dealers of the penny-ante variety, hoping to do great things with an old, antique-filled apartment in Venice. The apartment is their ship that has come in, although there are some tidal waves to navigate along the way, or we wouldn’t have a novel. Among the challenges faced by our plucky heroines is a secret room, an old coffin, and a vampire who's been asleep for 600 years…. Just the run-of-the-mill problems facing young entrepreneurs everywhere. Lindsey is the alpha, is a control freak; she’s the one who takes charge. She's always assumed this is what Gemma wanted – that it reflected the arrangement that best suited both friends. Imagine her surprise when Lindsey discovers that Gemma has a fierce side and some pretty strong opinions about various subjects. When Gemma reveals these previously hidden personality traits, Lindsey is unsure how to react at first. Soon, she decides that there are some unanticipated benefits to the shift within the friends’ power dynamic. Lindsey is able to relax more, knowing that Gemma is taking the lead. Lindsay notes to herself that, "Gemma's assertiveness was making my own fears melt away."

Back in the day, when I traveled with my mother, who was deathly afraid of flying, I could be serene (without medication) because I knew how scared she was. All of us know that planes stay aloft using some pretty strong intentional magic—and without the extreme concentration of those select few of us tasked with keeping the plane in the air, it would drop from the sky like stones in a river. My mother's fear was such a strong force, I knew my airplane was in good hands when she was on board, and I could relax my hyper-vigilance, confident we would reach our destination without plunging to the earth at terminal velocity. Can you tell how much I love flying? Actually, I do now, because I've discovered better living through chemistry, and my mother's little helper helps me not give a shit whether we fly or fall.

Then there was that time in Yoga Nidra class with one of my best friends. We were on time and getting into the zone when some obnoxious women walked in late, creating as much disruption as possible. Now, my friend is an extreme type A personality, just like yours truly. And normally she would have given those ladies the stink eye for harshing our mellow. But my friend was able to relax and rejuvenate, sure in the knowledge that I would unleash my inner New Yorker on these miscreants who disturbed our serenity.  Which I did, of course. So my friend didn't have to. She thanked me afterwards.

Why is it we can let go when someone else is feeling our feelings for us? Seems counter-intuitive that worry and fear among family and friends wouldn’t feed off each other and intensify instead of dissipating. Which begs the question: if we can let go of worry and fear when someone else is carrying the load, why can't we let go at other times? All of us know that worry is a misuse of the imagination, and fear makes us stupidly reactive. Why do we need to inflict these miseries on another before we can allow ourselves to shrug our shoulders?  I'm not sure I have an answer but I think it has to do with trust. In the book, it took Lindsey some thought and faith before she felt like she could trust Gemma enough to let go. And when the alpha friend understood that she'd made a mistake in not trusting Gemma, life got a whole lot better for both of them—Lindsey because she could take some of the load off, and Gemma because she felt trusted and valued enough to pull her own weight.  Win-win, my favorite outcome.

And the issue of trust leads me to the issue of faith. If we have faith in our family and friends to allow us to lay down the load, perhaps we can also have faith in something bigger than ourselves. If we can believe, first, that our fears and worries do no good whatsoever, and second that someone's already got our backs, then we can make like the French and lift that shoulder with a carefree, "C'est la vie."  

Or not. We can always choose to take up and keep our burdens all to ourselves. We can choose not to trust anyone else, and we can choose not to have any faith. Life will be nasty, brutish and lonely at that point, but we all make our choices. I choose to take a page out of A Vamp and a Hard Place and rely on my friends, my family and my faith to allow me to shrug. I don't have to shoulder all that weight alone.

Hurts So Good

I'm in the middle of book three of the Lords of the Underworld series by Gena Showalter, The Darkest Pleasure. This is Reyes' book, and he is host to the demon of Pain. This guy has a serious issue with cutting, a disorder I've never understood, although it seems to be the preferred method of self-destructive behavior for American Millennials. These poor souls, like Reyes, seem compelled to inflict pain on themselves. Without it, apparently, they don't feel alive. How terrible to be so desperate to feel—something, anything— that the sting of the knife in one's flesh is the only available relief. In the book, Reyes' demon exhorts him to administer pain, emotional and/or physical, either to himself or others. I've written several posts on the human tendency to avoid pain at all costs—even the cost of perpetual numbness. But what about the other side of that coin-—the pursuit of pain at any cost?  I don’t understand this affinity for affliction. But it is quite prevalent in many guises throughout society. We pursue pain in our athletic activities, our professional lives and in games of one-up-man-ship with friends, family and strangers on planes, trains and automobiles. We wear our pain as badges of honor, and some of us base our whole identities on our painful experiences both past and present. As I started to think about it, the pursuit of pain seemed almost as universal as its avoidance. Clearly, Gena Showalter has tapped into a universal truth in her depiction of Reyes and his demon. Who knew?

I think we've been told to "feel the burn" since the days of Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons (if you have no idea what I'm talking about, Google "sweating to the oldies" and make me feel old—just don’t tell me about it). In every exercise class I've ever taken, I've been told, "No pain, no gain."  So we look for pain, and we wish for pain, and we revel when we feel it. How twisted is that?  I'm pretty sure new research has come out that repudiates the “pain is good” theory of exercise, but many continue to seek discomfort in pursuit of bulging muscles. Which seems highly stupid to me; pain is our body's way of telling us that something is wrong and that we should stop what we're doing, not double down on the activity. But that's not how we roll, now, is it?  Burn, baby, burn.

And what about pain in our professional lives?  Here on the East Coast, in cities like New York and Washington, DC, the more pain we endure in our work, the better workers we are.  Here, only sissies work an eight-hour day. Twelve is the bare minimum to be considered a good employee.  And for those twelve hours of cubicle hell, we don't need no stinking overtime. Overtime is overrated.  We're nobody until somebody notices that we get in before anyone else and we leave after everyone goes. Then, and only then, are we considered big league material. And the pathetic part is that we mostly inflict this stupidity on ourselves. We admire the idiots who've never heard of work/life balance, and we're sure the world will end if we're not putting in more time than Charles Manson is serving. Crazy. In the real world, if you can't get your work done in an eight-hour day, you're not very good at your job. We should be judged on quality, not quantity.

And what about those of us who delight in cataloguing our aches and pains in loving detail?  We can go to websites for "my arthritis", "my migraines", "my cancer", and "my diabetes."  I don't want that shit. But so many of us are invested in our illnesses and injuries. We pay more attention to our pain than to our pleasure. To the point where our pain becomes our pleasure, and not in a cool BDSM kind of way like we're living in one of Cherise Sinclair's Masters of the Shadowlands books. Nope.  We've just learned to love pain, crave it, even, so that it becomes that measure by which we validate our lives, just like poor Reyes. And like Reyes, we've stopped resisting so that we embrace the pain and give it a loving home. And how twisted is that? As twisted das a severely arthritic hand, I guess.

I just don’t get it. If it hurts, stop doing it, fix it, or run the hell away from it. I saw a graphic on Facebook (talk about pain—but that is another topic entirely) that said that women should pursue men who make their lipstick run, not their mascara—love it!). We should not accept pain, even though, as the Buddha said, pain is inevitable. But it is not eternal, because nothing is. Further, while pain may be inevitable, suffering is not. We don’t need to build whole identities around pain. We could, and here’s a novel idea, build our identities around fighting our pain, and not making a home for it. The question for me is this: if we’re not housing the Pain demon, like Reyes, why are we so happy to accommodate all of the pain in our lives. So, let’s let learn from Reyes and let go of whatever pain we can and seek out the pleasures that this life offers us lest we end up hosting Pain for an eternity.

Endless Loop

I like to multitask. I'm totally ADHD and it takes a lot to hold my attention. Which is why I sometimes have several books going at once: a hard copy book (whatever non-fiction book is tickling my fancy); an audiobook (almost always a novel I've read before and want to revisit with someone reading it to me); and a new paranormal fantasy on my Kindle (unless I'm in a reading desert and have opted for an old friend to keep me company while I find a new author/series). So it's always kind of cool when I notice a theme or plot device in two books I'm reading at the same time. In the most recent occurrence, I was listening to Kresley Cole's Dark Needs at Night's Edge while reading Gena Showalter's The Darkest Night. And the common trope in both books was a curse that caused one of the protagonists to relive, in a very visceral way, the worst night of their lives. Over and over again, the nightmare reel is playing in a never-ending loop of pain and anguish. Sounds fun, huh?  Good thing this is fantasy and that could never happen in real life. But wait—that's not quite right, because, as we know, there is truth in fantasy and this is no exception. In Dark Needs at Night's Edge (Really?!  Again with the supremely stupid titles), Naomi was a celebrated dancer who is brutally murdered by a rejected lover. As a ghost, she is doomed to experience her death each night of the full moon, preceded by a compulsive dance that she can't control—it's as if she is a puppet with someone else pulling the strings. It's horrific. In The Darkest Night, Maddox, who houses the demon of Violence, is condemned by the gods to be killed each night in the same way he murdered another —stabbed to death and escorted to hell for the night, only to be reborn in the morning to do it all again the next night. More fun than the law should allow, is what I say. 

The common theme here is the idea that we are often stuck reliving the past—usually the most difficult or painful aspects of our history, and usually an event or moment that forever alters the course of our lives afterward. Anyone who's experienced a trauma knows all about this. But even those of us who have made a bad decision, like an extra drink before getting in the car, unprotected sex, just this once, marrying the wrong spouse or letting the right one get away—we have a tendency to put all of these actions or events on an endless loop in our brains and just hit "play."  It doesn't get any more depressing or limiting than this, at least for me. 

What do we hope to gain by pressing the "repeat" button over and over? We're not idiots, or at least most of us aren’t, so there must be some perceived conscious or unconscious benefit to all of this ceaseless self-flagellation. Perhaps we think we can gain insights from our repetitive analysis of the events in question. Maybe we believe we deserve perpetual punishment for whatever sins we've committed, even if the transgression involves being a victim of someone else's evil. Or maybe we believe that if we replay it again and again, we can change the outcome in the past and affect the trajectory of our future. It could happen, right?

For me, my endless loop involved my husband getting sick. I came home from walking the dog to find him unconscious next to our bed. Ambulance, hospital, tests, terrible prognosis (that was totally wrong, by the way, and who does that to a spouse?!). Worst night of my life. It was twenty years ago and I still replay it.  I'm still paranoid about coming home to see that terrible scene again.  I can't help myself, and I look for things he or I could have done differently, or what could have gone the other way for an even worse outcome so I won't do that in the future. It's all bad. But I watch that inner movie and I take it apart piece by piece, and then I put it back together and do it again. 

For some of us, our endless loop is more like Maddox's. We have one defining moment—the point before which our lives were one way and after which they were a different way, and we replay that over and over again so that we can punish ourselves and feel the burn. Or maybe we'd stop it if we could, but like Maddox, who is cursed by the gods, we can't hit the stop button, so we suffer continuous penalty. Whatever crimes we committed, real or imagined, I can't believe a benevolent Universe would want us to suffer for an eternity. If we're feeling guilty enough to relive our transgressions, we're probably sorry we did it and likely willing to make any amends we could and surely never do it again. At some point, haven't we paid our debt—to society, God, ourselves?  I can't imagine not. And yet we persist with the endless loop of misery.

And then some of us just want to change the past, which is, of course, a fool's task. The past doesn't change, no matter how many times we relive it. We can only change our present moment, and perhaps those of the future that haven't happened yet. But that other ship has sailed, and our attempts to alter what's done is pure insanity—doing the same thing over and over—in our minds no less—and expecting a different outcome. Just say no to that life-stealing, soul-sucking pastime.  Enough said. 

So how do we stop hitting "repeat" and play another song?  Therapy comes to mind, of any variety that works for us in our particular circumstances. I'm a big fan. Talking to friends, meditation, journaling, bodywork, self-hypnosis… there are many paths to healing. Love is also an effective answer.  For Naomi and Maddox, predictably, true love and a willingness of their loved ones to sacrifice for their benefit is the road to happily ever after.  And that can be true in our lives as well. Love heals. Always, if we let it. Time makes its contribution as well. But the secret ingredient of success for all of these scenarios is the willingness to let go of our pasts, and the conviction that we deserve a brighter future, one where we're not condemned to relive our misery endlessly. Turn off the endless loop and reclaim the rest of our lives.

The Changing of the Guard

I took a wee break from the Lords of the Underworld series to whip through Molly Harper's latest offering, Big Vamp on Campus. As you know, I love Half Moon Hollow, Kentucky, and all its wacky inhabitants. This installment of the series focused on Ophelia, the scary 400-year old teenaged vampire who used to run the Vampire Council. Ophelia was a bad vampire, and now she's being creatively punished. Ophelia has been sentenced to college to learn how to live among humans and her fellow vamps in something approximating harmony. Either she is brought down a notch and learns to co-exist or she will get a stake in her heart which provides sufficient motivation for her to at least try to go along to get along. Her defenses were higher than the ice wall in Game of Thrones, and breaching those walls is going to take considerable time and effort. I could relate. Most of us spend a goodly portion of our childhood and young adult years getting hurt and trying to figure out how to avoid getting dinged again. No one likes to get hurt, so we meticulously build our walls, brick by brick, channeling Pink Floyd until there isn't a big bad wolf out there who can blow our houses down. We're protected and we're safe…. But also we're separate and alone.

Interestingly, those fortresses are constructed without a lot of conscious effort. At heart, we are pleasure-seeking creatures who try to deflect pain. This is smart; pain hurts and pleasure feels good. And when something hurts, we want to protect ourselves from it. So we add another brick. We condition ourselves, like Ophelia, to assess what others want from us, what they can do to us and for us. We look for weaknesses to exploit, and strengths to fight against. We work to out-maneuver those who are trying to beguile us. We raise our hackles and don our armor. We go on the offensive, knowing that this is often the best defense.

And through all of these machinations, we insulate ourselves. I am a rock, I am an island, I touch no one and no one touches me. No wonder someone wrote these lyrics. These are very effective techniques. The problems come when we begin to realize that while we may not feel the pain of vulnerability, we're not feeling much of anything else, either. And not only that, we often discover that we are increasingly exhausted and our reserves of energy are being systematically depleted to the point where we don't want to go on. Alternatively, we may be forced into a confrontation with our defensive natures by virtue of the fact that others are tired of being skewered by our pointy parts.

I've written before about how there's no variable speed button on our feelings. They are either on or off. Most unfortunately, we can't choose to feel the love but not the pain, the joy and not the sorrow. Numb is numb at every level. And sometimes that numbness grows so gradually, that like that poor, overheated frog, we don't understand that we needed to jump out of the pot until it's too late—we're cooked.

Sometimes the wake-up call comes in the form of a major health crisis, brought on by our consistent but unconscious efforts to sublimate pain. All of that unconscious work to protect ourselves saps our energy and depletes us to the point of sickness. Auto-immune disorders, the bane of twenty-first century existence, comes immediately to mind.  What is an autoimmune disorder but our bodies' way of saying, "Hey, this way of 'living' isn't working! Wake up, dude, before it's too late." That happened to me; it took getting so sick that life was almost not worth living to reassess my priorities and get with a program that fed my soul and nurtured my body. The Universe definitely needed to knock me upside the head with the very bricks I'd used to build the defenses that were killing me. Poetic justice. Thankfully, I was finally able to listen and change, taking down my defenses, brick by brick, until I could feel again.

When I started making the changes necessary to live a healthy life, I noticed that others began to respond very differently to me. Ophelia learns this too. Turns out, when we're not constantly on the alert for danger, we give off a much nicer vibe and others react accordingly.  When I'm open, others can be too (well, at least those who are doing their own work to live awakened lives). When we drop the gauntlets and lay down the swords, we become more approachable. What a concept. For Ophelia, this means making friends among humans and vamps alike. For me it meant being able to accept the love and support my friends and family had been trying to provide over my objections. Turns out it's nice to let others help us. Who knew?

Not Ophelia. Not me. But, we both came to learn, life without the guards is actually lovely. And while taking the walls down necessitates letting in occasional pain, the joy and pleasure are worth it. So I say make like those immovable men at Buckingham Palace and allow a changing of the guard. It's fun, it really is. Just ask Ophelia.

Who's Your God?

I'm finishing up Gena Showalter's second book of the Lords of the Underworld series, The Darkest Kiss. And I'm excited because my friend who recommended the series assured me that the books get better as the series progresses, which is always a treat! Anyway, I've been intrigued by a sub-plot of the series wherein the pantheon of Greek gods, led by Zeus, has been overturned by the Titans, whom the Greeks had previously conquered to take over Olympus. Payback's a bitch, dontcha know? So, now we have a situation where a group of grouchy gods are newly returned to power, running the show and pulling the strings, taking an interest in people and circumstances that the Greek gods had been inclined to ignore for millennia. Note to self:  try to avoid becoming the object of attention of all-powerful gods intent on demonstrating their power and getting their revenge on. Not a good situation. But underlying that storyline is the extraordinary idea that our gods, or the idea of our God, can change over time and how that can truly rock our worlds. In The Darkest Kiss, the Titans, led by Cronus, are handing out assignments—which are not at all optional—to the Lords of the Underworld who have been mostly left alone by the Greek gods for millennia. This is not a welcome development for our favorite alpha hunks.  Our boys have learned to live with the demons they host and have even come to some accommodation of the death curse suffered by Violence, Pain and Death. Until true love frees them all from this vile curse in book one, The Darkest Night. I do love my HEAs. But now, Cronus has commanded Wrath to kill Pain's beloved, and Death to take the soul of the only woman he's loved in thousands of years. Talk about a buzzkill. Needless to say, the Lords of the Underworld are not big fans of these gods-in-charge and are hoping for another change in management, which does not appear to be forthcoming at this point.

Which got me thinking about the ways we each conceive of our own personal gods or God. I'm a big believer in the God of many faces—the Divine that exists and that isn't me. I'm happy and comforted to believe there is something bigger than me out there managing the chaos and creating purpose. But I haven't always believed as I do, and in fact, my concept of the Divine has evolved right along with the rest of me, allowing me to experience a change in Universal management whenever I feel the need. If only our friends, the Lords of the Underworld, could see things my way.

Now I understand that many people feel that God is a fixed entity or idea. Maybe He is that old man with a white beard who sits up on his clouds in heaven weighing our every move and judging the quality of our characters. Or perhaps your God is a more benevolent Jesus, trailing love and mercy in His wake for all who follow him and maybe even those who don't, depending on your particular understanding of Christianity. Or maybe your God is closer to the Jewish and Muslim construct, a non-personal energy that cannot and should not be depicted in any sort or concrete form, to avoid idolatry. I believe that the God of many faces is all of these embodiments and more.

I think God is so much bigger than our limited imaginations can conceive that it is the height of hubris to presume that any one of us, or any group of us can define the Divine in any sort of categorical way. And my apologies if I'm offending anyone, but that just seems silly to me. The Divine, by definition, is infinite. We, and our thinking, also by definition, are finite. Do the math.

If you buy into my logic, we can be like Cronus and his cronies and oust the current leadership in favor of a more proactive deity or deities. Or, we can discern that our needs are best served by a more distantly benevolent supreme being who is well disposed toward us, but perhaps a bit too busy to attend to our more mundane concerns. Which is OK, as long as the Big Guy shows up when we're in the foxhole, forgetting that we were functional atheists prior to our current consternation.

Or perhaps you prefer a more activist universal life force. No problem.  Being infinite, the God of many faces can help us with any problem under the sun, including what to wear and what to eat and who to date and which job to take. Infinity can accommodate anything we can throw at it. That's what it means to be infinite. Pretty cool. In fact, we can write the most perfect job description we can conceive, and the infinite will always have the exact quals we desire. Because that's also what it means to be infinite.

We can change our conception of the Divine and therefore our relationship to our God or gods as often as we feel the urge. If we're burdened by a concept of a frightening, judgmental God as a souvenir from our unhappy childhood, we can ditch that construct and build a more loving, compassionate, merciful God. If we're wracked with guilt and convinced we're going to Hell, we can work through these malevolent ideas and move toward integration and peace through confession, restitution and authentic remorse. All is possible with that which is infinite. Infinite possibilities is the name of the game. We are only limited by our finite thinking.

I love the world building in this series and I love the thought experiment inspired by the idea that gods can be conquered and ousted from power. I can't say I like either of these sets of thugs-in-gods'-clothing, but perhaps we'll see a third set of deities as the series progresses, or maybe the Greeks will be chastened by defeat and more benevolently disposed toward our heroes. In any case, it is all infinitely interesting and infinitely entertaining in my finite world.

Fighting My Demons

I've just finished the first book in Gena Showalter's Lords of the Underground series, The Darkest Night.  Good stuff. As with most firsts in a series, there was a lot of setting up to do to establish the rules of the particular literary road and the elements of the premise, which is pretty original. A group of immortal warriors who opened Pandora's Box and killed Pandora are cursed to house the demons they released with their fateful act. So, we have a pack of hunky Lords of the Underworld (and one woman) who embody Death, Violence, Pain, Wrath, Disease, Promiscuity, Disaster, Lies, Misery (she's the female, an interesting choice we’ll explore another time), Secrets, Doubt and Defeat (the final demon, Distrust, was unleashed on an unsuspecting world when his host was killed millennia ago).  Each of these Lords battles their demon, some with more enthusiasm than others, and attempts to prevent becoming pure evil. Easier said than done.  Which got me thinking, of course. What a delicious premise—the idea that we must struggle to overcome our baser natures and prevent our descent into depravity. I suspect that some of us embrace the depravity. I know I've been sorely tempted myself. Resistance is hard. Resistance takes energy. Giving in is so much easier; it's like sinking into a warm bed and getting wrapped up in cozy demonic blankets. For a little while at least. Also, as difficult as resistance is, it's also imperfect. We may choose to resist our demons, but we don't always succeed in keeping them at bay. And when we fail, instead of feeling good, we disappoint ourselves. And once we slip, we may fall victim to the "fuck it" syndrome. Happens to me all the time. 

I've given a lot of thought to the whole idea that we do what we don't want to do and we don't do what we want to do. It's the line from the New Testament in Romans, 7:15. How many times have I decided to eschew chocolate, or cookies, or something else that's going to attach itself to my ass in an undesirable manner, only to be overtaken by gluttony? I've written before about my struggles with pride and envy. But the question today is about whether we struggle against our internal demons or snuggle with them.  The truth, for me at least, is that there are a number of my demons that are just plain entertaining. For example, it's not nice to gossip. But, I’m ashamed to say, I'm not above sharing a slightly wicked bit of information. But not ashamed enough to shut down someone who dishes in my presence. Instead, I’ll offer them a drink and my full attention. I'm also not above embellishing a story to make it more engaging—I'm a storyteller, after all. Although I do draw the line at outright lies. And I enjoyed many extralegal activities in my misspent youth; activities I would happily repeat because they were freaking fun… or were when I was young and more invincible.

And how hard do I really try to resist that chocolate? Or that second glass of wine? Truth be told… my efforts are less than Herculean. How much do I tamp down on my temper when I know unleashing its wrath will get me what I want—even if others are upset in the process? Maybe not as hard as I could, truth be told. After all, it’s one thing to embellish to others, and quite another to lie to ourselves. Just say no to that stupidity.

I think we’re all ambivalent about whether to struggle or snuggle with our demons at times. “Sure,” we tell ourselves, ”I’m gonna fight the really bad ones. For sure if I housed Lies, or Misery or Defeat I would fight for all I was worth.” But is that true? Or is that one more way we snuggle with the demon of Denial—one of my personal favorites? Maybe I’m the only one, but sometimes Lies, Misery and Defeat are quite seductive, and my will to fight quite weak. Those are not good days.

But, as I read about these warriors who host real demons, I was impressed with their forbearance—and embarrassed at my own lack of fortitude. Perhaps I can learn a lesson from the Lords of the Underworld. In fact, I'm sure I can. Sometimes, I find so much truth in fantasy, I'm ready to eschew reality. I tell myself it's time to close my Kindle and get off the couch. And then I tell myself resistance is futile and dive right back in to read another few chapters. So maybe my struggles are more like snuggles after all.

Mighty Multicultural

I just finished the latest installment of Jessica Sims' Midnight Liaisons series, Alpha Ever After. Very enjoyable. The plot revolves around Savannah, a were-cougar, and Connor, a werewolf. She's pregnant with his twins (long story), but she is resistant to the idea of a marriage and happily-ever-after with him. Once he gets with the partnership over dictatorship program, however, the violins start to play for our cat and dog shifters. And therein lies the rub; maybe Ghostbusters got it right— dogs and cats living together may signal the apocalypse. Or, such cohabitation may provide a lesson in learning to adjust to individual and group differences so that all might benefit.  When I was growing up, my mother told me that marriage was hard and that differences in race, religion, culture, economic and intellectual status just make it harder. She told me I'd be well served to find someone whose roots and background were just like mine, so we could avoid questions about where and how and whether to worship, which foods to eat, which ways to pass the time, how to earn and spend money, etc., etc., etc. My mother wasn't wrong, exactly. It probably is easier to have all those questions answered right from the start of a marriage. But, wow, does that also sound supremely boring. Predictable, expected, lacking in any spontaneity or adventure – or the thrill of rebellion. No, thanks.

And while I didn't marry the truly exotic—my husband is a white American, after all—his roots are sufficiently different from mine that life has been anything but dull. Certainly, the differences in our religious upbringings, childhood environments and early life experiences have made for an interesting and sometimes difficult-to-navigate life partnership. I've introduced him to matzo balls and potato pancakes, and he's introduced me to smoked turkeys for Thanksgiving and scrapple. Hardly seems like a fair trade.  But beyond the culinary differences is our basic approach to child-rearing in some respects, our finances, how and where we vacation; he introduced me to camping for the first time when I was 28 years old, and to the view of a riverbank from the middle of the river, rather than from one side or the other. Revelatory. I introduced him to the rare species of animals that inhabit Park Avenue.

Our families, like those of Savannah and Connor, took a while to warm up to each other. That can happen. I will never forget my brother's wedding, which occurred 10 months before ours. My sister-in-law comes from a Mormon background.  At their reception, the two sets of families and friends had been placed at different tables on opposite sides of the room where the dinner was held. On my brother's side, we Jews were whooping it up, eating, drinking and making merry—loudly and with gusto. The Mormon side of the hall was dead silent, with very little movement and no exuberance at all. They looked at us like we were lab rats. But hey, we would’ve done the same, if we'd bothered to notice them at all once we decided they were kill-joy party poopers. We were all wrong to adopt such judgmental attitudes. Those two families never did warm up to each other, a sadly, predictable outcome of the wedding seating.

Seeking to avoid such an obvious dichotomy at our wedding, my husband and I mixed the tables up and spread them randomly around the room  so that it was hard to tell who was who and who was with whom. It worked, and the resulting party remains one of the best I've ever attended (not that I'm biased or anything). And, again predictably, our families have done very well together over the years, to the point that my brother invited my husband's sister and her family to his son's bar mitzvah several years ago. It was great.

When we talk about blended families we usually refer to spouses who’ve been previously married and bring children from other partners to the mix – aka (hopefully) Brady Bunch-style. But I'd like to suggest that all families are blended—simply by virtue of two individuals coming together who have different families of origin. Whether those disparate nuclear families represent differences in race, religion, culture, nationality, socio-economic status, or even if their backgrounds are similar – blending of some sort must occur.

When we marry, we blend. We add to the great melting pot that is America. Sometimes the mix is more successful than others. But nothing gets blended without effort—we've got to mix it up and hope the result doesn't splatter everywhere. Without effort, there can be no gelling. In those cases, like at my brother's wedding, the discrete ingredients exist side by side, like oil and vinegar – neither able to cross the divide to form a tasty vinaigrette. Don't do it. Make that effort to mix. Life is much sweeter if we blend. Besides, if cats and dogs can do it, so can we. And in the end, the result may be blended children who owe their heritage to all sides—just like Connor and Savannah’s little ones.

Born Again

I've been on a Gerry Bartlett kick, but the books are good and I'm almost finished so I’m going to keep going. The last book (so far) in the series is Real Vampires and the Viking. While the main protagonists, Glory and Jerry, are on their honeymoon in Sweden (those long, winter are great for vampires), they dig up Gunnar, a Viking vampire who's been asleep for the past 1200 years, buried in the ice.  Poor Gunnar was born once, born again as vampire, and then born a third time when he emerged from the ice to adjust to modern times (this is a popular trope in paranormal fiction—the "Sleeper" phenomenon; very similar to Owen in Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid series). All of this birthing and rebirthing got me thinking about what it means to be "born again."  I know that the phrase has specific connotations of the conservative religious variety, conjuring images of adults being dunked in rivers and subsequently proselytizing— loudly and often— to whomever will listen. I'm not one who does,listen, that is, as I'm not usually a fan of rabid fanaticism. But when I started thinking about it, I realized that my knee-jerk reaction to the term ‘born again’ was ignorant, biased—and wrong. As knee-jerk reactions often are, of course.  Looking back, I realize I've been born again many times, and have consequently spent considerable time and energy shouting it from the rooftops (aka proselytizing).  I will never forget the first time I read Ayn Rand as a sophomore in college. I was bitten, smitten and converted. I stormed into my political philosophy class to extol the virtues of Objectivism, which I thought was the cat's meow. My teacher calmly asked me to explain my favorable position. I tried, to which he replied, "Saying it louder doesn't make your arguments any more compelling."  Which shut me right up.

My next ‘born again’ experience came when I started a 12-step recovery program. I felt everyone needed the Steps and said so. Again, loudly. No one wanted to hear it, shockingly. I was equally vociferous when I became convinced that everyone should eat gluten and dairy-free—and give up all refined sugar, not to mention artificial sweeteners. One more time, I wasn't too successful garnering converts. I hadn't yet learned my lesson. 

Because the truth is, few people want to be screamed at from a soapbox (well, unless you are a Donald Trump supporter apparently). No one likes a fanatic, and no one wants to listen to someone foaming at the mouth. Which I understand.

But what about being born again in a less obstreperous manner?  What about the wonder and the joy of those beautiful “a-ha” moments when the scales fall from our eyes and we can see a truth, or many truths, clearly for the first time?  I will never forget when I fell I love with my husband, and finally understood what love without anxiety or doubt felt like. Or my first successful experience with meditation. I finally knew what all the fuss was about. Each of us is reborn a number of times in our lives if we're lucky and good. It's a consequence of immersing ourselves in new experiences, evolving into higher consciousness and embracing change in a healthy way that allows us to grow instead of stagnate. It happens every time we make a big leap forward, or when the scale tips with the weight of many lesser moments of renewal and transformation.

Being born again always requires adjustment and a period of acclimatization. And, of course, being born again also necessitates the pain of labor and the discomfort of the birth itself. As I written about time and again, change is hard. Growth is not for the fainthearted. We humans tend to resist it for all we're worth, clinging to the familiar and that which we perceive to be safe. It takes courage to let go of the past and move deliberately into an uncertain future. No one said labor and birth were easy. But at the end, if we're lucky and good, we get a new life, figuratively – and sometimes even literally.

We can embrace this new life with enthusiasm for new adventures and a desire to live authentically and with integrity. Or we can resist change and refuse to be born again. Gunnar chooses the first option. And so do I. And, if I may say so without proselytizing, so should you.