A.R. Williams's Blog, page 8

7:35

A year ago today, at 7:35 in the morning, my mom died.

A time machine wouldn’t be of much help if you can’t go back with a cure for cancer that has yet to be invented.  If you can’t get around the cancer, if you can’t undo the part where it crept into her brain unnoticed until the Saturday after Thanksgiving…  then a year later I have nothing but gratitude.  Certainly not gratitude for her death, but gratitude that we have no regrets.

Maybe a good death would be sudden.  An aneurysm at 93 with all of your faculties, at home, in your own bed, in the middle of the night.  But given the iron-clad premise of cancer at 67, she had a good death.  The best in care, the knowledge that her family came when called, colleagues and friends who came to see her in the hospital, an unplanned last meal with some of her favorites: matzo ball soup, lemon cream cake, tea from Teavana.

Last year, I made the calls that you make when someone dies and drove six hours to my sister’s house.  They had already put up their tree and we had the exuberance of the boys to propel us through to New Year.  This year, there is a Christmas tree in my house.  It is the first in at least 14 years.  Honestly, I don’t remember the last time I put up a tree that I had some kind of ownership over.  I certainly didn’t have a Christmas tree stand and I can’t remember if I ever owned one.  I have a stand now, purchased the same day as the tree.   A stand and a tree with LED lights and ornaments with stories: a salty peach, a crocheted hat made by my aunt Norma, a replica of the Serenity.  No, seriously.  The Serenity is hanging on my tree.

As already mentioned, I’m not a Christian.  The cognitive dissonance here is minimal.  The tree is an older, pagan symbol of fertility and these rituals are at least as much about fertility and the cycles of the earth as they are about a man who, by some scholarship, was actually born in September.

But tonight I stood in front of the tree with the same kind of reverence you bring to an alter in a designated house of worship.  And gratitude.  Profound gratitude that I have a house to put a tree in.  Gratitude that we did family right by seeing mom through her death, and then in the aftermath, a conflict-free grieving process in which we (my sisters and I) continue to support each other.  For the abundance of love in my life.  For the dog and the cat.  For employment.  For all the ways I am privileged beyond my earning.

I’m not bragging.  I didn’t earn any of this.  But I wouldn’t dare minimize the good things that are present in my life by focusing on what a selfish mind might find lacking.  Not tonight.

Graverobbers and Cockroaches

Enough with the seriousness.  Let’s talk about homemade cockroach killer.

There’s this legend about grave robbers in the time of the plague using a blend of essential oils dripped into handkerchiefs and then held over the face to protect against the plague.  If you look up “thieves” and “blend” together on Google, you’ll come across some people who feel very proprietary about the words put together.  They sell an oil blend with a name you’ve probably put together already, but there’s nothing stopping you from doing something similar at home.

I don’t remember what the official recipe is, but here’s what I do: Pine, Cypress, Cedarwood, Clove, Eucalyptus, and whatever else I happen to have hanging around.  I get my essential oils primarily through Wellington Fragrance, but they are not the only purveyors out there.  I am never particular about the proportions, but 1:1 isn’t a bad start.  Mix up a batch of the oil and then use it as you see fit.  A few drops in hot water plus some vinegar does a great job for cleaning floors.

The stuff kills cockroaches and repels critters.  Get yourself a spray bottle, fill it up with cheap vodka and add a couple of ounces of your essential oils.  Spray a cockroach on site until he’s upside down and he’ll die.  (I know this because we get the american cockroach around here.  He climbs up from the sewers into the drain in the basement and he freaks me the eff out.)

Not only is the stuff non-toxic, the crazy Lily-dog loves it.  Like she goes nuts when I spray it around and rubs herself in whatever stray droplets she can find.

 

Riled

In the wake of the attacks in Paris and the subsequent hyperventilating about Syrian refugees, I overheard a coworker saying that ISIS would be welcome to pull a similar stunt at the Democratic national convention.  Shall I start with the implications? This federal employees is fine with the notion that Democratic party leadership be wiped out?  That leadership includes the President, in case we weren’t paying attention.  Also, how are you any different than ISIS if you are willing to entertain the death of someone with different opinions than you as acceptable?

Ok, I’m sure he was being hyperbolic, I don’t suspect he would go out and pull the trigger himself, but speech matters. What we think matters.

Much adrenaline later, I’m wondering if we haven’t reached the limits of pluralism.  People are tribal, it has always been so.  The more interconnected the world becomes, the harder we seem to cling to our tribes.  I was going to go back to the 50’s as an era when the political parties in America could at least talk to each other reasonably, but then Joseph McCarthy came to mind and shot that bit of fantasy down.  Our politics has always been contentious.  There has always been a tension between the traditionalists who look backwards for solutions and progressives who look forward for solutions.  Rarely have the traditionalists ended up on the right side of history: slavery, civil rights, gender equality, the environment, the economy, military adventures… Whenever we try to do more of what’s been done before, it doesn’t turn out well.

Part of me is tired of the outrage, the constant bafflement at how otherwise decent human beings lose all capacity for reason when faced with politics.  I want to go to my corner where we can talk about out-thinking ISIS instead of out-bombing them, where we use more creative disruption like the dancing DC cop and less stuff that goes boom.  I want to hang out with people who are smart and compassionate and mind their own goddamn business when it comes to my party parts.  They don’t have to agree with me, but they can’t be content with doing the same old shit expecting new outcomes.  And if we could resettle the world, give half of it to my tribe and the other half to the assholes who think heading back in time is the right answer and anyone who disagrees with them is fair game for target practice…  I bet it would take less than a decade for the traditionalists to either self destruct or come begging to live in the world my tribe creates.

Not the most plural thing I’ve ever come up with, but the provocation was severe.

Getting Back to Normal

It’s taken me a few days (weeks?) to get back to normal.  The wine glasses needed washing prior to storage, the extra wine and the leftover books are still in the back of my car…  You know, little by little and all that.  And then there was the small issue of getting the book onto Amazon etc.  Which brings me to the realization…  I haven’t posted any words on the subject of the book being published and available and all that good stuff.

Small oversight.

So I have updated my author page at Amazon.  The book is also available for Kindle.  If you do read either book (or any of my naughty offerings) please leave a review.  Reviews make a huge difference in the life of any author and your voice via Amazon or Goodreads carries as much or more weight than that of any professional critic out there.  For two reasons.  First, your fellow readers tend to trust other readers.  Just as you check the reviews before buying a book, other readers want to know what they’re getting into.  Two, I read the reviews and I use the feedback to get better.

That’s enough of the book talk for now…

The News

There is an older news story that I’ve wanted to talk about and not wanted to talk about, all at the same time.  Search Prep School Rape Trial and you’ll come up with plenty of reading material.  Whether or not you want it is a different question.  This article posted in the NY Daily News specifically addresses the victim’s testimony, testimony which was parsed in various and assorted comment threads and used to cast doubt on whether or not justice was served.

Although I’m inclined to believe the girl, I have biases.  I was that girl myself.  My molester – not rapist – had that same over-sized brown hair. Clearly, I’m coming from an angle.  Full disclosure, etc.

A common thread between many of these stories that have been in the news is what these girls do in the aftermath…  Text messages between the girls and their accused rapists that are conciliatory or downright friendly, which are later used by the alleged perpetrators and the media as evidence that nothing bad happened.  But having those kinds of post-trauma interactions with someone who hurt you totally makes sense, so long as you put it into context of what it means to be raised in female gender norms.

To be more specific, I’m talking about white middle class Christian female gender norms.  The reason why I’m talking about white middle class Christian female gender norm training is because I can only speak from my experience.  There are cultural nuances here and I don’t want to overstretch my understanding to encompass a cultural upbringing that I didn’t have.  I suspect there are similarities, and I don’t want to exclude anyone who recognizes my experience, but I also don’t want to presume…

The pressure to be nice trumps everything.  From birth, you get told to be nice when you want your boundaries, when you want to say “this toy belongs to me and I’m not going to share it with you.”  You are told to hug people that make you uncomfortable, you are taught to shut up when someone says something you disagree with.  You are praised when you sit in the corner in your little white dress, quietly, and color within the lines.  Your parents say indulgently, proudly, how they could forget you are there, you’re so good.  So quiet.  So obedient.  So nice.  Your primary tool for self defense by the time you get to be a teenager is to make people like you.  Your secondary defense is to make yourself small.  The worst thing you can be is a bitch.  You are trained from birth to put other people first, to not make a fuss.  You are ultimately prized for your obedience, for your politeness, for being easy going, easy to get along with, easy to raise.

Isn’t it asking a bit much of our girls to stand up for themselves, to kick and scream, to make a fuss, to be disobedient, to be a bitch, to defend their boundaries… when there hasn’t been a single opportunity to practice these skills, a single instance where any of these behaviors were praised?

This girl didn’t want to be impolite.

As adults, we think “well, that just doesn’t make sense, that you’d be so polite you wouldn’t scratch the eyes out of someone who was trying to penetrate you when you didn’t want to be penetrated.”

But it does.  Because where would she have practiced being impolite?  When was she ever allowed to say no?  When was she ever praised for setting boundaries and sticking with them?

As adults, we think “why would anyone communicate with their attacker in a friendly way?”

And the answer is because the only control girls in this framework are given is the ability to make things better by making people like them, by building and reinforcing relationships.  We think, well, maybe if he genuinely likes me, then maybe this will be okay.  I imagine this is a particularly common feeling in the immediate aftermath, anything to reassert some kind of control over what’s just happened to you.  It was certainly one of my first reactions.

As adults, we think “why would anyone put off reporting over a graduation when they’d just been violated?”

Because girls are trained from the beginning to think of others, to put other people before themselves.

It takes time to grow into yourself, time to understand that you can establish boundaries and insist that other people respect them.  Time to say no and not feel like a bitch.  Hell, I’m still not 100% there yet and I’ve got 20 years on this girl who is being destroyed in the comments sections of many a blog for not knowing how to say no in a way that the commentators deem forceful enough to be believable.

There were only two people there, one with more incentive to lie about what happened than the other.  She doesn’t get anything out of reporting the event or even the trial.  Indeed, at least in the short term, she is better served by keeping a wretched experience private.  At least that way, no one can add insult to injury by saying all the things that people seem to feel free to say on the internet.  He has a great deal to lose in this process…  I can only assume that being a registered sex offender isn’t great for one’s career prospects.  The jury came back with its findings, I don’t really want to get into a debate about who was right or who was wrong.

There are just two things I want to say.  One, her behavior makes sense in the context of being brought up as a girl in a society that still isn’t particularly kind to the xx who is unapologetic for demanding autonomy over her person.  Two, please can we stop raising our girls xx’s as if “nice” were the only virtue available?  That way, when they come across someone who thinks that they have a right to the xx body whether that xx agrees or not, they’ve said no before.  And been heard.  Believed.  Respected for it.

Not punished.

Pictures

We hired a photographer, right?  Apparently when the event’s about your book, you end up in a boatload of photos.  Which is exactly what happened.

So the handsome guy is Diego, a long-time friend who came along for the ride.  In the lower right corner, I’m draped around a former student from the way-back-when time machine.  I taught her photography back in … 2002?  I’m including the photo in the top right because I actually laugh like that, but I don’t always wear red lipstick.

I wouldn’t otherwise include a solo picture of me, but my best friend sent those flowers because she couldn’t make it herself.  I made the photographer take the picture, I figured I’d better do something with it.  The handsome guy up there in the bottom right corner is Marshall, the inspiration for the Marshall in the books.  His hands really are the size of sledgehammers.  (I should note that Marshall’s name and a few physical details are the *only* bits of the book that correspond to real life.  All other similarities are purely coincidental.)  In the top right corner, I’m talking to a librarian in Maryland

All About the Benjamins

The book is thicker than a Bible that has the original Greek, the translation, and commentary all packed into one.  It’s called the Great Deformation and I’m not going to read it.  It was in the library at work and it seemed like the kind of reading you might want to do if you are writing about the end of the world.  Except that it isn’t.  Surely no point takes 712 ages to make.

Besides.  I’m about full up of outrage.

From what I did read, the book is complaining about the divorce from the gold standard, corporate bailouts via TARP, printing money, the Fed…Basically, what we have isn’t pure capitalism (duh) and this is outrageous.  Nothing is real and it is the end of the world.

Which has the ring of truth to it, but fails to take the argument to its full and logical conclusion: money is a social construct.  Value is a social construct.  If we had all agreed that a tree was an acceptable denomination and a real standard of what a man was worth, Donald Trump would be telling us he owned more trees than any other mofo on the planet.

We’re in a play that isn’t a play, fighting on stage with no audience, using weapons that draw blood from people who don’t get back up when assaulted, fighting over bright pink monopoly cash.  It only means what we say it means.  We’ve all agreed that these things are real: stocks, bonds, mutual funds, Benjamins…  but they are only real because we say they are real.

Not that I know what to replace it with.  We all know I love my house and I’d have something to say to anyone who tried to take it from me.  But I got that house because my mom traded time at work for symbols of value, which she traded for different symbols of value, which turned into more symbols of value in the stock market.  And then she died and those symbols came to me through no merit of my own.  Without ever touching anything, I signed a couple of papers and those arbitrary symbols turned into a house, which I, in turn, trade my time for new symbols which get turned over to the bank for the privilege of the various and assorted things that go wrong when you own a house from 1955.

I love my house.  I really do.  I’m sorry for talking bad about it.  It ought to be proud that it’s still standing 70 years later.

Anyway, it’s absurd.  As is only getting worked up about one aspect of a ridiculous system without getting worked up about the whole.  As is getting worked up at all.

So what do you do?  One of the maddening things about media is that they pile on all of this anxiety–both sides are guilty of this–without providing anything to do about it, which tends to foment impotent rage.  Impotent rage eventually finds an outlet and that’s never good (see Fox News, white supremacists, comment sections, etc).  There’s no need for it…  Take the liberty of laughing.  The emperor has no clothes, but he’s the emperor…  Dethroning one emperor only brings on another.  The far-sighted ones go for benevolence.  I mean, no one is going to overthrow Queen Elizabeth for being malevolent.  Maybe for being too expensive, but not for being a murderous tyrant.  The Royals might lose their jobs at some point, but not their heads.

There are times when revolt is required.  A successful coup against Hitler would have been nice.  But here in the US?  Meh.  (I’d be less meh were we to have a President Trump… viva la revolucion?)

The system is bogus, but it is only vaguely relevant.  What matters?  Love.  Family, lovers, friends.  Making someone smile.  Touch.  Community.  Kindness.  A bogus system doesn’t keep you from showing up.  From trying.  It doesn’t stop you refusing anything predicated on the suffering of another.  It doesn’t keep you from making your corner of the world better/kinder/more welcoming.  Money is only a stand in for time, and you don’t need a Benjamin to add value to the world with your time.

How it Went

By all reports, it went well.  I spent the two days before the book release party wandering my neighborhood and muttering out my speech.  Notecards don’t work so well for me, perhaps because if you write out every word beforehand, you lose fluidity when you’re standing up in front of everyone.  Instead, I muttered the general outline of what I wanted to stay until I had something more or less memorized and practiced.  I’m telling you, the neighbors thought I was crazy.

My publicist had us uber-prepared, so there was no last-minute panic when it came time to set up.  People came, which was a relief.  I don’t know which is more scary: no one coming, or more than you planned on coming.  Neither happened, so kudos again to Isoke for having everything under control.

I haven’t gotten the pictures to download as of yet, but this was the backdrop for the event, thanks to prezi.com.  I’ll post some pictures after I get the password to download them.

Currency

We’ve all heard the saying “time is money,” right?  It’s a Benjamin Franklin statement that gets bandied about but deserves further consideration.  After all, what if it is true?

Think about the overall growth in wealth we’ve experienced as a society.  Go back to the industrial revolution.  Every one of the inventions that shifted the production of necessary goods from the hands of crofters and farmers to the factory liberated a chunk of time from that process.  Dresses stopped taking three people a month to make and started taking one person a week to make.  (I’m making these numbers up.  The time decreased, I have no idea what the reality-based stats are.)

Every invention, every bit of progress involves liberating time.  Vacuum cleaners: the end result was time.  Computers and automation: time.  Cars: time.  Airplanes: time.

When you go to work, you’re trading time for money, but time is the real currency.  We are all given hours, no matter the circumstances of our births.  In fact, it might be the one resource distributed more or less equally…  Okay, the flaw in that argument is the health risks associated with poverty, the increased violence experienced in the African American community, preventable diseases in third world countries, etc.  It isn’t a perfect argument, just a perspective to consider…When one generation passes down an inheritance, what they’re really sending forward is time.

It is an idiosyncratic currency, to be fair.  But maybe dollars also mean different things to different people.  Anyway, it is just something to think about.

Writing Tools: Freemind

I envy linear people.  It must be so easy to store and catalog information, making retrieval easier.  I am not linear.  I am a cluster.  As I think about plots and people, it is more like a pinball machine than an orderly progression of ifs, thens, and therefores.  Which is fine, but how do you hold on to every cluster of thought for use later when there is nothing linear happening up there?

Freemind.  Mind-mapping software.  It’s free.  Avail yourself immediately, my non-linear friends.

The entire TCR world is mapped out in there.  Willow’s birthday, parents, which of the loose factions she is affiliated with, the history of the New Republic of America…  Ven, Ianthe, their associations and histories.  Plus ongoing themes, ideas I want to explore.  Reference points, continuity hooks, random thoughts.  And no end to the hierarchies, subcategories, or configurations…

I use it for everything.  To help think about personal situations in a somewhat systematic way.  To monitor goals.  Whatever.  It is an infinitely flexible way to think on (virtual) paper.  I would be drowning in snippets and notes without it.  It is the secret to my sanity…  Well, that and a great deal of talking to myself.