Category: Uncategorized

Another Homecoming and the Words that Come With It

The leaves have finally turned, orange and red and brown, dazzling the campus for Homecoming. I remain convinced that Homecoming is the remnant of a pagan ritual that captures parts of the harvest festivals and part of the sacrificial king (in the guise of a football game.) This would make pumpkin spice latte a sacrament, and I’m not sure I want to go that far.


It’s been a long time since I’ve thought this way, of the seasons of the year yielding a mythology we live by. I had no reason not to think this way, given that both Quakers and Episcopalians can skew romantic about the seasons, and rare individuals of each even call themselves pagan. In fact, the liturgical Christian traditions follow a liturgy of seasons, and mystical Christian traditions offer a glimpse of the movement of the year as well.
When I was younger, I was what I called a kitchen witch, making my own rituals in solitude, following the seasons of the year. This faded with my years as a professor, even though my religious life didn’t give me the hands-on relationship with life that I wanted. (Correction: Membership in the Religious Society of Friends did, but I’ve been 90 miles from Meeting for 21 years. The Episcopal Church put me too far from the feeling of sacredness.)

We need our rituals, whether dressed Wiccan or pagan or Christian (or one of the many other religions we profess). Those who have stripped ourselves of rituals because they’re “pagan” lose our moorings to the seasons and to the earth. Those without rituals that speak to them frantically try to rip rituals from others by brandishing the word “Satanic”, or create a mockery of ritual that worships hatred, bullying, and totalitarianism (MAGA rallies, I’m looking at you.)

I think about what Autumn says to me — golden and bittersweet, rejoicing at the leaves and wrapping up against the chill. Saying goodbye (Les’s death still resonates) and hugging the last of harvest to my arms. Snuggling with cats — always snuggling with cats. 

Hoping it makes for good poetry now that I vow not letting work become everything.

Loving and Nurturing my Story

I’m struggling to get back into writing. No, I’m writing poetry and short/flash fiction pretty well. I’m having trouble getting back into editing Gaia’s Hands.

Gaia’s Hands is my problem child, as I have said before. What do you do with a problem child?

My friend Les, who we memorialized last weekend, would say we love and nurture our problem children.

So, how do I love and nurture the story? I need to go back to the characters, because without them the story would not exist. I probably need to converse with them again, to get back into the game. 

The editing will be my project for NaNo, so I have time to get back into it. 

Time to nurture my problem child.

Back from my journey

I’m back to Maryville, and back to my routine, changed. 

The things I forgot while living out here, far away from home: 

  • There are people who love me unconditionally, who don’t seem to care that I have and have always had bipolar disorder. 
  • I know how to hug and I, as a matter of fact, love hugs
  • Time passes, but what matters endures.
I don’t have too many words yet, because I am very tired still from the journey. 

I love you all.

Eulogy

Mother Magpie leads me
past sere cornfields and buried bones
to the place where people say their goodbyes. 
There we eulogize the man
whose fireplace we huddled by,
who shone light in our dark corners,
and we leave that place with light in our pockets
to bring to others.

On returning home

No matter how far I’ve strayed, I feel at home when I come back to Champaign-Urbana. It’s not the landscape, which has changed so much since I’ve gone with all the new, taller downtown buildings, and it’s not the old hangouts, which aren’t what they used to be. It’s the people I used to know, and how we still talk as if we just talked yesterday.

Jodi and I talked yesterday as to how convoluted our lives were and how intertwined the different groups who knew Les really were. I know of people Jody didn’t know who knew Les — I’m not expecting them to come to the wake or memorial, because they’ve grown away. 

How to articulate this feeling? It’s like being home.

Home is a strange concept. My family doesn’t feel like home since my mother died, perhaps because my mother died in the Christmas season. I feel home at Starved Rick Lodge, however, because it seems welcoming. 
I’m glad to be here, even if it’s for a sad reason.

Surprises on the road to the memorial service

On the road to Champaign-Urbana to my mentorLes’s memorial service. Richard asked me if there were any surprises on the guest list (of course I don’t know the guest list). 

There are always surprises on Les’s guest list. Les knew a lot of people, so there will be more people I don’t know than those I do. But Richard wanted to know about surprises.

I don’t expect to see my ex-husband. I expect to see at least one ex-crush, but as it’s been years (I won’t say how many), it’s not going to cause any turmoil. There’s a possibility I might see an ex-boyfriend, and that would be a surprise, of course.

I haven’t lived in Champaign-Urbana for, I think, 25 years. I was just as — flamboyant? That’s not the word — Les said I had a large aura. That’s as good as any explanation. I was more emotional then, having not been diagnosed as rapid cycling bipolar then. I felt more insecure, because I hadn’t learned that admitting one’s insecurities made them a lot more manageable. I became obsessed with difficult, ambivalent men (the ex-boyfriends listed above). 

I knew a lot of people back then, and some of the people who found their way to Les’s cluttered living room were because of me. So there might be surprises.

About exorcism

I think my writing career needs an exorcism.

I’m mostly joking.

But something seems to have infested it, giving me rejection after rejection and making me feel like I’m never going to make it.

When I read the above paragraph, I get a little disgusted with myself, because I don’t really believe a demon could prevent good things from happening in my career. It sounds like an externalization of something that could very well be a matter of me not writing well. 

I doubt my career needs an exorcism, but maybe my attitude does. I’m convinced I’m not a good enough writer to be published. Every time I get a rejection, I think “Yeah, I would have rejected that too.” And then I feel down.

I’m told that negative attitudes affect reality. I don’t know if I believe that, because it sounds uncomfortably like blaming the victim — “Oh, you lost your job? It must be because you were thinking negative thoughts.” There’s also too many charlatans (I’m looking at you, Oprah) that have put forth the belief that you can attract love, success and riches from just thinking positive. 

Yet I wonder if my negativity about my writing affects something — maybe the writing of my cover letters, maybe even how my work resounds in the universe. I don’t know.

How does one exorcise an attitude?


Eulogy for a Good Man

I guess it’s okay to writer about this now — the obituary is now up; it has been posted on social media. 

My friend and mentor, Les Savage, died at 92 last Saturday. 

Les looked like a garden gnome — short, with wild white hair, chubby cheeks, and a beard. He had twinkling blue eyes, and yes, at least one person I know called him Santa Claus. Like Santa Claus, he gave the most wonderful hugs.


He’d led a fuller life than most; his reminiscences were peppered with phrases like “when I had my pilot’s licence”, “when I was in the navy,” and “when I worked in a lab in Glasgow”.  I didn’t learn until his obituary that he also could have included “when I consulted for the Apollo missions.” He was a combustion expert with a PhD in mechanical engineering who led a side business blowing up coal mines (in a controlled manner) to get rid of mine gases. He did carpentry in his basement and had wired up a house-wide stereo system long before Bluetooth made that easy. He appreciated good coffee, good wine, and good whiskey and taught me a little about each.

He also friended a motley crew of folks who needed a father figure and some emotional support. I was one of those folks, having a contentious relationship with my mother, undiagnosed bipolar disorder, and an unlucky love life that absolutely obsessed me. The group I hung out with Les called themselves Saturday Night Group because of their tendency to meet on that night to occasionally cook dinner, watch Star Trek: Next Generation, and talk. Membership rippled in an organic manner — new people showed up, some stayed, and we developed close bonds. I am still friends with many of those people, and I will see many of them at the wake.

He gave. This is what strikes me. He gave to his religious community as a communion bearer, he gave his support to the local LGBTQIA community, he gave to his “kidlings” as he called us. He did not judge us — we who were gay or pagan or atheist or struggling with mental illness or nonwhite or multiracial.  If ever there was a good example of a Christian man, it was my friend Les.

I loved the man. I still do.

Coffee coffee coffee

This is a not-enough-coffee day.

I’m on my second cup of vacuum pot coffee. A vacuum pot is not a common way of making coffee in the US anymore, although in 1910-1970’s (probably) they were a known way of making good coffee, better than the automatic drip which supplanted them in US kitchens. 

We have an electric vacuum pot because we’re a little lazy about trying to get the temperatures right, and right now we have fresh beans from the Board Game Cafe downtown. (Sometimes Richard roasts beans, and then we have really fresh coffee.)

We also have a Nespresso Vertuo for in-between coffee pots — for example, later in the afternoon. We prefer this to the ubiquitous Keurig brewer, which is impossible to clean properly and eventually yields a bitter coffee.

Sometimes we use a press pot, for good stout coffee, or a Chemex, for well-filtered coffee. Or a moka pot, for the closest you can get to real espresso without a machine.

We drink a lot of coffee here — I may drink over the daily limit of coffee. But if I quit drinking it, I would get the worst caffeine withdrawal — pounding headache and grogginess.

Besides, I like the taste. I like the coffeehouse culture and the fancy pot. I like espresso with a twist of lemon (or better, with a dash of sambuca). I like the coffee jokes. 

Coffee, good or no, is a part of my life.