A month of gifts, day 8: The Gift of Music

Last week, while the Plague was practicing his cello, he called me into the office. “Look! Music really does have charms to soothe the savage beast,” he told me. I didn’t bother to correct the quote, because the beasts were both resting peacefully as he played to them. The Small Angry Cat was curled up on a pile of clean towels, and the Large Doofy Cat was sprawled atop the computer tower, both of them sound asleep. And if you’d ever heard those two creatures fight, you’d appreciate the quiet, too.

Not every practice session at my house is a beacon of peace and hope. Sometimes the cello gets played passive-aggressively. Did you know that the cello can be played passive-aggressively? I’m telling you, the things you learn when you’re a mom. But most days aren't like that, fortunately, and this week is the school orchestra concert, where I'll get to hear the Plague play all the songs he's been working on since school started. and to see the triumph in his face--that's magical. I'm glad he has that opportunity, because even if he doesn't make cello a lifelong passion, his life will be richer.

I tell people my musical talent is being a good audience. I tried clarinet and piano, but unlike writing, I never had the focus to practice. I’ll listen all the live-long day, though. Classical, bluegrass, movie soundtracks, big band, alt-rock, indy folk, trashy pop . . . Every time I tell someone I’ve found a kind of music I don’t like, it turns out there’s a band or a singer or a song that is actually pretty awesome.

Here are some more songs I love.

Yo-Yo Ma playing the prelude to Bach's first cello suite:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZn_VBgkPNY 

The SteelDrivers, playing "Ghosts of Mississippi":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wRNK1cNVWw 

the Dragonborn theme from Jeremy Soule's Skyrim soundtrack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clcHxg9l5Bk 

and "Dante's Prayer" by Loreena McKennitt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDw3CyOmj20 

Tune in tomorrow, when I'll be hosting a guest blog by Joselyn. She's bringing some excellent holiday beverage recipes for you!

A month of gifts, day 7: The Gift of Pets

I like to tell people that my husband and I stole our first cat. It’s not technically true—Orca was abandoned by the neighbors, who threw her out when she went into heat (who on earth could have predicted that would happen?!) and began following my husband home from the parking lot of the apartment complex where we lived in Sacramento. A beautiful, sweet-natured calico cat, she spent the next 16 years bossing us around, as cats do.

Next came Donut, who came home with me after an ill-advised visit to the local SPCA’s ‘Whiska Wagon.’  He passed away last December after a valiant fight with a stubborn infection. I still miss him; he always was the first one to greet me in the morning (mostly because he wanted someone with opposable thumbs to fill his food dish).

(Here's Donut, looking grumpy over the whole new-kitten thing. Padfoot just wants to looooove him.)

Then Padfoot joined us. He’s a Maine Coon cat, enormous and fluffy. Sadly, like so many of the beautiful people, he does not have two brain cells to rub together. But he looks good. He’s basically a dog in a cat suit.

(All your fishes are belong to Padfoot.)

And now there’s Dirtpaw, another neighborhood stray adopted by my son. She’s a tiny calico cat with an outsize personality. We theorize that she has kitty PTSD from her time in the wild, since she’s prone to sudden rages. Fortunately she’s also prone to snuggling some of the time, and therefore she’s weaseled her way into our hearts.

(Dirtpaw does not recall giving you permission to work.)

Isn’t it funny, how creatures who sometimes eat bugs that turn them into a cross between a lawn sprinkler and the pea soup scene from the exorcist can become such an integral part of the family?

(I’m posting this today because it’s not my day to clean the litter box, so I’m looking more favorably on the rambunctious beasts.)

A month of gifts, day 6: The Gift of Shadow

This week, I talked some with a friend of mine about our shadow lives, the things we hide out of shame or fear, the things we feel make us unlovable and unworthy. It’s easy to forget sometimes that everyone has these shadow aspects. Sometimes we suppress them, sometimes we do battle with them, but either way, they shape us.

I think it’s not a coincidence that in folklore, one of the ways we can discern terrible creatures like vampires is by their lack of shadows and reflections. In this, to lack a shadow is to be wholly given over to evil. Yet how often do we try to outrun that shadow-self, hoping that if we can just put enough distance between us, we will somehow become perfect, or at least good enough?

It’s natural to fear the shadow. After all, society is designed in large part to keep the worst of human nature in check, constantly reminding us that taking or doing what we want without thought can lead to the most awful consequences. It’s good to have that order to keep us civilized . . . but at the same time, going too long without addressing those shadow places in ourselves leaves us broken and fearful. It’s not just a matter of crushing them, either. We will never be free of the shadow, so unless you want to become some sort of monster, you have to set a place for it at the table in your heart, and find out what it wants and why it’s taken up habitation in you.

The thing is, I think we need that shadow. Need it desperately, sometimes, a life-or-death yearning, a way of knowing what’s missing in our lives and where our deepest longings are pointing. The shadow can be a map, a guide, and a solace—but only if we can see it for what it is, not as a threat or a failure.

Angels come to us in the darkness. Without night, we would never see the stars and dream of something beyond this world.

I love the poetry of the Sufi mystic Hafiz, and this is part of the poem I read today, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky:

Most roots like something still and undisturbed

to grow in. There are always various aspects of

nature at play that parallel their parent—

metaphysical laws.

Sit down with a name of God on your tongue,

or let your spirit arms reach within and embrace

something sacred there; you might begin to shine.

All that lives in shadows, all names and forms,

will then run from—or bow to—the king of the

jungle . . . your soul, your soul.

A month of gifts, day 5: The Gift of Family

I called Great-Aunt Carolyn when I got to Spokane, and she said, “Where are you?”

“Here,” I told her. “I’m here, just a little turned around. What cross street am I looking for?”

She filled me in, and added, “Ed is already downstairs waiting for you.”

Ed, my great-uncle, turned 97 this year. But when I got to the assisted living facility, he was standing outside with his walker, keeping a sharp eye out. I rolled down the window and said, “Hey, soldier, going my way?” I always liked to make him laugh, because he looked just like his older sister, my grandmother, when he got that twinkle in his eye.

I say ‘looked’ because last month he passed away—just in time, his daughter said, for him to spend Veterans’ Day with his buddies. I could tell he missed them, the last time we spoke. Over and over he said, “It was a good life.”

Yes, sir. Yes, it was.

I wish you could have met my Uncle Ed. He was like a meteor in my life—he’d soar in with his stories and his larger-than-life persona, and I wanted so much to be adventurous like him. When he heard I was driving across the country, and planned to stop and visit, he said, “I used to do stupid stuff like that, when I was your age.”

I laughed. It was exactly what I had in mind when I set out.

A month of gifts, day 4: The Gift of Science and Technology

I love living in the future.

Last week I tried to describe my family’s first computer (a Commodore 64) to the Plague, who is eleven and fascinated with computer games. I explained my favorite game—the one where you had two ‘cannons’—diagonal lines—on ‘hills,’ and the player had to figure out the right angle for her cannon and blow up the computer’s cannon before it returned the favor. The cannon ball was a couple of green pixels, and my geometry skills being rudimentary, I died a lot.

The Plague listened with horrified fascination. Minecraft, by comparison, is astoundingly complex (however, I still die a lot—fall into lava, get smacked around by zombies, get pushed into lava by the zombies . . .) And let’s not even talk about my current favorite, Skyrim, with its gorgeous visuals, intricate storyline, and soaring music. It amazes me how far computer technology has come in three decades or so.

Don’t even get me started on the tech I carry around with me. I told someone recently that if you’d told eleven-year-old me that one day I’d have a phone that could take pictures, play music, connect to this thing called the internet that can put me in touch with the entire world, and also still talk to people, she’d have never believed it. And if you’d told younger me I would be able to download books to that phone, a dozen or more, and read whatever I wanted, wherever I wanted, her poor little head would have exploded.

For all the flaws of the modern world—and they are many and varied—it’s a pretty amazing time to be alive. When I see posts from all over the world, from people I’d never have had the chance to meet if I’d lived in an earlier time, it gives me so much joy. While I’ll never be able to visit all the places I dream of seeing, your pictures and stories give me a glimpse of that world. And that is a tremendous gift.

For that matter, if I’d lived a couple generations ago, I’d probably be dead by now: appendicitis, difficult pregnancies, the childhood diseases I didn’t get because of vaccinations. People of my generation like to joke that we don’t know how we survived a childhood without seatbelts or helmets, and with great family reunion toys like Jarts. 

(No, Mom, we totally DID NOT play with the Jarts while you were busy talking to the aunts. Forget I said anything!)

The truth is, I know I was raised in a relative sweet spot, timewise. And contrary to what the evening news would have you believe, this day and age is remarkably safe for a lot of us.

Not everyone, of course. I think of refugees fleeing their homes, of countries disintegrating into civil war, of people who live in fear because of their skin color or sexual orientation, of those living in the harshest poverty even in my own, relatively wealthy, country. Science hasn’t freed us from bigotry, from selfishness, from self-righteousness. At its best, though, our technology reminds us how close we are, and how fragile and precious the web we’ve constructed that connects us.

Now if we can just stop using the miracles to kill each other, we'll be doing great.

Triangulations: Lost Voices--available now! (Including my near-future horror story, "Wandering Swallows.")

Day 3: The Gift of Friendship

The last few weeks have been full of bad news, so much so that events in San Bernadino, while distressing, seem less shocking than they would have a decade ago. And while I don’t know any of the people whose lives have been uprooted by recent violence that made the news cycle, there have been less noticeable tragedies among my circle of friends, the sort of everyday nightmares that too often pass mostly unobserved.

I say ‘mostly,’ because I’ve witnessed an outpouring of love and concern, gifts of money and time and compassion in some of the darkest hours the human mind can comprehend. And while I wish my friends weren’t struggling, I’m also grateful that their pain has not gone unnoticed. We’re all part of a pretty amazing community of creative people, and that energy pours out at the right moment. 

Whether it’s boosting a project or helping a new mom, covering moving expenses or sharing experience so someone can better navigate the storms we’ve passed through, there’s a world of generosity out there to counter the truly horrific challenges our society faces.

Friendship gets stuff done.

Tuesday’s post about kindness grew out of a conversation I had at Readercon in 2014, with a friend I’d known online for years. We took a long walk and talked about life, our goals as writers, moms, and human beings. That time spent with her at the convention, the first chance we’d had to talk face to face, is also a gift.

In a few months, I’ll have a poem in Mythic Delirium. That one was inspired by pictures and photos a couple of friends posted on social media. At a time when I found myself discouraged and struggling to write, they inspired me. (A lot of writing has to be done alone, slogging through the word forests, but I’d bet any writer you talk to will tell you we couldn’t get through on our own. Those of us who are lucky find a community of kindred spirits and dreamers who sustain us through the difficult times and celebrate with us when the good news comes in.)

There have been other times, too, when friends have saved me. Living with chronic depression means choosing to fight for my life every day. Some days it’s fairly easy, and other days it’s not. On those other days, being able to talk with the people who understand has sometimes made the difference between life and death. There are letters and texts I’ll save for as long as I can, because they’re like arteries running between souls, carrying life and hope.

I’m posting this late, I know. Sorry about that, but I had to do something for a friend.

Burial fund for Gabriel Moody

The Gift of Wonder

My husband thinks I’m a bit crazy . . . Well, maybe a bit crazier than usual. This summer I took a road trip across the country, from Buffalo through Denver and Salt Lake City to the Oregon coast and Spokane, then home again. Six thousand miles, give or take, in less than two weeks, so perhaps I could be forgiven for thinking a few things seemed off when I returned. Like the tire store near the café where I like to write. It just looked wrong to me, the first time I saw it when I returned to Buffalo, and it took me a few minutes to realize the whole façade of the building had been changed: new color, new type of siding running vertically rather than horizontally. Easily explained, once I really noticed what I was seeing, but still an eerie feeling: that sensation of the ground shifting underfoot.  When I told my husband that story, he gave me The Look. The one that says, “You’re kind of odd, and you’re lucky I like you.”

The writer in me loves those moments when the orderly world slips a bit. It’s when I’m off-kilter that the story engine begins to rumble, as though it’s easier to ask ‘What if?’ at those times when I’m not sure exactly where I’m standing. There’s the neighbor whose yard maybe had no trees at one point, or two trees, but definitely has only one tree . . . today. There are the shadows glimpsed from the corner of my eye, the ones that could maybe have a life of their own.  That used to happen a lot more often, and then life threw me a few extra stress curve balls, and existence became much more about keeping my head above the current rather than sightseeing.

But this summer, traveling through parts of the world I’d never been before, I saw wonderful things. Strange territories. And when I returned to Buffalo, and even the familiar terrain seemed a little off, it was like coming home in a different way. The universe had given me back something I thought I’d lost. It was the gift of wonder, and it made me look at everything on the slant again.  

 Bandon Beach, Oregon

 Crater Lake National Park, Oregon

Custer, Montana

As much as I love living in the future—and I’ll talk about that tomorrow—there’s a downside to having so much explained, so much mapped out and contained. It’s easy to lose that sense of wonder, to assume that everything is orderly just because it appears to be on the surface. Those moments that catch me off guard remind me how many layers existence has. I don’t ever want to forget the glorious mystery inherent in life and in art.

One of my favorite singers is Jesca Hoop, with her intricate lyrics and unusual way of looking at the world.  Her “Seed of Wonder” embodies for me what makes her work great, and why having that sense of wonder is so vital.

Acoustic version of "Seed of Wonder"

Oh, and don't forget to enter the Giftmas Giveaway--see the sidebar on the right!