#2
Mostly silent in this tourist town
As winter crawls back
to where it came from
Rhythmic thump of a base
from a car
Down on the highway
So loud it’s like
I’ve rested my head
On the chest wall of
A slumbering elephant
Lilac sky slipping away to indigo
Reminding me that time is
Moving faster now
And all those things I have put off
For another time
Are coming due anyway
Poem #1
The picture on the surface of my coffee
Scatters with the slightest movement
And all that was
And all I saw again
Dissolved back
Into the ethers
Where it waits like a
Song sung low and soft
At the edge of consciousness
Until another day arrives
Some time ahead
And the picture forms again
Of what was
And the world that could have been
Back in 2014, I was at a writer’s conference and was waiting in line for a seat in the hotel restaurant while chatting with a woman I had just met in the lobby.
I didn’t know who she was at the time. Just a really fun and interesting person who had crossed paths with me on that day.
We chatted about a lot of things and the topic turned to romance and erotica writing. I had just published a book under a pen name in that genre.
She had been asked to contribute to an article entitled, 50 Writers On 50 Shades. A look into why a book with so many obvious grammatical errors and ridiculous plot lines had rocketed to the top of the best seller list.
Sidenote: published in the summer of 2011, this book had sold more than 150,000,000 copies just one year later.
So as my new pal, Katharine told me about the article she had been a part of and the fact that the book’s popularity had left the public and the publishing world shaking their heads as to why it was so damn popular, I said, “I can tell you why.”
She tilted her head and said, “ OK. Tell me.”
When I finished my explanation, she gaped at me and said that was the first time she had heard that theory and she wished I had been a contributor to the article too.
Two things
1-I found out later that Katharine was a literary agent. (!!) In New York. With a very successful firm. Yikes. I’m over there shooting my mouth off about my thoughts on women’s romance writing and she’s just laughing and chatting away. I would guess our visit was a nice change from people hitting her up for book pitches and publishing favors.
2- About an hour ago, and years after that chat that had people listening in and chuckling, I found myself on a FB Group message thread where the members were still discussing this baffling phenomena of poor writing generating a best seller and a bazillion dollars. People are still talking about this! Reading through the responses, one thing was clear; no one was addressing the core issue that draws women to read hot, erotic, material.
I couldn’t resist throwing my 50 Shades theory into the fray. The same one I gave Katharine in our not-at-all private setting with a bunch of conference attendees pretending not to listen in. Granted, it’s more than a decade later so not verbatim. And it’s updated, but it’s damn close to the first word barf. And it still feels accurate to me at least. So here it is.
Why was 50 Shades of Grey so freaking popular?
I’ll tell you why.
13 years ago, when the 50 Shades book released, women everywhere, were just realizing something. We were tired of being in charge of our own orgasms.
Directing men in bed with body movements, some words or drawing a map on us to say, “This spot! Right here! The same place that you’ve missed a thousand times!”, gets pretty freaking frustrating.
And given that all they have to do is insert in a hole and repeat to reach their happy ending, women have been living with a lot of mediocre sex. Yes. Some fantastic too, but when you canvas women for factual data, those experiences are as frequent as Halley’s Comet.
So, horrible grammar aside, that guy in that book took 100% charge of the delivery and quality of that girl’s orgasms and, because he enjoyed doing so as much as he did, he even showed her more ways to reach those “little deaths” to more spectacular conclusions. Without a road map! Or running dialog with specific instructions! Unlike the reality of most sexual encounters with non-fictional males who roll over and snore 2 minutes after making a deposit.
Yes, even just 13 years ago, most women were just starting to be more open about seeking satisfying erotic reading, more so with the privacy of a Kindle or e-reader that would allow them to read anywhere, anytime, anything they wanted.
The explosion of horribly written erotica for women after that grammatical dumpster fire was published, was unprecedented. And it also gave an opportunity for the really great writers to rise and shine.
So, thank you E.L. James for that contemporary trailblazing into women’s “romance” writing and she, in turn, can thank Anais Nin for lighting the way.
Women were so hungry for reading about (fictional) lovers who not only can deliver, but REALLY enjoy delivering the goods, that they devoured that spectacularly mediocre writing in 2011. Like picking through the inedible chicken bones to find the juicy meat clinging to the book carcass. And given the fact that Romance Fiction is now a $1.44 Billion dollar genre, I’d say we’re still a little peckish.
And that is why E.L.James is currently lounging on her pool deck in the South of France and we are all in line at Taco Bell waiting for our black bean grilled cheese burritos.
Your memory hangs
Like a song on the air
A tune I know so well
Whispering through the trees
Pulling on my heart
Sweet soft weight
Of all that you were
Still here
Like a song
I’ll never hear enough
In the air
That I breathe
This morning, I hung a new painting on my wall. It was done by Charles Passarelli; a 92 year old artist who spends his summers up here in the Leelanau Peninsula painting and teaching workshops in watercolor.
The painting joins three others done by well known painters and they all share the same subject matter: Willowbrook Mill. That’s the wedding and event venue I own with my family and it’s a charming and beautiful space that’s stood on this land since 1879. Well known and well loved as locals and tourists alike hold memories of this place from all its incarnations through the years.
When I hung the new painting, I turned to look at the three other pieces we have of Willowbrook and it was so clear how differently each painter had seen the exact same subject. And these aren’t just painters with a small “p”. These are PAINTERS. Plein Air winners and highly sought after artists known around the country. Hell, one of them, Neil Walling, literally, wrote the book on Plein Air Painting. And there they were, painting this sweet old building.
The differences in the images were angles and locations that gave them their best view on that day in that particular light. Their styles are different, from the dreamy soft strokes of Pat’s painting to the crisp, almost photographic brilliance of shadows, light and detail in Charless’ piece.
Same subject yet different circumstances, different perspectives, different feelings. It just depends on who’s looking.
Looking at the different perspectives, I remembered doing a personal growth workshop years ago. At one point during the workshop weekend, a participant was in a conversation with the presenter about an ongoing war he was locked into with a relative. “But she’s wrong! That’s not who I am! Why does she think that? Ask anyone and they’ll tell you! I am not that kind of person!”
The presenter chuckled and then proceeded to share this gem. I paraphrase because it’s been a long freaking time since I heard it but it was so good a response that it burned into my hippocampus like the Oscar Meyer bologna jingle.
He said, “Dude. If I brought 100 people into this room who have known you at 100 different points in your life, they would tell us 100 different stories about who you are. Why? Because each experience of you is unique. It comes with a fresh perspective of who you are right this moment if they just met you. Or maybe it comes with an airport full of baggage if it’s someone like a sibling who still hasn’t resolved the missing Hot Wheels Crisis of 1970. It depends on who’s looking at you. “
And damn if that isn’t the truth. It sure as hell is when it comes to me.
To some people, I am the shoulder they lean on, the maker of tea and the bringer of the soft blanket so they can curl up and escape the world for a while. To others, I am the evil overlord who swept in and severed the ties to the free flowing cash cow that they relied on to maintain their worry free (to them) existence. Or I’m the business woman who doesn’t have a filter when it comes to getting things done that need doing. In my 20s, I had a friend who called me Frank. A little bit because of my last name. A lot because I said whatever the hell I wanted to say.
100 different people, 100 different versions of me. And every one of them is 100% accurate.
To those individuals, given the little information they had about me and given whatever the source was that gave them this information, they formed a picture that will never be changed until they actually spend time with me and dispel rumors to learn the truth.
I have a nephew who grew up far away from me and our only interactions were few and far between when he was little. Everything he thought he knew about me, he learned from my sister; a famously unreliable source. We had the opportunity to spend several days together when his own sister got married in the South and each evening, after his wife put their daughter to bed, we would sit and talk into the night.
On the last day of the wedding festivities he shook his head and said he was completely blown away at how opposite every one of his expectations about me were, given the story he had been fed all of his life. Apparently, I would have been a great character in a Stephen King novel complete with Satanic worship and veins running with hydrochloric acid. Huh.
Sadly, people’s thoughts, opinions, positions, judgements are not visible like the different views and perspectives we can see in pieces of art.
Maybe it’s why we are so drawn to art. It’s so real. There it sits for us to ponder. A painting, a sculpture, a song, a story. All the dark and light, beauty and ugliness, depth and shallowness there for our eyes and hearts and minds to do with what we will.
Many years ago, I started a project I was calling The Three Questions. These three questions would “paint” a picture of your relationship with another person. They would, if the participants were brave enough to be honest, tell you exactly what you need to know about who you are to them. And it would tell them exactly how you wish that would change.
Are you ready for the questions? Here we go…
That’s it. So simple. So clear. So deadly. Take a moment and think through the people who affect you in your life and just imagine their answers to these questions. And remember that their responses are coming from historical data they have about you and also where their perspective was when the data was “collected”.
I double dog dare you to do this with at least three people. Buckle up. You’re going to get a painting of yourself that will either have you crying tears of joy at the love fest or reaching for the headache meds and dark place to curl up as you rethink everything you thought was true. So, yeah. Have fun with that!
How do people see anything?
It depends on who’s looking.
Willowbrook Mill by Phil Fischer, pre-2016
Willowbrook Mill by Pat McKeon 2016
Willowbrook Mill by Neil Walling 2017
Willowbrook Mill by Charles Passarelli, 2022
https://www.philfisherfineart.com/
https://passarelli-artcom.weebly.com/
Local Leelanau Peninsula fine artist- Pat McKeon
Winds of Change
invisible breath comes
softly first
seen by petals dancing
gaining speed and
bending my deep rooted tree
to the breaking point
roaring down
like a runaway train
into my life
carrying away
everything
i do not have the courage
to let go of.
gone now –
all the reasons
excuses
sad procrastinations
and seance candles
lit to conjure
things long dead
i can not tear
my vision from
and on it’s leaving
in silence
sitting on dirt
i will grow new things
better things
watered
with my grief
Good morning. GOOD morning. Good MORNING! Such an innocuous statement. It really shouldn’t elicit a Sci-Fi level of goose bumps and foreboding and yet, here we are.
14,965. That’s how many times I’ve heard Good Morning just from the H. in the past 40 years.
Were they all good mornings? Of course not. Because I am not a robot. And that is why my case feels so cranked at this moment.
This morning the daily greeting slapped me upside the head like Bill Murray realizing he was caught in a groundhog day loop…still. I know what H said, but what I heard was “Reset to Start.” My response, like so many mornings in the past few decades, has devolved into a monosyllabic grunt somewhere between *hey* and *ungh*. I don’t want to do the same day over and over until the end of my time on the planet. I want to mix it up! And it appears that even if I begin the “who talks first” morning ritual, the response is…. You guessed it.
It’s time for some new morning greetings beyond that two word replication. Something with some style, some humor. Just another way to acknowledge that, yes, we have survived sleep mode one more time. My favorite would be the recent meme, “So, it appears the assassins have failed again.” Love that. But it’s only fresh once.
Maybe “Weird dreams last night?” or how about “Did that new pillow configuration make your neck hurt less?” Or even a segue like, “…as I was saying…” or, “Welcome back!” Anything would be better than 14,966. Anything!
We hold onto rituals we think are required pleasantries without ever stopping to ask why or if we can change them or delete the practice altogether. Like saying “Bless you” after someone sneezes. It’s Medieval. Literally. They believed that in the exact moment a sneeze happened, that your heart stopped beating and it was a prime opportunity for the devil to jump into your heart. So they quickly stopped that chance with a sticky God Gob blocking the entrance until you were back to monitoring your own devil holes.
If you grow up Catholic, there are a plethora of weird and archaic practices like the God Gob Devil Blocker move. We didn’t question them because we also believed that a bunch of guys in dresses and women in scary penguin costumes had some magical access to the inner workings of the Universe and to question them was to put our very souls in jeopardy.
I guess we should feel lucky we dodged a bullet that they didn’t make a required catch phrase for other body functions as well. Though some 10 year old part of my brain is itching to hear the approved flatulence mantra. Mine would be “Christ on a cracker! What died inside you?”
My new mission is finding alternatives to expected social pleasantries. No more “Have a good day!” From now on, it shall be “Have a different day!”
Thanks for letting me vent. Now, get out there and make up some ridiculous sayings to change the trajectory of your day.
Until the weasel hunt is over…
Ten years ago, a health issue led to some questions, that led to some answers, that then led to the destruction of my imagined life and its imagined stability. And that led to what felt like my brain melting and my soul howling out into the void.
If my life were a melatonin induced freaky dream, it would have found me climbing the rope in the gym back in grade school, slapping my hand on the rafter to signal my arrival and then looking down to see someone had lit the rope on fire and it was fast approaching the soles of my Keds.
I have always listened to the Universe as it has guided me on my way. It hasn’t been an easy sprint from point A to point B. In fact, it took me a few decades to figure out that my spiritual guides might be slightly sadistic bastards that thought leading me on wild goose chases was highly entertaining. Case in point: at age 27 I was guided to pack my life in the desert and follow love to a northern city only to be met with a full stop, u-turn and a “Just kidding! Hang in there for seven months in this new location and your work will take you to your next stop which we aren’t going to tell you about until you’re seriously questioning all your life choices! It’ll be great! Trust us!” See? Sadistic.
I sat still. Miserably. Heartbroken. But then the next stop did put me on a path that held a pretty clear route for three more decades. Until the brain melting happened.
So, there I was ten years ago, at my kitchen table in East Lansing; charred bits of my old life flaking off me; writing like a mad woman on the wall I had painted into a giant chalkboard for big ideas. It was handy for menu planning, thought processing, doodling and list making. It’s too easy to lose the post-it notes or the 37th spiral notebook you write the big ideas in, but you’d have to be Criss Angel to lose a wall. So there you go.
New Life Goals!
Uh… Happiness? Nah. Too vague. Success? At what? And really, isn’t “success” the achievement of a singular goal? Then you set up a new hurdle to jump. Screw that. This brain exfoliation went on for a while.
Until I ran into a thought that stopped the brain leakage. “What the hell do I actually want now?” Staring at the doodles, finally, some strong words shouldered their way to the front of my burned brain.
Yahtzee!
The first word was COMMUNITY.
I wanted a real community of friends and neighbors who I could interact with, create with, commiserate with on whatever shenanigans we would get up to. I had lived in that house in that college town for two decades and for reasons that no longer matter, I had only connected with a handful of people. Those were lonely years. And I was done with that.
The second strong word was MOVE. Five years prior, I had set a deadline for a decision to be made for the years ahead and if the spouse hadn’t come up with a viable plan to relocate somewhere that I had a say in selecting, then I was going to make the choice and he could come along or not. Afterall, I had uprooted my life three times at this point, each time moving for his work that took me farther and farther away from a location where any of my eclectic skill sets were viable career choices.
Ten years ago, it was clear that I needed to get out a metaphorical machete and start clearing a path to where I was supposed to be. It was a true winter of the soul where I had retreated, hibernating and trying to keep the delicate seeds of dreams alive while I let my listening stretch out again to those sadistic guide bastards to hear where I needed to move next.
NORTH. That was the word. I don’t think there are any coincidences because I know how those sneaky bastards work, but I had two simultaneous invitations to go north for visits from two women I’d known for years who both lived at the tops of two Michigan Peninsulas; one in the Keweenaw and the other in the Leelanau. They did not know each other so three guesses who set this up.
Why the hell not? I packed my car and hit the road to Copper Harbor. I had a great visit with my friend and the miles on the road alone helped air out my head. The morning of my departure from her house, I sat alone on the dock with my coffee and threw out to the Universe a request for a sign to let me know if our communication line was open so I could pick up the next bread crumb they tossed on my path. I did not see a bird fly over, but as I raised my cup towards my mouth, a feather dropped right into it with a satisfying plunk. Hilarious. Message received. As Ellie in the book Contact frantically reported to the control room team, “we are good to go!”.
Next stop Northport. I had some very interesting days in this tiny town and I met a lot of people and already had a feeling it wouldn’t be the last time I visited. Sitting at the donut shop before hitting the road, my friend asked what I saw myself doing next, and I said I wanted to create gatherings where people can celebrate and learn and interact with their community. She pointed across the street and said that building was for sale. We walked over and got a tour from the owners who were outside tending plants. The very second I stepped into the ballroom, everything that was twisted and broken in my soul straightened out and said “THIS”. THIS is my future.
It still took another three years to bring together all the wiggly bits and pieces to finally take over this building and another seven years to become one with this beautiful business in a lovely town with a real community of friends and neighbors, but it happened. Ten long freaking years.
So, the moral of this story is that when your life explodes and your brain melts, it’s a really good time to reopen your communication channels with Sadistic Bastards Are Us. I mean your spiritual guides. Let them lead you on a merry chase as they move you closer to your own next step. The golden part is just over that hill with the steep incline, razor wire, fire ants and random lightning strikes. Come on! It’ll be fun! And ten years from now you’ll look back and laugh.
A word from the Patron Saint of Sadistic Bastards-
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward” Soren Kierkegaard
Can I just say that the Toon Me App is ridiculously fun? The self portrait image at the top of the article is from 2012, taken in my kitchen in East Lansing, next to my chalkboard wall. The other images are from Toon Me’s portal access to the Faerie Realm.
I am thankful for the beautiful spaces of my home and my work that flow with people and the opportunity they offer to witness as we celebrate happy things, mourn our losses, commiserate on worldly matters, or laugh out loud over the perfect madness of life on Earth
I am thankful for a community that rallies when one of us needs something we can not do alone
I am thankful when cancer fails at its job to wreck a life
I am thankful for the change agents who make loud noises about things and wake others up to the fact that the old system no longer works and it is time find a better way
I am thankful to the Universe that has coaxed and cajoled and led and dragged me towards the next and the next and the next small and large adventure in my life
I am thankful to the ever growing circle of family and friends who have arrived at my door on the road of love and for my chance to welcome them in
I am thankful for the gifts of music and art and word crafting and food creation that keep my soul skipping like a kid to their wild playgrounds
I am thankful for this new day where there is another chance for hard hearts and closed tight minds to open and stay that way
I am thankful for the rich and funny, small and large conversations I have had with friends, loved ones and strangers that brought baskets of ideas and inexplicable joy
And I am thankful for my life and the thousand things that allow me to dream something that is not there now and the ability to make them happen
November
Wind cleared the last leaf
There is no turning back now
Rise to face winter
Word Ninja Girl 