The DNA of Running

Writing prompt this week was to respond to this picture.

I can’t run. But that’s no big deal since I can’t walk either. Nor can I sit up totally on my own or wipe my own ass. I’ve never been able to do those things though, so I’m not completely sure I miss them. I mean, wiping your own poo seems like it can have its disadvantages. Of course, lots of people, including my parents, talk to me a lot about privacy and trying to respect mine since I don’t get a lot of alone time, yadda yadda. But as with the toilet routine, I’ve never really had privacy the way they think of it, so I don’t know how to miss it. I feel that way about a lot things that other people think I should be sad about. All the things I can't do. But I don't think about it as much as it seems like everyone else does. Except for running that is. My wheelchair is mechanical and it can get fairly speedy when no one is looking; the wind blows my hair a bit and I feel the tingle of speed and its dangerousness. So I feel like I can say that while I have never run, I miss it. My body misses it.

I dream about running a lot. Well, maybe not as much as I dream about flying, but I think my running dreams are the ones that are simultaneously the best and worst of my dreams. The running dreams feel real. As though somewhere in my DNA is the program code for running and my brain can take it and play it through my mind and across my body so that during the dreams I feel totally whole. I am wind. My muscles and veins have life. And then I wake up. I can never get back to the same feeling if I try to go back to sleep right away. On those nights I don’t usually go back to sleep at all. It is too depressing. So, I read.

If there’s an invention that I think has made life hugely better for disabled people in last hundred years, it’s the ebook. I don’t have to ask anyone to read or try to finagle a heavy book into a spot where I can both see it and turn the pages. Harder than you think when you’re farsighted and can’t lean forward or turn over. If I’m lucky, my older sister will help me to bed and she’ll let me keep my earbuds and ipad close. My parents think it is a distraction from rest. I guess I get to be a normal teen at least in a few ways.

After my running dreams, I like to read either science fiction or westerns. Frankly, I think they are mostly the same. I mean there’s always bad guys and mission to do or a wrong to right and shooting things with either lasers or bullets. My favorite western is this stupid historical one that is kind of a romance novel I think. I found it for free in the stuff posted by authors on the ebook sight. I don’t care so much about the love story and I really don’t care about this chick’s petticoats and their various levels of tightening. But the writer knows how to write about horses so well that I don’t care about the rest. The author, it says it's by Terrance Walter but seriously that is not a name, must be from horse farm or something. He has this amazing scene where horses from the chick’s family farm get loose and end up running through the streets of Chicago, but like western Chicago, so all old timey.

“Each horse in its turn, no more than half a footstep from the next, rumbled and thundered down the clapboard road at a speed that said anyone caught in their path risked the pain of death. Their brown coats heaved and swelled as their breathes reached peak to bring their trampling hooves down upon the earth like rail splitting hammers. Their legs pulsing as their hearts strained to keep the pace of freedom.”

Gets me every time. Reading it is almost like being in the dream. Almost like running. My breaths always get a bit fast and I have to close my eyes to calm down before I set off any alarms on my monitoring machines  in the night. That Terrance, he knows what it is to miss running.

Wonderfully Bonkers British Radio

WARNING contains: me, cheese, Carpenters, translations, generalizations, assumptions, exaggerations and plugs for radio I like. 

A brief bit of background on my music taste- I am not a genre music listener. My collection ranges from D'Angelo to Alison Krauss to Coldplay to Vivaldi to Allman Brothers to Jill Scott to ZZ Top to Dizzy Gillespie and more. Most of what I listen to is, or was, kinda mainstream I realize. I listen to a good deal of obscure Hipster music too but usually not until they've decided they hate it, aka Mumford and Sons. 

In trying to describe British radio stations to American friends I came to this phrase most often "bonkers." But it is wonderfully bonkers. Here is a recent string of tunes as heard on a popular London radio station:

• Coldplay - Fix You
• Barbara Streisand - A Woman in Love
• Peter Gabriel - Salisbury Hill (note this is one of my all time favorite songs)
• Phil Collins - Against All Odds (awesome TAL piece featuring this song FYI)
• The Average White Band - yes, the Average White Band
• T'Pau - China in your Hand (yes, they had more than one song)
• Pharrel - Happy
• Queen - I've Got to Break Free
• Passenger - Let her Go (no, I don't know who they are either)
• and then Arcade Fire, Goo Goo Dolls, Outkast, Bob Marley and Goyte.

After which I just had to pull over and cry with joy at the ridiculousness of that string of madness. I love the lack of genre specific pushiness towards a single musical outlook or demographic group. I love how it often completely lacks what many would think are present day commercially appealing songs. If you want that, you can get it in the UK, don't get me wrong. BBC has more narrowly chosen tunes on various themed channels. There are dance music and more "urban" stations too. But the sort of everyman stations are all like the above. 

Now, there is also a regular overdose of cheese. I mean as far as I can tell the Brits love a cheesy ballad more than the Queen, more than beer, and more than making fun of the Welsh. It seemingly doesn't to matter what the lyrics are per se; it need not be an actual love song. The song just has to have a melodic singer and some seventies like grooviness. By way of example, let me present to you the song Calling Occupant of Interplanetary Craft by the The Carpenters. It sounds like Karen Carpenter is on ludes. Maybe she was I suppose. And the lyrics. Well: 

In your mind you have capacities you know

To telepath messages through the vast unknown

Please close your eyes and concentrate

With every thought you think

Upon the recitation we're about to sing

Calling occupants of interplanetary craft

Calling occupants of interplanetary craft

Calling occupants of interplanetary most extraordinary craft

(if you're struggling for distraction, read the fab wikipedia entry on this crazy tune)

I heard this song twice on the radio. Yesterday. So yeah, let's all groove on some cheese ball tunes into our next cuppa. Often these songs are dedication, which is how I know that it is really the people of England who are seriously devoted to easy listening. 

Another thing I love is that a number of these stations do a "guess the year" session every day. They play five or ten or twenty songs all from one year and people guess. It might be 2000 or 1988 or 1963, doesn't matter. I really enjoy it. 

Now there's room to go into issues of mainstream culture in Britain and talk about radio listenership decline and blah, blah.* But let me enjoy my silly radio pleasures for a little while longer ok, mate? 

I think a lot of radio stations in the US might get more listeners if they were more interested in variety and enjoyment instead of demographics and genre line blurring. (here let me plug Chris Demm's weekly themed rock-ish show on Rock 92.3 out of Greensboro, NC for being cool and good fun**)

*I have further thoughts on the long term success and addiction some Brits have to the radio soap opera called The Archers. You can podcast it in the US I think. And you should. It is easy to find as it is ALWAYS in the top ten podcast downloads on the BBC website. Yes, top ten. Always. 

** I still listen to ROCK 92.3 over the internet while in the UK and I credit Kelly, Demm, and Deirdre with helping me feel less homesick....even with the Bojangles ads. Thank you:)

Failure is an option

Last week's writing prompt:

"I think failure is inevitable and necessary. We should give ourselves permission to fail or we'd never write anything. You have to forgive yourself for failing. In the absolute sense, pretty much every piece of writing fails because theoretically it could always be better." Lionel Shriver

I began thinking about this in terms of times in my life when I have chosen to fail versus times I have failed at something, period. When I was 20 and living in LA, I realized that I did not want to do the things I needed to do, become the person I needed to be, in order to have success in the film industry. I chose to fail and it took a year to realize that choosing to fail and being a failure were not the same thing. 

More recently, I have failed to be fully myself. I've shrunken down and pulled inward so as to be what other's imagine as less offensive. I've also failed to fix the heartaches of people I love. I've failed to sleep enough and therefore failed to be as generous and kind as I strive to be each day. As I've been trying to punch up a chapter of a novel I wrote in order to submit it for a grad school application, I've wondered if that novel is a failure as well. Or is it enough to know I wrote it and that a few people read and it liked it well enough. 

Then I went to hear Neil Gaiman read some of his writing aloud and also perform one story with a quartet and illustrations (really great, btw, if he tours your way, GO!). Introducing one of his short stories, he mentioned that he wrote it for This American Life but they rejected it. And I thought, "What?!" You don't get much more famous as a writer, as literary rock star, than Neil Gaiman and someone said, "Nah, not what we're looking for, thanks." At no point did he say he felt he had failed, despite a commissioned story being rejected. He said he liked the story and then he read it to an audience which seemed to largely like it too. Gaiman said he was putting together a collection of short stories and it was fun to go back and read over, to collect and rediscover stories he'd forgotten about. Not failed things; forgotten, stuff in a notebook, in the back of a desk drawer things.

My lesson learned here is this, and damned if it shouldn't have been blatantly obvious given what's gone on just with this blog over the past month, but writing as a release of creativity from one's mind, when written to sooth the soul, written to express something real or imagined, really ought never have a label of pass or fail attached to it. Do you have a guilty pleasure book? One you love but it is a genre or author or story that you're embarrassed to admit you read and more still that you love it? Odds are high someone, somewhere has deemed that writing a failure. It fails to be smart enough or demure enough or simple enough or genre specific enough. But you love it. And you should. The person who wrote it hopefully loves it to. They birthed it. Writers should write because they have a story tell and they should love their work regardless of other people's judgement. 

Notice I didn't say regardless of critique. I'm not saying all writing is good because someone, somewhere loves it. I'm just saying that there's a range out there and if one writer's odd ball tale makes a few people feel more normal or feel more joy, that's important. A writer's work needs feedback and editing. I just don't think it all needs perfecting. We can't all write like that and there's room for the most beautifully chosen and arranged words along side the simpler writing that may seem base but can still tell a good story. Writing can't fail if it's loved and nurtured. It can't fail if it speaks deeply to even just a handful of people. Failure in writing can only come, I think, in not sharing it.

I am missing you...

WARNING CONTAINS me, love, bad punctuation, truth and lies, and musings.

I am in a little writing writing group and we get prompts, I'm posting my responses here. This week's prompt is "I am missing you." It is stream of consciousness, but also short. If you skip this post, I'll understand as it is probably a little ham handed. It is also strongly influenced by the fact I watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower the other day. A lotta friendship/love/healing intensity there. 

I am missing you, that innocent certainty of youth that knew love was enough. Love can be all things, shape all things, bend all things, believe all things. Do. All things.

And then you grow up and you meet obstacles that cannot be moved by your love. Wanting someone who does not want you, despite your love. Being unable to help someone in or through or over something, despite your great love for them. You feel helpless. You feel worthless. Because if you, just you and your love, were great enough, good enough, pure enough, certainly you would be able to do all the things that love is meant to do, to fix, to feel, to fight.

And then you get older still and you see, hopefully you feel, that your love, little and feeble or great and fiery, is not meant to solve the problems of the world. Or mend the hearts of all who know you. Nor dispel the griefs or fears of those whom you love. It is meant to sustain you. Just you. The love inside you is there to fill you and flow through you and fall out of you and surround you. To make you whole. To keep you together. In your fullness, your enough-ness, and only when you've looked inside and seen it can be that magic you thought the thought of love alone could be.

With a full heart. With a complete heart. You can help others be all things. You can help those you love shape and bend and believe all things. Your love plus the love of someone else, or perhaps, even better, lots of someone elses, is awesome in its power.

But it does not mean you will always win. It does not mean that in your fullness you can make others full. You will still suffer grief when you cannot add the love inside you to someone else's love for themselves. Because you can't. Or even if you could, it would mean less inside you, then you're both incomplete and that gets you no where.

It means you can shine. Shine your love at people. Smiles. Hugs. Words of support. Your laughter. Your light in the darkness. A pinprick into a night that can guide and give, warm and wonder. That's your gift as a lover.

Trying to Make Friends in the Land of Nod

As I hope you've garnered from my blog title, I'm American. I like to think I'm not actually that loud, but sometimes I can be and sometimes I think people see me that way regardless of what I might do. We Americans do not have the best reputation abroad. We're not as loud as Aussies, but no one is really. People seem ready to forgive Aussies though, outside of sports fanatics, and less willing to perhaps give Americans room to be ourselves. I'm totally generalizing. Yes, yes I am.

It's funny though, I am often told by Brits that other Brits don't like Americans. Told that I can probably expect to be judged and perhaps treated unfairly at times. Yet, as far as I can tell, this hasn't happened. That may be because I am, as a friend of my husband one said, "Anglo-friendly." I can toss out some slang and I often call things by their proper name like lift, garage, loo, or brolly (spelling? seriously, I have no idea how to spell these words. I wrote "swimming cozy" on twitter and made a lot of people laugh). I think it might also be because it is impossible to tell if I am having a hard time making friends here because it is just hard to do or because I am American. Let's be honest, it's probably both. It's almost always both.

Making friends after college/uni is hard. A statement that many a journalist has made bemoaning the lack of the places and opportunities to make new friends when one is working full time and/or has children. Bollocks to that I say (see, anglo-friendly). And surely you could say that one can make plenty of friends at work and also make friends with other parents, particularly other at-home-moms like myself, when one has kids. While I think a lot of people believe these are separate worlds of friends, I feel that is down to people's choices. Before moving the UK, I had a pretty balanced group of close friends. There were long time friends, workplace acquired friends, friends without kids, friends with kids, and at-home-mom friends. Several of these really good friends I made in my late twenties and early thirties. Take that you nay saying thirty-something journos who say it can't be done!!

And then I moved to the UK and I have two or three friends. Nice friends. But not uber close friends (yet?). I am having a hard time meeting people. I asked my husband before we moved about how long he thought I'd have to chat to someone new before I could ask them for coffee. What's the Brit waiting time to avoid being "pushy"? He said he didn't know. Another friend said that I shouldn't worry because people I would want to be friends with would not be put off by my seeming or actual pushiness. Sigh. British people can be put off by almost anything though. (I am no less anglo-friendly!)

I find myself doing something I've never, ever done be before when living abroad. Something I have in fact done the opposite of when living in other countries. I am looking for other Americans. *hangs head in shame* I mean, I stalked a woman in the grocery store and then into the parking lot and faked a grocery cart steering problem just to talk to her because I thought she sounded American. And she was! And she was nice. Joyously, she offered her number and said we should have coffee within a few minutes of talking. But then she never answered my texts. Ever. Of course, I gave up after two attempts because I can take a hint.* I tried not to feel rejected. I tried not to feel like I was dating again and "like, why hasn't he called!??!?!!?" *wrist to forehead*

All of this leads me to a path that I have traversed before with not so stellar results. Finding other at-home-mom friends. I am not good at this. In fact, I'm worse at this than I was at dating (old friends reading this are questioning how that's possible, but I swear it is true). Because I am not a very good SAHM. I don't like it. There's no revealing in the beauty of infant-hood in my house. I am not crafty. I am not that great at housewifery. My home is livable, it functions and we are all wearing relatively clean clothes; but I'm not good at it the way a lot of SAHM are good at it and love to be that provider. I'm not a great planner, producer, arranger, shopper, bargainer, baker, or candlestick maker. I'm good at watching TV, buying groceries and not using them, impulse purchases of silly t-shirts, losing sunglasses and getting frustrated with my kids.

Why must I go this route? At the moment, it is almost the only path open to me. I am working on fixing that, but it is proving hard to get into a routine while house hunting and trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up, which all fall in between laundry, cooking, cleaning, asset management, and avoiding nuclear destruction. My oldest starts what the British call reception (state sponsored preschool) in September. I have been told, nay promised, that I will meet all these other parents and we will be friends. Damn it, we will! Because our kids will be friends too. Instant friendship, just add school uniform and crushed jammy dodgers.

What scares me is that this "reason" for friendship is exactly why I am supposed to have all these other at-home-mom friends. Which I don't. Now, I do actually like being a parent and I am excited for my kid to go to school (not just to be rid of him, in fact, I'm sure I'll miss him), so perhaps this time, this forced companionship might work. Maaaayyyybbbbee. Fingers crossed.

*I recently looked at my phone's recent calls and it turns out I've been butt dialing this lady a lot lately. I never deleted her contact (until now) and I guess it just happened one day and my butt thought, "Hey, let's just keep calling her since she doesn't like us anyway!" I'm pretty sure she never put my number in her phone. But if she did, I imagine the label has been rewritten to say "that stupid American."

Dear Librarians, don't tell children there's no such thing as monsters.

Dear librarians, I know this isn't most of you. But if you know anyone who works with children that does this, sit them down, give them a cup of tea and a fairy cake and tell them they have to stop right now.

I took my toddler to a library today and found myself listening to a young librarian reading stories to about half dozen children huddle expectantly at her feet. She made several egregious errors in her reading, not the least of which was calling a cheetah a leopard, but one thing she did really made want to give her a good shake about the shoulders.

She said there was no such thing as monsters. She also said you can't reach the stars in the sky. She proclaimed one's inability to be friends with an eagle. In other words, she said don't believe these books I'm reading you; these stories are silly. Don't imagine they might be true. Don't reach your arms up to the sky and hope that something might raise you up into the clouds. Because these, these are just words and pictures without meaning.

How dare you! Don't ever do that again! There are words. Juicy, dreamy, stuff of stars words and they just so happen to be paired with gorgeous, whimsical, absolutely to be believed pictures crafted to feed the knowledge all children are born with - anything I can imagine can be real. I am bear whose best friends are a bird and a frog! I am a bunny building a rocket ship to the stars! I am a panda whose sneezes can blow over whole towns!

I am certain that this woman in no way meant to crush the imaginations of children. What she was doing, mostly, was asking questions to the children with no thought to what they might think the answer could be. She decided the answers to all her questions before she even spoke them aloud. A pouting bird claimed to be collecting stones rather than riding in a boat with his bear friend because he was jealous of his new frog friend. The reader declared, "Is it fun to collect rocks? No, no it isn't. I'd much rather ride in a boat, wouldn't you? Of course you would." Sorry lady, but I'd rather pick up stones any day. Boats are scary. I didn't get to say that and no listening child was able to express otherwise either because she never waited more than a half a second for an answer.

In education, we call this "wait time." It is a pretty valuable tool that you have to learn to use in teaching (it works well in parenting too). It's simple.* You ask a question and you wait. And you wait. And wait. And wait. Until someone offers an answer. Even if it is "wrong", you listen and you respond positively as much as you can. You validate contributions to the conversation. It is actually easier with younger children than anyone else because they almost always have something to say. But you have to listen and think about what you've said, what they've said, and even what's generally going on in the world. What the reader ought to have asked about the story is, "Why is bird collecting rocks?" or "Do you think that is what bird really wants to do?" or "How do you think bird feels?" And then waited for answers. The best reply to very small children is "Let's keep reading and see!" Easy. No need to discuss that they think bird really wants to fly away and eat worms or that bird is quite happy to collect stones or that mommy said that daddy's head is full of rocks. Just listen and let them share that amazing gift of belief in all things that children have in their hearts. When you do, it is always entertaining and sometimes inspirational. What gift did everyone in that room today miss out on because someone wouldn't give them a few breaths to say something?

So, let's review what we've learned friends. Do not crush the imaginations of small children. Do not ask questions you already assume you have the correct answer to (this applies to all of us really, doesn't it?;) Learn to wait for answers and listen to replies. In summary - be nice, wait and listen.

*I know it isn't simple. It is really hard and takes years to develop as a skill in teaching and in being a good listener in general. But let's pretend it is easy and all try to do it, ok?!

How does anyone find a house here? OR Did the English coin the term moron?

I'd like to preface this post by saying I've bought two houses myself, helped several friends buy houses, and I have a couple of American friends who are real estate agents. I have even looked at buying property in other countries; countries where communism is or was the official form of government. They still had better estate agents.

Funnily, my agent friends in the US say that all real estate agents are stupid (their word choice). But I really want them to come and visit here because I think I can say without hesitation that the "estate agents" in the United Kingdom are seemingly the people in the country least motivated to sell a house, help anyone buy a house, or give any fucks about the whole real estate market. The level of service is appalling. Lord help you if you are a British person trying to sell a home because these people are not your friends.

How have I reached this conclusion? Well, here are but a few examples of baffling things.

I have emailed an estate agent after a viewing stating that I was quite interested in the property but had a few questions. The house had been on the market awhile. It is still on the market. And here's why - no one ever wrote me back. No one called me. No one tried to call or email me in any way despite the fact that my husband and I were outspoken in our appreciation of the house. We in fact said, "This is the best place we have seen." No calls. No emails. No sale.

There is an estate agent who I've met twice now who never knows my name, even though he has made the viewings appointments with me, twice. He probably has it written down on a piece of paper in his hand but perhaps he is not motivated enough to read. He also never follows up after a viewing. Never asks during the viewing if I have questions or if I am interested. The most recent house I saw that this agent was meant to be representing had not been well cleaned or even dusted before the viewing. That of course might be down to the property owners but there were literally cobwebs across the top of a door jam, hanging down. Oh and the house was listed for over six hundred thousand pounds. Yeah. Bring your own duster mate.

An agent told me I would not "disregret" making even a quite low offer on a house he was representing. Dis. Regret. DIS. What?!

I have emailed about numerous properties and had no answers or answers that were about other properties or been told a house was sold when it was not. I have seen a sold sign outside of a house I was coming to view and therein told an offer had been accepted three days ago but they were still showing it just in case. Which is probably down to me looking in an area of England that is insanely competitive (see expensive but dirty house above), but still. Three days ago? So, the day I made the appointment to see it.

Every agency I email immediately puts me on a list-serve and starts sending me house listings. That would be ok with me if the listings were related to my search. I think some places do it based on price while other on size of home while still others simply send you things if you appear to be a human who has email. I have received notices about properties in other counties (that's like getting notices about places in another state for my American readers). I have been told about a great, brand new place 45 miles away. Also for two bedroom apartments having expressly said I am looking for three bedrooms houses.

It is comical. But it is also just insane. There are nothing but reports of inflated house prices. Reports on how hard it is to get a mortgage. Reports on housing shortages and government schemes to get people to buy houses. Competition abounds. It is a sellers market except that it is a buyers market because no one can afford these places. It seems there is zero competition here between agencies. There are no buyer's agents as far as I can tell. You're just at the mercy of people who appear to have no clue what running a business means. I suppose houses do just sell themselves to a degree. But good gracious these folks are just clueless.*

I will continue to to search; praying that should I find a house I want, someone might possess the mental facility to sell it to me.

*note this is the clean version of what I think of all of this fucked up, sociopathic cockery.