The Cat's FB Page

Calypso

So there I was, trying to get into Calypso’s FB page to delete it.  Why does my cat have a FB page?  Exactly.  Why does my cat have a FB page?  

Anyway, I couldn’t remember the password, so requested a new one, but Yahoo told me Calypso’s email account didn’t exist.  Sensible folk.

That seemed the end of the matter, except that a FB log-in page popped up.  Ever the fat, dumb and happy soul that I am, I hit ‘enter’ and expected to be inside Calypso’s page.

Wow, FB!

Instead, there it was, my deactivated human FB account with a Christmas profile photo.  In reality, I’d logged onto a website, but psychologically, I’d opened a door that’d been closed for three months.  I was alone in a secret place without anyone knowing it.  

I walked round the virtual room, picked up dusty objects, read letters from people who’d been daily present in my life until I shut this door, a door they’d disappeared behind .  I looked through my friends list.  All good people.  Very few who were still active in my life. 

Real friends.

And so I defriended at will, leaving only people who’d stuck with me outside FB, plus a few I couldn’t quite let go of yet, until only thirteen friends stayed. 

Nev, on Catfish, says if a profile doesn’t have 100 followers, it’s not real.  But that’s not what I felt when I looked at those 13 names, my friendly coven.  That list seemed very real to me.  These were people to whom I mattered, or who at the very least, mattered to me. 

Giving w/o reciprocity.

It’s taken a long time to understand that people I admire and enjoy but who don’t reciprocate, aren’t really my friends, regardless how much they accept of what I offer them.  And obviously, based on the fact that among those 13 names are people who stayed behind the FB door, I haven’t fully learned that lesson.  But 13 names is a start.

In terms of society, that’s a 20^th century lesson, one that maybe won’t survive the 21^st century.  There’s no qualitative message in that.  People adapt, connect, make reality out of new things, discard the reality of the past.  Me, I’m definitely a 20^th century realist.  An anachronism?  Perhaps.  But life only works when you pay attention to what’s true for you.

Holding onto what's true.

Dear Friends

2015 is my year of the real in friendships.  So here’s goodbye to friends I didn’t want to let go, but who went anyway.

Glencoe

Dear Friend, the rambler who plotted out gentle slopes in deference to my decaying hip then took my hands when I wouldn’t let these old bones stop me from seeing what grew under the bridge.  You introduced me to the disconcerting call of stags.  When inexplicable dread and grief chased me off a Scottish mountain, you told me the history of where we’d been, the lives lost at Glencoe.

You imposed celibacy on yourself to protect women because innately, you felt you were selfish.  It became a joke between us, you the flirt who always wanted to hear stories of my sexual conquests.  I secretly believed that you could care for someone more than you did for yourself.  When I met someone whose most intimate moments I kept private, there were no more gentle slopes with you. 

Dear Friends, the gregarious who slept in my beds, drank my grog, soaked in my Lush baths, cooked so I wouldn’t and wore fancy dress with abandon, decorated for parties and helped in the garden, slept in the hammock and sat round the long table, talking and laughing, brought out the fiddle, shared your writing, bolstered my off-key voice with your own.  We shook the trees and ate all their plums, trespassed on Lord Muck’s land, sat in the dark, nibbled by midgies as we waited for owls.

When the Butler deployed, you filled my rooms with your children.  I felt myself uniquely blessed by each and everyone one of you.  When that house and that garden were gone, you couldn’t answer an email or meet me for dinner or lunch or a drink or even wave from the window as my train went past your home. 

The Liffey

Dear Friend whom I’d see in the halls at work, all tall and thin and beautiful.  I didn’t know you.  I only knew all the men wanted to fuck you.  Some of the women, too.  Then the boss sent us to Dublin.  We stayed too late over dinner, ran under street lamps by the Liffey, laughing and running and missing the train, talking all the way home in the back of the bus.  Our birth of friendship.

When you hanged yourself on the back of a door, they never forgave me, you know.  I never forgave me either.

Dear Friends, is it a wonder that now I hesitate to risk, and conclude that it’s me?

It's Not FB; It's Me

One small step for rabbitdom.

I’m about to leap into social media sacrilege.   I’m breaking up with Facebook.  There’s no ideological, political basis behind this decision.  It’s not even because the ads drive me crazy or I have to scroll through miles of ‘suggested posts’ for updates from my nearest and dearest.  It’s to counteract becoming invisible.

OMG! you say.  And does she put tin foil on the windows to stop the CIA hearing her thoughts?

Pipe down, you.  There is no psychosis here.  But I’m happy to explain if you stop interrupting me.

(Interrupting her?  I haven’t said a word.)

 You know, people can have a raucous laugh, swear like a pirate, dress like a clown, dance in public, knit outrageous socks, and still be hiding in plain sight.  You see this a lot with introverts and middle children, not to mention former therapists.  Oh, that’s me three times over, isn’t it?  I wrote about my own problem with invisibility nearly two years ago here. Haven’t made any progress, it would seem.

Invisibility doesn’t always come with lack of attention.  Humans have a great capacity to gaily interact with, but never see you.  For example . . .

When the Butler and I moved north several years ago, we thought entertaining was the way to make new friends.  It took us a while to realise that people were happy to eat his cooking, drink our grog, sleep in our beds if the need arose, but were  slow to reciprocate, if they reciprocated at all.  A few brazen souls asked us to give respite hospitality, as if we were a B&B.  An offer we readily declined. 

Those type of spongers can be quickly kicked to the curb.  Or kerb, if you live in the UK.  But if you do invisibility well enough, your close friends may believe that what they see (or don’t see) is real.  I once started a friendship during a time of relative smooth sailing in my life, not so much so in the other person’s life.  I did what good friends do, not considering what was or wasn’t reciprocated in my direction.  Then one day, I gave into a wee moan about something or the other.  No beating of breast or gnashing of teeth.  Just a wee moan.  This person made it clear that having a rough time wasn’t in my job description. 

Oh my!

Friendship implies more than one person at work.  If someone keeps their needs below the surface, that isn’t an invitation to pillage the friendship.  Yet with some people, if you don’t establish early on that you have normal human needs, then you’ve missed the opportunity to ever do that. 

So what’s this got to do with Facebook?

I used to have great friends, 3D friends, flesh and blood people who existed in the real world.  People with ethics and morals, some who even went to church, for fecksake.  Maybe having me around, put a splash of devilry in their lives. 

Something’s changed for me the last few years, though.  People who used to meet me for coffee, who cared about what happened in my life, now live only in Facebook photos, too busy for even the most decadent dessert.  Far away friends who once wrote often, now answer emails with, I follow you on Facebook!  as if we’re not supposed to have any conversation more intimate than what we’d post in a public status update.

It’s not that I blame Facebook – virtual reality destroying normal social interactions – any more than an alcoholic should blame an off-license for their own addiction.  But it’s so easy to be invisible on social media.  Facebook’s a constant exercise in Show & Tell.  I post an update.  You hit like.  I share a link.  You hit like.  I post a photo, you hit like.  I’ve noticed other people actually have conversations following their posts, but on my page, that rarely happens.  It’s Like Like Like, unless I post something real about what I’m feeling.  Then everyone ignores that little crossing of the faux pas threshold.  Even when I announced I was leaving Facebook, the most commonly used word was, vicarious.  My life, someone else’s entertainment; my invisibility complete.

And I don’t blame my Facebook friends for that.  I don’t blame anyone.  It’s very much like when the Butler started making our bread – the stuff in the shops tasted insipid after a while.  

As an ex-pat, I’ve had hundreds of moments in life when I needed someone who wasn’t family to step up to the plate and do something out of friendship, not duty.  Parties, funerals, pub crawls, covering my ass, birthdays, illness, bare faced truths, lies to the boss, dips in the ocean, scrambles up mountains, listening to dreams and fears and hopes.  These are the real things in any life.  These are the things I remember and miss.

So 2015 is the year I’m going to look for what’s real, both for me and from the people who would be my friends.  The swearing like a pirate, dancing in Tesco aisles, creating outlandish knitwear – none of that’s going to stop.  As to the rest of me, the invisible me, we’ll see what shows up at the door, won’t we?

The Big Deal

Fat, dumb & happy.

Right before the BIG DEAL happens, there I sit fat, dumb and happy, trying to decide if it’s harder to know or not know.  Fiction writers do this all the time.  Wonder WHAT.  WHICH.  HOW.  WHY.  The wondering of the moment is, as a novelist, which would be worse:

Worseness Option 1:  To know what you’re writing now isn’t as good as what you wrote the last time and there’s no way to drag up something better from yourself.  The point where you know it’s over, the snap of creativity gone, is that worse than =>

Worseness Option 2:  What you’re writing now is leaps and bounds better than what you wrote the last time, so you don't know why no one wants it.  The bug flying against the window experience.

So anyway, I’m thinking about this when notice of the BIG DEAL comes and swipes all Worseness Options off the table.  My leaps-and-bounds-better pleased someone in an office far, far away.  The fact that nine other writers have pleased the same office doesn’t matter.  

Calypso

Last century (literally) when another BIG DEAL happened to me, the people at work threw an impromptu tea party, complete with cake.  This century, my office mates are a cat and social media.  If you have a cat, you know there are only cat BIG DEALS.  Social media, it is, so.

By the end of the day, all congrats are done and dusted, pushed out of the way by what Ted’s cooked for dinner and the latest jab at men, women, the conservatives, the liberals, and a video of a juggling hedgehog.  Virtual life lacks appropriate rituals to celebrate and cleanse the emotional palate.  Not being the sort of person to whine about the good old days, I go to bed.

The next morning, two of the other nine people loved by that office far, far away have followed me on Twitter.  How cool is that?  So I look up all nine people, find five of them and friends of two others, send my congrats, Google for anything that any of them have ever written since pre-school.  While I’m stalking them, they post congrats back to me and this is all very civilised for a battle to the death via BIG DEAL.

And then that’s over because this is virtual camaraderie.  I, who used to spend my day giving witness to people’s most intimate secrets, I’m on my own now. 

Tell me it ain't so!

That evening, there’s a Tweet from one of the others =>  Is anyone writing? 

It made absolute sense.  Here we all were, ten recipients of the BIG DEAL, our 15 seconds of virtual celebration over – who else knew better what we were feeling than the people we were in competition with?  And none of us able to focus or write – I, myself had spent the day in a hammock with the Edinburgh Book Festival brochure.  After jokes about becoming an instant therapy group, the virtual friendship ended.  The inevitable, I suppose, because only one of us wins. 

Four hundred people submitted for this BIG DEAL.  Four hundred voices with four hundred stories so powerful, they couldn’t give them up, draft after draft after draft.  Four hundred voices who dared sing out loud; three hundred ninety-nine will go quietly into the night.

I only know ten of those four hundred.  Here are the other nine.  Read them.  Follow them on Twitter.  Check out their blogs and websites.  Keep them writing.  Let them know we hear them singing.

The Dundee International Book Prize shortlist: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-27794582

Under the Tamarand Tree                             

Rosaliene Bacchus, California                       

http://www.rosalienebacchus.com/writer/TheJourney.html

Daughters of the House of Love

Veronica Birch, West Country

She’s evaded my stalking efforts.

The Open Arms of the Sea

Jasper Dorgan, Wiltshire

@TriskeleBooks

http://www.jasperdorgan.com/

Sea Never Dry

Ben East, Virginia

@hBenEast

benonbooks.wordpress.com

Some Things the English

Rachel Fenton, Auckland

@RaeJFenton

snowlikethought.blogspot.com

A Village Drowned

Sheena Lamber, Dublin

@shewithonee

Sheenalambertauthor.com

Out Like a Lion

Robin Martin, New York

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGEt7t-YuIo

Ida

Amy Mason, Bristol

@AmyCMason

amymason.co.uk

http://www.spikeisland.org.uk/events/activities/write-club-march/

The Dreaming

Suzy Norman, London

@susynorman

http://suzynormanfiction.wordpress.com

Ball Pit Friends

When we moved into this house, there was a row of flower pots on an outside wall.  One or two were empty, but most had forlorn plants abandoned by the previous owners.  Scrofulous orchids, nibbled by slugs, some type of succulent and an amaryllis.  We brought them inside, pampered them, and in return, they bloomed. 

The empty pots stayed on the wall, waiting to be used.  Eventually speedwell seeded itself in those pots and we let it run wild.  In the autumn of that first year, the speedwell died back and an oxalis sprouted in one of the pots.  I brought it in and after sending four wobbly stems into the air, it died.  Bummer.  So the pot went back outside.

Next spring, more speedwell on the wall.  In the autumn, once again the oxalis came up, this time a bit more hardy and confident.  Now we have a regular thing, this oxalis and me, meeting up every autumn for its short lifespan.  It’s like we’re intermittent friends that we can each count on.   

That’s the story you hold in your left hand while I talk about what’s in my right hand. 

Early in the week, I read a blog by Amy Mackin that perfectly described when a typical rejection letter becomes a crossroads in the perception of oneself as a writer.  It’s a brutal experience for some (most?) of us.  Her blog made it so intimately real, it hurt to read. 

http://amymackin.com/mythbuster/

The blog incited all sorts of responses in me, none of which I shared with the author.  Not even when later in the week, someone thanked me for writing Amy’s blog.  The whole synchronicity of that exchange went zoooom over my head.

And then a friend of mine shared a link about SoulPancake’s ball pit friends.  Basically, a box of plastic balls with a sign over it that says, Take a Seat, Make a Friend.  On top of the small plastic balls are several larger ones with tasks written on them to help the friendship along:

Share three things on your bucket list.

Find one thing you have in common.

Describe the first time you fell in love.

Talk about someone who inspires you.

Talk about the experience that changed your life.

Create a secret handshake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfHV4-N2LxQ

Those people in the ball pit were random, but they made friendship look so natural and easy.  Sort of like my oxalis that comes up every year and that I set on my window sill to watch grow.  How easy would it have been to’ve recycled the compost that first summer and planted something else in that pot?  To never have known there was something lovely in the dirt?  How easy for any of those people in the film to come across the ball pit, read the sign, and keep walking.  Like reading a blog that moved me and not commenting.  I’d missed a chance to create a secret handshake with someone. 

That’s the way of the virtual world.  What SoulPanCake’s video doesn’t show are the pairs who got into the box and didn’t hit it off.  That happens.  It’s all part of the risk.  But we should, from time to time, consider the moment that we’re in as the ball pit, take a seat and make a friend.