Virtually Delayed

So there’s me, popping up my head after my writing winter of discontent.  It wasn’t writer’s block.  It was writer doesn’t give a fuck, heels dragged through my last draft of the novel about characters and themes I loved, absolutely loved.  And I didn’t give a fuck.  Emotively, I did.  Cognitively, I didn’t.

Once the novel was done and sent away to be slaughtered, deadlines for two plays waited my attention.  One play, an old friend who needed cosmetic surgery.  The other, only an idea.  Deadlines don’t understand winters of discontent.  I needed a kick in the ass, so decided to take a writing course.  Bit of structure, the fizz that comes from being around other writers, copacetic.

We have universities to the left of us, universities to the right, here I am, spoiled for choice of where to go.  On the home front, various things are being juggled (none of which understand winters of discontent, either, needless to say), so I opted for an online course.

This is a pretty funny idea because  2015 was going to be the Year of the Real.  Besides that, I’m not terribly visual.  In fact, I probably have a visual processing delay.  (When it’s going to arrive, is anyone’s guess.)  Which means that my photographer son and resident hooligan spent a lot of his childhood amusing himself by playing visual tricks on me.  Why I thought learning visually without the very necessary 3D contact with my classmates would work . . . well I wasn’t thinking, was I?  But I am nothing if not a slow learner, non-attendant of the obvious.  Off the money goes and I wait to be inspired to greatness.

It didn’t occur to me that I was in trouble when feedback for my first submission honed in on my use of accents in the dialogue.  (What accents?  thinks me.)  Some feel it courageous I’ve attempted accents.  Some, that I shouldn’t be taking on airs, using accents without a DRAMATIC REASON.  Oh, and did I know that certain (low brow) Dubliners might use the word ‘feck’ but certainly never ‘wee’.  That’s Northern Irish.

Oh.  The ‘accent’ is my husband’s speech pattern.  Oh.  Okay.  Light bulb moment.  They don’t know I’m not British.  Telling them once, doesn’t make much difference.  Telling them three times does.  And this isn’t a reflection on them.  It’s a reflection on virtual learning.  In a 3D classroom, they’d hear my voice week after week.  Online, I’m letters on a screen.  They aren’t here to get to know me.  They’re here to learn scriptwriting.

I did, however, understand immediately the difficulty from most of the course examples being culturally embedded.  (I may be slow, but I've been an ex-pat for a while now.)  We read this script, watch that film, my classmates are in stitches or deeply moved and I’m all WTF?????  Without the cultural context, my learning skimmed across the top, no  conversations where the Brits explained things to me about their home grown drama, heard my reflections as an outsider.  

My visual son says he doesn’t think creative coursework can be taught virtually.  Indeed, it would take a lot of online chatting for this group of dispersed learners to become a real writing group.  To be honest, there hasn’t been a week yet when everyone gets in the written assignment for the rest of us to give feedback on.  If life intrudes too emphatically for them to get their work done, they most likely don’t have time to chat either. 

It’s not been a total loss.  We’re covering ground that I’ve not covered before and my two plays show the results of this.  But it’s feckin hard work.  (Yes, I’m low brow.  No, I’m not from Dublin.)  If I’m lucky, I may get a small paragraph of feedback from one or two of my classmates, an equal offering from my tutor.  There’s no discussion.  There’s no listening to discussions of the other plays.  There’s me.  Squiggles on a screen.  And waiting.  Waiting for their assignments.  Waiting for feedback.  Some of which never come, followed by more waiting.

So never again, unless I’m too frail to venture forth and annoy the Brits.  Hats off to those of you who can learn virtually, but for this anachronistic speaker of crass dialects, 3D is where I stay.

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?

The Confession of Lot's Wife

Look out, York!

The end of a great day in York, the night crisp-cold, sharp lines cut by the full moon down every building and around every tree.  We get a late train home, full of people with the same plan.  The Butler and I find seats across the aisle and facing each other.  Not a long trip home, so we don’t care.

I sit at a table next to a young woman reading.  Across from her, a muscular young man checks his camera.  When he asks her to tell him which of his photos are crap, an American accent comes out of his mouth. 

I’m not fond of American accents that don’t come from former Confederate states.  Nothing political in that sentiment; my Civil War ancestor got disowned by the family because he fought for the North.  It's just what fits in my ear better, accents from the south of the country.

So, on the train, Annoyance #1, this Yankee sitting across from me, going over his holiday snaps.  Then comes Annoyance #2, their conversation.  Specifically, the way he intrudes on the woman’s reading with a near childish request for assurance that his photos are great, the woman’s dignified enthusiasm for his work, like a fond mother for a child.  This guy is hard work.  I have sympathy for the woman.

Annoyance #3 is what tips things off.  After repeatedly telling the woman that she should say if a photo is lousy – and it takes her a while to get there – she says she prefers one shot of a location over another shot of the same location.  That gives him permission to say how angry she looks in the next photo, but then she always gets angry with him when he tries to take pictures and how could he take good pictures when she’s nagging at him, and picking fights?  In fact, now that he thinks about it, all of these photos are of arguments. 

Annoyance #3 isn’t so much annoyance as that o-shit feeling in the pit of the stomach.  In my former life as a trauma therapist, I met lots of people in relationships where conversations like this always led to a box canyon called, It’s Your Fault I Hit You. 

The woman must have that o-shit feeling, too, because her comments on his photos now parrot his own, and if he changes his mind, she changes her mind, too.  There’s no enthusiasm in her voice.  She quite artistically monitors his level of emotion and adjusts hers to save herself.

So the photos gone through, she turns back to her reading.  He sits for about 3 seconds, then asks if she’s done her homework.  She closes her book and looks at the table.  He asks if she understood him.  She nods, continues to look at the table.  He makes her repeat the question to him so that he knows she did in fact, understand.  He then keeps asking questions about her homework and does she understand why she should do her homework and does she understand why he asks if she has done her homework.  By this time, it’s clear that the homework is her ESL course, which surprises the hell out of me.  The woman has an accent, but there’s nothing in her spoken English that leads me to believe she isn’t fluent.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, the woman stops looking at this man and looks out the window where it’s so dark, she can’t see anything but her own face.  What her expression says, I can’t see.  Maybe she doesn’t trust it to anyone but herself.  I stare at the Butler across the aisle who cannot hear this smiling man at my table speaking in a very low voice like he’s a normal human being, telling this woman that he’s putting her through all this in public because he’s her husband and he loves her and I’m still staring at the Butler to keep from leaning over and telling her that this guy’s an asshole or that she should run fast and far or come with us to safety.  I don’t say any of this because the worst thing I can do for her is say anything.  Speaking up for her would be another reason for him to hit her later.

‘I’m your god,’ he says to her.

The o-shit feeling ratchets up several degrees.  My little pea brain goes into overdrive trying to think of something I can do for this woman, some way to help her without making it worse.  But it’s a short train journey, my expertise has always been at cleaning up the mess, not stopping the mess.  I’m not smart enough to come up with something that'll do more than ease my conscience while at the same time, not anger this woman’s god.

Our stop comes.  The Butler and I get up to go, but there’s a bottleneck at the exit.  And there’s me, Lot’s wife, turning back to stare at that guy, everything I feel right there on my face.  I know it’s there because our eyes meet and his face reacts to mine.  The people in front of me move.  I turn around and walk off the train, no pillar of salt, just a conduit of social condemnation that this man can take home with him and take out on his wife.

A Winter's Walk

The Sheep Wash in summer.

The place was filthy with people on those last holiday outings with family.  Hill walkers.  Bird watchers.  New Year fitness resolutions.  And regulars like us, walking their dogs. 

The Butler suggested we go up the Drover’s Road to the moors.  I love the moors in all seasons, but the weather that day wanted me to prove it.  Once over the Sheep Wash where ice patched the steep incline, I was sorely tempted to suggest we turn back. 

Just get up this hill, I told myself, and we’ll be on the moors.

At the top of the road, we saw a clutch of folk.  Bird watchers, was my first thought.  Hungry for this year’s first sightings of grouse.  People notorious for hating Doodles.

And something on the ground.  The Butler suggested an animal of some sort.  Wishful thinking.  A woman lay on the road, one of the bird watchers who’d slipped on the ice.  I put the Doodle on lead and urged the Butler forward like a shy kid who didn’t want to play the piano for Aunt Matilde.

He knelt beside her, the group stiffening at his bolshiness until I explained he was a doctor.  Delighted at seeing the Butler on his level, Big Nose went over to help.  I secured our gentleman pooch, listened to people tell the Butler what to do while he talked with this woman whom he had nothing to offer, all his magic potions locked away at his workplace. 

To the woods.

The best way for me to help was to get the fidgety dogs out of the way.  Off we went along the Drover’s Road, tossing the ball, listening to grouse laugh.  There hadn’t been so many people up there since summer.  The ubiquitous bird watchers with eyes and binoculars trained on the heather.  A group of raucous lads on 4-wheelers.  People with kids in their Christmas clothes, the romantic notion of walking the moors in winter turning into a stupid idea.  

There wasn’t a sense of braving the elements together, but a division of purpose.  How could anyone be so stupid (that would be me) as to bring dogs that would plough through the heather after birds, run in front of 4-wheelers, knock down kids without proper footwear?  Although I put the Doodle on lead when needed, my caution didn’t earn me any points.  The Christmas bonhomie was over.

We reached the trail into the woods and turned back for the Butler, caught sight of him about the same time we heard the rescue helicopter.  The Butler and the Doodle are both ditzy about anything that flies, so we waited.  We actually stood where the helicopter wanted to land, so trotted out of its way, Big Nose slipping his collar but not wanting to get too far from his humans while the Doodle tugged in the other direction, ready to capture the mechanical bird. 

The wind from the blades was so fierce, we turned our backs just as a dozen or so grouse flew out of the heather in glorious cackle.  We shielded ourselves with our arms so we could watch them go, the Doodle dismissing them in favour of bigger game and Big Nose wondering how we could be so reckless when our lives were going to end any minute now.

Codbeck Reservoir

The helicopter landed and the rescue guys got out.  The first doctor on the scene now stood on the side lines, didn’t identify himself.  He’d already been dismissed by Mountain Rescue and the paramedics who’d shown up to play tug-of-war over the patient. 

We cut across the moors and over the stile, into the woods.  We didn’t know the woman’s name and she didn’t know the Butler’s.  No one we passed knew he’d knelt on the ice that melted into a cold, numbing wet so a stranger wouldn’t be alone in her pain.  Just a couple of dodgy looking folk with dogs who would jump on their children, chase wildlife, shit at random.

Charlie Hebdo

It’s Saturday and blog time, but there’s nothing in my protected, overfed life that’s worth talking about after what happened in Paris. 

Rage. 

It takes a lot of little dehumanising steps to get to dehumanising rage.  Like having a microphone shoved in your face after the death of twelve colleagues to be asked, Were they wrong to go so far?  Or being called a coward for blurring the offensive cartoons in your publication. 

Before you know it, you’re not safe going to the grocery store or sending your kids to school.  You’re angry and helpless, looking for someone to blame.  

So you legislate how much of her face a Muslim woman can cover.  You protest the building of a community centre near Ground Zero.  You make a crazy quilt of evocative ideas such as freedom, liberty, equality, and embroider them together with fear, anger, phobia, hatred.

Were they wrong to go so far?  The French journalist responded, You don’t argue with the dead. 

There are nearly twenty dead, including the terrorists.  Each life lost, started as a child in someone's arms.  How many dehumanising steps did it take for that child to give up his life for the opportunity to destroy someone else's?  That's a question worth answering.

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 Inner Wolf

We got Big Nose as a rescue.  He came fully trained, was what even North Yorkshire farmers call a gentleman.  When he was the only pooch in the house, I’d take him for walks off lead down the village street, he was that reliable.

But he’s got issues. 

What, me?  Issues?

Sorry, Big Nose, it’s true.  There’s a price for having a gentleman dog.  When we got him, he didn’t know how to play with humans and really doesn’t like it much now, although dogs are fun fun fun in his eyes, which is why we got the Doodle.  There’s all sorts of rules about when and where he can be in the house, none of them known to us, so we just followed his lead. 

If we raise our voice to the Doodle, if we do a sideways arm movement in a human conversation, or God help us, have an argument amongst ourselves, then Big Nose hits the ground, plasters himself against a wall, can only be soothed if we let him out of whatever space he’s in at the moment.  Six years in a house with only positive based dog handling methods, he still waits to be beaten. 

Big Nose

His worst issue is food.  Although he came to us as a practiced beggar in the sitting room, he leaves the house when we eat and often goes for 2 days himself without eating.  We figured there must be some signal we didn’t know that told him it was okay to eat, so we tried everything we could think of, even speaking to him in Irish, since he came from Ireland.  Nothing worked. 

When he does eat, we can’t watch.  We can’t even be in the same room.  After the Doodle arrived, we started feeding Big Nose outside so he’d stand a chance at getting fed, which actually made him more comfortable.  But we can’t be in the kitchen, lest we peek out the window at him.

The Doodle

The Doodle, on the other hand, came to us as a puppy.  She’s what North Yorkshire farmers would call a dominant, an alpha, a wolf sitting in your kitchen ready to rip out your throat.  Actually, she’s an intelligent and confidant dog who’s never been smacked and seldom yelled at, (the latter mostly because of Big Nose – if you’ve ever had a Doodle, you know your favourite phrase soon becomes For The Love Of God NOOOOOOOO).

Training a smart dog is full of rewards.  Doodle is a genius at spotting a pattern, reading my body language, figuring out puzzles, so it doesn’t take her long to know what I’m trying to communicate.  She views me as her best resource and wants to please me. 

As a problem solver, she also figures out things I don’t want her to, like how to open doors and gates, how to get over or through barriers, how to pick pockets or get dirty toys out of the sink.  But she’s no more trying for world dominance than is a child who’s proud of learning a new, albeit inconvenient skill.

Get that dog under control!

Because she’s a new (and very large) puppy, I’ve been inundated with all sorts of advice, some when I’m in the middle of training her, given by people who don’t know my name, let alone anything about my dog.  Most of their advice is based on aversive conditioning (i.e. let’s do something bad to the doggie so it’ll act more like a human).  The impression I get, especially in my home village is that Doodle should be a completed product, even though she’s not had her first heat (an event I’m storing up Valium to survive).

A few days ago, I was frantically knitting the last of the Christmas projects while the Butler was out of the house.  The Tesco guy came with our Christmas delivery.  Doodle has learned that knitting is verboten, so I stashed what I was doing under a cushion, didn’t bother zipping up the yarn bag, shut the living room door on her and Big Nose so we didn’t have to worry about open doors and gates, then went to meet the Tesco guy.

When I came back, there was wall to wall yarn over the floor and furniture, a smiling Doodle wanting me to come in and play.  ‘Out!’ I yell and point to the door.  Oh, more fun, in her eyes, so out the door she goes with her poodle-sass trot.  I command her to WAIT and close the door.

Nothing like fox dung.

Big Nose is pressed against the sofa, head down, whites of his eyes showing.  Well fuck me, I’ve done it again.  I get down on my knees, speak in a play voice, try to calm him but he stays very still when I touch him, not engaged, submitting, not relating.  I let him out past the smiling Doodle who hopes it’s time to come back in to play knitting.  It takes about half an hour for Big Nose to forgive me.

As to the Doodle, it would’ve been easier to smack her, screaming obscenities so she’d become incontinent the next time she saw a skein of yarn.  But what happened was my fault.  We had company, which is as delightful as gravy to a Doodle, and I’d left her in a room with something apparently lots of fun to me – unguarded yarn.  What else was a Doodle to do?

More pertinent, that ‘easier’ method is why Big Nose has a stunted emotional life.  This lovely, docile, affectionate dog will never enjoy the full companionship of his humans because someone wanted to kill the wolf in him.  That’s not research-based training; that’s tapping into archetypal fears. 

On the job.

For twenty-five years, we’ve known that the dominance based training comes from bad science.  We teach our children to be nice to the doggie, then as adults, discuss how hard is hard enough to hit our dogs.  When we’re not hitting them, we’re scaring, dominating, confusing, maligning and transferring our own motivations onto them.  

I question even 'humane' aversion tactics which call for a loud noise whenever the dog does something we don't want it to do.  Why startle the bejeezus out of a dog when going 'Uh-huh' or a quick intake of breath or a 'Tsk' gets the same message across?  Let me suggest, if there's a wolf in the kitchen, it's inside ourselves, not our dog. 

If there’s a new dog in your house this Christmas, educate yourself on the proper research into the reason for dog behaviour, such as John Bradshaw’s In Defence of Dogs.  Learn about relationship based training here.  Get to a positive reward based obedience class or better yet, some one-on-one training for you and your puppy.

Mostly, love your dog.

  

Here I come!