Two out of 3 ain’t bad

It’s been a while since I’ve written here. My friend Valentalae observed so to me yesterday. So this morning it’s on my mind to start doing so again. After all, you know what I say about doing, right?

It’s been long enough that the client I used to post to this thing from my phone has undergone some changes. Let me describe the picture above for folks using screen readers. It’s an AI generated photograph of a three headed dragon.

Which I have posted here because my brother and my sister are on my mind.

Me, Spacey, and Pene, we are like that dragon. For years we have referred to ourselves as The Ghidrah. The Japanese movie monster, but spelled a little differently.

I first met Spacey almost 30 years ago. He wasn’t my brother things first started. He was an Internet friend. I arranged to meet him when he was in town visiting family.

And although we had never met face-to-face before the second we got near one another, we felt an electric shock of connection.

It was like we recognized instantly that we were meant for one another, that we were part of one another.

Some years later, I want to say about eight, I met Pene at a kink event, Black Rose. A mutual friend assured me that I simply had to meet her because “she is strangely like you, you’ll see when you meet her.”

And it was true. That same bolt of lightning passed between us. We laughed at the same things, found joy in the same things, always wanted to stand near one another, or be touching. It was absolutely identical to the way I felt around Spacey.

It was uncanny. I knew they had to meet, and I said so to both of them. And about a month later they did, at another event. Without knowing what the other person even looked like, they found each other across a very large crowded room. Another strike of lightning.

Not too long after that, we all got together in the same place at the same time. And it remains to this day, one of the most significant moments of my entire life.

We met at her house. Which was deep in the woods, down a private road. I remember this so clearly. Some friends were driving me there. As we drove, and got close I could feel them. I knew exactly where they were. I told my friends where to turn.

“How do you know?” they asked me. But I couldn’t answer them because I just knew.

When we got there, I jumped out of the car and ran to the house so quickly my feet slipped, and I almost face planted on the ground. The door opened and they were right there because they felt me coming. I slid into their arms, and we embraced.

And it felt like a bomb going off. A swelling crescendo played in my head. And I knew the truth, which is that we were one.

It’s beautiful.

A little over a year ago, our brother died.

Tragically so.

He had been grievously injured. Languished in a coma. And after coming out of it had a cardiac event that took him.

When it first happened, I thought I was dead. I kind of was. I kind of am.

But in a way that I cannot describe to you, he is still with me and sister. We feel him.

And it’s sad. It’s a profound grief that I’m going to have for the rest of my days. But it is not completely bad.

When she and I talk, that feeling of his being with us is magnified. And together she and I still love everything and everyone that he loved. How could we not? We’re him.

For years, I have morbidly said that I was concerned about this time, these days.

What would it be like when one of us had passed? Because magical connection or no, we’re still people.

The answer is that it’s OK.

I have been blessed to have such a long love in my life. And I still have it.

#gratitudeNow: Nug it.

So sometimes, life teaches me things I don’t particularly want to know about myself.

One of those things is that despite literal decades of study of mindfulness, and Taoism, I’m not a patient person. Particularly with myself.

It’s not even been three weeks since Spacey’s death. As you might imagine, I’m a mess.

Some days, I’m carried aloft by decades of happy memories, shared laughter, the delight of shared work, values, and priorities. Other days, all those things wrap around me like a shroud, holding me so tight I can barely move, barely breathe.

I’ve been having a whole lot of trouble sleeping. I wake up around 3 in the morning, remembering seeing him at the viewing, touching his body, and feeling how cold it was. As opposed to the way he gripped my hand so tight, just the week before.

When people bring him up, I’m inclined to burst into tears.

I don’t concentrate well.

I alternate between not wanting to eat at all, and gorging myself on foods.

It’s not a surprise really. Anyone and EVERYONE I’ve been talking to about this, has assured me that this is all perfectly natural.

Except to me. Because I often seem unable to treat myself with the same patience, kindness, and compassion I give so easily to everyone else.

Today I slept in until around noon. I mindlessly watched television.

At one point, with my partners Squee and Moliére’s urging, I took a shower, put on fresh pajama pants, and, you guessed it - made myself some chicken nuggets.

We watched Ted Lasso together, remotely.

I leaned into my love of the show, and shared it with them. It helped me a ton.

Sometimes, simple comfort food and care from others is what’s important to have. I’m not required to operate at peak efficiency all the time. Sometimes you have to rest.

#gratitudeNow: Departures

I’m sitting at my gate at the airport, waiting for my flight home from Spacey’s funeral.

I feel calm this morning, safe.

The weekend was hard, very very hard but also good.

Sister and I spoke about him and in a way for him, at the funeral, at the viewing, and in all the little times and places that other mourning people sought solace and comfort.

I made deep connections with PowerFlower and her lovely husband. She spoke at the service too, in a deep and mighty way.

Between us we gently but firmly cradled everyone there and sort of shook the rafters.

It felt good.

And we spent quality time wrapping Mae in the warm loving embrace that is the continuance of our family during such an abrupt and painful departure.

This morning as ‘flower and Mr. Flower (he’s going to need a nickname too and shortly, I’m leaning into “Donuts”) drove me to the airport I got a powerful message from my brother:

TAKE JOY IN NEW THINGS.

Love what was, and hold onto it, yes. But also, welcome new love and joy and connection and growth into my life, my heart, my day.

I hear you brother.

#gratitudeNow: Kindness and Football

I just love the heck out of the show Ted Lasso. Spacey got me hooked on it. At first, I was super dubious about it. It’s a show about sports!

But it isn’t really. I mean, yes it IS a show about an American high school football coach, who gets hired to coach a professional soccer team in England. But it’s about way more than that. Ted Lasso is this irrepressible optimist, who digs in deep to the emotional lives of the people around him, and works hard to make their lives better.

The show is filled with characters you feel very strongly about. Some you love, some you hate, and some just utterly bewilder you. It’s brilliant.

If you haven’t seen it, you should.

Also, if you haven’t seen it yet, stop reading this post, because spoilers.

Kit man Will, and Assistant Coach Nate, who used to be the kit man.

So in season one, you get to know Nate Shelly, the team kit man. He's this shy, affable, sort of nobody. He loves his job, he loves football, he loves the team, and he's invisible. There is beat after beat after beat showing how he's just this big nothing burger.

The team owner Rebecca thinks she’s never met him, and doesn’t know his name. The players regularly treat him like garbage. At one point he accidentally gets locked inside the luggage compartment of the team bus.

But Ted never treats him like that. From the minute Ted meets him, he’s kind to him. And in his kindness, Nate blossoms. And other people around Ted and Nate see Ted do this and learn from him. Nate goes on to become an assistant coach. He’s really smart, really knowledgeable about the game, and his suggestions really help the team get better.

Then in the second season, this other thing happens.

When Nate becomes assistant coach at the end of Season 1, there’s this moment of surprise, where Nate thinks he’s being sacked. And he lashes out, says something really terrible to Rebecca. Which is quickly dismissed as a mistake, once he realizes he’s been promoted, and everyone laughs.

But it’s the seed of something much darker that comes to pass during season two.

The team hires a new kit man, Will. And right away, Nate takes issue with pretty much anything and everything Will does. Which seems both petty in a funny way, and funny in a petty way.

It's really smart writing though because after the first couple of times it happens, you get the sense that there's really something else much more troubling going on here.

Nate is incredibly shy and has very little self-confidence. He struggles to be respected trying to make a reservation in an everyday restaurant for his parents’ anniversary dinner.

Rebecca teaches him how to be confident by psyching himself up. And when he does it, the way he does it is sort of gross and a perversion of what she taught him. He's really mean to himself.

Later in the season you see him around his father and something starts to become quite clear. His father is an unkind bully. He diminishes Nate's accomplishments, talks down to him, treats him like an unruly child.

And Nate, in turn takes it out on people when he can too. He's incredibly cruel to players who used to tease him, and downright abusive to the new kit man Will.

As the season goes on, this gets worse and worse. Nate spirals out of control, becoming saturated in a mixture of anger, aggression, self loathing, addiction to attention, and an ever-growing need for validation.

If you get something truly astoundingly awful that I'm not going to tell you because you have to see it for yourself.

So I really love this show, and I get a lot out of it. It's a kind of comfort food to me that I watch over and over. In part, that's because it helps me feel close to Spacey. Which I really need right now, because of what he's going through.

But the really smart writing in this show also shows me something else that sometimes I struggle to elaborate to others.

Everyone around us affects us. We affect everybody else too. Nate becomes more and more cruel because that is what is taught to him by his dad. He's perpetuating the cycle of unkindness and abuse.

Ted short circuits that cycle, but he's only one guy and he has his own issues to deal with. So along the way Nate gets a taste of what it is to be valued, but it's not enough to overcome the negative messaging he was raised with and continues to receive.

Nate is not the only person in the show who have to deal with stuff like this. One of the players, Jamie who is an absolute Ace, a star is also a prima donna and an asshole. And his dad is an abusive piece of shit.

Jamie manages to get away from it, and better himself but it's clearly an uphill struggle for him too.

I want to think that Jason Sudeikis, the star of Ted Lasso, and one of the people who write the show is showing us all this as something of a cautionary tale.

I think that the show at its’ heart is about the choice between kindness and cruelty.

It's really a powerful choice.

#gratitudeNow: Silence

It’s really easy to get swept up in being busy. I’m in the middle of a very big weekend. I’ve got plans tonight for dinner as well as something social. Tomorrow I have coding to do, a virtual online lunch, and some dreaded chores.

It’s a lot. Also I’m dictating this blog post I am sitting in the parking lot of my gym, in my car before I go in to go swimming.

I decided to just take a moment to be in the moment. I turned off the audiobook I’ve been listening to. I turned off my car too.

And I sat, closed my eyes and listened to the silence. Except of course there isn’t any really. There is the sound of cars passing by on the road behind me. There’s also the sound of insects chirping and warbling in the forest behind the parking lot.

It’s a kind of meditation. I go looking for silence and don’t find any. Whenever I do this it always helps me to center myself. It helps me to connect with the truth which is that there is no place but here no time but now.

Recently I was telling a friend about my mindful practice. I talked about how it’s not something that you get better at, but rather something that you come back to over and over.

Every single time I do, i’m grateful for it.