Taking pictures is one of my lifelines. Whenever I catch myself slipping into the icky muck of hopelessness, I go outside and take pictures as a reminder that the world is full of beauty and wonder, which helps to counterbalance stupid crap like hatred, greed, hypocrisy, and all those other words that appear way too much in the media these days.

When I lived on Orcas Island, photo shoots were a focus of my daily hikes, and I posted lots of pictures. After a few weeks, my husband let me know that he liked the nature photos, but he really wanted to see pictures of me. Since neither my dog nor cat was particularly adept at photography, I started to take pictures of my shadow and send them to him with captions like: Shadow Me in the front yard. Shadow Me in the woods. Shadow Me at the ocean.

Shadow Me on Mt. Constitution

In my current state, I think about Shadow Me quite a bit, as I seem to have entered a shadowy, undefined time. Nothing brings this more to the forefront as when I meet new people and they ask, “What do you do?” thus triggering a long, rambling response that causes their eyes to grow wide, bleary, and eventually vacant. By the time I come at last to a breathless close, they’ve usually wandered off, and who can blame them? “What do you do?” is a cornerstone of cliché conversation, not an invitation to hear someone’s life story.

Part of me wants to panic about my relatively new lack of clarity, but another part looks back on all of those Shadow Me shots and thinks, Cool.

Shadow Me may be a faceless blob of darkness, but she seems to get around and have adventures. Sometimes, she even manages to find company.

Reality is based at least in part on one’s perspective, right? Therefore, I have decided this Shadow Me experience is not a midlife crisis (although it really might resemble one). No, this time is about eschewing definition to embrace the silhouette. And I imagine that’s just fine.

[Also, I may be in a midlife crisis. At least a little one. And that’s probably okay, too.]

Jonas Jonasson is the author of many true and funny quotes, and this is one of my favorites, particularly given the current state of humanity:

…if there was one thing he had learned it was that the very biggest and apparently most impossible conflicts on earth were based on the dialogue: “You are stupid, no, it’s you who are stupid, no, it’s you who are stupid.”

Yup, that’s a fact. I’ve spent lots of time with all sorts of people, both as a social worker and on a personal level, and I can tell you this – everyone, even the dumbest person on the planet, thinks other people are stupid. It’s amazing. And it’s also a problem.

See, this is what humans do: when it comes to poor behaviors, we interpret other people’s as indicative of their personality traits but make situationally-based excuses for our own. In other words, if someone does something we perceive as stupid, we think, That person is stupid, but if we do something stupid, we think, That was an anomaly. I just don’t feel well. Must be coming down with something. Or maybe it’s because I skipped breakfast. Or I didn’t get enough sleep. Or I’m stressed about work. Or…

The strategy of being overly generous with ourselves and overly critical of others creates a maelstrom of overblown and irrational discord. Doing something stupid doesn’t make you a wholly stupid person. We all make errors in judgment, and while that is a part of who we are, it’s not all of who we are.

Perhaps if people were more candid about their foibles, it would help us to be more honest with ourselves and forgiving of others. In that vein, I will now share a handful of stupid things I’ve done in my life. Please know that I am in no way implying this is a comprehensive list. Over the past four decades, I’ve done thousands of stupid things. Here are five:

#1: I bit a baby at a baseball game. I already wrote about that mortifying event several years ago and cannot bring myself to do so again. If you really need the details, you can find them here.

#2: I threw a marshmallow at a raccoon. This was in an effort to frighten it away, which obviously did not work. In my defense, I was young and hadn’t yet learned that raccoons are totally badass and laugh in the face of airborne confections. In fact, the one at whom I threw the marshmallow caught it in midair, then stared at me like, Wow. Just wow, human. For those of you who haven’t had a similar experience, I can tell you it’s pretty humiliating to be shamed by a raccoon.

#3: I got a tattoo in the dead of summer, two days before a planned lake trip. New tattoos = no sun exposure and no swimming, so I clearly didn’t think this through. Also, we planned to paddleboard on the lake, and I forgot my paddle. So I ended up having to wear sleeves on a 90-degree day and paddle around with a broom.

#4: I embarked on a 15-mile hike with no provisions besides a cup of coffee and two mini muffins. Over the years, my outdoor adventures have included hundreds of stupid acts like this one. Here’s another: I once coaxed my dog to charge down a long, steep hill, and as a result, we both almost fell backwards off a cliff. I swear, it’s kind of a miracle I’m still alive.

#5: I bonked myself in the head with a mallet. One evening, after downing a few cocktails, I thought it would be a good idea to build a bamboo fence. I knelt down, placed a stalk of bamboo where it needed to go, and hit the end soundly with a rubber mallet, which then bounced back and clocked me right in the forehead. It was my very own slapstick comedy moment. It was also incredibly painful.

All right, that’s enough. This is getting embarrassing. But the point is this: we all have strengths, and we all do stupid things. We need to stop making excuses for ourselves while we globalize other people’s blunders as indicative of their character. Until we get to that point, we may never move forward as a species, and forward is the direction we really need to go.

(P.S. – I also may have looked directly at the sun during the eclipse. But only a little.)

Back in December of 2012, I hiked up Mount Pickett on Orcas Island. While the trail up the mountain was clear, by the time I reached the summit, the ground was dotted with snow and ice. As I poured out some water for my dog Libby, I looked down and saw this beside my foot.

In the three months I lived on Orcas, I saw hearts all over the place, but this was the first one I’d seen made of snow. Thankfully, I snapped a photo before Libby inadvertently stepped on it and smooshed it beyond recognition.

I think of the frozen heart now, as my newsfeed is littered with an endless stream of Nazi bullshit. When confronted with that level of hatred and idiocy, it’s easy to go to a dark place in my head – a place of fury, retaliation, violence, and despair. But all that crap is useless. It demeans me. It turns me into my enemy. At the same time, it’s extremely difficult to watch the worst elements of our nation given validation and encouragement. The concept that “love trumps hate” seems to grow dimmer by the day.

But here’s the thing about choosing a noble path: it’s not always rewarded. Sometimes, we keep to the path simply because it’s the right thing to do. Even when cruelty and prejudice are vindicated, we continue to believe in love, respect, and unity. We hold onto the understanding that hatred and bigotry are wrong, and those who choose that route are cowards. And we have to do this without any expectation that love wins, because love doesn’t always win. Sometimes, the worst of the worst win, and that’s just the way it is. We bear witness to the tragedy of their victory, then continue to choose love.

That’s what I think the heart of snow is about, because today, although my heart feels frozen, I still choose love. I work to tamp down violent revenge fantasies, remembering that the angrier I get, the stupider I become (this is a neurological fact), and a grown woman shouldn’t accept behavioral cues from her brainstem. Those tiki-torch-carrying imbeciles think from their brainstems, which essentially makes them lizards…except that lizards have redeeming qualities.

So friends, in these dark times, please hold onto your hearts. Turn them to ice or stone if you need to, but don’t abandon them.

I’ll try my best to do the same.

Last year around this time, I took my dog Jasper for a terrible walk. Usually I don’t encounter a lot of problems when I walk alone, but on some days, it seems like all the men of the world got together and made a pact to be as vexatious as possible. This was one of those days. In the five minutes we walked along a main road, about half a dozen men decided to honk and yell as they drove by. The auditory assaults startled both Jasper and me, though he bounced back soon after each one. While I began to construct an internal mountain of rage, he just sniffed around, looking for new things to pee on.

Once we reached a public park and started to skirt the perimeter, my happiness at being off the street was soon squashed by the eruption of a massive thunderstorm. In the four years I lived in Oregon, I developed an irrationally fierce hatred of walking in the rain, and as water droplets blew into my eyes and ears and dripped down the back of my shirt, Mount Ragemore continued to grow. Unlike most summer storms which last only a few minutes, this one was relentless. It soaked us all the way around the park and back along the main road, where the honks and shouts resumed.

When we were a few minutes from home, the rain stopped. Of course. By that point, I was a hot mess of hatred. I couldn’t even decide who I wanted to kill first: the meteorologists who’d reported a 0% chance of rain that evening, or all the men who’d scared the crap out of me and my dog over the past hour. And then, right as I had the thought At least this walk from hell is almost over, another man started to yell at me.

I couldn’t believe it. Two blocks from home, dripping wet and seething with rage, I was still being harassed. To tune the man out, I filled my head with a furious diatribe against all the injustices of the world. As his voice got louder and raised in pitch, my anger grew. Increasing my pace, I pulled Jasper past a tall hedge, around a corner, and straight into a black bear.

This is actually the bear that crashed my Aret release party, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same one Jasper and I met. The neighborhood has since named him Walter.

Equally startled, the bear and I back-peddled in opposite directions while Jasper stared at it and wagged merrily, like: Oh, hello. I don’t believe I’ve met you before. Do you happen to have any treats? Or maybe a towel? As I stood in a neighbor’s yard and watched the bear retreat up the street, it dawned on me that what the man had been yelling was: “Bear! There’s a bear over there! Oh, my God! You’re about to walk straight into a bear!”

And right as that realization crystalized in my mind, a man ran out of the house across the street, stood in his driveway, and stared at me like I was the dumbest person on Earth. “Did you see the bear?” he cried. “Did you hear me shouting at you?”

“Um, yes,” I replied. “Thanks for trying to warn me.”

With a dramatic eye roll, he shook his head and went back inside.

Ahem.

Here’s what I learned from this experience: sometimes, when men yell, it’s not to make unwelcome commentaries about your body, inform you what they’d like to do to you, or instruct you to smile.

Sometimes, they’re trying to warn you about bears.

Years ago, I worked for a program that supported young adults in obtaining the skills they needed to move on to higher education and/or a career. One of my tasks was to track alumni students and make sure they were following through on their long-term goals. When I couldn’t get them to return my calls, I assumed they’d made some unfortunate choices and didn’t wish to discuss them with me. (Case in point: I once received a voice mail from a student, left at 3 a.m., that said: “Hey, Kelly. Just wanted to let you know I’m not ignoring you. The problem is that I’m ignoring myself.”)

It took six months to get in touch with one alumni student, and by the time she finally found her way into my office, she wore an expression much like the human face’s version of a dog with its tail tucked between its legs. She sat down, blew out a big, fat sigh, and told me her story.

Years back, when she started the program, she conducted research on viable careers and decided that dental hygiene would be a wise field to move into. She got her GED, enrolled in the local community college, and completed 18 months of course work. Soon after passing all of her exams and receiving a dental hygienist certificate, she applied for a position at a dentist’s office and was granted an interview. However, the moment she walked into the office, she remembered something critical.

“I hate dentists’ offices,” she told me. “I’ve hated them my whole life. The smell. The lighting. The music. The sound of the drill. All of it. I just sat in the waiting room wanting to die. It was like I’d walked straight into a horror movie, but it was my life.” I can’t remember if she bothered to stay for the interview, but soon after that ordeal, she joined a cosmetology program. “I thought about places I actually like to be, and the nail salon was number one.”

Smart kid.

I recently went through a similar experience, in that I applied for and accepted a job to teach CPR classes without really thinking about the reality of the work. On my first day, when I received several bags of dummies to take home, I was reminded of a clear, yet unfortunate truth: CPR training mannikins are creepy and gross and I hate them.

Whoops.

Of course, if I’d bothered to give the matter any thought whatsoever before that moment, I would have remembered (from the half dozen or so CPR trainings I’ve taken over the years) that those mannikins are the stuff of nightmares. Now, they were going home with me. I couldn’t bear to have them in my house, though, so for the past six months I’ve driven around with a trunk full of torsos and faceless babies.

I’ve since resigned from that job, and I now have a new career goal, besides continuing to write and publish books. My new goal is to join a league of wonder dragons.

Seems legit, right? And as an added bonus: no scary dummies.

I suppose my point is this: look before you leap. If the chasm into which you’re about to hurl your body is full of something terrifying, like dental drills or plastic torsos or angry bull sharks wearing clown masks, turn around and walk away. There are plenty of other chasms around, so do some exploring. You never know – one might be full of wonder dragons.

You’ve likely heard by now that Twin Peaks – that whoa-what-the-hell-just-happened-I’m-so-freakin’-confused-but-who-cares-I-still-like-it TV series from waaaaaay back in the 1900s – has gotten a shiny new reboot. Whenever I see updates about it, all I can picture is that spooky giant in the red bowtie standing stock-still on stage, eerily repeating, “It is happening again,” while Agent Cooper and the Log Lady look on in anxious stupefaction (pretty much how most viewers felt throughout the series).

The giant’s words perfectly encapsulate my current state of being, for, as it so happens, it is happening again. Last spring at this time, I was preparing to publish the first book of Aret. And right now, I am preparing to publish the second. A date is scheduled for a pre-publication book group, including most of the same folks who attended the first. The same friend who designed book one’s cover is working on book two’s. And, as with the first book, I am actively dreading the creation of a snappy summary for book two’s Amazon page. Writing what is essentially an advertisement for my own book really sucks. If I wanted to write ads, I would do so and make beaucoup bucks. Considering how much time I spend mending and patching my clothes, that is clearly not happening.

When my patches need patching, it may be time to join the ad game.

Right now I’m at a friend’s house, and on her back patio is a most fitting representation of my “it is happening again” life ~

Like the tiny industrial parts person, I feel as if I hang precariously over a yawning void while doing my best to hold onto something beautiful. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see how that goes.

Please wish me luck.

Again.

Back in the winter of 2012, the Portland Cello Project celebrated the 20th anniversary of the release of Pantera’s Vulgar Display of Power album by performing it in its entirety. [And yes, this really happened. It is neither fake news nor an alternative fact.]

If you’re unfamiliar with that particular album, here’s what the cover looks like:

And here’s what the Portland Cello Project looks like:

AND…it was amazing. Watching a stage full of cellists scream, “FUCKING HOSTIIIIIIIIILE!” while a bunch of black-clad, tattooed Pantera fans rocked out to cello music was more than beautiful. It was downright noble.

Reflecting on that night gives me hope, because if cellists and Pantera aficionados can find common ground, it’s possible for anyone. Whenever I have the unfortunate experience of reading the news, instead of worrying that there’s no way in hell the humans of this world will ever figure things out, I tell myself this:

“Keep the faith. Remember the Vulgar Display of Cello.”

🎼  Cellists + 🤘🏼 Pantera = 💖

These days, as I try to negotiate our country’s strange, new reality, I find myself engaging in strange, new, self-soothing behaviors. They fall into three categories:

EXCESSIVE SELF-PRAISE: When I manage to accomplish the simplest of tasks, like changing the battery in a smoke detector or sewing on a button, I tell myself: Hey, I’m like some kinda genius!

FORCED BELIEF IN COMMONALITIES: Oftentimes, my one point of commonality with a person whose opinions I find especially heinous is that we both like dogs. So when I encounter those types of opinions, instead of flying into a homicidal rage or grasping onto the belief that there is no hope for humanity, I force these words into my mind: I. Like. Dogs. Then I imagine the other person likes dogs, too, meaning that, despite all evidence to the contrary, he or she has at least one positive quality.

BLATANT SELF-DECEPTION: About six times a day, I read or hear something indicating that our government hates human life and the planet. Sometimes when I read or hear these things, I say to myself, Oh, wow – that’s so awesome! Of course I don’t feel that way at all, but pretending to gives me a teeny blast of joy for about half a second.

These three strategies share a common thread ~ they are all attempts to confuse myself into some sense of comfort.

My chosen soothing activities are similarly ludicrous. For example, I’ve been taking pictures of people’s eyeballs. What I’ve learned is that eyeballs are extremely reflective. That annoyed me at first, but now I’m going with it. The key is to put fun stuff in the background.

See? Eyeballs are cool and everything’s great! Tra la! 😸

Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not ignoring reality. I’m not saying don’t pay attention or #resist (for, as I am slowly learning, #allthingsmustbehashtagged). My sole intention is to keep myself sane enough to exist in this toxic environment.

So here’s my little bit of advice: in the midst of all the action you choose to take, whether it’s calling representatives, marching, writing letters, creating subversive art, running for office, or whatever, grant yourself permission to take a break from the live action carnage every once in a while. Praise the hell out of yourself for no reason. Take pictures of weird things. Remember that everyone (probably) has at least one redeeming quality. Pretend, if only for the span of a heartbeat, that social justice and the health of our planet mean nothing to you. Then, when your strength is bolstered and your heart & mind relaxed, return, refreshed, to the resistance.

[Whoops…I meant #returnrefreshedtotheresistance. Still on the learning curve, folks.]