A venal monster by any other name …

I have taken to calling the president “Caligula.” Seth Meyers put this in my head by referring to him a few weeks ago as “our drooling, potato-brained Caligula.” It felt perfect. I used the whole description for a bit, but have given up the adjectives. They offer too much cover for evil.

At the start of the administration, I refused to put the word “president” beside Caligula’s name. Also wanted to avoid using his name. I started calling him “THOTUS” instead: Titular Head of These United States. (I was pretty proud of that one, I have to admit.) THOTUS worked for me on many levels. It gave a nod to the man’s baseness by including “tit.” It acknowledged the obvious fact that the decisions he was making were guided by his masters even as he wore the crown. And it let me bypass saying his name or calling him by the office he held.

Eventually, I had to give up THOTUS. It still worked for me, still felt satisfying, but the damage being done to and by this country was too great to be tossing around a cutesy name for a greedy, self-aggrandizing, painfully unintelligent, insecure, hate-monger bent on theft and destruction. And so I finally succumbed, began calling him both by his title and his name.

But now the power and horrific majesty of “Caligula” has been presented, and I find it too fitting to pass up. I’ve been using it almost daily, and it satisfies utterly. Or … almost utterly. Sure Caligula’s rep is that he was a monster and a sexual predator who thought he was a god. That all tracks. Yes, the homework I did that turned up questions about the accuracy of those accounts, but it still felt right. But somehow not enough right. And, of course, that’s because of Caligula’s grand-nephew, Nero.

Nero keeps getting in my way. Famous for “fiddling while Rome burned,” which definitely feels right if you sub in playing golf for fiddling. But “Nero” doesn’t feel as right for me, and “Caligula-with-a-side-of-Nero” is just ridiculous.

And, too, there is the concern that saying anything other than his title and name is just repeating the mistake of THOTUS, the mistake of being funny when there isn’t a single funny thing happening.

I’m sticking with Caligula for now, despite the inaccuracy of the comparison — the Romans at least got one good year of not-insane rule before Caligula turned into a horror legend. I’ve dropped the almost cutesy, doddering-old-fool additions of “drooling” and “potato-brained” and settled fully into this usage. Hoping that I only need to use it for the next seven and a half months.

Hoping.

The Lady and the Tiger

March is almost over. Another Slice of Life Story Challenge about to go into the history books. Today is also the birthday of my friend Heidi. And April starts National Poetry Month.  I thought of all that, and suddenly I knew I needed to repost a couple of very old posts.

Heidi is a musician. Her professional name is Heidi Sabertooth (hence the title of this post). Back in 2012, she embarked on a writing challenge just as I started the SOLS challenge for that year. Her challenge? Write, record, and post a song a day for 100 days. Seriously. And then she upped the ante on the challenge by undertaking to create a video for each song. Because she is clearly so very much more ambitious than I can ever pretend to be!

I interviewed her when she was almost halfway through her challenge. And she had chosen one of my poems to set to music, so the interview and the song were posted on the same day.

Beans and Rice: Power and Control is the 8-year-old post that led to the poem Heidi set to music. Catching a Tiger by the Tail is the interview with Heidi that includes the video of the song. And I’m still trying to do that, still trying to catch that tiger, still taking on the SOLS challenge every March, still pushing myself to write a month of poetry every April, still striving.

It’s been a good month of writing. A good month of priming the pump to get ready for the grueling challenge of April. I am, as I am every year, grateful to everyone who reads here, grateful to the wonderful team at Two Writing Teachers who keep this challenge going and hold this space year after year.

❤

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It’s March, which means it’s time for the
13th annual Slice of Life Story Challenge!
Curious? Head on over to Two Writing Teachers
and see what the rest of this year’s slicers are up to!

Getting by with a little help from our friends.

…

Rearranging my position
On this friend of mine who had

A little bit of a breakdown.
I said breakdowns come
And breakdowns go.
What are you gonna do about it,

That’s what I’d like to know … *

The all-important question that I won’t be asking anyone any time soon.

Had a troubling conversation earlier with a friend who is definitely entering cabin-fever-freak-out territory. She’s been home longer than I have and called me today to discuss some catastrophe options she has been debating with herself.

Let me just say here that discussing — in a level of painful detail — catastrophe options is not a thing I want to be spending my time doing out loud. It’s bad enough that I have these thoughts from time to time. I don’t need to say them into the cosmos.

My friend is really scared, and I feel for her. We are scared. Most of us, maybe especially here in New York City, are scared. That’s real. And the reality of it makes it hard to take on someone else’s fears along with our own.

I said this to my friend, and she laughed. She acknowledged that she’d had “a stress explosion” all over me. “But,” she said, “didn’t I also give you today’s blog post?”

And look at that. She did.

I don’t want my friend to be so scared. She’s having trouble being home alone for such an extended period of time. That’s a problem I’m not having, so I tried to help her think of ways to fill her time more effectively. What she really needs, of course, is not to be on lockdown. I can’t do that for her. I offered to spend time with her virtually, as long as that time wasn’t spent thinking of all the terrible things that could become realities. I definitely can’t do that for her. We’re going to try streaming movies together. I hope something about that experience helps her.

It’s hard to take care of people from a distance. But this is what we have. We have each other long distance. We have whatever ways we can reach out, whatever ways we can offer calm, whatever ways we can be a listening ear, whatever ways we can offer a welcome distraction. Whatever ways.

__________

* Paul Simon, “Gumboots” (Graceland)

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It’s March, which means it’s time for the
13th annual Slice of Life Story Challenge!
Curious? Head on over to Two Writing Teachers
and see what the rest of this year’s slicers are up to!

Who’s Zoomin’ Who?

More Zoom adventures. Last night it was storytelling, today it was poetry. I have been a sometimes-member of a poetry salon since the summer of 2014 when I had the good fortune to meet the creator of the salon when I was in Berkeley for my third VONA. The salon is a monthly gathering. Our excellent host invites a featured poet who leads a generative workshop, then the featured artist gives a reading, and then there’s an open mic.

It’s always wonderful. I’ve met so many amazing people through the salon. I was hesitant about going at first because I’m not a poet, but a) no one cared whether or not I was poet, b) who says I’m not a poet, c) the prompts and discussion can fuel many kinds of writing, not just poetry, d) could I please just get out of my way and let myself do things I enjoy already?

Today, we had the salon over Zoom. This meant the salon was much bigger than usual. We usually meet in someone’s home and the size of the gathering is dictated by how people can be comfortably seated in that person’s living room. But a virtual gathering allows for different options, and there were more than 60 people at the salon today!

And it was great. Some interesting writing came out of me today, and I may have an idea for my April 30/30. So, you know, super successful day for me.

And … I got to learn a little more about Zoom. Because there were so many of us, our host put us into breakout rooms so we could share and talk about the writing we’d done with a smaller, more manageable group.

Zoom is one of the tools we’ve suggested our instructor try as they offer their classes online during our locked-down semester. One of the reasons we’ve suggested Zoom (and Blackboard) is the breakout room feature, but I’d never actually tried it.

I like it. There are still some things I want to figure out about it, but it worked well, and it’s easy to set up. Having such a large group could have erased the intimacy I’ve come to expect from the salon, but the small groups let us have that. Getting to talk to just three other people, however, made it possible to share work that was entirely rough and raw.

We had talked about incorporating the breakout rooms in last night’s storytelling, but we didn’t do it. Now I’m thinking about how we might use it next month, how I might use it in the big meeting I have on Tuesday.

 

While Apocalypse-World means I should focus on relearning the homesteading skills I knew as a child, some tech savvy will surely come in handy, too …

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It’s March, which means it’s time for the
13th annual Slice of Life Story Challenge!
Curious? Head on over to Two Writing Teachers
and see what the rest of this year’s slicers are up to!

The Wild Unknown

Since August of last year, I’ve had the pleasure of co-hosting a monthly storytelling event at an art gallery in Brooklyn. This is the show’s sixth season. It was started by a poet who has a love of the oral tradition, of the magic of stories around the campfire. Every year, he selects a pair of hosts, and every month the hosts bring two storytellers in to share 15-minute tales with the always-appreciative audience.

Three years ago, a friend of mine was hosting and he invited me to come tell a story. OMG, but that was fun! I was crazy-nervous, but it was also great to get to share some of myself in that way.

When I was asked to host, I was excited to give it a try. I had, however, no idea what I was getting myself into. Finding storytellers is hard. But really hard. Sometimes people say “Yes!” right away, but sometimes I ask one person after another and come up empty again and again. And even once I have people, I have no idea what to expect. I haven’t asked people who are storytellers, and everyone is super nervous about having to tell a story — not read something they’ve written, but stand in front of people and tell. I’ve asked people who are interesting to me, people who I know have a lot of interesting things about them. These things don’t mean they’ll tell a good story, but I am lucky: they always do tell good stories! The challenge of coming to be a storyteller unlocks a new door for them, I think. I mean, many of the people I’ve invited are writers, so they definitely understand a lot about how stories work. But writing a story isn’t really as much like telling one as you might think.

One pure joy of this hosting journey has been my completely delightful co-host, a young woman who is an artist and an actor and who creates in so many amazing ways, and who is full of energy and light. We connected as soon as we were introduced, and are already planning future projects to work on after our hosting year has ended. I can’t wait to see what our next adventure will be!

We’ve been having a lot of fun on this ride … and then COVID-19 hit. Our little Park Slope gallery with barely enough space for five people to distance themselves socially wasn’t going to be open for this month’s event. So … we did what half the world has done lately: we went on Zoom!

I was nervous: what if no one showed up, what if my computer froze (it’s done that in a few of my meetings this week), what if someone noticed that my house is a mess?! You know, all the worries.

But … all the worries were over nothing. Tonight was so much fun!

A — People came. As we approached start time, my computer screen started to do that intro-to-the-Brady-Bunch thing with all the squares popping up to show who’s joining the meeting. Not only did people come, but they came from places they wouldn’t normally be able to join from! We had folks joining from Long Island and Colorado. My cohost is Australian, and her mom zoomed in from outside Melbourne! So tonight was our first international showcase!*

B — People were so nice. This is one of the things I love about our in-person event, the way the audience is always ready to embrace the storytellers. And that was definitely true tonight.

C — The storytellers were sweet and open and wonderful. It’s such a gift to have people give you their stories, to trust you to hear them. I feel so lucky every time.

Every month, we have a theme for the evening. We’ve tried to have our themes connect to whatever show is up in the gallery. And we pick them well in advance. This month’s theme was “The Wild Unknown,” picked when we had no idea we were about to be plunged into the wildest of unknowns. Couldn’t have had a better theme for tonight.

COVID-19 didn’t beat us, couldn’t keep us down! We laughed and cried and laughed together. Which is maybe a good thing to remember as we shelter in place and pray for safe passage through this unsettling and straight-up terrifying time.

Storytelling can move us. Storytelling can connect us. Storytelling can make magic even when we’re not in the same physical space together. Storytelling is how we weave ourselves and our worlds together. I am so lucky to be a part of this. And I can’t wait to do it again in April!

__________
* I really just want to say, “Wicked cool!” when I’m this happy and excited. I’m trying to rein it in …

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It’s March, which means it’s time for the
13th annual Slice of Life Story Challenge!
Curious? Head on over to Two Writing Teachers
and see what the rest of this year’s slicers are up to!