for my grandma's birthday, i offer you a story of the time she read "the lord of the rings"
an epic journey!
dear friends, 1
hello and welcome to today’s installment of life.
i am very glad and grateful that you are here.
thank you.
this week was my grandmother’s birthday. 2
she died last year at 91. i love her and miss her very much.
so today, i share a fun experience i had with her.
she loved reading.
her favorite books were where someone “died on the first page.”
so i thought maybe she might enjoy lord of the rings.
classic! lots of death! fun?
so! here are some of thoughts and reviews from her epic journey 3:
A) is for At the start (48 pages in):
IRIS: “hobbits? “fake people?”
ME: “yes, fiction. fantasy.”
IRIS: “ah, fake fake. i don’t know if it’s for me.” 4
B) is for Better:
IRIS: “i’m at about 100 pages in and it’s a little better”
C) is for Continuing onward!:
IRIS: “I am on page 258. getting more interesting, but I think I missed the reason they are traveling on and on and on and on.”
D) is for Done:
IRIS: "FYI I gave the hobbits goodbye. Got up to page 380 and they started traveling again. No more for me."
E) is for Epilogue:
IRIS: “i threw it in the garbage. i tried to give it away but none of my friends wanted it.”
and that’s our journey for today!
for future journeys, here are some upcoming comedy show dates i’ve got:
indianapolis on 12/17-18! (that’s THIS weekend!)
columbia, mo on 12/19! (that’s ALSO this weekend!)
des moines on 12/22! (that’s next week!)
batavia, il on 12/30-1/1/22! (that’s new year’s eve weekend!)
rutherford, nj on 2/11-2/12/22! (that’s next YEAR! which is soon!)
and finally, here is a photo of me with iris on her 91st birthday.
love to you and yours, love to your irises 5, love to all!
thank you for being here!
also family.
adults, children, and others.
humans, non-humans, and more.
readers of all kinds! that is to say, kind-read spirits!
12/12. (looks like twelve out of twelve! a perfect score!)
click the links to see the twitter thread where i share even more than i share here, if you like. the journey continues!
she continues the journey though!
who do you love? who do you miss? what are their stories? share them if you would like!
I *never* type LOL because people never mean it and laughter is too precious to lie about. But--I wanted you to know “ 'i threw it in the garbage. i tried to give it away but none of my friends wanted it.' ” made me giggle audibly!
Who I love... who I miss...
Ack, this is a hard one, today's a reeling-from-a-bad-break-up day. My first thought was--it feels like I miss the person I thought my mentor was going to be. But maybe I miss--early on, there was this really, really good conversation between us. One of the most meaningful conversations I'd ever had. I miss where all I thought everything was going, the people we were going to be with each other.
I miss all the people I used to love uncomplicatedly, back when I thought there was such a thing as a good person, still. (Untainted by complicity with systemic abuse and torture of humans and more-than-humans, by complicity in the destruction of everything we love, everyeveryeveryOnes...) (I mean, we-they weren't not complicit, but I didn't get that yet.) I miss--
I Love and Miss the Motherplanet I was born into in '76... the thriving wilds we still (barely) had.
I miss me, being fun at parties.
(Taylor Moore, from the Reply All ep on Climate Rage: "Before quarantine I would bring this up at bars and parties, or whatever. People don’t like it. And now, you know, when every social interaction is so precious, I don’t dare talk about this stuff."
Alex G: "Yeah, I was just thinking, like, ‘I feel like I’m among my people.’ My wife really does not like to talk about this…"
Taylor: [laughing] "Mine either! No one does!")
And... I love podcasters! And how they've... sometimes sputtered out unsayable unknowings, those Jungian repressions that people I know for "realz" and trust(ed) deeply, won't let be spoken or felt in their presences. And sputtering suchlike not infrequently, at the same time masses and masses of others are saying that those unspeakables are shameful and wrong and immoral. (Like: Feeling Hopeless about Climate Change...)
(Maron: It’s all terrible. Every day is terrible.
There’s an impending sense of chaos and doom on a–on a lot of levels: cultural level, social level, environmental level, and a–a disease level.
People are just pissed off, feel powerlessness, and at the edge of it–you know–
There’s a Crackling.
There’s an Undoing.
[...]So how do we go on, thinking everything’s going to be okay, or at least–even, even honoring the patterns we, we’ve grown used to in our lives?")
(Marc's not the only podcasting person saying this, not the most knowledgeable nor committed nor even the most eloquent but--Holy Fuck. "There's a Crackling. There's an Undoing."?? It's like he spirit-conduited Bayo Akomolafe for a moment there!)
It helps a very weird amount--maybe I mean, it weirdly helps a very amount--feeling-with the disembodied voices of Unstrangers.
*****
And I love Bayo Akomolafe! And for a long reading-moment there, I loved your Iris and her hatred of the Hobbit. In her honor, I will not-read it, too. <3
Here's looking at you, Iris. <3
❤