Caterwauling

The new moon is coming up on the 31st. Meantime, I’ve got some energy to work out during this dark moon.

Dark moons are times when energy is low and the desire to toss a match to everything is high. Which makes it a good time to decide which of that is ours to carry and which needs be given back to the giver.

I’m working that out with Lilith Fair Radio on Sirius XM. I wish they’d keep this channel for longer than a month. Hard to believe it’s been 25 years since the first festival … since I graduated from college … since all of those mixed-up, dark-moon emotions that I didn’t know what to do with.

It’s been like hearing from old friends … the ones you actually like.

So much has happened since then. Lots of it good. Lots of it bewildering. I can’t imagine being stuck with the same dark energy (mine AND others’. Especially others’) from that time.

God bless people who have had dark energy attached to their light since then. I know some good banishing spells!

In any event, I’m also feeling some Big Will Smith Energy. Even though it was probably staged when he popped Chris Rock in the mouth at the Oscars.

Mmm meltaways …

Will popping Chris in the mouth shook something loose in me. It went beyond the delight with whom I trade insults.

While I have not uttered word one about their family (and I would dispute any so-called “proof” they would claim to offer, since they never provide such proof when I call their bluff), they don’t return the favor.

Next time (and there always is one), don’t be surprised if I end up pulling a Will.

But like I said, it went beyond that. An old memory flickered from a previous shitstain on the pantaloons of humanity, who said something about another relative, years ago.

Then, I chose to ignore it. Why give them any acknowledgement that their comment was seen, let alone processed?

I wish I could be like that again. Like, oh, look. You want me to acknowledge your pathetic existence? How adorable. Bye, now.

So I guess this is me acknowledging it. Maybe they’ll get a hard-on that they’ve been acknowledged after all these years. Maybe I’ll get over my anxiety that it will conjure up Beetlejuice by nodding in their general direction.

I wonder if all this (three years wasted) was really me just getting out of my system all the shit I should have said 15 years ago.

One thing I do know is that there is great wisdom to be found in anxiety and fear. And in utter and complete disgust, apparently.

The good news about this dark energy is that it will be gone on Thursday, with the reset button that the new black moon brings.

But I’m taking that Big Will Smith Energy with me just in case one of these Beetles still needs squashing.

My favorite finpub often ends with a page of random crap about the writer’s life. I used to hate it until I realized I’d rather read about his cats than his attempts at arbitrage.

SPEED ROUND

1. I’ve had “Hands Clean” on repeat on Apple Music. That song is 20 years old and it never stops being relevant.

2. One of my employees is having her cat put to sleep as I type this. Between that and all the recent hoomin deaths, I’m cried the fuck out.

3. Every time I ask my tarot deck about someone, I get The Emperor. See item No. 1.

4. One of my favorite employees resigned. I countered today. Been trying to make departmental changes for months, including giving her a promotion.

5. Corporations move so slow. Too slow.

6. I’m interviewing/testing four candidates for another role. Now I have this opening. And another opening. And I still haven’t made the structural changes that I’ve been proposing since November.

7. And we’re launching seven new products.

8. Tried a new doctor’s office. Only marginally less unhappy with it. Staying with the previous one with the state of the art facility and the doctor who keeps her hand on the door, the physician’s assistant who screams in my face and the medical assistant who couldn’t find a vein with a goddamned Hubble telescope. Maybe.

9. It’s rarely the friends I miss who call. My Japan team calls me more than anyone. Usually at 6:30 in the morning.

10. Writing one last performance review before I have to do 18 of them in May. Never thought this is where my journalistic/writing career would end up.

Just make sure you don’t tell on me, especially to members of your family
We best keep this to ourselves and not tell any members of our inner posse
I wish I could tell the world
‘Cause you’re such a pretty thing when you’re done up properly
I might want to marry you one day if you watch that weight and keep your firm body.

I found out Sia lay dying in a Canadian hospital via Faceypages.

Her mom, in B’more, was posting on her wall to hang in there till she got there.

Her mom didn’t really know we were friends and never responded to my calls to offer condolences and find out what happened.

I did find out what happened from a mutual friend who was in Vancouver and stayed at her bedside till the mom got there.

The mom and sister weren’t close to her, as far as I knew. Maybe something had changed. But it really seemed like they guarded Sia in death since they couldn’t contain her spirit in life.

In any event, this year I’ve had some flashbacks to that time.

I had a bunch of friends at my last job. They were there during the lowest point of my life last June. And boy were there a bunch of those. But without a reason to talk all the time, we mostly didn’t.

Not even in February, when one got married. Which I know because I read about it in the goddamn Palm Beach Post.

Not even last Friday, when another said on LinkedIn that her mom was in the hospital.

I texted the second one today to say I know I’m out of the loop/group and I have to find out about your big life events on social media now but I love you a whole bunch and I’m thinking about you.

My phone rang instantly.

Her mom died Monday.

Shit.

I didn’t say much other than I felt like I knew her mom. How much she looks like her mom. How awesome that she has a good guy to support her. How I’ll think of her mom loving her daughters and her cats … and their kids and their cats … and her perfectly manicured garden that she landscaped with her own two hands.

I said this is how I found out about Sia. Is this what we have to look forward to, a lifetime of getting heartbreaking news in between memes about overqualified SCOTUS nominees being cross-examined by hypocritical hicks and limp-wristed losers?

I remember the month my life went to absolute shit. How H. called Sue and they cried for me.

Sue’s obituary says she was everyone’s second mom, and her girls were lucky to have her as their mom.

As I read that during my next conference call, I wept for them the way they wept for me.

I don’t know how any of them are stringing sentences together right now.

And knowing that Sue died the same way Sia did, I don’t know how I’m doing the same.

I can now count four — four — young losses in my circle. All boys. Men. All sons of people close to me.

It is not lost on me that, if I’d bred, he or she would have turned 20 last month. It’s not that I think about it or celebrate it or rue it. It’s just how I measure time.

To have spent the last +/- 20 years investing everything you have into someone whose demons speak louder than love, I can’t even imagine what it’s like to be them today.

All of these events are unrelated. Only two of the families even know each other, but their kids would never have known of each other.

I don’t know all the methods. Whatever those were, are less relevant than the cause. And those, I do know.

And … I get it.

In a lot of ways, things do get better. But in a lot of other ways, they don’t.

I don’t know what the next life holds. Mom doesn’t believe there’s anything out there. I believe we go back to Source with our memories and the people and pets who were part of them.

I also believe we choose our next life based on what we didn’t get in this one. And that our memories get wiped clean so we can start anew and get the answers we so desperately sought in this life.

Jesse. Bryan. Jacob. Matt. May you find the peace that eluded you here. And may your parents figure out a way to go on in a world that was cruel while you were in it, and unspeakably brutal without you in it.

ETA: Five. Justin.

I read an EW article about Jackson and April (“Japril”) from Grey’s Anatomy, how their love story happened in the margins.

I was never a fan of the two together, a wildly successful surgeon and an uptight Christian girl who ran out on her wedding to another uptight Christian to pursue her love affair with Jackson. (Although that was a good episode.) But the phrase stuck with me.

The point was that their story evolved over several seasons, in the margins of viewers’ minds while the show focused on other characters and crises. One day they gravitated to each other and we wondered how we hadn’t seen it coming all along.

I think about how that applies to our own lives. I’ve had a lot of instant connections as well as a few carefully cultivated ones.

But it’s the ones that evolved organically … the ones where you see someone looking at you and wonder wow, was that there all along and we missed it until now?

Those were some of the best ones.

Which makes it so hard to NOT look in the margins again.

As if lightning could ever strike twice in the same place.

As if margin can’t amplify your losses as much as your joys.

As if you could ever find meaning in the text when the best stuff is what you were inspired to scrawl.

As if anyone could ever understand feeling so moved to ruin a perfectly good book with that flash of something great.

Even a flash was all it was ever meant to be … and even if it wasn’t.

I was at a doc recently and a daughter left a VM that the nurses played where I could hear it.

She tearfully said her mom just passed and thank you for her care.

The doc who heard it shrugged. “It was time for her to go.”

Good to know they view us as so disposable.

Maybe don’t say it in a suite full of sick people, though.

“I gotta ask you, how long do you plan to keep wearing that mask?”

That was from Peppermint Patty here at Fraggle Rock.

“Another one to two years,” I said.

Her partner, Salmon Patty, said, “May I ask why you wear a mask?”

“I’m immunocompromised. And it signals to people to give me space.”

Salmon Patty said, “Well I am immunocompromised and obese. I never once wore a mask and I’m fine.”

Salmon and Peppermint both rattled off how many times they’ve had COVID and they are still here. One vaxxed, one not.

Because I am who I am, I said, “I am happy you got through it and you are doing well now.”

Also because I am who I am, I might have bragged, “I had it exactly zero times.”

Salmon and Peppermint bragged that it was nothing and we don’t know why everyone was so afraid of nothing.

I got away from them as fast as I could. But it’s still bugging me.

Maybe it’s because the number of deaths that hit me personally is now on two hands. And the list of long-haul symptoms from others I know gets weirder by the week.

Or maybe it’s that when I said I am glad you are OK now, it would have been nice for them to say I’m glad that you are OK too.

Anyway. I don’t have high expectations of these people. I’m just glad they haven’t tried pushing their way into my elevator like so many others have.

Maybe though they can take a moment and tell The Others, hey, this shit isn’t over for some people. Show them some decency if you can’t cough up anything resembling respect.

My D.C. friends called me for our annual February “reunion.”

I almost didn’t go because, Covid. But I didn’t see them last year. And I really do enjoy seeing them.

When I went to meet them, I got a surprise in the form of another friend. This one I haven’t seen since she came down here to stay with me over a decade ago.

My friends gave us access to a conference room and she and I talked All Day yesterday.

We laughed and cried and reminisced but really talked about things that are happening now.

We took photos and you can tell I was crying all day but she looks great. You can’t even tell she’s worried about someone in the hospital back home.

She didn’t know that I hired a gal a couple of years ago because she reminded me of her. The gal became an instant friend and I enjoy her so much.

I was right — they not only look alike, but have the same big heart and crazy work ethic. My old friend said OK show me a photo because I want to see the new me.

I also got to hang out with a well-known journalist. And the reason I did was because someone at this event told me, she wants to meet you so get over there now.

She was wonderful. Elegant. The picture of grace.

Really, all the wives of my former writers are class acts. Truly remarkable, sophisticated, articulate and accomplished women.

It’s breathtaking, really, getting to hang out with such high-quality people again.

I’d forgotten what that’s like.

It was so good to be with my people, old and new.

This is what Covid robbed of us for too long.

I still didn’t use elevators or anything. Too peopley. But I needed and gave hugs. Lots and lots of those.

I’m quarantining after enjoying a day out in the wild. Here’s hoping I didn’t bring anything home except a heart that’s a lot lighter than it was 24 hours ago.

I did something I haven’t done in a while on a weekday.

I enjoyed it.

Literally, that’s what I did. Enjoyed my damn day.

I had a long meeting in the morning and a long one late in the day. But I took the middle part to simply enjoy myself.

Don’t get me wrong. The morning and the afternoon meetings weren’t fun. But net-net, the day was a win.

The best part was we were talking honestly about some shit that went down last year. And I got a good reminder from this eye-witness that a lot of it was far beyond my control. All I could really do is handle it with grace.

One day I’ll tell the stories. Still trying to do the gracious thing there.

I don’t have many friends. They always prove themselves to be anything but. So it’s nice to have real moments with people who are here who were also there.

There are a lot of opinions about “And Just Like That,” the SATC reboot.

I’ll say yes, it’s outlandish and dark. But as an original fan of the HBO series and not the “SATC-light” episodes that air on E! with no sex, swearing or sense, I will say that it’s been pretty satisfying overall to see where my girls ended up.

In any event, I think we can all agree that the music is on point.

Carrie and Mr. Big were dancing to one of my all-time favorites in the season opener, “Hello It’s Me.” And we heard the song throughout the 10-episode season.

Made me think of one of MY Mr. Bigs.

My own (first?) “John Preston” also died. Probably at the same age.

I know this because his daughter reached out to me recently to tell me.

Which, truth be told, my heart knew when it happened.

She was reading our old emails. Which, I don’t even know if I still have. Probably not, because I’m not all that sentimental.

Or maybe I do and I’m just afraid to remember those days.

He was in Arlington and I was in Alexandria. We went to the theater and museums and cafes and beer gardens.

So the story goes, I got a job in Rockville and never had time for anything but interstate commutes and way-too-long workdays.

Mostly true.

The rest of the truth is, our age gap felt so big then. And here was another guy with kids — his daughter was running her high school theater troupe and his son was starting to show signs of not being as independent as his dad hoped he would be.

(Um, hello THEME.)

His son eventually found his way. And his daughter has babies of her own now.

She sent me photos of the son she named after her dad.

I told her some stories she would appreciate and maybe remember, of times spent with them. Things I can’t even vaguely describe here without them becoming easily Googlable.

I didn’t tell her about those heady days when it was just us.

Nor did I admit I thought there’d be a better match for me out there if I would just free myself up for it.

We did stay Facebook friends. Although when I saw him go to the mat and defend a tRumper’s right to tRump, I deleted him.

I mean, that was SO HIM. He was in the service (the Air Force?) so hell yes, he fought to defend our right to do whatever the fuck it is we want to do.

But I just couldn’t support letting trumpers trump. And I will defend MY right to do that, till the bitter end.

He sent me a new friend request that I ignored.

I don’t know that we would have been close again.

But I heard “Hello It’s Me” today, as I have many times. And I remembered sitting in the IHOP with him in Del Ray (not to be confused with the Delray where I live now), having coffee and talking about the black-and-white movie we’d just watched at some Smithsonian or another.

He was the one who’d pointed out the song. He knew I needed to fly. That a middle-aged guy with kids and a “lifer” job with the government wasn’t enough for me. That he was at peace with his lot in life and didn’t expect the same from me.

Funny I’d end up gravitating to similar situations. Where suddenly the age gap didn’t seem so big. Where it still might not have been enough but I was willing to entertain that it could very well end up being more.

I know we end up repeating the same situations until we get them right.

But I can’t help but wonder (H/T Carrie), if what’s meant for you won’t pass you by, what happens if it comes around again and you still don’t know what to do with it?