Be the change you want to see.

Words are my stock-in-trade. I use them to make things and to explore the world. I go to them to learn and be comforted and to figure life, or pain, or puzzles out.

I come from Livejournal/Dreamwidth, before Facebook, when words were always what you used to tell a writer you enjoyed, appreciated, or interacted with their work. This is well before the "like" functionality was implemented across the internet.

Complimenting artists on their art, writers on their stories, wasn't something I could do, growing up pre Internet as I did. And it's thrilling as hell to be able to, like, tag @dduane and say, "thank you, your books helped me through a painful, awkward childhood where I frequently felt lonely and unloved, and I remember them fondly thirty years later."

One of my favorite poets said she could live three weeks off a really good compliment and nothing else. :) Psychology has done studies on the need for praise and compliments in developing and maintaining a healthy emotional life.

We need them, compliments and praise, but we shy away from giving them. Why is that? I have theories, but this isn't the place and time for that right now. Let me tell you a very short story instead.

I dig tattoos, both in the same way that I love art generally, but in a deeper way too. I have several, am planning several more. Yesterday at the service center, the lovely young man who checked me in, very well mannered, had lovely forearm tattoos: greyscale roses twining around words. (I tried not to stare, I didn't want him to feel uncomfortable)

So I'm admiring his art but didn't have the right kind of courage in that moment to tell him his art was lovely. The shading, the composition, the ballsiness of being a Hispanic dude in maybe his middle 20's with visible floral tattoos, all of these impressed me.

I'm waiting for the shuttle to take me home while they work on my car, reading on Tumblr, and I run across the why-guys-send-dick-pics thread, why women don't, and don't like them, how men don't receive compliments so women complaining about compliments is like the women are speaking in ancient Greek, incomprehensible. One comment that just nailed it was, "one person who's dying of thirst is watching someone who is drowning"

(digression:. if you find that extended thread/conversation, please tag me so I can keep it, or throw a link in comments to this? TYVM!)

And I thought, REAL compliments feed us. And I don't have students anymore who I can lift up in that way, but I do that with friends, and I do that on Facebook and Instagram and my other social media. And I do that for authors whose work I like (I need to make a long appreciative list tagging a bunch of y'all) and maybe, like my beloved friend Janice was doing years ago at Renfaire, I can start making a point of doing this in meatspace interactions again. Giving heart felt compliments. Nothing hollow, nothing that's got a hook in it, nothing manipulative.

Just a gift.

I mean, this thought passed through me in a flash, feeling nothing like it does now to write it all down.

And then the young man with the roses came through with a clipboard. "Oh, you're Liz, aren't you?" I smiled and nodded. "The shuttle's ready to take you home, have a good day," and I half blurt "oh thank you, and I hope you don't mind me saying? (He turns back, slightly surprised) That I love the shading on your rose tattoos. They're really beautiful!"

Folks, the LOOK on his face... I could see what ten year old him looked like when he was really happy. He looked for a flash like kids do when they catch a ball in the stands hit by their favorite player on their home team. He looked SO HAPPY, his smile changed his face completely.

I'm so glad I said something, that I got a second chance to put a look like that on someone's face.

This is a thing I vow to do more of again.

Compliments keep the soul alive in a world that's trying it's best to kill our souls with dread, fear, and despair.

You know: They lie when they say kind words cost nothing: they cost effort, and courage, and willingness to take the risk, ability to let go of an expectation of return. But I have the energy and the commitment and this is something that I can look for opportunities to put out into the world.

Thanks to my friend Panther who owns a share in, I believe, The Other Change Of Hobbit, I have a shelf of books I wouldn't ordinarily read. He let me go through his advance copies when I visited him on his Life Day in April.

Tonight I was looking for something to engage. I checked the shelf and found The Knitting Circle, a book whose opening page had hooked me into snagging the book from Panther's book-pile and taking it home with me.

Been awhile since I got grabbed by the throat by a book and couldn't get it to let me go. And I say that advisedly, since I just finished Stardust by Neil Gaiman. (BTW, if there are any fans inclined to do so, Wikipedia plot summary for Stardust wants editing, reads like it was written by a gifted 14 year old).

The Knitting Circle is wonderful. Highly recommended, and you don't have to be a knitter! Just be someone who understands that everyone has their own stories, their own unhealed scars, their own way of getting thru and past the pain again.

If anybody local wants to borrow this book, ping me here. I'd love to hear what someone else thinks.

Parking lot meetings are sometimes quite productive. One at work for about half an hour with Karen, I think I helped her sort her thoughts out...

and tonight at the Safeway, the fella who helped me take the groceries out to the car has a son whose cancer is rare and getting worse. I realized for like, a split second, that I was tempted to one-up the guy (I definitely thought 'Scotty's was worse, was rarer, was...' - then I shut that inner voice up). That wasn't my role, that wasn't my job. For whatever reason, this guy confides in me, and he's moved here from Texas with his Pipefitters' pension, to try and take care of his 44 year old son who promised that "hey, dad? would you come out and stay with me, I promise if you do, I'll get better"... and he's like, 60 exactly, (he was 16 when his son was born) and I don't think he tells people what's going on with him, very often.

I shut up. I listened and made listening noise and eye contact. I told him I was going to pray for him, and I did.

and I called my mom tonight because I have been thinking of my dad and brother a lot the last week or so and I needed to talk to her. It was a good thing.

My brother died this Sunday. Yes, while I was in Japan.

I'm dealing. Work is helping me sort stuff out so I don't have to try and teach when I'm, um. Upset.
*nods*

My brother's, um, widow. *handkerchief*
is doing a college fund for Aubrey Faith, in lieu of flowers.

So let me know if you'd like to contribute, eh? You could contribute anytime. And prayers and kind thoughts/energies are always welcome.



and if you want to help, you can ask me how I am when you see me. I posted to Barbarians list about this but haven't um. tried to read the messages yet. thanks for people's support so far.

If there's an upside to this, aside from Scotty not hurting anymore *handkerchief*
it's that compared to April 28, 1994, when my dad died (yeah, my mom gets two deathaversaries in the same month now...) I'm actually grieving. Took me like 6 or 7 YEARS to move out of cotton-wool-stuffed denial and irrational anger about my dad's going.

So I guess that's something. Stuff is moving.

Better get going.