Walhydra’s convincement

Walhydra admits she isn’t a very good Quaker.

Years back, she decided being a Quaker was probably the kindest way to do this particularly grouchy, misanthropic incarnation. Sort of like keeping herself on a leash—“choke chain” might be more accurate.

But it doesn’t always work very well.

“Most of the world doesn’t cooperate with me,” she complains. “Falling objects, other drivers, Microsoft products—they all go on their way with no regard for what I’m trying to do. It drives me crazy!”

Of course, she knows that’s silly. On her better days—roughly from First Quarter till Full Moon, if she squints right—she is able to stop herself at the start of a stream of blue language, take a breath, and say out loud, “It’s not about me.” That actually works. Sometimes.

Because it is, in fact, true. Most of the world doesn’t know that Walhydra is the center of the universe. It doesn’t even notice her unless she drives too slowly in the slow lane and it has to ride her bumper.

In those rare, squinting moments, however, Walhydra acknowledges that each conscious dust mote is just going about its own business, with as much clumsiness or finesse as it can manage, as much selfishness or love as it has been given Light to express.

That last paragraph, BTW, is Walhydra’s core definition of Quakerism. Or, rather, it describes our mortal condition in such a way that Walhydra can stand to turn the other cheek as she looks at the log in her own eye and does unto others.... Etc. (Aren’t biblical clichés useful?)

Obviously, the key to all of this is that Walhydra isn’t very good at lying to herself. She has been blessed with sure knowledge of what a temperamental, surly so-and-so she really is, behind her mutedly elegant Virgo persona. She acknowledges how important it is for her to feel secretly superior to other people—and what a silly old witch she really is.

Again, in those squinty moments, she sometimes realizes that maybe the woman sitting in front of her in the testosterone-poisoned muscle truck isn’t an arrogantly selfish office-worker who supports death in Iraq so she can pay less than $3/gal. Maybe she couldn’t compete as an independent construction contractor before she bought that truck, since she couldn’t haul enough drywall in one trip. She just doesn’t understand that we really do need to pay the full cost of everything we use, if we want to nurture Creation.

Oh, well....

Walhydra understands—in principle, that is—that each of us does our best "according to the measure of the Light" which we have been given. It’s certainly what Walhydra tries to do.

That’s another reason Walhydra became a Quaker. Whenever you admit that you’ve screwed up, Mother-Father God gives you another chance.

And you get points for trying.

Walhydra shakes her head in despair

As she was driving to work this morning, Walhydra stopped behind a vehicle which had an arresting decal in the middle of the rear window.

The words said: "A message to the oil companies."

The image was an oil barrel out of which a hand arose, shooting the bird.

The problem, from Walhydra's point of view, was that this is what the guy was driving.

Famous to 15 people

Walhydra has never really understood the American worship of celebrity, not even when she first came over in 17...um, never mind.

In earlier times, at least, one actually did something of value in order to be celebrated.

Now, it seems, simply catching media attention seems to be enough. Americans will even commit weird crimes in order to “be someone”—until the public’s ADD kicks in again, that is.

Walhydra is therefore intrigued by John Leland’s Op/Ed piece in this past Sunday’s New York Times, “Where All the Beautiful People Are Ho-Hum.”

Observing the spotlight shift from creatures like Tom Cruise onto creatures like Lazydork and Lonelygirl15, Leland remarks that, “In the YouTube era, everyone will be famous to 15 people.”

Walhydra suspects there are at least that many people who know about her, possibly not for flattering reasons. Yet she realizes Leland is writing about something a bit different.

“On some deep level, fame is more people paying attention to you than you can reciprocate,” says Clay Shirky of New York University. “That hasn’t changed. But now you have that fundamental imbalance filtered through a new technology with new expectations, including interactivity and egalitarianism.”

An interesting formula: Fame is more people paying attention to you than you can reciprocate.

“That happens pretty much any evening at the reference desk, about 10 minutes before closing,” Walhydra realizes. “Does that make me famous?”

She reads on.

“People like Lonelygirl have discovered a truth about celebrity, which is that celebrity is a narrative form, not a status,” says Neal Gabler, a senior fellow at the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California. “They understand that if you create a narrative, you create a celebrity. You don’t need movie studios or television.”

Celebrity is a narrative form, not a status.

That is definitely an interesting insight. Walhydra has been talking about herself for ages, and the story keeps getting more...inventive...as she works to hang onto her audience.

But she’s never posted a video of herself dancing with her shirt off, and she doesn’t intend to. Some decorum must be observed.

Leland continues: “But as a narrative, celebrity doesn’t demand that its stories be well-crafted or complex — just that they grab someone’s attention for a minute, said Ken Goffman, better known as R.U. Sirius....”

And he quotes P. David Marshall of Northeastern University: “We’re moving from a representation culture, where celebrities or stars represented us, to a presentation culture, where we can present ourselves.”

Now Walhydra is beginning to wonder. This is all just about attention, not worth.

Modest Virgo egotist that she is, Walhydra knows she loves attention and commendation but doesn’t want to seem to notice it.

It’s part of that “dark Lutheran” thing she and Senior Witch tease each other about: Lutherans—at least the Swiss-German-American ones—are supposed to do things with spotless efficiency and then not claim credit.

So what happens when no one mentions that they noticed?

As Samantha of Bewitched used to say, “We-ell...?”

Leland concludes with words from Leo Braudy of the University of Southern California: “Fame originally meant after you’re dead. ‘Undying fame’ is the phrase in Indo-European traditions. In a world with little media, that was considered an accomplishment, that people would talk about you when you’re gone.”

Walhydra nods. “That’s part of why I agreed to incarnate again, to find out what they were saying about me. Problem is, I don’t remember who I was last time.”

She ponders the fame thing.

In one of those rare moments of genuine self-liking, she remembers that, dark Lutheranism aside, what really satisfies her is doing well things she values doing.

And she probably knows at least 15 other people who have that same desire for themselves and for each other.

That’s not fame, but it’s something to celebrate.

In which Walhydra reconsiders: or, Isn’t there a way to turn this thing off?

Walhydra wonders if it was such a good idea to let the would-be writer back out of his closet.

Ever since she allowed him to do that first blog post, he won’t stop composing. He wakes her at all hours of the night. He interrupts her in the middle of conversations, while eating, while driving, attending to nature….

He acts as if he has to catch every insight in metaphor at once, before he loses it. Walhydra hopes bloggers eventually hit a rhythm with all of this…but meanwhile she’d like to get some sleep.

Worse, this is happening while Walhydra is on a week-long visit with her dear mother, Senior Witch—away from any practical, 21st century connection to the ‘Net. Senior Witch’s dial-up Windows 95-era browser keeps shutting Blogger down as an illegal operation. The would-be writer just knows he’ll forget everything before they get back to civilization.

Walhydra and hubby Jim call her mother “Senior Witch”—secretly, of course—because she is such an unselfconsciously enlightened soul. In her eight-plus decades, she has passed through Christianity and out the other side gracefully, without even noticing.

She protests that she is “not at all spiritual.” She wishes she knew what having a religious experience was like. Meanwhile, she does spontaneously what Jesus would do and walks lovingly into situations which Walhydra is still trying to intellectualize.

When the Lutheran Church was going through its latest round of squabbling over the supposed danger of affirming same-sex couples, Senior Witch said to her pastor: “I don’t understand what my son’s marriage has to do with my marriage. I don’t know what he does in bed, and he doesn’t know what I do—except in the textbook sense, of course.”

Walhydra is visiting because, as eldest and physically closest of three children, it is her assignment to help her mother make the transition into elderhood. Senior Witch has been a brilliant mother, housekeeper, pastor’s wife, college professor, grant-funding agency manager and neighborhood organizer. Now short-term memory loss and the attendant anxiety keep her from balancing her checkbook. Ex-social worker Walhydra has to summon all her patience and courage to coach Senior Witch through a loss of self-reliance which is both frightening and painful to experience—and as much so to witness.

Fortunately, Walhydra and her mother have been frank and loving adult friends for over 30 years. When either catches herself trying to avoid distress by “protecting the other’s feelings,” there is almost always some new opening of intimacy to follow. They are not at all good at hiding from each other.

So, Walhydra finds herself wondering when Senior Witch picks Iris as the rental DVD for their last night together. Judi Dench, one of their mutual favorites, portrays the rapid decline into Alzheimer’s and death of philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch, in a screenplay based on the memoirs of Murdoch’s husband John Bayley (Elegy for Iris and Iris and Her Friends).

Walhydra keeps glancing sideways at her mother as the love story of Murdoch and Bayley unfolds. “Is she trying to tell me something? Does she recognize her own future in Murdoch’s losses?”

But all of Senior Witch’s comments are about how well they have done this movie of two books she greatly appreciated, and how great an actress Dench is. As usual, she seems to enfold someone else’s tragedy within her own compassion without personalizing.

Which, of course, Walhydra almost always does.

Once the film ends, Walhydra concentrates through teary eyes on teaching her non-techie mother for the umpty-umpth time how to use the DVD player—after Senior Witch says, “Maybe I’ll watch that again once or twice after you’ve left.”

They end the evening searching, first in Senior Witch’s concordance and then through Google, for the last words of the movie. The elderly Murdoch concludes a lecture on love and goodness, her highest ideals, with the Psalmist’s words to God—which she speaks while holding the eyes of her husband in the audience (Psalm 139:7-10):

Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?
Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there;
If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou are there.

If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there shall thy hand lead me,
And thy right hand shall hold me.

The Feline Law of Surfaces: Master Miso's Legacy

Walhydra and hubby Jim remember many things about the little guy who watched over them for so many years.

Among other things, Master Miso was a great teacher who sought to teach his humans enlightened behavior.

Master Miso studied human beings for many years. He determined that their limitations could best be dealt with through one law and seven corollaries.

The Feline Law of Surfaces: Any surface not previously available to the cat must be sat upon.

This law is also sometimes referred to as “nesting behavior”....as, for example, when one sets aside the top of a corrugated box and promptly finds the cat lying in it.

Corollary 1: Any contained space not previously open must be climbed into.

No matter how small or...one would think... undignified.

Corollary 2: Whatever the human picks up to read must be climbed upon.

This corollary may derive from the cat’s clear remembrance of the Burning Times and his aim to protect the human from written lore that might attract new persecution.

Corollary 3: Clean laundry must first be pressed by the cat to preserve its wrinkles.

A variant on nesting behavior.

Corollary 4: All papers left on the floor are to be shredded.

Variant: No commercial cat toy is worthy of attention.

Corollary 5: All laps are to remain available at a moment’s notice, regardless of anything else the human is doing.

Conversely, no human is to place the cat on his lap. The cat may deign, if so moved, to accept a lap offered with due humility.

Corollary 6: All humans who remain in a room after the cat leaves are to come immediately once the cat calls from the next room.

Otherwise known as: "Really!...the HELP one gets these days...!”

Corollary 7: Feeding the cat on time is a sign of promptness and loyalty, regardless of whether or not he eats once fed.

When the cat is ready to eat, he is to be fed again, regardless of whether...etc.

Otherwise known as: “What ELSE do you have to do, anyway? It’s only two hours till your alarm rings.”

Sadly, Master Miso's humans are now left alone with each other, not certain how to proceed without a feline to attend to. Walhydra supposes that, when the time is right, another teacher will come along, just as Master Miso did.

Until then, she and Jim will fumble along, being nice to each other and their friends and laughing as much as they can.

In which Walhydra reluctantly joins the blogosphere: or, Telepathy is more genteel, but nobody listens anymore

Walhydra has resisted doing this.

Increasingly she finds herself complaining that reincarnation isn’t what it used to be. She recalls when one could ease into an incarnation and, once one had figured out the basic themes of the age, settle in for a lifetime. Barring war, plague, famine and what not, of course.

Now, it seems, each next middle school cohort is reinventing the human race—or at least the moguls of the marketplace want them to believe that.

And so…here was Walhydra on a Thursday morning, stuck in her current incarnation as a fifty-something, gay male would-be writer, sitting in a class on “Social Software in the Libraries” and typing awkwardly on a laptop at a table too high for her ulnar nerve-impaired wrist. *Sigh.*

Or, rather, *Sob.*

In another context, this might have been a safely interesting “professional development” exercise. However, scant hours earlier on the drive to class, the vet had confirmed by cell phone from the pet hospital Walhydra’s morning dream. Miso the Cat had died quietly during the night, after sixteen remarkably healthy years (80+ in cat years).

Knowing how this goes makes it no easier. Nor does knowing how quickly and gently he died.

Well-disciplined Virgo that she is, Walhydra had politely reassured and thanked the doctor, pulled safely off the highway—and bawled her eyes and lungs out for fifteen minutes.

(She learned years ago that letting every aching sob actually come out into the world is the best way to handle grief.)

Now she was sitting through a day of extremely well designed and presented “cutting edge tech stuff for you old fogies to stumble over” training. And not caring.

Or, rather, alternating between despair and terror as she watches what she thought would be a relaxing third career speed away from her.

Or, rather, feeling dull inside because her best friend—after hubby Jim and her Mom—has gone.

Or, rather….

Two nights later, Saturday predawn. Walhydra and her hubby cuddling silently. Without the constant presence of the little guy they had nicknamed "Bundling Board" last winter, they discover extra affection to share with each other.

They had buried his body in the tiny, leaf-covered backyard niche beneath the south window of their bedroom. Walhydra admits that she doesn’t really know if there is life after death—a paradoxical acknowledgement for a curmudgeonly old witch.

“Rationally,” she says, “I understand all about biological organisms and the neurological basis of consciousness. But the rest of me says, ‘This doesn’t make any sense. How can a person just stop being?’”

Usually, when you ask Jim if he believes in reincarnation, he deadpans: “Not in this lifetime.” This morning he just hugs Walhydra quietly.

Eventually—despite it’s being only 5 AM--Walhydra gives in to the now familiar message: “You’re awake. Go with it.”

She wanders to the living room for some skyclad tai chi, sits zazen to meditate…and can’t stop composing sentences for her new blog.

She washes and dresses. Turns on the brand-new PC—all those old files and emails recovered in a new body—and goes online.

Here’s an email about a new social justice organizing venture she needs to publicize to a thousand friends. Here’s a new email address for her blog. Some other neat stuff. The info she needs to add DSL and perhaps create a website for Miso.

Here’s the social bookmarking site she just learned to use. And here’s a venue for a library staff wiki.

A furry ghost slips through the half-opened study door and plops belly up on the red rug, coaxing.

Scary fun.