It’s not like I can avoid it. I speak English, so my experience of the world is slanted by Homer. I’ve talked about him and his Iliad before.

“Rage! Sing, Goddess…!”

The wars, the passion and the poetry could never—still aren’t! —be exhausted. The British university students kept on with their Greek translations well into Victoria’s reign.

What could compete with Homer’s words?

What indeed?

William Morris, famous for his arts and crafts textile designs, was also a poet and novelist. HE had an Icelandic friend who introduces him to an ancient Old Norse manuscript, which included the Volsunga Saga.

It’s from the 1200s, talking of historic events from 800 years earlier in Central Europe. The adventures described were dark powerful stories of the Volsung family, a fierce multigenerational story of revenge and the will-to-power.

Unlike the Greeks, these heroes were not the playthings of the gods. The tribal ferocity had a timbre rooted in the cold and dark north–a strange yet familiar indigenous epic. It wasn’t only England that was looking for its own unique identity in stories and language. The Brothers Grimm are just one example of the search for essential national identity through old oral traditional stories.

In the late 1800s industrialism and colonization had toppled old assumptions. Where did people fit in their lives and in society? The people were re-examining the stories of their own ancestors, not the re-purposed stories of Olympian gods grafted into the culture so long ago.

The emperors of industry didn’t trace their family trees back to kings. They filed their power in books managed by clerks. Sign here:

to pay back the loan

that lets you own

the smokestacks and the men who feed them.

Where is the heroism? What does success mean without the story of who I am?

Wagner was finishing his famous Ring cycle opera series with the Twilight of the Gods, based on the same stories. The story chronicles the end of the world. The time of the gods—heroism, honor and love—was ending.

What brought about this annihilation? How did it Wagner show this collapse?

It began with the craven breaking a contract. The God of all, Odin, made a contract with the Frost Giants to build his dream home, Valhalla. But he made the deal with no intention of paying the price.

But in the new world of industry and capital, where trust has taken the place of lineage, a broken promise proved to be the end of everything.

The Grimm brothers, Morris, and Wagner were trying to find a shared heritage, but Wagner brought it back to trust or honor. What allows us to be alongside one another if not trust?

This story, of the ring and the broken sword that begun in Old Norse was picked up by a more modern and familiar artist: Tolkien.

As powerful as a contract is in the world of the new middle class, Tolkien found another layer needed peeling away. He was chest deep in these indigenous stories—he was a linguistics professor. But before he brushed out his first tweed jacket, he joined the fight in World War One, seeing the worst of the modern reenactment of battle. Blood and sickness and death alongside his modern life.

The Volusunga Saga told the story of unbound ambition, constrained only by the limited power of what a collection of humans could do to one another. Humans had progressed since. The industrial age for workers led to the industrial age for warfare. The same tools that kept the smoke pumping out of the factories kept the men in place on the front lines to die in ways and numbers unimagined.

The 20^th century epic story of the Lord of the Rings of Power followed a small insignificant hero. He refused to use the power. He never forgot where he came from, longing to return to his beloved shire. His sense of belonging and the peace of his community fueled his commitment to not only refuse the power, but to prevent it from being used by others.

I can read the story of the Volsungs. I wonder what they would think of us, 1600 years later. We have more power than they could have dreamed. Can we refrain from using it? Have we turned the hero’s story inside out?

What with all the things going on in my life, I have fallen back on the comfort of puzzles. I can pick up a box with and interesting picture, open it and scatter all the pieces onto the table.

They don’t look like the picture. They are chaos and upside-down beige cardboard at first. The pieces are fragments of wildly unfamiliar and also impossibly the same shapes and images. I start to sort them and make sense of it.

In the world outside the puzzle box, I’ve experienced a rise in the number of disappointments and betrayals. I could give in to negativity and lose hope. There is certainly enough evidence to support pessimism. And yet, I will not resign myself to hopelessness.

So, the puzzles, with their promise of restoring order and even beauty from chaos are a way to fight back.

I flip all the pieces so their colors show. I touch them and look them over to get the sense of how this will work out.

What things do I know for sure? The one single straight edge is something I can rely on, that’s a place to start. The edges of the puzzle is a guarantee that I’m going in the right direction.

And yet…from the very beginning there is a battle.

How can this piece fit? Maybe this puzzle has the wrong pieces.

Or

Is something missing? The box was sealed but…

Maybe there was a problem and this time things won’t come together.

All the time I sort and look and fit the pieces together I am still doubting.

Did a piece fall and on the floor and get eaten by the dog?

WHERE is that one piece that has to have purple in it? I don’t see any piece with purple. This is the one the dog ate; I just know it.

I’ve put a few together now. Once, a piece was eaten by the dog. I know because I found that soggy chewed piece, rescued it and put it back together. It was funny looking, but it was complete at the end.

It’s a pendulum swing, between victories and despair. Every piece that slides into place is a satisfying payoff. And so quickly when I search for the next piece it can swing to the despair.

Putting that puzzle together is talking myself into faith every second. And as I practice faith and action in this small flat world that fits in a box, I am building the same for the larger world.

It will work. Things will come together. Have faith, and trust.

As much as I would like to be perfect, I am far from it. I have my proclivities and my blind spots. Unfortunately, I’m not always aware of which is which. I think I’m getting better at seeing which is which. I don’t know what I’m blind to, until I have a throbbing pain slam into me.

I have a lot going on in my head. The running conversation spills easily into my writing—my blog has been around for 20 years, and this weekly wonder newsletter for more than ten. I’m not short on thoughts.

Thing is, I am so busy listening to myself, I’m not so good at hearing what others might have to say. There is a saying “Read the room.”

Ah. The room and all the people in it have something for me. It seems I need to clear out a space in my head and give some attention to what is happening around me.

This doesn’t always come easy. I love to talk with other people, but when my mind is full it’s hard for me to set aside what I’m thinking about and make room for what others need from me.

And they don’t always even tell me. I have to sharpen up and look for signs. Are they tired? Are they excited? I have to be aware of what is happening in the minds and hearts of others.

With all the noise in my own head, I can easily overlook what’s happening for other people.

I’m getting ready for a job interview on Thursday. Wish me luck! I would love to be picked and I am flashing back to job interviews that have gone very poorly in the past. There was this one interview I finally got, and I was so nervous and desperate. I got on the call and tripped all over myself, barreling down on that poor hiring manager like a runaway freight train.

I hope I’ve learned a couple things since.

Like
Take a breath

It’s not all about me.

Do you know how Winnie-the-Pooh gets down the stairs?

Being unhappy and in pain makes it hard to think of another way to do things.

Christopher Robin takes Winnie by the right foot and he bumps his head down the stairs banging his head at every step. Between bumps he tries to think of a better way.

Pooh is a very simple bear, and the banging means he never comes up with a better idea.

AA Milne is a genius. When life comes at me, I can’t think about much else but the onslaught.

Pain and unhappiness have the consequence of making me stupid. How unfair! Just when I need my wits about me the most I am beset with distractions. 

In my martial arts class, the Sensei will set up a challenge for us to see if we can retain our skills under stress

Close your eyes and spin around for 30 seconds. Now run across the room and open a combination lock. Can you do it fast enough to get away from an attacker?

And the stress of doing it under pressure makes it even harder!

I am not at my best right now. That’s the reality. The stress of knowing that I have the capacity to do better, be more clever and less clumsy makes me perform even worse.

That’s feedback loop I prefer to break. Just like when I’m dizzy and fumbling with that combination lock, I have to take a breath, remember where I am and have some patience with myself.

Senseis also say:

Slow is Smooth

Smooth is fast

I am not either. But If I concentrate on being smooth I am more likely to get faster. Or at least make forward progress. Fast is a goal too far.

“When people show you who they are, believe them.” 

–       Maya Angelou

Since I got fired almost two weeks ago, I’ve been taking stock. This is familiar and painful territory. I have a strong urge to talk it through with friends. I am really missing one friend in particular, another professional woman my age that understood what it was like in the office.

I loved talking with her. In my mind, she got it. It was helpful to have a solid mutual understanding of what it was like in these kind of career moments.

It hurts to get fired—to get the chair pulled out from me as I was pouring my heart and soul into the job.

NO, YOU ARE NOT AT ALL WHAT IS WANTED.

I’m not? But can’t you see how I’ve been making everything come together? Can’t you tell how I’m doing exactly what is needed?

YOU MUST LEAVE AND NEVER COME BACK.

Ouch. I set the phaser of my face to “professional” and try to appear stone cold as I wrap up whatever last things must be done. Fill the box, hand over the hardware.

It turns out this job was not what I wanted either, categorically. Because they didn’t want my best. And I only do my best. They—this one and all the others which fired me before—were not what I thought and hoped they were.

I saw the signs. I knew this was coming. I hoped that I could blast though and prove how valuable I was.

I can fix it! Just give me a chance!


It turn out it doesn’t work that way.

I wish I could talk to my friend about it. We used to call every week. Well, almost every week. I would text to try to make a time to talk every week. Sometimes she would answer back. Sometimes she wouldn’t. I forgave her, she was busy. And a couple weeks passed without talking.

Until one day she stopped communicating altogether.

What?

I tried connecting again.

Like a punch to the gut, it became clear my role to was to pack up whatever remnants I had left in this relationship up and leave in a dignified way. The door is locked.

Just like after getting fired I can look back and see the things I chose to overlook. I have blind spots—things I disregard on purpose. I want things to work. I want these positions—relationships—to be different from what they are.

People are complicated; situations have many facets. But a few things are always true:
– I don’t know everything
– Everything is not about me


When it comes to a cooperation, or a collaboration, between people it takes both sides. I can’t do all of the work for both sides. It takes agreement. In that two-way signal, interruptions can come into either path.

It’s not just about me, and I won’t know what is about me and what isn’t. In the world of ignorance, my best hope it to dust off and keep moving past it. Wondering what I might have done differently is of limited use.

These different people told me who they are. I’d best believe them and get on to the next thing.

I’m always wanting to do great things. Little things lack pizzazz. I’m looking to make great strides and accomplish something huge. I want to be better than i am—stronger and faster than I am.

But I am what I am. I hope I could become more, but it takes time.

Time and effort. Frustratingly slow and ponderous time and effort. I wish it were otherwise.

I know it is not. I can only do what I can do, and I can only do it at the speed I can do.

It’s discouraging. 

It can feel like a reason to not try at all. How can my very small effort matter?

I’m thinking big, and yet small is all I can do. I want to give up. Why even try?

Someone once  told me when I am trying to turn things around, to see if I can make one degree of change. Turn it one little degree.

It’s not much but it is a change.  

It will make that much of a difference.  One degree might be all I can do, but if I can do that it will have to be enough.

I can do that, and if I keep trying I can do it again. Changes, if done consistently, can add up.

Making no change adds up. Nothing plus nothing times the days I keep doing nothing adds up to less and less time to make a change.

But 1 degree of change after 180 changes, results in a complete turn around.

Yes, I’m dreaming big. I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s a problem if I am only focused on the big goal and can’t beak it down into the steps that I can take.

The little steps…those tiny changes that seem inconsequential and barely worth doing.

The big dream can give me the reason to keep on with the tiny every day steps, to keep the steps going in the direction of the change i hope to see. 

It takes a lot of time, and a lot of little steps to get to the change I’m hoping for. It takes a big vision not to give in to the despair that waits every day.

Every day, make the little change that I can.  Keep the flame of the vision burning and keep my eyes on the big dream. Beautiful beaches are made of tiny grains of sand.

When I came back to Alaska from the country formerly known as the Soviet Union, I had to catch up on a lot of American culture. I’d been gone for a year and a half and had been outside the mainstream even before I left.


It was1993 and I was introduced to a new delicious beverage:


Snapple Ice Tea


I found it in the gas station food marts and particularly enjoyed the Peach Ice tea. Yummy yummy.


Not long after that, Snapple did a series of ads declaring they weren’t trying to be number 1. Coke and Pepsi could have that, but Snapple (at the time) had its sights on being #3.


Not everyone can be number one. Many times, there are uncontested frontrunners. I was thinking about that Snapple commercial as I was reviewing this verse
“Now there abideth faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love.”


No doubt, love is what the world needs now. I need love. I am hungry to give and receive love.


But I am at this moment enamored of the other brothers faith and hope. Faith and hope who are holding hands through life, sometimes side by side and other times taking turns on which comes first.


You got to have faith. And sometimes all I can manage is to hope that the faith will come.


That letter that Paul wrote, that’s been passed down and treasured for thousands of years is saying that faith and hope abides. Like a rock that will not be moved, these remain.


I’ll tell you, I need to hang on to that rock. That’s what faith and hope are all about. Faith is seeing something that hasn’t happened yet. And hope is like the seed of faith. If I’m in a spot that’s so unpleasant I might not even have the wherewithal to have faith. Maybe I can only muster hope. I have hope it will grow into faith.

Faith and hope abide too, close up against love. The second and third place may change in any given moment when ranking these three. I agree they go together, and I know I need all three. I’m hoping to get through these hard times.

It’s August, which is a new month. This summer has been a bit crazy for me and I wasn’t watching when the last month. July caught me by surprise and I did not deploy my new-month process. I have felt that lack all month, and I am ready for the new month of August now.

I know I’m not the only one with needs. I have systems set up. Yes, I’m talking about books.

I see people on social media talking about their books and I see the pictures of the stacks of books they buy from book stores. Sometimes I take a note of books from their stack I want to read myself.

But I am also judging them.

Book readers will often congratulate themselves on being smarter because of this habit. Sure, books are a great way to learn things—things I don’t know, stuff that will make my life better and me more successful.

I shake my head at these readers and book addicts. They ought to be clued into the price difference between buying first release hardback and the slouchy bargain paperback. That’s money. That’s money that could be spent on more books.

But even that is a rookie mistake. I guard my stash and keep the supply of book flowing. The true hookup is the

LIBRARY CARD

How did these readers enter the labyrinth? Were they really so richy rich to have a sufficient supply of reading material from a bookstore?

When it comes to product, a commercial bookstore can’t keep up with a library for inventory. It takes that Dewey Decimal tag to keep track of the kind of catalog I need.

If I need a book, I do not need it tomorrow. I need it the moment the last book is done. And I need it to fill a certain longing and itch that my heart and curiosity hold in that precise moment.

There are narrative micronutrients needed from certain genres and authors that must be consumed as the hunger appears. Nothing else will do.

I have lists. I have virtual stacks of things to read when the moment comes. I take this seriously. Anytime a book is mentioned in another book it goes on the list. YouTube videos and podcasts are great sources. Conversations with friends; a standard question when I meet someone new “What are you reading?”

If my list gets to single digits it’s moment of anxiety, I will scramble to get more in the queue.

The new month process is to review the library card apps on my phone and make sure I tap out the limits for the month. The Hoopla app lets me get 8 books. The Libby app lets me check out more, but they have a long waiting lists. I’ve got a set of cards that I can rotate through.

As a last option, I can purchase the book. I have to exhaust the library possibilities first, which involves keeping the balance of genre types to feed the need.

Thing is, life can come at me and I might discover an unpredicted hunger for a particular reading experience. I might find that a mystery I was reading cannot be tolerated after all, requiring a palate cleanser. Certain characters can do that, or poor narrative consistency.

I might not be the only one with these kinds of book needs. But I am the only one who can properly treat and address it. This month I have executed my library systems effectively, and it is a calming realization that I’ve done what I can.

I want to be stockpiled for the rest of the summer. It’s been uncomfortably unpredictable so far.

I’m not such a movie person, I’m a book person. That being said, I understand a lot of movies reach a lot more people. The 1983 movie Bladerunner is based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?

Someone suggested this book as an easy read, and I picked it up. Two things I notice: it is set in 2021—a year ago. That’s disturbing. Sci fi classics are becoming set in the real life past. This is as unnerving as Disneyland’s Tomorrowland being vintage and quaint.

But even more disturbing is the novel itself. The earth landscape is poison and horrifying. So common for science fiction to be dystopian and pessimistic. Yes, it is often wonderful writing. I just like a large base of hope with my art?

The book introduces the main character Rick Deckart waking up in the morning and exchanging conversation with his wife. To be frank, having a fight with his wife. It was her fault—she picked a fight because of the despair of living in a horrible world.

Philip Dick is from the era of classic sci fi, and he published this book in 1968. The 60s were a landmark time for American marriage.

This makes me think about sci fi wives. Society and worlds are being recreated, torn down and reimagined in the sci fi universes. How are the wives shown?

I am pretty sure Deckart’s wife was a 60’s stay at home wife, but he was a murdering bounty hunter. The wife played a minor role, being mostly another thing, the hero had to take care of.

Robert Heinlein, another 60s classic sci fi author, famously reimagined how marriages could work in Stanger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Both of these break apart the monogamy and imagine a group partnering situation. The wives were far more independent and didn’t seem to be a burden on the male hero.

Orwell’s 1984 had a very wife that was so light of a burden she came loose and floated away. The love interest was a woman that was very central to the plot and formed a critical emotional connection. In the end his devotion to her led to his permanent downfall.

Wives are not looking very good. But these are novels written by men. Do female authors have something to share about wives of the future?

In 1818 Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Frankenstein’s monster is a character not soon forgotten. The chemical and industrial discoveries of the time fed the imagination of Mary Shelley who created the story of a man of science creating a new proto-human from that science.

Victor Frankenstein himself was not married, although he had a fiancée. The story of the monster end with him demanding a wife. Just life the first human in Genesis, the monster could not stand to be alone.

But the scientist could not stand the idea of giving his monster a way to pro-create. In this female created sci fi world, the wife was the whole point for the new line of human.

Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale has the woman as a central point for society. She gets the basics: in a poisoned world, the ability to produce a baby is determined to be critical and the women who are capable of this become commoditized and farmed out for this purpose. When an important man is assigned a fertile “handmaid” the wife plays a very creepy sexual role, but not a very powerful or self-actualized role. The protagonist handmaid frees herself and does not appear to have any interest in being a wife.

There is a style of romantic sci fi that emphasized the power of love in the world. I enjoyed reading Audrey Neffenger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife where the hero was caught in a time traveling power that he could not control. The world was realistic contemporary, not particularly dystopian. No more dystopian than pre-covid life in America. But he found meaning and purpose in his out-of-control life by arranging to come back to the woman he loved across the time he was given

Like Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, it was enough for the time traveler to find his love and make a family.

Then again, there is Pamela Zoline’s story published in 1970 Heat Death of the Universe where the stay-at-home wife finds her safe suffocating suburban world even more minute-by-minute dystopian than Deckart’s poisoned planet earth. That wife’s world has significantly changed.

A wife requires another person to be a wife with. Those mutual expectations seem to have changed a lot over time. It’s interesting to track how wives have been shown in sci fi and how they’ve changed. Novels are a good place to imagine and re-imagine what could be.

It was an experiment, put together by people who read a lot and people who were ready to start something new. Everyone that came to America had already made that leap to try something new.

The ones who broke away from the government in place had been pondering and made a declaration “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…”

That’s how my country got started as an independent nation. They disconnected from one state to become better connected with their own people. I love that in its ideals America is open to connect to everyone. In the words of poet Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

With those lines I see an America that I can have hope in. We contain multitudes and within that is contradictions. And we are large. This strange system for states to do their own thing which can bubble up to the federal level leaves room for multitudes and contradictions.

It takes contradictions to get the multitudes. It’s not easy to get consensus. In one of my favorite stories, Jesus prays in the garden before he is captured for torture and death. He prays for those who are about to betray him. Jesus whose message had been one of forgiveness and love prayed “I pray also for those who will believe in me…, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.”

The miracle of loving unity requires a strong faith. It feels like a reach, and maybe even impossible. Then again, so was the American revolutionary war was a long shot. Becoming better than I have been is always a stretch.

I grew up in the 49th state out of America’s 50. Not only did our government at its inception leave room for different opinions, it left room for even more. Lay another plate on the table. There is room and there is enough. If we keep talking we can work it out.

I think of how Bob Marley and his Rasta types would say “I and I.” They are trying to embrace an idea that there is no difference between people. I am the same as you, so much that it is silly to say you. I and I are brothers, they would say. That’s a lot like what Jesus said in the garden.

It is painful to live apart. It’s not easy to live together either. And yet I believe that has more love in it, and that love is worth it.