Irish Fairy Tales

I mentioned in an earlier post that I took a trip to Ireland late last year.  If you're lucky enough to have been to Ireland you know what a beautiful place it is.  But even if you haven't visited you're probably aware of Ireland's rich history of folklore and storytelling.  And it just so happens that on our trip, we created a few stories of our own.

I promised my mother I would write these down for her.  I've been slacking on doing so.  So, Mom:  sorry this took so long!  I hope I did justice to these fun anecdotes from our trip.

The Gruber Ghost of Adare

The cemetery is very old, and sits in a quiet little section of Adare away from the tourist destinations and shops.  The church around which the graveyard sits has long since crumbled to ruins, and for years the place was overgrown with brush and greenery.

Only recently has the old cemetery been cleared – and that is, perhaps, how the Ghost escaped.

You wouldn't expect a German ghost in a small Irish cemetery.  And though you'll hear many stories of how he came to be there, no one person can say for sure.  All that is known is that on one grey, windy day, the tumbled tombstones inside the crumbled church were disturbed.

It was quiet enough at first that you could easily think you had imagined the sound, or that the wind had rattled something and caused the noise. But soon the quiet mutterings grew louder and there could be no mistake.  Something was awake inside...

The clouds darkened, and the wind whipped, and a lonely face appeared between the stones of one long-fallen wall.

"I'm a long way from home," you might have heard him say, if you were close enough. (Or you might not.  The voices of ghosts are soft and easily carried away on the breeze.)  "How will I get out of here?"

And the Gruber Ghost began to climb.  He tested each wall, until finally he found a very tiny opening that spilled out onto a very tiny path.

And the Gruber Ghost began to crawl, and to squeeze, and finally he tumbled to the ground.

And had you been there, you may have seen the clouds part just the slightest bit.  You may have seen the sun break through for a few seconds between drizzles of rain.  You may have felt the gusts calm to a quiet whisper of a breeze carrying a lost traveler home.   

A Brief Interlude

I do not like you, 50 Shades.
There are far superior marital aids.

I do not like your hacky prose,
In fact I think it really blows.

And though I would like slimmer hips,
I doubt I'll get them by biting my lips.

So take this "workout" thing and shove it –
even if the sheltered housewives love it.

I do not like you, 50 Shades of Grey,
When oh when will you go away?!


(Actual content coming later this week.  Promise.)

And I'm ready to suffer, and I'm ready to hope.

This last week has been a total roller coaster.  And while I'd love to go into specifics, since writing about things is sort of how I process and organize them and make sense of this big crazy world as best I can, pretty much everything going on is of a nature too private for blogging.  (I know this seems like a weird thing to say given that I've written several detailed posts about the state of my mental illness.  But there are some things even I won't broadcast to the open internet.  Plus those posts had the capacity to incite helpful discussion, where going on about my current state of affairs would really just be airing dirty laundry.)  Suffice to say I've hit some euphoric highs and some crushing lows, and it's all been sort of mentally exhausting, especially coupled with working retail at The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.

And all of that sort of got me thinking.  2012 has been a rough year.  I have this ridiculous apocalypse phobia – always have.  Since I was a kid I worried senselessly about seeing the End of Days and being crippled with fear as the skies go black and the seas boil.  (I was a melodramatic kid.)  So you can imagine how awesome all this Mayan calendar business has been for me.  And since I am also blessed with an advanced case of apophenia, every time some lunatic shoots up a public place or a massive hurricane devastates some place or someone starts making nuclear threats the shiny red CRAZY button in the back of my head gets hit. 

There's a point to this rambling, I promise.

Is the world ending?  Probably not.  But in a lot of ways, my personal world as I knew it ended in 2012.  I lost my father.  The end of my marriage was finalized.  Other little things along the way.  2012 was a year of (often painful) endings for me. 

So with that in mind, Ive decided to approach this "phoenix in the ashes" style and make 2013 a year of beginnings.  I've taken a few hits and been surprised at the fact that I was able to pick myself up and dust myself off.  But before my standard of living somehow gets stuck on survive, I want to take charge a little.  There are things I want to do.  There are things I need to do.

I've never been big on New Year's Resolutions.  There's no real reason for this; I'm not morally opposed to them or anything.  I just don't do them.  So this isn't a list of New Year's Resolutions.  This is just... a wish list of sorts, I guess.  But it's the kind of wish list where no one can really give you the gifts on it but yourself.

Tara's 2013 Wish List (in no particular order)

• I need to write more.  Since my father's death and the post I wrote for him, a lot of people have asked me "why aren't you a writer?"  The answer is simple and silly:  I have no idea how one becomes a writer.  But I'm going to write more and see if I can figure out some way to maybe claim I'm a professional at it.

• I need to move!  I'm too far from my family, and that needs to change.  This one involves a lot of work, but it's time to get to it.

• I have a web series to get off the ground!  This one terrifies me, as I know not the first thing about scripting, filming, or editing such a thing.  But I've got tons of support of which I shall endeavor to prove worthy.  First step is learn how to use this cool-looking camera I now own...

• I need to be a better daughter/sister/aunt.  Family, I love you.  I don't see you enough, or help you enough, or call enough.  You've all been there for me when I needed it and I can never really tell you how grateful I am to have you.  But I love you immensely and aim to be better at showing you that.

•••

There are more things, but it gets all weird and way too personal and detailed and it's mostly stuff the open internet wouldn't care too much about anyway.  The long and short of it is this:  2012 put a period on a lot of things for me.  I'm looking to make 2013 the start of the next chapter.

There's a particular Counting Crows song that I always tend to listen to a lot this time of year.  It suits the frozen melancholy of a New England winter really well, and in my most depressed of states it speaks to a certain wistful hope for a better future.  But it's also a bit passive.  So this year I'm going back to my girl Florence.  (You can never go wrong with Florence.  This is a great truth of my life.)  This song lifted me up during some of my darkest moments this year, so it seems a more fitting theme going forward:




It's also where the title of this post comes from. 

Whatever kind of 2012 you had, I wish you a successful, awesome, and scary in the best of ways 2013.  That's the kind of year I'm aiming to have. 

I'm (Not) A Slave 4 U

So I've already covered some helpful tips for making the holiday shopping season a less stressful experience for everyone.  That was the nice version.  This is the slightly less nice, perhaps a little bitter version. 

Somewhere along the line it became acceptable – at least in the States – to treat retail and other service workers as somehow less than ourselves.  I blame the "customer is always right" mentality.  This business strategy has led us to a point where the consumer knows that he or she can literally abuse the employees and rules of any given business and never face any retribution, because heaven forfend that business cost itself a sale or suffer a negative online review.  You can complain about almost anything, however ludicrous, and expect to receive an apology and probably a coupon or free item.  You can return items past the return date stated on your receipt, or without a receipt, or items that an employee saw you steal, and expect to get a refund.  Because if we say "no," you might not shop with us (or steal from us) again.

I'm not saying everyone abuses the system.  I'm not saying everyone is a bad customer.  But my experience has shown me that an appalling number of people have become so accustomed to being coddled that even the kindest souls simply seem to forget that retail workers are human.  So get ready to check your behavior – and if you're guilty of any of these things, think hard about how you'd feel if someone did any of them to you or about the hell you'd raise if a service employee acted similarly toward you.

Let's get into it.

Merry Shopmas!

This is reposted from my now-dormant fashion blog.  Happy Thanksgiving!
•••

I'm baaaaaaack!

Well, that's the plan anyway.  I work retail and it's late November, and that means my soul will belong to the mall gods for at least the next month, but my intention is to pull this blog back from the netherworld and get back to it.

And I mention the timing not just to make a blatant play for your sympathy, but also because it's topical!  Black Friday is staring us down and soon many of us will be fighting the crowds in search of gifts for our loved ones.  So in the hopes of making everyone's season a little more merry and a little less Grinchy, I give you:

Care and Maintenance of Your Retail Associate:  A Handy Guide for a Happier Holiday

No, this is not the new Romero movie.  This is your local mall.

 Before I start, let me say that this list is not just intended to be the grumpy rantings of a retail salesperson.  These tips will make your life easier too.  Some of them are common sense, some of them are common courtesy, but they're all good things to keep in mind.  That said, let's get into it:

Nature abhors a vacuum but what's between your ears?

I have a crush on The Newsroom. 

The first few minutes went live on the web before the first episode aired, and I was quickly intrigued.  I was a huge fan of The West Wing and its "smart people talking really fast about smart things" formula, and I was excited to see this applied to broadcast journalism.

(Full disclosure:  I minored in journalism in college and considered a career in the industry.  I went a different direction partially because of exactly the media issues addressed by The Newsroom  – I say at the risk of getting ahead of myself – and partially because I wanted to do something more artsy.)

So that first clip is really well-known.  But the clip that reaches inside my chest and wraps its hand around my beating heart is this one: 



YES YES YES.  It's the speech I imagine my college journalism professor – a fantastic and smart man who taught his students to be diligent and meticulously ethical – would want to see on television news.  It's the speech I would love to see, and the speech that would get me watching a news show religiously (should I ever own a working TV again).

The show does fall victim to some trademark Sorkin pitfalls:  the male lead is a genius prodigy with daddy issues, there is angst aplenty about co-workers who can't admit they're in love, everyone is a super genius who talks a mile a minute, etc.  And the liberal bias is deep enough that you need a snorkeling mask.  But beneath all that, the show makes some very important points about the state of American journalism.

The graphic at the left circulated on Facebook not too long ago.  It's one of those "laugh because it's funny; cry because it's true" things for me.

I'm a self-confessed CNN junkie.  When I had a working TV or when I'm somewhere where I have access to and control of one, I'll happily leave CNN on all day.  I like seeing the different ways a story is presented based on the time of day and the demographic audience at that time, or the way the presentation is changed between daytime and prime time and the weekend.  But mostly I like a steady stream of information.  (It's the same reason I feel naked without my smart phone now – I can't stand feeling like there's something going on that I don't know about.  Maybe that's why I studied journalism.)

But I feel a little guilty for my CNN obsession, because I know that even though it's not as clearly biased as Fox News or MSNBC, it's still not presenting the highest form of discourse or anything close to a complete picture of the news.  (There are a few exceptions to this.  Fareed Zakaria has a Sunday morning show that deals with a lot of international news that the network at large ignores or under-covers... but it's hidden away on Sunday morning.)  I could listen to NPR or watch C-SPAN, but I don't.  I call myself a purist, but instead of going to the organic farmer's market I happily swallow the processed, preservative-laden canned vegetables from the local chain grocery store. 

So how do you fix the state of journalism when even those who love it fall into the trap of style over substance?  I don't know.  It's too late to put the advertising worms back in the can, so whether we like it or not, news and its presentation are a business.  Print journalism weakens with every passing day.  And while the rise of blogs and the internet provides a wider range of sources for information, it also skews the signal to noise ratio heavily.

For now, I'm content to get lost in Sorkin's idealistic little world once in a while and resolved to begin seeking different sources for my news fix. 




Post title is a line from this R.E.M. song.

Been Away Too Long

Well hi there, blog.  Remember me?  I don't really blame you if you don't.  I haven't visited much lately.  Sorry about that.

I started this blog because I wanted and intended to write more.  This was partially because thanks to certain online shenanigans I sort of have an audience now, but mostly because I like to write.  It's how I process things sometimes, it's how I express myself, it's how I'm most articulate.  And lord knows I've had things I wanted to write about the past few months... but I either didn't have the energy or the time or both, and I sort of lost the plot in there somewhere.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that my father passed away over the summer.  That, while not unexpected, was a tough time.  I still miss him a lot and I think about him all the time.  (When my car acts up I catch myself going, "OK Dad, I hear you.  I'll check the oil.")  For a while other things seemed less important in comparison.

I didn't write for a while because I didn't want the post I wrote about my dad scrolling off the page.  Or because I didn't think I could write anything else as good as I was told that post was.  But the number of people who told me I need to be writing suggests to me that the greater error would be letting myself stagnate.

So, here we are.

What's up with me?  Some of the same, some new.  My depression got really bad for a while, which is another thing that kept me from writing.  I got to a point where I felt totally overwhelmed by my life.  I felt trapped and alone and terrified and I didn't see a way out.  And then the weirdest thing happened...

I took a trip to Ireland with some of my immediate family.  Our family there had arranged a memorial mass for my dad since not all of them could come to the funeral.  The day we left I was hanging by a thread mentally and had no idea how I was even going to get through the week.  But something about that trip – maybe just being away from my life for seven days, maybe seeing family I never see, maybe being in such a beautiful place – helped me turn a corner.  When I came back I was amazed at how good I felt.  How calm and happy and weirdly zen.  It was like I just forgot to pack all the anxiety and melancholy that had been weighing me down and left it overseas.

For a few weeks I tread carefully, waiting for that high to dissipate, but it hasn't.  It's like someone ran an anti-virus program on my brain and gave me a fresh start.  Yes, I'm still on my meds.  Yes, I still need them.  But I'm in a better place now than I have been in a long time.

I feel stronger somehow, too.  I've spent a lot of time apologizing and/or carrying crosses that weren't mine to bear.  I feel more able to give that up now.  I feel like I can stand a little taller and look the world in the eye without flinching.  I feel better equipped to face my own problems and to not make anyone else's problems my own.

I don't know how or why it happened, but it's a pretty good place to be.

There's been a myriad of other things since then – family emergencies, car trouble, a million of the other random things that make up day-to-day life and would usually send me into a tailspin.  But I've been good.  I credit a lot of that to my mother, who has recently given me incomparable lessons in strength, dignity, and grace.  Some of it, though, I think is progress I made on my own. 

Anyway, that's sort of the State of the Tara.

I'm going to make an effort to write more, even if it's just silly pop culture crap.  In the coming year I'm starting a web show – a prospect which terrifies me, but about which I'm also very excited.  I'm sure I'll have things to write about that process as well.

I feel like I've finally gotten (mentally, anyway) the fresh start I've been seeking for so long.  There are still a lot of things I need to work out, but I feel a lot better about where I am than I have in a long time, and I'm incredibly grateful for that.  Right now I'm trying to channel all of that into progress.  And that includes this blog.

So in short, I'm back.  Nice to see you again! 




*Post title stolen from the new Soundgarden song.  Did you miss Soundgarden as much as I did?