In defense of raccoons

3 March 2010 | 5 Comments

Hi!

I respectfully disagree with the posts here about the raccoons. They can be nice and sweet and they are obviously cute. The lady in Florida who was attacked by a family of raccoons “attacked” first… She went outside with a broom and started to hit them, I think any animal, specially one with babies with them would have done the same, just to protect themselves.

I have been feeding a small female in my backyard. She is the sweetest thing, 4 nights ago she brought 3 babies for me to meet, the cutest thing. She lets me get near her, she has never showed any aggression.

Respectful disagreement is never a problem here. Thanks for taking the time to write.

There is a reason the Park Service says Don’t feed the bears. But I sincerely hope it all works out for you, and am glad you are enjoying it.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under being human, blog 

The view from here

4 January 2010 | 1 Comment

Happy new year. I for one am deeply relieved to see the back of 2009, and am feeling many good things about 2010 — excited, determined, engaged, and something that’s about… hmm, about being lined up inside. About moving towards myself instead of away.

Personal perspective is a good thing. But sometimes I like to get a little bit outside myself. And so here’s a look at life from a place that’s a little bigger than me. Or maybe it’s not: maybe being human is the possibility of being as vast and beautiful inside ourselves as the infinite space where we live.
 

Enjoy your day, your month, your year, and thanks for being here.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under being human, blog 

When you don’t vote, people die alone

19 October 2009 | 6 Comments

Thousands of people have already ready Nicola’s post about Janice Langbehn, who was denied access to her dying partner by Miami hospital personnel who refused — refused — to acknowledge the legality of her durable power of attorney for healthcare and living will. A woman died alone while her partner and children pleaded to see her.

Nicola’s post — which you should read, please, if you have not — is titled “trembling with rage.” Me too.

In 2001, a friend who was supposed to be enjoying a nice dinner at our house ended up driving us to the emergency room instead, where I was hustled into the back with what turned out to be acute appendicitis. Our friend (*hugs Liz through the internet*) went back to our house, found our power of attorney and brought it back for Nicola.

No one gave us any trouble. No one looked at the legal documents that cost us thousands of dollars (that if you are married you pay nothing for because you don’t need them) and said, I don’t care if you have a lawyer, you’re not a real human being as far as I’m concerned and I’m not going to treat you like one, so you just sit out here and suffer and maybe we’ll get around to paying attention to the thing in the back at some point.

None of that. They just nodded and let her come in and hold my hand until the surgery, and then they brought her into the recovery room when I woke up. Just like you would for anyone.

But that’s Seattle. What if we’d been in Miami? Or Houston? Or Baton Rouge? And what happens if Washington voters decide in the next few weeks that what happened in Miami is okay here too? What happens if they decide that we aren’t real human beings as far as they are concerned?

You want to know what happens? Ask Janice Langbehn. You can’t ask Lisa Pond because she died alone in a strange hospital without a chance to say goodbye.

When people don’t have equal protection under the law, they suffer. They lose their families, their jobs, insurance, their pension, their homes, their access, the right to control the important moments and decisions of their own lives. If you think that’s okay, then you are saying that it’s okay to be hateful, and that your rules about what’s Good in the world are more important than real human suffering. Just so you know, that makes you an asshole in my book. But this is a democracy whether I like it sometimes or not, and every asshole gets a vote. You must vote.

Although I sincerely hope you will vote to Approve Referendum 71. Because you have the chance to save lives, save families, mitigate heartbreak, and just maybe make sure that someday I don’t die alone, wondering why my beloved Nicola isn’t there.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under being human, blog 

A moment to contemplate heaven

5 September 2009 | 5 Comments

Imagine these churches right across the street from each other.

And watch the conversation unfold…
(Thanks to K for sending this my way!)
 
churchsign1

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If there is a heaven, it should definitely include rocks and dogs and all the rest of us.

This religious war of the words isn’t real — it’s the creation of someone’s fertile imagination and the judicious use of the church sign maker. Anyone can do it. You can do it…

Sometimes I just love people and the things we can do.

Enjoy your day.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under being human, blog 

I don’t get to talk about spoons

13 August 2009 | 12 Comments

I don’t get to talk about spoons.

If you’re thinking Huh?, let me point you to The Spoon Theory by Christine Miserandino.

My partner has MS. She’s a member of the disability community. I’m not. She gets to talk about spoons. I don’t.

What this means in the simplest words I can find is: being a disabled-bodied person is a different experience from being an able-bodied person, regardless of other factors of race and class and so on. It’s different. Being a person of color in this culture is a different experience from being a white person, regardless of other factors of class and gender and so on. It’s different.

If you don’t share an experience of difference — the kind of difference that hampers your access to physical space, cultural privilege, opportunities, social respect, or being seen as fully human in the eyes of the people around you — please don’t turn around and make that experience about you so you can then participate in it.

I don’t want to hear about your personal “color-blindness” or your paean to how brave the crippled people are because they have so much more to deal with. Nor am I concerned today with whether someone else’s difference counts as much as yours. Difference is, people: can we just acknowledge it and deal with it? And part of dealing means that sometimes you just stand back and give people space to be, to speak about what’s different for them, and to understand that you don’t necessarily get to be different that way too. You can do this even if you don’t think their difference is important, or you don’t understand why it’s important to them, or you don’t see the problem, or whatever. You can, if you choose, simply acknowledge that it’s outside your experience, rather than going on at length about how hard your own stuff is. It does not diminish you if the occasional conversation is not all about you. There is a great vast amount of the world that is not about you, and sometimes people want to talk about it.

So stop making it about you and start listening to how it is for the people who are Not You. Take their word for their experience. And understand that sometimes they just don’t give a shit whether you have suffered too. And today neither do I. I don’t care whether you think it’s fair that the disabled community wants to own the idea of spoons, the same way I don’t care whether you think it’s fair that some people have spaces where white folks don’t get to speak their mind about the challenges of whiteness. I just don’t care right now.

And I’m not here to fight about it. It’s a big world and you can find your own space in another part of it, so if you believe differently, please go express it on your own blog. I will turn off comments in a New York second if things get even the slightest bit whiny or trollish. I’m just not in the mood. Is that unfair? Tough.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under being human, blog, life 

Another fearless story

11 August 2009 | 2 Comments

There’s been a fair amount of conversation recently on this blog about hope, and why people keep going in the face of hopelessness. Sometimes the universe demonstrates lovely timing: along comes a beautiful new ebook from Fear.less, written by Mawi Asgedom, that is all about hope and perseverance. Asgedom packs a lot into a small (six page) package, and what speaks to me most right now is his talk of courage, resilience and advice on how to persevere.

The moment of courage in a human being’s life is when all the indicators around you tell you that nothing’s going to work out, when you don’t have any evidence whatsoever that makes you feel like you’re going to be happy again. At that specific moment, when you can still step up and do your best, just because you believe that outside your own logic and reason it’s possible in the world, and you’re going to fight for it, that to me is what courage is all about.
 
– Mawi Asgedom

So many stories revolve around a hero faced with the choice to give up or keep going. Those are powerful stories, and they form the core of some of our most hardline cultural beliefs: that perseverance is all we need to win (if you work hard enough, you can do anything), and that stopping equals failure (a winner never quits and a quitter never wins). We put the emphasis on the results. But Asgedom also puts emphasis on the process: on knowing that when faced with the choice, we did our best.

I’m not here to say that persevering is always the right thing; sometimes stopping is the best choice. Billions of human lives have been lived as a string of such choices. I think Asgedom’s deeper point is that we have a choice, and we get to make it over and over again. It’s a lifetime’s journey. If you make a choice you don’t like, then make a different choice next time. Life doesn’t stop when we choose: it only stops when we don’t.

Download the ebook and share it as you like. Sign up at Fear.less to get more as they are released. And let me know what you think.

Wishing you more joy, more love, more hope, less fear.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under being human, blog, life 

fear.less

9 July 2009 | Comments Off

There’s a new kid in town, one of those neighborhood champions who will get in between you and the big bully — the one with the scabs on his knuckles from knocking down a thousand just like you — stick out her chin and say You leave my friend alone! And because it’s not just you anymore, Scabby Bully Kid will sometimes go away.

That bully is fear, and fear.less is the new online magazine that’s here to help us all square off against it. To help us help each other, by giving space for people to tell their stories and spread their experiences, ideas, ruminations, affirmations, and sometimes just raise their fists against all the things that make us afraid.

Fear.less is the creation of Ishita Gupta and Clay Hebert — a place where:

Every story you read is an example of conquering fear, whether an immediate physical danger, the looming threat of failure, the pressure to compete in a changing world, the incessant quest for identity, or the overwhelming uncertainty of death.
 
– from About fear.less

They’ve just put out their first preview of what you can expect in the magazine: from photographer Platon, reflections on fear, honesty, preparation and bringing your own true self to the party. See for yourself in this lovely PDF. If you like it, you’re welcome to save a copy for yourself, and spread copies far and wide.

Life can be so very good, but it’s rarely good in a vacuum of self. We’re here together, and that matters. We’re creatures made of soul, made for joy and love, and anything that gets in the way of that needs to get its front teeth knocked out. We’re all the kid being bullied. We can be the champions too.

(You can also find fear.less on Facebook and Twitter. Ishita and Clay, thanks very much for your permission to make Platon’s story available here.)

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under being human, blog, life 

What if…

15 June 2009 | 2 Comments

There are the big crossroads moments, of course, when a doorway blasts open between the life you’re in and another that will inevitably be very different, and the universe does everything short of hanging up pink neon arrows that flash “PAY ATTENTION NOW.” When I saw my first pictures of St. Paul’s and realized I had to have it, even if it meant going a thousand miles from home at age 13. When I was accepted at Clarion and had to decide whether to quit my job and take out a loan. When I met Nicola. When I said yes to the big job at Wizards of the Coast because I knew it was my shot at someday being able to write full time, even if I had to stop writing while I did the job. When I asked the executive producer to give me the screenplay work, and found myself suddenly, passionately in love with writing again. Those were doors.

It’s easy to play the game with those big moments: Oh my god, what if we’d never met, what if I hadn’t made it work, what if I’d been too scared or too sensible or too damn stupid to (any number of things)? But writer/columnist/yoga guy Mark Morford plays a more subtle game in this post over at SF Gate: not Monday-morning-quarterbacking the life you have now, but rather trying on a life that you see walk past you on the corner, or at another table in the restaurant, or in a parking garage… shrugging yourself into it for a second not because it’s so different from yours, but because somewhere inside is that tiny voice of recognition, of connection, of There I am again.

And he’s right: it’s a good feeling. It was nice to be reminded of it; and to imagine, for a moment, what it was like to be Morford standing there watching that guy and his dogs, seeing all those other ways that he — that any of us — might have lived this life.

(Thanks to Jeremy for the link.)

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under being human, blog 

My Northwest people

9 June 2009 | 6 Comments

Yes, these are ads. But they are also historical documents of those who are now My People: the cheerfully self-determined, sometimes cluelessly polite and occasionally wacky residents of the Pacific Northwest.

My friends, welcome to my world.

 

 

 

My very best to you and your people, whoever they may be.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under being human, blog, life 

Only human

19 May 2009 | 8 Comments

I’m a big fan of the awesome Carolyn Hax, the only advice columnist I have ever given a damn about (I am way suspicious of people who make a living telling strangers how to make personal choices). I like her a lot. Based on her print/online presence, she’s friend material. Her advice is consistent and always focused on relationship, communication, connection, being human around other humans. The way that we all abrade each other sometimes. Common courtesy. Kindness. Having the back of people you love.

I’m sending you off to a column from a couple days ago. It’s a two-parter: you’ll find the link to part two at the bottom of part one (or at the end of this post). Part two is the payoff, but part one gives you the context.

And although I’ve started this post as a fangirly squee-out to Hax, really it’s all about the part-two story that Jersey Guy tells. It made me cry. Some of us are never lucky enough to have this moment of realization. And although I think all of us make big life-changing mistakes, some of us are never lucky enough to make them with people who will forgive us.

I’m one of the lucky ones: for all the countless thoughtless ways I have fucked up with my Most Important People, I have been forgiven, and for most of the ways that people have fucked up with me, I have forgiven them. Sometimes only after a long time, and sometimes with very little grace. But I am working on it.

I get so tired of my own defensiveness, my own special-babyness, my sometimes utter lack of kindness, my occasionally incredibly limited perspective. I need stories like Jersey Guy’s to remind me that if I’m special, then we’re all special, and that I’d better not forget that we’re all only human. Only is a funny word: it implies “merely” or even sometimes “unfortunately” — but I think the real lesson here is that only human is a vast, complicated and lifetime-project thing to be. It’s a thing worth being the best at that we can; because the best is so fucking beautiful it turns my heart inside-out.

Jersey Guy – part one.
Jersey Guy – part two.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under being human, blog, life 

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