Make a list of songs that make you feel good and happy. Whatever music delights you.
Listen to these songs regularly, on purpose. Repeat as necessary. The positive feelings you get from these songs and their messages—especially because they come from music—may start to nudge out the voice of that certain unhelpful someone. This actually works—sometimes my feel-good songs jump into my head spontaneously.
Dance whenever you feel like it.
If you want to, share your list with a friend, or hum or sing the songs whenever you require an energy shift or some sunshine.
You’ll have your own songs. Here are some of mine: Anne Harris, “Lullaby”; Prince, “I Would Die 4 U” (esp. the cover by Anne Harris); Talking Heads, “This Must Be The Place”; Staples Singers, “I’ll Take You There”; Curtis Mayfield, “Move On Up”; Singing Sweet, “When I See You Smile”; Waco Brothers, “Plenty Tough & Union Made”; Erykah Badu, “Back In The Day”; Pharrell Williams, “Happy”; Sufjan Stevens, “Chicago”; Bruno Mars, “Uptown Funk”; Style Council, “You’re The Best Thing”; The Roots, “You Got Me” (esp. live with Jill Scott and Erykah Badu); Belle and Sebastian, “If She Wants Me”; Muwosi, “Who I Am”; Ini Kamoze, “Here Comes The Hotstepper”; Pentatonix, “Cheerleader”; Snoop Dogg, “Beautiful”…
I’m thrilled to say that my short story, “All The Little Machines,” will soon appear in Uncertainties 8, an anthology from the Dublin, Ireland-based Swan River Press, and edited by Naben Ruthnum. Uncertainties is an anthology series—featuring authors from Canada, England, and the United States—each exploring the concept of increasingly fragmented senses of reality. Uncertainties 8 is now available for preorder here, and you can read about what draws these anthology contributors to write weird stories here.
This is my first time being published in Ireland! And in this story, I let my fascination with the inner critic imbue the work…so I hope you enjoy what you find.
Published in 1977, the book depicts a family of field mice, who live in New York City (or near—the illustrations include a Zabar’s bag). The mice are preparing to move, and rather than get rid of their rubbish, they keep and move their collections of egg cartons, orange juice cans, yarn spools, old magazines, etc., which means they need seven moving vans. “Mr. and Mrs. Fieldmouse’s new house was an old house,” says the start of Chapter Two. Once inside the new old house, they must decide where to put all the rubbish. It lands in the garage. When Uncle Alfred and Aunt Kate come to visit in chapter three, the Fieldmouse family must clear out the garage so their visitors won’t have to park on the street. They lug the rubbish from the garage (“Garages are for cars,” says Mother Fieldmouse) into the new old house. The visitors arrive, and remark upon the nice new old house which has no place to sit down. In Chapter Four, Uncle Alfred—perched impossibly on the top of a tower of old magazines—says, “Look at all the things you can make with rubbish!” The field mice proceed to make lions, tigers, horses, bears, a top hat, then snakes, a trapeze, monkeys, a clown, a rattle, a family of elephants, a microphone, opera glasses, a hoop, a cannon, turtles, pedestals, cups, owls, a rabbit, and cages. “We have made a whole circus!” says Uncle Alfred. They take everything into the garage and present The Greatest Show On Earth.
Like my neighbor Becky, the illustrations are sweet and more than a little mischievous—these dear mice are always in motion, stuffing toilet paper tubes into bags, tripping over spools. It’s a fabulous book. (It’s out of print, but findable in libraries, and definitely findable on eBay or abebooks.) (Thank you, dear Becky.)
As soon as we read it, we decided to start a What Can You Make Of It? bin. We kept whatever seemed it would be useful. Our child made tons of creations from the bin. It became a reflex—if she needed something, someone would say look in the What Can You Make Of It bin!
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I come from a family, a culture of rubbish-keepers. The central thing may be to find something to make from the leftovers. Letting it sit around and gather dust or take up space meant for other things will (eventually) stop working. To keep everything forever is not sustainable.
A lived life may be full of discarded rubbish. A day lived, memories, experiences. When I write memoir, I go to the bin, see what’s there, tape it together, arrange it with something else—trying, always, to see what I can make of it. If I make something, if I even try, even when it doesn’t turn out how I imagine, doesn’t that mean this life is more than just emptied and spent days? Doesn’t that mean it’s more than rubbish?
It’s been a while. I have not really had much to say to you, but I noticed lately you’ve been sneaking in the back door of my thoughts, leaving plastic bags of rotten produce, a little stinky, I noticed you by the smell. Very sneaky, to find ways other than your usual mean notes scribbled on scraps of paper or your megaphone in my ear in the dark when I’m trying to sleep. The bags of yuck are not welcome, I asked you a long time ago to take them out to the compost, it’s almost as if you are digging up the junk from out back in order to bring it to me—why? I don’t need that stuff, those nasty packages, it can all just go back out there to fester & rot and make new soil. I do not need to smell its process. If you are trying to get my attention, just ask, just give me a face to face, just say what you mean. In the meantime, I don’t need your stinky parcels. I’m glad I realized it was you so I could remind you. I want you to find something else to do with your time & your trash bags. I don’t need your shade. Right now I’m trying something new, so just let me do it. You do your thing, somewhere else.
First of all, I can hear you muttering about how I didn’t do enough yesterday. That is your opinion. But I am not a machine. I don’t need to defend myself to you, but I will say that I needed some transition time, to get settled into the space & the time & the project. It’s not like I did nothing! Yes, I watched a trashy movie & took a bit of time to walk & shop. No I did not start that blessed Cat book yet. But I am going to give it a try today, and besides, who is in charge here? It’s me, not you. You are just a voice in the distance, you are not the one writing this novel. You are a pebble in my shoe, to be perfectly candid. At the very least, could you find something else to do, in this cute little town? Could you just take a day off, please?
Thanks for your help!
Love, Rebecca
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The good news is that I had a couple more days on the retreat, but felt no need to write any more letters. So I just spent the time working on my new novel. Stay tuned…
So so many mass shootings lately, and constantly (each person dead sending out a ripple of grief to their beloveds, mycelium, we all are, in this broken world…)…and just now the heartbreaking killings of Rob & Michele Reiner, which hit me in the gut. I grew up watching All In The Family, and of course there were so many other beloved projects he made… On social media, as often happens after yet another moment of irrevocable (people gone) violence, tragedy, I saw people asking ‘what is wrong with people?’ A cry of agony, we all feel it…this morning what came to me, by way of working toward an answer:
We are traumatized & trauma-tired, and capitalism and materialism and white male patriarchy do not value, or leave (or make) room for mending ourselves & our relationships. And I don’t know what to do about it, except to work on my little corner of the world (& myself). These violent deaths are so fucking sad and senseless. There are plenty of things we can do in the public/political realms, so let’s find our things, but sometimes it’s all I can do to take care of myself & my people, and just breathe every moment and try not to lose faith in humanity. That’s it. A hard thing. But it’s one thing I (maybe we) can do.
Thank you for reading this post. May we each find something we can do.
p.s. Boycott Amazon and big box stores! Support your local, independent bookstores! These people and places support human culture, and they are vital to our survival!
To help launch their new anthology, Nothing Compares to You: What Sinead O’Connor Means to Us, editors Sonya Huber and Martha Bayne invited others to submit essays, which Sonya would share on her e-newsletter (Nuts and Bolts from Sonya). You can read “Everywhere is War,” my essay inspired by watching Sinead O’Connor destroy a photo of the Pope on Saturday Night Live. (Content note: description of child sexual abuse.)
p.s. It means so much to me, as a survivor of child sexual abuse, to tell my story. The act of telling (and writing, and sharing) brings the issue out from the shadow of shame. I am grateful to be alive at a time when we can do this. I am grateful for all the love and support that helps us heal. Thank you for being part of my healing.
If you are like me, you know in your bones that these times call for much inspiration and fortification! So please do whatever you can to support independent, collective, human-scale publishing, and eschew the monsters of big capitalism!
Head over to the Literary Kitchen’s Underground Book Shelter to purchase fabulous, unique, humanity-expanding books.
And after I reached out to others for help, my dear friend Melissa shared a post from Gretchen Rubin about dropping kids off at college. (In that post, Gretchen Rubin writes: “I’m not really sure what I’m feeling. A friend emailed me, ‘You may still be processing those emotions for a long time.’ I think she’s right.”)
