Weeks 36-37: Corrode to Joy

In which the podcaster exposes himself, offers his hand, chases ghosts from a bridge, rips off a few facades, and extols the joys of oranges.

LINKS

Ru Paul MasterClass excerpt

Ru Paul’s Wikipedia site

Heather Cox Richardson comments

Heather Cox Richardson’s YouTube channel

Dean Spade comments

Dean Spade’s website

In Defense of Looting by Vicky Osterweil 

Halley Low IG Reels: 

You must love yourself 

Learn to love yourself 

The art of non-offense 

THE NEXT POD WILL BE CAST ON SATURDAY, MARCH 1. 

Transcript

MY 12-MONTH VIDEO FAST 

EPISODE 25 – WEEKS 36-37: Corrode to Joy

This is Richard Loranger and welcome to Episode 25, covering Weeks 36 and 37 of “My 12-Month Video Fast”. 

In the previous episode, “The New Flesh”, I spoke about how essential and empowering it can be at this moment in America to allow room for and incorporate joy and beauty in your life as a method of resistance. I want to offer a few more thoughts about that notion in this ep (always with the thoughts, I know), toss it around and see how far it bounces, take it for a walk in the woods, scatter its petals around the room and see where they land. I brought it up out of personal and observational experience – e.g. I’ve fought depression for many years with humor, sometimes to a fault (ask anyone who knows me). But you don’t need to take my word for it (and why should you?), so we’ll take a look at what a few others have to say about this and related topics.

Take for instance this musing by the fabulous and powerful creature known as Ru Paul.

[PLAY RU PAUL]

That’s actually from a MasterClass recorded in 2020, and I think you’ll agree that it’s applicable to most moments in history, rather especially (ahem) right now. In fact it got a lot of play on social media right after Polyp Littlehands and his regime started lobbing grenades at the trans and immigrant communities. And thank you for that articulation, Ms. Paul.

You’ll find those thoughts echoed in these to-the-point comments by Boston College Historian Heather Cox Richardson, made subsequent to the commencement of the above-mentioned lobbing.

[PLAY HEATHER COX RICHARDSON]

And thanks for that, Dr. Richardson. You go! (By the way I’ll put links for all the clips in the Episode Notes). 

You can actually find any number of folks advocating that position on social media, which is proving to be an unusually effective tool for support along with programs for resistance and anti-authoritarian perspectives at the moment. Who’da thunk? As my stalwart and steady listeners know, I’ve been at odds with Instagram’s tricky little dopamine triggers for some months now, but these same algorithms are currently dispensing sanity in healthy doses, or at least the impression that there are sane and passionate people out there. And yeah, I can still grab a few moments of cute humans singing and dancing once in a while, but they’re not getting shoved in my face all the time, thankfully. And it only took a coup.

Unfortunately the whole joy thing isn’t readily at hand for everyone, especially for some who could use it the most. At the moment two of the most vulnerable groups of Americans, immigrants and trans folks, are being terrorized – let’s call it what it is – terrorized by the Federal Government. That’s only made more horrific by the fact that our non-leaders are doing this as a giant distraction – they don’t really give a shit one way or another about these people – while they not-so-covertly attempt the biggest heist in history. These populations which are under assault (and there are and will be many, just those most exposed are getting the full treatment first), have historically undergone oppression most or all of their lives, leaving some of them prone to anxiety, depression, PTSD, and other emotional and psychological disorders. I’m going to focus on the transgender population, but I want to acknowledge the life-threatening harassment being perpetrated on the especially Brown immigrant population (right alongside BIPOC Americans), and I’ve put a link in the episode notes to a long and fervent missive by actor Luis Guzman about this, which will lead you to an army of like thinkers.

Various studies suggest that there are between 1.5 and 3 million people in the U.S. who currently identify as transgender. Additional studies from the National Institute of Health and others suggest that 30-50% of trans people experience mental and emotional health challenges, with higher percentages amongst trans youth – not surprising coming from a population some of whose lives have been one long beatdown. But I’m not too interested in numbers, which can be shaky and unclear; for me it’s enough to say a lot. A lot of people.

And people who deal with any of these disorders, on any level, people who are constantly in the process of healing, or trying to heal, or figuring out how to begin, don’t exactly have an easy time opening their hearts to joy and beauty at the drop of a dime. And yes I’m generalizing, but generalizing from experience. In fact trying to “cheer up” a depressed person is usually the dead-wrong approach to helping them. We can’t turn off depression, anxiety, or trauma for someone else, we can’t flip that switch, open the floodgates to let their toxins out (and those disorders are a lot like toxins that are trapped in the body). For better or worse, in the end (or the beginning), we each need to throw our own switches, nudge them along, figure out or set up our lives in such a way that those toxins will start to leak out on their own. I know this because I’ve gone through it numerous times. Though of course everyone is different; everyone has to find their own way. What we can do is offer or provide support – for each other.

This all feels pretty basic to me, and I hope that I’m not overstating the obvious. But my hackles have been up for weeks out of concern for my trans friends and community. Especially after I aired the previous episode in which I called for holding on to joy, I got all the more worried for those who might not have that capacity amidst this assault. Now I’ve already stated my familiarity with how depression and anxiety work, but some of you might wonder as to what my relationship to the trans community is. You needn’t have been listening to this podcast too astutely to know that I’m queer – though I don’t always make it the center of discussion – and frankly I don’t think that needs to be a requirement for such concern. In fact I know quite a few straight cis-gendered people who feel the same way (and have come across many on social media in the past month as well). That said, I think it might be time to expound on who – no, what – no, how I might be identified amidst current social constructs. So here we go, and a little of my history might be triggery for some, so I’ll start by letting you know that I’m fine these days about most of this, quite fine.

So I’m queer, like I said, which leaves most people asking (or wondering), What do you mean by that? Which pleases me, because I hate being categorized, even by myself. Put me in a box and I immediately try to climb out of it, or break it apart. Because language is never accurate, so it’s the last thing I want defining me. I’m the person at parties who stands in the corner till somebody comes up to me, and I say, “Hi, I’m some guy.” Which isn’t actually true, since I’m non-binary, so there’s one thing. Always have been, I think – at least I recall being ten years old or so and not really feeling like I was a boy or a girl, not really getting the difference (and yeah I knew they had different types of bodies, but still) and not being concerned about it. And I recall being in a performance piece in my late 20s in which everyone had to yell the names of things that were extinct; I would languidly shout, “Gender.” But I’ve only known specific language for it like “non-binary” or “genderqueer” for maybe fifteen years. (I’m 64, born in 1960, if that helps to place me.) And to be honest, I never found the idea or the sense of it in myself to be any way shocking; for whatever reason it was just matter-of-fact to me, and I’ve never really cared what gender or pronoun people use for me, because it’s enough for me to know. It’s a comfortable skin.

To be less vague and more so at the same time, I’m male-assigned-at-birth and mostly homosexual; some may be surprised to hear that, but I had a number of experiences with women (including a couple of girlfriends) that involved genuine attraction in my 20s. Since then I’ve found my attractions directed…elsewhere – but that doesn’t make those experiences any less valid. I believe I have that range of attraction because I’m very tactile – touch and affection are central to my sexual interactions, more so than many other factors including genitalia (which don’t really turn me on). For these reasons and others, I’ve come to think of myself over the last several years as graysexual, the status between asexual (i.e., lacking in sexual attractions, which I am not), and more normative levels of sexual desire. Like myself, other graysexuals tend to be affection-focused, and seem to have maybe a lower sex drive than the general population (though I don’t want to speak for everyone). Mainstream gay culture, which tends to have formed its shall we say self-image around sexual preference and the act of sex, often finds graysexuals to be confusing or off-putting. We’re just not walking around with our dicks in hand trying to find something to penetrate (at least not often). So if we haven’t explained ourselves (or if we don’t even know to, like myself for most of my life), we can often feel awkward and as if we don’t really fit into the mainstream (not to mention feeling cold-shouldered at times). Which, among other things, kinda sucks. And on top of that I’m a side, which means that I have no interest in anal sex and am actually turned off by it. Believe it or not, there are gay men who think that makes you not quite gay or gay at all (as if it’s a homo-specific behavior). This at times can increase my sense of being excluded, of not having a place in a culture with which I identify.

Well that’s about it for me, except for a couple of kinks which I won’t be discussing here (awwwww). 

Why am I telling you all this? Just to give a sense I think of how complex one person’s sexuality can be – and I think mine is kind of boring, to tell you the truth, if a bit non-normative. And also, if I’m speaking about, and speaking to, people who are feeling particularly exposed, I feel like I should be a little exposed as well.

I’m the type of person who doesn’t need to be in a relationship, though I have occasionally had boyfriends and a few FWB’s over the years. Three of my exes have died – one of AIDS in the 1990s. An ex that I was with in my late 30s died a few years later. He was last seen arguing with two cops after a queer rally in Chicago, disappeared, and was found a couple of days later in a vegetative state in an alley with his head bashed in. A police inquiry concluded that he’d had a seizure and had hit his head repeatedly against the pavement. I later learned that he’d changed his name (which I don’t recall) and pronouns to she/her, and that’s in fact what she was arguing about. The third death was of a younger person I was involved with in my early 50s. I related this briefly in Episode 5, “Sound and Silence”, but it bears repeating here. They were a genderqueer squatter of color – that’s always been my fave description of them. Their primary heritage was Philippino-Chinese-Icelandic; they lived in a big crazy squat-house about five blocks from me; they changed their pronouns frequently, wore outlandish ensembles of passed-along clothing, were very outspoken, and were frequently accosted. When we broke up they started using a lot of heroin, and OD’ed about eight months later in their mid-20s. First time I ever heard the word “fentanyl”. I wept for days over each of them.

I’ve experienced a bit of violence over the years myself (and I sure hope my quota is filled). I’ve been assaulted six times (leaving me to believe I’m some sort of magnet). Three of those were clearly acts of gaybashing. In my 20s I was walking with a boyfriend in San Francisco when a group of teens surrounded us, blacked my eye very efficiently, and moved on laughing. A few years later also in SF my friend Maurice and I were accosted around 2 am at 19th and Mission by a couple of cholos with a knife who wanted to know if we were lovers. We weren’t, though we were heading home to fool around. We were also on a lot of acid. Maurice started shouting at them in fluent Spanish, which to their embarrassment they didn’t understand. Then he said to me, “Let’s go,” to which I replied, “I can’t, he has me by the shirt” (which one of them did). Strangely enough that seemed to indicate some kind of faux pas, because the tough guy promptly let go and we walked away. The third hate crime I experienced was even stranger. I was with a bunch of queer skateboarders frolicking around in the Denver Pride Parade when a man came out of the sidelines, walked up to me and asked, “Are you gay?” No kidding. “Uh, yeah,” I said, somewhat bemused, whereupon he rapidly punched me in the face and ran back into the crowd. Nobody tried to stop him. Like I said, magnet.

Easily the worst violence that I’ve had done to me at least bodily was when a guy I was seeing drugged and raped me. He wanted to fuck me for his birthday present, knew that I didn’t do that, so he talked me into taking some valium instead so we could both relax. Instead he gave me a large dose to incapacitate me (I assume it was valium), and had his way with me. He was a sex worker and HIV+ and, I was learning, a sociopath with borderline personality disorder, and I was very lucky to come out of that HIV neg, though at that time it took six months to know for sure. In the meantime, I learned that it didn’t really happen. Of the three doctors who tested me, the first, a man, responded with stone silence when I told him what had happened. The second was a woman, who I thought would understand, but who instead lectured me on making light of a traumatic act that only happens to women. With the third, a man, I didn’t even mention it. And though a few in the progressive gay milieu that I was part of were sympathetic, many agreed with the doctor that men didn’t get raped and that it didn’t count to get started then change your mind (which was not what happened). This was 1990 and even now it’s shocking how backward ideas were on this at the time. I know I was shocked to see people believe in a rigid notion rather than believe me. In fact I’m not sure which was more harmful – the act itself or the community’s response. I consequently lost some faith in progressives in general, after I saw how rigid their ideologies could be, and I remain somewhat wary to this day, despite being of a progressive bent myself. That experience also sent me spinning into a couple-year speed addiction, which the sociopath had gotten me hooked on, along with increased promiscuity when I was riding the stone. Woo-hoo! And: sound familiar?

So you see I know a little about being endangered and the occasionally lethal consequences of oppression. Also to mention that I grew up and came out and came to age in a much less tolerant era – was in my share of protests and demonstrations and ACT UP marches, and got threatened for holding hands in public and bottles thrown at me for skateboarding around San Francisco in a black leather mini-skirt. I’ve seen so much progress made (at least in urban centers and university towns; I can’t really speak for Bumfuck), and though that may be overshadowed at the moment by gigantic disease-dripping sphincters (there goes my bias!), I feel certain that it will return, re-surge, and re-bloom.

Which doesn’t mean it’s easy going back, and especially so for those who have never been there. But I also know that they’ll adjust, and learn the ropes, and find their demo voices, and I know how sweet the air will be when it finally clears.

In the meantime, EMOTIONAL SELF-RELIANCE IS ESSENTIAL.

But before we go there, let me regale you with a humble canto that I scribbled a couple of nights ago in a writing group.

• What happened to you? Did it happen in the past? What past? How did it happen? What parts of you did it happen to? What you did it happen to? How many yous are there? If this is too strident, I can bring it down a notch. But I really would like to know what happened and happened and happened, not for any prurient reason or personal need, except that I would like to see things happen and happen and happen to you that trade trauma for breath, erasure for wonder. Nor do you have to tell me anything, but I hope you can and will tell someone, or have, someone who will breathe with you, someone who will take your hand. You could take my hand as well, if you’re comfortable, if it would bring you comfort. I’m just offering that in case it feels like there are no hands to take. But there are many, many, many, and you can take them from wherever you are. Yes, it’s better in person, in the flesh, in presence, and that will happen, it is already starting to happen, and while it does, here are hands everywhere, and breath, and warmth, and knowing, and kind eyes.

Maybe that was more of a prayer.

So, there’s support from without and support from within, and you gotta have both. I know there are some who can’t just leap into action, even self-healing or empowering action, who will need to lay low and self-protected until a later time, but anyone who can do so, well, I hope you will. This is the time if there were ever any to be alert and present and grounded and energized for yourself and others and all that good shit. Another obvious blurt, I suspect. And I know as well as anyone that most peops can’t do that every day – I can’t do all of that every day, particularly because some days I just feel fucking old and tired (my superhero name – don’t tell anyone – is actually Grouchy Old Fuck, more on that some other time, or not); but also because I’m really familiar with the Depression Do-wop and the Anxiety Hop, amongst the most crippling song and dance there is. But for some reason, maybe the sense that I still might experience beauty and awe again in the future – call me a delusional optimist – I can’t seem to find the time to totally give up. Even when I’ve been real bad and shut down and shut in, and I have, I eventually get restless, or at least my body does, and I bother to take a walk around the block, a walk in the woods, or ride my bike for ten or twenty minutes, and a little more and a little more until I’m ready to take some big boy-girl steps again.

I also find magical thinking to be really helpful for shifting my state of mind at times, even for throwing some switch or another. I think that’s a loaded term these days – magical thinking – with a bit much baggage, but if you can handle me using it you’ll see what I mean in a minute. I’ve mentioned it a few times in the podcast, notably in Episode 6 (for those with both fortitude and a good memory), “Intentionality and the Blackhawk Blues” when I visualize my misplaced shame as a nun and, well, chase her away with unsavory comments. I also used the blue light bulb occasionally back then. I had a cheap blue light bulb I’d bought for a party then added to the ceiling light in my room, which ended up burning most every day for more than eight years. It didn’t burn out; I just retired it. After that, whenever I felt that I needed more patience, or endurance, or stability, I would envision that light bulb, sometimes going as far as to meditate on it. And that thing is still burning somewhere in my mind. Go blue light bulb.

And here’s a really good one. Back in 2009, for the first time in my life I started having frequent panic attacks – you know the kind where out of the blue you feel like your throat is closing and you can’t breathe, you start seeing spots and are sure you’re about to black out and will probably die. Unpleasant fuckers, those. I couldn’t predict when they’d happen except that they always would when I’d drive my minivan over a bridge; and I was living in the Bay Area where there are a lot of bridges. I was terrified that, real or not, I’d lose control and crash where I couldn’t readily get help. I have no idea why they were happening and that’s not the point. So one day I’m heading up from the East Bay on to the SF Bay Bridge – this was maybe in 2010 or 11 on the old and rickety eastern span before the new one was opened in 2013. As I was approaching the bridge, I passed a big LED sign letting us know that the bridge would be closed for a few days in the near future for safety repairs. For some reason the first thing that flashed through my head – loudly – was, Oh, they’re cleaning the ghosts off the bridge. That thing had been standing since 1936 and of course there’d been deaths on it – many – so there had to be ghosts, right? It made such clear sense. Then it dawned on me like ka-blam, the ghosts were causing the panic attacks. Even more logical, right right? And did I believe that? It doesn’t matter! So I decided to find a way to chase them away. I cleaned the minivan inside and out spic and freakin span with the usual methods. Then I bought a big smudge stick of sage – which I’ve rarely used but it just seemed right for this – and a gorgeous tiny bell which I found at an Indian clothing and accessories shop in Berkeley, to clean the van spiritually. I burned the sage in every area inside (windows shut), then walked it around the outside three times clockwise and three times counter-clockwise, starting and ending at the driver’s door. Then I did the same with the bell, ringing it five times around in each direction, then got in, rang it thrice, and installed it in the old ashtray in the dashboard for easy reach. (Have I mentioned how much my neighbors love me?) After that, every time I started to drive onto any bridge, I’d ring that bell three times to scare away the ghosts and it always worked. The panic attacks were gone. True story. 

In that instance the ritual/performance aspects of the action really helped to make it effective, and I’ve used those at other times as well. I don’t pull these things out of some ancient gnostic tome, by the way – I just make it up based on what seems right. One time I cleaned a bedroom I was about to move into, which had been occupied for a few years by someone with particularly bad energy, by scattering rose petals all over the floor, filling the room with incense, then flinging a super ball (those tiny and very bouncy rubber balls originally from Wham-O, which now might be more commonly called bouncy balls) – anyway flinging a super ball furiously around every nook and cranny of the smoky room until I was dripping with sweat, in the process grinding some of the rose petals into the old wood floor. Then I opened the window, cleared the room, and repeated it twice with different incense. I later recreated this ritual as part of a performance installation show in an old farmhouse in Austin, in which ten of us each had one room to work with. I used several bouncy balls for that, making the room pretty intimidating to walk through, and called it “What to Do When a Policeman Lies.” So see, these things are multi-use!

But enough about me and my ball-bouncing and ghost-chasing bridgercizes. We’re talking about throwing mental switches and shifting one’s own state of mind and perspective, and lots of clued-in and interesting humans have writ and spoken about this over the years. To go back a few, consider William Blake, who postulated somewhere around 1790 in “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” that those concepts of each had been nefariously switched by religious and ruling powers in order to better control the masses – basically saying that Hell had always been depicted as full of energy, which was actually the creative and animating force that Blake also called “Eternal Delight,” while the serene and peaceful depictions of Heaven were meant to drain the life out of people. He essentially argued for a removal of these indoctrinated images and ideologies by a “corrosive method” analogous to the metal etching work that he did, in which everything that was not the true and underlying message or image was burned away. 

“…on the abyss of the five senses,” he writes, “where a flat-sided steep frowns over the present world, I saw a mighty Devil folded in black clouds hovering on the sides of the rock; with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence now perceived by the minds of men, and read by them on earth: 

“How do you know but every bird that cuts the airy way is an immense world of delight, closed by your senses five?”

And,

“…the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this I shall do by printing in the infernal method by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.

If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.

For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.”

If “The Doors of Perception” sounds familiar, that is where Aldous Huxley got the title of his book about the cleansing influence of mescaline, and from which the band The Doors thereafter took theirs. Thanks for all that, Grandfather Blake.

More contemporary queer feminist poet Adrienne Rich, about whom I occasionally rave, has a fantastic depiction of this process in her 1972 poem “Diving into the Wreck,” in which she posits that an attempt to see who or what she might be in essence and devoid of social constructs was analogous to deep sea diving down and away from the human world to perceive what one can of original forms. Her final lines, which often give me shivers, are:

We are, I am, you are

by cowardice or courage

the one who find our way 

back to this scene

carrying a knife, a camera

a book of myths

in which 

our names do not appear.

Whew! Thank you again and again for that, Ms. Rich. I hope you are resting in realness.

Now, to drift from the thoughts of passed writers back to living in what’s happening here in the world, which I may have taken us away from for a few minutes purposefully, here are some invigorating words from creator Dean Spade, an American lawyer, writer, trans activist, and associate professor of law at Seattle University, referencing the book In Defense of Looting by Vicky Osterweil.

[PLAY DEAN SPADE]

Gonna pick that up myself. Rock on, Dean and Vicky.

And a few more words of personal elevation and insight from Halley Low, who went from being The Original Miss Thing to The Original Rev Thing on Instagram (and yes he really is a minister). Here are two recent sequential posts, the theme of which can never be overstated.

[PLAY HALLEY LOW 1 & 2 (with “And” between if necessary)]

And I can’t resist just one more note from The Original Great Role Model Thing to boost us just a little further.

[PLAY HALLEY LOW 3 (Doctrine of Non-Offense)]

And good morning to you too, Halley. I can only say I wish I’d followed a Doctrine of Non-Offense much, much earlier in life.

So advice, advice, advice on ways to shift your mind and mental state and keep it there, taking yourself from taught thought to brink think, until you need to shift again – EVEN THOUGH you still need to figure it out yourself! So really just for inspiration, for breathing in, for breathing together. I just hope this helps someone. Let’s breathe together.

And wherever you’re at in all that, whether you’re standing on top of a mountain or digging your way our of a sub-basement, whether you’re inching your way down from a dizzying height or filling a basket in the root cellar, it remains an essential act, almost a necessity to hold a place for joy and beauty as a path of resistance, what everybody keeps yakkin about – but also just plain for the health of your heart and being. And sure, you can think of big and middlin’ ways to create joy, whether you can activate them or not, from hanging out with friends to jumping up and down at a punk show to – why not – protesting, but perhaps the easiest way to let them in is in tiny amounts, in incremental moments throughout your day. And what do I mean by that? Here are a few examples to get you started, if they appeal.

Enjoy water. It can be delicious and satisfying and energizing and cleansing. And it also makes up more than half of your body, more like 60%, and you can’t have enough of you. But even more, it moves things through – physically, emotionally, psychologically. When someone I know is grieving, I give them a couple bottles of really nice water to drink for themselves, because grieving and stress in general dehydrate you. Please enjoy water regularly. Enjoy it!

Air is good too, especially when you can catch it nice and clean-like. Any time you can, but specifically when you’re spinning, stop a minute and just breathe. Inspire, expire, inspire, expire. Just like that. And when it’s really fresh, take deep draughts. Get giddy with it. Go for a walk if you can – or open the windows and let it drift through! A lot of folks forget or never think to ope’ those windows. Fresh that space! You’ll breathe better and you deserve it.

Spend some time with trees, even if it’s the tired one at the end of your block. In fact that one might appreciate it more than many! Or if that’s too much work, how about your houseplants? You don’t need to talk to them (out loud), or do anything in particular, just be near them, be with them, look at them closely, treat them kindly. Plants are the earth talking to the sky. And if that’s not enough, they invented life! So you can thank them for that. Take in some of their oxygen and give them your carbon dioxide. They’ll love it. And they love water too – most are also 50% water or more – so you have more in common with them than you think!

Those are all pretty elemental, and if they’re a bit too dippy for ya, hey, paint your nails! Treat yourself to your favorite meal! Start a journal to get all your grouch out – or what the hell, write poems! And I don’t mean this to be critical in any way, but think twice about using substances, if you can; they may provide relief, but they don’t keep you as steady as you think. Which you probably already know – just being Mom for a moment. (Hey, there’s a new business idea: Mom for a Moment. Maybe I should give it a try.)

One last thing. A few years back, I dunno maybe ten, I was at my favorite sushi place at the time near where I live in Oakland, CA. This place had a long wooden bench along one wall with two- and four-tops lining it. I found myself sitting that evening adjacent to a four-top containing a young mom and dad and an older couple who must have been one of their parents. Propped in between our tables was a baby seat holding a very young infant – I couldn’t guess how young but this had to be one of their first outings. The baby was fairly curious and unphased by all the noise and motion around them, and occasionally would just stare at me for a while. I’d smile back but didn’t want to be intrusive so I pretty much kept to myself and ignored the group in general. Once they’d finished eating and had received the traditional orange slices (How do Asian restaurants regularly get the most amazing oranges? Can somebody tell me?) – anyway at that point I did catch the grandma asking if the baby had tasted orange yet. The mom said no, and promptly put a slice to the child’s mouth. It happened at that moment that the infant was looking directly into my eyes, and when they tasted the orange, I saw it, I saw it happen in their brain: their face lit up, their eyes and pupils widened, and I could see the ecstatic pleasure coursing through their nervous system as they experienced the taste of orange for the first time. I’m sure that parents get to see this kind of event occasionally or even often, but I am not a parent and had never witnessed it before – it was a first for me as well and felt like I was experiencing it right along with the baby. This moved me as much as anything in years, and I can bring it back again and again.

Why am I telling you this? Because it happened. It happened and happens and happens and will happen and probably happened to you, or something much like it, that some part of you might recall. And if you can call that up, you can dwell in joy with it at any fleeting moment.

Okay! Like I said, I hope something in there helps someone.

It’s the middle of February, almost through the first month of terror – of what, 48? Not too big a number if you start counting down. And let us stand tall and strong and full-chested as we stride forward through the waves with deep-rooted joy.

I’m driving down to Los Angeles today, February 15, for a little over a week and I’ll see if I can catch a peek of anything sprouting through the char. In the meantime I’ll be thinking about what to discuss in my next episode – only eight left! – which will drop on Saturday, March 1. That’ll be one day after Economic Blackout Day on Feb 28, on which you should plan to purchase NOTHING, and I believe that includes not overpurchasing before or after. And if you’re not familiar, google that shit!

This has been Episode 25, covering weeks 36 and 37 of My 12-Month Video Fast.

Thank you for listening, take care of yourself, and please reach out for any reason.