Just Kristin

Peo­ple pray to their deity, or ask inter­ces­sion of a saint or rep­re­sen­ta­tive spirit, when they no longer pos­sess con­trol or under­stand­ing of a painful sit­u­a­tion. I com­pletely under­stand the desire to do this. In order for this activ­ity to have any ben­e­fit, how­ever, at least one of two things have to be true: 1)The recip­i­ent of these invo­ca­tions has to exist and be endowed with the power to grant the request, and/or 2) the sup­pli­ant needs to believe absolutely that the result of his plea is the will of the god­head that they hold as supreme. For me, there­fore, this type of relief is not an option, and in some ways I am sad­dened by its absence. What do I do, then? I take my meds reg­u­larly. I trust in sci­ence. I offer love and care to those who suf­fer. (I am try­ing to do this even for myself.) I try to make right deci­sions when the deci­sion is mine to make. I try (but mostly fail) to not obsess about the things over which I have no con­trol, and to focus instead on those over which I do. I cry a lot. I allow oth­ers to be a strength to me.

*pause*

More amus­ingly, how­ever, if I may dis­tract my mind with some­thing I have noticed over the last month or so, I would like to posit that I, along with many oth­ers, have begun to pray in a new and dif­fer­ent way. I don’t know if it grew out of celebrity wor­ship or from an innate(?) belief in the heal­ing power of well-wishes, but it seems that the var­i­ous social media venues have become con­duits for mod­ern kurushii toki no kami­danomi. I have, and have seen oth­ers, tweet or FaceBook-comment celebri­ties in order to get them to acknowl­edge or address some char­ity event, cat­a­stro­phe, or even sick friend, rel­a­tive or pet. Obvi­ously, when spread­ing the word has a direct cor­re­la­tion to the amount of assis­tance a cause will receive, this is an under­stand­able peti­tion. Those of us, how­ever, who sim­ply want to hear, say, Neil Gaiman wish our ill loved one well, must have some other motive. As I can only speak for myself, I can say that in my case, the use of my own despair and the pain of my pet to gar­ner some new prox­im­ity to fame is not rea­son in the slight­est. I can­not think that of most peo­ple, really, if their anguish is true. That, then, leaves the idea, amor­phous though it may be, that obtain­ing this bless­ing from a per­son you hold as a role model or per­sonal source of inspi­ra­tion will some­how work a kind of magic… Are we really that in need of gods? Read­ing what I’ve writ­ten, I can tell you with cer­tainty that my cere­bral mind scoffs at the idea. My sad lit­tle raised-Catholic inner mon­key, how­ever, knows that any­one who can cre­ate sto­ries or art or music or humor that moves me must be able to help some­how. A nod on twit­ter as the new papal wave or por­tent? A saved re-tweet as a mod­ern relic, and back­ups as reliquaries?

I need a nap. I need a nap with all my peeps and furba­bies around me. Thank you to every­one who puts up with my drivel.

I would love to have an artist come to my home right now and do a paint­ing of the cur­rent liv­ing room set­ting. The only light comes from the hang­ing lights over the kitchen table and the three open lap­tops, one on each of our laps: D and Smoo on the sec­tional, and me in my reclin­ing rocker. It sounds hope­lessly geeky, per­haps, espe­cially when I add that the last sound to be heard was a song about “very mild super-powers” com­ing from D’s lap­top. It is warm and beau­ti­ful to me, tho. The dogs are each in their spots: Elvis, the hairi­est and hottest is on the con­crete floor at my feet, Hanna is in a ball between D and Smoo, and ChaCha is using Smoo’s knee as a pil­low. I love this clickety-silence, this col­lec­tion of glow-lit faces.

Just before I began writ­ing this, how­ever, ChaCha had been at Smoo’s feet, and because Smoo knows that she growl­ingly hates to be both­ered when asleep, Smoo moved her feet fur­ther away. The attempt at def­er­ence was met, unfor­tu­nately, by ChaCha wob­bling to her feet and mak­ing a surly noise. She stood next to Smoo for a good minute or two before mak­ing cir­cles and set­tling onto the sofa once more, and I couldn’t help but laugh out of both humor and sym­pa­thy, hav­ing felt, more times than I’d like to admit, how she seemed to feel. So pre­car­i­ous is our bal­ance upon the tightrope of com­fort and san­ity that any change, any nudge — well-meant or oth­er­wise — can throw us, ChaCha and I.

I wasn’t sure I was going to love ChaCha the way I love my more doggy dogs. She came with so much bag­gage, and was in such poor shape. Now I love her to bits, but she is still and odd duck, much less doggy than any other dog I’ve had. I think I might love her the way I love Japan: because it is unlike what I was raised know­ing, because of the mind-fuck, because of the sur­re­al­ity that, like the best Python skits, forces you to make the deci­sion to either be upset or laugh.