This diary is a combination thank you! — because through the donations of generous Kossacks, I managed to get the car, wooooot! — and continued ask (because I still have to pay off that loan) and photo-diary of the visit of a very dear friend you all know, especially you science geeks.
Fundraising status: $1900 1740 1625 1575 1510 700 670 655 640 635 435 (see updates below) which will cover it… I hope this diary will generate enough donations to giterdone! Thanks in advance!)
Past diaries: 1) Carless in the country, asking for help 2) Wheels fund: eyes on the prize (and a great collection of car songs in the comments. Add ‘em here too if you want.) Donation link is at the bottom.
Many moons ago, I did illustrations for front-page science stories by a brilliant and very knowledgeable person then known only to me as Darksyde, whom more recent Kossacks might know better as Steven Andrew. He would send me brief messages like “Can you do a Qax?” to which I’d cheerily answer “Sure! What in heck is a Qax?” Or, “Can you do Gliese 581c?” (an excitingly near and Earth-like planet, just discovered) and I’d computer-paint and shop together something like:
...which received the honour of being an Astronomy Picture of the Day, and he’d write a gorgeous, lushly-descriptive caption like:
With less than 7 million miles separating star and planet, Gliese’s solar wind easily plows through the planet’s (presumed) weak magnetic field and slams into the upper atmosphere to produce brilliant displays. Shimmering cascades of what on earth might be called colorful sprites, blue jets, and dazzling aurora mingle so completely with high, wispy clouds as to be virtually indistinguishable. Fat cumulus clouds hang low over the water eerily backlit by the brooding red-dwarf. One lone iceberg represents the assumed many which calve off from the great unseen ice-sheet dominating the planet’s dark side and drift slowly to their eventual destruction on global currents through a deep, planetary ocean of carbonated water. High overhead the barest hint of shorter wavelengths are scattered by the thick air, coloring the zenith a deep twilight blue. Could life evolve in such an alien environment?
In aid of Darksyde’s posts, I illustrated Qaxes and Hypatia in the Library and a space robot fixing a smashed solar panel while orbiting Jupiter and blastocyst-Americans and crumbling glaciers and more alien landscapes, one of which landed on the cover of the Kos-published science book Kosmos. He prowled verbally through the always wondrous and sometimes terrible beauty of the universe and its implications, and I prowled visually along with him.
But then my life went in other directions, and so did his, so it was a surprise when a Kosmail from him popped up a couple months back, saying he was going to be in Canada in October, so might I like him to visit? What was I going to do, say no?
DS aka Steven arrived on a Friday night and left very early Sunday morning, and in between we went out for sushi and other locally-available goodies, visited a local waterfall of which all photos must be on his phone so I hope he posts some in the comments, and talked about every manner of topic in the cosmos, including that an engine alert light can indicate a loose gas cap (proven true by my testing, easiest and cheapest fix ever!), and our lives.
For me, it was a dreamlike respite from my usual constantly-underlain-by-worry-and-mild-depression existence. Like when he gushed over my house, then once inside said, “I can tell this is a writer’s house. It may be messy but you know where everything is,” which I realized is for the most part true. He’s so positive, so encouraging, so enthusiastic, it made me look at myself in a new mirror. It’s said they do things big in Texas… that would include this man’s heart.
One of the most intensely bittersweet portions of our ongoing conversation was when we started talking health care in the USA, and I showed him my health card, that little piece of government-issued plastic which if I suddenly need, say, a quadruple bypass, just has to have its number keyed into the system to ensure I don’t even need to think about how much the operation will cost except hospital parking. That little piece of government-issued plastic which I wish, with tears in my eyes, I could multiply by 300 million or so and give to every American.
DS looked at it and started telling me how seeing it felt like gazing into a promised land that he cannot reach… and more, searching for the words and the metaphors. I realized I was having the honour and good fortune of being witness to his writing wheels starting to turn. I’ve been cogitating on a health care diary myself — I often do, then find myself inhibited by a sort of health-care survivor guilt. But it looks like, and I hope, he’s got one coming, which inspires me.
He has always inspired me.
Very early Sunday morning, when it was still dark, DS was on his way, starting a day’s drive that he estimated would take 12 hours. It was tough to say goodbye.
It is three hours until daylight as I write now, and last night I found an absolutely incandescent anger, an anger with heat of a whiteness I’ve never found before. A health card does not solve all problems. It can’t make your father not sneak into your room at night such that after your 13th birthday you think “This isn’t like when I was 11 or 12, I have less of an excuse not to do want he wants now that I’m a teenager.” It cannot fill the icy searing hole that was your centre after your mother locked you out in a Canadian winter until you feared for your life, then destroyed all your drawings and taught you you were sick, crazy, unlovable and worthless, so that you defined yourself as that from then on because it all happened when you were a preschooler. It’s a long way from help with a health card when your only way to survive is 1) forget what happened, 2) do whatever they tell you and 3) look outside your home to figure out what is normal and try your best to imitate it, knowing all the time that you’re just imitating it. Then when you’re an adult, you have to put a lot of your energy into uncovering it all and healing that you’d otherwise use for earning money, and constantly fight against the howling terror of putting your work out there and, worse, asking for money for it, both of which are necessary to succeed as a creative person, when your mother never told you “You can be anything you want” but instead “Everything you want to produce is poison.” So you go from middle class as a kid to poverty and debt for your entire adult life, and having forgot it all, blame yourself and the thing your mother said was wrong with you.
Um… I didn’t know I was going to write that. I’ve hit a point in the healing process where I’m wanting to tell people for some reason. Where the anger tells me to quit covering up for the perps, I guess. Where it says, “Let it out, like pus out of a boil. Let it out, tell people who you really are.”
There are positives—all the incredible moments of self-discovery and self-retrieval, the reams of story I wrote that I still think is good, the black belt in karate, the joy of parenthood, the novels I published, my more recent propensity to get onto stages. The illustrations for DS’s science pieces. I had the realization at the intellectual level that there was nothing wrong with me 19 years ago, and have been more effectively digging into the shit to get it at the emotional level ever since.
My friends have been my salvation, because I have always found liars, thieves and narcissists as partners, to whom I clung desperately in yearning for this “love” thing. With Darksyde I had about 36 hours of finding out what it must be like to be with someone who genuinely loves you, even though it was friend-love only, nothing romantic. Friends can help you find your lost centre by being unfailingly positive and encouraging.
For DS it seems effortless.
Another positive: in 2017, 18 and 19 I’ve made more money than I ever did before, even if that’s a low bar, in part thanks to generous Kossacks financially appreciating my diaries. Between that and living frugally, which I am very good at, I’ve been paying down the high-interest debt, albeit inchingly.
US$635 will do it for the debt I had to suddenly add to get the car. <deep breath> My PayPal is here. Please choose “send money” rather than “pay” if you can especially for small amounts, as the smaller the amount, the bigger proportionally is PayPal’s cut.
To Darksyde and everyone in America: may there soon be a little piece of government-issued plastic in your life that can save it.
Tuesday, Nov 5, 2019 · 9:35:37 PM +00:00 · KM Wehrstein
Just counting PayPal donations via the link, this diary has so far generated $80, but I’m expecting more through other methods and on other days.
I have found these diaries tend to have a bit a delayed reaction with payments, so I think there will be more yet.
Subtracting just that $80 puts the fund $555 short of the goal… getting there!
Thank you everybody!