The Singing Electrician & Me

Also: finding friends, book recs from you guys, a gory story, and a masquerading drain pipe

Before we begin…

What would you do if you were someone else for a while? Who or what would you choose to be? And what would you do if no one knew it was you?

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The Electrician in My Kitchen

As I write, a man I’ve never met before today and, in fact, have not yet laid eyes on, is singing in my kitchen. He is here to fix an electrical problem. The serenade is a bonus. 

He sings in bursts that seem tied to whether or not he knows all the words to the song playing on the tinny little device he brought along with his toolbox and tool belt. Sounds like a show tune one minute and something by Mariah Carey the next. Both the tune and words are hit and miss and blurred by the walls separating the kitchen and my office where I am writing to you, babysitting a post-surgical dog, and straining to hear what he’s singing in spite of his pitch which is along the lines of a large, insistent mosquito’s. Oddly, the sound does not grate on my nerves. The electrician in my kitchen lacks self-consciousness and I admire that. 

He got me thinking about how self-consciousness has ruled my behavior over the years. It kept me from writing for a long time and still makes me hesitate when I try to go somewhere with my writing that feels risky. I know that one of the reasons my current WIP has taken so long is my reluctance to expose myself. The scene I mentioned two weeks ago, concerning the face-off my two important characters must have, made me twitch with discomfort as I wrote it. Yes, the characters are fictional and no, they are not drawn directly from my own experience, but they are helping me to explore some what-if’s and regrets that are all too close to home. 

On the other hand, crawling inside my characters gives me the freedom to be someone else for which counters the self-consciousness. They can do things I may not be able to or want to do – like start singing back at the electrician in the kitchen, or sneaking up and smashing his radio or phone or whatever it is with a hammer. It’s been fun these past few hours imagining what I would do if I were one of my fictional characters or if he turned up somewhere as a character himself in some other story. Donning a fictional character’s life is a little like donning a Halloween mask - no one can see my blushes and I can take a few risks more safely – except for bursting into song within earshot of another human being. None of us would survive that. 

How has self-consciousness affected you or has it affected you at all? What got you through it? Share a story. You never know who among us (me) can learn from you.

 

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Body Consciousness & Book Recs From Readers

Last week’s post, Our Bodies, Our Stories, resonated with a lot of readers. It generated some great discussion, thoughtful comments, and book recommendations. By sharing her own body scan with us in this powerful essay, Sandra Butler, showed the grace that can happen when we trade self-consciousness for full consciousness of what our bodies can tell us about our lives and our world. If you missed it, check it out or share it with a friend or two to see where it leads you. 

Among the books recommended by Spark readers are:

Judy Reeves planned to buy a copy of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass as a gift for herself. This book is on my Christmas wish list, if I can wait that long. A botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Kimmerer embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. Yet it was her voice and prose, magical from the first few pages, that make me want to read it. 

Andrew Merton offered up both H Is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald (“Best nature book ever. Riveting.”) and Foolscap: Or The Stages of Love by Michael Malone (“a great sendup of English departments and the literary world in general.” )

Elizabeth Aquino is loving the “fantastic new book” by Alejandro Verela’s The Town of Babylon.( “It was recommended by Alexander Chee in his association with Boxwalla, a cool book subscription company.”)

One Spark reader, Robert Howard, has already started Sandra Butler’s collection of essays, The Kitchen is Closed, And Other Benefits of Growing Old  and writes, “applause fills my head.” 

And two of you mentioned the film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande with Emma Thompson as a must-see movie. The film explores a woman’s decision to finally see what new stories her body can tell her after years of living a very careful, some might say, dull life. Doing this requires her to give up self consciousness. It’s on my list. 

What’s on Your TBR List? 

What are you reading or want to read these days? Share away. Send a photo of the stack of books that you’ve got going by your bed or wherever your books pile up so we can feature it in upcoming issues of Spark ( send photos to elizabethmarro@substack.com).

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Searching For Friends As Adults

Two posts I came across this week touched me deeply. They explore the sometimes daunting effort to make new friends as adults. In her post, Do You Have 90 Hours To Be Regular Friends?, Nia Carnelio, who fearlessly explores topics that tackles topics that shouldn’t be controversial but are, shares her desire for friendship and her growing understanding of what it will require. The essay draws from her experience and fascinating research that breaks down the hours required to form “regular friends” versus “best friends.” 

“As a new friend to people here in this new country, I’ll now feel like they have their own circles, too, and I’ll never progress past acquaintance or casual friend.” - Nia Carnelio, Not Controversial 

Do you have 90 hours to be regular friends?

Gayla Gray became aware of her longing for friendship after reading Nina Totenberg’s memoir of her friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 

“I found myself in tears several times while reading the book, not necessarily because I was reading something sad, but because I was reading about friends being there for each other and having fun together while living life to its fullest. I was gobsmacked when I realized that I hadn’t had very many of those types of experiences and those experiences are what I have been craving in my life for quite some time.” - Gayla Gray, So Novelicious, Books & Reading, & More Books

Nibbles & Bits, Vol. 5

Lily, Again: Or Why This Newsletter Almost Didn’t Get Written

TMI warning - if you are not a pet person or are uncomfortable with words like vagina or venereal, or do not enjoy gory details, feel free to skip this part. Or, in the spirit of Halloween, regard it as a “trick” amid the treats contained elsewhere in this week’s Spark. 

I am a terrible person. A few newsletters ago, when we celebrated all things beginning with the letter “L”, I told everyone how much we loved our new-ish dog, Lily, IN SPITE of her nightmares and wild mood swings that we chalked up to being an adolescent. Then the bleeding started. And kept going. Like a teen who hasn’t quite mastered the whole period thing, she leaked blood all over the place and we had to schedule surgery to explore the possibility of a bad spay job. We set the date for November 9, and ordered some diapers. 

Then came Wednesday morning. She went out to pee and what looked like part of her insides fell out of her vagina. LOTS of blood followed so our vet shuffled his schedule and operated right away. She had cancer. A tumor had been causing the bleeding. The tumor was what I saw oozing out of her body on Wednesday. Specifically, it was a venereal transmissive tumor which means she got it from a male dog, possibly the one that made her a too-young mom last year.  (You can see what such a tumor looks like here. Lily’s looked exactly like this but I will spare you the photo I took in a panic to send to the vet on Wednesday.)

Lily will be a satellite dish for Halloween

These tumors are common in both male and female dogs who live in places where dogs roam freely, according to the Internet. She got through the surgery and although she is drug-addled, cone-headed, and forced to wear diapers for a few more days, she has retained her sweetness and has borne everything with dignity. Her prognosis is good and will be better when she completes several rounds of chemo in the coming weeks. Sleep, however, remains an on-and-off thing for her and for us, so forgive me if this week’s newsletter strikes you as even more unpolished than usual. On the other hand, as I’ve been typing this, I’ve noticed another letter theme emerging: “T” words. As in trick or treat and tumor. 

Because it is, after all, Halloween

In case the previous few paragraphs failed to satisfy your thirst for blood, here’s a terrific reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Tell-Heart.”

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Welcome New Subscribers!

Welcome to all of you wonderful folks who joined us in the past week. It’s thrilling  to find so many new folks on board each day. If you would like to check out past issues, here’s a quick link to the archives. Be sure to check out our Resources for Readers and Writers too. And help us spread the word by sharing Spark with your friends. Oh, you can find most of the books discussed here on the Spark Community Recommendations Page of bookshop.org where each sale supports local bookstores and generates a commission that right now is too small to even mention but if it ever gets any bigger, we will decide how to spend it together.

That’s it for this week. Let me know how you are and what you’re reading. If there’s an idea, book, or question you’d like to see in an upcoming issue of Spark, let us know! Use the comment button below or just hit reply to this email and send your message directly. 

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Ciao for now.

Gratefully,

Betsy

P.S. And now, your moment of Zen…Beneath the mask is a — drain spout?

Exactly. Janet G. of Southern California snapped this on her travels. Apparently even drain spouts get a little self conscious.  

Calling for Your Contribution to “Moment of Zen”

What is YOUR moment of Zen? Send me your photos, a video, a drawing, a song, a poem, or anything with a visual that moved you, thrilled you, calmed you. Or just cracked you up. This feature is wide open for your own personal interpretation.

Come on, go through your photos, your memories or just keep your eyes and ears to the ground and then share. Send your photos/links, etc. to me by replying to this email or simply by sending to: elizabethmarro@substack.com. The main guidelines are probably already obvious: don’t hurt anyone  -- don’t send anything that violates the privacy of someone you love or even someone you hate, don’t send anything divisive, or aimed at disparaging others. Our Zen moments are to help us connect, to bond, to learn, to wonder, to share -- to escape the world for a little bit and return refreshed. 

I can’t wait to see what you send!