Understanding My Place: A Letter and Neil Gaiman

Stranger in a Strange Land – No. 26

The other day my husband brought home a glossy, four-color, eight-paged publication he’d found on the sidewalk in our neighborhood. He intended to toss it into a recycling bin, but when he realized what it was, he knew he had to share it with me first.

I pawed through it—picture after captioned picture of one senior couple’s 2012 activities: celebrating milestones with grandchildren and former exchange students; vacationing with friends and family in Italy, Monaco, and China; learning to surf in Hawaii; hosting Union Rags and the Wyeths at the Kentucky Derby; acting as professional photographers for a wedding, building custom furniture, and so on. And so on…

Was it a self-published booklet to commemorate these events?

NO! It was their Christmas Letter to friends and extended family!

It’s exactly why people have come to hate such correspondence. It was so over-the-top it could have been a parody of the genre. But it wasn’t. It was a chirpy report of all the stellar 2012 moments one family experienced. And they sent it to someone in MY neighborhood, which can only mean (or I HOPE it means) that the recipients lead similar lives and didn’t take said Christmas Letter as the disturbing show of pretentiousness I did. Once again, I felt quite removed from my neighbors.

I had just been reading about Cabal, a dog rescued from a roadside by author Neil Gaiman. I learned that Cabal suffered from the same condition my pooch did (degenerative myelopathy), that British-born Gaiman now lives in the Midwest, that his relationship with Cabal was of the unexpected and nonpareil variety… Heck! I have more in common with Neil Gaiman than I do with these Christmas Letter–sending neighbors.

Hmmm. Maybe I can work Gaiman into my own Christmas Letter this year. Maybe I, too, can incite envy and head-shaking during the holidays.


This is part of an ongoing series regarding my transition from the Land of Lincoln to the Bluegrass State. For a list of previous articles in the series, just select Stranger in a Strange Land from the right of Lull, under “Choose a topic that interests you.”

[Photo of Cabal and Neil Gaiman by Kimberly Butler and titled Unconditional Love.]

Finding Acceptance in a New Neighborhood

Stranger In A Strange Land – No. 18

“Ow!”

I was in the yard, just about focused for a great photograph of a bird, when something pinched my arm.

“What?” I could almost hear it say—“it” being the tiniest and roundest of hard-shelled bugs digging into my skin.

Actually, I was grateful the bug had alerted me to his intentions. That hasn’t been the case with most of the other bites scattered across my body. The bugs of the Bluegrass love me and I sorely (literally) resent their Welcome Committees.

Granted, one may safely assume that my move from an urban area to a smaller city would mean a proportionate increase in mosquitoes. However, I didn’t anticipate the range of their biting brethren lying in wait for me. And each new bite revives the itch and ooze of every older bite.

Yes, yes, yes. I’m applying Cortizone cream, refraining from scratching, wearing clothes that don’t aggravate the situation. All the same, I have angry welts of varying sizes all over me and I’m not happy about it.

My dear husband, on the other hand, has been bitten only once, but it caused such a frightening reaction on him that I guess the bug community decided to leave him alone thereafter. His elbow swelled and hardened and reddened and hurt for months. That said, I should probably be thankful I have just a hundred small bites and no signs of swollen limbs. But this is slim consolation.

I suppose that by sacrificing my skin to insects I’m truly living in harmony with them. However, if you know of a histamine-less way to be a good neighbor, please let me know. SOON.

[Art by Balthasar van der Ast.]

This is part of an ongoing series regarding my transition from the Land of Lincoln to the Bluegrass State. For a list of previous articles in the series, select Stranger in a Strange Land from the right of Lull, under “Choose a topic that interests you.”

Escaping the Island of Misfit Toys

If you've watched any network telly lately, you've probably glimpsed the Island of Misfit Toys—a no-man's land where imperfect toys from Santa's workshop are exiled, never to be loved by a child or placed in a home. This make-believe world from the creators of the animated Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is also airing as a commercial blasting the poor cellphone service of a major provider and we see the coveted iPhone dumped among unwanted toys from previous generations.

Misfit toys and unemployed people have much in common: We're useful (though perhaps not in the way our previous employers expected or understood), we want to be recognized as such (even an autoreply saying "Thanks for applying" would suffice), and we yearn for a sense of belonging.

I came across this sentence in a book this morning:

"Place is the true core of the universal."

I don't know the original context in which poet and physician William Carlos Williams wrote it, but it certainly speaks to me in my present predicament—as I think it does for great numbers of people on this planet for a host of reasons. How much despair has bewildered us—how many graceless acts have been committed because someone had no sense of place or belonging?

Finding your place isn't always easy. It requires time, honesty, introspection, perseverance, intuition, and careful deliberation. As poet Anne Sexton wrote, you have to…

"Put your ear down next to your soul and listen hard."

Sometimes we're forced into exploring our souls, as I was earlier this year. When the possibility arose that I might lose my sight, or a portion of it, I had to rethink my dream career of being a book editor.

What else can I do? What else do I want to do? What parts of me have I ignored all these years? What do I care about?

As author Susan Chernak McElroy wrote in "Other Angels: One Woman's Bible":

"I pressed on with my goal to make my outer life look more like my most genuine inner life, whatever that was. … Gathering, even defining, a genuine life for myself out of the old was the task of my lifetime."

Indeed. No one is going to rescue me from the Island of Unenjoyment. I have to do it myself. I have to rediscover where my place is and then map out a way to get there.

On the other hand, if Rudolph happens by to show me the way, you can bet I'll follow.