jodyrathgeb

    Lighten up, people!
    Maybe it's the season, with all that residual back-to-school feeling of needing to buckle down, but doesn't it seem that everyone is taking themselves way too seriously lately?
    We have a polarizing political season. Facebook posts are shrill and preachy. Workplaces are edgy. Restaurants are pretentious. Sneers have replaced smiles. And everyone takes offense at the slightest slight.
    Quick, please, someone throw a cream pie!
    I'm just as guilty as anyone in this overseriousness. (Overseriosity?) I get crotchety when others ignore things I think are important, such as punctuation and pedestrian rights of way, and I'm far too glum about aging.
    So let's all just take a step back and start to lighten up by stating what we do in the simplest, least pretentious way possible.
    You're not a Chef; you feed people.
    You're not an Artist; you make pretty things.
    You're not an Attorney; you make sure people follow the rules.
    And I'm no Author; I tell stories.
    This Sunday, I'm participating in Brandylane Publishers' Book Bask, a wine-and-snacks party that will feature six of us authors - er, story-tellers - talking about our books. Some of these books have serious topics, so I figure it's up to me and the totally unserious Fish-Eye Lens to add some levity. To that end, I'm starting off my 15-minute slot with some audience participation.
    Can't figure that one out? Well, if you're in Richmond, come on over to Book People, 536 Granite Ave., at 2 p.m. to see what colored index cards and Scotch tape have to do with telling stories.

    I've never been a perfectionist when it comes to housekeeping. I love those plaques that say, "A clean house is the sign of an empty mind," and when I have a choice between cleaning and anything else, anything else usually wins. Once, when a visitor looked up at our 11-foot ceilings and asked how I get cobwebs down, I followed her gaze and replied, "I don't know. I've never tried."
    It's not that I'm a slob. I keep things reasonably in order, even though I'm losing the battle with the "kitty tumbleweeds" that skitter across hardwood floors. I go after them about once a week and do other cleaning only when the dust and scum go beyond my tolerance level.
    Unless, that is, I've invited someone over. I clean for guests. Mostly. What I've discovered about myself is that I have different levels of cleaning that depend on the visitor. The better I know you, the less I feel compelled to pretend that the crew from House Beautiful just left.
    Last week, for example, I cleaned thoroughly for a meeting with our financial planners. But several days later, when friends Mike and Janet came for a chili night, I just tidied the bathroom. They've been here before and they know our cats run our lives; no need to hide Kit's scratch pad or remove fur-gathering towels from furniture.
    I supposed my whole psychological profile could be derived from these cleaning habits. A quick swipe will do for a fellow writer, but my brother-in-law? Break out the Pine-Sol. Verrrry interrrresting.
    And then there's the island house. I'm actually a better housekeeper there, out of necessity. Doors and windows stay open, so the beach makes its way indoors and sea air keeps salting the furniture and floors. It's hard to keep up.
    But everyone there is in the same situatiion, so even casual acquaintances become close friends in this who-is-spongeworthy (cleaning sponge, that is) spectrum. And true close friends take an even cozier position in my psyche.
    So when Lynn says, "Forget the windows. Let's go to the beach," that's friendship. When she adds, "But you've got to clean then sometime soon," that's love.
    Transferring some of this cleaning hypotheses to writing, I can see first of all that I do make a distinction between my writing-for-pay and my fiction. When I do a magazine piece, I try to write well but I don't fuss over it. I get it done. For fiction, I push more. I try to get it right.
    So it's a good thing fiction audiences are anonymous. Writing for strangers is, I hope, making my work cleaner and more meticulous. I guess there's a reason we're told to polish a manuscript.

    Wednesday, Sept. 19, is Talk Like a Pirate Day. I don't know how this strange event came to be, but I plan to participate ... even if it's only to say "aargh" instead of my usual epithets (like "darn" or "drat," of course), or to call my husband "Matey."
    TLAPD, however, has got me thinking about the persistence of pirates. Why do they capture our imaginations (yes, pun intended)? There is plenty of real and dangerous piracy out there on the seas, yet saying the word "pirate" invariably conjures up not desperate Somalians but 17th-century treasure takers, with eye patches, beards, puffy shirts and peg legs. It seems we would all prefer to keep our pirates safely in the past and in fiction.
    It's odd not only because we have the real thing in our midst, but also because we should be dealing with our everyday pirates ... the ones who easily pillage what should be precious to us. These pirates aren't after money or possessions. They take things that are far more valuable.
    Some pirates are after our awareness and appreciation of the world around us. They don't want you to see the full moon, hear an opinion other than your own, feel an ocean breeze. It's a large crew, captained by technology. Mates include your smartphone, the Internet, air conditioning and the ear buds that insulate you from the world.
    There there are those dastardly pirates of self-confidence, sneakier because they disguise themselves as airbrushed beauties in magazines; clerks, waiters and preachers who give you those "you don't belong here" looks; sometimes even your parents and teachers! Listen to them and consider yourself robbed.
    Other pirates steal your generosity of spirit, making it so much cooler to be mean than nice. Their ships are most numerous in schools, but they persist throughout life.
    Worst of all are the pirates of your time. They appear everywhere: in phone menus, on television, among your colleagues, at understaffed grocery stores. Watch out! Pirates!
    So maybe Talk Like a Pirate Day isn't so silly after all. We can use it to talk back to all those black-hearted, rum-roaring scoundrels who would make us less than we are.

    Officially, I go to the islands two or three times a year. My visits are much more frequent, though, if you count the times I'm there in my head. Shockoe Bottom and North Caicos could hardly be more different from each other, yet I keep having experiences that trigger connections:

    I hear geese flying overhead and think of flamingos. They sound alike.
    I find myself wondering about street junk I see on my walks (Did someone rip out those hair extensions herself, or was there some fight with another girl? How did a pair of men's boxers end up in the middle of an intersection?), and the thoughts carry me to the beach, where odd things wash up now and then, also raising questions.
    The power goes off for no apparent reason, and I think "PPC" just as often as "Dominion." (Actually, the island power company is now called Fortis, but no one is yet used to the name.)
    Living so close to the Slave Trail, Lumpkin's Jail and the site of Gabriel's hanging, I reflect often on Richmond's history as a center of slave trade. And those reflections lead me just as often to the plantation ruins on North and Middle Caicos, where American Loyalists brought their slaves and then abandoned them when the crops failed. 

   The slave connection between my two homes has intrigued me so  much that it's become a foundation for the novel I am currently writing. The coming-of-age story features a female protagonist who is from the islands but now lives in Shockoe Bottom and studies in the pharmacy program at Virginia Commonwealth University. She, too, goes back and forth between the two places (both physically and mentally), making connections and feeling the ghosts of slavery in a much more personal way.
    Right now I'm calling it "Here and There," but the title will probably change. It is a work in progress.
    As we all are.