◯ eClips: Lessons
We’re a handful of days past the full moon, but it’s still reflecting welcome light into a darkness that’s coming on earlier and earlier. This week, after night falls, you can look south to see Saturn.
The sidewalks outside my house are lined with yellow leaves and evergreen needles. I’m trying to enjoy all the colors before the leaves drop in the increasingly wet weather. (Send me photos of the fall colors you’re seeing!)
I’ve worked at a gardening magazine for almost 10 years now — hired for my red pen, not my green thumb. I spend my days looking at photos of lovely gardens and editing articles that explain in-depth how to successfully grow all kinds of crops. A decade of shepherding information about soil and seeds, and I’ve still rarely dug my hands into the dirt myself — until this past spring.
Going into it, I recognized that the gap between what I “know” in my head and what I can actually do with my hands was wide, and getting wider. The longer I put gardening off, the more I felt like an imposter. I gardened with my mom a little growing up, but as an adult, I hadn’t really known the satisfaction of yielding food and flowers on my own. So, along with my housemates, I put a few plants into a plot I dubbed an “experiment,” and planted seeds in a few pots too. I figured many of the plants would fail.
And they did. Shade we hadn’t anticipated stifled most growth. We put the greens in too late and lost the nasturtiums to aphids. I’d get behind on watering, and, since I’d said I’d take care of it, I felt guilty every time I noticed the wet soil that meant my housemate had witnessed the wilting and handled it instead. The potted herbs were healthy but then went to seed in the heat wave.
After the cilantro’s leaves had withered away, I noticed the clusters of coriander seeds on the ends of the stems, and popped them off into a spice jar to flavor my food. Amid all the failure, I’d still grown my own spice for the first time. And I’d confirmed what I’d anticipated by calling it an “experiment” — trying and “failing” still beat just reading about it. I learned a lot of lessons from what didn’t work. On the days I managed to spend a few minutes tending, I felt lighthearted. I hope it’s that sense of play, more than a professional prerogative, that encourages me to take those lessons into the next season, and try again. So, for today’s Spotlight, I was happy to hear K.C.’s thoughts on the importance of play in her latest creative endeavor.
◯ I Was That Girl by K.C. Compton, whose Spotlight interview is below. Per this powerful piece’s bio, “She knows a thing or two about building one’s life from the ground up and wants you to know you can do it, just in case you feel that you can’t.”
◯ What I Learned About My Writing By Seeing Only the Punctuation. “What would it look like if I visualized my use of punctuation? What would it look like if you analyzed yours?”
◯ The Bookish Rituals That Keep Me Grounded. “These little bookish things that I do every day, week, or month are not, individually, profound. They’re just habits that, with time and attention, have become meaningful. Taken together, they keep me centered. They remind me to slow down and pay attention. They give me strength to face the chaotic mess that is the world.”
◯ The Garden of Rebirth. “You can regrow store-bought produce and vegetable waste to create recurring harvests, spurring your garden on with plentiful bounties.”
◯ On reimagining what success means. “Poet Megan Fernandes discusses valuing personal relationships, the importance of messiness in the creative process, and reconciling your politics with what you make.”
◯ It’s Time to Stop Talking About “Generations”. “Failure to recognize the way the fabric is woven leads to skewed social history.”
◯ Outline and 12ft.io. These are paywall-breakers that I use to read articles when I can’t afford to pay publications, or don’t want to because of their politics. Since my job relies on readers, and my interview today is with a longtime journalist, maybe this is an ironic thing to share. But I’m all for the commons.
◯ mynoise.net. “Beautiful noises to mask the noises you don’t want to hear.”
Spotlight: K.C. Compton
K.C. Compton is a journalist, mom, newshound, and “someone around whom you will know it’s great to be alive.” K.C. and I met at Mother Earth News, where our team shared perfectly over-the-top potlucks and spent our hours discussing punctuation and mycorrhizal fungi. I’ve learned so much about storytelling and life from having her as a co-worker, mentor, and friend.
Happy birthday! Are you celebrating today?
I bought my entire wish list for myself, which happily wasn’t too many items. But it did include a knot-tying kit and an instructional manual for how to tie knots. I told my cousin that, and she said, “You are truly nuts.” And I said, “Yeah, maybe, but, you know, if the apocalypse happens, you better hope you’re with me, because I’ll be able to tie some killer knots!”
And then I finished a painting. This painting was one that I had started and was just playing with these colors that I really loved, but they were just really dark. And I was like, “Oh, this is not what I wanted.” And then I read on this watercolor site, somebody said, “Well, you know, it’s watercolor, just rinse your paper off and use it again.” And I was like, “What?” So I did, but I found out that some of the paints are staining paints — even though they’re watercolor, they stain. And so they left these little ghosts, and I thought, “Hm, well, maybe I can do something with that.” And then I started looking, and I went, “Oh my god, look at those lines in the background. I think that’s a little cabin.” So I turned it into this whole scene of a little cabin in the woods. Anyway, I just love it. Watercolor has taught me this incredible lesson that when you think things are completely fucked up, just hang around with it for a little while, and stand away from it, and then give it another go and fuss with it. You know, I created something. It’s maybe one of my favorite things I’ve ever painted. And it’s just because I went back at it and said, “OK, well, let’s see if there’s anything here.” And, indeed, there happened to be.
I know how creative you are, and artistic, but I’m not sure I’ve ever talked to you about painting before, actually.
That’s because I just started it during the pandemic. I’d never held a paintbrush before. And I was just like, “Well, what the hell have I got to lose?” I’ve always wanted to do this, and nobody’s watching me. So, why not? And so I ordered one of these little kits online. And I did that for a few months, and then I just found it a little boring. So then I branched out, and I started playing with it, and I started watching tutorials. And then I found out that, maybe even more than painting, I like buying watercolors and brushes and cool paper!
It’s been an amazing project for me. I had no idea on Earth that I was going to fall in love in the way that I have with painting. I started waking up thinking about color, and thinking about how one color might go with another. It has opened up an entirely new part of my life that I never knew was there or was missing. It’s been an incredible gift, and especially during, you know, the previously mentioned terrible time. It kept my mind off things, I guess. But it also gave me this incredible outlet that I just fell in love with. And, you know, another lesson here is that you’re just never too old for life to keep opening up for you. That’s something that I would love for people to know.
I think you’ve modeled that for me since the moment I met you! I’ve been thinking lately about what art wants to be, or what a piece wants to be. About whether this thing I want to create has an existence outside of me, and I just need to listen to it. I know that’s how some people talk about it. Is that how you feel about what you create? Are you trying to experiment with what’s inside you, or are listening for what the piece itself wants?
I think it’s more of a dance. It’s just being open to what is there and going, “Oh, well, that sure wasn’t what I intended.” And then going, “Well, but it could be!” And then being willing to keep playing with it. So, there’s a caveat in the idea that it’s “out there” and you’re just trying to find it.
In my writing, I used to think that there was a perfect lead. I spent a lot of time trying to find the perfect lead, you know? And I just find it really hard to get into a story if I don’t have the lead, and so that quest for the idea that there was a lead “out there” that I had to find really hamstrung me. And I realized, “Oh, just fucking get over it,” you know? Just write something! And you can always go back if it’s not the perfect lead. You can always go back. And maybe the perfect lead will emerge as you’re writing the piece, but just have something to get you into it. And don’t let yourself get too fussy. Because I can get perfectionist real fast. But don’t get too fussy or too wound around the axle about it being something you have to discover, because really, it all comes from me.
I don’t believe there’s a perfect form for everything, that we have to seek. But I do think that we’re always in a dance with what’s there, what presents itself, what we observe, and all the different influences in our lives and our experiences. Which, I think, is why it’s so important for artists in particular, but all of us, to have many different experiences and influences. To allow as much in as we can comfortably, or sometimes uncomfortably, manage without getting overwhelmed.
My second year as a journalist, when I was working as arts and entertainment writer for the Albuquerque Journal and knew not what I was doing, at all — it was a totally made-up, fake-it-til-you-make-it life, as most of my career was — I interviewed one of those old women blues singers from that era, from the 30s. And I said — because she was in her 80s when I interviewed her — “What’s the secret to a long and happy life?” And she said, “Well, you just find what you love, and you do it til you drop.” And I just think that’s perfect advice. And another thing for me is, if it ain’t fun, I don’t do it, generally speaking. And I can make almost anything fun.
True enough, I know that!
When I walk in, fun just came in the door. And people think that means I’m shallow. You know, that’s one thing I’ve kind of battled against all my life, or that’s been present for me all my life, is that, because I’m lighthearted and I’m pretty upbeat, a lot of people think that means I’m shallow, or that I just don’t get it. It’s like, “No, I have been through so much shit in my lifetime that none of you could even imagine!” And I am not going to let it get me down, you know? So, I rise. I always do.
My mother was like that. She wasn’t unsinkable in a fun, upbeat, ebullient way. She was just unsinkable. I mean, that woman did not let circumstances get her down. She was a pain in the ass, and she was crabby, and she was sometimes just so angry. And I get why she was angry. But she also was this incredible role model for not ordering right off the menu of life, which is very important.
When I was in the seventh grade, and we lived in this tiny oilfield town, she was at a bridge game, and my mother looks around, she takes her bridge hand, she puts it down on the table, boom, and she says, “You know, I’m sick and tired of sitting around gossiping about other people’s children. I have better things to do with my life.” And she got up and she went home and she registered for college, which one did not do, and she commuted 30 miles each way to the Oklahoma women’s college, which was in Chickasha, and she majored in music. And she didn’t even know how to play piano, but by god, she had always wanted to get a degree in music. And so that’s what she did.
So, saying “To hell with other people’s expectations and assumptions!” — and doing whatever you want regardless of age — is something that runs in the family!
It kind of does! She was a really great role model. It’s not like you don’t care what other people say. You do. I mean, I’m kind of a pleaser. I like making people happy. But I don’t like it more than I like having an interesting life or doing the things that matter most to me. So if I have to choose one over the other, I’m always going to go, “You know, I’m just not cut out for this. See ya!” Like me and marriage. Yeah, I’ve tried marriage! I didn’t take to it! Thanks!
Yeah. And how toxic of a belief, that everyone has to, in this exactly right, perfect way.
That was a big eye-opener for me, and let me tell you, it came kind of late in life — that I did not need to have a man in my life to be happy. And that being married was not a requirement. I was raised to be a wife and mother, and I think I’m in the last generation of American women for whom that was the sole expectation. And then, when I was pregnant with Ariel, I was working at the YWCA’s women’s resource center. That was in 1976. So we were having all of these speakers and all of this conversation about this thing called “feminism,” and it was weird to me, and it didn’t fit at all. But I had just started writing, and I had had three freelance articles published. So I was introduced to this woman, and the one who introduced us said, “Penny is a playwright. She’s written a couple of plays, she’s written books and is a speaker. She speaks about feminism and consciousness-raising, and she has two twin boys, and one who’s a couple of years older.” And I said, “Oh, then your kids must be older.” And she grabbed both of my hands, and she looked me right in the eye, and she said, “No. My twins are 7, and Jonathan is 9. And I did it, and you can too, and we must.” It shook me to the core. This is at a point where I had been going to marriage counseling by myself for a couple of years, and was trying hard to make it work with the kids’ dad and just could not. It was like trying to push a boulder up a hill. And I had this epiphany one night. I went, “Oh my god, it is never going to be OK with me to have my success come through him.” The idea that I would have my own success in anything was completely foreign to me. And I didn’t even know what to do with that. It was just the opening salvo of a process that took years. But, you know, that’s the process of personal transformation. It took a little time, but that was the catalyst.
Much of my career was driven by survival. Like, what do I need to do to make a little more money for these kids? And it ended up giving me just an incredible career.
Did you have a relationship to gardening and plants before the part of your career that was at Mother Earth News, or did that interest come specifically from your time at the magazines?
No, I was raised — half of our backyard was a huge garden, and some of my most vivid memories as a kid were being out there, with my dad in particular. I remember watching him out in the backyard plowing the garden space up every spring, and then getting out there on our hands and knees, my sister and me, poking pea seeds. I just have this vivid memory of poking pea seeds in the ground in rows. My dad would take the chalk line and pop it down and make this straight line on the dirt. And then we would dig a little trench there along that straight line, and pop the little pea seeds in it, and it was just such a process, and there was a way to do it, you know? He was a very careful gardener. We lived in red clay country, so the soil there did not naturally grow much, but my dad was a keen composter. And so we always had this beautiful, rich, deep soil, and I really had no idea that it was probably half cow manure. My sister Donna and I would watch that garden space like a hawk. And then, we could hear dad’s truck tires, his brakes would squeak a little when he turned the hill down to our home, so we knew Daddy was on the way, and we ran to the front door, and we just burst out the front door going, “We have peas!” Because they were always the first plants up in that year’s crop. And so the first peas were such a huge harbinger of things to come.
Many of our meals during the summertime came straight out of the garden. And then I gardened some when [my son] Austin was a little guy, and then pretty soon life got too busy, and mostly I just didn’t have any time to garden much for years. And then, when I moved to eastern Kansas and started work for Mother Earth News, I started getting back into it. But the part of it that really was the most special and heartfelt for me during that time was being able to get to know herbs better, as the editor of Herb Companion and Herbs for Health. I’d always sort of known that, “Yeah, herbs, echinacea, yeah, goldenseal, la la la.” And I just didn’t really have an appreciation for, “No, really, these are powerful healers. These are powerful aides for your immune system.” I really believe that a lot of what we need to be healthy is right there in the plant world, if we just are smart enough to cooperate with the plant world, to be healthy and to keep it healthy. That was really powerful for me, to get to know herbs better. And now I always have a bottle of Mushroom Defense around, or oil of oregano. I mean, that shit’s magic! If you’re starting to get sick, just start slamming oil of oregano — and water, because it tastes like bong water. God, it’s horrible.
You’re the one who brought oil of oregano to my attention!
Oh good. Those are my go-to’s now. And then also just falling in love with culinary herbs. I can’t even imagine cooking without herbs now. I just smell tarragon, and I’m immediately uplifted and happier. Just the smell of tarragon is thrilling to me. So, that’s my favorite culinary herb. You didn’t ask, but there you go.
Well, I was about to! In addition to the oil of oregano, what are some of your favorite herbs to work with? Has that changed over time, or been consistent?
Well, it’s been pretty consistent. Turmeric is another one that I take every day. It really helps with arthritic pain, and it’s good for immune boosting too. So that is one of my go-to’s that I take on a regular basis. And I take one that Gaia produces that has black pepper, because that supposedly helps the turmeric be more bioavailable.
Arnica is so amazing for bruising and achy joints. I also use it almost every day because I’m getting arthritis in my hands. Getting old is not for the faint of heart. It helps enormously, along with daily doses of turmeric.
Are there any plants that feel wound up with memory or spirituality for you? Are there any plants you have a spiritual connection with?
I think plants are very bound up in my memory. Just smelling a tomato plant puts me right back in the garden with my Dad. Just seeing poison ivy, or seeing anything that is remotely maybe poison ivy from a distance, just puts me on a very bad mental trip, because I am so, so allergic to it. And a friend gave me some rose-infused olive oil, which I use after my bath, and the rose scent always reminds me of my mother.
And then, I did psilocybin when I was in college, does that count as a plant?
Oh, yes.
And, you know, I did LSD, and I didn’t care for it at all. I did it twice, and I never wanted to do it again. It was like a conversation you can’t hang up on. Like, it is telling you where we’re going to go next, and in ways that I didn’t find fun after very long. I was like, “OK, OK, I’m exhausted, I’m done. I want to stop.” And it was like, “No, we’re not even close to being done.”
But peyote and psilocybin permanently altered my view of the world and my relationship with color. I didn’t do either one of those very much. And peyote, I felt like it was a part of a culture that wasn’t my culture, and maybe I didn’t have a right to just chop up some buttons and swallow them in a way that wasn’t shamanic, and that wasn’t part of an Indigenous cultural experience. Psilocybin may be the same thing, but I didn’t feel that with it. So I did psilocybin a few times, and very quickly, with both of them, I just got sick of being inside. I couldn’t stand to be inside. And I still have that experience, when I just feel enclosed and I have to get outside. And being able to be outside and let the color speak to me, and let the trees and the plants surround me, just makes me feel at home in ways that nothing else does.
One of the big changes for me and moving to yet another apartment here in Seattle is that now I have big windows in all the rooms, and I have trees and plants out every window, and I can breathe again. I’ve finally gotten things settled down enough to start putting plants in my house. It’s starting to look like home now! One of my saddest things about moving out here was having to say goodbye to my plants that I had raised for years.
Since you live in Seattle and have lived in many different regions throughout your life, what’s been your experience of plants and of seasons over time? Does it feel disrupted each time you move to a new region, or is it exciting for you to get to know a new region?
Oh, it’s totally exciting for me. Having moved from Oklahoma, which has definite seasons, I love the different seasons. I don’t think I could ever be completely happy in some place that doesn’t have seasons. I moved to New Mexico, where the seasons are so different, but oh my god, going up in the mountains when the the trees are starting to turn, and the colors up there in the mountains, and driving on a mountain road in the snow was just spectacular. And then moving to Wyoming, where the weather is a harsh mistress, and there may be three or four months in the summertime in Wyoming where you don’t need to be prepared. I just got accustomed to driving around with my snowpack in the car. Every year, we would do at least one story of somebody who tried to walk back to their house from their car, or somebody who tried to walk to the highway, and perished in the snow. Because the snow comes hard and fast and deep, and it can cover up a car in no time with the wind blowing like it did. So, I learned to take winter very, very seriously.
I lived in this little cabin 10 miles outside of Casper. I had to go along the highway and then turn off onto the road out to my house. And the month before I left, which was in April, just before I got to the road that turned off, there was this sign above the highway — and it was a blizzard, it was already blowing cold and snowy and everything — and it said, “TRAVEL ANYWHERE NOT ADVISED.” It’s like “OK!” I had a woodstove and plenty of wood, so I went home and put some wood in the woodstove and enjoyed looking out.
What is your experience of fall and winter like here, in comparison? How do you feel about fall and winter as it’s coming on?
Well, fall is my favorite season. I just love it, things start getting cooler. This is starting my sixth year here, believe it or not, and I have so far not found the rain awful. I love it. But I don’t have to walk anyplace, and I don’t have to catch buses, and I don’t have to be out in it. I can sit in here and I can look at it and I just love it. But I think we’ve all benefited from realizing that we need to take additional vitamin D3.
I need to start my regimen.
I just started yesterday. I put them by my coffee. To which I’m truly addicted.
Coffee! That’s a daily ritual, I bet. It is for me!
Totally is. I love coffee so much that when I’m getting it ready at night, I get really excited, because I get to wake up and have some coffee. And it’s odd, because I don’t like drinking coffee at other times of day. But I love my morning coffee.
I do too. I don’t know if I could ever give it up.
Nope. I can’t. They’ll pry my cold, dead hands off my coffee cup.
So you have going outside, and you have coffee; are there other rituals that are seasonal or daily or weekly that you follow to keep yourself moving and grounded, or do you like to have spur-of-the-moment days and weeks?
Oh, I have spur-of-the-moment days and weeks. A lot of my schedule is determined by the work that I have to do. And my cat gives shape to my life.
I’ve never been really good at observing rituals. I wish I were, I want to be the kind of person who does that. And I’m just not. I have certain elements that I require in my life to be fully me. I have to have houseplants. I have to have an animal, at least one, in my home. My work, you know. So much of my life has been driven by my commitments. I just had promises to keep. And so that has given a lot of structure to my life.
But I think painting has become that for me. It’s not the same kind of pleasure when I start thinking about what I’m going to paint, but if I just turn on the music and I just get out colors that I really like and start playing with them, I enter into a completely different space, and then I look up and it’s like, “Holy shit, that was four hours ago!” And I don’t often have that experience with writing, I think partly because I’ve never felt all that free with writing. A lot of the writing that I’ve done has been on deadline, it’s been writing for something. So the painting is something that’s just for me. It’s just because I want to play. And reminding myself that it is play has been surprisingly difficult.
When I started showing my little paintings, and people were saying, “Oh my god, it’s wonderful, can I buy that?” I sold a couple of them, and then it was like, “I feel really weird about this. I don’t want to do this, because there are so-much-better actual artists trying to sell their work that I feel like an imposter. I can’t stand it.” So instead, what I started doing was, if somebody really wanted one of my paintings, I just asked them to donate to a food charity the amount that they would’ve paid for my painting. And that way, I’m not painting for hoping somebody else will buy it or like it or whatever.
What happened with my writing was, I started writing, and I had all these stories, and I was playing with it, and I was having so much fun. And I still have those characters in my head. But that was when my kids were still little, and when the kids’ dad and I divorced, the only marketable skill I had was that I could write sentences and good transitions between paragraphs, so I became a writer. And in some ways, it kind of sucked the juice out of it for me. I didn’t write anything fanciful or fun for decades. I just started writing for money. And I’ve loved my career. I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with that, or that I made a bad move, because I leveraged what I had to create an incredible career for myself and I’m really proud of myself for doing that. But it did put the writing on a different level, and it wasn’t fun for me in the same way anymore. And I can’t seem to get back to that with the writing. But with the painting, the fun’s there, and the play is there. And so I really, really, really do not want to do anything that jeopardizes that.
That resonates with me, and it also makes me think of making music. And one thing I’ve watched you do, no matter where you are, is build community, and specifically community around music. It is a ritual of a sort, even though, as you said, structured by commitment to music, to community.
To community for sure. Still, here in the PNW, I haven’t created the music community for myself that I was able to create in Lawrence and Kansas City. The vibe here was so much different than it was in Kansas City. There’s a whole lot more of a sense of professionalism and people not just getting together to jam and have fun. It just hasn’t been fun for me in the way that it was there. It has been really stressful. So, I haven’t created a music community for myself — that’s not true! That’s fucking not true! Oh my god, I can’t believe this. That is not true. That was true. But hold the phone. Here’s what happened. I did go to this music camp. It was for singers only, singers at Port Townsend. Voiceworks was the name of the camp. People came from all over the place, and it was a week and a couple of days of singers. And we worked on blues and gospel, and close harmonies, like old-time music and bluegrass. It was just incredible. And I met some women from Seattle. And when it was over, we said, “Well, we ought to get together when we get back to Seattle, and do some singing.” Betsy has this little tiny house in back of the house that she and her husband own, and it has a wonderful patio. So, we got together, and we were singing on the patio and the neighbors would come out and applaud. It was so funny.
And then COVID hit, and we quit being able to do that. And we spent a couple of months just miserable and sad about it, and then we were like, “Well, we could Zoom.” And so we started Zooming every two weeks. We couldn’t harmonize with Zoom because there’s a lag. But we would just eat, and we would each go around the circle and sing a song, and then Kate, who isn’t comfortable singing by herself, would read a poem. So, we just had this wonderful two hours every other week of these women singing and reading poems to each other. And then we became really close friends and got more and more vulnerable with each other, and we just so supported each other throughout the pandemic and now.
I knew I remembered you telling me something about that!
That’s so funny. They’re so precious to me, and my experience with the first musicians that I met was so disheartening. And so, it was kind of a heartbreak for me, not to be able to bond in that way with musicians. But then these women, and I can’t believe that didn’t just spring to my mind immediately. Because now they’re some of my dearest friends.
Do you have any kind of relationship with the sun or the moon cycle?
Not with the cycles so much. Although, it’s really fun that, since I’ve been painting, I’ve really started noticing the relationship of the light that each produces, and getting the light right. And in watercolor, that’s really, really, really important. You have to know where that light shines and how to provide for it in the painting so that it’s not dull, so that the light really comes off the page. And so that’s altered my relationship with sunlight and with moonlight now.
In terms of celestial bodies, one of the peak experiences of my entire life, now and forever, was in the early 90s. My friend Paige, who lives in New Mexico, rented cabins at this place, I can’t remember the name of it. But a professional astronomer had bought a ranch in northern New Mexico, which on any map of the lightest and darkest areas in the country would be in the darkest areas of the country. So, he bought a ranch in the darkest part of New Mexico, in the mountains, and he created this bed-and-breakfast with telescopes, and some of them were professional-level telescopes, just kickass big telescopes that anybody who paid to stay there could use and look at. And he guided a tour of the night sky with his telescopes, and I got to see nebulae, I got to see these constellations and far formations that I just never could imagine. And I got to see the rings of Saturn. They were like I could reach out and touch them. It was astonishing. It was just astonishing. And that is something over which I will never get.
I have chills thinking about that. Did it make you existential at all in the moment, or how did it make you feel?
Oh, of course it did. I mean, how could you see something like that and not feel like this speck of dust that we are? But I had an experience years ago — and I was not high — I had this experience where I woke up with this friend that I had made love with. And I started feeling like I was just pulling away from him. I lifted kind of off the bed, and I looked and I saw him. And I saw his beautiful black hair on his pillow, and I thought, “God, what a lovely being he is!” It was weird, because I was not in love with him. He was a good friend and, you know, occasionally a friend with benefits. So then, I just pulled back and pulled back and pulled back, and I pulled through the roof, and I saw the roof of his house, and I saw the neighborhood, and I pulled back and back and back and up and up and up until I was in the stars! Like, in the stars and looking around! And then all of a sudden, poof. I wasn’t there. I completely disappeared. And so, when I saw the nebulae and the stars and all of that cosmic way-the-fuck-out-in-space stuff, it just felt like, “Yeah! Yeah, we are here!” I don’t know if that makes any sense, but it just felt like, “Yeah, we are stardust!”
Yeah, you catch a closer glimpse of what really is our home.
Yeah, and that’s why, when people say, “Are you afraid of death?” I am not afraid of death at all. I don’t want to die, I love being alive. I’m afraid of becoming a medical situation before my death. I just want to go to sleep and not wake up. But I am not afraid of what’s beyond, because what’s beyond is just going back to there. Just going back to stardust. And I’m good with that.