Pipe-trimony
We've got a new podcast w/Sacha Mardou, an old Instax, and some more of my patrimony
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
Podcastery
This week, I got back to recording with guests and posted Episode 648 of my Virtual Memories Show. feat. With PAST TENSE: Facing Family Secrets and Finding Myself In Therapy (Avery), cartoonist Sacha Mardou brings us a phenomenal graphic memoir about the midlife process of overcoming lifelong traumas and anxiety. We talk about her decision to to make her therapy process (& sessions) public, first as online comics and then as Past Tense, the benefits of the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, what it took to violate the English stiff upper lip and admit that she had problems and needed therapy, and her mother’s Jehovah Witness conversion and how she’s still sifting through the damage of that. We get into how therapy changed her relationship to her daughter, why corniness is no reason to avoid addressing/admitting one’s inner child (and the work I needed to do to truly appreciate Past Tense), the strong, supportive and sympathetic public response to her online therapy comics and how she wound up going back to her therapist to deal with the shame-cycle of that, and how her families (and therapists) feel about seeing themselves in the book. We also discuss Sacha’s indy comics upbringing, her marriage to fellow cartoonist Ted May and whether that means her daughter has any hope for a non-cartooning career, how she feels like her art is always catching up to her writing, how we feel about Gen X getting overlooked, her Doris Lessing binge during perimenopause, why we need to turn up the bonobo turn down the chimp, and a lot more. Give it a listen. And go read PAST TENSE!
Last week I posted Episode 647, feat. Oliver Radclyffe’s journey into trans-selfhood via his phenomenal debut memoir, FRIGHTEN THE HORSES (Roxane Gay Books/Grove Atlantic). We talk about the importance of trans visibility, how his understanding of masculinity and being male have changed, bridging the gap between his trans narrator and this cis-het reader, and how he faced down the risks and sacrifices in his life as he transitioned, despite the uncertainty of what lay ahead. We get into how he found the perfect voice for his memoir, the importance of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy on his writing process, why being raised in privilege explained why he knew so little about the queer world, the surprisingly wonderful support his (conservative Christian) parents gave him throughout his journey, and why the book focuses on his pre-transition life. We also discuss whether he looks at photos of his pre-transition self, how testosterone has affected his life, how gender can shift with age, whether he’s ready to be an empty-nester, why he identifies as a gender-irrelevant transsexual, and a lot more. Give it a listen. And go read FRIGHTEN THE HORSES (and his essay collection, Adult Human Male)!
Recent episodes: Eulogy • Rachel Cockerell • Paul Karasik • Kate Maruyama • David Denby • Peter Stothard • Cecile Wajsbrot
Pipe-trimony
We were at the beginning of the hill and the woods behind the house, having skirted the wall of forsythia. He was assessing which trees were likely to fall and which of those were likely to hit the house.
“What’s that pipe lead to?” he asked, pointing at a length of 1.5” metal pipe sticking out horizontally from the sloping ground.
“. . . The washing machine,” I told him, pointing through the forsythia to the house. “My old man decided he was sick of dealing with septic backups, so he ran the line from the laundry under the backyard so it’d empty here in the woods.”
I told him about the lightning strike in 2019 that exploded the PVC portion of the pipe leading from the house, how it left a 6”-deep gouge in the grass, with shards of plastic scattered everywhere. How when the firemen and I found it, I said, “We’re all just gonna say we didn’t see this, right?”
“I used to have the same thing when I lived in town,” he said.
Then he told me one of the Norns might be compromised, but probably wouldn’t hit the house if it went down.
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Instaxery
No new Instax this week, so here’s one of a bald man’s hair dryer, from March.
Artistry
I tried to make some art this morning for you, but failed pretty heinously. You should go to the Flickr album of most of the art I’ve made & find something you like.
Postcardery
Let me know if you want to be on my postcard-a-day list. (Financial supporters of the podcast get a hand-drawn or painted postcard as a thank-you.)
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far. I’ll be back on Sunday with links, books, & workout-/meditation-craziness, and on Wednesday with a new episode, and maybe some art and an Instax.
This old airport’s got me down / It’s no earthly good to me / And I’m stuck here on the ground / As cold and drunk as I can be,