Grief House - Portals

In this episode about loss and acceptance Sascha and I discuss what happens when loss is offered and we decline. How does it look to decide to stay despite external cues that insist leaving makes the most sense. What happens when someone leaves you, but you don't leave them back.

We discuss the tired dogs guarding our wall-less houses, the way painful no's can tether us tight and whether we might be able to construct a touring experience in which we get to amble through the abandoned psychiatric hospitals of each other's souls.

This is one of my favorite episodes to date. I hope you come and visit, and stay and stay and stay.

You can see video of this episode at the Grief House YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/twgh3YkV2uE

In this very special episode our friend Parsa scores Sascha and my pleasure. We then play with laying the different pleasure offerings down on top of each other.  It is the best thing in the world and Sascha and I both die and are reborn several times while listening to it. 

We wonder about pleasure and perception; whether or not pleasure can ever occur in isolation. We think about cycles of pleasure and how one cycle sets off the next. We talk about the pleasure of jelly coats and jelly shoes, the pleasure of frozen air in lungs and the pleasure of being safe enough to deeply feel the joyful edge of discomfort. 

In this episode Sascha and I discuss our Loss Badgers. We explore what it's like to live with them in various states of acceptance. We talk about their teeth, their smell and the way they act in public. We contemplate the merits of suits for Loss Badgers and special shoes for wading in Loss Badger lakes. We make plans to build ecosystems where the Loss Badgers can roam in all their glorious presentations.

We invite you to show us your Loss Badgers - clothed or unclothed, at a nice cafe or naked in the fields.

In this first episode of our month-long exploration of pleasure, we look at expected and unexpected pleasure, wonder about how fear limits and enhances pleasure, and how we trade in types and shades of pleasure.

We talk about the complex pleasures of live music, ravenous zombie-fish, sour cream and onion potato chips and tearing barbecued flesh from the bone and how welcomed and acknowledged grief can spread and deepen joy.

We'd be so pleased it you would come join us.

In this episode Sascha and I talk about time as a many layered thing. We discuss truths of our mothers, the truths of our childhoods, and truths about love, 

We consider what it feels like to imagine truths of different moments collecting and collaborating rather than replacing each other. Liking how this feels, we proclaim it our reality.

In this episode we discuss the nature of time. What does she look like when we aren't watching. What do we look like from her perspective? 

We wonder about all the ways we interact with time - spending her, saving her, wasting her, keeping her  - the games we play with her as individuals and communities. We consider which of them help us, which of them hurt us, and whether there's a way to invent new games?

We talk abut our different relationships with time and what it's like to watch other people hang out with her in ways we've never imagined. We imagine time as a water wheel, vines we can swing from and a river in which we are held. We talk about when we feel most happy with our relationship with time, and how to support that relationship for ourselves and each other.

In this episode Sascha and I introduce our comfort creatures. 

We consider Comfort as a formica table top, a sandwich a calm place in the woods. We wonder about the way our comfort loves us, the way it feels to be with her, the way she can be overlooked. We imagine our comfort creatures spending an afternoon with our fear creatures. We wish we could spend time sitting in a one of those ball rooms with slides, where everything is bright and soft and cushioned, with them all.

Our friend Parsa gives them voices. It's 100% magical, and surprising and amazing; like meeting someone you've always known and never seen. Like becoming, suddenly, unblind to ultraviolet light or undeaf to the music of the spheres. I can hardly tolerate how good it feels. We hope that you'll enjoy it.

In this episode we discuss grief in all its ambiguity.

We talk about grief's waiting room and what it's like to linger there, the intersection between chaos and order, how boxes can be used for liberation and knives can be used to open jars. We explore the notion that some loss might be more real than other loss, and try to nail down, for certain, whether any loss is unambiguous. 

At the end we make a special request of you, our listeners. Oh, we hope you hear it and make the thing we ask for. We would be so, so, unambiguously happy.

In this episode Sascha and I build playgrounds for our fear creatures and watch them swing and slide while we sip coffee on a bench off to the side. 

We discuss how to be friends with a creature that swallows you every night after dark, the dimensionality of fear, fear as a paper doll, a shadow and The Babadook. We discuss the particular horror of being the thing we fear the most and the strange tenderness that comes from offering our fears a chance to take a break and soak in a hot tub together.

This episode is scored by Parsa Shahinpoor, who has given our fears voices of their very own. That and many other things makes this my favorite episode to date.

In this episode we discuss death. We talk about our evolving relationships with death as a state of being and our personal relationships with our own deaths. We talk about the hard work of being held, the ways we have tried to evade and defeat death and the evolution of our respective friendships with her. 

We have some creative playtime with death, during which we let our deaths dress up in costumes of their choosing (Sascha's is a Dachshund crossed with a black bear accompanied by a woman in rainbow gowns!) and, in the end, feel so much better for spending time together - Sascha, me, our two deaths and (we hope) all of you!