SCORPIO: Humor Edition
Glowing delightfully in the dark
“Dear Humorist Doling out Advice: Scorpion Style”
Advice column by Colleen Markley
Read time: 8 minutes
Dear Humorist Doling Out Advice,
Hi. I’m a writer with a monthly humor column, and right now the world doesn’t feel very funny. How do I make my deadline while staying authentic to how I’m feeling?
My editor and my readers are expecting humor, but I have things I need to say about some really important issues that are keeping me up at night.
So, I’m writing to you, a humorist, instead of writing my monthly humor column. And like, I know this too shall pass, but when? Help me, Humorist.
Signed,
Sad, Mad, and Not Funny
~ Multiverse, Metaverse
Dear Me ~
I wish you came to me more often for advice.
And, I don’t know, maybe life would be easier if you gave yourself the same gentle compassion you give your friends.
I wish you remembered you were cosmically designed to be a super-sensitive human.
Maybe it doesn’t always feel true, but your vulnerability is your superpower. It just doesn’t come with a cape.
I wish you’d remember to lean into your moon sign—Scorpio—which astrology tells us makes you intense and emotional and unhappy with surface level. Some people love that about you. Some are scared because you always want to go deeper. Darker.
Are you really surprised you feel the pain of the world as it suffers? Maybe we are surprised by the depth of it. Maybe it is echoed in the longer nights and shorter days and the fact that you can tell when it’s going to rain in your right hip because that is how old you are now.
And yet, like a toddler, you are surprised when the stove is hot.
The world is hard, and terrible.
And the world is soft, and sweet, and kind. And sometimes we need to look harder for those parts because we don’t have an app to Find Our Positivity.
That is a practice called gratitude. Deeper than gratitude—the practice of delights.
Enough Love
Poet Ross Gay writes and speaks about this practice of delights. You and other creative spirits had the honor of learning from him in person this month while nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina where the trees wept color.
He spoke about not wanting to leave this life not loving what he loves enough.
You were stilled by this.
When we love enough … that is when we hurt the most, even if just from the fear of losing that love. And when the world is tearing itself apart, and we hear stories of others having their loved ones stolen while standing in breadlines, or from their homes, or at school, or a place of worship, or at the theater, music festival, or in a bowling alley, or at the hospital where they thought they would receive care and grace—we cry along with them.
Ross Gay also challenged you to think about whether connecting in our sorrow might be the space we find joy together.
So how do we do that?
Gently.
At our own pace.
With grace and forgiveness.
And maybe, like Scorpios, just living on the edge and being true to our most vulnerable and authentic ourselves, without being apologetic to others.
So, Humorist, let’s write our thing. Say what we need to. Let the funny arrive, without over-seeking.
And next month, when we are sharing one of our all-time favorite funny pieces, relish that joy and laughter. Hold onto it for the next time you can’t find your funny. This too shall pass. Even if the way we find our way back to humor is hearing our inner twelve-year-old snort at all the jokes that come to mind from “This too shall pass.”
So, here’s what we wrote in the dark, looking for the light, waiting for this too, to pass. Hopefully, it doesn’t smell. But we can’t be silent. Silence is deadly.
“Approach”
The only way I can put my head on the Pillow At night Is to tell myself: Thank god we are safe. Thank god it was not my kid. I couldn’t take that Pain So I push it away But can’t fool my tears. You are my youngest, seventeen this year. The year of the driver’s license. The year of kitsch and irony as you become nostalgic doing each thing in high school for the last time. This is the first year you have requested a birthday party, since fourteen was in lock down, Fifteen was polite requests for antisocial behavior, sixteen was are we doing parties yet? I did not know the answer. But this year you asked for a party, and since you are a kid who rarely asks for anything, I was delighted to do this thing, it is your senior year, next year you will be somewhere other than the place I am. You will celebrate your birthday with friends neither of us knows, yet.
The bowling alley you said. It will be so fun. Like when we were little. Then you had the bumpers up so no one got a gutter ball. Now, I watch your face grin as your friends arrive, greeting each other with hugs and giggles. They laugh when they get gutter balls because now you are too big for bumpers. You all adore the shoes and eat the chewy pizza that should not be allowed to exist in the state of New Jersey, where even crappy pizza needs to uphold a standard. And then you tire of bowling and ask if you could go to the arcade on the other side of the bowling alley, and I say yes, of course. Go. Enjoy. I’ll be right here, at our lane. Months later you would text your friend at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. Are you ok? Relief. Yes. They spent the night sleeping on the floor of Chase Hall, the center for student services. The plan had been to surprise a friend with a birthday cake. It wasn’t the celebration they’d planned. The building had just been renovated, but the heat wasn’t working yet. The outdoor club managed to get the group mats to sleep on. Cold, scared, but grateful to be together. The next morning campus police escorted them back to their dorms. They were shuttled in shifts to the dining hall. Told to bring extra food back, because they weren’t sure when they’d be allowed out of their rooms again. Too dangerous. We didn’t know that story yet. I didn’t know how proud of you I would be when you showed up as a supportive friend. Solid, when everything felt like it was falling apart. Even from three hundred miles away. At your birthday party, we still had thirty minutes left on the lane. I thought of that old book about Bowling Alone, and I thought of all those Saturday mornings when my father would bring me to the bowling alley for the kids’ league. For Christmas, he bought me a bowling ball, drilled small for my smaller-than-now hand. Not too heavy, beautiful. An amber shade dotted with sparkles. My initials engraved and flecked with fake gold. CEM While you and your friends play Pac-Man and collect tickets, I rent a pair of shoes. They smell better than the ones I used to wear as a kid. Then, the aroma of anti-fungal spray lingered alongside the cigarette smoke, the clatter of pins echoing from the other lanes where the adult league met. Their strikes explosions–the wood splashing and tinny against the chamber where the pins once stood. Now the machines keep the score. Automated. Calculated. Tabulated. At eight I was still convinced I’d never master the sevens times table, but I could score a strike and a spare and figure the math, even in the tenth frame.
I bowl alone. It comes back to me easily. Keep my thumb up. Point toward the ceiling. Follow through. Sometimes I don’t, just because I don’t have to. Sometimes I point my fingers straight ahead at the pins, waving them in front of me as Bon Jovi croons and the family next to me searches for sanitizer before eating chicken tenders. My father was a math major. My math peaked at nine. He’d sit behind the lanes in a vinyl backed chair, solo at a table, and read the newspaper, shuffling and peering over the top when it was my turn to bowl. Spares earned a smile. Strikes, the smile grew teeth. I turned after every throw. Even when I knew he’d be shaking his head. Even when I could hear the loud sighs. “Colleen, remember to follow through!” The floorboards on the approach have two sets of dots. As a kid, I started out standing at the lane line. Staying behind the line is not just a rule to keep you at the same distance from the pins as everyone else. It’s also a safety issue. Anyone who has stepped beyond that line knows how slippery it is. If they’ve lived to tell the tale and try to convince you they didn’t fall down, they are lying. One inch into that slippery wax and you are on the ground admiring it at eye level. I found it beautiful. One too many times. I didn’t want to stand near the line. Too dangerous. And too much potential for embarrassment. We all laughed when a kid fell in the lane. It took me until I was ten to develop an approach. First, I used the closer set of dots. Stayed after our team had finished, but the league hadn’t yet ended, so I could practice until they opened to regular play at noon. I choreographed my moves until I found one that fit. Left foot on the second dot from the left. Hold the ball tucked under my chin, thumbs against my heart. Right foot step forward, both hands push straight out at chin level, support the ball. Left foot step forward, right hand extend the ball back behind you (don’t let go). Right foot step, release the ball, thumb aiming for the left center dot. Follow through. Now, I use the further dots. There are extra steps in my adult approach. You gather your tickets as a group, gifting them to the little seven-year-old whose eyes grow wide that a group of teenagers has just bridged the gap between the pencils and the stuffed animals. You make them feel seen. Important. You are good kids, enjoying life, bowling, games, music. Sharing joy. You come back to find me, bowling alone, enjoying life, too.
You are resilient. But not bulletproof. And somehow, I feel like that is my fault. It is my motherly duty to keep you safe and teach you how to navigate the world independently. Away from me. But this world is not safe for you. And yet I launch you into it, headed toward a cosmic debris field where I pray you are not hit by a meteor or the millions of nightmares dancing within the black holes. You are my most precious gift. So many precious gifts have been lost. Stolen. And I cry at the thought of losing you. Of anyone losing a version of you. Losing any good in the world. I want you behind the line. I don’t want you to fall down. I want you to stay upright. Safe. I need to develop a new approach. Continue to make the world safer so we can continue to enjoy this life and its delights. Celebrate more birthdays. More strikes. More spares. More gutter balls. More joy. More tears. More everything. I want to celebrate everything with you. And I intend to follow through.
Let’s laugh through life together…
The signs of the zodiac are not just about the people born into that astrological moment. Life is an easier path when we see the positive vibes from others and adopt them as our own.
Next month: “What would a Sagittarius do?”
Send your questions, curiosities, and hardest life problems directly to me at Colleen@ColleenMarkley.com. Also, call your therapist. Maybe you should get a second opinion.
Don't have a question right now but do have a comment, insight, or general epiphany?
Awesome!
Please share your thoughts using the comment box at the end of this post. I love hearing from (nearly) everyone. That includes you :-)
~ Colleen
Want more?
Read more from Colleen in “Parenting Scorpions, No Stinging Desired” featured in the 2022 Scorpio edition of Dharma Direction.
Colleen Markley is a novelist, freelance writer, and memoir instructor living in the New York City area. Colleen’s essays and humor have appeared in multiple anthologies in print and various magazines online. She was awarded the Nickie’s Prize for humor for her essay “Unflappably Calm, Occasionally Furious, Ready and Willing to Hide the Bodies,” published in Sisters! Bonded by Love and Laughter.
Named the June 2021 winner of the Erma Bombeck Writers Workshop Humor Writer of the Month, Colleen attempts to be funny every month as a regular contributor riffing on the zodiac for Dharma Direction. Her novel-in-progress, LILITH LAND, is a story about the end of the world where only the women survive. (It’s a novel, not an action plan.)
Find her at www.ColleenMarkley.com or sign up here for her newsletter and updates.
Visit Colleen on Instagram or Facebook. Or check out her reviews and what she’s reading on Goodreads.
The Reading Dingy … Hanging on every word
Make Time - Take Time - Escape Time
The Dharma Direction tribe is all about sharing good vibes and part of the way in which we do that is through our book lists—these are the ones we’ve read, want to read, or need to read.
Check out our selections here on Goodreads.
Coming Next Week … SCORPIO: Angel Edition
Regular readers may have noticed that we’re publishing out of order this month, with the Humor Edition kicking off Scorpio season. Debbie Abbott’s Angel Edition will arrive next week, then Dharma Direction will be back on schedule.
Publisher’s Note ~
Our second Bonus Edition, free sneak peek is coming this month right after Thanksgiving.
Did you get a chance to look … and listen … to the first Dharma Direction BONUS EDITION (08.29.23)? Providing audio and visual content from our contributors through video interviews, narrated articles, and photo sharing—this issue gives y’all the chance to see what’s coming next year when we introduce Dharma’s new paid tier subscription option.
REMINDER: There will always be free content on Dharma Direction. Supporting the publication through paid subscriptions will be a future option that includes exclusive access to the additional content described above.
For now, we thank you for your support whether it comes in the form of simply stopping by to read with us, or as a free subscriber … we love you all.
Until next time … #gowiththeflow
~ Debbie Abbott, publisher/editor