EPisode 57 - Take What You Will

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  Welcome back to the podcast. However you might have found your way back here. Or found this podcast at all. I know how a few people found this show, and given how small this audience is, that’s not an insignificant segment of said audience. All things are relative, of course. Or at least, then can be if you look at them in the right light. 

But look, you know how it goes. I wasn’t a stranger in the podcasting space when 

I started this show. I hadn’t made myself known, per say, but I was there. I was an active member of the community. Less so now. For reasons. 

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I shouldn’t be so secretive about this part. There’s no reason for it to be a secret. It’s the only part of my larger life story that I’m actually okay with being more public about. It’s the one part of my life that I’m not ashamed about per say. Which is great because you’ve probably already figured it out. 

But I’m not great with people. At all. It’s not that I hate humanity. I mean… No, I don’t hate people. There are parts of humanity, some tendencies or common mistakes we keep making that I do have a problem with. But at the same time, on the whole, I do like people. As a concept, an observable phenomenon I can keep my distance from. I admire them from afar, I would say, as if I am not one of them. As if that is not a part of the group that I should be in, that I should count myself among, and that I shouldn’t isolate myself from lest I suffer the consequences of that form of deprivation. 

It’s not good for humans to be alone for too long. We need some solitude sometimes. Some of us need it more than others. But at the same time, every single person has their limit with such a thing. Every single person has a breaking point, and if you pull away too hard and too long you’re guaranteed to hit it. 

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Of course, you aren’t going to realize when you hit it. It’s not a sudden drop into that destabilized state. It’s more a slow and cautious deep down past the point of no return. It’s so slow and initially subtle that you hardly realize it’s happening until you are already there, until you look around and see certain ghosts from the past. Certain memories that you are usually so easily able to avoid and run from are suddenly there with you. It’s only when you recoil from the shock that you realize you’ve come a long way and still have further to go. That sudden movement reorients you. It forces you to assess and see all that bad news around you. It forces you to see your own hurt and how it’s just been festering for the past twenty-some years. 

Or is that just me? Am I the only one who–in the last couple of months or a year or so–has seen the ghosts of the past come back to haunt me? It’s only in the silence of my home that I hear their rattling chains and ethereal complaints. The charges they levy at me, indictments that will never see the light of day, are now echoing in my head.

I used to use podcasts to keep them away, to tell you the truth. And that worked well for a while. And then it didn’t. The specifics of that don’t matter, but what does matter is that I was suddenly left to reevaluate my relationship with podcasts when they didn’t work as a bandaid for a deep, festering wound anymore. I had to take a look at this one facet of my life in a new light. 

Or really, the light that was always there. And I was finally forced to admit as such right then. Or I could have. But I didn't do it. I’m very good at putting off that sort of thing. 

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I took some time the past week to write out every episode of this unnamed show that I could remember. None of the plots were fully, fully complete. I couldn’t give you an in depth description of every little thing complete with names or fully accurate descriptions. I mean, come on, that can’t surprise you, right? I had to give Jade a completely different name than the one she had on the show. My memory is shoddy. But that’s also not the point. 

I really shouldn’t lose sight of the point, MJ. Come on, you got this. 

I did that because I really wanted to be sure that I was giving you the right information here. That when I say that Jade always discovered or stumbled into the plot that I wasn’t misleading you in some way. She really always just found someone who needed her. She always walked into something larger than herself and decided to help. Or if there was an episode that didn’t go that route, I don’t remember it. It might have just been a one off or two. And so, I’m just not inclined to think those deviations matter. They are exceptions to the rule and not the rule themselves. 

I just think we need to think about the rules here. For our intents and purposes that’s all that should matter. 

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But it also shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that I’m not an expert on children’s media. I don’t have any degrees or much experience digging into these issues beyond the fact that I was once a child that watched these shows and found myself shaped by them in ways I might not fully understand. It’s a noteworthy perspective, to be sure, but it’s not a very informed one. It’s not a very technically skilled one, I should say. 

But from that very limited understanding or exposure, I am willing to draw some conclusions. Or assumptions, you might call them. I have some opinions about children’s media that I think make sense but also might not in the grand scheme of things.

I don’t know. It just seems to me that having a young child discover something, some task to do, some act to undertake just makes sense for children’s media. It’s an “age appropriate” sort of adventure. There’s no need to start any sort of deep introspection or existential crisis when you’re still learning who you are and what the whole world is like. At that age, you aren’t standing on steady ground just yet. You aren’t ready to push yourself. You don’t have the ground to adjust or to reposition yourself on. Nothing in that framework has been set yet. At that stage in your life, you’re trying to do just that. You’re trying to build your understanding of yourself and the world. And that’s a very different task. 

In some ways, discovering an issue is a way to get the data that you might use to lay out your foundation. It’s a part of learning about the world which is what you need to do. Jade’s data points were just… more varied, I could call them. “Distinct” might be another world. But it was probably okay. Or right. Or… necessary. It’s just a part of life, I suppose. 

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It’s hard for me to be alone and hard for me to be with other people. I can accept that now. It wasn’t something about myself that I wanted to accept. But it was a fact that seemed to always linger at the corner of my existence until I couldn’t really deny it anymore. It was just too obvious. 

So now I know this about myself, and I can’t help but wonder what it is I’m supposed to do with that information. It might seem just as obvious, but once again, I’m putting that realization off. 

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Let’s take one of the episodes I do remember and go off of that for Jade’s story. In this episode, she’s stepped foot into a village not unlike what you would come up with in a Dungeons & Dragons type setting. You know, thE so-called stereotypical fantasy setting that we’d also call a Medieval village sort of fare. The roads are likely cobblestone or dirt. The buildings are modest. Maybe there’s thatch on the roof. There are some signs in that old timey text. You know the one. I think. 

Either way, Jade appeared just on the outside of that town. On the edge of a road worn down by wagon wheels and horse hooves. No one is around her. No one is there to see her, though from what I remember no one ever sees her regardless. They are too absorbed in their own tasks or in their own worlds to see her. Or maybe she is just out of their line of sight because she is so small. Either way, they don’t really see her, and she keeps slipping around them as if they were no hindrance at all. And to be fair to her, they aren’t. 

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I’ve said before that podcasts let me hide from myself, right? Or rather, making podcasts has always included twisting the reality around me a bit. My real life always seeps in. Or parts of it do. I can keep a fair bit of it out. I can keep the important bits of my life out, but there are parts of me that seep into inconvenient places. There are scraps of me waiting for you to find them. And that bothers me. Because I know who has been finding them. Those few people who came to this podcast with very specific reasons different from everyone else’s. I know they have started pouring through my every word. I know what they hope to find. But what I don’t know is how I feel about it. Maybe that’s because I don’t know what the outcome will be. 

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In this specific episode, Jade was walking into the town square completely unbothered by anything around her. And there are a lot of people and things around her the closer she gets into the center of town. Like a lot. The screen was very busy with people and horses moving about. And the animation was incredibly detailed too, which added more visuals and things to look at. It was even more things for the eye to take in, and even without those additional pieces–from what I can remember–it still would have been overwhelming. It was to me. Maybe to other watchers of the show, but it didn’t seem to phase Jade much at all. She just kept walking. That was it. 

And maybe Jade didn’t see cause for concern. Maybe she was just good at living in the moment, a moment defined by so much amusement and potential joy lurking in fruit stands and hanging slabs of butchered meat. It was an open market sort of situation with all the wares and activities therein. There are people around her who have to buy, sell, barter, or trade coin, grocery items, fabric and other small wares, whatever it is on their to-do list and whatever it was they needed to continue on with their lives and days, but despite how busy and otherwise distracted they are, they keep out of her way. They let her walk as if she had some sort of destination in mind, and maybe she did. Maybe. 

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Do we need to talk about her motivations? Or well, I guess we tried to. I mentioned that there was no way of knowing them, but if that conclusion was unsatisfactory to you, well, it was to me too. I’m not saying you should feel bad if you don’t feel that way. But there’s something natural about that reaction, right? We should want to know more. It’s part of trying to understand the story as it has been put to us. It’s part of bonding with the characters in the same way we bond the people around us. It’s a part of connection, a part of living. 

And stories can replicate a lot about life and living, but it’s never a perfect mirror image, is it? It’s never the exact same thing, though we may want it to be. We may act like it is, instinctually or not. It’s hard to say exactly what is going on in our heads, but it is something. 

And in this case, that “something” is a need to understand, even when it seems like there is nothing to understand. 

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Okay, but there is something… Well, understanding the desires and motives of those around us can be seen as a survival thing. It’s important for us to understand these things simply so we can gauge whether or not we can trust someone. Are we in the way of their ultimate goal? Are we allies of some sort? Those aren’t the end all, be all questions. There are some more pressing matters than others. But if this fundamental question doesn’t land in our favor, we would want to know about that. That’s data that can drastically change our later choices. Or even our current ones if we are the sort who try to anticipate and minimize problems. Regardless, if someone is willing or invested in your failure, it’s something you would want to know about, right? Even if it was an indirect sort of desire. And while that’s not the sort of thing a child could think to want, it’s still something we want to verify. For our own sake. 

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But as a fictional character, Jade’s desires are somewhat irrelevant to us, right? I mean, she’s not real. There’s nothing she can do to us. There’s nothing she could do that could have any direct effect over us. Well, unless you want to have a conversation about influence. That sort of thing. What did we learn about the world if we watched her show as kids? I’ve raised that issue before. Or part of it. 

Yes, Jade wanders off, and no one immediately notices her. Yes, she doesn’t seem to have anyone who cares about her except the uncle who shows up at the end of every episode. But honestly, there’s a lot of kids who live and suffer by that disinterest. They’d need some sort of comfort, right? Maybe Jade was that comfort. Maybe she was seeking out her own, a place in the world that actually had a small spot reserved for her. Which is something we all want, but it’s not the sort of want you become aware of unless you’ve known what it is to not have that sort of thing. It’s a desire that makes itself known only when it is unsatiated, after all. You aren’t even vaguely aware of it otherwise. 

So is that what Jade was after? And is that why she seeks to help everyone who needs her? Is it just her attempt at bartering a space for herself?

It’s an odd impulse for a child to have, but adults have it all the time. So many of us do whatever we can to please those around us just to be more agreeable, just to be the sort of person everyone wants to be around. It’s for acceptance, because on some deep level we don’t accept ourselves. We don’t like ourselves, and we think there’s something inevitable about other people sharing in that opinion. So we have to sweetened the offer somehow. But it never feels like enough, does it? 

We always feel like we need to do more. We always pressure ourselves to do more. We’re just so familiar with the ledger of our lives and know how difficult it is to balance. We know the debts and drawbacks that come with our lives. To everyone else those are secrets. But there are some that are… Well, they aren’t even secrets. Or at least not in my mind. 

Secrets are something that can be guessed or they can be the fodder for a rumor or two. It sucks, but that is just the way it is. That’s what a secret can become. It’s something that you think you have a hold over, but it slips through your fingers in ways you can’t control or fully anticipate. 

But there are things that no one could even guess. And in them, there is an unexpected power, a protection that comes from a story that seems so unfathomable that no one will entertain the thought. 

Not that I fully know what that is, of course. Or at least, I won’t admit it. 

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In this episode, Jade continues to wander down the path of that open air market. It’s normally a street, though, from what I can remember, but the open air market just inserted itself into that space on that day. Like, it’s the sort of place that can be packed up if the weather is bad. Or at night, the streets can be kept clear for anyone who might find themselves wandering about or on some sort of journey to some unknown place. 

To Jade, regardless of those stalls being set up, that remains a road, a path that she walks her journey to some unknown or immediately unrecognizable location. It is some place for her to be as she continues forward. She looks around, but she doesn’t do it with wonder or with a targeted sense of purpose. Her gaze is somewhere in between, something more like just existing, though that state of being is hard to describe. It also takes away her agency, I think. That she’s just there somehow, she’s just skating along and going through the motions in one way or another. But as she does that, her eyes lock onto something that’s ahead. A woman mixing together some bottles. Or the contents, if you want to be technical. 

One was a pale brown liquid and the other was a pale, nearly clear substance, still a liquid but thicker. You could see it clearly in the two bottles the woman held in her hands, clear glass so she could see what she was doing. 

And that transparency was good in some ways. Or one might suspect. But it had its limitations. There are contexts in which it is better to be obscured to have other’s not know what a jar or bottle holds, to mask the truth or whatever it is. Whatever you mean it to be. 

But Jade doesn’t really know that. She doesn’t know the virtues or drawbacks of staring at the older woman’s work. In fact, the bones of her hands and knuckles seem to lead Jade’s small eyes to the work in front of her. That is, until the secrets were tucked away when the contents of one poured into a green bottle whose shape was curved but less sleek than the others. It was more… ordinary, I would say. It was more basic, more… innocuous? 

Regardless of what you would describe it as, said green bottle was then handed to another woman, one who was a little younger than the woman who had been working behind the table The older woman handed the bottle off. And when she did so, their hands brush against each other as the exchange happened. 

And that doesn’t really mean anything, per say. That’s just a part of being careful. Of making sure that it was never completely unhanded at any point in time. It could never be unintended. It could never be left to fall. 

The younger woman–though she was not young herself–took the bottle in both hands after that. She took the bottle and handled it like it was something sacred. And maybe to her, it was. It was hard to say. Her face remained just as blank as Jade’s until she turned her head and saw the young girl. Until she saw Jade.

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I shouldn’t have said no one will entertain the thought. That’s just impossible. There’s always someone. Far too many someones are willing to wander down paths of no return. I should know. Or rather, I know you are here. 

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Aishi Online is a production of Miscellany Media Studios. It is written, produced, performed, and edited by MJ Bailey with music from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. If you like the show, please leave a review, tell a friend, or post about it on some mysterious online forum. You do you.