Author: Chrys Buckley

Chrys Buckley was born with albinism, which means she has no pigment and she’s legally blind. Chrys has bachelor’s degrees in Arts & Letters, Micro/Molecular Biology, and Biochemistry. She endured approximately ¾ of medical school before breaking free to focus on writing and disability advocacy. She’s currently in the Book Publishing graduate program at Portland State University, pursuing concentrations in Book Editing and Book Design. Chrys is the manager of the Digital and Audio departments at Ooligan Press. Her nonfiction has appeared in The Sun, Shark Reef, and Aerial. She was a finalist (twice) in MTV’s “I’m from Rolling Stone” writing contest. She has won the R.L. Gilette Scholarship and the Sophie Kerr Gift in English Literature. Her debut collection Invisible Violets: A Mixtape in Lyric Essays is forthcoming from Wandering Aengus Press. Chrys lives, works, walks, and writes in Portland.
Podcasts, Pop Culture, TV

My Unofficial Guide to (Smart, Funny, Thoughtful) Bachelor Podcasts

Chrys Buckley

The Bachelorette comes back tonight! As I mentioned last week, I’m excited for this season even though I haven’t watched in awhile (didn’t watch Peter’s season at all; it would’ve been a different story if they’d chosen MIKE). I’m excited because of the drama we know about, and being compelled by having some different types of leads, and seeing how it’s’ going to play out in quarantine, and also let’s be real because nothing else is on.

So yeah, for all those reasons, I’m psyched. For the show, and for the return of podcasts recapping the show.

(Oh and I’m going to take a side note to say that something I said last week is a bit wrong, and I couldn’t be happier. In Matt James’ season, currently filming in PA, there is a contestant who’s hard of hearing, so that makes a second person on the show, in what, eighteen years, with a disability).

Back to podcasts! I listen to a lot of Bachelor-related podcasts out there. Even more during this endless quarantine. While writing this, I may or may not but definitely do have an old episode of a Bachelor podcast playing in the background.

Broadly, I’d divide the podcasts into two categories: those hosted by people associated with the show, and those hosted by people who aren’t associated with the show, by fans. There are some fun ones hosted by people who’ve been on the show, and I’ve listened to some, (Bachelor Happy Hour, A Beautiful Podcast to Fall in Love, Almost Famous, etc) but I personally enjoy the ones by fans and commentators a lot more.

So I’m going to highlight four podcasts hosted by people who aren’t associated with the show. All of these can be found on Apple Podcasts or wherever else.

2 Black Girls, 1 Rose

I love this podcast so much. During the early days of quarantine, I heard about it from another podcast (either Here to Make Friends or Bachelor Party) and binged the whole podcast from the beginning and spent way too many hours addicted to Justine and Natasha’s commentary on the show.

One thing I love about 2 Black Girls, 1 Rose is how they incorporate so much into the podcast. Their recaps go from discussion serious topics of race and representation (and their was an episode, and I don’t remember which one because I binged them all so quickly, where they talked about disability on the show, and you know I’m here for that) to commenting on fashion.

Continue reading “My Unofficial Guide to (Smart, Funny, Thoughtful) Bachelor Podcasts” →

Blindness and Disability, Music, Writing

Creativity Goals Check-In October 11, 2020

Chrys Buckley

goals11Goals from Last Week – How Did it Go?

Writing

  • work on blog at least five days – three.
  • at least fourteen sessions of digitizing old writing – oh boy, I did six.
  • finish disability letter for the school – worked on it, didn’t finish.

Music

Lifestyle

  • sleep without the phone (a struggle you can read about here) – this will put me at 203 nights (29 weeks) in a row – yes.
  • write Morning Pages every day – oh no, just two (yesterday and today).
  • don’t look at phone until after Morning Pages – once, just today.
  • do an Artist Date – yes, two actually. As mentioned in this week’s Artist’s Way Reflections column post, I spent an hour listening to music and sorting through my clothes, and I’m counting it. I did one this morning too. I went to “The Differentialists,” a weekly meeting organized by some classmates where we go through and try to figure out medical mysteries, which is aligned with my imaginary life in Week Two of The Artist’s Way of being House. It was the most fun out of any Artist Date I’ve done in a long time.
  • clean my apartment – it’s gotten totally out of control and I have to move in less than a month so yeah – yes, finally. It was really stressing me out.

Reflections on the Week

Continue reading “Creativity Goals Check-In October 11, 2020” →

Pop Culture, TV

Better Call Saul Episode 106 “Five-O” Recap

Chrys Buckley

bcs106Wow, the Netflix description of this episode is…almost misleading. It’s all about Jimmy going to further lengths than he thought he would to help Mike. While this is technically true I suppose, it amounts to spilling a cup of coffee. And very little screen time for Jimmy.

This episode is all about Mike. After knowing him from the Breaking Bad Season Two finale onward throughout his time on that show, now in this prequel, we finally get Mike’s backstory.

Episode Summary

Teaser

It opens with Mike getting off a train in Albuquerque. Inside the train station (which is so fancy it took me quite awhile to figure out it was the train station), he meets Stacey, his daughter-in-law, who seems, well, not exactly thrilled to see him. Before leaving, Mike indicates without outright saying it that he needs to use the bathroom. He goes into the women’s room and gets a maxipad from the dispenser and then goes into the men’s room, where he reveals a bullet hole in his shoulder. He changes the dressing, using the maxipad to redress the wound.

Then Mike is at Stacey’s house, outside, playing with h is granddaughter Kaylee on the swings. Eventually, she goes inside while Mike and Stacey sit down and talk outside. She wants to know how long he’s staying. “For the duration,” he says. They talk a bit about Mattie, Mike’s son, Stacey’s husband, Kaylee’s dad, who died. Mike says he’s here now, he wants to help. He’s better than he was, he says. This is the first hint that Mike had quite the drinking problem after his son’s death.

Continue reading “Better Call Saul Episode 106 “Five-O” Recap” →

Metaphysics, Music, Writing

The Artist’s Way Reflections – Week Five: Recovering a Sense of Possibility

Chrys Buckley

whitepumpkinThis was another volatile week for me. I think it’s just a volatile time. I had a hard time sticking to things like Morning Pages, after thinking I’d turned a corner on that.

The damn pages just aren’t letting me ignore feelings that I’d much rather ignore and it’s annoying.

In this chapter, she talks about wanting to be left alone, and I’m definitely feel that to some degree, and also in these quarantine times, the need for human connection feels paramount, especially as someone who’s living the quarantine life alone.

It feels somehow that this is out of balance for me, like I’d like to work in more connections in some ways and less in others and I’d like to think and write on that to re-center as it applies to in-person, virtual, phone time and social media.

Week Five: Recovering a Sense of Possibility

Limits

One thing that really spoke to me in this section was the bit about how we’re miserly with ourselves because we’re afraid of overspending any spiritual abundance. For me, it manifests as a fear of jinxing things, a fear of getting my hopes up, a fear of what horrible thing will happen if too many good things happen.

Does anyone else feel this way?

Continue reading “The Artist’s Way Reflections – Week Five: Recovering a Sense of Possibility” →

Podcasts, Pop Culture, TV

My Origin Story with The Bachelor franchise

Chrys Buckley

It’s kind of an odd show for me. I’ve never been into reality TV all that much.

I mean sure, I watched some early seasons of The Real World back in the day, and there was a summer where the guy I lived with watched a lot of reality TV (the summer of 2006) so by proxy I saw a lot of Big Brother that summer, and Rock Star (I think that’s what it was called, where people competed to be the lead singer in a band) and some real trashy shows I only vaguely remember. I’ve seen a season or two or three of Survivor and got majorly turned off when there was a contestant with a disability, I think she had a prosthetic leg, and some other girl on the show bullied her and all these people said all these horrible disability tropes like she’s doing it for sympathy and shit like that. I was OUT.

But other than a couple other random shows here and there, none that I remember enough to even know by name, and other than singing shows, I prefer my TV scripted.

And then…enter The Bachelor.

bradandemily

Continue reading “My Origin Story with The Bachelor franchise” →

Music, Writing

Creativity Goals Check-In October 4, 2020

Chrys Buckley

Goals from Last Week – How Did it Go?

Writing

  • work on Moonchild (writing project) all seven days – only two, more on this later
  • work on blog at least five days – DONE.
  • at least seven sessions of digitizing old writing – DONE and then some, had more like THIRTEEN, more on this later too
  • work on disability letter for the school – minimal progress

goals10

Music

  • seven guitar practice sessions – did TEN, making up for last week, not quite fully caught up yet.
  • get up through song 100 of Book One of my Hal Leonard Guitar Method Complete Edition book (catch up from last week) – which means FINISHING BOOK ONE! – and move onto songs 1-4 (all very short) for the first lesson in Book Two, which focus on the Am chord – DONE. Yeah for starting Book Two!
  • seven piano practice sessions – did TWELVE, to catch up from all the missed ones last week.
  • Finish last week’s keyboard goals – catching up on Technic and Composition sections – and move forward, getting through page 61 – DONE.

Lifestyle

Reflections on the Week

Continue reading “Creativity Goals Check-In October 4, 2020” →

Pop Culture, TV

Better Call Saul Episode 105 “Alpine Shepard Boy” Recap

Chrys Buckley

bcs105This episode starts something that continues through much of Better Call Saul, and that’s Jimmy and Mike having separate storylines. Sometimes, an episode will cut back and forth between them, that’s more typical, but in this one it’s more like a relay race, with Jimmy’s world getting the bulk of the airtime before he passes the baton onto Mike.

Summary

Teaser

Unlike some others, this one doesn’t jump into a different timeline but picks up right where the last episode left off, with the five-dollar bill Chuck left on his neighbor’s driveway when he stole the newspaper. The neighbor has called the cops.

Two cops go to Chuck’s door and ask him to open up. “We know you’re there, you’re casting a shadow through the peephole.” Chuck says he’d rather not, that he has a condition, that he can’t go outside. They don’t believe him since he was just outside stealing his neighbor’s newspaper.

He starts to cite law on probable cause when one of the cops goes around to the other door and calls the other one over. They see all of Chuck’s camping stove fuel and they think he might be cooking meth (hello, Breaking Bad resonance) and go back to the front door. Chuck still refuses to open the door and says they can only come if they don’t bring any electronics. No cell phones, no flashlights and especially, especially, no tasers..

They break open his door, and go in, and taze him.

Continue reading “Better Call Saul Episode 105 “Alpine Shepard Boy” Recap” →

Music, Pop Culture, Writing

The Artist’s Way Reflections – Week Four: Recovering a Sense of Integrity

Chrys Buckley

orkilapostcard

She says we might feel volatile this week and I…feel volatile. And pissy. I suppose that’s part of the process that happens when reading and doing this book and all that comes with it, the ways that you get more real with yourself and how you feel about things, a big theme in this chapter and in the book as a whole.

I hope doing this book will eventually bear fruit, and also that this post isn’t too volatile and pissy to read. I thought of erasing so much of it (and did some) but also felt like the realness of what this process is like is important to share.

Some part of me feels lighter for having written this and being real, and I’m reminded that as stagnant and persistent as the volatility and pissiness may feel right now, they aren’t permanent and eventually will become something else. To quote House in one of my favorite episodes, (the season one finale, where he’s treating his ex’s new husband and talking to her on the roof), “Something always changes.” But for now, here we are.

Week Four: Recovering a Sense of Integrity

Honest Changes

The meat of the chapter. In length and in topic, this feels like the crux of it. And it spoke to me.

First, the part about the kriyas, that physical manifestation of big change. I’ve felt that throughout my life at big moments. I’m reminded of a time, probably in the fall of 2004 but that might be off, when I read something I wrote to my writer’s group. We met and shared weekly but this week I read something that was more difficult and that felt like spilling secrets in a way that made me feel both ashamed and flooded with relief to say it, out loud, to people.

The next day, I got sick with a cold that hung on for over a week. And I always felt the two were connected, that somehow clearing out that writing by speaking it aloud cleared something out of my body too, the tension of having held something in for so long.

More recently, anytime I’ve taken a step towards leaving medical school, like writing to a dean about it, writing to my parents about it, and then most strongly after posting about it here, I’ve gone through a bout of is “Is this covid or an emotional hangover?” because I felt so worn down.

Continue reading “The Artist’s Way Reflections – Week Four: Recovering a Sense of Integrity” →

Music, Pop Culture, TV

My Pop Culture Digest – September 2020

Chrys Buckley

Music

For music, along with sprinkling in a whole host of other albums, the ones I’m listening to over and over are largely unchanged from last month. folklore, Gaslighter, Such Pretty Forks in the Road and Petals for Armor are my mainstays.

Taylor Swift

Earlier this month, Taylor performed “betty” for the Academy of Country Music Awards ceremony. This was the song that got to me most on my first listen to folklore and has stayed one of my favorites off the album ever since, so of course I tuned in. I don’t have cable, but, there are ways around that.

Her performance was pitch-perfect, from the music to her voice to the outfit to the guitar. Here it is:

Since this was on TV and all, she had to change “Would you tell me to go fuck myself?” to “Would you tell me to go straight to hell?” and it most definitely doesn’t have the same punch as the original line. God I hope we get live concerts again before too long because I want to scream this line, the real line, along with Taylor and tens of thousands of fans. I miss live music.

I hope one day, I can play this song on guitar. I reeeeeeeally want folklore guitar and piano books!

Continue reading “My Pop Culture Digest – September 2020” →

Blindness and Disability, Music, Writing

Believe You Can – A Virtual Talent Show

Chrys Buckley

believeyoucanflyer

On October 17th, myself and several other blind and visually-impaired performers are taking to the virtual stage to showcase all kinds of talents. There will be singers and musicians and spoken word artists and even, I’m told, a clogging tutorial. I’m not even sure what clogging is, but I’m excited to find out!

For my part of the show, I’ll be reading a prose piece. I’m deciding between two (and both are ones I’ve read at other events). I just have to read both over, pick one, and edit out the swearing. I’m assuming this is a family-friendly audience, while most of my live reading spoken word type stuff has always been among adults.

The event benefits the National Federation of the Blind of Pennsylvania and is part of Meet the Blind Month, which happens yearly every October.

I’m looking forward to sharing my work, and to experiencing the varied talents of the other performers.

Here’s the flyer in link form:
Believe You Can Flyer

And here’s a link for tickets and info:
Believe You Can website

I hope to see you there!

-Chrys