https://open.spotify.com/show/5jexRQbUYQUgqvSByQUGzu?si=770234ffa9af400b
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Mork Calling Orson...

Writer's picture: Leah WelbornLeah Welborn

Come in, Spirit Guides!

Had you asked me a decade ago what I thought about “Spirit Guides” I might have nervously giggled and said something like, “not much.” But now I can see that they’ve been with me all along — they even came to me through my family’s TV when I was a little girl.


There have been stretches of time throughout my life, often spanning months and sometimes years, in which I’ve had very few pleasant interactions with other people. That was especially true of my childhood.


Like so many who grew updepressed and anxious in anabusive environment, there seemed to be no end — let alone ‘light’ there — to the tunnel in which I found myself.The flickering blue light of the TV was my hearth and my altar.


My life was dominated by what I saw on TV and how my vision of myself and my reality both fell desperately short of it.I studied how thingsshouldbe through television. I lamented not being Samantha on Bewitched(though I was probably more aligned with her mother Endora and would NEVER have gotten involved with that loathsome adman Derwood), or Laura Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie.


Really, I wanted to be anything but the depressed, sweaty little autistic girl I was.


It was around that time that I first heard of Boulder, Colorado, in the context of a friendly and bewildered alien named Mork who landed in that city (via an intergalactic egg) and lived there with a pretty journalist named Mindy.


I was captivated.


Telling Stories

A good yarn has always captivated me.

Hearing stories, telling stories…I identified as a writer before I could actually form letters (it’s true), and my first poem (inspired by a Madeline L’Engle book) was published in a children’s magazine when I was 9 (I’ve not earned as much from a single poem since, incidentally).

To paraphrase Joan Didion: from an early age, I told myself stories in order to live.


I longed for a connection to something outside of myself,but aside from a desperate attachment to my mother and my animals, there was none.


But there was always television.


Mork from Ork

Mork & Mindyis a show that I’m trepidatious to rewatch because I have such fond memories of it. What if, like so many of the shows I loved as a kid, it doesn’t hold up when watched through my jaded adult eyes?


In his breakout role, Robin Williams played Mork, the Orkan who arrived on Earth via an interplanetary egg. He first arrived in the fictional world of Happy Days (the famous episode “My Favorite Orkan”) and then spun off into his own warm and endearing sitcom, named for him and a sweet brunette.


The primary thing I remember about the show (besides the lovely aesthetic of Mindy’s apartment and Robin’s frenetic energy) was the way each episode ended.

An exterior scene of their apartment building would fade into an interior shot with Mork sitting on the couch repeating, like a mantra, “Mork calling Orson. Come in, Orson.”


Then we’d zoom quickly into his mind where Mork is decked out in his red and silver space gear, standing in a dark room, continuing his chant:“Mork calling Orson. Come in, Orson.”


A voice offstage (presumably that of Orson) would then reply to Mork, and the two would have a conversation about the lessons that Mork had learned that week. I was a rapt little autistic girl, soaking up the feel-good lessons about humanity, hoping they’d help me get along better in a world where I, too, felt like an alien.



When Stories Become Dangerous

If the chronology of Western history were to be mapped onto my life, my own personal Dark Ages would have lasted from birth until my mid-40s.


Of course, that’s an exaggeration. And of course it’s true that in Western history there were a lot of beautiful things that came out of the Dark Ages, just as beautiful things came out of the first half of my life. But I don’t think any of us particularly want to go back to either.


By the 2010s, I felt certain it wouldn’t get any better for me. I had no hope, no love for life, no motivation to even try anything…what would it matter?


My mind had grown so stuffed with negative stories that my brain had rewired itself into a gothic labyrinth of terror.Every negative thought became a self-fulfilling prophecy until I had manufactured a cage of stories around myself that I felt certain I couldn’t escape.


I’d been made captive by my own stories — captivated in yet another way. You could say I manifested doom.

By default, I’d put my guard dog ego (I call him Spike) in charge of my life and he was wreaking havoc, barking and biting and keeping joy at bay while my non-ego bits quivered in a closet, pretending not to be home.

My nervous system was dysregulated. My diet was trash. I’ve written about it extensively, so I won’t go further into it here.

Suffice it to say I had hit rock bottom some years back and had pitched a tent and decided to squat there. It was a miserable existence.

Then grace intervened in 2020 and I began the very long and arduous process of building a healthy, joyful life that I have no desire to escape. I call it “Empowering My Magical Self,” and it’s the core of everything I do now.


Calling all Angels

My loving, healthy relationship with my Spirit Guides, and thus with my highest self, is the most important thing in my life.

You might wonder if I “hear voices,” and you may worry about what those “guides” tell me to do. That’s because you’re a creature of your society and your age. I understand that the dominant culture of the West frowns on such things, and I’m not here to argue about that. I gave up on fitting in long ago.

But I will tell you that I enjoy constant internal conversation with a force of good that knows me and the world intimately and rejoices in it all. I know we’re communing when I think of a friend and she calls out of the blue with wonderful news to brighten my day. Or when the exact clip from Absolutely Fabulous shows up in my Instagram feed to gently mock my self-absorbed, self-righteous train of thought…I know that’s them.


Guided By Voices

Every morning I converse, in writing, with my guides. I open the dedicated digital journal where I keep our chats and type, “Good morning Beloveds!” and then go from there. What I’m planning to do, my energy level, things I’d like to happen, things I’d like not to happen, etc.


Then I quiet my mind as much as I can and wait for the replies to emerge — not like audible voices, but rather a deep knowing that starts to form; an analog photo in developing fluid. When the knowing comes, I start writing.


My Guides usually start by addressing me with a pet name that often surprises me. “Little Farmer” was a recent one they used when they wanted to emphasize the point that the seeds I’d planted months before were starting to bloom. Is it silly that that made me beam with pride? I don’t care if it is. I did beam and it gave me joy.


Similarly, it doesn’t bother me when people say, “Leah, that’s just part of your brain! It’s just you talking to yourself!” Why should it matter? To me, it shouldn’t. It doesn’t.


Too many people live in fear of cultivating a relationship with the divine because they don’t want to seem goofy or naive. Or they think “prayer” has gotta sound like “Big Daddy in the sky, Thou art so great and i art so loathsome please forgive me and also let my ball club win. Amen,” kinda thing.


I’m here to tell you it doesn’t.


Orson’s Reply

When I asked my Guides last month for a way to explain our relationship to skeptical people, or to people who are simply curious, they instantly said, “Mork calling Orson,” and I laughed out loud at the simplicity.


Of course, a treasured memory from my loathsome childhood would hold the key.

Now I’m 50, almost 51, and as fate would have it, I live about an hour south of Boulder, Colorado.


As I write, I have an image of myself in my mind. It’s forty-odd years ago in Texas and I’m a little child leaning toward the light of the console TV, falling in love with the open, earnest face of Robin Williams and wishing that I had my own Orson to talk to.


Offstage, a disembodied voice whispers, “Oh but you do, Little Girl, you do.”

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