Many Old Nights- A Poem

I had a dream we were sitting in a kitchen

It was the middle of the night and we were talking

About old times, different times

The sound of the past in a remembrance sigh

And I said so many things, even commenting on the weather,

Avoiding only the painful sliver and simple truth that I was still in love with you.

You offered me a coffee

I don’t really drink it, but I said yes

Because that’s the strange thing about moments like that

It’s less about what you’re doing

Than who you share the moment with

It was pitch black, a cave in a cup, so unlike your hair that always

Shimmered gold

A yellow brick road, braids instead of bricks,

And the light that shined down matched the light in your eyes

As we sat and just lived

Just for a little while.

I asked how your children were

You said they were fine, they were thriving,

And that made me smile because

I never thought I was the type to be a father

But if I met the right someone then I might

I don’t know

For someone like you, I would try.

What was said after that, I’m not entirely sure.

I remember the stonework of the floors

The way the lamplight made bits of the wall glow

A strange bronze, a copper,

The mind’s half-remembered memory of what walls might look like.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it all ended then

If a tired mind thought perhaps

It would be better not to prolong such a tragic and

Lovelorn Pandora’s lost box.

In a real life now distant and long ago

We’d never needed to talk to fill any of our time

Your eyes always said enough and even now I hope

So did mine.

But no,

No I worry that isn’t the case at all

Not even if it was better and easier

And we were both happier that way.

Instead, I find it likely in that same old tragic sense

That in the dream, my dream with her,

My time came to tell her just once

With full intent and empty commitment

That I loved her

“Hello, I love you.”

“Hello, I still love you.”

“Just so you know, this cannot change.”

But I fear more than anything that I know myself

Every flaw that resides within me

And I think, sitting at your kitchen table

In the quiet

In the night

The time came for me to say any number of things

Words that have echoed and been ceaselessly rehearsed

Only to find that instead I simply stared

At her, perhaps at my coffee,

Watching every odd thing that might distract me

The way the liquid rolled in rings always pocketed

And as the dream faded into night

As a kitchen light became quiet thoughts and

Ordinary eccentricities

I watched her vanish,

The spark in her eyes, the slight smile drifting

Into mist, into a fog, into the past

And I woke up in the present, forgotten, unopened,

Set aside by old choices I hadn’t realized I’d made

And I wondered if she was happy

Before wondering just once

If I’ll ever truly forget what it’s like

To have something to say, to mean with all your heart

With everything you are

And say nothing.

Homebuilder- A Poem

I watched you build a house

I thought

Perhaps it wasn’t lasting

As natural disasters happen

Almost all the time.

And given enough of that time, I thought

The house that had been built

Would go

It would vanish

You and I would blink

In time

And we would find

That there lay an empty plot of land

And that

And us

Was all that was left

And I would look at you and say

Let’s build something special

And you would answer,

Let’s plant one hundred trees

And in one hundred years

We’ll still be watching them sway.

But there never was a ground-clearing

Disaster

And we both knew far more about

Watching trees

And admiring their beauty

Than we ever did planting them

And in that time, that passing time,

I watched you build

A separate house on purchased land

And every year I saw levels added

In stone and concrete

And bits of old carved wood.

And after spending my life now

Waiting

Watching

On the lookout for the phoenix

And the flame

I found myself stood in a prairie

A plot

That small spot of nothing

And no seeds

Let alone trees

And I watched you step out

Onto the porch

In the night

Holding your life in a blanket and cloth

And I trailed my hands through

Towering grass and the truth

That I’d spent my waning time waiting

Alive but never seeing

That you were never building a house

You had already built a life.

Q&A: The Way Things Go

With the release of my latest book, and my second collection of poetry, available here, I thought it would be fun to do a little Q&A in honor of the project getting put out in the world. Thankfully, you all came through and I hope the answers are satisfactory. This entire project has been one hell of a journey and I’m glad it’s here. Art is an intensely therapeutic thing, and in many ways this one in particular feels like setting free the saddest part of me, as if it had been a bird trapped in cage.

Thank you all for your support. I appreciate it more than you’ll ever know.

Always,

Luke

What was your inspiration for your book?

When it comes to poetry, the inspirations are always in constant and evolutionary flux. Some poems are caught in a moment like a butterfly in a child’s net, others are the recognition of something odd, written down in a little notebook as a single line to be remembered and then explored at a later date. Since the one thing that is unavoidably true is that I wrote this collection, it’s very me. So the inspirations are existential explorations of art, life, and the pain of falling in and out of love. They’re very human inspirations, I suppose. Very ordinary. But my hope is that they are enjoyable just the same.

How did the concept of the cover art come about? I certainly feel a statement made about its contents with this one featuring a drawing of yourself on the cover.

There is a deliberate frankness to this collection that I think is reflected in the cover art. Though my work in the poetic field has always been on the nose and deliberate, there is a sense of openness and honesty to almost every single one of these poems that I think is a bit of a departure for me. Instead of cloaking myself in the safety of metaphor, I wanted to feel everything I was going through so that I might finally let it go. The cover is a reflection of that. When in conversation with my artist, the immensely talented Bree Reetz, I had an idea in mind: A memory of the past that I needed to let go, a reflection of what wasn’t there any longer. And what was born was the finished product you see now, a poet who (for a brief moment) learned the lesson that sometimes there isn’t anything in the window.

Sometimes there’s no one there.

What kind of timespan do these poems cover? New? Old? Ancient? Fresh out of the womb?

Unlike my last book of poetry, which was very much a collection of my life as a poet up to that point and a gathered together bit of decades-old writing, this book is very current. It is a reflection of how far I’ve come and how far I’ve yet to go. Written predominantly over the last year, I hope that they represent a new side to my work, an embracing of openness, that I think is important not just in art but also in ourselves.

How did you organize the pieces in this collection? Just by what felt right, chronologically by when they were written, or something else? Was it difficult to settle on?

For the most part, much of the collection is chronological and a reflection of my mindset at the time of the book’s writing. We are all, in many ways, just stories that haven’t ended yet. This story is mine, and so I hope the reader will see some progression as I worked and wrote through some of the hardest months of my life. There are recognizable arcs in all things, all you have to do is look for them.

This is clearly going to be some personal poetry. How did you select poems for this collection, and otherwise leave them out of others, such as your first poetry book for example?

Generally speaking, especially with poems, I tend to try to write between 150 to 200 pages of work and then cut them down so that I’m able to weed out any that I’m not feeling especially bullish about. This book was a little different in that I didn’t cut nearly as many as I have in the past, because I wanted to keep the tone of the expression intact. While this might mean there are some that are a little too introspective and personal for the reader to fully connect with, I hope everyone is able to appreciate what I was going for in leaving less on the cutting room floor than I have in the past.

What kind of tones should we expect? Is it all devastatingly depressive or are there happy or upbeat poems as well?

That’s the weird thing about poetry, isn’t it? It really does depend entirely on which poem you happen to be reading. I know I’m not the most cheery of writers (this has been pointed out to me a time or two before), so I’m sure no one will be surprised that the contents are a bit somber. But I had moments in writing the book that I think might surprise some folks, as I dabbled here and there in a little more oddity, dark humor, and wistfulness than I have in the past. I like to think that might be a reflection of artistic growth, but then again maybe it’s little more than an obvious sign of a fracturing and uncertain artist. That, I suppose, will be up to the reader to decide.

Who hurt you enough to inspire these poems? Can we harass them if we figure it out?

I think that’s better left alone. The people that are reflected in these poems are less a full picture and more a reflection of a moment in time, as I came to terms with the fact that I had to let go of the memory of them just as a ship must release an anchor that is causing it to sink. In the end, these poems aren’t people, they are just poems and words on a page.

How do your experiences writing poetry, short stories, and novels compare?

There is a deep relief that comes with writing poetry that isn’t necessarily shared by the short story and novel writing I tend to do, or at least not in the same form. While in novels, and even short stories, I’m able to really poke and dig at some themes, exploring them through spiraling lives and emotions, world-building and dialogue, my poetry is and will always be a bit more of what I guess you might call the release of a long-held breath. An instant of art reflected in the instant of creation. While the short stories and novels are explorations of something I find I enjoy exploring, my poetry is much more an act of saying something I deeply need to say.

What are your thoughts on where poetry is at in the greater literature space, and with today's consumers?

To be honest, I’m very much detached from the current trends in poetry and its creation. I read a fair number of poets from time to time, but for the most part they lived more than a couple decades in the past. I don’t think I’ve read much of anyone more current than Mary Oliver in the last year or two, and it has been a hot minute since she was in her hayday. I can’t say I particularly care for the rise of Instagram poets and their heights of literary greatness that come with writing little more than two to three lines of navel-gazing simplicities, but I suppose even that is enjoyed by someone. There are great poets out there, there always will be, but as with all things I will always be a little bit annoyed at what it is that takes up the majority of our bandwidth and is reflected in popular culture.

Does the agonizing march of time ever stop?

Yes. But when it does, we’ll realize that we wish it would go on a little while longer anyway.

What do you hope people take away from this book?

That art matters. That resilience doesn’t always look the way you think it might. That it is okay to feel hurt by the things that hurt you. That it is better to let go of something that is gone than it is to hold onto something that was never really there. And that life is hard and it’s okay to feel like you just can’t do it all anymore, but, if you do keep going anyway, there are more than enough things in the world to make the trial feel like it’s worth it- if you let them.

Let People Hate Things

Before we get started, I just want to add a disclaimer that this is about art. I’m not going to get back in the weeds of an old Facebook post in which I once said (in a rather basic way) that people should like what they like without a sense of “Guilty Pleasure”. Just own your appreciation for what you find pleasant, I said, do your thing. It took, I believe, two comments and around fifteen minutes for someone to say “UNLESS IT’S CHILD PORN.” To which I should’ve said, “Quite right, you fucking dildo. At what point did you think that’s what we were talking about here, when my lead-in was saying that Britney Spears actually had some good songs?”

But I didn’t, as I have tact. Instead I just said something along the lines of “Well obviously. Maybe read the assignment next time.” Shockingly enough, they don’t really talk to me anymore. I can’t fathom the insights I’m missing out on these days.

But as that serves as a rather fantastic jumping-off point, let’s just start here. I have always and will always be a strong proponent of art being a wholly subjective experience. Whether that art is read, watched, or listened to, we bring so much of ourselves to the proceedings that it seems to me to be a rather preposterous exercise to describe it as anything else. Sure, the art itself exists as its own entity, a creature that was created by a creator with a very individual identity and soul, but once that art is released upon the world, then it becomes a part of that world and is then experienced by all manner of people who, if we’re being honest, rarely give a damn about the how or why it actually came to be (on the basest of creative levels). People will see what is in front of them, and they’ll internalize it so they can understand it, and that understanding of that art will inevitably be reflective of their understanding of most everything else. Which is to say: Flawed, limited, and, in all likelihood, a little self-important.

That might sound pithy, but it’s genuinely not intended to be. I just think people are limited in their objectivity, usually mistaking their own personal quirks and grievances for said-objectivity, and it’s rather hilarious to act like they’re not. Especially in the case of art and one’s enjoyment of it.

Given this now thoroughly-established context, I’d like to launch an aggressive broadside against one of my absolute least favorite dialogues in modern times. It is seen in the Twitterverse, blogs, forums, and any group that was spawned over the past five to seven years, usually said with the tone of a holier-than-thou churchgoer at yet another disappointing baked goods sale. Those words? “Let people like things.” That’s it. And, I’ll admit, while they might appear to be fairly anodyne, I assure you they are highly annoying. They’re like someone stabbing you in the eye with a very tiny tomato. And if you don’t believe me, well too damn bad, because we’ve already established the concept of subjectivity and what a bummer for you, you’ve wound up in a world of mine.

Let people like things. Keeping this within the world of movies, books, and music, I don’t actually have a problem with the statement as it is. It reeks of pretense, sure, but other than that it’s not aggressive in any particular way. There’s no use of profanity, no slurs, no discernible malice. But what there is, is an avalanche of implication. What is that implication? Well, suffice it to say that if we are talking about a movie and one person says to the other that they don’t like a movie, and the other’s reaction is to say “Let people like things!”, that is a problem. It’s a dialectic problem. It’s a communication problem. And it’s really fucking annoying.

Because it insinuates 1. That talking about art and personal preference is only societally acceptable if you are in agreement; which, for the record, takes all the fun out of talking about art. And 2. That the very expression of a negative opinion in regards to said art could somehow strip away the enjoyment of it that might’ve been felt by others. The first point should be viscerally appalling to anyone who’s ever had an independent thought in their life. And the second point should be annoying to anyone who doesn’t find their opinions on the things they enjoy to be so manifestly fragile that the very notion of someone saying their artistically-subjective viewpoint is wrong could strip away the enjoyment they claim to have experienced.

It is at this point I will add an addendum. A notation. NOTATION ADDENDUM: As someone who was once an insecure child, then an insecure teenager, then, at times, an insecure adult, I understand that it can be frustrating to find out that the thing you like is not enjoyed by everyone else. Indeed, the thing you like might be genuinely hated. It can be a bummer to feel like that thing you thought you and another might bond over will now most definitely not be bonded over. I want you to know that this is okay. But the simple fact of the matter is, since everyone is bringing their own selves to the artistic experience, no one is seeing the same movie, or hearing the same song, or reading the same book that you are. They’re experiencing their version of it, just as you’ve experienced yours, and those two versions of the same thing will often fail to align. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

So yes. People will, inevitably, like what they like. They only become annoying when either they insist you like it too or demand your silence, lest it lessen or poison their enjoyment.

In a social sense, this is stupid as it cripples the chance for a good conversation about what we like and what we don’t. In a character sense, it’s juvenile as it says quite loudly that your likes and dislikes are still mired in the high schoolerian concept of “I must be validated or else I’m sad.” And in an artistic sense, it’s infantile. There’s nothing more petulant, more insipid, than living in a world in which whether or not someone else enjoys your artistic quirk validates or invalidates it. It would be much easier, and save everyone else a lot of time, if you were to simply hold up a sign or banner that read “Please don’t express opinions. I’m not equipped to handle them.”

Now at this point, a caveat, an aside! ASIDE CAVEAT: I understand that, sometimes, people just like to say they like things without the potential of someone else saying their thing is stupid. I get that. I think it’s far more fun to find out who someone is by listening to them talk about the things they love, but I understand why there are more than a few people in the world for whom the conversation generally ends at “Well. I liked it.”…and that’s about it. There’s nothing wrong with that, “Less is more!” as they say, but it is a bit boring and you still need to be prepared for someone to say “Well I didn’t.” (While trying to decide how to handle this crushing realization). So this caveat is all to say that the only way you’ll ever truly avoid anyone’s dissenting opinions is to not openly state any of your own. And honestly, what fucking fun is there in that?

I mean this with all the sincerity I can muster, despite the sarcastic and pedantic nature of this dialogue: I’ve learned more about people from our long and rambling conversations (and arguments) about art than I have about almost anything else. Because, spoiler alert, most people find that it’s hard to talk about themselves, unless of course they’re the sort of insufferable idiot who thinks they’re endlessly fascinating. But if you ask what people like, they’ll tell you and they’ll often tell you why. And if you ask what people hate, they’ll do the very same thing (probably with a bit more gusto). It doesn’t have to be adversarial, although those conversations are fun; it can simply be a conversation in which you chat with someone over an artistic opinion that you’re both in stark disagreement over. You’ll learn a lot about strangers. And you’ll learn a lot about friends.

If you ask someone what they like or dislike, they’ll tell you who they are. More than anything, they’ll tell you if they’re interesting and have something of value to say. I’ve listened to a friend defend Marvel movies (a cinematic endeavor I truly have no time for) and come away with a far deeper appreciation for that friend, not because of the movie they’re describing but the person they wound up telling me they were. By the same token, I’ve listened to a person talk about the very same Marvelous topic (and opinion) with such self-importance, such fragility and genuine emptiness, that I never really wanted to listen to them again. (Sidenote: I caved and gave them another chance, and they were even worse in a myriad of holier-than-thou ways).

And who would I be if I didn’t mention the time I found out I was in a car with an anti-Semite, due to their thoughts on Schindler’s List? The social utility is without end!

People will always tell you who they are if you listen, and you’ll never be able to listen to anything if no one is speaking. Talking about what you love helps spur that conversation onward. Talking what you hate propels the conversational boat just as well. And the truth is? With the right company, either one is just as much fun as the other. So then let’s try to end this on a positive note, why don’t we? On the topic of Art, people will always like and dislike things. They might do so with deep thought and deeper understanding or it might be more of a knee-jerk reflection of who they are, but it will be there because it’s them. And it is far more fulfilling and far less limiting to talk about both rather than begging for the societal silence of half of who a person happens to be.

If you want to exist in a world where people are comfortable talking about what they like, you have to be comfortable existing in one in which they talk about all that they don’t. Because, I hate to break it to you, people dislike a lot of things and life is far too short for pretense. So like things! Hate things! Feel absolutely fucking ambivalent! Just be prepared to tell people why, if they happen to ask. Because the why is so much more interesting than the what, and it always will be. And you wouldn’t believe the friends you might make if you have the confidence to be yourself and talk about all the things that shaped you and everything that (thankfully) did not.

And if you don’t want that space for disagreement to exist, that big old world outside of yourself? Well. Then you’re not looking for individual complexity. You’re not looking for depth. You’re living your life yearning for either the high school clique you wish you’d never left or the one you were never able to join. Good luck with real life, fellow human. Your spine and opinions have the load-bearing strength of a stick man, and you haven’t even been drawn on one of the heavier pieces of paper.

Let me know how it all works out for you. Although I’m sure you won’t want to hear my thoughts on the matter.

The Old King of Nob Hill

Were you to take a walk-about through Portland there’s no shortage of things you’d see, referring obliquely to all things good and bad. You’d see an endless variety of boutique shops that nobody but the wealthiest could actually afford to visit, just as you’d find little dive bars and cafes that are as numerous as the crows in the sky. There are bookstores, dogs, trees, lichen and moss covered concrete, and all the people of Portland, those who have homes and those who don’t. There’s no shortage of those struggling out here, and while some are drug addicts who (for example) might throw gasoline on unsuspecting passersby, most are just folks whose life just didn’t quite work out. Whether that’s due to health maladies undiagnosed or those very same maladies that had been diagnosed while the patient in question didn’t have the money for care or medication, it doesn’t take long to understand that everyone has a story.

That’s an easy thing to forget, I think. When you become so accustomed to seeing human beings as something to be avoided, dodged on the side of the road like some odd bit of refuse or a believer peddling books of Christ, you miss the bits of truth that hover in the air all around us: That there are good people here. And it never costs anything to be kind and treat someone as the human being they are and have always been.

One of these people is a man named Franc, a gentleman from Germany who currently lives up and down Burnside, though you might miss him as his preferred cubby is often swept by Portland Police in an act of clearing the streets for the city’s elite. This truth is one that you’d never guess bothered the man, as he’ll only ever seem to ruefully smile and state that he knows he’s not the most well-dressed individual anymore, and he’ll say that he’ll get his spot back eventually.

As of this writing, there are many mysteries that surround Franc. I know that he used to work a corporate job, that he used to be married, that he used to have an apartment and a dog and a family. I know that even though he’s probably only in his early sixties, he needs a walker due to the neuropathy that makes it increasingly hard for him to get around; something you’d never guess based on his tenacity and willingness to walk as far as he needs to get to where he’s going. And I know that the first time I ever met him, he walked slowly into my liquor store and I was told by a misguided colleague to follow him because he looked like he might steal something.

He didn’t. Instead, he and I wound up talking about Negronis and Anthony Bourdain, the perils of mental health and how its cost can sometimes catch us all off guard, and for twenty minutes we stood standing in a liquor aisle, talking about life and the things that keep us going on the bad days. In the weeks and months that followed, he became a constant staple that I’d always notice and always stop to visit with when afforded the opportunity. Sometimes he’ll tell me about his friends, or about the ex-wife who sees so much more joy in him now than she ever did before. Sometimes he’ll ask about my puppy or my job, and he’ll make sure to check in on me and that I’m doing alright. And so many times we’ll simply talk about the weather, and how something as simple as a blue sky can make a day worth living.

Last night, I saw my friend Franc for the second time this week. He came in for his standard purchase, a little $1.50 shot bottle of Legacy Canadian whiskey, but he said he didn’t really need one, he just wanted to come by and say hello and share something with me, if it didn’t make me too uncomfortable. And there, on one of the colder nights we’ve had this winter and at the end of a cold week, he referenced his visit earlier in the week and told a story about how he’d so enjoyed our conversation that when he left the store to return to his cubby, he wasn't bothered that it had been claimed by another man without a home. He said that it troubled him initially, that he would’ve made it back in time if he hadn’t been so chatty, but then he smiled. Bundled up in his hoodie and blue parka, he said that as he walked down Burnside looking for a new place to stay, the one thing he knew for certain was that he’d so enjoyed our conversation that it made it all worth it, that it was a sacrifice he’d make every time, and that I had a beautiful smile and it meant so much to him that I always stopped to say hello.

He said that there are so many people who never acknowledge him, and that so many times they make him feel as if he’s already gone.

Franc is a good man and he told me once how his ex-wife has crowned him The King of Nob Hill, because everyone who’s ever given him a chance has seen the kindness in him, and I can’t really think of a more fitting title. I have no interest in people of power, or wealth, or glory. But show me someone who, despite the hand they’ve been dealt in life, is still beaming and being a positive force in the lives of others? What exactly is the purpose of living if not that? What else could possibly be the point of being alive?

Before he left, we agreed that the next time I’m out and about without a fear of being late to work we’ll find a place to sit down and have a beer and some good food. We’ll talk about life and our path through it, so I can finally get to know my friend a little bit more. He beamed at that and said he couldn’t wait, hoping that I’d bring Alice along if the timing was right. And then he smiled once again, just before he wandered out the doors and into the cold Portland night, and said “I love you, man.”

And then we shook hands and he was gone.

But after the hell that has been the last few weeks, those words and that happiness stuck with me more than anything else has. He’s a good man, The King of Nob Hill. He radiates kindness and resilience. So if you ever see him, an older gentleman with a graying beard and long brown hair as he makes his way through the city with his walker and a heavy blue coat, please say hello. Smile. Give him a little of your time, because I promise he’ll always remember you.

It costs nothing to be kind.

And I look forward to seeing my friend Franc again soon.

The Various and Sundry

It’s been awhile, my friends.

Or at least, it’s been a while since I did anything other than post sad poetry on here that might make you wonder if I was doing alright. The good news is that, happy or sad, I’ll always be writing sad poetry that might make you think I’m not in a very good headspace. The bad news is that these last few poems were definitely written while I was, as the kids might say, “Going through it.” This is all to say that, well, 2022 was just a bit hard on me; the last couple months of it especially so. There’s a running joke I like to tell people (for my own benefit, as all good jokes tend to be) and that joke begins in saying that December is the end of a gauntlet run for me and it’s one that has been harder and harder to get through every year since 2012. I tell them that, once January hits, I feel like Doc Holliday in Tombstone after he saves the day and tells Wyatt Earp that he wasn’t half as sick as he made out. The key point of this joke is that, I used to use this reference unironically before eventually realizing…well…Doc is still very much sick. And in the movie he dies not long after, even if he does manage to rally and save the day.

So I make that joke, I make that reference, and I say “I wasn’t half as sick or badly off as I made out.” and then I chuckle to myself because it’s a little gallows humor that I can wink at because I know how hard the ways of life can sometimes be.

It was a strange thing, last year. I had so many highs. I finally quit my job at FedEx, I ran my third marathon, I finished my ninth book, and I met new friends. I went back home for the first time since my big move, seeing my old life and those who still lived in it. I got to celebrate my Mom’s birthday and cook with her for the first time as we made Indian Fry Bread, a memory that I will hold onto forever. I went to Seattle, I went to the beach, I saw whales, I saw Neil Gaiman, and I managed to track down a duck that I’d been wanting to see since I was four years old and paging through a bird book. There were so many good things. So many memories that should live like forest fires inside of me and keep me warm on the coldest nights. And they do. But as with everything else in the world we know, nothing can go on forever.

2022 was also hard. Three people in my life died, passing from this world in a blink; there one moment and gone the next. Every now and then I think I’ve processed it all, but then I’ll find myself thinking about them and wondering what they’re up to, only to remember that they’re not up to anything at all anymore. My closest friend out here in Portland got a cancer diagnosis in November and, while we both stood strong for over a month in an attempted beam of positivity, the final word came back and at best she has three to five years. It’s a cruel thing to happen to a kind person, and she is that. In truth, she’s one of the best people I’ve ever known, and the idea that someone like that will barely reach 40 years? It’s not right, really. And it’s not fair. Her smile and laugh should go on forever. They are lights that should never go out.

And through it all there have been other things. The new job I fled to from FedEx hasn’t been what I’d hoped and wound up packed with all its own traumas and oddities. Two days before Christmas, one of our regulars was struck by a car and killed outside the store. He was a kind man, and I’ve never in my life seen so much blood or had to watch a kind man die. I spent the next couple weeks trying to process the event, routinely breaking down in tears when I thought about it too much, and to be perfectly frank I don’t think I’ve yet to come close to moving past it. I wish I remembered him more clearly. I think anyone who’s gone deserves that. Instead when I think about him, I just see blood lit up by cop car lights and find that I’m unable to cross a street unless there isn’t a car anywhere close.

And then there were the poems. I write sad poems about sad things, because I don’t particularly know how to make sense of my life otherwise. Writing helps, it always has, and I think there is a better than equal chance that I never really wanted to be a writer, I just had to. It’s a hack thing to say, but I mean it with quite some earnestness. I’ve thought about it a lot these last couple years and I don’t think I ever had a chance of being anything else. It’s the only way for me to make sense of my life, and so it’s the only way for me to keep going. In the spirit of that, I wrote a lot of poetry toward the end of the year, and I wrote a lot of poetry about the sadness in life. Not all sad things are inherently terrible, of course. Some start out as good things, such as when you meet a special person and think there might be something even more special to come, only for that flame to flicker out as all flames do. There were many poems written about that, because you’d be shocked at the effort it takes to tear down walls you’ve built, only to have to build them back up again. It’s a strange thing to care about someone. It’s a strange thing to hope. But even though I’m a romantic at heart, I’m not a child and haven’t been for quite some time, leaning more and more toward a novelistic fatalism in my deepening age. So you’d think that sadness and heartbreak and sadness revolving around heartbreak wouldn’t hit quite as hard as it once did, but it does. It really does. And isn’t that just the funniest thing?

Still. Through all of this, I come time and time again to the simplest realization. It is the realization that has kept me alive and will keep me alive for as long as I meander through a world that often seems pointless in its endless trials and trivial tribulations. Feeling the worst things in the world, no matter what they happen to be, is better than feeling nothing at all.

At least there are the friends who are here, so you can be there for them while they go through things they should never have to face, making memories together along the way. At least there are the beginnings of things, the hopes and smiles and romantic thoughts, even if those things will so often always end. At least there are the birds in the skies and the sounds of the crows, constant reminders of the beauty of the world around you. At least there are the memories of those who went on without you, those shadows of someone that used to be that can shelter you from the overwhelming heat of the sun. There are so many good things about the world, and yet they’re so easy to forget when things get bad. And things have gotten bad. They really have. And things have gotten worse since we last spoke.

But I’m still here. I’ll always be here. A loved one teases me routinely about my excessive use of superlatives, but I mean every one of them sincerely. “Always” to me means the simplest thing. It’s a personal statement. It holds a personal definition that can best be described as: “As long as I can. As long as I’ll ever know.”

In the meantime, as I get through these rough patches, just know that I’m thinking about all of you. I appreciate you being in my life and caring about what I have to say. Things have been difficult lately, the nature of life has been cruel, and I don’t know that the road ahead has ever seemed longer or more poorly lit. But I’m here, writing, living, and doing my best to find joy in the little things, and I always will be.

Things aren’t all bad.

And I’m not half as sick as I made out.

January Rain

I was happy once, I swear

I don’t remember when

Not really

But I know that if you’d seen me

You would’ve liked to see me there

In a moment as the sunlight

Not merely a man stood in the sun

But that day was something lasting

And even a day can only last so long

Even now, even after all these years

I will still and always ask myself

What you feel, what anyone feels

And if they ever feel the fear

That has set like breaks in broken bones

Like gold that mends fine art

I will always wonder if it’s just me

If I’m alone and have been from the start.

I know that’s not the case

The mathematical odds are just not there

But the loss I feel in another’s smile

It cannot be an accident

Like a car left lost on the side of the road

Red lights blinking

My eyes adrift as a dissociative boat

Now sinking

That tried traveling a misunderstood path

I see every smile, every light in other eyes

And I wonder

I wonder if they feel like that

If they’ve always felt like that

And I wonder if it’s their forever all of the time.

It’s not. I know it’s not.

Because they are like me

And I am like them

Even if it doesn’t feel like it and hasn’t

Not ever

We are cut from the same cloth and yet

Here I am

I flutter and am tattered

I’m a lost flag trampled beneath happy feet.

I know your smile doesn’t last forever

I know that great fragments are all that I see

In my heart, I know that will always be true

But what a joy, I must think

I must cling to it like a lifeline to a man in a lake

What a joy

If your smile could just last forever

And you never had to feel just like me.

The Terms and Conditions of Being- A Poem

   i- Awareness

For the longest time

I didn’t think I’d be around for very long at all

Not really and maybe not ever,

At least not through the dreadful scope of the fall

It’s a strange thing to think about

Even stranger to put into words

Although I think if you know me even a little

That’s what I’ve always been doing

I’ve been screaming into the darkness for

The sake of a little boy who now might be heard

And that’s a strange concept

I know it even though I’ve committed to write

The idea that the things I create are little more

Than a useless attempt to reach myself

A part of me who can never hear me say

That it’s never going to get better

Not in the way you hope

It’s never going to get easier

Even though that’s how they all will say it goes

The clouds you used to love will hover

And the waters that you never swam will

Slowly drag you down

Until you drown

In the depths of who you’d always said you’d be

A child’s mind and a stupid wish

The ignorance that said that there’s no end

He couldn’t see

One where all wrong things for once went right

A world where he could just once look back

And see he’d lived a child’s life

Instead of always hoping

Instead of writing stories to both his older and younger self

Where things went right

Where he was happy

Somewhere other than the place that always

Was his lasting hell

Wouldn’t that be nice?

It would be, right?

How stellar would it be if after all of this

And where I’ve been

Just once I could be happy with my life.

And I know that it won’t happen

I know that even more than who I’ve been

Every step and every story told is just the empty man

A vacant space

Of who I’ve been and who I am

And the truth is that I never was a child

I was told great lies that I was an old soul

But I was just depressed

I was suicidal

And I didn’t know how to handle a single moment

Of who I am

So I was just a buffer, and that’s all

And I was a lost and flightless fly on every wall

Life spun on and formed false memories

That told me every bit of who I might still be

Something more than the tragic ending

And the sadness of it all.

I don’t wish that you could hear me.

I have no desire to ever cause you any pain

It’s just the simple child’s silent plea

That who I am is not just the simple fragment

Of something greater that you’ll never see.

It’s the crater

It’s the loss and it’s the void

It’s every little piece of me that I wrote about

In the hopes that this, my stupid dream

Would somehow bring me joy.

That of a child

That little dreaming thing I never was

I wish you knew how much it hurts

To be in every crowded room

And finite space

And just wish that I could be buried in my dirt

Right next to my memories

And every last false friend I had to make

And the simple truth that no matter what

After all these years

After all this pain

I was just a child who never once grew up

Someone who believed in monsters

Because then perhaps in the great night

He might find that there are angels too

And if they were there then so was he

And it would take the weight of the god damn world

To ever weigh him down

But it did.

It really did.

And isn’t that just the funniest thing

A simple dream my anxiety would never allow

Because I have lived every single moment

Every lasting second

Knowing who I am and who I’ve been

And that I’ll never make it out somehow.

I wish you could’ve seen me

I wish you could’ve seen me happy here.

But all of life is a child’s game

A broken board

And one I was too lost to ever learn to even play.

ii- Acceptance

I want you to understand

Perhaps more than anything else

That who I am and who I’ve been

Has never been anything other than

My understanding of my lacking self

I exist in a moment

A simple understanding of all that I have been

Something old and something past

Every last happiness and strangled grasp

Held tight to the fraying ropes of a story

That still just might begin

At the ending

At the fatal point where all things naturally end

I know that sounds repetitive

But there’s a more than equal chance that’s who I am

Someone in these empty pages

Just waiting to be filled in

With the thoughts and the moments

The likes and loves of a better man

And I know that might sound derogatory

And like a last insult

But I promise that it’s just the thought

Of a story at its end.

There is no part of me, not now, not again

That I do no longer know

I’m lost in a moment

A heartbeat that lasts forever now and then

I think that you might think of me

And every lasting moment that you’ve seen

But that doesn’t matter

Not really

Does it?

I hope that at this point, at this end,

I’m just a story

And I am the empty thing that’s always lost

In between this life and every simple hope

That never cared

Not once

About the finite of the human cost.

And see…I’m thinking about you as I write

You, the architect of every bit of our own risk

The pillar and the constant

Of this everything

And the everlasting of the lasting life.

It’s like you’re staring in silence

And every fading bit of who you are

Is showing as a moment

As one thing elating in a separate space

To differentiate you from the past you’ve been

And the man you were

To show you who you are

And what could be has been.

Again.

Repetition

Do you think any of these words have ever happened by mistake?

I think, in the end

That might be the funniest thing

This truth that you think that I am swimming in a puddle

And not drowning in a lake

Lost in a moment

Lost in every bit of who I am

And nothing more than a shadow

Nothing but the failure that

A failing life has been and will end before I go

Into the ether

Into some place where I can rest

So far away from the pain I follow and the fragile things

That told me who I am just wouldn’t last

Sometimes I wish they were right.

I really do, even if this is acceptance

It’s my poem and my terms, so if you don’t like them

You’re welcome to leave

This is all I can do to stay alive

And even though what will be will be

I’d be lying if I said I enjoyed the ride

When I’ve lived every moment on a rollercoaster

On broken rails

Through rusted halls

And I’m afraid of heights.

And none of this matters

In the end I am little more than words on a page

Something to last, as a fire burning low

Until I find the end of my fleeting hourglass days

I hope it’s in the mountains

I hope more than anything it’s someplace quiet and deep

With whispers of great life all around us

The rush of wind as it winds through stalwart trees

The sound of birds in flight and the falling of the desperate dying leaves

The beautiful world that has housed me here

And I hope it’s always been happier than I’ve managed

And even happier than I’ve ever gotten to be.

iii- Finality

I heard it in a song once

The way great instrumentation slowly fades

And all I never knew right then was

That I’m little more than one last final note

That will only go away.

It fades into the distance

Last chords drowned out by all that’s been

The history of a failure

One here just to watch all the good dreams die

So close to where they never left

Held fast by roots in a dying ground that has run dry

I know I should’ve watered

Or found something that might have saved the soil I cracked

But I never knew how to be the man

Who was only ever going to be the last one left

Standing in the silence

Staring at the dreams that might still grow

Wishing more than anything that who I was

Is some base knowledge I might still come to know

That would’ve been something

What a world in which to live

Still a pointless place in a pointless life

But somewhere happiness, for a little while,

Could be a song that still might begin.

I know that I’m an artist

And I don’t care if I chose it or it chose me

There’s just the simple truth of it all

That the best things in life are words

And people

And every love that might still leave

Because nothing is permanent

Nothing that has been will ever stay

It doesn’t matter if you thought it would

It’s an invention of a human mind that will only ever betray

You in a moment

It’ll tell you everything you’d like to hear

That who you are is still enough and even then

No matter what

And when you need it most

All you’ll know is what’s been lost and all that’s no longer near

And I wish you could’ve been here

Even if it’s just for a moment that has passed

I wish we could’ve watched my dreams

And smiled even as they only always left

To be lost in the distance

To be with that old self that might still be

And I know even then, it wouldn’t last and

All I’d have to do is blink

Even as you stared

And when I’m back, it’s like you were never even there.

Maybe that would’ve been better

Maybe the best times are the ones that we forget

Maybe if I woke up one day and blinked into the rising light

I’d find that in the truest sense

You were never there

And I’ll finally be alright.

But I know I wouldn’t be.

I knew that and I know that even now

All I am is whispering things in the hope I might convince

The sad thing that lives in me

The one that’s anchored in dry earth

With the weight of a child, that nothing youth,

And the one that has never left.

I think I’d rather be that nothing

The plants that grew if just to die

I think that now, despite who I am

I’d rather be something that began

Instead of this

Instead of me

Instead of just a constant lacking end.

But I am.

Don’t you see that I’ve always been.

And I’m just a comet that missed the earth

And the only song that has ever played

Is the one I’ve never heard.

Superlatives- A Poem

The side effects of (always) using superlatives

Is that it’s hard to be taken seriously when

You live in a world of simple words

That everyone has heard so many times

Before

And I know. I really do. I get it.

I’m not oblivious, it just seems that way sometimes

It’s suspected

Because it’s easy to say ‘always’, I suppose

It’s even easier to say ‘I promise’

Or ‘I’m sorry’

Or ‘I won’t ever leave you behind’.

It’s easy to say so god damn many things

I just know

More than anything

That it never has been for me.

I live in constant moments of

An ever-fracturing past

That holds tight to half-remembered memories

And every last lost person

Who lives forever with the dead versions

Of me.

They’re heard in the echo of an unanswered phone

They’re whispered in silences spoken

They’re the everything everywhere all of the time

And the regrets of the man that I am.

The one who never said goodbye to his friend

Or friends

The ones who he thought would always be there

To be told that I would always listen

I’d make time

I’d see them through every up and every down

So that never, not once, would it end underground

But it has

And it will

And one day it will once again

But I’ll still be there.

Always

Because there should always be a meaning to the word

‘Will.’

I’ll be there, always.

I promise, always.

I’m sorry, always.

Because if I don’t have the moments that matter to me

The promises I get to make to the people that matter

The promises I’ll never once not try to keep

Then what is the point of the words that I’ve said

Or the purpose of the man that I am

Or every superlative you’ve heard once again now before

They’re just words, I guess.

Just words

And they’ve never been anything else.

But they are.

They really have been.

And I hope more than anything that at some point you’ll see

That they’re always more

And will always be more

Than just empty vast words to me.

The Empty Sound- A Poem

I can hear it.

I can hear all things

I always have and

I wonder if you can hear them too.

I heard your laugh that broke through walls

I built with the intent they never come down

They towered.

They stood.

They were as thick of the crust of the earth.

They would’ve been perfect

I think

At the very least they would’ve done their job

But the man I am has never been quite

The one I’ve always wanted to be

So for every wall that went up,

For the promise I tried to make myself make

I built a door deep in the stone of the man that I was

And on every door was a lock without purpose

A lock left hanging

Dangling

Rusted metal resting on rotting wood

And I told myself it wouldn’t matter

I said that, twice and then once again,

I said “These are walls. My walls.

I know what this means

And I swear I won’t let them ever get in.”

But I did.

I think it should be said “Of course I did.”

Because for all my fear of failure

For the sadness that built like walls the man I am

I knew I never once had it in me

Not ever

To lock myself so tightly in

A world that was a spot for me

A coffin in which to rest alone

Someplace so far from old new pain and

So far from every bit of what hadn’t been.

And I think, if I had been vigilant

I think, if to my own self I’d remained true

I just might have always been safe there

And the walls would’ve done well what walls do.

Would I have been happy?

I don’t know. Not really.

But then I suppose I’m not happy now

Not in the space reserved here just for me

A useless fortress with open doors swinging free

In the silence

In the wind

In the things they all say make no noise.

And they always told me you can’t hear a smile

They said there’s no sound to accompany

The way your eyes shine with great joy

Or the way you move when you’re happy

When you’re content

When you’re at ease

But I know they’re great peals of thunder

And I know they’re greater rushes of wind

That will keep open doors swinging open

And held

In a wall that’s had the important parts

Punched in.

I wish I didn’t hear it all the time

I wish I didn’t know the sound your smiles make

But I do

I always will

And it’s the sound of great stone walls when they break.

I imagine I’ll have to repair them now

I imagine I’ll have to now find the lost tools

That I never once in my life thought I’d need once again

What was made had been made so tall

But isn’t that the humorous joy in existence

The joke

And your laugh

That sometimes great happiness can end in nothing at all.

Web- A Poem

What a thing, to be a leaf

Stuck lost in a spider’s web

To be dead but held aloft by

That which often goes unseen

To be something other than all other things

And all that life won’t mean.

For just a little while, you can

Rest

You can be held by what’s not there

You can be all the things you hope to be

Even though you’ve died,

And even though you fell

Fast as a tumbling thing toward the earth

To the ground’s embrace that waits

For you, that yellowing crumbling thing

Held for a moment by a finite breeze

That even then will let you go.

And so you fall.

The world rushes fast around you

And through holes punched in who you used to be

As you wait for the end of all that once was

You close your blind eyes and hold breathless breaths

And then you’re caught.

And held.

And all the spinning stops

And you find that you can breathe in that calming moment

That blink

The pause before the end

Because nothing lasts forever, really

Not a leaf, and not a spider’s web.

Greetings from The Void

Hola, friends and family.

It’s a Saturday afternoon and though I’ve been trying and failing to write something of significance today, I seem to be striking out with all the success of someone like me were I ever to have a go at playing professional baseball. Fun fact: I once went into a batting cage that was shooting baseballs at seventy miles an hour. I thought, due to being young, confident, and deliriously delusional, that I could hack it and maybe summon the abilities of Barry Bonds pre-steroids. Well, I saw the red light flash, signifying that a ball was imminent, and then I heard the slap of a hurtling sportsball hit the leather mat behind me. At what point did it get from one spot to the other? How did I not see it? Haven’t a clue. I think simple human brains aren’t meant to understand things like this. Am I truly an idiot with barely hidden delusions related to my own ability? Or, hear me out, did I happen to be the lone eyewitness to the first ever interdimensional travel i.e. teleportation? I know one seems more likely than the other, but we’re all serious people so I don’t think we should dismiss the scientifically viable latter option. Just in case.

Anyway, this is all to say that writing today is hard. Harder than it should be. Harder than it has any right to be. Whenever I have days like this, I like to tell myself “Don’t be hard on yourself, you dumb brained stupid head. Everyone needs rest days, even failures.” and I think to myself “Damn. That’s a good point.” But the truth is that rest days drive me up a wall. I spend 45 hours a week at a mindlessly menial job with the goal of just writing every time I have a free moment to catch my breath. Let me tell you, this is not ideal. But more importantly, it becomes increasingly annoying when I finally get to my day off and actually have time to write- only to find that there’s absolutely nothing there. What has the past five days been for, Brain? If not to survive until the weekend so that I can finally creatively flourish, then what? Now, when I need you most, you’re going to lay down and play dead? Where was this deceptive energy when I needed it at my aforementioned lifeless day job? I’m very annoyed by your habits. You are not appreciated at all.

Anywho. That’s neither here nor there. I’ve been a bit all over the place lately, which could be playing a big factor in my productivity. In all honesty, I’ve always worried that there will come a time when I no longer have anything I want to write about and on days like this, that seems to be a much more real and looming possibility. On days when I sit down at a computer and find out I literally have nothing, not a single word or well-placed turn of phrase, I do wonder what I’d do if this was the big one, the big moment, the staggering realization that the passion is gone and the fire has burned out. I don’t know what I’d do. I’d probably get terribly sad and watch Paddington 2. But then the day passes and eventually I write something else and it’s not bad and I go through the whole relentless cycle again and again.

One day I won’t have anything left to write about, that much is unavoidably true. But, fortunately, I’ve never been one to hide from the fact that I’ve always been reliably good at hurting my own feelings. As such- I know the inspiration and the prose that follow will eventually strike. They just do so in their own time, while I spend each and every gray day sitting in a chair while my life passes by.

It’s strange. It’s very strange.

Strange to weld yourself to one thing, but be bad at making money with it. Strange to choose one path in life even though you know it will only ever trouble you. But life is strange, and even though these days are absolutely maddening I think I’ll always be grateful for the constant chaos that is woven into my day, even if it often does feel like uncertainty and failure. Without those spiderweb cracks, I would be an ordinary man in an ordinary job and that’s about it. Some would say, quite reasonably, that I’m both those things anyway and they wouldn’t be wrong in the least. But! For just a moment, when those threads of mania rage about all the things I could be doing instead of the things I am, it seems like one day I could be something more.

Clearly I’m going through a bit of something right now. I don’t know exactly what that something is, but it’s certainly there. This, in case you’re new to the Luke Ganje experience, is simply how I work things out and make myself feel a bit better. I’m not merely screaming into the void, this just happens to be my void and you’re welcome to hang out in it for a little while. Artistic void, personal void, whatever it winds up being on a day to day basis, I’ve always liked the idea of talking through my annoyances and concerns. It makes them seem real, which is good, because once something is real- it can be addressed and is no longer relegated to some far corner of a dusty mind where it appears as some looming and ominous fog.

So creatively, it’s been a bit of a bump in the road. Personally? About as bumpy. But an ancient old woman did give me a block of suet the other day because she knows I love birds and thought it would help me make friends, so it’s not all bad. Nothing is ever all bad, it just seems that way sometimes.

But for now, I’m going to go stare at a wall (not literally, it’s just where I hang my storyboard for my book projects) and hopefully the next time you hear from me- there will be strange bright things on the horizon.

Oh. And go buy CONFESSIONAL. It’s still a thing you should all care about.

Cavernous Words- A Poem

More than anything, you were there

Around us, cathedral ceilings rising tall

With no god to look even twice

A lectern and a microphone

You were there, and so was I.

I’ve never believed in a higher power

Not once, save for childhood fear

Felt in the home of an all-seeing eye

Staring at the portraits, the moments of pain

And every lasting bit of suffered iconography.

Above all things, it was never a home

Though I’ve heard it described as such

No, for me it was something different

Something else

Less road to eternal life and more mortal parking lot.

So I say this without reservation

No exaggeration or ill-fated whim

For a stretch of two hours of infinite time

I thought this might be how it must have felt

To sit in a room where you knew all the words

Where you knew what bits would be said

And why

And yet that knowledge stole none of the joy from the room

It didn’t take away the thrill of the stories

That danced like old hymns or vampire bats

High up above in acoustic built skies.

You once said that the saddest word in the world

Was the great echo felt in “Alive”

And my life has been spent in agreement with you

There’s never been another I’d choose

Save for the emptiness I’ve always felt in all things

Since I was a child

A boy

In a church pew told only to pray

And that if I did so just long and just hard enough

I’d find the moment, the hope

And the way

I never did though, not really

I don’t think

I’d hate to imagine I never have noticed

But for the briefest of moments, a pause or a breath

The flicker of a star felt in time

I found a small seat near an ocean

A pond?

And the world boomed like a symphonic hall

That sent great words now scattering

As Seattle rain that I’ve read all my life

And they gathered and lingered like the friends they have been

Keeping me company while I have waited

For the arrival of somebody else’s known god

In the silence of that somebody’s church.

And for a time you were there, a moment, a dot

And I knew how it might’ve felt to be those

I used to study on Sundays of childhood silence

A childhood for those most unlike me

Those who built towering churches

Those who placed stained glass in their homes

And what a wonder it was, what a gift

To feel for just a moment, that flicker

The breath held for an hour or two

The realization that you were there, in that hall,

My one-night cathedral,

And somehow there I was

So was I.

And for a time, sitting there,

Listening as your voice carved stories in stone

I felt as I did as a child, with my own books held tight in my arms

At home in the thought that there might not be a god

But at least I was no longer alone.

A Brief Update of the Mundane and Unremarkable

Greetings, random person who might have stumbled across this.

As my towering fame continues to rise like Babel (because nothing bad ever happened there), I thought I’d pop in to just make a few quick notes so that you know I’m still alive. Flourishing? Not quite. But alive and kicking, as the elderly and soccer-obsessed might say. My ninth month in Portland is about to end and I’m stuck wondering if there's such a thing as an adventure that actually continues. I’ve long confided in people that I’m a wanderer at heart and that I just happened to get started embracing that reality a bit late in the game, and as I sit in my apartment thinking about the mundanities that make up my life, I find that I’m already feeling an itch to go somewhere else, to do something new, to change up the habits that have already nested in my day to day life like an exceptionally tenacious wren.

That’s not to say I don’t like it here, I do. And it’s not to say the people aren’t great, because 70% of my interactions are quite lovely. But I know myself better with every passing day and while I’m a world-weary realist, there’s an undeniable romantic in me that wants to live in a world that I’m quite positive doesn’t exist. When I came to Portland, one of the things that drew me here was the promise of “Portland Weird”. I wanted to find odd people and odder situations, and dip in and out of them like a waterbug searching for food. But the thing they don’t tell you is that…odd people just seem and act and look like ordinary people. They’re just…there. And the magical weird city is little more that a collection of concrete and litter, buildings both big and small, and a collection of stores that might be different from the ones you grew up around but…they’re still just stores. Little places populated by people who might not be entirely ordinary but are still simply…people.

This isn’t a bad thing. It’s simply the way things work. It’s reality. Things look strange and odd and magical when we’re a thousand miles away but, when you get right down to it, they simply look that way because it’s somewhere new. It’s something we haven’t experienced before. It’s a fanciful and fantastical act of “othering” for the sake of our imagination and contemplating people and places we don’t really understand. I think the only problem with any of what I’m saying right now is that, if you’ve read my work or know me and have talked to me for any stretch of time, you’ll know that I’m not actually that fond of people. That’s not to say I’m not a people person, I’ve been told that I have at least some basic conversational charm, but rather that I don’t think very highly of the human race at all.

I think we’re… fine. But there’s so much in the world that I hold in such high regard and find to be so imminently and transcendently magical that being 'fine’ is a bit of a wet rag. I’ve found some nice people out here, folks that I even think might be really good friends if we keep wandering around together, but everything else possesses so much of the sameness that bothers me about humanity, life, and existence. It’s just…ordinary. If you talk to enough people, they all sound the same. If you wander around a city, you come to realize that there really isn’t that much that separates it from any others. Not really. And I realize this is a gross oversimplification of life, but since I’m just talking to myself and trying to convey what I mean, I’m alright with that. I’m not talking about what existence is, so much as trying to pin down how I perceive it.

The simplest way I can put it is that it’s just ordinary. And after a while, if your life is waking up at 6am, exercising, going to work at an unfulfilling job, walking home, and then trying to cram in some writing before you fall asleep and do it all over again…the opportunity for it to ever be anything else is fleeting. The magic of a new place and population is quickly ground down by the mundanity of routine. It’s just there. And after a while you realize that your entire life has begun to look a bit too much like a run-out-the-clock operation, like a boxer in the ring who is merely trying to dance around an opponent’s punches so that he can make it to the final bell.

This is, to put it plainly, not ideal.

If I were to be honest with myself about why I came to be this way, I think it mostly chalks up to the fact that I read a collection of books at the perfect moment and they left behind a different me than the one they found. Their impressions lasted. And somehow they left behind a person who was both wistful and whimsical, but also a bit detached, lost, and fatalistic. It’s a strange mixture and not one that I’d recommend for any mixed drink, but it is me. So I can’t help but appreciate that it’s there. Still, it has left me in a bit of a spot. A less-than-desirable predicament, Wodehouse would say.

I think I know now that I’m never going to stop moving. I think, at the very least, I’ll always be someone who has to pick up and leave when he knows exactly what’s going to happen next. I don’t mean that in all ways, of course, but I do as they pertain solely to me. The good thing about being me is that I know for certain that I can blend and fit in just about anywhere, at least for a little while. I can feel for a short stretch of time like I belong wherever I happen to be. But when that changes? When people start to look like ordinary people, when concrete towers start to look like every other monument to finite things…I think it’s just time to go.

On to another city, another town, another…nowhere at all.

I think that wistful part of me will always hope that at some point I’ll stop and realize that I’ve found it. “It” being whatever I’m actually looking for. And for now, my chosen place will do me just fine, as I get to listen to crows every single day and the one thing no one ever tells you when you pick a favorite bird is that it’s so damn lovely to pick one that’s common and ordinary and everywhere all at once. Imagine living in a world where you can’t go a single day without seeing your favorite thing? I like that part about Portland. I like that one certainty because crows aren’t like people. I never have to worry about getting tired of them. I never have to worry about them letting me down.

They’re just there. They’re everywhere all at once. And that will keep me here a little while longer.

How long? I’m not sure. I need to think hard about my next step in life. I need to remember how inspired I was to write when I first arrived here. And then, I suppose I need to find somewhere new, someplace where I can live in that magical moment that tricks me into believing I’m in a place so different from the one I left behind, at least for a little while. I know it will fade away eventually, I think that’s just how my brain works, but I like the idea that some day it won’t.

Maybe, if I go far enough, if I test myself and ask great things of who I think I might be, maybe I’ll wander into a world that never stops feeling different. And I will one day find myself at home in a place that never stops changing, a place that I’ll finally never want to leave.

Sequel- A Poem

I think, now

At some distant point near Long Last

You’ve now gone

As far as I can let you go.

I think you’ll always be

A kite in my night sky

Something gone but lingering

In a space now far beyond

The space I’d once left just for you

On a towering hill sat next to me

Where I never had to feel the line go slack

And see white nothing falling down

A child’s string now lost in towering grass

A severed line leading to

A child’s empty cup.

And I’ll always know you’re out there

In empty skies that aren't my life

Something to flutter now so far beyond

The still grass that solemnly sings

Only one half of a promising song

And unspoken vows lost like a kite on the wind.

How Odd the Disconcerting Replication of Otherwise Ordinary Things

Hello again.

I officially made it through my first ever Thanksgiving away from home or, if you’re not partial to celebrating that day for national or ethical reasons “It was Thursday just a couple days ago and I didn’t lose my mind.” As it turns out, I didn’t do many of the things I thought I would. I didn’t sit in a sports bar, Bukowskiing my way through some fair bit of poorly planned coping mechanizing. Nor did I follow through with my ideal plan: Buy a lot of bread and then wander around town feeding crows. Did I care that this would’ve made me look like a Home Alone character left on the cutting room floor? I did not! And to be honest, I really was looking forward to that even if there was a better than average shot of all the birds ignoring me. That would indeed have been a grave blow to the wobbly and unreliable morale.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to face any of those trials and tribulations that at this point are relegated to the realm of the ‘strictly fantastical’ that is usually reserved for poorly built metaphors and the idle hopes for a second date when the first date was a disaster. No, instead I wound up going to spend the holiday with my boss and her family. I’ll admit that I was trepidatious; I’m not necessarily partial to people and, even when I am, it usually works out best when they’re someone I’ve known for….let’s just ballpark it and say (at least) 19 years, 4 months, and 13 days. But, I’ve been oddly happy these past couple months so I wasn’t looking all that forward to ushering in some sort of rampaging depressive episode because some crows ignored me. No, I was bound and determined to turn the tides in my favor and avoid all rocky outcroppings or gigantic icebergs that James Cameron should’ve seen coming. So I called my boss at noon on Thanksgiving Day and said, paraphrasing “What the hell! Why not! This seems like a better idea than manufacturing my own psychological downfall!”

Since I routinely say things out loud because I’ve mistaken my very real reality for some sort of mystical charm palace, it’s possible I did use those exact words. We may never know. Although I’ll keep you all posted if I get called into an HR meeting with some haste once Monday rolls around.

So I rode with my boss and her unstoppably chipper daughter out to Beaverton, dodging all manner of horrors along the way (Most notably: Red lights and this one really weird guy who decided the darkest part of the evening was a good time to walk down the middle of a one way road). I sat at their table, meeting a husband and another daughter, both charming in their incredibly distinct ways, and felt oddly at home for being somewhere that was nothing like the memories I had of the times I’d spent with the family I’d left back home. Instead of old memories, there were old stories that weren’t mine. Instead of family jokes where I knew every punchline, there was a new writer’s room. And instead of the slow quiet that often lives with a group of people who know each other impossibly well, there was incessant laughter, new customs and traditions, and food that was a far cry from the Thanksgivings of Bismarck, North Dakota: Ganje Edition.

There was also a gorgeous bird who sat on my shoulder for the better part of dinner. And if you know anything about me at all, that is about as good as things can get. Also? That bird gave me kisses when I left. So. Your move, 2022. Beat that.

This is all to say that, it was the strangest feeling. Days don’t mean quite as much to me as they used to and while I used to think that was just a side effect of being me, I’m beginning to realize in meeting more people that it’s more just a side effect of being human. Birthdays, when they’re not counting down to tobacco or booze, are just days. Holidays, more often than not, are little glimmers of what used to be where, if you sit completely still, you can almost see the memories of the child you used to be that are now hidden deep in the cracks of floorboards once new. And in this strange state, everything just…blends together. But that doesn't mean that those days don’t still mean something when they wander around once a year. Because more often than not, they do whether we realize it or not.

I suppose, in that way, it is always better to be an echo than nothing at all.

And me? I was an echo. Not in my own safely-structured bit of familial familiarity, but in someone else’s. A strange place where I was allowed to be myself, but even he felt like someone new. And I found myself welcomed and happy in a strange place I never thought I’d be: Sitting at a new table, so far from my old one, and taking a chance at being someone who embraced new traditions instead of wandering vaguely in the hope of finding something I wasn’t even sure was there. And yes, there will be more than time enough for me to decide next time around whether I’m ready to feed some crows (I’m bound to make that happen eventually!) or find something else that can be genuinely specially mine. I can’t always rely on the kindness of new acquaintances. But for one day it felt lovely to do just that, because it was precisely the kind of thing that I might never have done back home, specifically because I never would’ve needed to.

So I suppose, in the end, this is all to say that moving away can have the strangest effect on you. Every little old thing that used to be is gone now, and you’re just a child playing with blocks in the hope of building the kind of personal memories and traditions that will reverberate through the lives of those who will one day wander into yours. But it doesn’t have to always be that way. Sometimes you can just go out on a limb, tell yourself to be polite, friendly, and the ideal guest, and accept an embrace or a hand that’s offered to you. In that moment, you become a fly on the wall, a spectator to another life or lives, and for just a second you can feel what it’s like to be part of something so much bigger than everything and anything you’ve ever known.

That time will end, it always does. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. And even if there are few traditions to be found in the lives and memories of others over the course of a single meal, there will always be the promise of those memories. And memories, if they’re good enough, just might last forever.

This was supposed to be my first Thanksgiving alone. But I wasn’t.

There was laughter, there was joy, and I got kissed by a bird named Sunny.

It’s hard to imagine ever forgetting something like that.

The Strange and Unenviable Task of Writing Things No One Will Read

Well hello again, persons of the internet and various strange and inhospitable plains.

When I moved out to Portland, I decided with some concrete certainty that I would forgo almost all social media and instead keep my whereabouts and eclectic activities tied firmly to this website and this blog. What better way to experience the world, I thought! What better way to hone my writing talents while wandering poetically through my new home! Well, as it turns out all that idealized self-assessment has apparently translated to me spending a lot of time on instagram looking at pictures and posting less-than-compelling content. Is that out of the ordinary for me? Of course not. I have aspirations to be the next Neil Gaiman/Christopher Moore/Edgar Allan Poe all rolled up into one, but, unfortunately, I also have the mental faculties, dedication, and attention span of a wildly bewildered stick insect who is suddenly appalled to realize that after all this time, all of his friends have just been sticks.

Anyway. This is all to say that I rather dropped the ball on this one. And if I’m going to keep paying for this ridiculous website that no one really asked for, then I might as well put it to good use. What form this “Good use” might take? Well, to be frank, I haven’t the foggiest. In the end, it probably just means I’ll ramble aimlessly in my typical “scream into the void” fashion and just hope it makes a difference. Will it? Probably not. Seems a bit stupid to think that it would. But oh well, what else am I going to do? Go out there and meet friends and bird friends and hot babes? Enough with your fantasies, let’s be realistic.

To give you the briefest update on my life out here (because that really isn’t the point of this entry and it’s rather late and I have various sleep-related activities I’m looking forward to investing in), things have been, in the words of all great minds, ‘not too shabby’. Meeting people Is hit or miss and I have yet to fully woo the crow population of the area, but I’m happy to announce that I’ll be putting about 92% of my energy into the latter while allowing for a nice 8% reserve for talking to ordinary human beings. I don’t see what could possibly go wrong. But yes, the weather out here is nice, the rain is always present, and I’m thoroughly enjoying being caffeinated and drinking IPA’s. The latter is still a shock to me. Had you told me this would be my fate, I would’ve thought there was a better chance of me liking a Wes Anderson movie or a John Mayer album like a psychopath. But oh well, life is a strange thing and tastebuds, those creepy flesh donuts of the tongue, are somehow even stranger.

Of a little more topical interest (he said to absolutely no one, devoid as he was of even rudimentary awareness and social norms), in the last four months I’ve finished Book Seven and Book Eight in my tireless effort to succeed at my hyper-vague goal of “Write More Books Until I Eventually Fall Over Dead”. That’s something I’m rather proud of. The first book is my first bit of anthology horror that will go by the title of Confessional and features (I believe) 15 tales of horror and dread. It features the sort of spook and fear that I’ve always enjoyed, the looming, the ominous, and the tonal, but there’s also going to be more than enough evocative and shuddery imagery that I hope there’ll be something in there for everyone of the scary bent. Sadly, I can’t even imagine how poorly it will do in terms of sales. Parading around a book like that in front of a bunch of folks who’ve spent the last two years buying my somber saddo books hardly seems like a winning strategy. Then again, if I was in this for glory and money and adulation, I would’ve just become a politician who lied his way into the pocketbooks of those he’s managed to deceive.

There’s still time, grant you. Sadly, as earlier stated, I’m not the most motivated person in the world.

As for the eighth book, that is something that can actually be found here. Going by the excessively long title of “The Side Effects of Waiting for the End of the World”, proving once again that I’m not afraid to use SO MANY words when fewer would undoubtedly do, it is the first poetry compilation I’ve ever put out into the world. Featuring much of my work from the past several years, along with a dozen or so written after my move out here, it realistically is probably the closest I’ll ever get to writing an autobiography. It’s personal and tracks through my thoughts on life, existence, and the sadness that tends to go hand in hand with living. I like to think its relatable, indeed I think with art most things usually are, but I suppose I’ll have to see. It may well be that It’s too much ME, too much of that strange weird guy who you used to see in the midwest wandering a bookstore: See as: An answer to a riddle it hadn’t even occurred to you that you might want to solve, mostly because you didn’t and you don’t. But, as with all of my writing endeavors, I wrote them because I wanted to write them and I put them out into the world because, in time, I decided I wanted to put them out into the world. I think they’re quite good and, I truly do hope there will be people out there that happen to think the very same.

At the very least, there will be something out there. And it will be the sort of something that wasn’t there before.

No matter what, and even if absolutely no one reads it, that will be enough for me. I suppose, in the end, it will always have to be.

So please, throw $12 at the titanic Amazon machine (that now apparently my most liberal and most conservative friends and family both hate with equal vigor for wholly separate reasons, proving once and for all that time is a darkly comedic flat circle) and make my life a little bit easier. Who knows, you might wind up enjoying it. At the very least, you can live with a certain bit of comfort in knowing that, if I ever starve to death, it probably wasn’t because of you.

Then again, maybe buy two copies. Just in case. I’d hate for that guilt to follow you until your tragic and inevitable death.

Buy THE SIDE EFFECTS OF WAITING FOR THE END OF THE WORLD. It’s decent, I promise.

A Dispatch from New Beginnings

“It’s like the people who believe they’ll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn’t work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you. If you see what I mean.”- Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

Well hello.

Now that I officially have the good old internet once again, this is indeed my first ever dispatch from my new beginning. I was going to name a poem that, but to be frank the poem wound up sounding kind of stupid and so it became a blog title instead. Why waste good words, even if there are only five of them? Anyway! I suppose this is the introduction of Portland Luke (‘Portly’ for short). Gone are the days of me being a medium-sized (yet unknown) fish in a puddle, and here are the days of me being a bluegill-looking thing in the Atlantic Ocean. Was this the right choice? In the words of my hero (myself), ‘Who the hell knows?’. But today is my two week anniversary of living somewhere entirely knew for the first time in my entire life, so I figure that’s something worth celebrating with a tongue-in-cheek blog post.

What is life for if not to celebrate somewhat pedestrian life achievements?

Anyway. Life is going well here. I’ll probably wind up looking for a job in roughly the next ten days so that financial stress doesn’t become all-consuming, but for the time being I really am enjoying my meandering walk-about life through my new city. I’ve managed to write two new short stories, roughly 25 pages each, and they both were met with resounding approval from my eternally-trustworthy superfriend Jess (last seen as a ‘review’ in “It Seemed Like A Good Idea at the Time”), so I can at least say that these first two random weeks have been creatively productive. In personal life terms? Not so much. I’m better at randomly wandering into a decades-long friendship than I am “Hello stranger, will you be my friend?”, so it’s been a rather lonely couple of weeks, but then again I’m a rather lonely person so I can’t say this is anything new or unanticipated.

As the Gaiman quote indicates, I seem to have brought myself to Portland. What a drag!

But really, life out here is going quite well. I could complain but I’ll save that for my insane short stories I’m currently working on. Petty negativity is better expressed creatively, or so I’ve found. Life is short so you might as well murder little lemons indiscriminately for the sake of consuming their life force and bodily fluids, that’s what I always say. And I have, I think. The walks through gorgeous parks and trees have been numerous, my exploration of local bars and restaurants has been sublime (featuring great beer and some truly lovely sushi), and I’ve already added four new birds to my Birding Life List. Pileated Woodpeckers, it turns out, are just as gorgeous and awe-inspiring as I always believed them to be.

I will admit it is a strange thing to be out here, however. I’ve never been the greatest at recognizing the passage of time, so there is already a part of me that feels as if I’ve always been here. I often find it difficult to relive my day-to-day life in Bismarck, North Dakota, and find moments of memories flashing through my mind at a cinematic pace at the absolute strangest of times. But I do miss my family and friends out there. I miss the boxing nights with my folks and the card games on Sunday mornings. I miss the beers and hangs with the coworkers who became friends (or vice versa). And I miss the sushi nights and random rambles with the creative types I really only just got around to meeting and enjoying right before I left.

And yet here we are, in Portland anyway.

It was for the best, I know that. The uncertainty in my new life will kick into gear aspects of my creativity that were rusting away into oblivion back home and I’d imagine I’ll be better off for it. Although I will at some point need to get a car, because there is a definite limit to my current adventurous escapades for the time being, and that’s a rather annoying truth. I had hoped to get by as long as I could, but dammit there’s an ocean out there just 90 minutes away and I’ll be damned if I’m going to just let it sit there doing nothing without me. But other than the infrequent loneliness and missing of loved ones, the uncertainty and anxiety that comes with an infinite amount of new things, and all the other stuff I’ve cathartically complained about, I really am enjoying my time out here.

Will it be the eternal home of Luke Ganje, part-time author, full-time undiscovered male model? Who knows. But it’s a change of pace that’s been mostly a joy to experience so far and I hope it pays dividends in my writing. I’d always thought of myself as a limitless fount of inspiration and imagination, but it turns out that living in the same place, working the same job, doing the same thing, and staring at the same walls over and over and over again for years, can actually be a little detrimental to my whole ‘imaginary friend’ attempt at wandering lethargically through life. For the time being, this will be better. I will (eventually) meet new people and see a bunch of truly weird shit I never would’ve seen at the Bismarck Denny’s, and that’s alright with me.

Maybe one day I’ll tear through the front page of The Bismarck Tribune with a release of “The Nodak Nomad: How A Bismarck Native Calls Himself a Nomad Despite Never Really Going To Too Many Places or Even Doing Very Much”. Look out, Cliff Naylor. I’m coming for you and I’m stealing your fans (the unaware elderly while they’re still alive) and I’m never giving them back.

But for now I’ll leave you with this, because the day is moving along and I need to do something other than pushups and blogging: I am enjoying the experience, it’s been quite a ride already, and so far I’m not dead.

Which, when it comes to that last part especially, I think we can all acknowledge is a positive plot twist none of us saw coming.

Forgetful- A Poem

I fear so very much the thought

That I’m wasting my most precious time

That I’ve lived a lasting finite life

With some flawed hope of grand design

Whether it’s been etched upon a notepad

Or perhaps I’ve been bled upon a stone

Why even now on one last open plain 

Do I feel so terribly, so frightfully, alone

Despite every one of my best efforts

To script out the days that pass 

The moments between joy and sorrow

The life that happens there 

Is everything you’d thought you’d feel

Even though they will not last

As eternal as a dewdrop

As boundless as our love 

You’d like to think they last forever 

But black ash paints your bright white dove

It tars up every flightless feather 

It steals away all that was yours 

And in the silence of the night there’s a wonder

A stutter

The arrival of perennial fear

That there’s never really enough time for them

Those words that mean “anything at all” 

We try to tell ourselves there is

And we live life through years in which we lie

To ourselves so that we might sleep or dream

Of something better than a voluntary goodbye 

And that’s really what they are, aren’t they?

You know you don’t really have to go. 

But what a cruel world it is in which we live 

Where we perish in empty nests covered in snow 

No matter how we thought to linger

For one more second, minute, hour or year

There’s never enough wealth for even a moment 

A moment just to stay

To say perfectly the things we thought we’d said

Only to forget, to embellish, to delay 

For the sake of an imagined comfort where

We live a timeless life

One in which no pain is uttered

Because it isn’t real until we say 

That I suppose it’s time for going now

I guess after all of this 

I tried so much to cherish and share

Each and every vital thought like light you sparked

But now that I am going, I’m swallowed by a fear

I swear it wasn’t supposed to end this way

I swear I just got lost

I was going to show you my whole life in an instant 

… I swear I just forgot. 

Cecropia

I have no idea how old I was exactly, but I keep telling people I was nine. It’s bound to be a close enough approximation and as with most things related to childhood memories, there’s a haze to that kind of thing that can be baffling at best when trying to put a specific number to when you were what or when, where, or why. I just know that I was a child and, for the sake of this account, probably about nine. Also funny, and acting as a damning indictment of my memory, is that much as I don’t know my exact age I’m also just as uncertain as to why I was where I was. I just know my mother had driven us to a little used car lot on the strip of Mandan, a tiny little town that is attached like a leech to our tiny little city that likewise desperately wants to be something more. And it’s raining. That’s the part I know for absolute certain.

I can forget why I was where I was. I can forget how old I am. But I’ll never forget when its raining, not even in a memory.

So there we were, standing in a car lot, in the rain and accompanied by another family. I don’t know who it was exactly, but there were only ever two options so at least there’s a picture in my mind that can haphazardly form without any effect that might be too terrifyingly Frankensteinian. We were all huddled around the cars and some of us were laughing, although to be honest I don’t think I was. An appreciation for the sound, rush, and smell of rain isn’t something I was born with so much as a living thing that grew from me over the years. And then, just like that, a rush of commotion and those very particular childhood sounds that told of either adventures formed or treasure unearthed.

It was the latter. And as it turned out, it was a treasure I’d never forget.

I suppose to underscore this I should make clear (if only briefly) how my mind works. The truth is, and as sorry as this might sound, that I never really remember moments. It makes life a bit of a drag and it makes writing an absolutely abysmal affair at times, but that’s just how these things tend to go. Instead, I remember flashes. There’s rarely if ever the memory of the emotion of a time, no matter how special or sad the occasion happened to probably be. There are rarely carefully catalogued specifics. Instead, in the white haze of dense fog, I remember the little snippets that flash just right and, since I am who I am, those snippets that burst through the dreamlike banks are most often animals or birds, insects and, perhaps on the rarest of occasion, a person. But for the most part, those photograph flashes are reserved for those who are not like me.

I remember the first time I saw a Great Horned Owl. I remember the first time I saw a Great Blue Heron and the same goes for a Wood Duck. Even more profoundly, I remember walking through Athens and while my memories of the Parthenon are now next to nonexistent, I see as clear as day the first (and probably last) Hoopoe I’d ever seen. I remember standing outside the Coliseum in Rome, but so much more than that I remember seeing my first Hooded Crow. I remember how it flew as a scavenger only to be chased away by a much more agitating gull. And I remember its colleague that I tried and failed to photograph as it sat on a railing by some nearby ruins.

Clear as day. Every time.

There is so much joy attached to the life around me. And on dark days I rely not on past lives or conquests of varying sorts, but on those so unlike me.

This is all to say, have you ever seen a Cecropia Moth? They’re titans, really. Seeing them brings to mind Old Gods or Mothra battling Godzilla, something great and vast and old. In reality, most everyone I ever tell about them utters the dagger-in-the-back “Well it’s just a moth though” betrayal. And I mean sure, I guess you could say that. But it’s also North America’s largest native moth. Its wings are significant enough that, were you to see them fly at night, you’d swear you were watching something even a bit larger than our regional bats. And they’re absolutely stunning. Whether it’s the distinct markings and eyelets on its wings or the fuzzy (and adorably chubby) red and white banded body, they’re visually arresting in all the ways that matter and it makes perfect sense how and why they would capture a child’s imagination in the rain.

Everyone was standing in a circle around a car that I’m almost positive was a bluish gray although that just be my seeping memory of the rain and clouds, and one of the older boys got on his hands and knees to crawl underneath for this mystery we’d yet to solve. No one said anything about just what that boy had seen, we all just…flocked to the excitement. So when he came back out and up holding a moth far bigger than his hands, though still careful to shield the moth from the rain it’d undoubtedly been hiding from, the sound of awe and fascination was universal. It was that sound. The one you hear not just when you see something beautiful, but when you see something beautiful that you’ve never seen before.

And no one in that used car lot, not the parents nor the kids who stood in the rain for reasons I can’t recall, had ever seen anything like it. Sure, we’d grown up with swallowtails and monarchs. But a fully grown Cecropia Moth of absolute jaw-dropping size? That was the kind of new that you just don’t forget.

I didn’t anyway. And I actually spent years remembering that until I saw another when I was…let’s just say twelve for the sake of avoiding that whole numbers/memory thing this time around. I was milling around my family’s backyard near the railroad tie steps that ushered you out of the backyard and up along the side of the house. We had old neighbors then, a nice gardening-conscious elderly couple whose name I won’t spell here for the sake of not wanting to muck it up, and they always had leafy vines that would topple over our fencing and house everything from Yellow Warblers to the bees that I quite unpleasantly discovered could kill me. It was an ordinary space, just eight or ten feet of vines and wood, but every now and then you’d see something memorable in there. (Justified shoutout to the aforementioned warbler).

Then, one day, I saw my second Cecropia moth. I don’t even remember exactly how I found it beyond a “Secret Garden” highly stylized reveal that exists in my childish memory, one of a young me turning over a leaf or two to see the chunky titan on the underside. This one didn’t linger as it had no rain to hide from and chose instead to explode in a burst of giant flapping wings as it haphazardly flew past me and high up into the air. That part I remember clearest. I remember standing on the railroad ties in the summer breeze, watching as my second Cecropia disappeared into the trees that lined and surrounded our backyard. I just watched it go and I loved every minute of it.

And that was it.

It was gone.

For the longest time, that beautiful moth that brought to mind all manner of fantastical things to spring up in my imagination became a figment. A spotlight figment, sure. A lighthouse or a red hot flare. But a figment all the same as I spent the next twenty years of my life wishing I could see one again. I’d wander through our North Dakota attempts at forests and hope year after year that I’d see another burst of light in the form of an incredible creature I so fondly remembered, and to be honest it never worked. The space beneath cars on rainy days remained unoccupied and the vines were eventually replaced by a species of plant not nearly so invasive, and with those childhood spots now gone, my moth friend seemed to go as well.

And as odd as it may sound, I spent every one of those twenty years hoping I’d see one again. And, when I decided that 2020 would be my last year in North Dakota, I spent every moment of last year’s summer and the beginning of this one hoping I’d see one more before I left. That seems a bit ridiculous, doesn’t it? What are the odds of seeing something that’s eluded me for the last twenty years, let alone right in time for a move (and what would obviously be a self-serving turn of events)? What are the odds of, with less than a month to go, a coworker coming up to you and showing you a picture of one he’d seen on his garage door? What are the odds of that very same coworker calling you an hour later to tell me that, while on his lunch, he saw that the aforementioned super-being was still hanging out in the shade?

And more than that, what are the odds that I’d drive over to an apartment complex I’d only been to once and see the object of my childhood daydreams relaxing without a care in the world on a warm but breezy summer day? Due to the hyper-specificity of the questions, I’d be willing to bet “Slim to None” would be an accurate answer. And yet there she was. And somehow, after twenty years of remembering every fragment of a pair of childhood moments, blowing up and exaggerating the size and majesty of every frame, this fresh new memory was everything I’d hoped for and more. She was just as daunting, as beautiful, and as clumsily charming as I’d remembered the others I’d seen before.

She was my entire childhood in a moment and a fitting goodbye to my life in North Dakota.

It was only after moments of study and reflection that I carefully removed her from the concrete and hot metal, carrying her gently and with utmost care not to touch or tarnish her wings, and transported her to a fresh collection of trees far away from the heat and unsettling interest of swarming swallows. She all too happily clambered (again quite clumsily) off my hand and into the leaves and branches, and after staying for a few minutes longer to watch her find her footing and marvel, I turned away and began my slow walk back to my car alone.

It was so odd, those moments.

If I could’ve just stayed in those trees for the rest of the afternoon and watched her, I would have in a heartbeat. I wouldn’t even have hesitated. And while I think so much of that truth is due in large part to the simple fact that there’s something so magical about the living things around us, there was something more to it as well. In that moment, I felt like I was walking away from my childhood. Away from the memories that had kept me company all this time as I waited with bated breath to see something remarkable again; for those little flashes of light that so often helped me keep the darkness of life at bay.

It was the strangest feeling and even now it’s a trial not to put on my boots and go out in the hopes that I’ll see her again.

But I won’t. Because I have my new memory now, one to live side-by-side with the decades-old photograph flash of a life gone by. And I have that quiet hope that the next time our paths cross, it won’t take us twenty years to get there.

And, if it does, that it won’t feel like such a long wait.