The End.

It's been a while since I've been able to say that. 2 years, in fact.  It was exactly two years ago (give or take a few days) since one book ended and the next began. First came "A Little Piece of Me", then "The Silence and the Noise", and the time has come for the gravestone to be hammered home with the completion of "Can You Feel the Thunder?". I didn't know what to do with myself once I tapped out those fateful words. The End... Much like in life, it was an end I had long known was coming, yet one at which I did not want to arrive because such is the nature of stories and the love that grows when characters become your friends.

These books started almost six years ago. I was a different person when I met Atticus and Eve and they were different people when we parted ways, but the journey mattered. It always matters. I know that the day will come when I look back and wonder where they've gone and what became of those friends I made, but that's not a road I'm meant to travel because such is the finality of life. Their story is over now. Their lives are now their own. And who they are and what they did will one day be up to anyone who takes the time to read their story and wander into darkness at their side. 

What happened was my story to tell. What happens is for everyone else. 

I love writing books and I always will. I once did it because I thought I might be rich, but now I just do it for me. I love every moment of seeing my friends in my head and wondering what might happen to them next, what horrors they might face and try to overcome. More than that, I like to think that one day someone will read their stories and think "You know, I wish their world was mine." I certainly do. And though I write for myself, I feel rather warm and happy at the thought that someone might think so too. 

Their world, much like ours, is dark. But that doesn't matter and it never does. All that matters are the people in that world, the ones that make it darker and the ones that make it bright, and what they'll do to find something lasting over the course of a finite life. So in closing, I'd like to thank the few of you who've read the drafts and offered your support and those that have inspired the quirks and smiles that give my characters life. I'll never remember who you are, not always, but every now and then I'll see a flash of you in them and I'll know. 

Sometimes I see myself there too. Sometimes I like to wonder if they'd like me if we ever met. 

A Little Piece of Me. The Silence and the Noise. Can You Feel the Thunder?

I only know two things with any shred of certainty: I'm proud of the story I've created. And I so dearly miss my friends. 

My Constant Friend

I'll never be able to quite decide if my home lies in the dark,

Or if all my broken childhood fears have nested in my heart.

To lie in wait as partial eggs that leak their bleeding yolks,

I thought I could at last belong in this house I didn't know.

For what purpose is this fractured shell if not to keep us calm,

In endless arms of comfort cold that shelter from the warmth.

What purpose holds my eyeless sight if not to hide from life,

Within the waiting confines of the endless loving night.

It should matter, my vacant host, that you end my passing days,

To banish fast to distant lands hopes voiced but not embraced.

Still your welcome matters most, far more than finite hopes, 

For tears of joy are nothing if there's no sadness to help them sew. 

Your silence lasts forever and in that we find your peace,

The endless promise forever presented we're ever too blind to see.

We scorn you for your place in us and the hopes within your end,

But I can see just who you are-

                         Oh shadow in the darkness, you will always be my friend.

Nighttime Tears

I heard a baby crying in the room beneath my bed,
I heard the baby crying and it echoed in my head.
I heard my baby crying and its darkness pierced the air,
I heard that baby crying and I knew he wasn’t there.

Life/Time

Sometimes I am left to die as the stars they fall away,

Sometimes I’m an exploding planet that burns with sunstroke blaze.

Sometimes I’m a man awake still with a living dream,

And sometimes I will wake at night and never sleep again.

I am just a memory

And I am just a friend.

I am just the man who dies

When his story’s at its end.

I cannot speak in comforts and I cannot speak in faith,

I cannot speak with desperate lies to dry my eyes today.

I cannot die in silence and I cannot long for life,

When the life I live has naught to give to feed my tired eyes.

I am just a shadow,

And I am just a shade.

I am just the man who lives

And hopes he’ll die today.

I will not say I’m friendless and I will not say I’m dead,

I will not say that I’m alone when I live inside my head.

I will not say you killed me nor that you broke my heart,

You have no skill at acting and you hardly had a part.

I am just a human

And I am just a man.

I am just the man who sees

The joy in painful memories.

I’ll always know the strength of life and the pull to still go on,

I’ll always know the will to live when you think that will is gone.

I’ll always know the death in life and the torture that loss gives,

But I’ll live this life in strength and hope that I’m the one who lives.

The Curious Nature of Sad Songs

Just a few days ago I chose to attend a showing of the film Paddington 2 with my folks at our local theater. It was a delightful little movie and I urge you all to see it.

It's also one of the few movies that has ever caused me to tear up in a theater.

Now, that might seem odd to you because it's not a sad movie. It's not even a perilous movie. Surely the trials of a bear from Darkest Peru doesn't possess the oppressive weight of a Schindler's List and cannot be compared to whatever normal people tend to cry at, yet here we are. At 28, I'm forced to confront the simple fact that I'm now the sole owner of tear ducts that have been laid siege to by sentimentality and the passage of time. 

That's not to say I was ever the stalwart sort in my younger years, of course, because I certainly was not. I tended towards displays of anger that were brought about by the entirely psychologically-recommended strategy of "Ignore all problems until they rise up like a tsunami and crush you under the collected weight of your subconscious" and various other eruptions of unpleasantry, but I never really got around to crying that much. Truth be told, aside from a mental breakdown or two, the only ordinary occurrence that drove me to tears was the death of my beloved terrier named Max. That happened when I was 21, we had to put him down, and I almost punched a coworker in the face because he greeted my tragic news with "Well it's only a dog, right?". 

I'm a calmer person these days, but I still think he should've felt that comment for a few days. So I suppose we all have our flaws.

Then I turned 22 and something odd and completely unavoidable happened. I got a little older. Day by day I aged and life took on fresh meaning as I died a little more with every tick of the second hand on a very small and inconsequential clock. The version of me that had been beholden to pervasive dark thoughts and wonder in the face of mortality began to see flickers of life and weird bright colors in the face of the shadows that I'd always loved. Hell, even the songs that had driven me through my tumultuous teen years no longer had quite the hold over me that they'd once possessed.

I got a little older and sad songs held a different meaning and happy songs a greater allure.

I was a metal kid, see. I got through my days of teen angst, where my only real issues were acne and an unwillingness to socialize with people my own age, with the bolstering of tragic tunes and the calming thunder of a double bass where the lyrics were a haven for all the things I wished to think about. The simple fact of the matter was that I loved sad things. I have always found a certain allure to the nature of sadness and grief because they are emotions that linger with far more tenacity than your everyday happiness might show. Sing someone a happy song and there's a chance they'll relate, but sing someone a sad song and there's no doubt they've been there a time or twelve before. It might've been last week, last month, or last year, but they've been there and in many ways I knew I would soon be too. 

That's the important part though, right? The tail end of that sentence is what matters. Because you see, the strangest thing I found in life is that the tragedies in art, whether it be film, music, or words, are far more comforting when you've never felt their truth. I sang along with gusto to songs that told tragic tales of infidelity, a truly heart-wrenching topic for any betrayed fourteen year old. My fists clenched when I saw superheroes forged in the fires of dead parents even though my own remain happily alive to this day. And I soaked in the glorious prose of writers who knew only psychological torment in the faces of their loss, convincing myself that I could relate to them in my bedroom as I pondered the unfairness of having to mow three lawns on a sweltering July afternoon.

In my defense, North Dakota summers can be quite sweaty. 

Yet I digress. Because for all my pining for the life of strong emotion and pain that my artists had experienced, I was blissfully unaware of life and the peculiar nature of its tolls. All I knew was that I didn't understand these finer points of the human existence and the treacherous slopes that inspired these works and in a very Promethean way, I wanted them for myself. I wanted to hear the songs and understand their meaning, to see the movies and understand their violence, and to read the poetry while finally feeling their longing. And then I got older, I grew up, and I realized that it's so much easier to love the sad things in life when they haven't yet happened to you. 

The simple fact of the matter is that secondhand emotion is easy to throw yourself behind because you've haven't had to do a damn thing when it came to the legwork. You can be a happily single man raising a triumphant fist in support of someone who has overcome wanton infidelity, but when you see your life crumble around you in the wake of deceit and betrayal then suddenly those songs aren't as easy to hear. When you see a pet grow frail and old, the movies where a dog dies are now something you can relate to. When you have a child, films with children in peril are not merely the adrenaline rush they once were. And when you lose a loved one, the tales of what used to be are accompanied by a weight that was never there before and you find yourself wishing not for the breadth of experience to understand those notes, but for the times in your life when you didn't yet know their meaning. 

Why? Because human beings are fickle creatures. They wish for things they don't yet have, only to get them and realize that they were never really what they wanted at all.

Me? I'll always enjoy the sad things in life because they make me feel and when they make me feel, they make me appreciate all that I've had and still have in this world, however fleeting those things may be. But as I grow older, day by day and minute by minute, I hear a catchy tune that fills me with joy and I see a happy movie about a bear in London, and I'm momentarily transported back to the earliest parts of my life when all I knew was blissful joy and the potential for an everlasting happiness that settles like a hazy fog and never leaves.

Life's not like that, of course. Happiness is an emotion and as such, it is never a constant. It's truly no more lasting than a snowflake on bare concrete. But it still has merit and every sliver of it contributes to a greater structure built on the backs of memories of who we once were and who we hoped to be. It just so happened that, for all my desire to be a tragic poet who could relate to the most mortal aspects of life, I was also a little boy who wanted to go on peril-free adventures with a small bear who ate marmalade sandwiches. 

I liked sad songs when I didn't truly understand why they were sad and I truly do still enjoy them from time to time. But now that I'm a little older and a little more worn down by life, I appreciate the joyful things that take me back in time to a world where everything was possible and happiness wasn't just a 'sometimes' but the end of one attainable quest and the promise of further adventures that went hand-in-hand with a joy without end.

Matchbox Cars and Hotwheels: A Justice League Review

Do any of you remember the days when you played with toy cars? I feel like I have to ask that because I'm honestly not quite sure who my audience is and if there is one at all. Perhaps you played with dolls or, in my case, the far more formidable and bloodthirsty Beanie Babies. They had the upper hand over all those garbage toys like "cars" and "tiny creepy replications of mini-humans" because I was able to knot plastic bags around their necks and throw them off the deck to see if they'd float gracefully to the ground. They never did, of course. We lost many good men but loss is par for the course of life so let's move on.

Anyways! Toy cars. They were the jocks of the toy kingdom, a dominant force of metal that couldn't handle running into the slightest pebble without severe structural damage. They were like Tesla in that way. (Full disclosure, I know nothing about Tesla so please don't fact check that. It would be impossible for me to care any less than I already do, so let's focus on the toys). No child in his damn mind wanted a Matchbox car. If there was one such child, probably raised in the woods not by wolves but by a mink and his malcontent rabid chipmunk pal, he probably didn't know a thing about toys. Pine cones? Sure. Toy cars? Leave that to the real boys, False Romulus. 

DC has, unfortunately and unfairly, become the Matchbox car of the comic book movie genre. While Marvel has churned out hit movie after hit movie, each cell of film somehow becoming more and more gummed up with the slime of cotton candy quips, DC has been what it's always been: A deeper and darker world that isn't afraid of going dark for the sake of its intent to tell tales steeped in morals and the battle for the soul of Metropolis or Gotham. Sometimes this is a fool's errand as the story and the script are rarely as grandiose as the creators believe them to be (we're all looking at you, Studio Interference Squad), but the intent has been there to build on the back of Nolan's grim reality and to tell stories that matter. Yet years have gone by with Hotwheel Marvel churning out bubblegum hits while DC has struggled through the grime of trying to be something more and, as earlier established, no one cares about Matchbox cars because sometimes they're crappy and take themselves much more seriously than they should. 

Thus, for every quasi-decent DC movie (Dawn of Justice and...well, the other ones...) there have been three critical and financial successes for Marvel (Guardians of the Galaxy, Guardians with Sherlock, Guardians with Paul Rudd, Guardians with somehow even quippier Guardians, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera) and the world has laughed at DC directors who can't seem to escape the Instagram filter that is Gotham City. Meanwhile the youths of today have glammed onto the resulting joke-a-minute laughfests that reached peak absurdity in Thor: Ragnarok, a 150 minute Saturday Night Live episode that decided to go with the "Shotgun approach" to jokes in that, if you spray wide and often enough something will hopefully die. I died in that one, or at least my brain cells did, and I mourned for the days when people at least pretended there was something superhero movies could say. 

What's that? You want to destroy an entire world and, instead of granting us all a moment of silence, you'd rather make your last of 2,913 quippy one-liners? By all means, go for it! God knows we're all probably brain dead by this point anyways. Thanks for the Cotton Candy Comas, you bastards of humorless laughter! Let us laugh! Why? I have no idea but apparently that's something we should all do while led to the slaughterhouse so that we might be bled dry of any sense of humor that requires a smidgen of intelligence to appreciate. But do you know the worst part? In this world of "Dear god! They're more successful! We must mimic!", instead of staying true to their slightly-less-than brand of Matchbox, DC thought to themselves "Yes. Of course. We can also do that! Nothing can get rid of a cloud like a chunk of sickeningly sweet Coney Island Diabetes Foam that looks just like our clouds but is overwhelming and tries way too hard!"

And that brings us to today, when I saw Justice League and silently wept for the mass grave of all the promise that grit and grime can sometimes embrace. Why? Because DC had a brand. It might not have been the immediately sexy brand (the box office dynamos of Guardians, Deadpool, Ant Man, and every other joke-laden jokefest saw to that) but it was distinguishable. When the masses saw a Bat Signal float through the air or the S that apparently is a river (because to hell with how topography works, right?), they knew that it would at least be something different. It would have some metal in the timbre and a hint of nastiness in all things heroic. It would, as the laymen would perhaps put it, have balls. But, take it from a man who has been dumped by enough women to know that coming in second is pretty damn lousy, losing is a terrible thing and eventually DC got tired of losing. 

That's why, on the heels of Batman Vs. Superman (a grimy world of betrayal and dizzying plot devices) and Wonder Woman (a fantastic exercise in genre that finally gave the world a Diana Prince flick that was a stunning achievement), we got...this. Gone are the moral platitudes and the battles that are all grunts and agony, replaced with mortal heroes who somehow care so little about death that they quip on the battlefield constantly as the world dies. Gone! are the characters with some semblance of... character, so that they might be replaced with tension-killing one-liners. GONE! Is the Instagram filter, replaced by CGI so bright and boisterous that even Snapchat had no use for it. And here, risen from ashes into slightly more colorful ashes, is the new DC world where creators on the losing Matchbox team thought "Screw it. Maybe we should try to be Marvel."

Except they're not. Now they just look like a Matchbox car in a Hotwheels box. They're all style and they gave away their run-of-the-mill ordinariness for the sake of a little extra paint. They sold their soul for jokes that, on a scale of the best reasons to sell a soul, is pretty stupid. And their world which was at least anticipated and recognized became a strange collage of puzzles that was assembled by a blind teenager with ADHD. Momentous things happen...for the sake of a punchline. Lives are lost...between quips. And our heroes that were once spouting grievances and frustrations with such Shakespearean gravitas that it might have been inadvertently comedic a time or two...well, that's so frequently abandoned that it's relatively easy to assume they've been possessed by the same Voodoo witch that resurrected Robert Downey Jr.'s career. 

This may be treading into dangerous waters that make it sound like I hate this movie. I don't. It's actually not terrible and there's quite a bit to like even though it's often coated with that pinkish glow of insipidity. Ben Affleck continues to remind me why I don't actually hate him, even if he's taken to Bale-growling through even his Bruce Wayne scenes. Gal Gadot is a true treasure of empowerment as Wonder Woman, a well-written character and the true heart of this franchise. Jason Mamoa, even though he's not given a great deal to do here, shows why he has an Everest worth of Charisma that rightly has the masses screaming that Aquaman should be the Sexiest Man Alive and not a philanderer with a neck beard. And Ray Fisher does the best job at acting with half of a face since Tom Hardy and Aaron Eckhardt went back to back for Nolan (an admittedly odd and strange bar to set). In truth, from a character standpoint, Ezra Miller is the only one who finds himself truly lacking as he takes on the role of "I'm going to say a thing that's funny so we can all be in on the joke" guy and suffers for it. Sure his moments visiting his father in prison (there are two) are nice, but he's a talented young actor who deserves better than to be relegated to the status of Joss Whedon's Punchline Bag. 

But oh well. If the Rock Monster in Thor: Ragnarok can teach us anything, it's that audiences love nonsense for its own sake. 

And so we find ourselves in the imitation Hotwheel world that is now the DC Universe. Gone is the seriousness and the risk. Gone are the moral platitudes. Gone is the sense that, no matter how hard we might try, the good guys might still lose. And, thanks to you, the whimsical masses, we are given our finished product: A cinematic universe of our most conflicted heroes where there's really no conflict; where Armageddon is staved off and giant alien flowers grow to the joy of young children (they're probably poisonous, so goodbye, cute Chernobyl Child!); where there's never a death-defying scenario that can't be "bolstered" by a joke that punctures the tension balloon; and a world so full of CGI that you'd be hard pressed to find an actual set instead of a green screen. Indeed, where in the United States could you find a field of corn for Clark Kent to brood as he does his best impersonation of the Greek God of the JcPenney Cologne Counter? Seems like a case for some re-shoots to me!

In the end, this movie wasn't awful. It wasn't even bad. I have no doubt that I'll watch it a time or two more simply for the magnetism that can be found in its leads and I'll easily choose it over the last five years of Marvel drivel, save for a spare film here and there. It'll live forever in a little pocket universe as the first step DC took to turn its brand into something it wasn't for the sake of a comic book movie bubble that's going to pop relatively soon anyways. So in the spirit of that, perhaps a little more cinematic nihilism on my part would help to soften the blow? But no. I've had my fill of Cotton Candy and if I don't have diabetes then there's sure as hell a chance that I might have a cavity or twelve. 

Oh. And did I mention there was a villain? No? It doesn't matter. He could've died to the tune of Magic Carpet Ride and I would still wind up forgetting him before the next CGI-rampage even had the chance to occur. I hope you're happy, my friends. We all live in a Coney Island of Cinema now and, whether you like it or not, you finally get to play with toys that are imitation knockoffs of that one thing that seemed so much cooler when you were a child. The grass isn't greener over there, Billy. It never was. It's lifeless astroturf that may soon serve as the bedrock for the new home of the Cleveland Browns.

Now quickly! To the Cinema! I hear there are at least 75 minutes of after-credit scenes that are now as pointless and ego-stroking as the 'encore' songs that plague the setlists of even our greatest singers. 

Empty Bird Cages

I am an honest man.

As such, it stands to reason that I'd do my best to speak honestly or else what would be the point? What purpose is served by a dishonest honest man? There's quite a bit of repetition in there but it doesn't bother me. I've done worse things and in time I'll do better. For now, I'm spending a Tuesday evening sitting on my deck wishing and waiting for better things and I wouldn't mind if they were delivered via overnight shipping.

Amazon is good at that kind of thing, I've heard. Perhaps I should've invested in a Prime membership and things would've wound up going a little more smoothly but I got scared off by the shipping so I decided to avoid happiness at all cost. It seemed like a good idea at the time and yet I can't help but feel like a man who dove into a bed of cacti for the same reason. If you don't understand the reference then I'd recommend you go watch "The Magnificent Seven", and by that I mean the classic with Charles Bronson, not the remade atrocity with Denzel Washington. 

It hurts to put "atrocity" and "Denzel" in the same sentence but such is life and I'm sitting on a damn cactus so why should one of our finest actors escape my ire?

Anyway.

Life has been difficult of late. Three days ago I was three weeks from going to the Grand Canyon for a vacation that has been two years in the making and today I had to cancel it. Or perhaps even worse was the fact that I didn't have to, I wanted to. You see, life hasn't been what it should be of late and to be perfectly truthful it's not always easy for me to be me. I live in a world of absolutes where there is either joy or pain, darkness or light, success or failure, and I always have. It usually works out and it has made me into who I am today but that's not to say that it's a perfect system. The downside is that there are times when those absolutes all swing the same way and when this happens, I can't cope with the mania that comes with too much of a good thing and I slip into deep trenches when it dips and drops into a trifecta of darkness, failure, and pain.

That might sound melodramatic but it's not. The simple fact of the matter is that I'm very much a hills and valleys type of person even though I live in a region of the United States that's never met a hill it didn't want to steamroll with the bland power of the Great Plains. The pleasant part of this is that I've never met a valley that didn't eventually climb into something greater but the fact remains that those lows need to be traversed for the inevitable hills to hold any worth.

That's what I like to tell myself, anyways. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.

This time around the Valley has gone on for three weeks. It started long before that due to a long stretch of creative infertility before tailing off into some unpleasant health problems and crashing into a mountain that represented some pretty lousy heartache. All these things are simple little tragedies, I know, and indeed it seems woefully shortsighted to call them tragedies at all, but they are tragic to me and I suppose that's what matters in these moments where they're felt and experienced by me. They gathered together like a storm in a tiny bottle and grew into thunderheads that brought with them a sadness I've rarely felt that might as well have been hurricanes. 

I found myself caving to emotion at the drop of a hat to such a deliriously odd extent that silence sent me spiraling as did any movie, song, or television show with even the slightest heartbreak heft. So I tried to hide from both and in doing so hid from everything else as well. That worked about as well as you could imagine and after almost two weeks of lifeless isolation I decided instead to surface and get lunch with my parents while skirting around the bigger picture and focusing on a trip I was less than two days from cancelling.

It helped and I left with the desire to write a story and buy a bird. 

I managed the latter but didn't come close to the former. The story stalled after seventeen words but the bird was still a bird, a little Zebra Finch of the sort that I've wanted since I was a child, and for a single day he made me happy until I returned him because the life I thought he'd bring to my apartment wasn't a life at all. I hadn't the money or the space to purchase him a friend and the cage they'd assured me was large enough for a solitary bird wasn't nearly big enough for a man who loves birds more than anything, and so the sounds of living things, the flutter of wings and a frequent chirp and song, became a constant reminder of the little finch that could only fly ten inches each way before little bars blocked his way. 

I knew then that the Grand Canyon wasn't meant to be. I knew it as soon as I realized that even the things I loved most weren't enough to make me smile and I couldn't bear the thought of visiting a site I've longed for my entire life only to feel the same sadness when I stood on the precipice of wonder. What is a view if I can't see flight? What is wonder if I can't hear song? 

So instead I returned my little bird friend, named Atticus because what better name exists for a Finch, and even though he'll probably wind up in another cage on another day, perhaps he'll live there with the friends and family I couldn't provide. Perhaps he can live in a little home where he can sing and his kin can sing back. And today I told my boss that I no longer needed a week off to see the Canyon, a notification accompanied by a joke that it will still be there next year or the year after that. That was the hardest part, I think. It felt like killing a dream even if only for the moment and I have so few dreams left that haven't yet died that I'm beginning to feel their losses a little more each time. Perhaps those losses will one day get to be too much, but perhaps they won't. 

Today they didn't. Even though I did tear up when I got home and heard nothing, even though I teared up with the understanding that I'll soon be another year older and not where I want to be, and even though I sometimes feel adrift in a very small world where I'm bumping into the walls of a cage I didn't even know was there, I'm still rather certain that those things will eventually fade like they always do. Then, when I'm ready to hear the sounds of flight and majesty, when I'm ready to see sights I can only dream of without the restrictions of whatever ghosts the heart can manage, I'd like to think that things will be different.

Perhaps I'll finally have my moment to stand on the precipice of greater adventures and canyonlands and think of how distant the stormcloud sadness has become. 

A Trio of Vignettes

There was once a man who dreamed of dead things

         That lived in the shadows of his footprints and the corpses of fallen leaves.

They were not his friends,

            Not quite,

And he knew they'd only be there for him in patience til he died. 

                                            So he wished for them to not so gently fade.

He built himself a room of cheap dollar charms and quickburn sage

                                                                   And the coffin nail remnants of a man and his grenade,

In the hopes that it might drive away the devils in the hallways

           And the shadows in his ears.

    Yet still they flickered as the man grew weaker

                 And those happy dead things played dice with shattered bones

Until the clock struck 29 and the living man lost living life came slowly dying home.

                                                                  *

I once shot a shadow in the hopes it was a leper,

Amid all the errant and traitorous truths that it was just a specter. 

But how was a man to know within that static snow of every false bravado and histrionic lie,

That painted life with broad black strokes and laid eggs in fictitious minds. 

How was he to know was I,

That the specter falling fast with all its shadowed awe,

Was naught but cannon fodder in wake of heart's shotgun blasts. 

Yet it all was clear enough to see if only I had looked

When my last name was finally written within fate's hallowed books,

That penciled my damnation and bent to hear the cry

Of he who would live and die at the altars of shadows and the whimsy of his lies.

                                                             **

There was once a man and he lived his life by passing days and the failing time of lava lamps.

He watched clouds pass and wished they were dragons,

He saw people pass too and he thought they might be knights.

His feet scattered pebbles like they were meteors

And when the day came for hands to rise from waters high,

He saw in those fingers and fists the pages of a book that would someday end.

They were his books and they resembled his seconds, his hours, and his days.

The man wished for substance,

The man wished for life,

But he sat on water's edge with late-light laments

Because his pages were blank and the stars had gone dark.

They were just there. 

The perfect encapsulation of a life lived in a mind

And the world that ages and the pages that turned,

While the man bobbed adrift through the waves of change that never once had the tide to occur.

                                                                    ***

Question Time: FAQ for the Curious, Asked by the Curious

What inspired you to start writing and has it changed over time? 

I certainly hope it has. As a warning, I'm going to be delving into the purest of cliches to answer this question and I'm not afraid to go there, as I traffic my emotional instability in briefcases of purest honesty. The truth of it all isn't that I'm some tortured artist who needs to speak to his pages to feel fulfillment, it's not that I'm a poet driven by the metronome in my head, I'm just a normal fellow with an odd little dream. The funny part is that it was a dream kickstarted by the most human of reasons: There was once a time when I was sixteen and I desperately wanted to impress a girl. So, I showed her a short story I'd written and told her I was a writer. 

I've been writing ever since and there's a part of me that will always be that teenage boy who wants only to impress a pretty girl. Fortunately, it's also the only thing I've ever loved to do and it all wound up working out pretty well. I'd like to thank that girl someday (Christina was her name) but she stopped talking to me about six months after I tried to wow her with my tenuous grasp of the English language.

I don't blame her, really. I was a rather terrible writer back then.

Are you going to lie to me?

I certainly hope so. More than that, I hope I lie to you so well that you believe everything I tell you even if it takes you to terrifying worlds that you'd never wish to visit alone. Also, there'll be cotton candy and treats.

That is a lie. I just lied. 

Pineapple pizza, heresy or brilliance?

Fun fact of absolutely no use to you: I'm actually lactose intolerant, so unless the pizza is cheese-free then I sadly have no interest in it. For the sake of this question that's obviously determined to plumb the depths of my psyche and philosophical core however, I'll pretend that I'm not: As a man with a great love for outside-the-box thinking (I once wrote a story about a dinosaur in Hollywood who is trying to salvage his career while mired in controversy over the fact that he sometimes eats his child costars), I think pineapple is a worthy addition to just about anything and I'll absolutely include 'pizza' on that list. That being said, I also am prone to dipping chocolate chip cookies in guacamole so maybe it's best if you don't listen to me. 

What genres do you want to break into and write?

 There honestly aren't many that I haven't already wandered into by accident. Though darker fiction, horror, and absurdist comedy are in my wheelhouse, I tend to genre hop with some frequency. Of course there are some that I'd like to give a shot, namely pure genre fiction and a crime novel that's delightfully pulpy. Who knows, maybe I'll write some erotica sometime as well. 

"50 Shades of Luke" does sound pretty snazzy, even if it also sounds like the abject failures of my sunscreen choices.

What inspired you to do music projects and will you continue to do so?

For those of you who don't know (and judging by the Youtube views, it's safe to say that's all of you) I have a handy little side-project in the realm of "heavy metal" by the name of Deathbed Dichotomy that began a handful of years ago. I can't really sing particularly well and I wandered through the seas of teenage distress with the help of music that most elderly folks categorize as "noise", so it was inevitable that I'd try my hand at such a thing as I have this general desire to at least try doing everything I want to do. In the end, I wound up getting in touch with a friend and asking if he wanted to start a band and stick with me while I screamed and wrote rambling lyrics. He said yes and we went for it. I'm proud of the songs we've made and I'm sure we'll make more in the future, though I'd also love to give clean vocals and spoken word a shot so who knows where I'll find myself in a few years.

Do you like kittens?

I'm actually more of a dog person but I have a deep and constant love for all living things that aren't human. Humans are fine, I suppose, but animals and birds and bugs and plants are better. So, since I guess kittens fall into at least one of those categories then sure. I like kittens. 

Is there a type of character you're itching to write about?

Yes. In the next few months I'll be writing my first novel focusing on a female lead and I couldn't be more thrilled by that challenge. It tells the tale of a songwriter who dies only to keep dying. Instead of moving on, she tumbles into every life she created in her songs and the story follows her efforts to escape the cycle of endless mortality she accidentally built around herself. So I guess you could say I'm itching to launch into that work.

What would you tell aspiring authors? Or, better yet, what advice would you give your younger self?

 Have fun. Enjoy yourself. Most of all, I'd tell anyone (including my younger self) to just write. Too much of life is spent telling yourself you can't do things or making excuses and building walls where there are none. If you want to write, then write. Write the good things, write the bad things, write them well and write them poorly, and gradually you'll find your knack. But here's the tricky and easy part: You'll never do any of those things and you'll never accomplish anything if you don't first put one word in front of the other. 

Who is your favorite author?

In terms of ideas, Ayn Rand. In terms of tone, Neil Gaiman. In terms of dialogue and delivery, Christopher Moore. It's a trinity of conflicting styles, but they're all so terribly good in their own ways that I can't choose just one and I'd recommend reading all of them. Christopher Hitchens, John Hart, and Dennis Lehane are all up there as well.

How do you stay inspired?

That's the easy part, actually. There's nothing I enjoy more than writing, telling stories, and venturing into worlds that aren't my own. The inspiration never fades because I never tire of finding all these people I so dearly wish I could sit down with over a cup of coffee.

I truly wish to know why boys are dumb?! From your perspective of course!

Ah, the most complex question of all. There are countless broad-stroke answers to this that would loop all men of the 'boy' categorization into the same collective, but as an ardent individualist I rather oppose such categorizing and will instead paint my answer with the biggest and broadest brush you could possibly imagine. See, the problem isn't that boys are dumb even though a tragically large number of them are. The problem is that people are stupid. We have conflicting goals, beliefs, attractions, desires, hopes, dreams, lifestyles, quirks, traits, flaws, strengths, and so much more, and we all exist in the same stew in a rather large and jaw-dropping crockpot. That purest of individuality, all those pieces that are so unlike the others even when we think they might be similar, is both beautiful and immensely irritating. 

Boys are stupid because there are stupid boys. Boys are also grand because there are boys who are grand. The part of this that's most frustrating is that what we do with this information is all on us. There are fantastic human beings out there and we can find them, but first we have to identify what makes the stupid ones stupid so we don't spend our entire lives falling down rabbit holes in pursuit of false things when the opportunity for something far better, greater, and more fulfilling is entirely within our grasp. You see...boys will be stupid as long as you give them attention for being stupid. So find the good ones and force the stupid ones to evolve or be left behind. 

Hope this helps!

Where and what have been your weirdest forms of inspiration?

Probably almost every bit of my inspiration would be seen as 'weird'. I wrote my dinosaur story because the concept of a dinosaur eating children made me chuckle. I wrote a book about the search for immortality because I think death is a concept that is overlooked in its complex beauty. And I have a notebook by my bedside for when midnight inspiration strikes. In that notebook is the line "Dead kid with balloon butterfly wings" and while I still don't know what that means, I apparently figured it was worth going for. 

My mind is a treacherous place. There are banana peels everywhere and I don't even like bananas.

How do I woo the girl of my dreams?

Good god are you asking the wrong man. You poor, poor, poor deluded fellow. Fortunately, I have a spectacular imagination so with luck that'll be able to help you get out of whatever sad-sack predicament you seem to have fallen into. Now, as I see it there are about three cardinal rules to wooing and I'll give you the quick rundown of each of them so you can go about your business and I can get back to writing about terrible things happening to terrible people. I have an image to maintain after all.

1. Be Honest: Groundbreaking, I know, but it also flies in the face of most pursuit tactics. See, I'm a big fan of honesty. I think it trumps absolutely everything and it's quite the weapon when used correctly. If you see something in someone that you think absolutely needs to be addressed, appreciated, or paid homage to, then do all those things. If someone matters to you, do and say things that convey that they matter to you. Don't be afraid to speak your mind. Don't run from your feelings. And don't let someone ride off into the sunset because you were too averse to the truth to tell them just how highly you thought of them.

2. Be Romantic: This doesn't take much and anyone who tells you differently is a lying liarpants that shouldn't be listened to. Now it should be noted that what constitutes as romantic depends on the subject of the wooing, so you need to play it accordingly. Don't, for example, buy someone a bajillion dollar ring when she doesn't like gifts. Don't buy a dog for a girl that was mauled by a Chihuahua as a child and now only has a third of a face. Don't buy a plant for a girl who thinks of herself as a plant, because that's like endorsing slavery. In short, being romantic means being conscious not only of what this person likes but who she is and why she likes it. So pay attention and don't be a dolt. 

3. Be There: Somehow the thing that seems to escape so many people is the concept of emotional availability. You can't woo someone without caring about them and if you care about them, you should be there for them both on the good days and the bad. 82.3% of caring is showing up and I know all of the maths so you can trust me when I quote this completely imagined statistic. If you care about a girl and you want to care about them more while seeing if they feel the same, you don't set them free. She isn't a balloon. Show you want to be in her life by being in her life and maybe things will work out the way you hope they might.

How do you get into the mindset of your characters?

The easy way of answering this is to say that I'm never not in them. While the characters inevitably take on lives of their own and become almost wholly separate from me, they begin in me and as a part of me and while they may diverge and grow into their own completion, there will always be a small portion of them that is always me. If I am writing the story of a scared child, I ask myself what I'd think as a scared child and that voice begins to act accordingly. If I write from the perspective of a schizophrenic, I put myself into that world and look at everything until I see his life as he does. All it takes is focus and the willingness to sometimes navigate treacherous paths for the sake of your work. 

It's that easy. It's that hard. 

Do you have to spend a lot time thinking before the pen hits the paper or does it just flow from mind to paper?

 It depends on the work. When I write comedy, it tends to flow very easily and I can complete a 15 page story in about an hour. When I write horror, sometimes that takes a great deal of planning and meditation to get in the proper frame of mind. And when I write novels or, god forbid, trilogies, then that takes weeks of prep work and outlining along with character sketching and the like. So I don't have a steadfast answer to that as it varies entirely on what I'm writing at the time, but it should probably be noted that I'm not at all afraid of grabbing my bizarro dreams by the horns and winging it entirely. 

Life is a bit too strange to do everything entirely by the book, after all.

If you weren't a writer, what would you be?

In a different world, in a different life, or perhaps if I had so much more time, I would be a boxer or I would've at least tried to be one. I've got quite the love of sports and there's no sport that I think of quite as highly as I think of boxing. I love everything about it. I love the resilience, the strength, and the utter power of will that it takes to succeed. There's something so appealing to me about a world in which the only thing standing in the way of your goals is one man in the other corner, and all you need to do to make it through to the other side is to show that your desire is greater than theirs. What's not to like about that? What's not to love?

And plus, the things I enjoy more than hitting something very hard would make up quite the short list. 

Moving On: How to Live on a Recliner and Why

In the very late part of last year, when snow was busy bombarding me with the full realization that when it comes to the location of my atoms and existence I may well have made a terrible geographic mistake, I tore apart my old bed with a baseball bat and purchased an air bed. There are two why's that should be asked there and as most people are rational, I will answer the first query right off the bat. Simply put, I didn't own a wrench. Or a hammer. Or one of those little screwdrivers that wouldn't have worked even if I'd owned it. And though a part of me wanted to do right by that bed, I also was rather bored and knew I'd always put it off if I didn't take action. 

Baseball Bat Enters the Scene.

As for the second question, why, well that one is oddly enough a little more complex. It was the earworm brainchild of an offer from a friend who was, at the time, in the process of contemplating the notion of vacating his lease in a rather cozy and pleasant apartment. As I was a man who loves all things cozy and pleasant, I took him up on an offer to move into his place at earliest convenience for us both and I tore apart my bed so I could begin again in a new place with one that didn't torment me with malicious springs. I purchased an airbed to tide me over and slept nights with thoughts of new things, "new" being the driving word as I was rapidly approaching year eight of my current apartment and the walls had become ever so dreadfully dull, and waiting for the stars to align. 

Sadly, as life goes, It soon became apparent that those stars were meteors and Bruce Willis would never arrive to save my solitary world in time.

The apartment offer dried up in a flash of those thoughts where you squint with the wonder of "Oh my. There's a chance he's not going to leave.", my airbed of countless five-star Amazon durability reviews promptly stabbed itself and proceeded to constantly deflate with such manic efficiency that I was often brought back to the waking world with the unpleasant sensation of being adrift in one's own apartment. I don't like water that much and I loathe drowning, one of those probably being a byproduct of the other, and for two weeks I was snatched from sleep by feelings of the latter as my unrepentant airbed tried repeatedly to swallow me whole.

As with all great sharks, even the ones made or rubber that come in boxes, I don't think it would've even left a trace. 

I could've found the hole, I think. I looked multiple times but I don't think I looked too hard and instead decided to throw the whole thing away, Sic Semper Tyrannis after all, and I looked at my tiny recliner that I believe to this day was stolen off the set of a movie focused around either very small adults or very large children and thought, "That seems about right." I like to think that it was because I was being very rational and understood quite rightly that $80 was an expense I couldn't afford, but in all likelihood I probably just felt betrayed by an inanimate object and held it against him accordingly.

Do you ever get the feeling that people don't understand you? I do. I go long stretches over the course of which people try to tell me what I'm doing and why, and they do try mightily, only to eventually segue into varying mutterings that generally have to do with the confusion that my life sometimes (some would say "often") seems to embrace. There's often laughter and jokes at my expense, all of which are earned, and then those things subside until the question is forgotten and left saved and wrapped in tinfoil for a later date. The recliner that became my bed was the source of such things a great many times and even though I had my reasons, I never cared to mention them. 

It didn't matter, not really. Or rather, the only person it mattered to was me. 

See, I realized on one of those early winter mornings when the hope of moving into an apartment that hadn't yet vanished was still new that I probably wouldn't leave if I stayed in that same bed, staring at that same ceiling, pondering those same thoughts. If my world remained where it was and my mind with it, I'd stay in the same place it'd felt like I'd always been. Why? Because I used to like comfortable things, I used to hate risks, and I never once met an unknown prospective future that I wasn't happy to pass up for the known I already possessed. 

I didn't like who I was back then. I thought of that version of me as a rather weak-minded fellow who looked through rose-colored glasses at discomfort and the status quo until he was happy enough to stay there and it was a version that had flourished for many years. So on that cold and wintry night, laying on an airbed that I'd re-inflated for the third time that day, I came to a decision that I needed to do drastic things for the sake of myself. I needed to throw out all the things that were holding me down in the depths of my own subconscious shortcomings and I needed to start running and never look back. 

I walked out into the snow that night somewhere around two in the morning to toss my bed in a dumpster that had always been far too small and, when I wandered back inside and the shivers had stopped, I snagged a pillow and a blanket and holed up on that little recliner that was only slightly more comfortable than it looked and vowed to let things expire until I had no choice but to leave and finally find some other apartment that seemed a little more like home. 

"Home"

I've never much felt attached to that word. I had a home as a child and I visit there often, but I've never had a home since. I've lived places, I've slept places, and I've made memories in those places, but never once did I feel at home. I just 'was' and I used to spend days wondering if that's how everyone felt or if it was just me. That part I never figured out, or at least I haven't so far, but I do know that in another world, in another life, I might've been a nomad and wandered until I could wander no more. Either that, or I would've cared so little for my own location that wasn't a home that I never would've left my apartment and metamorphosed into that weird hermit who rented the same two-bedroom slot for thirty years until he realized he'd made a terrible mistake. 

I didn't want to be that hermit. In truth, I'm odd enough already. 

So in the end, January became February, February became March, March became April, and April became May. And I slept sleepless nights every night on my bed that wasn't a bed for the sake of forcing myself from a life I might never have left otherwise. I'd found ruts to be far too comfortable before, whether in my personal or professional life, and though I'm not always good at avoiding them as I'm not the best driver, I've finally started to see them for what they are when they are. You see...it's all a trick, a joke, and someone's laughing at us at all times even if they don't understand why we do the things we do. It doesn't mean our methods are wrong, they're just ours, and it doesn't mean recliners don't often make the bed you need.

And the bed you need is so much more important than the bed you want. 

I moved out of my old apartment with its rotting walls and halfway-house appeal on June 1st. I moved into a cozy little apartment up north that's cozy in the right way, like a launching pad and not a rut, and it even has a porch. Sometimes I look back on those old rooms that were never a home and all their memories both good and bad and I wonder if this one will be different. I wonder if one day I'll look across the table at a friend or family member and say the words I've never really said or meant since I was a child, "I'm going home."

If I had to guess, I don't think I will. I find it far more likely that this was the beginning of an avalanche and I like to think that I'll soon find myself running as fast as I can towards the finish line of this life. Not because I'm a morbid person thirsting for mortality, no...but because I think life needs to be lived like thunderous rocks spilling down mountainsides, like snow-brought wreckage spilling through trees, and like an adventure that sometimes needs the biggest and boldest push to set everything in motion. My push wasn't that bold, not yet, but it was just the right size for me and I'm living somewhere I've never lived before for the sake of no one else but me. 

That makes me happy and I've rarely been accused of being any such thing. Most days I just 'am'. Most days I'm so much less than what the voices in my head that might be a conscience seem to want me to be. But today I'm sitting in my new apartment, trying to figure out how to work an air conditioner that isn't four hundred years old, and typing a meandering blog for the sake of the precious few who seem to care about what I do with the day after day that is my life. And do you know the strangest thing? Whether it's because of the new place or the drive to be so much more than what was never really gone but often beaten down, I feel quite at home here.

Not the home, not yet, but perhaps one day I will look back on this time and think what a wonderful choice I made. I'll thank that friend of mine who decided to keep the apartment I liked the idea of but didn't really want. I'll thank my baseball bat for being there when I desperately needed to destroy the bed that was holding me to my youth in more ways than I could count. And I'll thank that silly little recliner that was just comfortable enough to tide me through some long nights and just uncomfortable enough to push me towards the new start that I so desperately craved. 

Sometimes we do strange things for our own betterment. Sometimes it's because its necessary, sometimes it's because we're strange people. I don't know which category I fall under, but I do know one thing: I slept in a recliner for five months to finally escape the last seven years because I knew myself better than anyone else. I knew what I had to do to start over, no matter how odd, no matter how uncomfortable, and no matter how sleepless.

And I don't regret a single thing. 

On Annoyance, Life, and Talking Too Much

I've never been too terribly good at picking up on social cues. 

Say what you will about authors and our lifestyle quirks that are often perceived as being the personification of awkwardness, but there's a general assumption that we are all students of the human condition and masters of reading people with a near Sherlockian efficiency. I can't speak for everyone out there or the true depths reached by my fellow writers, but I can speak for me and I can say with great certainty that I am not this way. In fact, I remember quite vividly the first time a man took a swing at me and to this day I still have no idea why. 

It just happened and I remember thinking, "Huh. Well this seems like an overreaction."

Now I'm sure he probably was sending me subtle hints. Maybe his eyes had widened, maybe his nostrils were flaring, and perhaps his muscles were tensing noticeably, but if any of that was true then I didn't notice it. I was probably looking at or thinking about something else and the world as it was slipped away from me. Is that on me? Perhaps. He thought it was. But there's one thing I know with some certainty and that is this: He never said so. 

You see, most of what matters to me can be boiled down to two things, openness and honesty. I write because I enjoy writing but also because I like writing characters who often communicate with the clarity for which we should all strive, a trait that I find to be distinctly lacking in everyday life. My fellow humans seem to have a mindset more in line with "Why speak my mind when I can be obtuse?" or "Why say things when I can just...not?", and it's an endless source of frustration.

As for me, I do tend to talk a lot or not talk at all. I don't particularly like the former, my mouth usually gets dry as I spend most of my life not saying very much, but when it has to be done I tend to sling it out there so I can move it all along. I don't have time for lies or a variety of deceptions, political recruitment or the antics of human misery, I want only to hear the truths that makes everyone tick. So I talk. And when people ask my opinion or ask who I am, I tell them without any sort of filter or quick-buff polish because those things are rather silly and I don't have time for silly things.

Tragically, I'm a writer so the words tend to come out in a waterfall or avalanche and next thing I know, I've spoken more than intended. 

Let's wander into a story.

Have any of you ever dealt with infidelity? I imagine so.

The odds are there and if you have, I'm sorry. It's relatively terrible and I still remember the first time it happened to me. As it turns out, it's much like being swung at in that you'll definitely remember it forever even if you don't always see it coming. In case you were wondering for the sake of comparison and all sorts of mathematical and scientific things, I'd rather get punched in the face and it's not even close. If forced to choose between the two, I'd pick a square shot to the nose or jaw every time. 

Is that a tragic revelation? Not really. I'm almost certain everyone, or the sort of everyone that exists in the generalization that is more than 'no one', has found themselves in this sort of position but it is nevertheless unfortunate. Fortunately for you, pleasant reader, I do have a point for bringing this up. See, this girl of mine had a lot of problems. They were problems I knew about and as I was a fool who desperately wanted to be in love, I thought they were problems we could overcome and live happily ever after in that "We'll still die in about 40 years anyways" kind of way. They weren't, of course, but I didn't have the wisdom to know that yet and I still don't. Instead, I stood by her and spent day and night talking her through the bad times. 

When bad things got worse, we talked. When she couldn't sleep and had crushing depression, she called and we talked. When good things went bad, she called and we talked. Over and over again, no matter the time, I had her number tied to an alarm that would sound when she called so I would never sleep through her calls when she needed me. I made a point to be there for the person that I cared about, never unavailable, and though that's something that can be taken advantage of, it's also one facet of my existence that I don't particularly care to change.

I was a foolish man and today I'm more of a stubborn one. 

In the end, all the talk didn't particularly help. I didn't save a damsel in distress because this isn't a fairy tale and things don't work that way. Instead, she wound up choosing a few different people over a weekend and my world fell apart bit by bit until I was standing amid wreckage that I didn't even realize was mine. I was just...there. And I tried to fix things because that's what I thought I had to do, so I held onto her like I was Sylvester Stallone in Cliffhanger and I didn't have the maturity or common sense to see that this mountain was a volcano.

When emotions were stripped away and the truth crept through the whispers that I hated so much, it turned out that it hurt a lot more than the action. I think it did, anyway, as those are the things I remember most and if I focus hard enough I can still hear the words echo in my head like they're screams. I asked her why, I asked what I did wrong, I asked why I wasn't enough and if I ever could be, and she looked at me without the faintest appearance of regret and said: "Honestly, it's because you talk too much."

I wasn't quite the same for a long time after that.

People asked with relative frequency why I was darker and more sarcastic. I lost a few friends and I spent most of my time alone. Worst of all, I stopped talking. I devoted myself to not saying much of anything and decided that saying nothing, nothing of substance, honesty, or support, was a better pursuit. To be completely frank, I was young, stupid, and I sulked. I sulked for about 11 months until things started to look better and they only did that when I finally walked away from a future that I was trying desperately to will into existence.

It couldn't be willed. It had died a long time ago if it was ever alive at all and I am not a necromancer, nor do I believe in resurrection. But youth makes fools of us all and I spent a portion of mine getting lost in the words of someone whose words should never have mattered. But what can I say, I'm a writer. And words always seem to hold weight, so while the pain faded with time, they hovered and lingered and stung.

You talk too much.

Those are tough words to digest for someone who thought he might be in love and I found myself in a world where I didn't know when to talk or why. Interestingly enough (and of no great surprise to anyone), I'd never been a good socialite or conversationalist and I'd been even worse at miming my way through small talk and whatever young people were ever supposed to do, so you'd think I wouldn't have lost too much. But I did. Any mooring that I had was cast off and worst of all was the truth that I no longer knew when to try to help. 

How, after all, do you speak words of comfort or support when those words might be unwelcome? How do you be who you were when who you were wasn't good enough? I didn't know. So in time when those unpleasant wounds had healed, I started talking like I used to and tried my best not to look back. Why? Because there is no such thing as all the right words and even the best authors need editors and the finest speakers stumble over a tragically terrible turn of phrase. That more than anything else broke holes in the dam of a youthful and saddened mind and pushed me down the waterfall. 

The funny thing is, I'll always talk too much. I rarely know when is the right time to say the right thing, nor do I ever know how to say it, but I try. I speak because the words are there even when they're a hurricane. I speak even when my emotions have been bottled up for what feels like the eternal lifetime of a genie in a bottle. I do so because it's me. That voice, those stutters and words built on the back of elephantine good intentions, they are all that I am. And yes, sometimes I talk too much and wish I had an editor who lived in my canines or the roof of my mouth so that he might tinker with the syllables so the right ones always came out. But life isn't a book.

It's not a story.

It's not a fairy tale.

It's just life. It's there until it's not. And all those people, even and especially the ones you care about most, are only there until they're not. So damn those editors that creep into your head and tell you what not to say. Damn the coward in your heart that says there's always time tomorrow for what could be said today. Because even now, even in the shadows of pain and behind fortress walls built from what I used to be, I wouldn't take a single thing back from those too many words spent on a person who didn't hear the right ones. 

Words are like puzzle pieces and they only complete a certain picture. Mine aren't expert level, they're quite often so clunky that they're the puzzle version of Duplos, but they're a grand portion of what I hope might make up quite a pretty picture. It would be of a horse, I think. Either a black stallion or Secretariat with smoke billowing from his nostrils like a steam engine, because I like horses and I want to live in a world where all my words and missteps still make up something beautiful and worth seeing. 

We all stumble over words. No one knows the right thing to say. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't stand at attention til the late and early hours of the morning for the people we think we might someday care a great deal for. All it means is that there's a dam in the gaps of our teeth and if you can knock them free without getting punched in the face, you should do it. You should do it even if it means learning to take a left hook.

Because words matter.

The honest ones will always matter.

Whether in the form of a waterfall or a barely-there stream, they are you.

I'm Luke Ganje. And I talk too much. 

Movie Review- Kong: Skull Island

I had a date once. 

For anyone who knows me and all my quirks and general absurdities this might come as a surprise, perhaps a shock, but I assure you I'm not lying. There was a date and we had the sort of dinner spent sitting across from one another while words were exchanged and laughter ensued in that kind of way where you laugh because you feel like you're supposed to laugh and you smile because simply staring seems creepy. The dinner was filling even though, for the money, you knew you'd be hungry again in a matter of hours. The conversation was fine even though, for a date, you would've hoped it'd have a bit more depth. And the companionship, such that it was, was pleasant enough to remind me for those few moments that I wasn't completely alone in the world. 

I never saw her again, so that was nice. (And quite the accomplishment considering the small size of the city in which I live). 

It wasn't that I didn't have a nice time, either. She was very conversational, very sweet, and very attractive, and for anyone who knows what dating is like you know that those are three very important "very's". But after we parted ways and wandered off to go the rest of our lives without communicating, the feeling of enjoyment faded with the understanding that absolutely nothing of consequence had been said for the entirety of a three to four hour long date. She said a lot of things about other people and other friends, and I smiled and nodded in encouragement because that's what you do when you're trying not to be rude. Then she talked about a friend she used to have that cheated on a boy with another boy. Then she talked about this one fellow she dated for awhile that had a dog but she didn't like dogs. Then she talked about this friend of hers who was always clingy but not too clingy that they weren't still friends. Then...

I'm sure by now you're beginning to see the problem.

In truth, I left that date knowing two things about that girl: 1. She had quite a few friends who do not seem like people I'd like to call friends. 2. She didn't like dogs. And for all those words that floated in the air, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was keeping them suspended when they should've dropped to the tile floor like the emotionless rocks they were. It was like reading a comic book where all the dialogue bubbles were filled with dead space or dust.

I saw Kong: Skull Island today and I left that movie with one thought rattling around in my head: "Huh. So this is what a second date would've felt like."

It's not that Kong is a bad film, not really. It's just that it's a film. It's not good, it's not bad, it's not going to give you an STD or an engagement ring, it just...is. For all its bells and whistles, and I assure you there are quite a lot of those, it's a purely dispensable exercise in excess with every bit of emphasis spent on surface sheen instead of inner depth. I'd like to tell you the plot but it's not worth the ten words it'd take to explain. I'd like to tell you the names of some of the characters, but I have no idea what they are as the movie spent the entirety of its run time wandering through forests in a misguided attempt to build tension by forcing us to care about characters we were never even given the time or nuance to know.

Tom Hiddleston plays a tracker who's incredibly good with a sword in a movie about giant everythings. That's nice. Brie Larson is an anti-war photographer who is very anti-war. Again, nice. John Goodman is Skinnier John Goodman and he stomps around trying to find proof that he isn't crazy, only to endanger everyone's lives on a crazy mission chasing monstrous killing machines to prove that he isn't crazy. And Samuel L. Jackson chews scenery in the only role that is given any character meat as a soldier who doesn't know how to do anything but soldier and lead his men, only to become a raging caricature at the drop of a hat because that's what the movie needs him to do. All other characters, save for John C. Reilly's punchline-delivering Survivor contestant, are cannon-fodder for Kong and the hellish lizard creatures to whom 90% of the budget was devoted to making look as menacing as possible. 

To the filmmaker's credit, it can at least be said that it succeeds there. Kong looms as he's never loomed before (and far more effectively than he did in Peter Jackson's drastically overlong melodrama) and he dispenses godlike vengeance on the Lizards From Hell who have been realized here as pure nightmare fuel. The battles that rage for almost the entirety of this movie and at the expense of everything relating to character development are indeed a sight to behold, and for that the director must be given his due credit. Yet it must be said that I wanted more.

I wanted to head for home excited by the prospect of a monster universe Kong shared not just with Godzilla but with compelling humans as well. I wanted to care when nameless grunts died for the sake of the next special effects sequence. I wanted to sit back and think to myself, "Wow. I'm quite glad I care about the world that will certainly be in peril at some point". Instead, I found myself back in that restaurant listening to stories about people I didn't know in situations I couldn't connect with because I was mired in a world of petty gossip instead of compelling heart.

Once again my companion, as beautiful as she was, just didn't possess the depth I was looking for.

Kong: Skull Island was a monster movie pure and simple. But that doesn't mean I didn't go in hoping it would be just a little bit more than that.

2 Giant Raging Apes out of 4. 

The 15 Best Movies of 2016 (and the 5 that should die in a fire)

As always, I’ve taken the time to compile a list of my favorite movies of the year. Usually I’d put a bit more work into this (as seen in 2015 when I ranked literally every movie I saw over the course of that year), but come on now. We can all stop pretending that you guys actually care about this. Much like older men whose rather repellent jock lifestyle has died and forced them to relive their days of sexual conquests with constant retellings, I’m writing these down for the best reason of all: So that I can remember them for the beautiful and enjoyable experiences that they were. Obviously, the humorous jock analogy died over a sentence ago and should now be ignored. Welcome to my “best of” list for 2016.

THE BEST

1. A Monster Calls: What can be said about this movie to best illustrate its placement? I changed my own rules to include it in this list. In the past I would’ve relegated it to some harshly graying area of Purgatory as a member of 2016 that I saw in the early hours of 2017, but I could no longer in good conscience do such a thing. AMC is a dramatic powerhouse of a film with fantastic performances, beautiful cinematography, and a story so steeped in honesty that it feels remarkably true. I hadn’t cried during a movie since I was a child and I’d long since grown to believe such a thing was no longer a worry. I was wrong. And the best part? A Monster Calls earned every tear.

2. Arrival: From the moment I saw it, this film seemed like it would be at the top of my list. That suspicion was almost proven correct as the year ran out and a second viewing underscored just what a perfect work of science fiction it was, indeed its only downfall was the arrival (see what I did there?) of J.A. Bayona’s aforementioned fantasy of loss and acceptance. Nevertheless, Denis Villeneuve has now entered that pantheon of directors that includes Christopher Nolan and Nicholas Winding Refn as names that will put me in a theater with absolutely no hesitation.

3. Sing Street: People think I'm not a happy or positive person. Guys, I'm a happy and positive person and I adore happy and positive movies (when they're actually good which is almost never). Sing Street proved just how well a positive movie can be made and it tells a perfect story about young love and the part that music plays in our lives. Also, fun fact, if the ending doesn't make you smile then you have no soul.

4. Hell or High Water: It's been several years since I saw a movie and thought "That Ben Foster guy is going to be great." and I'm happy to say that after 2016, I may still be right. With his performance and those of Chris Pine and Jeff Bridges, who lit up the screen with equal amounts of vigor, they made an impressive trio that brought to life an indie Western that I never saw coming.

5. Kubo and the Two Strings: I make no secrets that it is my opinion (a correct one) that Laika is putting out some of film's best animation and most inventive stories I've ever seen. Kubo is a perfect example of hitting both those high water marks. If you don't like animated movies, give it a chance. If stop-motion isn't your thing, give it a chance. The only reason it didn't make the top three is due to the unfortunate truth that it ran into Arrival, a serious heavyweight, right at the end of the year.

6. The Neon Demon: Disclaimer- I will never recommend this movie to anyone. The only reason I would ever show it to anyone is either A). Because they're as odd as I am. Or B). To see what their reaction will be to what I know is coming. This is not an ordinary film and it sure as hell isn't normal. But it has cinematography that is fantastically brilliant and imagery that, after 9 months, I still have not been able to forget. It has a score that can only come with a Winding Refn movie. And for all it's bizarre and violent morbidity that overwhelms the latter portion of its run-time, from top to bottom it is one of the more fascinating films I've seen in years.

7. Ouija: Origin of Evil: Mike Flanagan. If you're a fan of horror films, remember that name. Honestly, if you're a fan of horror films, you should already know it. This entry to the list added to a fledgling filmography that was already stellar before he released this, the best horror flick of the year. That in itself is saying something with releases such as "Conjuring 2", "The Witch", and "Lights Out" giving it a run for its money, but it blew every single one of them out of the water. With Ouija, Flanagan has proven himself to be a master of pacing who's unafraid of directorial flourishes and throwback approaches to deepen the tone of what he's trying to do: Become THE horror director of the new decade.

8. La La Land: Time will tell if I remember this movie more fondly or if it fades ever so slightly in my mind, but as a lover of musicals this struck most chords for me. The performances, specifically that of Emma Stone, were quite excellent and it was a beautiful love letter to dreams, LA, Jazz, and the classic musicals of a bygone era. It’s nice to see movies like this get made, with their ample heart and greater ambition, and I truly enjoyed my visit to the theater.

9. Rogue One: It’s a Star Wars movie, yes, but do you know what that means to me? Not that much. I have very little allegiance to the series and will always hold to the notion that there was only ever really one good Star Wars movie, but now I look back on that harsh statement and must acknowledge that there are two. Felicity Jones, in her second film on this list of mine, proves why she’ll be a name to watch for quite some time. Darth Vader does the most appalling vicious things that made me squeal with nerdily childish (and sociopathic) glee. And for a Lucasfilm run by Disney, they pulled no punches and allowed all heroes to go out on their shields, dying honorable deaths for the good of resistance and freedom. While some shallow and lacking character development might’ve caused R1 to drop further than I’d anticipated, it still did more than enough to sneak into the top 10.

10. The Accountant: Alright, I’ll admit it. Ben Affleck is pretty decent. But do you know who’s even better? Jon Bernthal. Oh, and that one fellow Gavin O’ Connor, who previously directed Warrior and did so well to make a boring sport look cathartic enough to heal broken brothers. There is no way to adequately describe just how fun this movie is; from its juggling of hyper-violence, to its nuanced approach to childhood disabilities, to its awkward humor that brings a chuckle every time, it knows its purpose as a film from beginning to end and succeeds on every level of entertainment.

11. The Nice Guys: For all intents and purposes, this is a spiritual successor to Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. As soon as I heard that, I was in. Hell, as soon as I saw a trailer of Russell Crowe breaking bones and Gosling paying homage to Lou Costello, I was in. This was hands down the most fun I had in a theater all year, and while its rather light on content the pure entertainment value was more than enough to elevate it onto my best-of list.

12. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: THIS MOVIE SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN THIS GOOD. IT SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN THIS FUN. And yet here we are. I walked into the theater expecting to kill some time as we all knew the glory days of Harry Potter were behind us and the trailer looked merely ‘meh’ as most trailers do, and yet I left smiling and wishing I had someone to smile and laugh with. That last part isn’t because I’m a lonely sod, but because I went with my father who had no understanding of the Potterverse and, therefore, was confused. Nevertheless, my enthusiasm wasn’t dampened and I adored this little slice of positivity.

13. 10 Cloverfield Lane: John Goodman, if he were ever gone, is back and he’s far more menacing and creepy than any otherworldly being that bombs the world in spaceships. What a fantastic surprise this flick was. It nailed every bit of its tension-building and kept me guessing as to the finer points of its story right up until the acidic end. Cloverfield was a good, fun, monster movie. But 10 Cloverfield Lane? Well, that was just a good damn film.

14. The Witch: Can you understand Old English? Are you repelled by blatantly Satanic horror? How you answer those questions will decide whether or not you enjoy this film, as I had friends who were alarmed by the latter and confused as all hell (god I’m funny) by the former. But me? There’s no ignoring the mastery of craft and dedication that went into this period flick about a family falling apart on the edge of a potentially witch-infested wood.

15. Eye in the Sky: I’m saddened that no one talked about this film more. In a world where the morality of drone warfare is a topic that should always be discussed, this little film starring Aaron Paul, Helen Mirren, and the late great Alan Rickman should’ve received more publicity and accolades. It will leave you shaken and worried, yes, but best of all? It will make you think.

The Ones I Haven’t Quite Seen Yet : The Edge of Seventeen, Moonlight, Manchester By the Sea, and Silence.

The Ones That Should Die in Flames of Dead Dreams:

5. London Has Fallen: Do you know how hard it is to make me fall asleep in a movie? Nearly impossible. I actually thought that it WAS impossible, but no. Then this gem popped up and almost killed me. Devoid of plot, devoid of characters, devoid of any meaning at all, LHF is a perfect picture of the insipidity that action films should avoid. Sadly, it didn’t and we were all the worse for it.

4. The Fifth Wave: Have you ever watched a movie so aggressively terrible and derivative that you were crippled by hysterical laughter and tears for large portions of its runtime? Thanks to this, one more nail in Liev Schreiber’s acting coffin, I can say that I have.

3. Independence Day: Resurgence: FOR GOD’S SAKE! WHY ARE WE STILL FOLLOWING JUDD HIRSCH ON HIS BUS TRAVELS!? WHY IS JEFF GOLDBLUM HERE? WHY DOES EVERYONE LOOK OLD AND SAD? And the real question...what dark bribery did studio execs have over everyone to drag them into this hell-hole of a “movie”?

2. Suicide Squad: Well done. You had talent most comic book movies would’ve once dreamed of...it’d be a shame if...someone were to...ruin everything...

1. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back: If only I’d had the foresight to see the title as the warning it was. If only I’d heard the distant rumblings that hell in cinematic form was coming. If only I’d hidden in the piled corpses of Gerard Butler, Chloe Grace-Moretz, Jared Leto, and Judd Hirsch, so that the monsters couldn’t find me. But they did. And never have I seen so much running across yards. Never have I seen fight scenes filmed so slow and “realistically” that you could swear it was either decrepit Steven Segal or your drunk uncle at a Fourth of July party. Never have I laughed so frequently at closeups used so poorly. The only joy I had in this movie was when I turned to my father halfway through and rebuffed his plea to leave, as he’d chosen this dumpster fire and we were going to ride it out for the sake of harsh mockery in the future. Congratulations, Jack Reacher. Out of all 72 movies I saw this year, you were the worst. Wear that crown of shame with pride, you sack of gingivitis and manure...you earned it.

Snowflake-Fractured Smiles

If there is one aspect of me that remains undecided, it's my feelings in relation to all things Snow. I don't snowboard, I don't like the cold, and I haven't sat in a sled since I was 11 or 12, yet there's something about its harsh beauty that does bring a sad smile when it settles on the ground.

Even now as I write this, I sit at an angle so as to look outside and perhaps this is why I find myself undecided. For love is something that can be experienced and felt no matter when or where you are, whereas my love-affair with snow is shackled by the knowledge that were I to venture out into the cold embrace of winter, much of the affection would be lost and I would find myself hoping for a warmth-induced demise.

Life is full of instances like this. You spend a great deal of time telling yourself you love something with all your heart and that all you see is its beauty, but it's only when you must distance yourself and look upon the situation with a practical eye that you begin to realize that much of what you've felt is a self-styled smoke-screen. And with this realization comes the knowledge that love is not something that can be felt with distaste and discomfort.

That's not how life works and it's no way to find happiness.

I used to smile at the idea of snow and laugh at the memories it conjured of a childhood well-spent. But times change, and so do people. Thus strikes the epiphany that an aspect of nature that held so much of me in my youth is not so relevant anymore. This is life, it's change, it's the mystery of the human mind. But it isn't love.

Were I to love snow, it would be something that would spur me to cloak myself in layers before leaping into its arms for the sake of my happiness. Yet here I sit, content to admire a superficial beauty from behind a pane of glass. That alone speaks volumes; volumes which I hear and understand.

I've often considered my opinions towards love in the emotional person-to-person aspect in much the same way. There are times when something about another raises feelings and memories of a long-forgotten past and spurs us forward, no matter who we are in the present. Time will pass and eventually the infatuation fades and we will be left alone to wonder why. If one doesn't know the reason, then this will be the cause of much uncertainty and despair for it will seem that we are changing faster than our mind and feelings can comprehend.

For some, this will continue to last. The reasons will evade them, and so will the knowledge of what brings them happiness as they try to understand why the past holds no present happiness. They don't see that the past is the past for a reason, and it has brought us to who we are for a purpose. We took steps to become this creation we've molded- how foolish it is to assume that our happiness lies in what was.

There will always be some amount of allure in our memories of the past. There will always be the nagging thought of what might have been had we not changed so. Such is the nature of humanity as we struggle daily to find our place in the world, and there are days when the present takes on the face of a harsh reality, but the answer is not to crawl in the shell of what was. Life, love, happines...these things take courage. And courage is a necessity of the present and our goals for the future, but it holds no place for what has come and gone.

Love is something that we work towards, something that we identify by seeking those with qualities to be admired. That admiration comes from a shared trait, one to which we can tip a hat and silently say "Well done.". At times it's hard to remember who we are in the present, so we grasp at straws and cling to another with loyalty to the past. We see naivety, youth, innocence and we remember who we have been. But love isn't found there, for this person too will change and a time may come where you realize there is not so much holding you together anymore.

I was asked once why I thought so many fell into relationships that never lasted. This is my answer to that question. You see, there comes a time when everyone moves beyond the innocence of youth and becomes who they are. It's a harsh road and a difficult process, but it's worth every misstep and error for in the present we can find happiness in the knowledge that who we have become is something we've been striving towards for so very long.

So the next time you feel a surge of admiration for another, take heed. For it is there that happiness lies waiting, not in a long-forgotten memory of who we used to be.

There comes a time when everyone changes, which is why professing love to what one "Might someday be" is a dangerous road to travel.

In time it will be my turn to profess a feeling of love, but it will not be the snow-struck memories of a child. It will be the concious realization that my admiration is rightly earned by one who has worked tirelessly for who they've become. A love that is framed in who a person truly is...that is a love that cannot, and will not, ever die.

And that is a happiness we should never stop searching for.

And Here We Go Again

This marks yet another iteration of the Luke Ganje Professional Experience. I've had blogs in websites in the past but I came to realize a few simple things in those months and years of trying to put keyboard to screen for the sake of prying eyes: I wasn't very good at what I was doing. Or at the very least, I wasn't very good just yet. And so it was that I spent countless hours churning out material that could only be described as "meh" or, on the good days, "eh". 

Fortunately, this is a quality that has changed and risen over the years. Either that or my delusion has risen to such spectacular levels that I certainly think it has, so it really all amounts to the same things. As such, and as pointed out in this first blog title, here we go again. We're going to try this one more time while putting a fresh spin on all my pursuits and giving me a soapbox from which to rage against all things entertainment, philosophical, political, and personal. Because if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that nothing quite endears you to the public at large like voicing your opinions in a clearly disruptive and honest manner. 

It's why I'm happily married and surrounded by a multitude of loyal friends.

(Note: I've recently been informed that I have neither of those things. Whether or not this is a consequence of the previous paragraph is unknown, so I recommend you tread carefully.)

I'd like to thanks my parents, for continually supporting me as I pursue unrealistic hopes and dreams. I'd like to thank the Earth and its atmosphere for providing me with petrichor, one of my few joys in life. And I'd like to thank myself, Luke Ganje, without whom none of this would be possible. 

Buckle in, folks. Or don't. I am a wholehearted believer in individual rights so, bumpy ride or not, you're welcome to prepare for the adventure at hand however you like.