trends fallen, hopes lifted

As according to the ancient tradition, I blogged every day in September!

It was a near thing.  There were some days I had to post my updates in the wee hours.  But we soldiered on together, and learned a lot.

In the past, I've examined Facebook likes.  Not this time.  This time we're looking at views per post, which seem to be pretty reliable, somehow. I used to be weirded out by the fact that I had readers apparently in Russia, which could only mean some bots or other person not actually reading any of it, but they represent only 5% of my total views, and at least 92% of from America, so I think they're trustworthy enough.

My views aren't included, of course.

The numbers tell a story.

It's a story of gradual disengagement!  Not what I was hoping to see, but I'm not that surprised.  I could feel myself losing steam as the month went on, and there were more and more late-night posts, which tend to get a much lower response.  The lesson is clear:  target people when they're at work! That's when everybody is camping out on Facebook and looking for blogs to read.

My least popular post was light in dark corners.  It was a non-poetic stream-of-consciousness-type meditation on where I am in life right now.  It's a low-context post, which seem to be among the least well-received (except by some very vocal individuals).  It was posted September 29th.

The most popular was the road of savvy thorns, a more traditional narrative interwoven with comparisons between fixing machines and helping unhappy people.  It was high-context, had references to Shakespeare and Melville, and nobody spoke up about liking it especially well, but it was very well-received by these general measures.  I don't do a lot of this kind of post, but maybe I should.  It was posted September 2nd.

But I don't think what I chose to write had all that much to do with the popularity (with notable exceptions like my drunken post, which I find to be utterly hilarious despite its absolutely shameful admission).  I think people just get a little overwhelmed with seeing this stuff every day, and they think "oh, I'll get around to it", and then they don't.  I think this because that's what I do, all the time, except when I set myself a specific challenge, and let the sense of competition motivate me.  Well, I'm motivating you all right now.  Go read my stuff!  You won't regret it.

Mainly, I am excited that I was able to accomplish this challenge despite having a daughter to care for.  My wife deserves much of the credit for that, because she was understanding and accommodating of my desire to write.  But my friends have assisted as well, and I thank you all.
It's reassuring to know that my favorite people will always be there to support me in my favorite activity.  I only hope I can do the same for all of you.

subtle augur

I write a lot about fire.  It's a recurring theme in my poetry, plays, and stories.  When I ask myself why, unbidden, the answer floats up from my subconscious.  Maybe I'm in hell.

But probably not.  That would be a very easy answer, so I reject it.

Fire is potent, but carries a tenderness.  It can be as quiet or as loud as you need it to be.  Fire is, above all, useful.  Hell should never be so warm, I think.

It's terrifying, yes.  But all pain is terrifying.  Fire is not special for this.

***

I want to fly.  I've always wanted to, and I've sought to sate that desire with various games throughout my life.  As a very young child, my dream was to grow up to be a pilot, though it grew to seem a less appealing career choice every year.  But still, to look up at a plane is a very special thing for me.

***

At times, the mind clears, and all is lucid.  A humility overtakes you, and you recognize your limitations, and forgive yourself.

***

I live a life of high adventure, and emotional exorbitance, and I confess I have no choice.

***

Yesterday I described myself as strong, and I am.
But there are certain problems that no kind of strength can solve.
They will tell you that others cannot make you feel a certain way,
But it's a question of how you define yourself in relation.
Without that change in definition, without a breach of empathy,
You can never hope to reclaim that agency they promised.
And if you are unwilling or unable to change it,
If you are overly habituated, or too afraid, or simply very much in love,
Then they will one day speak of you as possessing a sort of lonesome virtue,
(As long as you are not dead)
And still, and stubborn, not to perceive, nor to cause anything in them,
You will languish in the feelings that are given you.
You are a slave, you are not yourself.
You are they and theirs, and a rainbow of hot sorrows rises, steam from a grate,
The skin burns, but you do not pull away,
And there is no benefit.

Yesterday I described myself as brave, and I was.

light in dark corners

The month is almost done.

It was a great September.  A span of days that really ran the gamut of the emotional experience for me.  My daughter learned to crawl, and my spirit did, too.

I experienced great triumphs, and hardly any failures.  I worked hard, stretched myself, and became a buoy for the world.  I want to be more than that, but it's a start.

I am dependable, healthy, intelligent, friendly, funny, thoughtful, brave, and energetic.  I have my flaws, but I try not to let them get in the way of making other people happy.  I think I'm pretty successful in that.

I have many, many wonderful friends, and the number grows by the week.  I've reforged bonds and rediscovered beauties long forgotten, and discovered some brand new ones as well.  I've taken chances, and profited from it.  I have tried, always, to be kinder.

I've also suffered.  Quietly, in dark corners, where I don't need to risk concerning anyone.  I have always been one to suffer alone.  But there is less reason to suffer every day.

Three and a half years ago, when I started this blog armed with nothing but a dream, I could not foresee this future.  Since that time, the future has become like an open book, and things have gone according to plan.  Understanding has given way to compassion.  Careful study has been replaced with abundant love.  Now I cross my legs and meditate easily, and the answers wait for me.

A human being is a small room within a large one.

It's late.  Let's put it to bed.  The world is quiet, soaked in rain, and looking in at my warm room, where my wife has pulled a blanket over her lap, and ages gracefully.

There is a difference between remembering that you felt something, and remembering how you felt it.  I am cursed forever with the latter, and all the pain and joy that go along.

I must remember to stand tall.

The month goes its way, a new one rolls in.  An arbitrary distinction, and a critically important one, like a border, like a shadow, like a name.  They change sometimes without us even realizing it, but suddenly we find a new place, a new time, a new person.

Write down what you want to achieve, then do it.  That's been my secret, all this time.  And on the way, remember to be kind.

polar silence

On the 3rd of the Month of Mars (now Foon-Devvit):

Mayday and godspeed you to our site.  We arrived and set up camp on 9 November in all good health, not considering the six of us who threw themselves into the icy ocean rather than disembark the ship.  The remaining four and I watched the flat-mouthed sailors stare while the ship took them home.  They are godly men, sailors, and did not like the looks of we who had so turned away from Him.

The instruments are all in perfect working order.  There remains ample fuel for the heaters.  Our food store still overflows with rations, barely touched in the presence of unlimited, delectable penguin meat.  But we are running low on truth.

Dr. Arkani was the first to go through her supply, frivolously sharing tales of her childhood adventures in the Taurus mountains.  Her cheerful relation of the events of her past easily segued into meatier discussions of adolescence and early adulthood, which we devoured greedily.  Over the first few days of the expedition, she grew paler and more withdrawn as she started to realize she was running out of facts to be honest about.  And we, beady-eyed vultures that we are, drew them from her ever more strongly.

Within two weeks she was a husk.  Her hollow eyes failed to track our movements about the camp, and her strawberry hair grayed and frizzed in the terrible, empty cold.  It got to the point that she would open her mouth, and we would instinctively turn away.  Nothing good could come out of it.

We buried her a few days later, though it took Medjeye hours to find a spot that was permafrost and not just another ice sheet.  The backhoe put her under, and we pulled our greatcoats tighter, and we wondered how long we could sustain ourselves with the little morsels she'd shared at the end.  She had owned a dachshund once, and carried it when it fell ill.

It was Bresley who uncovered the green stone a few days later, when he went to check the gas in the backhoe.  There, in the middle of our camp, a stone had been placed.  He carried it to my desk, and we gathered around to examine it.  We found we could all read our own names in it, but no one else's.  It is still in my cabin.  I leave it to you.

The next month was a blur of sullen, scientific endeavour.  The war had produced so many new ways to sense things, and we actively engaged them all in seeking to understand the ice.  The cook, Ms. Maxwell, swore up and down that something was out there, watching us from the glacial floes.  She even came to believe it was waiting for us.  She was a madwoman, and I never saw anything.

Bresley was the next to crack.  Over breakfast one morning, he began to babble, and soon become like a spigot with the top knocked off.  Endless streams of memory flowed out of him, logorrhea in full swing.  I held him down, and Medjeye attempted to choke some sense into him, but Bresley continued to tell us about his Christmas memories even as he collapsed into unconsciousness.

I have never seen a partially asphyxiated man attempt to talk in his sleep.  Yet talk he did, and before long, we could not help but listen.  The day's work was forgotten as we sat a silent vigil in the mess tent, taking in his every word.  We grew warm, and removed our coats, as he grew colder.

He expired around dinner time, having spoken, in Medjeye's estimate, some two-hundred-thousand words about his life.  Not a single one of us was hungry, and we retired to our cabins with fond thoughts of wintry adventures in Dorset.

We buried him alongside Dr. Arkani.  We were sad to lose him, but we stood in the December sun and felt like we had come back to life.

The three of us discussed our plan.  It would not make sense to keep things bottled in.  One would break, as Bresley had done, and die.  Instead, on Ms. Maxwell's suggestion, we agreed to take turns sharing ourselves, one at a time, so all might be sustained.

It started out well.  I explained all about the years I spent working a trader between New Zealand and French Indochina.  Medjeye spoke, with a detached fury, of a wife he'd tried to forget, of the prison camps where he'd learned to make crepes.  Ms. Maxwell detailed her relationship with her high school history teacher, and how it had all gone wrong from there.

We were mistaken.  The strength and heat we'd felt as Bresley spilled his guts was nowhere to be found.  Instead, a sharp pain traced its way across each of our midsections whenever it was our turn to speak.  You give more of yourself than you receive, you know.  Remember that, for our sakes.

My eyes met Medjeye's, and we shook our heads, and shut our mouths.  But Ms. Maxwell could not stop talking.  We tried to shout her down, but she became hysterical, demanding that we allow her to go home.  She finally shut herself in her cabin, and we listened by the door until we were satisfied that she was quiet, but breathing.

The next morning was one of fierce hunger.  The mess stood empty, and I opened Ms. Maxwell's tent with some fear.  It was justified.  She had traced on the walls, in her own blood, a story about her history teacher, and the baby they might have had together.  She had told a story, but it was a supposition, and never true.  She sat at the foot of her bed, hugging her knees, sobbing to herself.

I bashed her skull open with a lantern, bashed until her damnable head full of lies was scattered all over the floor.  Medjeye came charging in, pistol in hand, but made no move to stop me when he saw what she had done.  Instead, he pocketed the gun and set to scrubbing the bloody deceptions from the wall.

She should have known better.  There was no room for stories here.

Our steady defense of the truth strengthened us, and Medjeye and I worked on in silence for the next several months, taking our careful measurements and staying out of each others' way.  Without Ms. Maxwell to do the cooking, we ate mostly raw penguin meat.  It smells awful, but tastes like savory, buttered steak.  Our teeth were stained red from the diet, and we stank of bird shit, but we have been satisfied.

This arrangement is over.  Last night, as I was reading my name in the green stone, Medjeye came upon me, a fiendish glint in his eye.  I stood, and made to give him my hand, but he spoke to me.  He spoke in his native tongue, and I am not a superstitious man, but his words frightened me.  There was truth in them, even if I couldn't understand, and the green stone gleamed.

His words were as angry as they were true, and when he was done with his tirade, white eyes and red teeth shining, I ran for it.  He grasped at me as I dashed past him, his clawlike grip tearing away my greatcoat, and I emerged into the frozen night with an awful gasp.  My lungs almost refused to function against the oppressive weight of that terrible cold.

I looked for some means of salvation, but there was none.  He always kept the only gun on his person.  There was no vehicle that could carry me safely among the floes, and without my coat, I would freeze within the hour.

I sprinted into the darkened mess tent, hid behind a heater, and waited for him to find me.

He never came.  The next morning, after a night spent uncomfortably wedged between cooking apparatus, I crept back to my cabin.  He stood there, frozen in place, in the pose he had adopted as he turned to snatch me.  His tongue was extended halfway out his mouth, and as I watched, it cracked and fell to the ground, shattering.

I knew, then.  It was not his words that had done him in.  He blamed me for our situation, and who could say he was wrong?  But his actions carried more truth than words ever could.  The green stone shone brightly in my quiet little cabin.  Perhaps it still does.

I have built a raft from tables and bags of flour.  I will take with me the little radio, the pistol, some rope, and enough food and water to last a few weeks.  I do not expect any to hear me, as we are far from the world.

I have dropped four such messages in bottles, in the hopes that one may be found, and someone may be warned off, before our site is rediscovered.  Beware the green stone.  Destroy it without speaking, before you read your name in it, before you learn the new ones, or the old.

Sincerely,
R. P. Mogger, Commander, Operation Tabarin
Captain, British Antarctic Survey
1944

sad food

A friend at work told me that she's made a few changes to her diet recently, and is finding herself filled with a great deal more energy in the evenings than she used to have.  Those changes are only really in her lunch habits, which she changed to include a fair few more complex carbohydrates (three-bean chili was today's dish, for instance).  Suddenly, she finds herself much more awake into the evening, much more energetic and engaged, she reports.  It's like she's a different person from this tiny change alone.

This is alarming to consider.  It makes me wonder how much of our feelings are us, and how much are simply the chemical reactions occurring in our bloodstreams.  If you can be changed so fundamentally by making a different choice for lunch, what are you?  Are you just what you eat?

It seems it must simply be a thin fabric of personality and feeling, easily broken and easily replaced, over a chunk of memory and habit.  But memory, too, is inconstant, and sometimes seems rather randomly accessible.  At least habit is solid.  Habit is concrete.  Habit, on the margins, is people.

I generally eat a similar diet every day, and the only thing that really alters my mood therefore is how much water I remember to drink.  Enough, and I'm my usually ecstatic, bubbly self.  An insufficient amount, and my mood can become very dour indeed.

Do you think about the effects of the food you eat on your psyche?  Do you wonder at your true nature as you snack on a bagel?  Do the competing demands of your mind and body work together to serve you, or are you their servant?

There is no escape from it.  We are bound to the realities of chemistry.  Our choices can only ever be incremental, and must first seek approval from those chemical bonds.  But there is a way out, with discipline, and common sense, and mutual support.  If that's what you are.

ages

Some men retreat at the coming of age;

Some embrace the part, for all the world’s a stage.

Younger men quail at the thought of surrender,

Fixed on a dream and the words, “now or never.”

But we happy few know the middle way’s best,

To thine own self be true, then give it a rest;

Hang up the costumes, search for a job,

Bid farewell to adventure, and swallow a sob.

Look to the west, and feel your heart harden,

Then tighten your belt and tend to your garden.

Great expectations are fine in the youth,

But bleak are the houses of Beauty and Truth.

So set aside sunshine and sweet puppy love,

Take wing as a raven instead of a dove.

And take heart in the fact that still, not all is lost.

For always some good thing comes along with a cost.

The days may grow cold, the nights may grow darker,

But at least you’re in love with Dorothy Parker.

amends

Tonight, my blog post is interactive.

I made Amends.

the honest price

Once a week, I get together with some friends and play a stirring round of Dungeons & Dragons.  Let me relate to you the latest tale.

It was a bright spring morning outside Rabanastre, the capital of the Kingdom of Dalmasca.  My character, L'ppy the Bard, a rabbit girl who could play a mean ukulele, had just embarked on the grandest adventure of her short leporid life.

L'ppy

L'ppy was a cheerful, boisterous girl, fond of a good insult no matter who was the target.  She prized honesty above all else, though she always had a weakness for handsome men.  She was on a personal quest to recover her family's prized ocarina, which had been stolen by some nefarious rascal.  In the meantime, she had made a few friends, and together they agreed to adventure together, earning gold, gaining strength, and coming to understand the meaning of teamwork.

As they set off into the wilderness in search of a killer tomato, something terrible happened.

Tomato

In the distance, L'ppy and her friends spotted a saurian, a great dinosaur of the plains.  Her Seeq companion, Vin the Virtuous, recognized a potential threat to his status as the most frightening, overmuscled powerhouse in the land, and attacked.

Vin

L'ppy and her friends watched in horror as the saurian ripped into Vin, but the proud Seeq refused to back down.  He fought back valiantly, but L'ppy could see that he stood little chance on his own.  She didn't feel like she could do much to help against a 20-foot-tall lizard with teeth as long as her arm, but she couldn't leave her friend to die.  At the very least, she might be able to pull him away with all the speed her long legs could muster.

She approached the terrible lizard, and arrived just in time to see Vin ripped in two by its awful mandibles.  She tried to retreat, but realized her mistake too late, as its powerful tail swept her feet out from under her.  Before she could rise, the beast was upon her, tearing her body apart in one fell bite.  Her friends watched from a safe distance, dismayed but not surprised.  They had warned her against trying to help, and they were right, but it was too late for L'ppy.

My next character was Felbroz the Barbarian, a Moogle from the good country.

Felbroz (Kupo!)

Felbroz was a furious fellow, often given to collapsing into apoplectic rages the moment it seemed things might not go his way.  He was famed among the country people for having stood up to a brutal local lord in defense of his people, but he had a tendency to act without thinking, and it got him into trouble more often than not.  In spite of his pretensions to justice, deep down he believed that the only real measure of someone's character was his strength.  He dreamed of protecting his homeland, but constantly felt the call of destiny pulling him away, as though he were meant for greater things.  Because of this, he had trouble staying in one place for very long, and his migratory lifestyle prevented him from forming many meaningful social bonds or connections.  His own people came to view him as a stranger.

He arrived in Rabanastre filled with determination to find his own way, and soon fell in with L'ppy's earnest companions, now looking for a new friend to journey with them.  Although they found Felbroz's gruff demeanor off-putting, he soon became a treasured member of the team, and they went on several successful quests together.  Felbroz never lost sight of his goal, though, and reached out to more and more Moogles on the way, hoping to finally understand where he'd come from.

On the way back from a dangerous quest, however, the party once again came face to face with a saurian.  Felbroz, who'd heard the tale of Vin and L'ppy, knew better than to attack.  However, coming from a background where communing with nature was considered one of the highest virtues, he believed he might have the gumption to soothe the savage beast.

Felbroz approached the dinosaur calmly, with some trepidation, but a lot of belief in himself.  He had been trained from an early age to calm animals, and the size shouldn't matter to someone of his great personal charm.  When the creature noticed him, it paused, and he began to do an adorable little dance with the intent of befriending it.

The saurian watched quizzically for a few moments.  When the dance finished, it tilted its head, clearly confused.  Felbroz drew himself up to his full height (3 feet, 2 inches), took a deep breath, and started dancing again, with all his heart this time.

The saurian roared, and charged him.  It was over in seconds.  The companions, watching once more, sighed and shook their heads.  It needn't have ended that way.  It's not smart to mess with saurians, no matter your intentions.  Wild animals are unpredictable.

And that's how I lost two characters in very short order.  I regret nothing.  I played truly to myself, and to them.

a difficult man

As has been heretofore related, Malfred was a difficult man to have as a friend, and of his acquaintances, only his rare lovers ever stuck around for long.  This was a dissatisfactory arrangement for all parties, but he was a sort of maven of misery, so anyone associated with him for any length of time would have wound up miserable anyway.

The problem with lovers, Malfred thought, was that they got his hopes up.  He'd long grown accustomed to distance from the people around him.  He had a handle on that sort of loneliness, he'd grown up with it, and around it, like a tree can grow comfortably around a metal pole.  The metal is wrong and off-putting, but the tree couldn't imagine life without it.  So it was for Malfred and his malaise, but for the women he loved.

By the time of his final separation, his tripartite romantic life seemed to him to be very sadly repetitive indeed.  For a pattern of events to occur once, he thought, was unique.  Twice was coincidence.  Three times, though, indicated a trend line which he did not at all like to ponder.  The bulk of his employment was spent in the thorough creation and study of trend lines, in a cold warehouse office with a concrete floor and a single bare light bulb to see by, and though he was well compensated for his excellent extrapolations, they never did him any good when he drew them from his own life.

He concluded, not unreasonably, that future relationships were likely to follow the same path.  An initial excitement would sweep away his concerns.  A prolonged period of intense discovery and elation would follow.  Eventually, those bursts of radiant joy would grow dimmer and quieter, and his new love would come to see him in his totality.  She would evaluate him, and herself with him, and see something, somewhere, that she did not like.  She would utter words of sincerest regret, and disappear like smoke into a dark, concave ceiling.

Malfred believed that he could not handle this happening again.  For someone of his unmatched jinxedness, he maintained a relatively sunny disposition, and was never prone to extreme thinking.  Even so, he trusted the trend line, and the trend line predicted that all future relationships would fail.  Some men, denied their fondest desire, will immolate themselves rather than accept anything less.  Malfred, clearly, was not one of them.

He swore off love.  Nothing so dramatic as a grand, vain statement in the theatrical tradition.  He simply adjusted his manners such that, even were a chance to present itself, he would respond in no way favorable.  No woman, he resolved, would ever again get close enough again to cause him any further pain.  He'd had his fill of it, and he was ready to carry on as he had, without investing his emotions into any other who might only go away again.

What a fool!  He should have known there are better ways to give up, and more likely to succeed.

But women always caught Malfred off guard.

cooking for one

The other night, I decided to cook some pork.  I've been experimenting with country-style ribs, which are a cut of meat I don't fully understand, but I'm getting there.  I cut them off their bones and tossed them into a pan.  Things started getting a little crazy.

I had salted and peppered (squarely) the pork, as a wise chef must, and the oil and onions were dancing excitedly when the meat hit the metal.  The sizzling began, and oh, how it sizzled.  It sizzled beautifully.

The juices of the pork invaded the pan, and mixed with the onion slurry, forming a marvelous au jus.  But I was not there for jus. I was there to cook flavor right into the pork.  I knew what I had do.

Reaching below the sink, I carefully withdrew my secret weapon.  Perhaps, in your cooking (and baking!), you have come across an ingredient so powerful, so intimidating, and so fiendishly inculpatory that you have opted to use it in every single recipe, forever.  If not, I have news for you:  distilled white vinegar is amazing.

I poured several dollops into my pan, delighting in the smells that arise.  Cooking pork for long tends to toughen it, but I needed to get the heat high for a while in order to cook those tasty juices back into the meat.  The solution was to add something that would help break down the meat a little bit in advance, to tenderize it sufficiently that it might not be a chore to eat.  You could also use lemon juice, but where's the kick?

My vinegar tore into the flesh of the pig, opening it up like a pore cleanser to allow more wonderful flavor to be absorbed.  I watched, gleefully transfixed even in the midst of cutting potatoes, as the meaty juices cooked back into their origin.

The meat simmered in its pan. The potatoes were cut, then fried, then fried again.  The meal was complete.

This was all done without a recipe, without any timers.  I just watched, and tasted, and felt it out.  But, and this is crucial:  I had done similar things before, all with a recipe!  It was only years of experience cooking like this that has given me the sensibilities to eyeball it.

When you don't know anything, you need to work extra hard and prepare to succeed.  But when you're well-versed in a task, you can just kind of wing it, and let the spirit of improvisation guide you.  You know that things can't really go that bad.  You know that you've made it this far, and all your fears were ill-founded.  The pork isn't going to burn.  Things are going to be okay.

It's a feeling, I think, that only comes with time.  But I'm starting to feel it, more and more often, outside of the kitchen.

The meal was delicious, because I trusted myself.

pariah music

All of us have our guilty pleasures.  Some of us even have darker secrets, misbegotten things we bump in the night, shameful indulgences we huddle around, hurriedly covering whenever we're abruptly interrupted.  The strongest among us break free from the concerns of society, and learn to live their passions freely and openly, no matter the social stigma or consequence.

There are a whole range of interests that may incur social approbation.  It's not just the nefarious stuff.  Certain hobbies alone can be enough.  Growing up a strident nerd, I understood first-hand how liking certain books and movies was enough to consign someone to castigation and torment.  Bullying was a real problem, and at the time, I thought it was just related to my unfortunate taste in media.

Now I'm old, and I don't see myself as a nerd.  I don't identify myself much at all with any particular groups.  I like what I like (which is awesome stuff), and that is rad.  And yet you will learn, even in this enlightened age, even surrounded by supposedly forward-thinking people, that there are those who will look down on you merely for liking something weird.

I'm a fan of k-pop.  That's Korean pop music.  I first encountered it (outside of PSY's YouTube videos, which are hardly representative of the scene) at a Korean fried chicken restaurant.  The k-pop was blaring.  The chicken was crispy.  My soju bottle was empty.  And I was transformed.

I never listened to American pop music.  I never paid attention as it evolved to occupy strata of increasing weirdness and self-reference.  I was insulated from the broad influences that inspired k-pop originally, and I was utterly without context for what had emerged from the nightmare dream of artistic cruft that early k-pop videos entailed.  I was hit, in 2015, with the full force and fury of an international media machine aimed at extracting every ounce of precious fandom from my weak and simpering form.  I was totally unprepared.

Here's the video that hooked me:

Boy, those girls can dance.

I had to know who they are.  I had to know what they were about.  I had to see more.  And YouTube made it very easy to do those things!  Above all, I had to let the world know what it was messing.

Now, some kind people have been very receptive to my ranting insistence that they endure these foreign lyrics and intensely affecting multimedia experiences.  I appreciate that.  It's a lot to take in at once, but I've been lucky to meet many people who could handle it.

I've also been unlucky, meeting many who could not.  People who'd knit their eyebrows together, looking confused, unable to understand why someone would listen to music in another language.  People who'd laugh, shrug, and say "of course," as if there was something about me that implied they should have known I'd like k-pop.  People who'd shake their heads sadly, perhaps clicking their tongues.  People who'd just say "no."  It's a hard thing, to try to share something you care about and be rejected.

This is not a whiny complaint.  Not everybody is bound to like music just because I like it, and that's fine.  I just want to point out that there are plenty of otherwise good and kindly people who feel totally comfortable completely dismissing me, minimizing me as a person, because of the music I enjoy.  That clearly says more about them than about me.

As a straight white male, I'm no stranger to discrimination.  Wait, I mean, as a straight white male who's lived in Japan, I've experienced it first-hand.  I've even experienced housing discrimination.  I was banned from a dormitory simply because I was a white man, and they had heard white men threw loud parties.  It meant I had to live an hour from school instead of ten minutes.

With that experience in mind, I can tell you this is much the same.  When some people find out I like k-pop, they think it tells them all sorts of things about me, and they feel comfortable judging me!  I'm over here trying to appreciate incredibly intricate choreography and editing, and they're over there throwing shade.

What people like says nothing about who they are.  To imply so is simply dishonest.  Identity is a shorthand, and let's leave it at that for people who just want to enjoy some music.

a new gravity, annotated

Today, I'll annotate yesterday's poem, to give you a sense of the writing process I used, and I'll also clarify some of the meanings (or confuse them)

Alluvial barometrics reveal a certain hesitation (とある逡巡) in the amity between those celestial histrionics

I started this poem from the words "alluvial barometrics" because they sounded really good in my head.  When I started writing it, I didn't know what alluvial meant exactly.  I looked it up and realized it meant, loosely, "of or relating to dirt," which would go on to help form the rest of the poem.

"A certain hestitation" sounds awesome, and is a good lead-in to the next part.  I threw in the Japanese (to aru shunjun, "a certain hesitation") to enhance the idea that this might be an internationally-aimed science report, as implied by the initial language.

"Amity" is a weird, ambiguous way to refer to friendship, fellow-feeling, or general goodwill. I like to be vague with these things, to increase the chances of the reader associating with an emotional event in her own life.

"Those celestial histrionics" says a lot in a few words.  We're talking about specific bodies in space, here, and they're kind of showy and dramatic.  Histrionic is a real weird word to use to talk about stuff in space, so it begins the work of personifying the subjects.

In spite of the mutual eccentricity of their respective orbits, in spite of every astronomically intuited projection, in spite of the prolonged annulment of the proposed heliofaction of this perfect binary system

"Mutual eccentricity" refers to an orbit's eccentricity, or its deviation from a perfect circle.  Mutual lends us the first real idea that these orbiting bodies are interacting in some way.

"Astronomically intuited projection" throws in the idea that something truly unexpected is happening, important since astronomy is normally so extremely predictable (at least, when it comes to motion)

"Prolonged annulment of the proposed heliofaction" is a doozy.  Heliofaction is a Latin-Greek hybrid monster of a word I coined which can probably mean "creation of a sun".  That creation, it seems, is something that should have happened already, but hasn't for some reason yet to be revealed.

"Perfect binary system" begins to describe the actual nature of the orbiting bodies -- they're orbiting each other.  Taken with the preceding clause, we can suppose that these two bodies were meant to form a star, but haven't.

All readings point to a flawed view of gravitation, a blistered syllabus, and numerous lunar and satellitical (satellite, rhymes with appellate?) demises, a cut brakeline in the vehicle of knowledge

"Flawed view of gravitation" is freaky!  Gravity is supposed to be pretty well understood, at least at the level of large objects in space.

"Blistered syllabus" should cause any teacher to shudder.  The very notion of all that knowledge getting all messed up, oh me oh my.  Our preconceived notions may not be correct, and what we thought of as authority may simply be ignorance mixed with confidence.

"Numerous lunar and satellitical demises" implies more upsets in this closed system.  Things are going crazy!

"A cut brakeline in the vehicle of knowledge" is meant to give you the sense that this series of developments is not only out of control, but outside mortal comprehension

Theory passes into law passes into myth passes into theology, theo in, theo out, until the unwise heretics cast it off and reclaim the mantle

"Theo in, theo out" makes the startling case that our efforts to understand things scientifically is the root of religious belief.

"The unwise heretics cast it off and reclaim the mantle" continues the cyclical theme, using religious revolution as a metaphor for the evolution of knowledge

That self-same mantle, your glorious fundament, that so affected my periapsis, that so imperiled the inherent stability of systems

"That self-same mantle, your glorious fundament" is a fun few plays on words.  A mantle can be both a great responsibility, and the geologic strata of a planet between the surface and the core.  A fundament can be both the stuff a thing is made of, and also slang for a posterior.

"That so affected my periapsis" refers to the periapsis, or lowest point of an orbit.  An essential thing to remember is that, when referring to orbits, low is synonymous with close.

On tectonic shudders, on geologic pauses, on the impassivity of terrain, you rely

"Tectonic shudders", or earthquakes, are immense and violent.

"Geologic pauses" are very long, as is anything on a geologic time scale.

"The impassivity of terrain" is in reference to something's, or someone's, unmoving features.

And my surface so unkindly pocked and furrowed, and my aura that of frenzied, unkempt gases

"My surface so unkindly pocked and furrowed" could be about impacts from meteors, or simply cruel treatment.

"My aura that of frenzied, unkempt gases" evokes the visuals of Jupiter and its great, spinning storms, and something of mania.

And my core a sickly solid stack of cruel, unbalanced certitudes, a leaden impossibility
I'm not really sure what I was getting at here.  I guess planetary cores can be made of lead.

All to spin once more, together and apart

Forward and backward, attracting, repulsing
Things get a little micro here.  There is a nice symmetry between the very large and very tiny, and I play up "attracting, repulsing" for dramatic purposes.  We have gone from planets to atoms and subatoms, and the rules are startlingly similar.  So it goes for relationships great and small.

Entropically trusting, affecting, depending, wavering ectopically

"Entropically trusting, affecting, depending" relates to the concept of entropy, whereby, it can be argued, all systems must inevitably slow and come to an end.

"Wavering ectopically" presents a pleasant similarity of sound, and refers to something moving out of place, to where it should not be.

Alluvial barometrics suggest a profoundly enigmatic set of personal developments

"Alluvial barometrics suggest" brings us back, but instead of the cold scientific report stating a new fact, we have a quieter, more questioning tone.

"Profoundly enigmatic" means, as before, that things are tremendously unexpected.  So unexpected that we could not even have expected not to understand them.  It is outside of our grasp.

"Set of personal developments" is an admission that this was never really about planets at all.

a new gravity for me and you
A new paradigm for personal interaction.

a new gravity

Alluvial barometrics reveal a certain hesitation (とある逡巡) in the amity between those celestial histrionics

In spite of the mutual eccentricity of their respective orbits, in spite of every astronomically intuited projection, in spite of the prolonged annulment of the proposed heliofaction of this perfect binary system

All readings point to a flawed view of gravitation, a blistered syllabus, and numerous lunar and satellitical (satellite, rhymes with appellate?) demises, a cut brakeline in the vehicle of knowledge

Theory passes into law passes into myth passes into theology, theo in, theo out, until the unwise heretics cast it off and reclaim the mantle

That self-same mantle, your glorious fundament, that so affected my periapsis, that so imperiled the inherent stability of systems

On tectonic shudders, on geologic pauses, on the impassivity of terrain, you rely

And my surface so unkindly pocked and furrowed, and my aura that of frenzied, unkempt gases

And my core a sickly solid stack of cruel, unbalanced certitudes, a leaden impossibility

All to spin once more, together and apart

Forward and backward, attracting, repulsing

Entropically trusting, affecting, depending, wavering ectopically

Alluvial barometrics suggest a profoundly enigmatic set of personal developments

a new gravity for me and you

you are not alope

Who hasn't been fascinated at some point by cryptids?

These creatures of mysterious fancy delight me.  I love to dwell in the space between their fakeness and their possibility, to swim through the foggy mist of uncertainty that surrounds every report about their existence.  They represent the best parts of the world, the undiscovered countries, whatever's around the river bend.  The people who follow them bristle with an enthusiasm which is lost to most by their fifteenth year.  Here is my favorite:

THE NOBLE JACKALOPE

The jackalope is the original, the classic, the most quintessentially American of cryptids.  It may surprise you, then, to learn that it has roots dating back to the Old World to the better part of a millennium, perhaps as far as Persia.  A creature of woefully underappreciated majesty, the jackalope combines the savage dignity of the stag with the hirsute swiftness of the hare.

I have a special fondness for the jackalope for two main reasons.  First, it has a relative simplicity compared to so many other cryptids, making it slightly less likely to be fake.  Second, I can boast a geographical proximity to the Jackalope Research Institute, run by the alarmingly insane Bruce Larkin, who claims the title of the World's Foremost Jackalopoligist:

I have never visited the JRI, but it's so close, I think it's just a matter of time.  The website has some very fascinating facts, and I will now excerpt some for you:

• Jackalopes will never establish themselves in Canada because they are allergic to poutine
• Jackalope antlers have a faint candy corn aroma.
• They only mate during thunderstorms on February 13th of leap years. (ok, me too)
• They are born and grow so quickly that they are often born on the same day as their great-grandparents.
• Jackalopes usually have 13 babies at a time; 6 babies of one gender and 7 of the other.

There are also jackalope poems!  Jackalope jokes!  Jackalope downloads!

Learn more about the noble jackalope.  I dare you.

More cryptids to come.

optical bromide

Podcasts are fun!  Podcasts are cool!  I was going to start a podcast, but I never got around to it.  My feelings on the subject were something like this:

I don't want to be Just Another White Person!  So, that was a good excuse to find something else to do.  Perhaps someday I will return to the idea.  I have the equipment (voice, fancy microphone), and a friend willing to join in who is only half-white, and may therefore lend me some much-needed legitimacy.

Today, I submit to you the introduction statement I prepared for my podcast, which never even had a name.  It exists merely as a supposition, but I think it could have gone somewhere.

MY EPHEMERAL PODCAST INTRODUCTION

When I was a child, there was a game I would play in my own head.  I would sit or stand quietly, and I’d close my eyes, and I’d feel myself float away, up and up, away from the ground, and the air, and the colors, and the light – up until I was infinitely high above it all.  I’d be so far away from everything, I’d shut off each of my senses, one by one, until finally I’d gently bump into this indistinct bubble of…nothing.  I would touch it and lose myself, drifting away into the sensation of emptiness, letting my personality sublimate into a boundless ocean of nothing.  I’d always snap out of it after a few seconds, but the goal of the game was to see how long I could maintain that state – it was never very long.

I started playing this game when I was about seven years old, well before I could have fathomed that it might have any meaning.  I asked my mom about it once, and she told me that I was a weird kid, which was true.  It wasn’t an escape, or a meditation, or anything – it was just different, a fun game to try from time to time.

I imagine that I understand how a character in a film might feel if you imbued her with some agency.  A film character is not a person, but our minds turn them into people, much as they create personifications of the actual people we meet in our lives.  If I were to meet you, and we were to spend several hours talking and getting to know one another, each of us would walk away with a more-or-less clear picture of a person who stood for the individual we had just met.  But, inevitably, our conceptions of each other would be vastly different from each of our conceptions of ourselves.  Getting the full measure of a person takes years of attention; even then, there will always be some things that remain stubbornly locked away.  Even at that point, in our minds we merely carry a well-realized impersonation of the individual in question.

Because a character in cinema looks like a person, sounds like a person, and acts like a person, we fit that portrayal into the space in our minds we reserve for people.  We assign emotions, habits, and a personality to that deliberate conglomeration of facial expressions, gestures, costume, context, and lines.  We allow ourselves to be tricked into believing in the existence of such a person, so that we can be emotionally invested in what happens to her.  We let ourselves believe in her reality as a person, including treating her as though she has the capacity to make choices.  But she does not.  Everything she experiences and does is predetermined by the writer and director.

But, if you were to grant a character the power to stop and think about her situation, to give her life, then something very peculiar would occur.  Much like how we can never fully see into the hearts of others, the camera never fully perceives a particular scene.  The field of view is limited, the aperture points in one direction, and something is always missed, no matter how wildly the perspective changes.  Film presents a flat world and asks us to believe it has depth – we supply whatever sits outside the frame from within our own minds.

And so, a film character brought to life would soon realize how much is missing from the world around her.  She would search and, unable to find what does not exist, reach out for something more.  She would perceive the invisibly soft limit of her world in the form of the screen – she would feel that her reality only extends as far as she can perceive, and beyond that lay nothing but a great emptiness.  She may be hopeful.  She may be afraid.  She may find herself wishing that she had never woken up from the endless dream of her simpler life at all.

Whatever her reaction, she wouldn’t be able to touch the screen forever.  That would be a pretty boring movie to watch.  She would eventually have to return to her routine, and try to hold on to that sensation, that connection to whatever lies beyond, which she somehow knows is more real than her world, and contains the Truth.

There is a very famous quote often attributed to the French director Jean-Luc Godard that goes, “film is truth 24 times a second, and every cut is a lie.”  Another quote, by American director Brian de Palma, has it the other way:  “the camera lies 24 times per second.”

If two directors of the highest regard can come to such an opposite understanding of the nature of their medium, what hope do we have to make any sense out of it?  Roger Ebert considered the above contradiction, and tossed in a third perspective, pointing out Picasso’s view that “art is a lie that tells the truth.”  That was Ebert’s clever little way of admitting that he had no idea who was right, or even if anybody could be right, and I find myself in the same boat.  Neither am I equipped to serve up a metaphysical discussion on the nature of truth, whether lies can ever serve the truth, or whether directorial intent makes a difference to the honesty of cinema.

My goal is to tell you why movies are important to me.  From that, you can draw your own conclusions.

cytoplasmic verbiage

Last year, I experienced Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and experienced a phantom pain of my own.  Perhaps it can heal, perhaps it can't, but there's much left to say about the ideas espoused in the game.

The central villain of the game, who goes by the name Skull Face, has a grudge against the English language.  He views it as akin to a disease, spreading itself memetically through the normal routines of commerce and cross-cultural interaction, that wickedly stamps out diversity and causes suffering wherever it goes.  He hatches a plan to unleash an actual disease on humanity, one that will target the vocal cord resonance patterns specifically of speakers of English, killing them and ridding the world of English forever.

He's nuts, and his plan is stopped through the careful coordination and sacrifice of many players in the story.  What's fascinating to me, though, is the relevance his point of view can have for people in the real world.

This post on Reddit, written by a Mexican man who feels he's had to watch elements of his country's culture gradually erode over the last several decades, was pretty affecting.  As Americanization takes hold and, inevitably, creates distance between him and those citizens of his country who take to it more, or are too young to remember a time before, he finds there is some truth in the ideas the game introduced.  Cultures can be threatened by other cultures, without any violent conflict or conscious economic pressure.  Is that a bad thing?

My favorite blogger suggests it isn't a thing at all.  Instead of American or Western culture supplanting others, he elaborates on the idea of universal culture:

"Universal culture is the collection of the most competitive ideas and products. Coca-Cola spreads because it tastes better than whatever people were drinking before. Egalitarian gender norms spread because they’re more popular and likeable than their predecessors. If there was something that outcompeted Coca-Cola, then that would be the official soda of universal culture and Coca-Cola would be consigned to the scrapheap of history."

He makes pretty strong market-based and utilitarian arguments in favor of this idea, and couples them with a few examples of ur-Western cultures whose systems and values were hardly comparable to or even recognizable in the modern concept of the West.  America simply happens to be the biggest country where capitalism and the lionization of the pursuit of individual happiness coincide, so America is the chief source and promulgator of the products and ideas that the most people will want.

So where does language come into this?  It's hardly mentioned in the blog post, yet it's the focus of the Reddit post, and they're both talking about essentially the same thing.  Why the disconnect?

Could it be that certain languages are simply better at conveying ideas than others?  I could believe it for specific types of ideas.  I know from experience that Japanese is far better at expressing vaguely wistful ambivalence about an unexpected development than English.  And English is a much better language for describing the specific way you feel as your intestines are removed (the Japanese culture of gaman usually prevents them from whining too publicly about this process).  But for ideas in general, I can't give one or the other the nod.  This is too subjective a question to ever be answered, and until we get super-intelligent AIs, it'll be pretty hard to try without having someone who knows all the languages.

There's the possibility that America is where the money is, so its language becomes the lingua franca.  But that doesn't really explain the Mexico example, where products that are already popular are being transitioned into English from having been in Spanish, and individuals who aren't really active market participants (read:  6-year-olds) have linguistic preferences leaning away from Spanish.

So I don't think there's a qualitative difference between the usefulness of languages that favors English in spreading to other countries, and I don't think there's really an extrinsic economic reason, either, because it seems to be happening independently from market processes.

But there could be a reason aside from usefulness.  English could just be memetically superior, in the sense that it is better at spreading itself.  It could really be that English self-replicates more effectively than any other language, that many of its words are simply more palatable to the average human, regardless of initial culture or linguistic patterning.  That theory would actually support the effectiveness of these other elements of "universal culture," as any interaction that relied on this most-successful language would naturally have an advantage.  Markets would favor products that relied on English.  Six-year-olds would rather express things in English.  Nobody would know why, and it would be spreading everywhere, as fast as technology would allow it to.

This is exactly what Kojima was getting at.  How else to explain the runaway success of English than to liken it to an insidious virus?  "Meme" was the explicit theme of Metal Gear Solid 2, after all.  These have always been games about how our circumstances shape us, and how we respond to that.  You have now seen a post from a Mexican man responding to the circumstance of English predominance, and as an English speaker himself, he's likely to be on the front line of people noticing the phenomenon.  I predict, over the next 2-3 years, we will be seeing more and more of a backlash as non-English speakers begin to realize how thoroughly our language has infiltrated their cultures.

Of course, like the blogger, I don't think it's really a problem.  Why seek to control the spread of culture, which is supposed to be the natural accumulated product of billions of free choices by individuals?  But he and I are both sitting at the top of that heap, and it may be that the view looks very different from the bottom, where it's about to fall on you.

a new moon

The Japanese have a certain peculiar belief about their country.  They believe it has, uniquely, four seasons.  Japan does experience four seasons, it's true.  But many Japanese believe that theirs is the only country to carry this distinction.  The Japanese are susceptible to many strange notions about what sets their land apart, but this is one of the oddest.

I am happy to report that, as of this morning, I can confirm the Mid-Atlantic Region of the United States stands as competitor to the climatic uniqueness of the Chrysanthemum Empire.  I was driving, and I looked at the road, and it was ablaze.  The fallen leaves had scorched the roadsides, and I drove surrounded by fiery reminders of the transience of all things.

Leaves, though, man.  Leaves are designed to fall off.  They're a terrible symbol of transience!  They come back next year and they are basically completely the same.  When spring rolls around again, you're not going to look at the beautiful flowers and foliage and think, "those are nice, but I sure miss the ones from last year!"  They're COMPLETELY REPLACEABLE.

Look, I get it.  It's all very poetic and everything, but the plants aren't dying.  Just these...vestigial parts of them are shriveling up and falling off, because they aren't useful.  What's useful, though, endures!  Sometimes you just have to throw away that useless stuff and trust that what you really need will grow back.  Have a little faith in yourself, and you just might find the beauty that those 'useless' things you've been carrying around can become, if you have the courage to let them go.

the lady or the chicken

I pulled up in the public parking lot next to the restaurant where I'd be meeting a friend for lunch.  I noted the location of the parking payment kiosk, and saw my own parking space number, 468.  I started walking towards the kiosk.  It was sunny, but not too warm, and the clouds were graying slightly, giving the few leaves tumbling through the air a chance to stand out.

As I approached the kiosk, I saw a woman walk away from it.  She walked to her car, made a disgruntled face, then returned to the kiosk ahead of me.  When I got close, I saw her tapping the screen in frustration, getting an error message.  "Space 520 is not found.  Please enter a valid space."

She threw up her hands in frustration and turned to me.  "It's saying it can't find it," she told me, as if I could help.  I shrugged.  "That's very strange," I answered, and waited patiently for her to get out of the way.  She showed no signs of moving.  "What should I do?"

I gestured towards an empty space near where I'd parked.  "Maybe you could try that one."  She frowned, then squinted.  "470," she read out loud.  "Yeah," I said, pointing to the kiosk, "try it."  She shook her head.  "Somebody might take it before I get there."  She went to move her car.

I typed in 468, and it worked like a charm.  I can only assume that 470 helped her out.  I was late for lunch, and was gone by the time she had returned to the kiosk.

I was kind of shaken by that woman's need to look to me for assistance.  I didn't feel especially qualified to be of help.  It seemed that she was simply blown away by something so simple and straightforward refusing to work for her.  She had a lot of faith in the systems that underlie our society, and that faith was shaken.  Suddenly, she had to doubt all of her assumptions.  Not everything makes sense.  In her terror, she turned to me.  I'm no authority, but I was the nearest thing she could put her trust in.  I hope I helped.

That story was true, and so is this one.  There was a chicken, once, who lived a normal chicken life.  One day, that chicken's owner decided he wanted to eat that chicken, and took an axe to that chicken's head.  The axe blow did not kill the chicken.  The chicken's head was removed, but a piece of the brain stem remained.  That piece was enough.  The chicken could stand, and move around, and its autonomic functions continued unabated. The owner forced soft food into its esophagus with an eye dropper, and took the chicken on the road.  That was Mike the Headless Chicken, an American hero.

Do you see what these stories have in common?  A woman confounded by the failure of an underlying system, and a bird unconcerned by the obliteration of an overlying one.  Think long and hard, and ask yourself what really matters in your life, and which one you'd rather be.

six or seven sheets to the wind, your call

Ok I am drunk bloggin'

Look I don't get drunk often

In point off fact I only learned to get drunk like 1 year ago

Before that I was clean and sober and and lived life straight as an arrow

Let me tell you college was difficult

Friends *(suuposed friends) poured alconol on my he ad

Beers were poured!!  Because they thought I thought I was better than them

For not drinking

I didn't think that but nevertheless beer was poured what a waste

Look friends I admired you and never thought myself better

I just wasn't interested in alcohol

But now have found it unlocks a certain kind of honesty

An honesty that is altogether unwelcome

That's fine though nobody minds I guess

I can still play the ukulele and that's what they want

I said a few positive things tonight and freaked people out
|
Is that what I've become someone preponderantly negative

That ain't me I got so much love

It was one of the best nights of my life

Maybe I'm sobering up but let me just say

Writing this blog for you is a true honor and a privilege

And I love you from my bottom to my top

While my wife is asleep let me say

Let's be together forever goodnight

domestication

On my continuing journey towards something dimly resembling adulthood, I have begun searching for a home to buy.

The rent v. buy question is a tricky one.  When I first got married, the future was fluid, and the answer was easy:  rent, rent, rent.  That turns out to have been a good decision, since my rent hasn't gone up in over seven years, and anyway I had no money when I got married.  Now I've got some paper, and I'm ready to feel like I don't have any again.  I could keep renting, but in my area the cost to rent is rather exorbitant for the kind of larger place I'd be looking for.  The kind of place where you can comfortably raise a family.

So I'm looking at mortgages.  I'm looking at down payments.  I'm looking at school districts.  This is an exquisite form of personal torture for someone who regards himself as fundamentally Bohemian in outlook.  Like a certain Mr. Draper, the opportunity to just pack up and ship out at a moment's notice has always held great appeal, even if I've never actually made use of it.  I like to categorize my possessions, and one of those categories is 'must-haves,' things I would be sure to take with me when I need to escape from my life.  There are precious few of those.  I would not be found.

But I'm not ready to run yet, and instead I'm about to nail myself to the floor.  I can handle that.  It's for my daughter's good, and creating her endows me with certain inalienable obligations as far as making her experience of living however slightly less miserable I can.

The wife and I went house-hunting a few weeks ago.  We visited an open house near where we live currently, and it was a beautiful place!  It felt clean, and open, and beautiful, and spacious, and livable.  I looked around, and could imagine a pretty fun life there.  It was expensive, but within the realm of affordability.  It was doable in every way.

I was ready to pull the trigger, but (as always) the wife was a little more cautious.  We talked about it, and decided we needed to look at more than one house before making a decision.  That seems reasonable.  That seems safe.  That seems wise.  That flies completely in the face of how I like to approach life, and I've been very successful at it so far.

Places have never been extremely important to me.  In my eyes, a place is merely a forum to interact with people, which is what really matters in life.  I can be comfortable living somewhere, or uncomfortable living somewhere.  I don't care at all, as long as I've got the right people around me.

The wife feels differently.  Places have always been extremely important to her.  The feel of a place needs to be just right, she claims, or she simply cannot be happy.  All my appeals to the idea that we would be happy just from being together fell on deaf ears.  Above all, we must find the right kind of place.  Well-lit.  Boreally orientated.  Properly ventilated.  Aloof neighbors.  Thick floorboards.  Situated on an ancient burial ground.  You get the picture.

A home of my own is more than a place to live and meet people, I admit.  But it opens up an entire world of new responsibilities, opportunities, and fantastical engagements, should I choose to pursue them.  An entire arcane laboratory, all to my own design, if I should so choose.  The wonderment would be never-ending.  The dead might live again.

These are some of the ways I could cope with the idea of buying a house.  I'm terrified by my regular middle-class lifestyle, terrified of collapsing into a perfect family unit of perfectly average composition, forming a singularity of suburban bliss.  It would be happy, but there seems to be so little room to carve out something new for yourself on that all-too-traveled road.  Tell me, where can I find the novelty in always doing what I'm supposed to do?  Where can I find the challenge when I hew so close to the middle road?

I don't want a house that I can go back to and be content.  I want a house that will constantly push me back out into the world, and force me to keep on growing.

tacit fondness

I started writing a blog post last year.  It was pretty long, about twice as long as my average post.  The subject was primarily a message I had found in my 11th-grade yearbook.  It was a message that I had written to myself.

When I found that message, I was really impressed with myself.  Although my yearbook was also full of other people telling me off for pulling a stupid stunt like writing my own message, I didn't see it that way.  Not only was it a clever move, but the message itself was a poignant meditation on friendship and sincerity.

I liked it so much, I knew I had to write a post about it.  Maybe I just wanted to show off how emotionally intelligent I was, even at 17 years old.  So I wrote this extensive post, but there was only one problem -- I didn't actually have the yearbook with me when I wrote it, and I wanted to include the message as a direct quote.  So the draft sat in my computer, waiting for the day I might remember to pull out the yearbook and finish it.

That day came last week.  I opened the yearbook, navigated to the last page, and realized with some dismay that, on rereading, I didn't think the message was nearly as meaningful as when I'd first found it.  Maybe I was just primed to appreciate that sort of the thing at the time.  Whatever the reason, I realized I'd never be able to put up that post.  It reflected my feelings at one point, I guess, but no longer, and it would be disingenuous to pretend like it still meant the same thing to me.

(Just so we're on the same page, no, I am not going to show you the quote now, or likely ever.)

I still think it's a cute message, and far from a bad one.  But it's not something I'd feel particularly proud to share.  There was a time when I saw all of my words as golden, everything worth sharing, holding it all up as a key to unlock the mystery of myself.  But that isn't really true.  Some things are deep and insightful clues to my psyche.  Some things are just cute jokes.  I'm finally learning to differentiate the two.

hands down

As you can see, I am pretty comfortable with expressing myself through the medium of words.  Nearly any format (play, poem, texting, blog post, novel) will do, and I'll happily prattle away until the cows repatriate themselves.  But there are other media than these, my friends, and in those, I can struggle.

Music is my next-most-comfortable realm to live in, and I've got a good sense for it, though my technical fundamentals are lacking.  I'm working on that -- I've been studying music theory -- but it takes time, sometimes conflicts with my natural instincts (which is right and good, instincts aren't everything).  When music clicks for me, it really clicks, and through great effort, that clicking will happen more regularly in the future.

The problems really start to arise when it comes to visual media.  I'm just not a very visual person.  I didn't even have any sort of emotional reaction to a piece of graphic art until I was around 27 years old.   This was the piece:

By the German street artist El Bocho.

This piece is enormous, roughly twice the height of a person.  It's hidden behind a series of blocking walls, so there's no way to see it coming -- you just turn a corner and BAM, your entire field of view is filled with this face.  I stood, absolutely transfixed by it, for several minutes, and then couldn't really bring myself to leave it for another ten or fifteen.  It was a transformative moment for me.  It's still burned into my mind.  It always will be.  I don't know its name, and I don't care.

After that, visual art started to make a little more sense.  I visited some modern art museums, and really pushed myself to see what was going on in the artist's head.  I visited some historical art museums, and found myself appreciating the development of artistic style and technique throughout history, and then even throughout individual artist's lives.  It seemed so much simpler, so much less inscrutable than I'd once believed.

I decided to take an art class, and signed up for an online one that seemed like it would offer a really good overview.  I got myself a nice drawing pad and some good pencils, and was off to a pleasant start, but then I was given a miserable task.

My third or fourth assignment was to draw an object without looking at the paper.  I didn't understand the point of it, and the teacher didn't care to explain.  I tried anyway, but it was grueling, and I deeply resented receiving a terrible grade when I hadn't had any notion of the value of the assignment.  The teacher gave a flippant response when I complained that I didn't understand why he'd asked us to do that, and I quit the class.

I regret it.  I have many ideas that would be far better suited for expressing visually than in words, and I believe I could develop the skills necessary, even if I'm not naturally suited for it.  I just wasn't ready to blindly follow a teacher's advice at that point, although I recognize now that I should have just swallowed my pride and stuck with it, even if he wasn't the tenderest shepherd of my fragile feelings.

Sometimes, the more talented you are, the harder it is to learn something new!  The smallest setback is a huge blow to someone conditioned to success.  But it's vital to keep in mind that, if you aren't failing, you aren't learning.  It might be time to pay the old sketchpad another visit.