TWENTY YEARS, MAN??!?!?!

Two months of not writing seems paltry when compared to 20 years of not writing. My reaction to the idea is not unlike Jeremy Piven's in Grosse Pointe Blank:

When I was in junior high, a friend's cousin came to visit her in Jacksonville and we became friends ourselves. Since they only stayed a week or two and it was the late 80's/early 90's when the internet was not generally available to most of the public, we had to make do writing letters to one another after she left town.

Every few months I get a few pages of notebook paper folded like they were meant to be fit in the back pocket of my jeans instead of the envelopes they came in. "HI BRY!" was always splashed on one side of the packet and the handwriting was different from letter to letter, like she was figuring out exactly who she wanted to be through penmanship. I still struggle to make my handwriting look like I'm older than eight and it amazes me that women have this knack.

We shared everything. I mean everything. Ev. Er. Ee. Thing. There were no limits to the conversation, although they usually revolved around how school was, what our friends were up to, and what kind of trouble we got ourselves into. Deeper than the trivialities of daily life at 15, 16, and 17+ was the expression of trust and love that is obvious when I read them now. The topics we shared are things I'd never discuss with my circle of adult friends with the exception of my wife.

One day I stopped writing back. I don't remember when exactly and I'm very fuzzy on the why, but I got a letter and didn't send a reply. I don't know if I got another one after that, maybe, maybe not. They just stopped coming and I had lost my pen pal.

Three days ago, social media with it's esoteric algorithms decided that since she knew someone that knew someone that I knew that maybe we knew each other and I might want to see what was posted on her wall-feed-sharing-place. I've reconnected to quite a few friends in the last year or two of being very active online and it never occurred to me to look her up.

Maybe it did, but we had history. Major history with trust, sharing, and acceptance that I didn't have with anyone but the woman I've chosen to share my life with. In the past, that kind of history has stayed my hand in talking to ex-girlfriends just to avoid the inevitable elephant in the room. This time, though, it didn't.

What crossed my mind in the second before I clicked on the friend request was hope that she wouldn't judge me for not writing back. Fear that she would. The possibility that I'd be ignored in return twisted my guts as my finger applied pressure on the plastic button of the mouse. Too late, I had clicked it and the option to undo what I had done loomed before me for another eternally long second.

Which was how long it took for the Friend Request Sent to change to Friends.

Despite being agnostic, atheistic, and skeptical of all manner of phenomenon, I do ascribe to some metaphysical beliefs. The guiding hand of fate, subtle multiple circumstances that leads to amazing events, is something that's been difficult to shake because I've felt it's touch on several occasions. That sensation of being the focus of that thing or energy or collective bore down on me as though I was an insect being pinned on display.

My first message was chosen carefully, crafted to be eloquent, apologetic, inquiring, hopeful, neutral, inoffensive, but ended up being, "Long time no see, how you been pen pal?" I cringed, biting my hand. How could I be so stupid as to think that she would want to talk to me? How could she even reply to that? I should just log off now and leave it for later...

"Bloop," my computer told me. Which could mean anything from I don't remember you to how could you do what you did to me, don't you know ignoring someone close to you is the worst pain you could put them through? What was she going to say?

"Long time no see pal. I've been mostly good. How about yourself?" Just like that, the 20 years between then and now vanished. The letters have transmuted from notebook paper to digital chats, delays shortening responses from months to a few hours, minutes, or seconds. 

The trust is still there. The acceptance and absence of judgement as present today as it was when we said our last goodbyes at 18. The over-sharing as well, but that's between us. Thanks, Jacque, it's great to have you back.

Eaters of Glass, pt 2

One thing that's always bothered me is the rigidity of modern fantasy in it's delineation between what is divine and what is mystical. Fantasy RPG's have drawn a hard line between the two, which has become enforced over the years. I've always wondered where that separation occurred and why, as the mystical and occult have long been held to be aspects of one another. 

 

Tolkien certainly didn't make the distinction, as Gandalf, Saruman, and even the villain Sauron were all essentially angels that took flesh. Magic was a harnessing of the natural order of things, tapping the divinity of creation to enforce or bend the rules that the Creator established long ago. There is a  long-held view that the supernatural is at least in part a unit in theology and I don't understand this more recent need for separation. The second part of "Eaters of Glass" addresses this to some degree, with more to follow:

 

 

The tickling on my sacred marks has grown stronger and I know the others feel it too. It is strongest amongst the foundlings, although whether they squirm from that sensation, the cold water, or youthful impatience, I do not know. Belan reaches out to the youngest foundling, a girl with a tangled nest of flaxen hair, who clasps his forearm so they touch wrist to wrist, whirling knots and dotted lines touching, her eyes widening in delight with the sensation I know is soon to pass through each of us. She reaches out to a boy huddled against the hiked skirts of the foundress, he to the foundress herself, and one by one we make a circle facing one another standing in shallows of the river.

 

I am among the last to join and when my arm locks with that of Jendra's, the tickling becomes a tingle of pleasure. The numbness of my feet fades and the water feels as warm as it appeared to Belan, the stones I stand upon no longer uncomfortable but instead cradling my feet, the tinkling of the river as it flows away now a song with words I could understand if they were sung slow enough. With each clasping of arms, the sacred marks pulse with pleasure, each addition to the circle a different sensation: one like cool rain on a warm day, another the sweet relaxing of sleep after a long day's work, the next the stomach-twisting pleasure of a first kiss. All our joys become melded as we are joined, until at last Miika holds his arm out to Belan, who waits with the Blackwood, ready to complete the circle. 

 

When the wand touches the sacred mark at Miika's wrist, our hands are no longer needed to hold our arms together. Like the lodestones the foundlings play with, the sacred marks hold us rigid, bound to one another by a force stronger than muscle and bone. The sun shines down on us, feet on stone, water around our ankles, wind in our hair. The sensation of each of our individual joys becomes melded into a greater pleasure, that of connection and stability, of family and village life, of love. I know this joy is not my own, though it is a joy that all of us feel in the ceremony, which is it's purpose, afterall.

 

Belen takes his wand away from Miika's sacred mark and as our sacred marks release their hold on one another, we are left with that sense of connection, now less physical sensation than shared knowledge though a light tingling pulses through our bodies from the sacred marks in time with our heartbeats. Turning to one another, we embrace and hold each other close as though this act may restore some of what we felt for that brief moment. The foundlings hold one another's hand, as do some of the adults, and follow Belen to the middle of the shallow riverrun where he lifts a small basket from the water.

 

The loose weave of the basket allows water to drain easily and sunlight to reach through to glimmer off it's contents in a sparkle of blues, greens, and bright white across the riverbed. Belen gently shakes the basket to rid it of further dripping and the sparkling light produces a musical tinkling clatter. The knot holding the basket's lid in place comes undoes itself with a touch from the Blackwood wand and stooping, he lowers the basket to the curious eyes of the foundlings.

Inside, the basket is filled with smoothed shards of glass, polished by the movement of sand and water. The glass is brought to our village by the heavily robed Marschites at the end of summer, in payment for their portion of the barley crop. They always bring a bag of sharp edged, multi-colored glass for each village on their trade route and Belen places it in several of these baskets in the river's course to soften the edges over the course of the seasons. He straightens his back, looks around our circle into the eyes of each young man, woman, and foundling and speaks.

"As we grow food to nourish our bodies and keep our flesh hale, so too must we feed our hearts and minds to remain strong. Our people's hearts and minds are bound to one another and the sacred marks on our bodies show the strength of our connection. There is a fire within us that brands these marks on our flesh and it must be fed to remain burning," Belen reaches into the basket with the Blackwood wand and stirs the contents like a fostress over a soup kettle before sliding the wand into the belt at his waist.

He reaches in and withdraws a thumb-sized piece of smooth, white glass, holding it up so that sunlight blindingly reflects on the few faces that remain free of river-polished frosting. The words carry some hidden meaning, but the ritual of repetition obscures those that have heard them each year know them. "The glass is earth shaped by fire and air and water. It is a vessel for the sun, the greatest giver of life burning with the fire of the sacred. As the sun has returned from it's journey away from us, so we return to it. May this gift feed the fire of your heart," grey eyes soften with a smile as he hands the white glass to the youngest. "May this gift feed the fire of your heart," he repeats to each of us, the largest pieces given to the foundlings while the older among us receive slightly smaller pieces. He takes a piece for himself last, repeating the prayer one last time, "May this gift feed the fire of your heart," before placing the glass in his mouth.

We all do the same, though the younger foundlings hold theirs in little fists. The piece of glass given to me is the rich green of pine needles, the size and near to the shape of my thumbnail, flat and rounded. It is cool at first, but warms quickly in my mouth as I work my tongue around it like the beetroot candy we make sometimes. The gentle pulsing from the sacred marks on my throat begins to itch and tingle as I roll the glass around my mouth, sometimes gently clinking against my teeth. It begins to dissolve, just like the beetroot candy, but where the candy is sweet and fragrant, the glass tastes of the air before the storms of early summer when the wind blows hot and cold together and fills the sky with lightning.

All of my sacred marks begin to itch lightly, though not enough to bother scratching as they did in years past. The foundlings rub here and there, at one wrist or across their chests. One does a curious hopping dance in the shallow water of the river prompted by the sensation. Once the glass is gone from our mouths, Belen ties the basket closed and returns it to the water, gesturing for us to return to shore. We dry our feet and put on our shoes, unhitching skirts and rolling down pant legs. The foundlings are eager for the midday feast the elders will have prepared for us to nourish our bodies as Belen has nourished our hearts.

Eaters of Glass

What follows is a bit of fiction that I started writing quite a while ago, developing the world and story in fits and starts the way my writing always progresses. I'll read something that sparks an idea, have a dream about something else, then somehow connect the dots between those things. 

 

What started as a musing on the difference between fantasy and science fiction became tied up very quickly in Arthur C Clarke's famous Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." What happens then, when technology is so advanced that it's ability to sustain/maintain itself is essentially infinite and the very people that utilize it no longer understand it or know how it is used? Those that do know are as wizards... Here's the first installment:

 

 

 

When the first days of spring lift the winds of winter and the sun warms the frozen earth and thaws the river ice, my people gather at the Blackwood tree for the blessing of our wise man, Belan. The sun is a hand above the treetops as we leave the thatched homes with hearths kept warm by our elders, cloaked against the morning chill in groups of twos, threes, and fours to walk the cobbled paths to the meeting place near the common well where we gather our water. Once assembled, foundlings scamper in the dewy grass heedless of ceremony while Belan moves among us, Blackwood wand in hand, to touch our foreheads with the ash. Not one of us knows where the ash comes from as Belan has lit no fire and regardless, Blackwood does not burn.

Blackwood does not make windfall. Blackwood cannot be felled. It's trunk and branches turns the blade of axe and saw. Like other trees, it grows bare when the winds turn cold and lush during the warm seasons yet it's leaves never fall. When I was a foundling, I once climbed the slick trunk to it's lowest branches and spent an autumn afternoon trying to discover this mystery. My fostress lashed me soundly for my absence in the fields that day and though I know the leaves grew thinner, for I noticed those nearest me when they were gone, never once did I see where they went.

The secrets of the Blackwood tree are known only to the wise men among us. Only they may pluck it's leaves for their tinctures and salves, but where their wands come from, no one has seen. It has been said in whispers and tales told around hearthfires that the Blackwood itself gives the wise men their wands and it is with this thought in my mind when Belan finally stands before me.

His lined face is bent to the wand in his hand and when he raises his bright eyes to mine I feel he knows my secret wonderings. A nod, so slight and brief I question whether or not it was imagined, gives me pause. Eyes the color of stormy sky hold me in place as the wand rises to leave it's mark and before Belan moves on to minister the blessing to the others he gives me a warm smile. The ash tingles and crawls against my skin and I feel a warmth spread from it, a goose-pimple raising of skin that travels in waves from head to foot and an echoing return of warmth and tingling from the intertwined lines and knots of the sacred marks on my wrists, ankles, neck, chest, and thighs before fading to the lightest of tickling.

When the last of our village has received his blessing, Belan leads us to the riverbank and takes the path upstream. Snow along the banks and iced puddles begin to thaw as the sun rises as we near the bend where the river moves swift with run-off through the stony shallows. The foundlings run ahead of us to find dry seats on the sun-warmed stone, tossing their cloaks aside and working at the leather laces of fur-lined boots. The youngest strode to the water's edge only stopping at a gentle reminder from the fostress, impatient at the slower plodding of adults and eager to begin to festive ceremony that marks the end of winter's seige and the beginning of the planting season.

We fold our cloaks and lay them on dry spots or hang them from the branches of the willows and hazels; shoes are carefully laid nearby and stockings stowed inside them, trousers are rolled up and skirts tied high. As the first of us strides to the icy cold water, the younger foundlings splash in with shrill screams and deep breaths while the older ones watch on laughing and giving a good-natured ribbing. Though we have performed the ceremony every year since our own days as foundlings, the water's chill is enough to numb feet in moments and stir light-hearted epithets, the stones of the riverbed pinch and poke despite their smoothness. Belan alone strides through the water as though it is warm as a bath, stooping to wet his fingers before touching them to his lips before waving us to stand together.

A Week and a Half

I guess that's not too bad to wait between blog entries. I could probably post daily, but I'd expect the quality to go down with the increase in post rate, making it akin to a Facebook Status Update - something I'm not fond of either.

No one needs to know every little thought I have. It's bad enough that the people I know hear the drivel that spews from my lips in person, although I'm told that it's sometimes pleasant drivel. I'd like to think that writing this stuff down gives me a few moments or minutes or hours to contemplate what I'm trying to communicate and most days it does. Right now, though, I'm streaming consciousness and drinking coffee.

After the journal post, I thought of a few things to write about, like my love for haiku writing and reading, why a single man was capable of adding some 1300+ words to the English language and these days people generally use only about twice that number daily, or a review of Godzilla which Tabitha and I saw on Friday. I'll probably do those topics at some point or another, but there's something else I've had on my mind lately. Love.

Yeah, as sappy as it sounds, I've been thinking about love a lot more recently and what that too-simple four letter word means to me. Part of love has always been, for me at least, ensuring that those I care for are in good spirits and health, perhaps not fiscally solvent but able to keep their heads just above water. There are many of my friends for whom I feel this love and if you've eaten at my place I hope you've felt this love and who have reciprocated in turn. It's a deep, warm, supportive feeling that lets you sleep like a baby.

Infatuation, though, is what most people think of when someone says they're in love. The crush. There's nothing like that sensation when you've got it and once it's gone, it's make-or-break time for whatever relationship has been woven as a result. The thing is, everyone wants that sense of infatuation and sometimes you find it or it finds you and it's not for the person it should be with. But sometimes it is... and it's amazing.

The impatience, anticipation of speaking to or seeing that person, watching for signs they feel the same way about you, all of that is quite literally intoxicating and like any opiate will hook you like a five pound fish on twenty pound line. There's no wonder people hunger for that feeling. I get the butterflies in the stomach, the moon-eyes, a warm-fuzzy tightness across my shoulders, and an uncontrollable need to smile at absolutely nothing.

It's akin to visiting a theme park, getting dizzy on the teacups, feeling your stomach flop in the roller coaster, knowing that the haunted mansion is down that path and you can't wait to get to it. To perpetuate the metaphor, once you leave the theme park and those flip-flop feelings settle down, you have a choice to find a new high or a new equilibrium. That's a hard choice to make in the face of intensity, one that a lot of people have difficulty with myself included.

I adore my wife, it's my sincere hope that she knows this and believes it, feels it daily from me whether I'm there with her or absent. The feeling that when that person isn't with you or in proximity at the least, you feel like there's a part of you missing, that's the love I share with Tabs. I'll hear a joke and expect to hear her laugh, but she's not there and now I have to remember the joke to tell it to her later. Dedication, I call it; the kind of love that I think most people secretly wish for in a relationship with another person even when they're saying they want an infatuation.

What I've come to learn is that you need both. You need both infatuation and dedication, the former occasionally and the latter perpetually. Some people are lucky enough to have that with their partners and everyone else calls them lucky bastards. I count myself among that rare group and am constantly amazed at how lucky I got to have my best friend as my partner in life.

There's always going to be times when that sense of love is in short supply, but sometimes that's what it takes to remind you of why you're with a person and it's enough to set those butterflies fluttering.

It began on May 14, 2014

The closest I've ever come to writing a blog was an annual update on a miniatures gaming website showing off whatever I had been working on for the last few months. While I love writing and the format of journal entries, I'm horrible at keeping up with them. Once, my writing was prolific and streamed out of me faster than I could think it. Stories were rare, but poetry, prose, and stream of consciousness (like this) much more common. These days, I don't write nearly as much, though story seeds crop up much more frequently.

Stacks of mostly blank journals lie accusingly next to my nightstand along with the spiral notebooks that Tabitha and I wrote back and forth to one another in back in high school. There's a few simple journals, faux-leather wrapped folios of lined paper that would be indistinguishable from the hundreds just like it sold in big boxes across the US. The flowered journal I kept through high school, filled with poetry, lists of names of people I had met and their astrological signs, little bits of nostalgia crammed in the pages like flyers from the Fusion Cafe and concert tickets. Then there's the other journals.

There's a few specialty journals you wouldn't be surprised to see in a Barnes & Noble, like the Star Wars Journal (made pre-prequels, thank you very much!) whose spiral-bound, wide spaced lines are randomly indented by quotes from Episodes IV, V, and VI and silhouettes of the characters they're attributed to. It's fuller than most with my shoddy penmanship, the first half dozen or so pages with entries from my brief time living in Virginia with my father, step-mother, and step-sister, with the two or three entries written about our trip to New Jersey to visit my dad's family there. The rest is filled with characters, plot ideas, rules alterations or inventions, and the like for several of the Star Wars roleplaying games I've had the privilege of running.

Another would be what I call the Curmudgeon's Journal, boldly advertising it's intent to be a private vent for the well-adjusted sociopath on the cover. It's also interspersed with quotes from celebrities and historical figures regarding the stupidity of Man. It was a gift, well-received, from someone who's heard me rage against the ineptitude of the masses on more than one occasion. While there's no shortage of material for me to fill it's pages, this journal lies empty.

One of my favorite unusual blank books was purchased during my last trip to Disney World: a yellow fur-covered book with unlined, pale ochre construction paper pages inside, little black bead eyes and embroidered nose and mouth on the cover. Imagine the Evil Dead II Necronomicon crafted lovingly from the head of Winnie the Pooh by the Disney marketing department. That's how I think of it - a beloved childhood memory made into some thing. One time I thought to make it a photo album of the trip, but it's laid fallow for years.

Another favorite I picked out at a Ren Faire years ago. Dyed red leather stamped with a dragon design and held closed with a huge Celtic knot button and leather jesses, it is a beautiful work of craftsmanship and I'm loathe to dirty it's pages with anything less than the perfection it deserves.

That, I think more than anything else is what keeps me from writing, that fear of putting something on the page that's less than perfect. I find that I edit, re-edit, check grammar and paragraph structure, delete sub-par sentences, research more appropriate synonyms, edit again, et. al. in place of getting down what I wanted to record in the first place and it is this attempt at birthing perfection in place of crafting it that has kept those journals blank for so many years.

Perhaps that will change. I've got stories to tell, so long as I can let them be (in my own estimation) ugly and unrefined for a while. It's my hope that this journal without pages won't stay empty.