Friday Freewrite

I walked a long way yesterday.  Walked right out of my head and into the black beyond.  Have you ever been there?  Not to my black beyond, I mean, but to yours?  Well they might be the same one I'm really not sure.  No one ever talks about it.  Most people probably don't know it's there.

But it is.  It's the reason we're scared of the dark.  Scared of what follows behind.  Scared of what comes after.

Because we already know: we carry it around with us in our heads all the time.  In the back, in a small unseen corner that never gets dusted there is a door.  Mine's large and wooden with big iron straps on it and a large iron ring for a handle.  It's a very heavy door and it's only meant to be opened once.  You know when.

But this is me we're talking about and I've always been too curious by half about what goes on in my brain.  So there I was poking around where I shouldn't be and I found this door in front of me.  How very odd.  Right at the limit of my brain, right at the curving wall of my consciousness I find a door to...what?  How could there be a door at the edge of me?  Where would it go?

Surprisingly it wasn't hard to open.  I just had to really want to go through it--but then, most people probably don't ever want to run out on themselves so their door stays shut tight and unnoticed in their undusted corner.

I think it's been calling to me lately.  I used to shout at it--or it would shout at me, I was never sure--'what are you?'  What are you?

Recently it's been a bit different.  Something's been calling back 'Come here.'  Come here.

Yes.  I'm coming.

Through the daily worries and joys I'm coming.  Past the shoulds and the should-nots I'm coming.  Past the buried emotions and the rock bottom instincts I'm coming.

Come Here.

I'm at the door.  I'm coming.

Come Here.

I'm here.

Here.

Oh God it's so dark it's so empty there's light above me and I think it was the door I came through but it's such a small patch of not-dark now and I think I'm falling further and further away and am I breathing I can't tell anymore if I'm breathing maybe I don't need to breathe anymore I've fallen right out of my body is my body breathing is it all right how will I ever get back how will I ever get out of this black beyond the black the black oh God it's so empty and I'm so small I'm getting smaller I don't know how I know but I'm getting smaller the black is taking everything away and soon I won't be able to go back there'll be nothing left of me

That's it.  That's what the black beyond is.  It's nothing.  Forever.  And you wonder why we all dream of falling and falling and never hitting the ground until BAM!  We jerk awake in our beds and tell ourselves it was just a dream, just a nightmare.  It wasn't real.  It couldn't be real.

We don't know that what we're really experiencing is time in reverse: a memory of what is to come.  The black beyond is stalking us in our heads and we don't even know it's there.

Don't go there.  Don't find your door whatever it looks like.  Don't wish to see what's on the other side.  There's a price if you want to come back.  A price to pay that you might not want to.  Because the price to pay to come back is to come back and live forever with the knowledge of what's inside waiting.  There's too much truth living in you now for all the lies and fakery to fit.  There's no place you fit anymore.  But there will always be the door.  Always the black beyond.  And when you finally dissolve into it maybe it won't be black anymore.  Maybe it won't be empty.  Maybe.

Movie: The Siege

I don't know if anyone remembers this movie.  I don't know if it made much of a splash when it came out in 1998.  I certainly don't remember anyone talking about it then or now.  I might have seen part of it on tv once: one of the scenes was slightly familiar.

But watching this movie now from the vantage point of 2012, all I can think is how horribly predictive it was, and how heart-breakingly sad it is to watch now.

The plot is simple: there are arab terrorists in New York and they are using bombings to try to gain the release of their religious leader whom the American military kidnapped after he directed a bombing on an army base in the middle east.  The FBI (headed by Denzel Washington) does its best to discover and take care of these many threats but they are hampered by both the cultural differences and the US military when martial law is declared in New York city.

Arab extremists.  Bombs.  Hundreds dead.  Terrorist cells.  All of these things made more haunting by the occasion wide shot of New York city with the two towers still standing.

1998.  All this in 1998.  And seeing how Hollywood works, this script could have been in production for up to ten years.  Maybe less, maybe not.  I couldn't say.

This movie--while powerful--wasn't spectacular.  I can see why it isn't particularly remembered now.  (Although Denzel and Tony Shalhoub turn in some great performances)

The reason I tell you of this movie is because it represents something of our history.  Not only 9/11, but of WWII and the camps that interned innocent Japanese Americans.  This is what we can become when fear rules  us.  It is a good thing to be reminded of.





And a very Happy Birthday to Liam Neeson and Karl Urban!  We are glad you are alive and making wonderful movies.  Well, I say we.  At the very least I'm glad.  :)

Wednesday Word: Remnant

Remnant: a small piece remaining from a larger whole.

Why does this word take so long to say?  Remnant.  It lingers in your mouth.  It should be shorter!  Smaller!  Something more befitting it's meaning.

That is all.

Things my mind comes up with at 5 in the morning

I have a job now.  Jobs are cool.  But my job requires that I stay up very late/early and go to sleep at 6-7 in the morning when I finish my job.  So while I'm out there driving my paper route and doing my best not to hit things while simultaneously rolling papers and sticking them into boxes and reading my directions and being very thankful that no one else is on the road at the same time as me--I often have strange thoughts pop into my head.

Not that that's all that different from other times.  I think we all know that my head is very strange.

But the very strange thought that popped into my mind was this:  'Oooh!  Bunny!  Don't hit it!  Wow, bunnies are fast...bunny races!'

In case you didn't follow that: I almost hit a bunny (there are so many of them and they are all so cute and fuzzy and their little tails are so adorable I could just die.  That is all) but managed to avoid hitting it not only thanks to my excellent driving skills (aaaaaaaahhhhhh don't hit the bunny!) but because that rabbit was just so ridiculously fast.  Which led to the inevitable, 'I wonder how fast they can run,' which led to the, 'It would be so cool to see two rabbits race each other,' which will eventually lead to my convincing a good friend to let me borrow her rabbits and try to race them.  Please?

Polka Will Never Die!

Sigh.  There are so few of you who will understand why that is so funny.  And to you all I say thusly: 'What are you doing?  Go read The Dresden Files!  Now!!'

But this post is not about Jim Butcher's going-on-fourteen-books amazing series that you should immediately read .  (hint hint).

It is about Polka!

(just in case you didn't know what polka sounded like because everyone you've ever met has been a hater)

Polka is amazing!

But what surprises me most about polka is how many people dislike it.  Passionately.  They despise polka so much it's amazing there hasn't been a legendary polka-music-burning like what happened to all the books in Germany before WWII.  (I'm not trying to minimize the horror of what happened back then by comparing it to polka.  But in all seriousness, I've met more people who hate polka than I've met Anti-Semites.  Why are there no Polka Hate groups?  No scary tatoo clad men running around destroying clarinets and accordions?  I'm sure most people would be glad of their absence.  Not me!  But some people)

But I think I've discovered why there is no middle ground with polka.

I know--it's a big shocker that I discovered the secret after all this time, but it took a keen mind and countless hours of--oh, wait a minute, it only took listening to three polka songs in a row to understand.

People hate polka because they don't like being happy.

No really!

Polka is so ridiculously joyously fun-filled that it leaves no room for anything but having an amazingly ridiculous joy-packed fun-filled time.

So if you have any tendencies towards gloominess at all--no matter how small or slight--you don't like polka.  It will annoy you.  You'll wish that it never existed and that someone had killed the first person to invent it before they wrote a single note of it.

So you and all your grumpy-gill friends can go stand in a corner discussing how much you hate the rain.  I'll just be over here cavorting with everyone else who wants to have a good time.

Polka will never die!

Poem: End of Destination

This was first written in my Senior year during my Classical literature class.  I'd be paying enough attention to my teacher but at the same time I'd feel so urgent about something--who knows what sort of something, I don't--and I always feel better when I externalize my unknowable emotions into words/poems.  So it's a bit odd, even for me.  :)  A couple years later now I've reworked it and edited it down to something a little better.  Thoughts?

End of Destination

I defy poetry as words. 

I’ve traded up for

faltering phrases to snag

your inner landscape and make it stick to mine. 

My own interests require me

to tell you that this

is a wild fire in the curls of brainy-matter

stuffed in cornered crevices, pulsing

out in thoughtful moments

the compressed

under-sternum-panic Beat. 

I bid the beat. 

It isn’t fair, it isn’t fair, it never gets old how

it just isn’t fair the lies

are neither here nor there, the fresh the old the

sensatory drowning pull

Down—

pressure flying behind it all it pushes me forward,

give me no-nothing

I wish begging wasn’t so undignified what use is pride—

all pride is keeping world from moving on too quick and leaving me behind

I ask that you acknowledge

I’m deceiving you/me

we-heap

It takes more than unknowable statements

(I say whimsical profundity) to fill a bucket

with a hole in the bottom.

Frequently washes the sailor his cloth,

the sailor his cloth, the sailor his

hands. 

I’ve only got one. 

Only got one in my

lead covered net I

only spasm for lung-air blood-breath to shake my head

You might as well keep

pulling on that string, something

larger

will come out of the hole and you don’t want to miss it. 

Regret to inform loss-duck.  Lurch-luck. 

I falling height.  Drinking

time is only blinding, compacting in a

garbage compactor, extractor compactor half

adrift half

sane half

afraid half

here half

ear brink edge, level six on the kitchen aid—

mechanical scream whirring cream to whipped cream creaming sugar and butter before

adding flour. 

Have I lost you/me yet? 

Have I lost the peculiar

doubling

of ideas-impossibilities both true both

here-gone

would you mind if we had a moment of silence

Did you mind?

Suction from the back of the eyeball gives no brain fluid

I hope you know it only shows how much you pissed your life away

your potentialities

by sitting like a lump on your one tone ass with your one tone voice—

kill-shot kick to the head. 

I’m in the throes of foes, handed over to

those immortality sickened and I

am catching it left handed sort of way. 

Hate me, I’m learning

to hate me,

learning from everyone else who withers with their mouths

false-trues that once upheld

souls from mangling. 

But the worn out gears of machined gunned clock

tower factories we-heap. 

Oh we-heap.

This is good and bad, you understand.  At least pretend—

I’m pretending too

since I don’t really have a mind to think with, you understand,

at least pretend you

understand I need a crack-less cavern

solitudinous bubble shaped

for convenience of no entrances. 

And they say keep it open to the sun to the moon to the stars to me to them to wind to dirt

to world

to flagrant invasion insipid morrocans, or do

I mean those things in your hands filled with sand a stone shaking

in a five-year-old’s hands at a teacher’s discretion. 

We-heap,

oh, we-heap.

I’ve tried to word over world

In search of a little vindication

Taking part in twisting your arm—

Metaphorically speaking vindictive

But only by reason of loss

Perceived, received, deceived

In a way that crippled my

Sensibilities of the younger me

Who was told that being odd

Was a sort of death and

Didn’t I want to be immortal?

Pardon me if I am bitter

It’s only the words I learned to chew

But never swallow.  Never eat

Heave all unnecessary baggage water-ward

I promise sir, you won’t need this,

It’s only one light lie I need-believe—

Well I believe you told it to a child

And tried to teach a price

That makes you feel all safe inside

All comfy-headed cushion-souled

Now that magic sold itself to pay the bills

That weren’t existent yesterday,

The day before that saw perpetuation of a lie

I tried hard not to hear.

This should be a National Holiday

It's Morgan Freeman's Birthday everyone!!!

Break out your exclamation points and get ready to par-taaay!!!!!!!!  WHOOOO!!!!!!!!!



I'm sorry, I just can't help it.  It's MORGAN FREEMAN.  And he's still alive!  Yay!!!  I mean, he's not terribly old (75) but he's not getting any younger and that makes me seriously dread the day when he won't be alive any more.  I know--too morbid--but if celebrating your birthday is about anything then it's about having been born on this day once upon a time--and still being alive on this day right now.   :)  This is a reason for happiness!

So we should all celebrate Morgan Freeman's utter awesomeness and go to Clarksdale, Mississippi and hang out at his blues club.  (Morgan Freeman owns a blues club!  See?!)

Or, y'know, for those of us not within easy driving distance of his blues club (sad day :(     ) we should just have Morgan Freeman parties and talk about how awesome this man is.

We can break out our worst/best Morgan Freeman impressions!

We can watch our favorite Morgan Freeman movies!

We can get into fights about who's allowed to kidnap Morgan Freeman and force him to legally adopt them!

Yay!!  This is turning out to be a great party, guys.

But seriously, dibs on the legal adoption thing.  Don't make me come after you.

:D