Boys and Girls

Matt asked me to write this. He implored me. I can only assume he felt that I was more aptly prepared and disposed to discuss the themes which are to follow. There is a good chance that this piece will be double posted, here, and also over at The Most Sublime Noise to Penetrate the Ear of Man, a fellow blog I have only recently begun writing for.

I asked her her name and in a dark brown voice she said Lola. L-o-l-a; Lola.

Vanity Fair said of Nabokov’s masterpiece Lolita that it was “The only convincing love story of our century.” If Lolita is this century’s only convincing love story in literature than The Kinks’ 1970 song “Lola” must be the only convincing love song we are left with.

It’s surprising how catchy the song is when you first listen to it. The strong twanging intro grabs you deep down in your groin with a snug grip only to let go for you to relax as Ray Davies’ tiny, pubescent, boy-girl voice starts to whisper in your ear. There is something entirely faggoty about the sound of the song that, even before you know what it is really about, is exciting and playful to listen to. At first listen “Lola” is simply a summer love song like any other summer love song should like to be, enjoyable; cutesy; moderately lasting. “Lola”, on its surface, is a well to-do love song. But, it is what’s under Lola’s makeup which is truly remarkable and endearing about it as a love story. This love song, like so many good rock and roll love songs, is nothing but a painted whore, a bright pair of leopard print tights, hiding the true nature of love and art, a throbbing, tucked back, veiny muscle of love.

“Lola” is among those other hidden pervert songs like “Blister in the Sun,” “F.H.I.T.A.” and “Longview.” The enduring quality The Kinks managed to impart in this song, besides the slightly masked transvestite and homosexual themes of the story, is that even after the point when it becomes clear to the listener that the song is in fact about an uncommon or expected love affair it is still and incredibly enjoyable satisfying song. Lola dregs up in its listener those feelings of sexual confusion and apprehension that have always lived with us. It’s hard for some people to imagine living a Grecian life style of antiquity and partaking in the styles of man-love only understood between and warrior and his fellow plunderers and spearmen or the occasion and goat farmer and his cattle. The question that should be pressed to our leaders, in politics, religion, and academia, in sociology, anthropology, history and psychology has nothing to do with “nature verses nurture” or “how do we square the cases of child molestation by the forefathers of modern culture with today’s values?” or even “is homosexuality a trait or a choice?” but what would you do for the love of a woman?

Nevermind the bullocks. Over look the five o’clock shadow and that she walks like a man. This is a battle of wills: not the head and the head but the head and the heart. The love for a true woman isn’t physical but spiritual. When you’re left in solitude, away from home for the first time, what will you do for the love of a woman, a woman who you can love and will love you back, just as hard and severely? What price would you pay? Is it so wrong? Should you turn away, run for the door? Or is it more atrocious to deny yourself happiness and to refuse what love there is that’s real?

Girls will be boys and boys will be girls
Its a mixed up, muddled up, shook up, world …except for Lola.

-Caleb Michael, not the world's most masculine guy

Dämmerung

A friend once told me that one day I would be in a relationship that made me realize how one really was supposed to be. That, sadly enough, I would actually understand how they work, how I work… understand that I was… happy. That idea bounced about in my head for weeks, months, maybe even longer, my mind, my heart, my soul mulling it over, fighting it, alternately embracing and rejecting that notion. That silly, profound notion of happiness. In the end she was right, I’m sure of it, though I’m not quite sure if I know it yet.

It has always seemed to me that the beginning of relationships are the easiest… they are the most awkward and worrisome, but they are also the most exciting and simple periods.

I think that once you get past that, you really know where you stand, you should truly be able to see where things are going, even if you are too blind or stupid or ignorant to realize it at the time. If you really sit back and look, maybe, just maybe you can see into the future. Sometimes I wish I had last time, because I know it would have saved me a lot of stress, heartache and frustration, and a whole lot of anger. But, again, I’m not sure I would want to give up those experiences for anything, no matter how awful they were.

Sometimes I’m afraid that I’m sabotaging it all, that I’m just a screwed up and demented to the point of no return. I fear that I cultivate the arguments and frustrations or that I somehow engage in some sort of campaign of psychological warfare to destroy it all. In those dark crevices of my mind I wonder if I don’t enjoy the misery, but I know I cannot linger on that. I know that I have to fight those thoughts, and those impulses with every ounce of my strength just in case they are real, because anything less would be surrender, would be utter destruction.

I know it is hard in that initial stage to know where things are headed, and since I have the misfortunate (or perhaps the gift) of over-thinking everything, I am sitting here pondering whether it is all going to come crashing down like some castle of building blocks under the wrath of a child’s tantrum. I know that someday I will look back on this and laugh at my ignorance, but for now all I can do is wonder and wish that I could just leave things be.

It terrifies and excites me simultaneously to think of what might come, to think that this happiness welling up in my gut could actually last (and I don’t mean intermittently like last time). To think that I could feel that joy spreading throughout my body, radiating until it feels like I’m going to burst ‘less I release it, unless I lose myself in her arms, against her lips, or with my face pressed against the top of her head like some little kid clinging to a teddy bear. Because, despite the way that this all sounds, I am not all that worried… intellectually, sure, but not in my heart, stomach, or soul.

I know that I’m a fool; that I’m naïve, but the oddest part is that I don’t care. The emotions are too pure, too vibrant to just sit back and let them happen. I cannot help but embrace them, but raise my arms to the cold night sky to stare up at the stars and be… to let out a barbaric “yawp” as every nerve ending in my body lights up like a Christmas tree. I don’t know any other way to do this, any other way to love, than completely, to dive right in and let the waves buffet me and hopefully bring me to shore.

And, I think it just all comes down to something a friend told me, that once all the worrying and overanalyzing and everything else is done, you have to let it all go and just be.

So, I will just be. And while I know all those demons will be in the dark recesses of my mind, I’m just going to ignore them, because “the world is puddle-wonderful” and I wouldn’t have this any other way.

Apartment A2

My first apartment had bumpy, uneven floors and a tick in the walls. I was living in the old apartment when she broke up with me. The second night I spent there she and I went around the apartment and had sex in every one of its rooms. This was before I’d even gotten any furniture moved in. My bed would remain on the floor where I first dropped it for the entirety of my time living there.

We had sex in every room that night: mine, the closet, the living room, even my roommates room, right next to the frame of his bed, a cold painted steel frame leaning against the wall. She was on all fours and I was on my knees too, right where he’d eventually put his bed, right next to his picture of Jesus.

She sat on the ledge in front of the sink in the kitchen and I fucked here there too. I was bumpy and uneven and paunchy and she was perfect, fit and slim; dark, olive skin; callous and still fragile.

After she’d broken up with me it was never very easy to do dishes again, to stand in front of the sink, facing in, my hands down in the water, my finger tips wet and pruning, hesitating and burning down there. If I left the window open the steam would rush up in my face and sometimes the pilot light in the stove would blow out too and the room would smell like gas. It got a lot easier eventually, and even now I just hate doing dishes for all the normal reasons, for all the reasons I had for hating to do the dishes when I was young, before things got complicated. Before sex and kitchen sinks had anything to do with one another the way they sometimes do now.



Caleb, the no fun apt. room A2

To My Friends...

All things have to end…

All things must end, no matter how much we all would wish it otherwise, no matter how much we tear, beg and fight. The gods don’t care how much we pray or yell, we just get dragged away kicking and screaming in the end.

I think that perhaps it’s that helplessness that makes it so difficult. That intense desire to just have things stay the same, for stability, but the knowledge that change in inevitable.

My own impulse is always to hold on for too long, to not give up, to battle until I’m bloody and tried, until I’m lying on the floor my chest heaving for exertion and my eyes wet with tears, until I can no longer even think.

It’s a noble thing to end things when you know it’s time, I doubt I ever could. I know that I would wait until it was too late. I don’t know if I even realize that it’s over until it’s too late, until things have gotten so twisted that they cannot be fixed. Sometimes I wish I could just get out earlier, sometimes I wish I could keep those fond memories without the bitter, that I could have the clairvoyance to know when it was time to bow out. It’s a hard thing, no… a brutally painful thing to crush someone so close to you, to crush yourself, even when you know you have to.

But that’s just the thing… once you know you have to do it, there is no turning around. You stare down form the precipice, the pit of your stomach in your throat, your heart aching inside your rib cage, just knowing… Knowing that everything that once was is gone, that no matter what you do, nothing will ever be the same again. It doesn’t matter whether you want to jump or not, you know at that instant that you must someday, there is never any going back.

I remember it all too well, steeling myself for that fall, ripping myself away from what I was closest to, what I wanted the most. But I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t move without crying…and so I just stood there like a statue, both of us understanding what had to be said, what had to be done, what was inevitable. And those memories were the worst, because that’s what you’re really tearing myself away from, not the future, but the past. Those raw, throbbing memories, those happy, sicky-sweet, haunting visions that will some day be wrapped all neatly in cellophane, but are now demons, just rip at you until you can’t even move.

I could try all the clichéd old phrases in some vain attempt to have this all make sense, to try to explain something, but I know none of them will help. Who even wants to be helped when things are like this? All you want is to not feel anymore.

And so I just sit here, wrapped in the darkness around me, safe yet so vulnerable at the same time, thinking, feeling… imagining how you must be feeling, remembering, wondering. I wish I had some words of comfort, something to make everything better, to make it all make sense. But it doesn’t… it’s completely senseless. Even Camelot fell, Kennedy was shot, and the day succumbs to the night again and again until someday the world ends. So, I bang out this rambling nonsense, hoping that it will help on some level, even if it will only help me. Because, in the end, I’m not even sure who this is for… is it for you two? Or is it for me? Or perhaps it’s just for all of us… for humanity. I think maybe in the end that’s the only comfort in any of this, just knowing that we are all here together, separated by so much, but united in the fact that we all feel. We feel the sorrow, the loss, the remorse, and the joy separately, but also together.

That’s all I have, my shot in the dark, my attempt at understanding and my hope that on some level, someday I can be of help.


“And if you'd 'a took to me like
A gull takes to the wind.
Well, I'd 'a jumped from my tree
And I'd a danced like the king of the eyesores
And the rest of our lives would 'a fared well.” – The Shins, New Slang

Finals, Kwanzaa, and a poem

Finals are over. Frosty the Snowman is a bitch. And there are less than two weeks until Kwanzaa.  Excited yet?

To wrap this up, here is part three of the star wars content. It's a poem, which kind of breaks some unspoken BSD rules, but it's about star wars and love, and I know that at least Matt and the girl I wrote it for liked it.

A Star Wars poem for Higgy:

You shut down the trash compactors on my detention level.

That is to say, you take my breath away.

And maybe I just want to be your Bothan spy, 

Climbing in your AT-ST,

Hoping we’ll drive home together tonight,

Back to Echo Base or Yavin IV.

And it makes me smile.

No, 

I’m not saying that you are the

Comforts of a Tauntaun.

But you do have the warmness of one.

And a certain bluish glow,

Like Obi-wan on Dagobah.

I’ll sit and watch twin suns with you,

Waiting on Tatooine.

I’ll make the Kessel Run to you,

In less than12 parsecs with 1.21 gigawatts.

And through the haze of snow and sand storms,

Or the clouds of Bespin

I’ll follow you

Like a Tuskan Raider

Would their Bantha.

You found me like a probe droid,

Hit me like a wamprat,

Loved me like an Alderaanian.

And so, I don’t have a bad feeling about this,

Because I think you’re the droids I’m looking for.

So lets party like ewoks,

Live like Rebels, die like Wookies,

And love like only Hoth will ever let us.

(edit)

Caleb Michael, played

The Cave

Humans are the most messed up creatures on earth. I wish that meant more than it does, because the only reply to that statement is “no shit”, but hear me out…

I just can’t imagine that any other intelligent being could be as stupid and emotional as we all are. We don’t understand one another and we don’t understand ourselves.

We… ha… you all know that I’m just talking about myself. Not that projecting this aspect of me onto the rest of humanity is incorrect, I’m sure it’s right, but this is personal. We’re all fucked up, we’re all just chaotic jumbles of emotion staggering about in the dark and knocking into one another. We don’t know what we’re doing, we have no clue where we’re going, but we sure as hell aren’t going to admit that to anyone.

We try to form rules for this existence, to make guidelines for how to form relationships and who to form them with. We try to artificially construct rules for responding to one another, but it doesn’t work. It’s all fake, it’s bullshit. We’re all just in the Cave, chained, staring at the shadows on the wall. I just wish people could be honest with each other about the things that matter. I wish people could just see me for who I am, but no one wants that.

Like J.D. once said, “…nobody is themselves when they start dating. Dating is just acting like you're somebody you're not until the person likes you enough so you can show 'em who you really are.”

It all sickens me so much. But, the worst part is that I’m sure I am really no better than anyone else in this aspect. I just sit here and write and wonder about everything, instead of going out and making connections, instead of interacting. I write here and hope that someone will get it, someone will understand where I’m coming from and get that this stupid little blog means far more to me than it ever should. I assume that someday someone will read around all the jokes, all the literary references and insanity and find those little bits of me that are pure and real, the true essence of all of my confusion, and understand.

But, in the end it’s not for them that I do this, I do it for myself and only myself. There is that hope that someone will understand it all, but that’s not the point. I write because I would no doubt go mad otherwise and become some twisted, wretched.

I know I’m just fumbling around in the dark here, groping for others in the hopes that perhaps they can see, perhaps we can save one another. Maybe someday I’ll find the light.

Stare into the Abyss

There is nothing worse than reaching out desperately for someone to take your hand and pull you from the abyss, only to watch them stare back at you in confusion. Worse even than them looking down at you in derision, or callous indifference. To know that it’s not that they don’t want to help you, but that they cannot. How could they when you don’t even know what you’re searching for yourself?

You’re just Holden wandering through the wintry streets of New York, faking a gunshot wound in a bathroom, running about with that goofy ass hat on.

I want that hat.

And the most fucked up thing is that I want to be Holden.

I know I care too much, worry too much, analyze too much, think too much. I pace, fret and wonder about everything until I can’t do it anymore. But, I want that. Giving in would be too easy, being content would just feel like giving in. Feel like settling.

It’s not that I’m unhappy, far from it really. That’s not to say that I’m never upset, but generally I like my life, I like who I am. But, that’s the thing… I enjoy this. I enjoy the good fight. I enjoy the discontentment and endless self reflection. I like the torture.

Why should I push it away? Why should I pretend? Why should I try to feel something that I don’t? I’m looking for something. What? I don’t know… I don’t even think I truly believe I will ever find it. I’m not sure how any human ever can. Maybe this is where people think fate comes in, God comes in; maybe this is why so many of us are so bitter and cynical.

I wish I knew if I believed in fate or not. I always pretend to be such a logical person, but I’m really not. I always felt I believed in progress, but I don’t know if I do. I’m a burning pyre of contradiction. The rationalist and the dreamer, the optimist and the pessimist, Aristotle and Plato waging war in my very core. I love and hate humanity simultaneously, and that’s probably the hardest to admit. How can I even be? I feel like the main character of some Romantic novel…

I want to spread my arms out to the night sky, tilt my head back and scream my lungs out to some dark street corner, but I know I could never do it, just as Holden never could speak when he called Jane. Something holds us back, leaves us mute. So, I’m left to sit here and use my sign language on this keyboard, to bang out my frustration at the world, my frustration with myself, and wish I was making some actual noise.

“Got to admit it’s getting better, a little better all the time.”
“It can’t get any worse.”

Henne to Manningham

I’m sitting on the edge of the couch, watching, waiting for the kickoff. Michigan down by ten to the Spartans. My mind is reeling, trying not to think about what had happened to bring us here, trying to suppress that tightening in my gut. I try not to think about how well they had played coming out of the tunnel and how atrociously things had gone since the end of the first quarter, not to think about the first or eighth of September, not to wonder how hurt Hart really is.

The game returns from commercial after the State extra point and I lean forward, my elbows on my knees, my hands clutching the sides of my face just in case the unthinkable happens and I need to jam my palms against my eye sockets. My right leg is bouncing up and down frantically, I don’t even notice until the girl next to me tells me that I’m shaking the entire couch. I laugh slightly, and mutter, “Sorry. I’m nervous.” I settle my leg down, it requires a conscious effort of will to keep it still. And then the Spartans kick the ball off and Michigan has possession again, and hope begins to return…

Henne to Arrington, 12 yards.

And here it is again… that offense I remember from so many times before… Henne back in the pocket, calmly throwing the ball around the field, passes caught by receivers slipping out of bounds to stop the clock. And then the camera switches back to the heroic senior quarterback, who hadn’t played very well, but was about to bring us redemption… the quarterback who was now hobbling…

And then it’s Mallett, with his baseball cap on backwards and a look that was somehow a mix of boyish enthusiasm and grim determination, and maybe a little bit of fear, about to put his helmet on over his hat, before it is swiped quickly from his head. My breath catches in my throat and I can hardly even move as Mallett gets behind center, takes the snap… and fumbles…

Yet, somehow… somehow the ball skips forward, jumps into the outstretched hands of our Messiah, number 20, and he’s sweeping around the line and running up the field for a first down. I had no idea Hart was even back on the field, but it was as if he knew where he had to be that instant, and as if he reached out and called the ball to him with The Force.

And then Henne is back under center, surely hurt and in pain, but knowing that this was his last chance to turn it all around, that he just had to be magic one more time to get them through this all, that he had to be the one to lead them back from the jaws of defeat.

Henne to Manningham, 13 yards

Henne to Mathews, 3 yards

Henne to Arrington, 11 yards.

And they’re just picking apart the Spartan defenders, who are reeling. Henne looks like he’s a little kid back there, slinging the ball to his friends on the front lawn, down past the mailbox and over that old Cadillac parked against the crub. The Spartan defensive line is like a little brother counting hopelessly to five Mississippi, the ball always gone before he can even get to three because the cards are jus against him. And then it’s a touchdown, Mathews streaking across the back of the end zone and Henne finding him. Jubilation. The Victor’s.

And the looks on the MSU student’s faces are priceless; they are drawn and wide eyed and full of fear, because they have seen this all before, against the back drop of the Michigan band. They’ve seen their team collapse again and again, they’ve seen those men in maize and blue tear tooth and nail back from the brink of annihilation and they know they’re just as helpless as their peers on the field. They know it’s over, they know the miraculous comeback is inevitable, they know that Michigan is holding them at arm’s length as if with a Hart stiff arm.

And the Michigan defense stuffs the Spartan run, despite the fact that they have been on the field for the entire half, that they have to be sucking wind and running on pure adrenaline and will, and Michigan has the ball back, a little under 4:30 left and time for just one more drive for the history books.

Henne to Arrington…

to Manningham…

to Arrington…

to Manningham to the 29 yard line

… as if Henne is making sure both his star receivers get a little of the glory.

Then it’s a handoff, and despite Minor fighting for every inch of ground he can gain, trying to claw his way around to the outside while being completely covered in green, he’s tackled for a two yard loss. The next play is an incomplete pass and suddenly it’s third and twelve, the prospect of a 42 yard field goal and overtime staring me in the face. And I’m back crouching over, almost in a fetal position, my eyes glued on the TV, and my right leg surely twitching like a scared animal, though I didn’t notice it at all.

And then it happened, something magical… something that instantly recalls thoughts of that Penn State game in 2005…

Henne dropped back, and Manningham streaked down the field and the ball was hurled into the air, soared like a magnificent savior towards the corner of the end zone. And Super Mario, number 86, number 1, leapt into the air, hovered above the earth like some divine being as my breath caught in my throat and the blood thundered in my ears, just hung there defying gravity until the ball came crashing into his outstretched hands and he fell back to the earth, the ball cradled safely away as he landed… and then it was bedlam.

I’m on my feet and the Victor’s is playing. It’s comeback victories and Rose Bowls. People are embracing and cars honking all over the dark streets of Ann Arbor. It’s that first kiss and Christmas morning all wrapped into one, shouting and pumping my fist to the beat as the marching band blasts East Lansing away.

It’s Henne to Manningham… those three words I’ll remember for the rest of my life no matter what happens… those words and that time that ovoid ball found it’s way into Hart’s hands as if called back to where it knew it belonged, nestled in the arm of Mike Hart.

NORAD of Camelot

I'm not really sure if anyone understands human relationships, or how they even can. I know that I don't, and I'd bet the farm that I never will. I'm pretty sure that it takes truly understanding the other person to have that sort of connection, and who even understands themselves that well? How is it even possible? It's getting to the point where I'm beginning to think that human social interactions are just too complex for our species' intelligence. I have never met any two humans that have a relationship that can be said to be easy that truly care for one another. That can't be said about dogs or rabbits or pigmy marmosets, can it? Do dolphins passive-aggressively torture one another? Do they get into fights for no reason? Do they play mind games with one another and obsess over every little thing until they go insane? No, they fight or play or ignore one another, or whatever else, but they don't really have so many problems. I'm not saying they aren't complex creatures, any of them, but I can't imagine it being the same.

Even the relationships that seem the stablest, the best, the happiest, rarely are. People put up these walls and act as if they are happy together, but everyone bickers and fights. And I believe that's what shakes my foundation in all of this the most... no one really seems to have that happy of a relationship, even those relationships that I always took for granted as being wonderful really aren't once you peel off the outer coat. Everyone has their problems, and maybe that's how it is supposed to be, maybe there is some philosophical reason for it, but damned if I know what. So how am I supposed to be happy, how am I supposed to make things work with anyone if those relationships that seem so happy are just farces? It's like finding out JFK cheated on Jackie, or about Lancelot and Guinevere... how odd is it that both our Camelots fell prey to the same virus? I know that I'm probably over-reacting, that this is just how life works, that relationships are hard work and they can work out as long as both parties care enough, but it just seems like it would be so much easier to be a frog or something. Maybe someday I'll figure it all out, but I have my doubts.

People are just neurotic, as old George here shows.

Maid Marian

I've been getting some suggestions lately, which is good... I'm glad to have ideas on what to write about, but normally it just doesn't work that way. To write anything that I consider good, I need to be in the mood to write on the subject... so instead of writing a season preview for Michigan football, or posting funny youtube videos, I'm just going to ramble for a while about a subject that I know nothing about.

I guess it doesn't help that the first lesson of love I remember came from a Disney movie. As a child I watched Robin Hood daily, and a hen always told me that, "absence makes the heart grow fonder". I'm not sure if that's true, but maybe if something is meant to be it is. Maybe crocodiles do truly come back if they are yours... or butterflies, if you'd rather. Sometimes, I think that maybe absences just make it easier for the girl to forget about me, to convince herself that it is best to stay apart. I don't know. I never find that that's true for me though, as it seems like I'm always there daydreaming about what I once had. Not having something just seems to make me want it more. Maybe I'm just a hopeless romantic, maybe I was just brainwashed by Disney as a child, but I really don't care. I want to be able to rob from the rich and give to the poor, to dance with the girl in the twilight, the sky lit with fireflies, to scale castle walls and defeat the evil usurper with a cocky grin. I want to be able to look into someone's eyes and know it's right, it's perfect, and that nothing can ever change that.

I'm not sure I have ever felt more confused in my life, yet more certain at the same time. I'm not even sure if I know what that means. I know something is missing right now, but that it's not possible to fix it at the moment. Maybe time really does heal all wounds, maybe things will turn out right in the end, maybe all those things I was told about love and relationships and women are right, maybe they aren't. I really don't know if it matters or not. The oddest thing is that I don't even want to feel better. I know that it's okay to hurt...

"When everything seems like the movies, yeah, you bleed just to know you're alive."

I know that I could go on for ever, just spewing off movie quotes and love songs, poems and sayings... from Tennyson to The Beatles, and Shakespeare, and Casablanca, but I'm not sure if it would do any good, or even if it would make any of this better. I'm not even sure if it would make any sense. "with your feet in the air and your head on the ground...", "'tis better to have loved and lost..." "O happy dagger!", "here's lookin' at you kid", "pity me that the heart is slow to learn what the mind beholds at every turn", "she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah", "I can't see me lovin' nobody but you for all of my life"... It doesn't make any sense in my mind, anyway.

"And if I hurt you, then I'm sorry, please don't think that this was easy"

I know I'm rambling badly, but it's a projection of my thoughts, I suppose I'm almost at stream of conscious at this point. Intellectually, I know that I will be all right in the long run, I know that things will get better eventually, but none of that is penetrating this shell at the moment. Even this writing feels incomplete, but maybe that is just a reflection of my own self.

"I woke up today without my left arm"

Maybe absence really does make the heart grow fonder.

Oo-de-lally, oo-de-lally, golly, what a day...

And as I am Peering down Springs Blouse...

Why will I continue to search for meaning in a seemingly meaningless universe? Why must I reject those beautiful bouts of chaos? They hit me like pleasant strokes, bubbles in the brain-at the park last summer they floated through that cramped air and sun streaked sky.

Sitting in the tub I am four and my mother’s blowing bubbles over my head and they stick to the white tile walls and the water is getting cold and the bath is full of mountains of white that keep popping and a hair floats by and I get scared. When the water is too chilly for me to take and the heater in the basement is already dead from exhaustion mother fills a pot on the stove. Pouring it over my toes I know she loves me.

But then it was summer again and for some odd reason music sounded better then it ever had before. Something in the air had changed and what more than that, Spring had crept out from 45 degrees of rain into a stuffy car and suddenly its 63˚ at the city airport. And that damn it all to hell April 6, 2006 or was it 2005 or 1994-0r-2 had pumped me full of thoughts of perfect folds of red summer blouses and divine bosoms with perfect playful cleavage as a girl asks me to turn in her paper for her because she can’t be bothered by the niceness of the day to leave her seat and I’m peering past her name in the upper corner and seeing her smile and the shrug of her shoulders on the same depth of field while her breasts pull daisy stalks into that V you see when two leaves or petals or legs or parts of summer met.

And then I am back at the park and that damn it all to hell April has set girls on every thought and emotion and sense I have. And there’s something in the air where I breath that causes something inside of me to feed and I can’t tear any bit of my over worked mind away from the breasts I see floating across the sky and over my bath and then I realize that they're bubbles I am remembering and I was four in that tub again.

And sometimes, we just have to be happy that summer and winter are so set in their ways. Spring and Fall, no matter what month, have a way of going either way, running a bit cold or feeling un-restfully warm as the wind blows. But, there is something about the middle of summer, something which is absolute, solidified by the heat of a July day which only summer has. Summer time is strong and sure, letting itself be known in every drop of sunlight into sweat, shouting out it’s presence like a boy with his ball in every long hour of the longest days. Summer burns a memory into your mind so surely that your brain peels. So definite that every blade of grass ever plucked up and rolled between your fingers, pulled at from the ground till it burst out singing dirt into the air as it gave to you is locked away in your mind. Summertime brings on emotions so dormant that even the bugs shoot off electric joy as they dance through the night, little thunderstorms so soft they could mock the lull a baby’s sleep. And, what’s more there is the memory of the first smear of that galvanizing green against the pavement where it is smeared into the heart and the soul of you the first time you see a fire fly die. Summer brings all the calmness of a nap, all the comfort of grass hugged feet, all the joy of nights so dark the sky is filled with lights that out shine cities and so warm that the day might not ever end and summer will just last forever.

And then I realize that it is April again and I’ve set out to get myself and there are a million pretty girls I’d love to kiss before I’ve lost my sense of Spring-supple breasts and supple heat that reaches inside of me and turns my chest up to the nth˚.

A Goodbye

There are so many things that I wish I could express, but I can't. It is simply torture to feel a presence in a room and to look around, only to find nothing, and know that my one constant is gone forever.

All I can say is that I could never have asked for a better friend.

Scully

It’s funny how everything can change so quickly. People come and go like waves washing over a beach, slowly eroding the sand castle that you spent so much time building, slowly breaching those walls you put up. Feelings appear and vanish, transform and regress, sometimes without even your realization. It’s impossible to pinpoint any of it, especially when those sharp feelings recede into vague recollections. At least the lessons learned remain, even if you don't always follow them, and those memories that once brought pain and uncertainty are nostalgia-drenched to happiness. Sometimes I feel that is how I wish to view everything, through the lens of five years in the future where everything is shaded like a sepia picture. It would be so much nicer then, so surreal, like the plot of some Hollywood movie.

It’s funny how one little moment can change everything, how an event can make you see things so differently, how you can be so certain of a thing one week and be lost the next. When a crushing loss can mean the opening of new doors, the realization of new happiness is it possible to predict anything? Should it be that way? Is it fate, or just the spin of the roulette wheel?

It’s funny how words on a glowing screen can encapsulate so much, can be so important given everything. How they can bring hope and comfort, and how the human mind seems to always seek that out wherever it is available.

It’s funny how friendships can change so much, yet be stuck at the same point they once were because of something totally out of your control. When you’ve known someone for seven years it’s hard to change, anyhow, even if things are different than they used to be. At least that familiarity is comfortable, the knowledge of your feelings is reassuring, and you have someone to talk to who never gets mad or annoyed at you. At least you know that you’re wanted, that you’re loved, that you belong. At least you have Star Wars, The X-Files, baseball and sitting in front of a computer until four in the morning because you can’t bear to tear yourself away.

At least someone misses you…

“I was saddened when I first got back this evening and you weren't around.”

It’s funny how a sentence can change everything, can make you think so differently, even when you had already realized that those feelings exist. Sometimes you just need a kick over the edge. Even if everything is so uncertain, even if the distance feels insurmountable and even if fear creeps in where it never was before, it doesn’t change anything. It’s best to just close your eyes and enjoy the sound of her laugh and the warm feeling in your soul. At least you have happiness that way; at least you can smile. That’s what matters, because eventually all those other feelings will be wrapped up in a nice coat of nostalgia anyway.

Even if nothing ever comes of it all, and the odds don’t seem good that it will, you at least have those memories, you have joy. Even if there are so many coincidences, so many things that would have to go right for it to end as it was meant to, it doesn’t mean it can’t end happily. And who knows, perhaps there is something to all that fate stuff after all. I know that’s what they tell me in the movies. Besides, I would rather my life turned out like Field of Dreams, in any case.

Me, a Swimmer, and The Creature From the Black Lagoon: An Unnatural Love Affair

What’s wrong with the Creature From the Black Lagoon is everything that is wrong with science and religion. Love.


I can still remember when I first saw this movie. It was a long time ago. Throughout six and seventh grade I spent many Friday nights with my best friends Joshua and Nathaniel. We’d stay up “late” at Josh’s, sitting on his floor watching old movies his father had rented for us. We’d watch the classics: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, Abbott and Costello Battle Racism and Oppression in White Hollywood. And we’d watch the creature features, like The Creature From the Black Lagoon.

Remember when you were little, and you were never sure whether something was going to be really scary, or just exciting and funny instead? Watching The Creature From the Black Lagoon is very much like that. When you’re young so many things that shouldn’t be scary are scary, like dead bodies, and missing links, and girls. But when we get older the really terrifying stuff in the night comes out, like loneliness, and lose, and woman. And if we’re lucky those things can still be funny too. But what was nice was that back then they always were funny and scary. Back when we were little everything scary had the possibility of being funny, and that’s the way it should be. We should be able to laugh at ourselves over the stupid stuff we get torn up and freaked out over. I remember hiding in Josh’s closet, wound up in a curtain, waiting for Nathaniel to come out of the bathroom so I could jump out at him. And remember that feeling you used to get, that feeling when you’re trying to scare someone, and you’re so tied into it, so excited and young and funny that you’re scared too? Scared of your own tricks, of your own jokes, of how young and stupid and sublime you are. I had that felling. And it was wonderful, wonderful to be scared.

That’s what The Creature From the Black Lagoon is like. You don’t know if you should be scared or laughing. And usually it changes every time you watch it. Just like when you’re trying to scare someone else, if you want it to be scary, if you’re willing to let yourself go, let yourself be a part of it, it can be as scary and exciting as anything in life can be.

The last time I watched The Creature From the Black Lagoon I decided to get a professional opinion on the movie. So I went to Wynston Rose McCreary- The Swimmer. And right away she hit it right on the head:

“I don’t get it…is it supposed to be funny?”

Wynston is completely right, sometimes you can’t tell! The Creature From the Black Lagoon doesn’t always make sense. The character himself…its self, really is a contradiction between science and religion. And no, not like the way Nightcrawler is a Catholic, or John McCain is a Republican, but the way Jesus is the son of God, or Orion is the son of Darksied, or Luke is the son of Vader.

You have to understand; the level of weirdness in this film is of that like you’ve never seen before. It isn’t a horror film, or a slasher, or a thriller; it’s a creature feature. The villain isn’t evil, or demented, or a Dracula, they’re just weird. They’re blobs and flies and gillmen. The Opening scene of Creature is the creation of the heavens and the earth…and then all of a sudden WHAM! they cut to the primordial sands of evolution and start talking about how all life evolved out of the sea, pulling itself up from the dregs and the muck and pretending to be man. They even say the world is over 15 million years old. See? They’re coming at us from all angles!

The Main character, The Creature, Gillman, is no less confusing when you think about him. He’s a sort of missing link, part man, part fish. Have you ever watched a fish in a tank? They’re fucking crazy! And so is Gillman. Fish are like retarded hairless dogs that can breath underwater. They go all over the place, eat all sorts of stuff, chase and roll and scrap with one another, and what do they do at the end of the day? Die on you. And Gillman is the same way.

In the film a group of scientist travel to the Amazon searching for The Creature. And, of course, they have to bring along a young, pretty, she-scientist. And of course, Gillman falls in love and tries to kidnap her. Which makes no sense! I’m not sure what he wants with her, he has no penis. So why is he kidnapping her if he can’t rape her? What, is he going to wait for her to drop her eggs and swim up stream so he can then fertilize them? Or, of course, maybe he’s just a little curious and wants to dry hump her a bit.

Honestly though, I find it pretty upsetting that the science crew and I totally expect Gillman to rape the girl. Why can’t he just kidnap her? Why can’t he just want someone to talk to, some company? Why is that so unbelievable? Oh yeah, because he’s a fish man. And that is exactly what makes Gillman so tragic: He’s a fish that is in love with a woman… not even Shakespeare could have written a story that compelling. Gillman, the eunuch child of creationism and evolution, is in love with a white woman in 1954. And, in the end it isn’t tragic, or cute, or anything lasting, it’s just unnatural, unreal, unbelievable. But, like any good love affair, totally frightening and worth dying for.

Sitting there in my room watching the movie for the first time in years with The Swimmer I had to consider our own unnatural love affair and how deep and weird and wet it was. I had to think about how long I’d known Wynston, how I’d met her, and how we’d gotten where we were, sitting there across my bed. When I first met Wynston I was all over her, just like Gillman. But unlike Gillman, her and I are really good friends now, and I didn’t get shot and lit on fire and drugged and killed for loving her.

I really do love her; she’s my best friend. And it really is weird and wet and deep, but it’s also real, and like any good friendship totally frightening sometimes and absolutly unnatural.

I think in the end what is most upsetting about The Creature’s story is that the very people that came looking for him kill him. They chased him down, they cornered him, they made him fall in love. And isn’t that the way it always is? We ask for it, we want it, we know the score and the price, but we still fall in love, we still go looking for it. That’s the point though. We fall in love and risk the weirdness of it all, the possible pains and growths and fears, but we still do it. And like we’re being transported through the Amazon or back to childhood we’re struck with the sudden fear and excitement and thrill of being scared. And it’s that thrill, that horror, that funny feeling that makes us laugh out loud when we know we love someone and are scared as hell that we do. And it’s that laugh that makes the search and the pain and the black waters all worth the while.



“Why is a movie about a black lagoon so reflective to me?”
“I wonder what color their clothes are.”

-Caleb, The Eunuch Child of Creationism and Evolution + Wynston Rose, The Swimmer

Box Score

“I’m reading the box score, Scully. You’d like it; it’s like the Pythagorean Theorem for jocks. It distills all the chaos and action of any game in the history of all baseball games into one tiny, perfect rectangular sequence of numbers. I can look at this box, and I can recreate exactly what happened on some sunny, summer day back in 1947. It’s like the numbers talk to me, they comfort me, they tell me even though lots of things can change some things do remain the same.” –Fox Mulder

One day, Mulder reminded me of something my dad once told me, something about how I should love baseball because of how much I enjoyed statistics. My seven year old self never really understood that, because things like wins and losses, points and touchdowns, goals and assists were so much easier to understand than ERAs, batting averages, WHIPs, or slugging percentages. But, not understanding all of that stuff never stopped me from loving the game, and it never stopped me from playing second base, or debating All-Star team rosters with my grandpa on lazy weekday afternoons. And when I grew, and my knowledge of math increased (though I will never admit again that math has ever helped me better understand sports), I began to get what my dad had been trying to tell me all those years before.

Baseball is the game of statistics, the game of numbers. I learned what all those funny acronyms and abbreviations stood for, and what they meant. I learned all the little intricacies of the game, and I fell in love with it all over again. It wasn’t just whacking a ball with a stick and running bases or catching and throwing, it was strategy and numbers that stretched back into the foggy reaches of time, numbers that meant something, that could restore something. I might never be able to recreate a summer day in Boston in 1920, but I can damn well know what happened at Fenway that day. So, I think back and wonder what it was like to watch Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, Babe Ruth or Mordecai “Three Fingers” Brown, and I dig up all those charts filled with numbers and abbreviations and marvel at the order and simplicity of it all.

Once at a game at Comerica Park a blonde in the row in front of mine caught my eye. She had her hair back in a pony tale and a baseball cap on her head, and to my amazement she was filling out a score card as she watched the game from the bleachers. She was recording for posterity that day in time. It was quite possibly the most attractive thing I had ever seen in my life. Just watching her slender fingers marking outs with a pencil and seeing her rapt attention at every movement of the game was intoxicating. I understand if that makes me seem crazy to most of you, but I’m sure that someone out there understands. I know Mulder would, at least.

Ballparks themselves are intoxicating… the rumble of the crowd, the call of the vendors, the warm smell of hotdogs and the freshness of the air, the warm sun shining and the inviting sky spreading out in every direction. There is just something about them that is different from all those places called Arenas, Bowls, Domes and Coliseums. They are parks, they are fields… they are expansive and open. I feel sorry for those cities that don’t have a true ballpark, but are forced to share a facility with some other sport. It just isn’t the same. I’m lucky enough to have two of them, though one is a haunted shadow of its former self.

It has been a long time since I was last in Tiger Stadium, but I’ve went past it many times since then and I know it’s still sitting there at Michigan and Trumbell, just waiting. No matter how long it has been, though, I know I’ll remember those long, claustrophobically low tunnels that must still be there, and the field where so many of my heroes and my father’s heroes roamed for summers stretching back decades. I still know those steep bleachers that made you feel as if you were right on top of the field and I can hear the seagulls crying out in my mind. I can still remember sitting along the third baseline, cracking shells and popping peanuts into my mouth, the mitt on my left hand just itching for a foul ball, and my dad next to me keeping track of the game on a scorecard.

Comerica Park is newer, more open, and perhaps the grass is greener now, but I know it will never replace Tiger Stadium. No park can ever replace that old warrior in my heart. But, CoPa is a good park, and the skyline from it makes me think about how much I love the city, despite everything. It’s funny how those surroundings gave me so much courage, how thousands of people around me brought me comfort. It’s odd that friends chattering away and the thrill of a potential comeback victory made me do something that I probably would never have done otherwise. So, I talked to the blonde girl with the scorecard and the Tiger’s hat. I told her that she was beautiful, and she smiled at me. I talked to her, and my heart thumped at her smile and the look in her blue eyes. I felt alive… and it didn’t matter what she said, how she responded, that was never the point. It was only the movement of her lips as she formed the words, not what she spoke, that mattered, the gentle curve of her jaw line and the happiness that I knew my words brought her. So, we talked about the game and ourselves, and it was unbelievable. We talked about filling out scorecards, four seam fastballs and our lives. And it didn’t matter that she had a boyfriend, that I never got her phone number, or that she lived in Cincinnati, because I was happy. Nothing but that one brief moment mattered in the end. Of course, as with all good love stories, the night ended with fireworks, brilliant streaks of neon color lighting up the cool Michigan night. I haven’t seen her since, and know that I never will again, but all that is important is that I was there, watching baseball in a park, speaking to an angel with a scorecard, and that the Tigers won it in the bottom of the tenth. It was exhilaration, it was pure joy, and it was a moment that will live forever through the pencil marks upon a piece of paper. Sometimes, things just seem to come full circle, I guess.

“Shut up, Mulder, I’m playing baseball.” –Dana Scully

Mr. Zamboni

It doesn’t take a poet or a hockey fan to appreciate the innate love people get from a Zamboni gliding across the ice.

Who doesn’t love the Zamboni? Foreigners? I don’t know. I don’t think so. Hating the Zamboni wouldn’t be un-American, and it wouldn’t be un-Canadian either, but it would be something damn close to it- It would be un-Human. And unheard of.

Even if you aren’t a hockey fan, or a winter sports fan, or a warm blooded human being, the Zamboni will make you a fan of something more important, a fan of the ice. Everyone can love the ice, the way skates feel, the tight strain around your feet and ankles, painful and protective, so much love that it hurts like a Christmas hug from a fat aunt, or a thanksgiving dinner that aches and fills more than it tastes, or a handshake from your father when you both know you’ve just done something utterly amazing. Ice is perfect- it’s cold, but it isn’t sterile, and the molecule aren’t bound tightly closed but are instead held together with open arms, embracing each other lovingly.

The Zamboni can make you a fan of ice, of the cold, of the winter and Canada. Zambonis are so damn gorgeous. They are everybody’s friends. They’re a source of comfort. People watch Zambonis go around and around ice rinks, mesmerized, enthralled, watching a childhood mobile that’s larger than life. In those large rinks time and space are transformed and people are lifted away from this world, and enter into someplace where the national anthem isn’t about a war but is still patriotic, where having an American flag and a Canadian flag hang side by side just seems right, where white scaffolding isn’t a sign of industry, and clean air isn’t just a Canadian selling point. Hockey rinks, excuse me, Ice rinks, aren’t magic, they’re just nice, and they make other things nice too. In an ice rink, the ice isn’t hard, but dependable, the air isn’t cold, but crisp and still, and the energy isn’t lost, it’s just stored away, like the sun is inside Superman, in people, waiting to be let out, to burst out, to shoot out blades and dance on the ice, gliding over everything, to sing out of mouths like god singing the universe into existence, hanging in the emptiness of space a beautiful cloud, fleeting and energetic, singing the body electric.

Raw ice is great-ice in the wild, untamed, the kind that’s always rough but has kind snow banks to catch you- but ice in a rink is a whole different world. The ice rink is its own nation, its diplomat the Zamboni, a king and a commoner with duel citizenship. And even in writing this I can’t tell if in my soul I’m a Canadian or an American. I guess I’m neither and I’m both. I’m a Michigander; and I’m a kid, and I like to skate, and I’ll always love to watch the Zamboni work its magic and do its thing.

Does every ice rink have two flags in it? Or is that a Michigan thing?

The Zamboni should be our state Mascot. Or at least Canada’s. They’re like Teddy bears or best friends, and they do what Roosevelt did for this country and what best friends do for us: They pick us up, brush us off, wiping away the tears and the blood, scaring over our cuts and softening our bruises, they set us back on your feet looking like we’re something new, something still amazing, even when we’ve been through hell, even when we aren’t much. The Zamboni comes in when everything is cut and torn and wrecked to hell and cleans it up, smoothes over all the bad parts and leaves the ice fresh again. The Zamboni gives everyone a little more faith. At a concert you cheer for an encore and hope to get one, at a hockey game you cheer for the Zamboni and know you’ll get it.

It’s always there, The Zamboni, that last glorious player, taking his victory lap for all of us, all of the skaters that have been there before, and all those skaters that’ll be there again.

What’s so great about the Zamboni? I consider myself a poet and a hockey fan and a Michigander, and I still can’t answer that question properly. It’s great because an Italian guy from Utah built it. It’s great because it has two seats for a one man job. It’s great because it’s one occupation everyone can respect, the way janitors and schoolteachers and prophets should be respected but aren’t. It’s great because it’s a part of hockey. It’s great because it’s as hard to understand and as easy to love as Curling. And it’s great because everyone always waits for it, and watches it out there all alone; doing a good clean well needed job for all of us.

Thank you Mr. Zamboni.
Long live Lord Stanley.
And go Wings.

-Caleb, Michigander.

"Check it out… he’s a DRACULA!!”

So, you know the Universal Monsters? Yeah. Me too. And, for a while, I thought everyone did. But no.

I’m not even going to get into Frankenstein (that’ll come another time), but Dracula; aw boy. He’s a pimp, that’s a fact. Not only does he live in a castle swerving game all over some nasty vixen , dress to impress rockin’ a cape, and suck on necks like it ain’t no thing, but he’s also been the father to more horror stories and creations than any other of the Universal Monsters. Don't believe me, check it out: Blacula, Count Von Count “the Count”, Dr. Acula, Alucard, and any guy that whore Buffy ever got down with. Oh, and about a googolplex of porno characters. Yeah boiiiiiii! Oh, and Batman. Oh, and Nelson too.


But honestly, Dracula, he’s taking a beating. I kind of feel bad for him. No, I really do feel bad for him. Bram Stoker wrote him as a caricature of evil, a stereotypes of the dark and the dirty and the incredibly sexy. Dracula was those things that go bump in the night, who actually could go bump in the night, and did.

-“I don’t see nothing wrong with a little bump and grind with a little bump and grind”

Dracula was a frustration and contradiction, and it must have worn on him. He was a lover who could not love, an undead living out death as a man of action who was not a man. And he did it all in the dark… in England…with a bunch of protestants….sort of…for a little while.

But what is Dracula now? As I said, Stoker wrote him as a caricature of other, short sighted fears. But now, he is even a caricature of that, of his once strong self. He’s a joke. A sharp orifice with a widow’s peak. That’s not sexy, that’s not money baby.
And Count Dracula was money baby. He was fresh.

So looking past Stoker and Nosferatu, and Batman and Manbat, and Count Dooku and Saruman and let’s talk about the man, the one that deserves the credit, the love, the cash and the women: Bela Lugosi. The man made Count Dracula, Dracula. Lugosi is the reason some little kids and foreigners and those people I mentioned who don’t know the Universal Monsters yell “he’s a DRACULA!,” and not “he’s a vampire!” Because Dracula’s the only one that even matters! BECAUSE HE’S A DRACULA! HE IS DRACULA!

Bela Lugosi was a holy cross burnt on film. A ghost, so lifeless and empty of anything but evil his character wasn’t a reflection of light on film, but a burn mark or a vacuum. Lugosi was Dracula, he did travel to America from Eastern Europe, and I bet his boat had a few dead crewmen and rats, and he couldn’t really speak very well, and he kind of looked sickly and grotesque, but he was rolling in it. Yeah boiii. Yes boy.

And people don’t know who he is? HE’S A DRACULA!

So that’s it, I’m going to tell them all. A piece for each, of last words, or a eulogy, an epitaph, or a salute, or a shout out; for the biggies, the masters, those monsters, the terrors and inspirations. Who? The Universal Monsters! Those DRACULAS!:
-Frankenstein’s Monster
-The Phantom
-The Mummy
-The Invisible Man
-The Bride of Frankenstein
-The Wolf Man
-And The Creature from the Black Lagoon

…but fuck the hunchback, and his Disney gypsy…

So, if you have no idea who the Universal Monsters are, if you don’t know Dracula's a vampire, or you think that the Invisible Man is the same thing as the Headless Horseman, or that Frankenstein "has bolts in his head an shit...and he's green, right?”, and you have no clue about the Wolf man, or you just think mummies look like “someone wrapped in toilet paper or something... and they walk around with there arms out...or something...no those are zombies right? Or do mummies do that too?”…

Or, if you just think that, well, "monsters are green,” than you might enjoy some of this. Or you might just want to pretend you’re a little kid again, and that all of this is true, and is happening in your neighborhood, and in your closet, and under your bed, and you might just want to enjoy that feeling instead, while you still can. Because one day the only thing that’ll be left to be scared of, will be the really scary things, those things that really are a Dracula.

Oh, and remember, like my good friend Wynston taught me one frightful night:

“Monsters are green…Apples are green. Apples, are green.”
(…and no Biasman, she wasn’t high)

-CML, The Invisible Dr.Glogger’s Monster from the Blacula Lagoon…. Returned….’s bride….
In Black and White

A Siren's Call

I wrote this a few months ago, and while I have already released it onto the web, I figured I’d post it here with a few minor revisions so that it can be with the brethren that sprung from it. Because, it’s the spark that started this whole thing, at least for me. It began like this… and everything sort of took off from there.

I never write anymore, I used to, constantly. Letters, words, sentences flowing from my fingers through the keys and appearing almost instantaneously onto that big, bright convex screen, streams of consciousness just rushing from my brain to my fingertips. I wrote a lot, it was soothing, cathartic, and my company in the dark, me, my mind and the screen. And it always returned to the same feeling.

Now the screen is flat, and the colors are sharper, but nothing has truly changed the experience. I just don’t do it. I used to. A lot. Sometimes I think about it, and I long for it, sometimes I wonder why I don’t write anymore. Sure, I write… I write essays, and I write e-mails, and I write instant messages. I write notes on marker boards, and random bits of info on scraps of paper, but I don’t write.

The urge still comes to me late at night, an urge that I can’t even truly describe. I grapple with the words, with the idea, with the logic of it all, but never feel I have anything concrete. I want to write, not just about anything, but about it. It is as if my soul is longing for release, my mind needing some sort of outlet, but that’s not really it. My first memory of it came in the low, hallowed whistle of a train passing through the night. How many times when I was young I sat awake at night, the darkness wrapped around me just as securely as my blankets, staring at my ceiling, and that train beckoned me like a siren’s call. How often I wanted to fling my covers off of me, and run through the deserted streets to find that train, as if the answer could somehow be there.

The struggle is still the same now, a fight for some sort of meaning from this feeling I have deep in my gut, in my mind, in my heart. Frost once wrote, “I could say 'Elves' to him, but it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather he said it for himself.” That’s how it feels to me. I can only grasp some fragment, some part of the mystery. The mystery wrapped inside an enigma. It is not loneliness, not discontentment, nor contentment, not fear or anxiety, or excitement. It’s not need, or worry, not calm, or wonderment. Is it rational? Irrational? I know others have felt it, but here I am still searching.

It is the sensation of staring at a Hopper painting, of singing to myself late at night while driving in the car alone, the rumble of the wheels on the pavement and the streaking lights of suburbia surrounding, but never touching me. It is gazing up at the stars on a cool spring night and feelings so small, and yet so large at the same time. It is the existence of a sparkling, shining world of newly fallen snow, where everyone is safe, yet isolated in their little igloo of knowledge. It seems to take shape in Something Wicked this Way Comes, in the insomnia of Charles Halloway and the running pf Will and Jim. But does Bradbury truly understand it? Do I misunderstand him? It seems to be a paradox, but it cannot be. I will not believe that. It makes me feel like Holden, wandering through the streets of New York, searching for something he doesn't understand.

It is the longing that someday someone will understand, and the fear that no one will ever be able to grasp it, least of all me. The drive to discover the true meaning, and the wish that one day someone will be able to help me find it.

And as I tap away at the keys, it always comes back, welling up in my gut and causing my mind to long to understand it, my heart to reach out and grab it. It is the realization that every word I write, every thought I think, every feeling that strikes a chord in my being is inherently entangled with it, this unknown that is so familiar. It is the hope that humanity has some purpose, and that I have some reason for being, but the fear to truly believe.

Sometimes I look back for it in the ignorance of childhood, sometimes forward into the future, but it’s always there, throbbing in my gut, whispering something I cannot truly hear.

Space...

Of these generations Space was born. Man’s steps feel not just on the face of our world, but on the dirt and dust of another. And even those steps changed the face of our globe. A new understanding was given to humanity, an old concept for once and for the first time real: Space. Beyond flight, beyond the sky and height and birds’ freedom we found something entirely new: Space, and eternity, “a finale frontier”… New skies, new blankets died with the richest ink that we could touch and feel and wrap around ourselves and our minds around. Man stepped out beyond this world and into a thousand others; and our lives weren’t just flat like an old map, or even constrained as on the surface of a classrooms globe, but they had depth, they’d found a new meaning. We’d stepped beyond height and found space, distance unimaginable. And in doing so, our reach exceeded our grasp. What once only our eye could touch (or could touch only our eye, or only through that our hearts and minds) now our hands had a chance at too. A distant moon became a child brought back to its mother, or a small toy rolling into our hands. Stars became more than just sparkled lights but bright hopes. How sweet and sad our world had become, so poetic as it exploded again and what little domain we had, what small grasp and clear understanding, split and spun out in a million directions to become this universe, ever expanding, and pulling with it in that expansion’s wake our many imaginations.

We found space. Real space. An emptiness, a distance, a separation. And how amazing it was. So much room to play, to fill with imagination, to dream in. And we did. We floated through it and past everything we’d known before.

In our lenses and photographs and souls we saw we were part of something more, much more. We were now part of a system. We’d been totally enfolded in a solar system, a cosmic mind we could travel through, with bodies to visit and touch and kiss.

What grace places two people near enough to fall in love and believe it destiny? How nice and right and perfect that one city might hold two people, so right for one another. Or maybe it’s a school, or a neighborhood. How well made that against all separations, great or small, once lives meet no space exist that is enough. How small is this world that one life can find another to share with, in all the multitudes of faces and feet and inches and miles of sea and earth and hill. What space is this that can be passed through and brought to its nothing point? Is this world so big, when chance or luck or faith alone can work beyond so great an obstacle as space?
So, how great is all that space we’ve found? How long will we be alone? How long until we’re found or find that no emptiness is far enough when two celestial bodies pumping in rhythmic orbit find one another?

How much space have we found, and what will be that which closes it? Our minds? Our love? Or just our souls, as dreams, returning to another bodies waking life?

I’ve never seen a mission launch. I’ve never seen that power in person that could breach our atmosphere. I’ve never been so close to a power like that, something of gods or angels. I’d love to see our space history, to see those relics, those titans of the outer limit: Sputnik-1, our silver -red- globed Prometheus and an identity of earth’s thirst and thrust. Saturn V, a true rocket ship (a beast, a giant, a cobbled mess of metal and earths core blood) ripped from true imagination and science not-so-fiction, sending more souls than Bradbury’s or Asimov’s or mine, yet unborn, to step a solid step on history. Or the first Space Shuttle, STS-1, that Columbia, whose graceful ascension rivaled that of Mohammad’s or Christ’s or Elijah’s or even Superman’s.

But I’ve seen it on television, and I’ve been cast back to sitting next to my father or mother in 1969 and seen this entire future open up in the glowing brightness of black and white. And wow, what a future that has been opened.

-Caleb Michael, BSD-1, Space Cadet