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

Revisited

Today I found a porno-magazine in the middle of the road. It was all alone on the asphalt. The pages were turning one over another, back and forth, exposing young girls and their breasts and asses and more. When my bike tire rolled over the magazine I thought I heard the crunching of dry leaves but as I looked down I saw her. I saw her two legs, pinned down by me now, spread eagled underneath the rubber of my tire. Held there, her legs disjointed, her smile gazing up at me, wet and pink, spread wide across her youthful face. She is clean and pristine and nice but undeniably dirty and corrupted on the page. She looked happy to me. She looks happy to me still. She looked ready to make someone else happy too. “This girl is a giver,” I thought. “Someone who really understands the meaning of altruism. A real tart of empathy.”

Suddenly, I’m passed it and before anything can register I’m hearing the leaves rustling again, pages turning quickly, full of nature and instincts and carnal matters. Did I just see that?

I did. Yes. Yes! And there it is again, and there again! It’s as if some little boys (maybe two or three, let lose from somewhere inside of me) are gathered greedily around it, the magazine, and are flipping glossy pages, silk slick first and then clammy with sweat against their blood-flushed fingers. The pages seem so dry though, so worn there in the road that one more turn by those invisible spit licked fingers might tear the pages, mutilating some poor girl’s body or face and bending staples out of this book’s binding.

I double back and there she is again, and again (or is it now her sister, or her lover?) They’re young and fresh and all different shades of the same well known (or well learned) pinkish hue. But I’m more struck by their faces- each is happy. Everyone is smiling up at me with perfect pearl teeth, high polished on the pages. “What’re you so happy about?” Even their looks of longing and hard-pressed, long waiting glimpses of anticipation seem more playful than anything else. There is nothing these girls are missing. Except, maybe, their clothing. But, I don’t think they even miss those all that much.

The pages keep turning at a heartbeat’s rate and I’m standing over them. My bike is in the grass and I’m in the middle of the road staring down at my feet and her face, and ass, and more, intently and not so unlike Mosses I’m on a mountaintop with God. After all, I’m staring down with my eyes averted from all the people walking past me, from all their disgust, from the drab sky and cold wind that was before in my eyes. But is this so much better or so much worse? I was content today, void of thoughts and feelings until these girls fell underfoot and under tire and flaunted their happy, content, fresh faces in my way. How can I feel sixteen and sexy and stupid all over again? And lost like John the Baptist awaiting god in wilderness untouched, uncontrolled, and all alone before all majesty, at once? How can I feel so old and stupid and decrepit too? These girls are running past me like all girls do, but flipping one by one past me, turning back flips and bending over, wide and low and long, across beds and barn doors and stable walls. They are taunting me and are unkind, and dance past my old, cold weathered stiff bones.

By the grace of God I’ll walk by all this and won’t take off my jacket and fold it over my lap today. Not today. I’m not all that young and uncontrollable and untouched. This isn’t freshman year again, not like every other day has been. I’ll walk by all of this today. Or, maybe I’ll roll it all up tight as her and stuff them in a black back pack. Maybe I’ll save it away not for pleasure, but as a tool, a reminder, a talisman of fall and sex and being young again, or never again, or always still.

Who knows really?


Caleb, 19

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.”

Father and Son

It’s a dreadful day when you finally realize that your father is human, that the pillar of strength and discipline, that paragon of everything safe and good in the world is just as scared as you are, when you realize that he is just as flawed as us all.

It’s a terrible moment when you finally beat him at one-on-one and you know by the look in his eyes and the sweat dripping from his brow as you sink that last jump shot that this time he didn’t let you win. It suddenly hits you that you are too fast, too strong, too skilled, too young (and maybe not young enough). And maybe there is a triumph in that moment, a gloating, but that grin soon falls from your face. You know that the days of throwing a Nerf football in the front yard are gone, the days when a tackle meant being picked up in a giant bear hug. You can see it all in his eyes and the heaving of his chest, that strange mixture of pride and defeat that must come when your progeny eclipse you.

It’s a horrible feeling when you realize that your father can no longer help you with your math homework, that you’re a better speller than he, that you have a better grasp of astronomy and history and philosophy and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, that you can beat him at Jeopardy without trying. And maybe some of it is just forgetfulness, and maybe some of it is technological and scientific advances, but you don’t think of that at the time. It just hits you like a dull thud.

The transformation in your relationship is not a sudden thing, it’s gradual, just as growing up is, but when you finally make that realization that he is human, it is the beginning of the end of the world as it once was. You begin to see his flaws in you instead of all the good and maybe you don’t want to be just like him anymore, maybe you want to strive to be better, strive to overcome those flaws. Maybe that’s natural and necessary, and maybe it doesn’t matter so much whether you succeed or not. It’s the mother bird pushing her babies from the nest and hoping that they fly. It is a jolt when the big picture appears to you, though, that you are your own person now, that nothing is tying you down anymore. You stand with him on a little cliff overlooking Lake Huron and stare out into the water, stealing yourself. You tell him he’s being an idiot, that he’s not thinking and the reason he’s arguing with your mother and that he made a scene is not because he’s upset with her, or you, but he’s stressed from work. It’s quite possibly the hardest thing you have ever done in your life, to confront him damned the consequences, but you succeed, you embrace and your world is turned upside down, is opened up. Maybe we all need that eye-opening jolt of realism to know who we truly are, but that knowledge never comes at the time. You just feel alone, and defeated in the moment of your greatest triumph. You feel lost and confused

And slowly you realize that he is no longer your boss, the King of the castle, but a cog in the unit that is your family. You realize that the two of you are equals, compatriots. He stops telling you what is right and you begin discussing things… there aren’t anymore time outs, or yelling, even when you do something boneheaded like flip his van over three times and almost kill yourself. He knows that you’re a smart kid (or maybe adult?), that you’re not going to make the save idiotic mistake again, he trusts you…

It’s a nice feeling, but one with immense consequences, because you no longer have that safety net. Sure, your parents are there for you, but you know that it is time for you to set out on your own, to make your own decisions, to make your own mistakes, to have your own victories. It is that old universal truth that freedom and safety are polar opposites. You are free from the nest, but not longer secure, and it is terrifying and terrifyingly exciting at the same time.

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˚.

Starship Captain

Sometimes I think I should’ve been born in a different era.

People always say that, people always crave change. For some reason, they want something new, something different. The grass is always greener on the other side, and probably dozens of other old sayings that don’t come to mind right at the moment. Sometimes, though, it does seem that it really is greener over there, or maybe it is just greener in fiction. Yeah…

Maybe I would’ve been better off being born in a different reality, something that wasn’t so concrete, something more superfluous, somewhere more magical.

I started re-reading Dune about a week ago. I’m not sure quite what gave me the urge to do it, but I picked it up and started reading it. I think it was some sort of yearning to read an epic space opera... I can't really believe I just used that phrase, but I'm just going to go with it. I would read for a while and then start to feel guilty about doing it and begin to talk myself into reading something that I hadn’t read already. I have a huge stack of books that I want to read this summer, and I was “wasting” time rereading something I had read years ago. I always do this, make reading into some sort of chore and try to “accomplish” something by finishing a book that I don’t really want to. I should just read what the hell I want and stop reading what I don’t enjoy. But, anyhow… I stopped and considered reading something else several more times, but I never did pick anything else up, Dune was just too good.

And then I reached a point that made it all worthwhile, that made me realize just why I was still reading it and why I always listed it among my favorite books. As I was riding north along I-69 in Indiana, I reached some sort of nirvana.

I don’t think it was the words on the page, or even the place in the book that did it for me, but everything just came together in an instant. I realized just how great a book I was reading. It’s so good that I cannot even begin to explain it. I just felt like Paul, knowing that he was moving inexorably to a future he did not want, but being helpless to stop it. It was pure contentment, pure joy and a feeling of intense comfort and satisfaction, as if I was doing the perfect thing, at the perfect time, in the perfect place. I know there are countless people who wouldn’t enjoy reading Dune, many who probably would hate it, even… I know this, it’s not for everyone. I guess it’s plodding at times (but I never find it so), maybe a bit confusing, it’s long and dense, but I guess that’s part of what I love about it. Herbert created a world so rich and huge that it took my breath away even though nothing was new to me. At that one moment, the book was perfect, and the world was so right that I ached to be there myself. I wanted to be on that awful desert world. I wanted to be caught up in all the intrigue and violence of the Imperium. It is the reason I’ve sacrificed hundreds of hours to playing Imperialism, Civilization and Crusader Kings, just trying to reach that place where I feel that I am actually there, that I am actually the commander of armies, the diplomat plotting, the captain of that mammoth starship.

And, I guess it’s the same reason that I love Star Wars so much, the reason that I feel every insane, nostalgic feeling that I do. It’s all about that feeling that I can’t even explain correctly. Those things are more than movies to me, more than books, more than ideas, more than anything that I could ever put my hands on, or watch with my eyes. It is a world, a galaxy that is so ripe and wonderful that I cannot help but yearn to be there. It feels more like my home than this Earth ever will.

But, that’s when I know something is truly great. It simply transcends appreciation. I appreciate good books and movies, and I enjoy many of them, but a certain number of them strike a different chord. Some things I love, and they make me love them. It isn’t a passive experience, but they reach out, grab me by the collar and beat the living shit out of me until I realize their greatness. I feel every pang of sadness, every joyous moment and experience every wonderful adventure as if they were my own. The real world simply has never provided me with anything that real or that grand.

Gah, there I go talking about fiction again, but I just want to be a starship captain when I grow up, dammit.

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

Moriarty

When I was young, I had a Moriarty against whom my Holmes was pitted, as surely as I had found my Watson at that young age. I was matched against this fiend as early as I can remember. We were rivals of unimaginable import, no less so than Achilles and Hector or Batman and The Joker. Our battlefields were countless; the football field, the jungle gym, the backyard, the basement… We fought over the Super Nintendo controller, and we fought because we could. It was rivalry, it was sport, and it was a battle for the fate of everything that had ever mattered to me. And when one day he began to tear apart the snow fort that I poured my blood, sweat and tears into, it was a defense of honor and justice on a scale that would have made Superman proud. And we fought, beat and pummeled each other into the snow, fists flying, bodies tangled and snow rubbed into faces, a scene right out of Calvin and Hobbes, but what then felt more like The Battle of Hastings. I came out of it all victorious, and I stood there in my front yard, clad in all the regalia of winter, my cheeks flushed, my eyes bright and my heart thumping a triumphant opus. As the sun shone in that blue sky and the snow gleamed around me, I knew I had preserved my little kingdom in suburbia, I had held the city through the night.

It wasn’t just two boys solving their disagreement with fists, but something far greater than that, at least to me. Our conflicts always were more important than simple fights, because I never lived in the real world, not then, and not now. That lump of snow was my castle, and the pile of dirt in the backyard was the Hall of Justice. Roman Legions marched through my bedroom, and spaceships zoomed past as I stared up at those glowing neon stars on my ceiling. I always understood Richard the Lionheart better than Bill Clinton, and I probably still do. I never chose this rival, this nemesis, we were thrown together just like Arthur and Mordred. Since I can remember, I knew him, and we fought tooth and nail, and I gloried in the warfare. It was the stuff of legends and fairy tales to me. I despised him with every fiber of my being for my entire childhood, and then one day, all of a sudden, things changed… I was a freshman, and he was no longer there. I grew up, and moved on, but there was always that place in me that longed for that conflict, as assuredly as I needed comrades in arms.

It is important to have adversaries, to have someone to strive against, someone to push you and make you better. In conflict you strive to win, to fight your hardest against all odds because of that competitive fire burning inside of you. You do things that you never thought you could because of that need to be better, that need to win. In battle you become stronger, mind, body and spirit, even if it’s truly only mock combat. An enemy makes you learn and fight to succeed not with a helping hand, but with a kick in the teeth. Sometimes it’s the pain and hardships that turn you into a success, that make you strong. Sometimes it’s those bruises and black eyes that spur you on to be the best. Kennedy once said of the space program, “But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

Besides, when you’re a kid, weaving tales in your mind about defeating your rival is just fun. So now I’ve found a faux-archenemy, a new foe to clash with upon the battlefields of my imagination. If in doing so, I’m crossing the Rubicon from reality to the realm of fantasy, so what? Is it all that different anyhow? And it is in this vein that I struggle to keep the imagination flowing, the world from sinking into some sort of drab, cynical Hades. Because, what would be the point then? With no struggles, no adversity, where is the thrill of living? Who cares to live without that excitement, without that conflict, without that fun?

And so I write, because its better that way, half in the world of fiction, and half in this condition called reality. Like Alice, half through the looking glass, and half at home. Sometimes I wonder if fiction and reality are so different after all. I always find that people believe the myths more than they believe the truth, anyhow. I’m told the quack of a duck doesn’t echo. I really don’t know if it does, perhaps I should just go find a duck and a cave. Or I could just sit here and write about epic battles and great conflicts and then maybe go watch some Looney Toons and see a fight over whether it’s really Duck Season or Wabbit Season…

At dinner recently, I brought up the subject of archenemies, and how I wanted one. It got some good laughs, some hilarious stories and some jokes. For, who in their right mind wants an enemy, anyhow? While I cannot vouch for the state of my own sanity, because… well, that’s just a Catch-22, I can say that it is the idea of an enemy more than the reality of one. I miss the thought of having someone to pit my strength against, and in doing so, make myself better. I need something to fight, something to strive for, and some hardship to overcome. How else would I know that I have accomplished anything?

I realize the real world is filled with enough hardships, conflicts and roadblocks for me to struggle with, overcome and in doing so strengthen myself. But in the end, the problems of adulthood simply do not hold the same romance as those childish fights. So for now I’ll just look back at all those struggles of childhood, remember the glory and the happiness that they brought, and know that I will always have them. And in the end, isn’t that enough?

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

An Intro to the Introductory

Alright, this isn’t ideal, and was not according to the complicated plan of action that I thought up and forced Caleb to agree to, but “the best laid plans of mice and-“, okay, I’m going to stop there. For the time being, I’m just here to write a quick introductory post that will probably be all substance and little style. I apologize, but with classes, the insane amount of essays I have to write in the next month, and the… well, whatever you do at art school (drawing and sculpting and building giant tank turrets, I think) doing that Caleb is currently caught up in, our real intro for this blog will come later, though it should definitely be within the next month or so. We are writing the true introduction together, and since we are currently separated by about 150 miles, there are some barriers to speedy writing. Anyhow, I was just chafing at the bit to get this thing started, and to post an essay that sort of has a deadline coming up fast, so here we are…

I’m Matt, and my partner in this intrepid endeavor is Caleb, who will be along eventually. That will have to do for introductions of us writers for now, though I doubt it really matters, since I’m going to assume anyone reading this at this early stage knows at least one of us.

I guess the main point of this blog is to get a chance to write more and to actually get our stuff out there. Speaking personally, it’s already gotten me to start writing things not related to dead Greek guys or the Salem Witch Trials, which is always a good thing. It’s wonderful to have a reason to write again, and such a release to be able to get my thoughts out in a medium like this. Now if I only had something to record the thoughts I get before I’m about to fall asleep, I’d be all set. I always get the best ideas for things to write about when I’m wanting to go to sleep, and if I got up to write them down I would become an insomniac like Caleb… is that too close to home? I don’t think that it’s even funny. Ah, well, I write what comes to mind. Anyhow, I’m getting way off topic.

There isn’t any main focus to our writing, though I hope I speak for both of us when I say that we enjoy writing about the human condition. Which, I realize sounds pompous as hell, but I don’t really care. I’m sure half the stuff will be rambling pieces about emotions and events with references and quotes from across the board. And while I can’t speak for Caleb as to what else he’s going to write about (probably Superman, though), I plan on inserting some less literary tidbits (movie reviews, complaints about stupid pop-cultural topics, articles about video games, television shows, books and other things I happen to think of, and stuff on various sports related topics), and whatever else comes to mind.

The last order of businesses has to do with the layout, which is crap in my mind, at the moment. I lost the knowledge (which wasn’t much) of html that I ever possessed, so I need some help with getting rid of that prefab header and inserting a header that a friend (thank you again, Marc) made for me. If anyone has any knowledge of html, or blogs, or can direct me to someone or somewhere that does contain that knowledge, it will be much appreciated. Get a hold of me however you know how, or drop me a line at blastshieldsdown@gmail.com. Thanks in advance.

Finally, I just want to thank everyone who bothered to come here and read through this. I promise you it will get better soon. Caleb is a master storyteller and has the silver tongue of a bard, so I know you will never be disappointed by anything he writes. And if you’ve ever enjoyed anything I’ve written, then you’ll like this blog. Thanks once again, we’ll be back soon.

EDIT: If you're going to criticize my writing, please make it constructive. I appreciate constructive criticism, but (and I know this may be hard to believe) I don't care whether or not you think my writing is "forced pseudo intellectual fiction". Frankly, that phrase itself is forced pseudo-intellectual fiction. I'm almost inclined to believe that was a joke, but I figure if it was a joke, someone would've left a name. If you don't like what you're reading then stop reading it, it's not that friggin' difficult.

By the way, thanks to all the people who commented with something to actually say.