Back in the states: a dream

Back in the states he sat in his room and watched the wind move palm trees outside his window. The wind was blowing from the Southeast, and it was warm, a fire danger. The smallest spark would send a fire raging up into the hills, threatening mansions and drawing engines from all over.

He fell asleep to the sound of the wind.

In the dream he was lying in the grass. A woman was lying next to him, her body pressing down reeds of grass, blond hair pillowed on the ground. Even though he did not know the woman in his dream; he saw in the woman in his dream something like the girl he'd been with during his first six months in Rome.

The two of them had met in a modern art class during a section on sculpture. The two of them had worked painstakingly on a tacky clay models, shaped over the course of a four hour class session to look like the naked model, an old man with age marks on his ribs and back, who stood in the front of the class, shivering and nude.

When they stepped back from their designs the teacher asked them to look at their neighbor's and comment. The two of them stepped away, eyes blurred, and stared at the sculptures. They were, even by a rough estimate, not particularly good. But how did one say this to a stranger?
As they stood there, in the cold and silent room, he started to offer a critique, complimenting the shape of the clay's right arm, some tenor of movement that he wanted to say that she'd captured.

Her lower lip started to quiver and at first he was certain that she was going to cry. She burst into a quiet laughter instead; her eyebrows lowering as she tried to contain fits of laughter. Her whole body shook with the effort. At first, he was offended and almost walked away, but then he looked again at his sculpture with new eyes. The head was like a watermelon that had been sliced open, the arms were uneven, and the legs seemed to have more in common with the legs of a very large herbivore than a human being. He started to smile and then found himself trying to control his laughter as well. The girl put a hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle, failing, and the two of them walked quickly from the room and out onto the street.

On the street a church bell was tolling and a flock of pigeons were wandering around after a boy peddling his bicycle down the alley, dropping bits of bread over his shoulder as he went.
"What did it look like?" the girl asked, pausing to catch her breath.
"Something subhuman," he said. "Like a cross between a panda bear and a cougar, in which the mating didn't go well. Like it was something they tried but called off mid-way. Like Victor Frankenstein would walk by and be appalled at what he saw."

She smiled at him, which he didn't notice because he was looking down at the cobbles, too shy to raise them. The light from the sun was making a dazzling display on the ground where water trickled down from the eaves and ran between the cobbles and towards sewers 2,000 years old.

On writing mostly

As far as I can tell, the world is not crying out for my opinion on things, let alone the election. Nor should my voice be a particularly loud one as I'm a white male, which is as protected of a class as you get in our current instantiation of Democracy. I should say that if you voted for Trump, willingly ignoring his racist and sexist rhetoric, then I'd be hard-pressed to see eye to eye with you. This was not a normal election. Trump just settled a suit for 25 million dollars for bilking people out of funds with a faux for-profit University, and yet we expended a great deal of energy trying to combat the image of crooked Hillary. No. Donald Trump is what it looks like when someone is crooked, and we elected him President. I digress.

I write for fun. Or rather, I write for fun because I haven't found anyone who wants to pay me for it on a regular or semi-regular basis. As such, and noting my protected class, it's maybe deeply selfish to even talk about how this election has effected my perception of the written word. I'm not taking the usual tack that I've seen post-election: we're all in an echo chamber, the media lies, we aren't listening to one another, people aren't racist except when they are. Rather, it has deeply effected my understanding of why I write.

I had an interview recently with the Sierra Nevada Review, be sure to look for that on the internet the moment it arrives (crickets), and I talked about why I write. It's this old idea I had that fiction could build empathy by allowing people to briefly jump the fourth wall and get access to someone else's thoughts. Fiction has been doing Being John Malkovich stuff for centuries now. And yet, the results of this election make me question that premise and perhaps the ability of anyone to have access to any mind but our own. Even our fictional characters might surprise us by voting Trump.

The election has briefly shattered my desire to write and create, to give small portals into these fictional characters because I have people right in front of me, every day, who I managed to know nothing about. It seems implausible that fiction could actively go about bridging that unbridgeable gap between the you and the I. So why try?

There are many arguments for the continued role of writers in a post-Trump world. However, for the time being, I'm not writing about sadness and loneliness or the way the light slants across a snowy field. I can't do that right now. I don't know anyone. Not even myself.

Here is an owl:

Ninja stars and Halloween

When I was a child, I used to dress up as a ninja every year for Halloween. We didn't have enough money for an actual costume, so I just put a blanket over my face. I wanted to be like Snake Eyes, the silent ninja from G.I. Joe. I wanted to throw ninja stars around the corner of our hallway. All day I'd practice with small paper stars, taped heavily that never found their way around the corner like I wanted. Life is full of little disappointments.

One year, in fourth grade, I went with my best friend's mom to pick out a real costume. Somehow, we settled on a raccoon. I was, by fourth grade, aware that I was too old to be wearing a raccoon costume without looking like a fool. This identity, knowledge of self in relation to other selves, wasn't with me much until that year. Suddenly, I knew, acutely, that I looked foolish wearing a costume and holding out my bag and saying trick or treat to adults, who knew that I was too old to be dressed up in a hot costume.

I cut trick or treating short that night and went home with a pillow case only half full of candy, not accounting for all the crummy hard candy that some people gave out at Halloween, Jolly Ranchers and thick bazooka Joe gumballs, little plastic wrappers of disappointment. You wish, some years, maybe not often, but when you write, or in reverie that you could go back in time. and I don't mean to physically shrink myself, But rather, you wish that you could go back to a little boy standing at the edge of a hallways with a piece of folded paper in his hands, desperately, but hopefully, waiting for it to turn round the corner and make a beeline for the back door. And then you'd know, at least for that day, that you'd done something new. 

World Civilization Texts

Early in the fifth century, a king came to power who suggested that the Bible had been misread, and that rather than reviling snakes, they all should be collected and revered. This king ruled but a short time in Egypt before he was killed by a snake's bite on the heel of his left foot.

In roughly 400 B.C. a poet came to power and built a city based on aesthetics and beauty. Some say he was the basis or reason that poets were left out of Plato's perfect Polis. The city was made entirely of porphyry, and every staircase was adorned with Pegasus or Griffins and door handles were elaborate mouths of lions. Everyone in the city spent their time making the city more beautiful, each person, forgetting their duty to one another, as everyone sought to make even the slightest object, a shelf, a hand towel, the most beautiful iteration that the world had ever seen. As you might imagine, such a city could never last, and the city was sacked by marauding Vikings and the ruler burned at the stake.


Long before human beings had arisen from the seas, struggled onto land, climbed into and out of the trees, a prophet arose in the sea. He was a mollusk and was prone to long periods of silence, which his followers often mistook for devotion. This prophet foretold of a day when the mollusks would cease hanging onto the walls of rocks, and they would walk on two feet and play baseball and sometimes smoke a cigarette behind the 7-11 on their sixteenth birthday. He too was eventually burned at the stake, but years later, and in a city far away from here.

Hello from across the room

I made you a paper airplane when we were in second grade. I wrote, "I love you," in the middle of the white page, using a yellow crayon. Back then the only shade of yellow we had was just that, yellow. I made the airplane using all the skill I could muster, but I was never any good with my hands or fine motor skills, so I botched the job. It was the first, or so it seems, though it must already have been the thousandth, of jobs I'd botch in my lifetime. But that's a story for another day.

I'd been in love with you for at least a week, maybe even two. It's hard to remember because time goes like the wings of a hummingbird when you're in love. Once, I'd seen you on the playground playing four square and your face was flushed with exertion. It was a Tuesday, and perhaps that's the day that I fell in love. Though it could have been a Wednesday. I lose track of these sorts of things. 

I made the airplane that afternoon during recess, and I looked at you from across the room. You were looking at your pencil, forming perfect o's with the kind of care that characterized all of your work. Who couldn't love such a diligent worker? The plane's wings were uneven, but I thought or knew that it would soar across the room, past the blackboard and over the wooden desks to land perfectly on your desk. 

I couldn't imagine, truth be told, a life where the plane didn't soar across that space and unite the two of us in love. I waited until the teacher had turned back towards the board. She was showing us the letter q, making certain that we formed the tail with a slight mark out to the right. All of her attention was focused, laser-like on the board. I remember her dark helmet of hair, rigidly cut off at the shoulders. And then I threw it.

The plane flew across the room like a thousand ships sailing across the seas. And then the shoddy job I'd done on the wings came into play and the plane spiraled, falling like a mallard from Duck Hunt towards the ground, where it alighted right on the desk of another girl, who's name I barely knew. She hesitated for a moment, looking shyly at me, her cheeks turning scarlet and then she opened the letter.

Sometimes things don't work out quite as you planned. And sometimes they do. She and I have been together now these forty years, all because of those faulty wings, that doomed flight.

Just another Friday morning in the middle of nowhere land

                I wish I could have bottled, like perfume, that summer we spent on the shore. Most evenings, we’d watch the sky fade to blue from a bench in the local park, laughing at nearly everything we said. You used to do a voice that sounded a bit like Donald Duck, and in that voice, you’d narrate the day’s events, becoming increasingly enraged, as Donald is prone to do, about the slightest of insults, the copy machine jamming or collating in an unsatisfactory manner. I used to stare at the shape of your lips, wondering how long it would be until I could lean over and quiet your idle chit chat with a kiss.

                I read somewhere recently about black holes, an idea that perhaps we could use them to bore through time, the world’s most interesting drill. If I could bore through time and have the years fly past me like trees out the window of a train, I’d go straight back to that summer on the shore. Just when you were telling me about your boss’s boss, and her insane little Corgi, I’d lean over to kiss you, and then I’d wrap my arm around your shoulders and wait for evening to settle, for the cicadas to start humming and all the birds to come down from out of the sky, to rest their light bones on the shells of trees and rocks. Wouldn’t you? 

Game of Thrones: Oathbreaker

Game of Thrones is a television show. This may come as a surprise to some of you who thought it was a series of books. I'd call it an American television show, but its scope is global. Anyhow, the thing about television that's different than a book is that it relies on visuals to move the plot along. Books use words. Stick with me here just like Bran is sticking with that guy who grew into a tree. A subtle pun rests in the prior sentence because trees have sticks. Anyhow, there was a great deal of exposition this episode, a few false starts, and then the end of a watch. With GOT, I often expect a great deal to happen. Though I sometimes then criticize the show for rushing through scenes and making a mess of it. Hello Dorne plot line. This episode was satisfying, in part because it was content with things not happening. The most exciting scene, a legendary sword battle, took place twenty to thirty years prior. 

We grant books their expositional scenes, though apparently Martin's are notorious for describing the exact flavor of the mead and pig's snout. In television, we often expect more. Mad Men, televisions best show for many years, was allowed to rise slowly towards a climax like an expert lover. Because GOT is so grand, it's hard not to want everything to happen all at once, and it's a relief when it doesn't. In part because the slow build of scenes and rivalries is what made the plot leading up to the Red Wedding just so good. What's Tywin up to with all those birds. Oh, I see, plotting an awful murder. Except I didn't see, which is why it's fun to occasionally linger, watching Tyrion try and coax something interesting out of Missandei and Grey Worm was delightful. My only real doubt in this regard is wondering if time lost in those lingering scenes. It wouldn’t be a problem in season one, but the viewer can start to feel the clock ticking on these final 19 episodes that need to bring us from fifty different narrative threads into one giant war with ice zombies who look like someone’s long haired grandpa. If that long haired grandpa was also a zombie who stole babies. I only had one grandpa like that. The other one was pretty normal. 

The show is bookended by scenes at the wall. The rearrival of the show’s hero, Jon Snow, is spiked with some nice dialogic turns. Rather than throwing Jon back into the world raging at Sir Alliser the bastard, we get a rather nice scene of Jon, genuinely perplexed at his plight. “I shouldn’t  be here,” he says, but even better, “I did what I thought was the right thing, and I got killed for it.” The Stark children have been learning that lesson for quite some time, and it’s nice that this time they could just bring the murdered child back to life. Even if he isn’t a full Stark, but part Targaryan as well. I found the scenes of him hugging the red-haired Wildling and his friend very touching, just as I found the scene at the end where he parted ways with Olly and Sir Alliser, touching. He seems genuinely troubled with what has transpired, and it’s believable that he leaves the wall, his watch, by virtue of his death, ended. However, I’m not entirely sure what  Jon Snow who isn’t only doing the right thing will look like. It’s not like he doesn’t know that the ice zombies are out there taunting him, so he better walk quickly, and in a southern direction if he wants to get anywhere worth being.

Remember Sam and Gilly? What about Gilly’s baby? Bran Stark has grown three feet in the same amount of time that child has gone from being 8 months old to nine months old. That said, their relationship is a sweet counterpoint to the usual muck and mayhem of a thrones episode, though I can’t even remember the last time we had a good scene of sexposition. However, like Jon, Sam needs to get off that boat, wipe the vomit from his hair and get to reading books because the white walkers aren’t moving as slowly as that baby’s journey through life.

Since Lost ended, television has always had one rule, flashbacks are great. The second is like unto it: having a sword fight with a dude spinning two swords at once makes it way cooler. Young Ned proves to be a bit light in the swordsmanship and benefits from a stab in the back to best the best sword in the land, which leads him, though he looks about 17, up into the tower to rescue Jon before his sister dies. Or whatever you think is up there…but it’s that.

Back in the weirdwood tree, Bran carps about being a cripple, while Hodor gently rubs his lower back and asks if they can slow Bran’s growth spurt down like Craster’s baby. Alas, says the man who lives in the tree, we’re just going to hang out and look at the past. Now roll me another one Bran and let me tell you about the time I rode a dragon.

Unsatisfied, with the incredibly fast pace of the Daenyrs plot line in Mereen, (the queen raises taxes by one denari, the populous is restless…is roughly what a video game version would like. Her plot is basically leveling to the nth degree), they move her back into the Doth Rahki home..or do they? If she gets condemned to death it’s clear that Drogon is going to come down and eat the Doth Rahki like goats.

Back in Mereen, Varus finally makes some headway into solving the man in the golden masks. Those masks look heavy and make them rather easy to identify. I think they should have gone with arm bands or something. Varus, ever the kind heart, manages to buy off the prostitute and put her on a ship, though the news he delivers is virtually useless—all the other rich people are working against us. This is peppered between Tyrion trying to get Grey Worm or Missendei to say anything interesting, but I feel like that particular show could go on for 8 more seasons without ever having that happen. Theirs is a love story that can never be told, and so I hope it isn’t.

Qyburn arrives back on the scene, creepy as ever, handing out odd plum candy to children. Qyburn, everyone thinks you’re creepy. Can’t you give them some chocolate or something. Does it have to be candied plums? Nevertheless, his spy network is now out and about seeking to find anyone who doesn’t like Cersei so the purple mountain can bash their head into a wall.

As I noted at the start, some things don’t happen. Cersei and Jaime march into the small council to declare war on Dorne and the council promptly walks out. Though it was a delight to see the lady Olenna, a real treasure of the show back to throw barbs at everyone in sight.

Tommen, full of as much rage as his kitten from the books, marches into the High Sparrow’s presence and appears to have a sermon delivered to him. It was your standard three point sermon, probably learned in seminary, but Tommen seems convinced and promptly forgets why he was there and starts batting at a yarn ball.

Arya continues her “training.” And by training I mean beatings and torture. As I noted before, I’m not quite certain what she’s gaining by eliminating her identity, since it’s her identity that lead her to become an assassin in the first place. Can she not just call it quits now, like when someone is ABD and decides to become a surf instructor instead of a history professor? Can she walk now? I think she should. I think she won’t.

And finally, we get Ramsay another pair of people to torture. Like most viewers, I’m confused by the nuanced presentation of Ramsay that the show has engaged in so far. Is he horrible? The worst? Or the horrible worst? I can’t wait to see what sort of unholy things he has to unleash on Rikkon and Osha to show the viewer that he’s quite evil, a fact which escapes us otherwise. I can only hope that he’ll be eating a sausage in a few episodes while Rikkon looks on in horror. Okay. I just hope Osha stabs him in the scrotum for five minutes straight. I guess we'll see.