for my daughters

Oh my daughters, so much I wish I could say to the both of you. So much about life and love and the universe that you have to discover yourself, that words fall far short of describing. That we are made of stars, that we are the cosmos recognizing itself. That this completely crazy thing we call life is full of wonder. It's also full of darkness, full of mystery, full of pain, full of love. All of these things are part of the wonder.

I love both of you so much.

I can remember holding each of you right after you were born. The total love I would never believe it was possible to feel. I talked to both of you in the womb, I danced with you both in the stars. I felt so honored to be chosen as your father. So much I wanted to show you in this world...so little I can explain. You have both enriched my world beyond measure.

I make mistakes as a father. I am very human. I have always hoped that being human will show you it is ok to make mistakes--it is, in fact, very necessary to make mistakes. It's ok to feel like shit because sometimes that is how the world is. It doesn't mean the beauty, the wonder is gone. Perhaps we would not appreciate it as much if we didn't struggle. We would certainly not grow if we didn't fail on occasion.

This has gotten pretty syrupy. I apologize. I don't want you to see the world through my eyes--I want you to see it through your own. I hope that you can savor the discovery, the wonder. That you find your passion and joy. That your sadness teaches you and sometimes overwhelms you but never drowns you. That you respect yourself and can be strong when you need to be strong and cry when you need to cry. My arms will always be here and be open, no matter how old and tired they will eventually get.

It's a quiet Saturday evening as I write this. For just a moment--a brief, brief moment--I am stopping the noise of the world and savoring all of the growth, love and joy you've brought to my life. You will never know how much harder I try because I want to be a worthy father. Especially if I'm snapping at you because I'm tired or feeding you an uninspired dinner or nagging you to get to swim practice. I don't always know best. No one does. There are no easy answers in this life.

But there is wonder. There is the cosmos. There are amazing things up there, and there are amazing things inside your heart. They are one and the same. I'm so fortunate to share this part of your life's journey with you.

red eyes

Magic. You want to know about Magic? It can't be defined. It can only be experienced. And when it is, you're changed. Maybe for better, maybe for worse, maybe in ways you can't describe. Changed. Altered. Not the same. 

Alone at home I'm not afraid to dance around like an idiot to songs I love when no one can see me. Sometimes even when they can. Those songs, those are Magic. My daughter gives me a hug. That is love, and love is Magic. Love and Magic might be one and the same. Neither can be defined with this crude tool of language. They cannot be held in by these weak barriers. 

I know folks who believe Magic can happen with the proper rituals. I'm skeptical, I guess. Perhaps for them Magic does happen with careful preparations. But I find that Magic happens when it wants and doesn't really give a crap if you're prepared or not. Magic sometimes wears the guise of Surprise. Magic is a cheeky fucker. A prankster. It laughs at your preparations and laughs when you trip over the cat and kiss the kitchen floor. 

Candles are nice, though. I'll give you that. 

There are almost as many dumb songs about Magic as there are about love. There are a couple of good ones. Art is subjective. Commerce is a headache. Magic can't be caught by the dollar, but sometimes it can be held by a melody. The melody knows its mortality. The dollar thinks it is everything and therefore immortal. 

Oh fuck you, Muse. Don't make me sound philosophical or political, I'm a failure at both. Isn't there a navel around I can pick the lint out of? Feh. There's an insistent beat in my head. There's a voice that won't shut up. In another lifetime I was a schizophrenic. In this one I just hid it better. For someone who spends almost all his time in a relatively small area, I sure dream of travel a lot. Astral travel, anyway. The hippies ruined that one also, but the drugs were good for awhile. They really were!

Astronomers recently found a small galaxy with a supermassive black hole. That's what they call it, a supermassive black hole--and yes, supermassive is one word. I love that phrase. Think about it for a second. We don't even really understand black holes. So a supermassive one...wow. You go ahead and watch Game of Thrones or the Superbowl or whatever it is you do. The universe has more important matters to attend to. Maybe if you called it the SuperMassive Bowl Hole. Some pornographer probably already thought that one up. 

I've got nothing against Game of Thrones. I'm just not interested. Blame science. Magic sometimes wears the guise of Science. 

Red eyes and candles. Hugs. Life cradled in your arms. So many sides to Magic.

two songs plus one/friday night

This.

Oh, it's a fragile thing
This life we lead
If I think too much I can get overwhelmed by the grace
By which we live our lives with death over our shoulders
Want you to know that should I go
I always loved you, held you high above, true.
I study your face, and the fear goes away.

And this.

She's on my side again
The easy way
I come to my soul
Walking in the downtown
Talk to my soul
They won't get lost inside again
I'm on my way
I can see it the darkness coming my way

And one from the master. This man's work means everything to me. 

You never liked to get
The letters that I sent.
But now you've got the gist
Of what my letters meant.
You're reading them again,
The ones you didn't burn.
You press them to your lips,
My pages of concern.
I said there'd been a flood.
I said there's nothing left.
I hoped that you would come.
I gave you my address.
Your story was so long,
The plot was so intense,
It took you years to cross
The lines of self-defense.
The wounded forms appear:
The loss, the full extent;
And simple kindness here,
The solitude of strength.
You walk into my room.
You stand there at my desk,
Begin your letter to
The one who's coming next.

warm, flat lager

The words are beginning to pile up, but they still aren't the words I'm looking for. It's like getting a warm, flat lager when you were expecting a cold, hoppy IPA. But at least the words are coming. Tonight I felt the despair come crashing down over the quality of the output but I've so far battled it to standstill. And no alcohol was involved. Just keep working. 

There are a few things I like in the story I'm working on. But the story, it just doesn't move. At least after the first few paragraphs. And then I think I should stop working on it and work on something else...but what if the breakthrough is just around the corner? One never knows. So many abandoned projects lie behind the one that succeeds. Knowing when to cut the cord is the hardest call to make...I've never figured out the formula. 

Been thinking of putting one of my old stories up here. The act of typing it out (because Blogger sucks with the whole cut-and-paste thing) could be interesting, revisiting something that is amateur compared to what I do now, but *works*. As in, the story moves. I'm always hesitant to revisit past works--I want to move forward. But perhaps in this case it would help me with some of the current roadblocks. 

I dunno. It's a Halloween story, so I've got to decide before too much longer. 

two headlines

Item: Stephen Hawking says that under high energy levels, the Higgs Boson could collapse space and time. Specifically, a catastrophic vacuum decay would occur with a bubble of the true vacuum expanding at the speed of light. It would, however, take a particle accelerator larger than earth. He goes on to say such a particle accelerator is "unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate." So there's that. Sleep well.

Item: We are on the verge of a sixth mass extinction. A new study found that the modern rate of extinction across all species is 1,000 times greater than it was before humans began altering our environment, and thousands of times greater than new species can be created. It's not just the loss of so many species; it's the loss of critical ecosystem functioning in which animals play a central role. Sleep well.

Two items. Two random bottom-page news articles, a couple of paragraphs each that I read while I took a quick lunch break. I have no great insight to offer on either of these. Rather, I am simply astounded that they both exist. Step, for a minute, away from your daily grind and just think of the implications of both of these. We have the capability of destroying the earth (we knew that, but still.) We have the potential knowledge of how to, if not yet the capability of, destroying the universe. And yet, the other headlines I saw today revolved around killing people in the middle east and football players abusing spouses. There is probably a larger point to be made somewhere here.

Today I got up and sent my kids to school and went to work and came home. Soon I will make dinner. I live in a world where the two above headlines exist, even if they are buried at the bottom of the final page. I treat all of this as normal, as if normal were actually a thing. I sleep and shit and sing off-key in the shower. I will continue to do all of these and many more things. My world, for the most part, never stops.

But every now and then, for maybe just a second or two, it screeches to a halt, completely frozen. For those couple of seconds I am amazed at the implications, even if I can't fully understand them. Amazed at the power that actually *is* in our hands that we, in general, are completely unaware of. Amazed at what we've done. Awed and frightened.

Sleep well.

appdev

So this is the opening to a story I never have finished, despite numerous attempts. But I dunno, I always liked this opening. And I want to post some writing tonight. So here you go.

I think, in times past, people counted the ticking of the clock while they were waiting. Does anyone have clocks that tick anymore? I don't think so. Everything is digital, built into our phones. There’s an app for clock ticking, I suppose. I think the waiting is worse in total silence. Nothing to distract. It might be possible to create a house that's totally silent, but I have my doubts. Doubts about getting the silence, I mean. There's always the hum of electricity. I guess you could not pay your bills and they would cut the electricity off. Then you'd be pretty cold, unless you had a wood stove or a fireplace. Building a fire makes noise, a fire burning makes noise. There is always some complicating factor. There is never true silence.

                I’m rambling.

                I can’t count the ticking of the clock, this apartment is absolutely silent and it really doesn’t matter, I know she is dead. Our four years together are over today. I wasn’t even there when it happened…if it’s happened by now. Jesus, I just don’t know.

                I remember a post a friend of mine made on Facebook, back before all this crap happened and I did things like read Facebook. A dude asked my friend, an avid cineaphile, what he should be prepared for before watching his first Tarkovsky film. My friend told him "deep existential grief." I guess that's pretty much where I'm at now. I used to like Tarkovsky, though I think Bela Tarr had the market cornered on deep existential grief. The heaviness of human existence. Used to, but not now. I don't need films for that now, or music, or any art. The universe is punishing enough.

                Why did it have to be Sequoia?

                I know the answer to that, but I don't want to accept the answer. I suppose that’s one definition of deep existential grief. The universe doesn't give a shit, one way or another. It destroys and creates pays little attention to what it spits out. A million years from now the human species will be dead or evolved into something we can't even recognize. I think I'm pulling for death. Species that unleash shit that we don't understand and then run away don't really deserve to survive.

                It’s too fucking quiet here. I can’t sit still and I can’t move. There’s a bottle of Maker’s on the coffee table in front of me but I don’t even have the stomach for that. Sequoia…she kind of hated that name, you know. She had nothing but derision for her burned-out hippie flake parents. Yet she never changed her name. When I asked her why, she just shrugged and made a comment about it not being worth the trouble. I think there was something deeper there, though, something she would not say. And now I’ll never know what it was. There are lots of things I’ll never know. That’s true of all of us, but when your number is coming up and you no longer have time for any bullshit, you become extra aware. Sharper perceptions. I should dull them with the whiskey.

                Eventually they will miss me at work, and they’ll figure out that I know. Sharpie would miss me right away, but Sharpie is dead. Lucky bastard. He went quick, too—lethal injection of [x]. Sequoia and I dumped the body in Panopticon Lake yesterday. By the time it’s found, it will be irrelevant. The body and us. We may have been followed. It’s hard to know, those fuckers are everywhere.

                Oh Sequoia. I know you must be dead by now, and I should go check to make sure. But I can’t bring myself to do it. They’ll figure it out soon enough, if they haven’t already. They’ll come for me. I don’t know how many, and I can’t hope to take them all out. But I’ll take as many of those fuckers as I can. That’s what the gun on the table is for. I’ve never fired it. But I will. I’m going to go out firing.