I have a Blog?

Yes, yes I do. And while no one may read it anymore, including myself, I'd like to blog more than I have been...which shouldn't be so hard. Life's been very, very busy lately, and stressful, and I just haven't had time to blog. That said, I'll try to post more things in the future, as I miss it.

Thanks. 

Winnie the Pooh is in My Blog Too

Awhile back I learned a few things. Important things, unimportant things. Obvious, not so obvious, and of course what should have been obvious. But it seems like the most important things, what should be so obvious, are often not. One of those things happens to fall in the important and obvious and not so obvious and what should have been obvious, and other categories as well.

I am, of course, talking about Winnie the Pooh.

Really. What else would I be talking about?

Recently—the past few months—the sheer brilliance and significance of Winnie the Pooh quotes came to light. For a man who reads and rewrites many quotes, I feel I should have known about Winnie the Pooh quotes long ago.

It was one of those nights like so many other nights, when you think something might be important, or you feel something, but you deny those thoughts and feelings because they seem silly and arbitrary and out of place, and you tell yourself to take off that ridiculous hat because you’re A) alone in a dark room with no one to see the hat, and B) the hat is horribly anti-Semitic

Anyway, here’s a Winnie the Pooh quote. One of my favorites. 

If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together.. there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we're apart.. I’ll always be with you.

Winnie the Pooh is obviously a badass, as well as a romantic. Combined, those are my two favorite things. I will again refer to Arthur Fonzirelli.

So you’re probably thinking to yourself, But Michael, why are you sitting in a dark room at 12am blogging about your undying love and passion for a yellow fictional bear who has an unhealthy obsession with honey? If you’re not thinking these thoughts, then maybe you should.

And to answer your question. A) –apparently this is my new style? No, no it’s not. This is a one time thing. I haven’t written in a very long time. It’s somewhat unhealthy for me, as my mind gets clouded with thoughts and insanity, but, at the same time, it keeps me focused on other things. Truth is, I have enough written material right now, especially for someone my age. I shouldn’t start something lengthy—I should start Aa) looking for a job so I can move and Ab) keep sending away agent queries and whatnot, and while doing that Aaa) continue editing and such. This system is becoming horribly confusing. Also, B) My life has recently taking an amazing and not really surprising twist, and lately I’ve been devoting most of my time to the most amazing person I’ll ever meet.

So writing can take a break while I formulate plans and complete the rest of my goals. The most important and difficult is already fulfilled. And wait…I just realized I’m horribly sidetracked and I don’t even know if I answered your original question, which was mine.

I’m thinking about Winnie the Pooh because of you, my dear. Because Winnie the Pooh understands what most people, and bears, do not. People are always looking for inspiration and reasons and advice, but they’re not looking in the right place—they’re not looking at Winnie the Pooh, and they’re certainly not looking inside themselves. They’re looking for logic, when life is anything but logical, when surprises are the honey that young bears loves.

I should have realized it then, I suppose. But I’m slow in understanding. Realized that Winnie the Pooh is in fact a prophet, and since I cannot be my own life coach, I follow the teachings of a anamorphic bear.

The Little Things

Today I was in the mall and didn’t once think about zombies. This seems like something little, but it isn’t, considering zombies are usually the first thing that crosses my mind when I enter any mall.

None of this is little or inconsequential. Quite the opposite.

Today my mouth hurts from smiling. I like smiling, although I don’t think I’m very good at it. But maybe I’m getting better.

I’m learning to drive while only using my left hand. This makes me exceedingly happy.

There are some things, that no matter how many times you see them, it always feels like you’re seeing, and feeling something, and knowing something, for the first time. That first amazing, breathtaking time.

I love curtains.

Tonight I wandered through a cemetery, and the sky was perfect. I think it’s the first perfect sky I’ve seen. The clouds, layered and billowed, allowed pockets of moonlight to pass through, and those pockets managed to bathe the cemetery in a pale, sterile light. The moon, nearly full, hid behind and within those passing clouds, just barely visible yet still spreading light.

And I wondered: is the sky itself perfect, or is it the moment, and all the moments before and beyond, and beyond, and beyond?

I was once afraid of forever.

Once.

Tonight, and nights prior, I’ve been learning and reaffirming the fact that some things are not meant to be understood by the masses, or even closer communities. Some things can only be understood by two people, together. When something may seem illogical or insane or countless other negatively connotated adjectives, that something truly makes more sense than anything else you’ve ever known or thought or said. It’s everything.

And lace. I also enjoy lace. But I’m not sure about lace curtains.

Beautiful Blurs of Motion

He was sitting on a train watching the world pass by.

He was thinking on this train, sitting, watching the world pass by.

He found it easier to think when the world was always in motion, when nothing ever stayed the same, when his thoughts were the only constant, and even they shifted at times, and fled when they became too real or too painful. And then he just did, and didn’t think.

The train was empty apart from him. It always was. Or always had been. And he always sat in the same seat, in the last cabin, at the very end in the left corner, and he always rested his head against the cold hard glass and stared, and stared, and watched the world blur like a painting suspended in a constant state of motion.

A state of motion.

Once, not so long ago, the world itself seemed to be in a constant state of motion. His thoughts never made much sense—at least not to anyone but himself. His mind was never quite right. And his heart—his heart he preferred to ignore. Otherwise it hurt. His heart he kept in a vault, perhaps somewhere on the train, where no one would ever find it, since he was the only passenger. He rode alone, and in some ways preferred it that way.

Riding a train is thought to be safer if you ride alone.

But he only preferred riding alone in some ways, and these ways weren’t enough.

Sometimes he would stand from his seat and wander the train cabin by cabin. Every cabin looked exactly the same. Vacant, clean, smelling of nothing.

And then one day it smelled like berries.

The scent surprised him. Sweet and inviting, almost intoxicating. Some cabins were thick with the scent. Others, faint, fleeting, nearly an apparition of his mind. But no—no. The scent was real. The berries were real. It came from somewhere, just as everything comes from somewhere, just as everything happens for a reason.

And so he followed the scent for hours and hours. The train had no end, or if it did, he had never reached the other side. The last cabin was his home, his refuge, but the front—there was no front, no end.

And so he walked.

And eventually he came upon a cabin where he could nearly taste berries in the air, and sitting at the end of that cabin, in the corner seat on his left, a beautiful woman who glanced up as he entered. At first he thought she was looking through him, or past him, at something behind, but then he realized her eyes were very much focused on him.

She smiled, and somehow, although he could not tell how just yet—just yet—he knew this smile wasn’t like her other smiles. There was a difference, and maybe it was slight—but it wasn’t, not to him—but he knew she had two smiles. One for him, and one for the rest of the world. And that touched something, somewhere, very deep within him. Something he had buried. Something that she, with just a smile, began to unearth. And that scared and delighted him.

“I’m doing a puzzle,” she said. “Would you like to help me?”

“I like puzzles,” he said, and approached. “How are you on this train?”

“This train?” she asked, as if there were other trains. “Oh, it’s just one of those things, I think.”

“Those things?”

She nodded and smiled and motioned for him to sit across from her. “Those things that are supposed to happen, those amazingly terrifying things that grip your heart and mind and never let go no matter what happens, those things that everything rests upon, that you balance your life upon, those things you must embrace even if they can break you.”

He nodded, it all somehow making sense. “No one wants to be broken.”

“No, but…”

“But you must let yourself be broken if you ever wish to be whole.”

She beamed and dropped a puzzle piece. “You can read my mind?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, although he didn’t quite understand it, or care to understand it. Knowing was enough. “Is that okay?”

“More than okay. Now, will you help me put this puzzle together? I fear it’s been broken as well. I can’t do it alone. I need you.”

He looked across the table at her, and knew he needed her. “Why are you here? Really?”

“To be with you.”

“And this is real?”

“It can be real, if that’s your wish. But we really must put this puzzle together.”

He nodded and looked down at the puzzle; it was already halfway done. A puzzle of gnomes drinking and drunk from a barrel of rum. And more barrels in the distant skies, carried in the talons of great owls. And the owls were dropping the barrels of rum, and the gnomes were drinking from the barrels, and everything was good and quite strange. But, somehow, everything fit together. Perfectly. And that, he thought, was the very scary, terrifying part. Not just about the puzzle, but everything. It fit together perfectly, and he wasn’t accustomed to such breathtaking moments in life. He had never looked at a picture—even if just half complete for now—or puzzle, and knew that it was perfect. He had never began talking to someone and almost immediately realized he could talk to her forever.

“I’ll help you,” he finally said, after staring at the puzzle and the pieces, and her ringless fingers picking up the pieces and fitting them into the puzzle. “But I’m afraid I’ll put the pieces where they don’t belong.”

“Me too,” she admitted—admitting her fear with the realest smile he had ever seen, that she had ever smiled. “But I trust you.”

And he knew he trusted her as well. More than that. He just met her, but no, that’s not true at all. In some way, in some form, he knew her from the beginning. He didn’t know what beginning, but some beginning, and that’s all that mattered. He knew her, and loved her to the point of lightheadedness, the point where everything else pales in comparison, the point where nothing else matters, the point of real so real it almost feels surreal, and although he hated admitting it to himself, the point beyond explanation. He had always been so adroit at explaining things to himself. Sitting on this train, staring out the window at a muddy world of motion, explaining life to himself with his own fucked-up logic. So adept. Then, this, and explanation finally, and rightfully, and thankfully, failed.

And he couldn’t be happier.

The Nightfall Game:The Lightkeeper's Tale

 The Nightfall Game:The Lightkeeper's Tale

“I can’t stop seeing your face,” she began, the Lightkeeper. “So long ago when the winds were still wild and the world still free. So long ago, when whispers were the sound of music and music was but a notion yet to evolve. Long enough to forget, most would say. Just long enough to remember, and remember, and never forget that all things begin at the beginning.

“We were never an exception.”

She opened her dark eyes and stared across the room. Her eyes fell upon no one, but they never did. Of all of them, all who played this Nightfall Game, she was the most reclusive, the only one of them who did not speak outside the tale she told. The Lightkeeper—although no one knew what that titled bestowed—a petite woman who always sat in the darkest corner, always in the same robe of the darkest black, always with a single glass of wine so dark it, too, neared black.

Her stories never told a story.

“The lighthouse,” she continued, her whispers barely audible in the tavern’s deep silence. “Where I waited at world’s end for you. Do you remember,” she asked, “the brushes, and how they rested between your fingers? Do you remember my hands, my fingers, and how they molded with yours and became one, and how we became one? The paint, and how you called it your life’s blood? My tears, and how you called them your life’s greatest failure?”

She swirled the wine, sipped. Swirled. Sipped.

“Do you remember my words, my desires? Paint me something beautiful, I asked.

“And you said, what was it that you said?”

“‘Beauty cannot be painted, because beauty cannot be seen by instruments as blind as our eyes. We cannot see beauty. We can only feel it.’”

“Then what will you paint me?” I asked.

“And you smiled and touched my hand. A graze of the fingers, but enough.”

“‘Something you can feel.’”

“And you took my hand into yours and pressed it against my chest, my heart, and insisted that I must feel, that seeing is not enough and will never be enough. You must feel, and believe, and know, to truly see. Or else you are blind.

“And you painted me something beautiful in those days so long ago. Not beautiful in itself. It’s what you draw out of something, and someone, that’s truly beautiful and miraculous.

“And then, like all good things, you passed into the west on a ship that never returned. I waited, and in your absence I began the work you never finished. I painted you a hundred scenes. I painted you a world, hoping you’d find beauty in it, hoping you would return to capture what was rightfully yours.”

I can't think of anything other than dream doors now, so that's the title even if I hate it

Have ever you looked back onto your life and thought yes, that’s why that happened, now I finally understand, now it all finally makes sense when I thought none of it would ever make sense. Or maybe why something didn’t happen?

Have you ever looked back and found that so many things that never made sense, that you thought would never make sense, finally do?

Maybe not. Maybe you have. I hope you have.

--

This sort of thing has been happening to me quite a bit lately. Logic is coming from unlogic, and even that makes a sort of quasi-logic that’s a little frightening.

A lot frightening, actually. But a good fear, which is the best fear, and consequently the only fear you shouldn’t truly fear.

--

There are some things I say quite often, but only because they’re important to me and I rest much of my sanity and happiness on them. Dangerous, I know. But I live dangerously. I’m like Fonzi; I only dress in leather and tight jeans and I punch jukeboxes.

Everything happens for a reason. I don’t know when I started believing this, or why—I assume something must have begun the initial belief, but nothing too important if I can’t remember. Anyway, the older I grow—and I’m an old man—the more I believe something I once only just wanted to believe. It makes more and more sense. Everything does happen for a reason. You live like this, you’ll find yourself paying extra attention to everything. It’s rather amazing.

--

And dreams. Remember how I never shut up about dreams? Well, if you don’t remember then you should probably reread all my blog entries. I’m sure you’ll find many embarrassing things I wrote about myself, some of which are the consequence of a tad bit too much alcohol—good thing I’m cutting back a lot on that, because of someone.

Dreams. Usually I write about nightmares, because I don’t tend to dream anything other than nightmares, or at least some form of mentally damaging dreams. Not really nightmares…but something. My mind is fucked.

But nightmares or not, I’ve always said how dreams are more important than most people will ever admit or acknowledge. Now, I know I’m crazy for far more reasons than my obsessions with dreams. In fact, my dream obsession seems like one of the sanest parts about myself. Because, lately, dreams have very much directed my life and opened doors that may not have otherwise opened. Dream doors?! No, let’s not go that far. Let’s not be that crazy. Not yet.

Although dream doors does not have a nice ring.

--

So that’s it. I feel crazier than ever, but in a good way. I think the people who are crazy but know they’re crazy are the happiest, but then you’re not really crazy at all, since you know you are. You’re just you, and you’re happy, knowing that everything is happening for reasons and that dreams are dreaming and nightmares aren’t always nightmares and that even the dreams have reasons, extremely vital reasons to your waking self and waking life, and yes, all that.

Letter (8)

Letter (8)

The last time I wrote you letter I had to stop halfway through.

--

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t even a letter. It was forced and meaningless. I wasn’t sure where I was or where I was going. Now I at least know where I am, for now.

--

I was trying so hard to reach you that I was moving backwards, to somewhere I could never escape from. Somewhere between North and South Dakota, maybe, somewhere that’s real but really isn’t, somewhere you slip between the cracks and sink deeper and deeper into nothing.

--

I didn’t want to go there, not alone, so I stopped writing and stopped thinking for awhile. This was a few weeks ago, I think. Time blends. Reality blurs. Time repeats itself. I didn’t think that was possible but now I’m almost sure it is. The past exists to be repeated. Even those things you believe will never happen again.

Those moments, or moment, that seem incapable of replication.

--

I’m in South Dakota now, in a town that does exist. It’s not one of those cracks in the world. There’s nothing special here. I don’t have anything grand to share. I don’t do anything special or meet anyone worth mentioning or see anything that’s worth staring at. Well, one thing, but we’re not there yet.

What happens in the world, it doesn’t seem to happen around me.

 But there’s something here. The air is crisp in this part of the world. Crisp and clear and you can see forever. You can smell the sky, the night, and in the night, the stars. I breathe deeply, the cold air into my lungs, and breathe out, and suddenly I can’t see forever. Suddenly I’m lost deep within a frosted cloud of my own creation, and just as suddenly, it’s gone.

Or maybe I’m exaggerating. Maybe the cloud isn’t that big. Maybe I’m just lost in other ways. Maybe the cloud just looks bigger at night—nights like tonight—when the air is so crisp and the sky is so dark and the stars, the stars, the stars are endless.

--

I’ve been camping near a mountain’s summit, a bit below where the wind isn’t as strong. At night I climb to the summit with my sleeping bag and lay beneath the stars. There aren’t lights here. It’s a lot different from back home. There’s more stars, more everything.

I think I’m becoming part of the sky, and I think I’m okay with that.

I’d take you a picture but chances are you’d never see it, and even if you did, it wouldn’t be the same. There are some things you must see or experience, some things that pictures and even words fail to describe.

I’d tell you about the stars, I would, but it wouldn’t make a difference.