I know, I know. Two week unannounced hiatus. I will admit that part of my lack of blogging is simply sloth and that I haven’t had the motivation or inclination to write it. The other part is that nothing happened two weeks ago and that last week I was in Halifax and otherwise occupied.
Yep. Halifax. Canada. My parents had decided that they wanted to do a family trip at least once this summer, so we settled on a road trip to the Bay of Fundy. That translates to sight-seeing, with my parents doing the usual touristy thing leaving me doing the usual young adult thing: A whole lot of nothing. I enjoy seeing the sights as much as the next guy, but I’m a more active person. I need to be doing something as well. That’s why I enjoy hiking. You get to head out into beautiful scenery, have some enjoyable physical activity, and then there’s the reward of whatever view you’re hiking to. However, simply walking around one town or another is frustrating to me unless it’s somewhere completely different like Venice. There’s no destination, no purpose, no objective. There’s minimal effort and I find it banal to wander around somewhere and simply “soak in the view.”
I think I tired of sightseeing and traveling for their own sakes while I was still in Europe. Perhaps if I had a friend around my own age to get into trouble with, it would be different. Maybe. How, I don’t really know. Crossing three states and a Canadian province to simply walk around a town that looks like a quiet, clean version of New Bedford seems inadequate though. I don’t get any particular thrill from simply seeing things. I grew up looking at such pictures online or in magazines or books, so the sight itself is seldom awe inspiring. The journey isn’t much to talk about either, as most of the time you’re staring at miles and miles of tarmac or the airplane seat in front of you.
So when we occasionally actually did something, I was nearly thrilled for the change. Example: We went to see some sort of strange, balancing rock on Long Island, across from Digby. Instead of driving up to it, my father and I got out of the blasted car and hiked for about a mile to get to it. It was a short hike and an easy one, except for over sixty stairs at the end of the trail. It also went through a lovely forest and involved a little effort to traverse. The rock itself was boring. Even so, I would have gone either way because there was an activity!
Oddly enough, the object of the trip, to see the eighty-foot tides that the bay is famous for, was addressed last. As we started heading home, we diverted to a place called the Joggins Fossil Cliffs. Some of you may know them as a place that Charles Darwin wrote about in his “The Origin of Species.” Some of you. Not me. I’d never heard of the place beforehand. Haven’t even read all of Darwin’s book. Either way, it’s a cool place. I’m not too clear on the geology involved, but something made the area into a sedimentary rock-based fossil extravaganza. People started pulling up fossils in the 1800s and the place has been under examination and excavation ever since and they STILL haven’t found all of the fossils! There are so many of them that the institute has no need to pick up any more, which left us literally walking on fossils!
We arrived just before low tide, so once done with our tour, my father and I took a stroll to the water’s edge. At least, that was our intention until we realized that there was about a football field of sticky, slick red mud between us and it. So much for that idea. Still, looking out across a beach that stretched nearly a quarter of a mile from the cliffs to the water, and knowing that it would all fill up again in six hours, was interesting. I only wish that we could have gone far enough to let the surf chase us back. Yeah. It’s supposed to come in that fast. It goes out far enough that there is a “Not Since Moses” fun run at the beginning of August each year that takes you across the ocean floor while the tide’s out.
Surf race or not, I was glad to get back home. The first thing on the agenda after unpacking was to meet up with some friends and hang out. While that sounds like inactivity, we had an objective: To enjoy each other’s company, enjoy the night around us, and to watch the ocean and relax. I suppose that enjoying each other’s presence might have been what my parents, or at least my mother, had in mind for the trip. However, for someone my age, that sort of thing’s value becomes voided since you’ve been living with that person for twenty years. Friends, on the other hand, are hard to meet with especially when you’re at college. It’s a rare treat. To make it even better, at this age, there’s more room for spontaneity when you’re with friends, also known as stupidity. That evening, for the first time in all the sixteen years that I’ve lived in this town, I went night swimming. It was unplanned for, so I swam in my boxers. It was also cold, the bottom rough, and shallow. And it was amazing. Even when I later found that I’d cut up my foot on something, I thought it was totally worth it.
This is the sort of thing that I’ve been looking for. Even though Marion is boring in general, I like to be around people who can make it seem new, or do something fun with it. I like the flexibility of being with friends; the power to do as we please at the drop of a hat and be ourselves. No matter what sort of relationship you have with your parents, you can’t really be yourself around them. There’s always some sort of expectation, some barrier either your family or society has set. It’s only taken me a long time to see just who is crazy and fun to be like that with. Those are the people I need to look for and the people I need to see more before the summer ends.
Oh God. The summer’s ending.
Shit.
Song of the Week: This happens to be my father’s favorite song by R.E.M. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!
At the moment, I’m feeling pretty good! I kind of want to do a little dance and I’ve got a stupid grin plastered to my face while I giggle like a little kid. I’m not even feeling great for any particularly spectacular reason either. It’s just that a few minutes ago I finished writing the rough draft for the thirty-second chapter in my novel and I looked outside to find that, by the gods, it was still light out! That never happens! I mean, I’m usually happy as a dog with a stick when I finish a chapter, but I also usually finish some time between midnight and 2 AM. By then I’m too tired to do the happy dance. Right now the only thing keeping me from turning on Fall Out Boy or N’SYNC and then barreling ahead to write the next chapter is that I remembered that it’s Friday and that this blog thingy-ma-bobber still needed to be done. I’ve only written rough drafts so far and I still have holes in the plot’s outline that I need to fill, yet that doesn’t stop this sort of thing from feeling good. Maybe that’s the mark of finding something that you love: Spending hours on a project with no promise of reward and then being suddenly and irrationally happy once you finish part of it. It’s either that or the simple fact that you can get lost in something for hours on end without really noticing, aside from the sporadic elation when you start work on your favorite parts of the process. Perhaps it’s both. Perhaps it’s different for everyone. I don’t know. Actually, for any of you people out there with something you’re passionate about, I’d like to know how you feel when you’re involved with whatever it is, or at least how you know that you’re passionate about it. Mike Bliss, I’m looking at you. The robot in me still finds emotions a bit confusing and I’m trying to figure some of them out. On another note, I NEED something to be happy about because I found out that A) My university tuition now needs to be payed (over $20,000 a year for a STATE school?!), B) Over these past few months, when I haven’t been able to work out too much, I’ve lost about seven pounds of muscle, and C) I’m apparently being referred to a trauma surgeon for my leg injury. A freakin’ trauma surgeon?! Come on! That’s a bit excessive, isn’t it? I mean, yeah, my leg still hurts some after six months and I hesitate to do anything with it, but this guy’s used to dealing with people sporting open chest wounds! The simple fact that I’ll be walking into his office is embarrassing! I can’t tell whether that or the inevitable price of the visit is worse. Having universal healthcare like every other developed nation in the world would be mighty nice right now! Bloody insurance company lobbyists. That’s one of the first things I’m going to fix when I become Supreme God-King of the World. Other than that, I haven’t too much to report. Treating writing a book like a regular job means that I don’t get out much and little happens to me aside from what goes on in my own head. While that can be pretty bizarre and exciting for me, it’s not something you tend to talk about. Then again, this is a nowhere town near Cape Cod. Even when I had my usual summer job nothing happened. Nature of the beast I guess. Anyhow, I’m going back to thinking about elves and fairies and medieval amputations! Have a good week everybody!
Song of the Week: I’m going to pretend that this song can apply to something, rather than just someone. Okay, it’s actually just been going through my head all day, you happy now?
I love freedom of speech. I can get really irritated with the concept sometimes when I listen to the poisonous propaganda that oozes out of FOX News, yet as a whole I adore it. Aside from the moral implications of allowing a population to speak its mind and say whatever it pleases, whether the government likes it or not, wonderful things arise from the practice. I don’t know about you guys, but I rather like having comedians, novelists, singers, and artists who can express their souls and opinions without worrying about someone calling “Off with their head!” We get some fantastic stuff aside from Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show, like what happened today when South Carolina took down their Confederate Battle Flag from in front of their state capital building.
I’ve attached a video of the event below and it is beautiful. Rather than the ravenous boos and “Southern rights” tripe that I expected, the spectators were cheering for the entire time, chanting “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” and waving the stars and stripes. Around 3:50 in the clip, you can even hear everyone singing “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye!” It sounded like the crowd at a football game, which I suppose is a bit demeaning to the hardcore southerners there and I am just fine with that. Perhaps it was a bit petty and perhaps it will galvanize some extremists against the north or rational people in general, but it was not overtly vicious or terribly gloating.
The beautiful thing about free speech is that, when people have the chance to say whatever they please, they will do so. Sometimes that means that vile words will be spoken. However, I have found that people as a whole recognize and revile truly harmful public agendas. The more that a corrosive message circulates, the more people it could potentially recruit. More importantly, it also reaches moderate and rational ears. Word then spreads from their lips, explaining why the message is harmful and disgusting. What tends to happen I’ve noticed is that the message holds sway for a while, longer if the bias and bigotry that it is founded on is deeply ingrained and widespread, and then it looses clout because its adherents friends and descendants notice how poisonous it is and shy away from it. In short, the more public a harmful message is, the less harm it tends to do in the long run as opposed to the ones that are whispered behind closed doors in only sympathetic ears. Of course there are exceptions like the Nazi party where a poisonous public message takes serious root. Luckily those are few and far between
For those of you that know me, you know that I’m not a terribly optimistic guy. I opt for realism in every situation and realism can look pretty bleak and similar to pessimism. However, instances like this one in South Carolina make even realism look good.
Song of the Week: You could call the spectators’ singing the song of the week, but here’s my own little contribution.
Okay, I’m sorry everyone, but I’ve been raking my brain for an hour trying to figure out a topic for this week and nothing’s coming to mind. All I can seem to think about are the books I’ve been reading (The Dresden Files and The Wheel of Time series) and my own writing, which I intend to resume presently. I don’t know if my brain is misfiring or if there’s just nothing for me to say this week. Sorry for that!
Song of the Week(?): This is one I was jamming to when I finished “Small Favor” by Jim Butcher today and I can’t get it out of my head. It’s a good one, though, so I don’t mind and hopefully you won’t either. Just, for the love of God, skip the first 15 seconds or so. They're horrible and will ruin the whole song for you if you do not heed my warning. Actually, you can skip the whole first minute.
Nothing has happened around here. Nobody wants to hear me talk about repainting the house and I don’t want to remember it. I’ve already used a couple of entries to talk about my writing and mention my novel, so that’s done. The supreme court supported some interesting legislation legalizing gay marriage and supporting the Affordable Health Care Act, but I’m sure that if you wanted to hear about that you could got to your favorite media political pundits for biased opinions, rage, and/or crowing. Whether it’s a hissy fit or gloating depends upon whether you watch FOX or MSNBC.
That stuff gets old. It’s the same thing every time. There’s little news reporting and lots of opinion and speculation and you can always guess what someone’s going to say so long as you know which channel you’re on. What I’ve found with almost everything in the entertainment industry, and yes that includes the news, is that the providers are always subscribing to their audience expectations and the audience expects tropes and stereotypes. Understanding that and you can predict almost every movie, show, and book plot and can anticipate what each political commentator is going to spew. It’s a little boring.
Which is why I was overjoyed to read a book this week that at least tried to be unique. Author of “The Night Angel” trilogy and, most recently, the “Lightbringer” tetralogy, Brent Weeks has a problem with editing. I’ve read four of his books now and each of them has an almost embarrassing number of grammatical errors and various instances of awkward syntax. Regardless of those, he is still a fantastic storyteller and does a wonderful job of fiddling around with fantasy hero tropes. In “Night Angel” he creates a character who is born into extreme poverty and crime, commits murder to protect his friends and regain some dignity, and then becomes a mercenary assassin. Then the story becomes something similar to the typical redemption plot line with some fun magic and great plot twists thrown in.
What I’ve found that Weeks does exceptionally, however, is showing how children are shaped by their traumatic experiences and how those determine who they become as adults. His thoroughly damaged childhood characters became thoroughly damaged adults. They either have an extreme drive to overcome their difficulties or have almost debilitating fears and obligations that they must uphold from deals made in a desperate adolescence. Sometimes they have both. Sometimes they become monsters. Sometimes you can’t even tell when a person is a “good guy” because the things that they do are so immoral or horrifying that passing a single judgement on them is impossible, even if those actions are entirely understandable and sometimes necessary.
I’ve only recently finished “The Black Prism,” the first of the “Lightbringer” series, and I’m already having a ball. Okay, the syntax is still annoying, but he’s learning. I’d certainly hope he would by his fourth book anyhow. I think that he’s also picked up on how well received his stories about corrupted youths were. So here we go again with another story that begins with a loss of innocence. Okay, it’s more like the innocence was dragged out into the street, forced to watch everything from torture to a porno, set on fire, trampled, and then left out to dry with the crows pecking at its kidneys. We saw that sort of merciless realism with “The Night Angel” trilogy except that this time, instead of having the protagonist become a freakin’ magic slinging ninja, Weeks flipped the hero trope on its head.
In the acknowledgements section at the end of the book, Weeks said that before he started writing a friend of his had said offhand how interesting he thought a book might be if “the [fantasy hero trope] was turned into an [inverted hero trope].” In the first “Night Angel” book we watched an eight or ten year old boy grow to fourteen and then eighteen in the course of about ten chapters, becoming a morally conflicted killing machine and then an amoral killing machine. In “The Black Prism” we see a fifteen year old, obese, illegitimate son (literally a fat bastard) go from being a disappointing, disdained, and ignored village child to being the disappointing, disdained, and coveted bastard of an emperor while carrying an obsession with vengeance and having no combat or political skills whatsoever. The book takes place over the course of maybe a week or two and, while he certainly is heroic in many aspects, he’s not a warrior and not what most people would think of as a hero. He’s not Samwell Tarly either and is neither timid nor weak. He’s a screwup, but he’s tough. He’s not strong, but he’s smart. He doesn’t have much in the way of friends, nor is he good as making them, and mouths off at almost everyone who could help him. To top it off, his need for vengeance, his despair, and his desire to prove himself to his new father force him to exceed anyone’s expectations, especially his own. Even so, he’s still generally pretty useless in most cases and is beaten, insulted, and nearly killed repeatedly. The thing is, his character paired with the empire’s machinations made for a fantastic story!
I often hear readers of such stories complaining about authors like George R.R. Martin putting their fictional children through horrors. Actually, more often than not those who condemn such authors are the people who have heard about a story but haven’t bothered to read it themselves. Typical. Anyhow, the point is that these people become enraged when they read about a child being tortured for sadistic pleasure or babies being murdered to preserve a political succession. That’s the point though. The point is to evoke rage and horror. It’s supposed to be sick. Why do you think that they put The Massacre of the Innocents into the Bible? It’s supposed to manipulate your emotions one way or another. The reason that these people get angry at the authors, however, is that they don’t want to believe that this sort of thing happens in the real world too. It hits a little too close to home.
Perhaps it’s not something that we tend to see often in middle class or wealthy parts of the world, particularly not in America. Even so, I would be willing to bet that similar atrocities happen across the globe. We get exercised over the child labor laws (or lack thereof) in southeast Asia and genocides in Rwanda for good reason. These things actually happen and we feel rightfully sickened by them. At the same time, why do you think we put that stuff on the news repeatedly and make movies out of it? It’s sensational. It’s emotional. It’s horrifying. Call it what you like, be it realism or barbarous voyeurism. Deny it all you like, but you know in your gut that these things make fantastic stories.
Some people are drawn to “Saving Private Ryan” because it’s gory and violent and violence is simple. You kill someone and your problem is over. It’s easier than real life. However some people, whether they realize it or not, are drawn to it to see Tom Hanks struggle to hold himself together and then are fascinated to see how Matt Damon turns out in the end.
Horror and conflict and scars make for interesting characters, characters worth writing about and whose stories merit retelling. It makes for good stories because damaged and broken people are real and you never know how they will react and grow if the story is told well. If that’s not your kind of story, fine. Just don’t start damning other people’s storytelling. Unless you want me to start trashing you for watching “Jersey Shore” and “White Chicks” that is.
Song of the Week: If that blog got a little morbid, here’s something to cheer you up! More cynical realism!
Over the last few days I’ve had the usual post-birthday question “So what does it feel like being 20?” asked of me dozens of times. For the last few days I’ve answered that it feels like my stomach is trying out for the US gymnastics team. My birthday was the usual non-event. I don’t really pay attention to it myself and try to avoid the subject with my friends until after the fact because the pampering and attention feels bizarre. I even made the mistake of inviting a friend to sleep over the previous night, hoping that he wouldn’t notice my birthday. Of course, I forgot about Facebook’s notifications and his first words in the morning were “Hey, Happy Birthday man!” Curse you Zuckerberg. So, after hanging out with various friends and tunneling my way through a stack of barbecued ribs, I retired and did my usual geeky thing. A couple of days later I met up with my friend Billy, the only other American who had attended Ellesmere during my gap year in England. He’d finished his exams, graduated the school, and, wouldn’t you know it?, still lived near Boston! We met to go bouldering, which is a fancy way of saying indoor rock climbing without a harness and often climbing with your back parallel with the impact mat on the floor only fifteen feet below. He too asked me the question. “So, dude, what does it feel like to be twenty?” Of course he asked this while I was dangling from an overhang and swinging my body to try to get my legs back up to something I could press them into. Okay, “swinging” makes it sound more dignified than the flopping fishy movements I was making before I dropped flat on my back with a yelp. Billy nodded. “So that’s what a twenty year-old is like. Majestic.” I lay my head back and laughed as I tried to get my fingers to close into fists. My forearms probably didn’t have enough strength to let me hold my kitten by the time we left. He was way more experienced and his arms were sore too. At least my hands weren’t covered in blisters like his were. When I finally got home that night all I wanted was to sleep. I then realized that I’d only had a couple cups of yogurt to eat that day. Normally I would take full advantage of my voracious appetite’s absence and head to bed. Instead I decided to nourish myself out of respect to my body once I showered. As the hot water washed away some of my fatigue and weariness, I noticed that I felt kind of chilly, even though the bathroom could have doubled as a sauna from the hot water. I wrapped myself in a robe and by the time I was done with half a rack of leftover ribs I was ready to puke. I wore a sweatshirt to bed and used my bathrobe and an extra blanket as additional insulation when I noticed that my shivering wasn’t stopping. Long story short, chills, aches, and the nightmares that have been plaguing me every night for the last few weeks made for a fun evening. The next day I got a call from my Nana and I got the same question again. When another sharp pain had passed and I finished my impression of a Picasso portrait, I told her much the same as I’ve told you. So far, being twenty feels like being at sea. I couldn’t even think straight for most of Friday, so writing of any kind was out of the agenda. Miraculously I felt better again for the most part by nightfall and the next day I was goofing around outdoors again. However my appetite has not entirely returned and if I take so much as one bite over my limit I’m likely to hurl again. I’ve made sure to treat toilets, sinks, and other such receptacles with increased deference to keep relations friendly just in case I need to give them a very sudden and personal hug. Of course the nausea wasn’t helped much by the South Carolina shooting a few days ago. I’d love to see the right wing try to claim that racism isn’t an issue anymore after that massacre. Even John Stewart couldn’t bring himself to make any sort of joke to help people cope via gallows humor. He made a good point during that episode and now I’m wondering what the point is of going after ISIS or anyone else overseas when we are doing this sort of damage to ourselves. Are we bombing them in case they decide to attack if there happens to be anything left of us when we’re done over here? Good job doing the terrorists’ work for them, people. Good job. As if I wasn’t confused enough with my own career choices and disgusted already with much of American culture, this last bit has reminded me to seriously reconsider moving to England for good. As if the avaricious political agendas, ignorance promoting cultural figures, and some peoples’ asinine obsession with political correctness wasn’t enough, racism is the cherry-bomb on top of the gunpowder sundae. Even if I wasn’t sick my stomach would still be doing flips. The thing is that I can’t think of a thing we can do to remedy the situation aside from improving our education system and preventing racist or religious legislation from being implemented until people start cluing into the fact that black people deserve the same respect that every other human being deserves. While punitive laws like forcing the south to remove its Confederate flags and renaming its racially-biased streets would give the country a political and physical face-lift, it would also provoke retaliation and resentment. On the other hand, trying to be patient seems to be rewarded with more deaths like those we saw in Charleston on Wednesday. Gun control won’t fix the issue. Even if it lowers the body count some, fanatics will still find ways to kill people. During the shooter’s hearing, the family members of the deceased said through their tears and bitterness that they forgave the boy who killed their loved ones. Normally I would use their example as a shining beacon of what we need to practice to heal divisive relations. However, while forgiveness and understanding work between two wronged parties such as in a war, I doubt its efficacy in the face of maniacs. Victims on both sides of a war will feel rage because they have lost their homes or their fathers or their pride. Forgiveness and the understanding brought by an effort to learn about the other side’s perspective works in those situations because war is often brought about by rational, albeit morally questionable reasons. The rage can be assuaged because both sides can come to empathize and lay aside their swords so that no one else has to suffer a dead father or a burned home. Zealots don’t have that capacity. They are uncompromising, unrepentant, and desire to inflict misery to sate their own irrational obsessions. They might disguise the effort to others or even to themselves as a reaction to some imagined sleight. At their core, though, they understand that they hate a people not for what they have done, but for who they are. They dehumanize their enemy and for them it becomes an issue of “what” those of the enemy are. They do not even consider their targets worthy of compassion or reason or anything more than what a beast would get from a hunter or zoo keeper. I want to believe that the remarkable forbearance shown by the members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church is the most effective way of handling the larger issue. I think that it is the right way of handling it, but I do not think that it is the best way or that it will even work. I fear that this display of mountainous generosity might only be perceived by the fanatics as weakness. So, to answer the million dollar question of the week “What does it feel like to be twenty years old?,” it feels like I’ve been brought into a world with a lot of potential and beauty in it and it feels like a lot of people are using that potential to burn and mar the beauty.
Song of the Week: The moment I left the theatre this song started playing through my head, probably just for the line in the third verse. You’ll probably know it when you see it. Anyhow, this is a good oldie. Enjoy!
Song of the Week: This is a pretty well known song I know, but it’s
really applicable for this entry. Also, I’ve been on a big RWBY kick, so
it was either something from that show’s soundtrack or this. Besides,
this song’s a load of fun!
