Beneath The Sound of Hope

Editing Is No Fun

2011-11-06T20:49:00.000-05:00

Here are some videos for your viewing pleasure.

The first is from a band that I had never heard of before, but I found them on Gorilla Vs. Bear. I enjoyed the song, but I really loved the video. If you've spent any amount of time in a Goodwill store or a large thrift store, you'll probably like this one.

This next video is from Kings of Convenience. They are a very relaxed and quiet band. One of the members is from The Whitest Boy Alive, which I've listened to for a while and is also quite good. I'm just enjoying the relaxed nature of their music right now. Enjoy this simple but fun video.

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NaNoWriMo just is simply not as good when you aren't actually writing a novel. It's that simple. I just don't enjoy it all that much. It's fine though. I knew I wasn't going to love the editing experience. But I know it needs to be done. What this means is that, usually I'm absolutely excited to sit down and start writing, and now I'm not entirely looking forward to it. It just requires some more willpower. I'm working on that. I've missed one day this week and it doesn't look like I'm going to get any in tonight. That's OK though, because I've successfully completed NaNoWriMo before without writing every single day. I know I'm not going to have this thing completely edited by the end of the month, but I'm going to be far closer than I was just last week, and that's what is most important.

Anyway, Maria and I are about to relax and watch something, so I'll cut this short. I'll try and give occasional updates during the month, but this year feels like the busiest in a long time.

On The Cusp Of November

2011-10-31T23:05:00.000-04:00

I've been listening to Shout Out Louds for about two days now. I really enjoyed their first album, but never really got into their second album, not because it isn't good, but because it got lost among the shuffle of new releases and albums. Then, Work, their third album came out last year and I loved it. I spent a lot of time listening to that album while lying on the couch in my dad's place on the lake all alone looking out the giant dark windows or watching the iTunes visualizer hazily light up my TV. Occasionally I just go through my iTunes library and pick something I haven't listened to in a long time or something I might have skipped over. This lead me back to Our Ill Wills, their second album, which I've now been enjoying greatly. All of this is to say that you should give Shout Out Louds a listen if you haven't yet. There is an earnestness to their music that I love.

"Walls" is from their 3rd album, which is the best of the three and the first I would suggest to anyone.

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Lots of things seem to be going on around here. First off, Maria is on a social media domination spree now that she has opened her etsy shop. Go take a look. She's added a lot of work, and she's making new work for it as we speak. In order to promote, she's taken to Facebook with an art page, and even Twitter (which she seems to know very little about, but is learning quickly). Needless to say, she's busy. It's pretty awesome and I'm very proud of her.

I, on the other hand, have been doing things like grading papers, playing video games, watching Doctor Who, and basically not editing my novel at all. But! that will change starting tomorrow. Why is that, you ask? Well, because tomorrow is November, my favorite month. Why is it my favorite month, you ask as well (you sure are an inquisitive person)? Why, because it's National Novel Writing Month, of course! This is the time of year when the stars and planets align and I hunker down to write a novel in 30 days. It's a glorious time of year when my creative juices are peaking light crazed marsupials and I can't contain my excitement.

As I've mentioned before, if you've been paying attention, I've decided that this year will be different. I won't be creating anything new. Instead, I'm editing like a mad man. My mission, which I've chosen to accept, is to *completely edit this baby by the end of the month, come hell, high water, or some combination of hellishly high water, which I would assume burns while drowning your lungs. I have a feeling I'm not going to enjoy November as much, but it will still be thoroughly rewarding when I'm successfully done with it.

*completely is used rather loosely here. It really just means a solid second draft.

Other than that, we spent a wonderful weekend with Maria's cousin and her husband. It involved a marathon late night session of Rock Band, an apple orchard, donuts and cider, pumpkin carving, and homemade pesto pasta. Quite a good weekend, if I do say so myself. It's nice to have couples to spend time with. Now, we've got to hit up the only other couple in the area sometime soon (Ryan and Shelby, I'm looking at you).

And that's about it. Don't expect me to post my work during November, largely because it was all posted last year. This year it will be slightly different and edited, but I doubt any of you want to read through my novel twice. If you never read it in the first place, go back to last November and start reading from there.

To Write Or To Edit, That Is The Question

2011-10-20T22:48:00.000-04:00

Has Coldplay done it again? I'm constantly amazed how Coldplay continues to put out great music. I've written about this before, but honestly the only misstep they've taken in their career seems like X&Y. I'm listening to the new album, Mylo Xyloto (what a name, right?), and I'm impressed. I doubted again and was worried they would make a less than stellar album. Right now, I'm not even cringing at any lyrics (like I did with Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall). Instead, I'm just greatly enjoying it.

Here's the video for their new single. I must admit, this is a great video because it takes a simple idea and just goes with it. When it switches to concert footage for a few minutes, I'm not all that impressed, but it switches back right at the end, and it certainly brings a smile to your face.

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Tomorrow starts the weekend. I'm very excited about that. There's no school Monday and Parent Teacher Conferences are on Tuesday, which means I'm not teaching again till Wednesday. It's a nice break, and I plan on getting all caught up on my grading. Once I reach that point, I'll feel much better. I hate the feeling of being behind in grading, but it isn't yet worse than the feeling of actually grading, which is perhaps why I get behind? It's really just the papers that are difficult. But, that is the life of an English Teacher. It feels like it's getting easier with each year. It will never be a painless experience, but it will certainly get better.

November is looming ever closer. I keep waffling back and forth between two ideas: Write a new novel or edit the last one. This is a very tricky situation. On one hand, I feel like November is the best part of the year whenever I'm writing a new novel. It's magical, creating something that didn't exist before. I'm energized by it. There's really nothing I enjoy more (even when it seems like a chore). But, on the other hand, I really feel like Those Of Us Who Saw The Light Shall Speak Of It Forever is the best one I've written yet, and that it deserves to be finished and polished and given a chance. And, when am I going to stop moving on to the next novel without finishing the previous one? If I'm not careful, it could be a never ending process. I could be fifty, working on my 26th novel, having published nothing at all. Of course, I could be fifty without a published novel even if I do sit down and edit the crap out of one of them eventually. It's a a gamble right?

The nice things about this problem is that I can tell that I'm really just writing for myself. I'm not worried so much about selling a book or anything like that. I obviously just like writing for the sake of writing. That's good to know. If I was writing for some other (external) motivation, then I think my writing would suffer. I doubt I'd have the passion I think I have for it. Or maybe I'm just very patient and I'm not in a rush to get to a published novel, which is also good. I don't want to rush myself. It takes time to develop as a writer, and I think I'm doing a good job of practicing and trying to perfect my style and technique.

But it really comes down to this; for this upcoming November, I don't feel like I have a good idea for a novel. I sketched out a few details some weeks ago, but I don't feel strongly about them. My first novel just came out of nowhere and shaped itself as it went along, but was fueled by my excitement for actually diving headfirst into writing a book. The second involved a lot of brainstorming and crazy ideas that I felt (at the time at least) could create a very interesting novel. It was a chance to further develop my style and prove that I could do this a second time. The third started with a vague idea and a set of rules to guide it (multiple narrators, each with a distinct style, viewing the same event), which resulted in, at least in my opinion, my best work so far. This potential fourth novel simply has a skeletal plot that I stitched together one afternoon on the couch. I'm not feeling as passionate about it, and the idea hasn't had time to float around in my head and learn to swim.

So, I think the desire to actually edit a novel fully might win out this year. It will be the first year I don't officially participate in NaNoWriMo since I started in 2007. That seems incredibly long ago, and while I'm sad that I won't be a NaNoWriMo winner this 5th year, I think this could potentially be a very rewarding experience. I'm going to treat November the same as I always have. I'll still have word goal and I will attempt to write every day. I'll just be editing an already existing novel instead of creating a new one. While that seems much less exciting (infinitely so), it is probably something I need to do. Editing is probably the hardest work, simply because it doesn't carry that feeling of creation that pure writing does. I need to teach myself how to slag through that process and come out the other side with something I'm proud of.

Why I Hate Drunks At Concerts

2011-10-17T22:33:00.003-04:00

Here's a video from the new M83 album. M83 have made lots of great music that does an excellent job of honing in on a feeling of nostalgia. The new album is excellent, so I thought I would share a video. It seems like it would make an excellent J. J. Abrams movie.

M83 - Midnight City (Clip Officiel) by Spi0n

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Maria and I had an awesome weekend, mainly because we saw the Smashing Pumpkins in Detroit on Saturday. We also visited her parents, went out to eat, watched half a movie with Kati and Maria's dad before falling asleep, and cheered Maria's mom on during the Detroit Marathon. It was quite a packed weekend.

But anyway, back to that Smashing Pumpkins concert. Here's some photos to start us off.

We arrived to the show early, at about 4:30, because I had gotten us on the list to get into the Smashing Pumpkins Record Club pre-show meeting, which took place in the lobby about an hour before the doors opened. It was pretty cool because we got to talk with Kerry Brown, who does lots of producing for the Pumpkins and has been with them since they started. Most of the meeting was just about the upcoming reissues (which will be awesome), so it wasn't a whole lot more than "here's some stuff you can buy", but there was a lot of talk about free projects as well (it looks like the Smashing Pumpkins Record Club will always be free). The bonus, when it came to the SPRC meeting, was that we didn't have to stay in the cold for as long, and we were the first ones in.

So, before the show started we found ourselves in the front row, leaning against the barrier, and staring at the empty stage. All I could think about was how amazing this was going to be. The Smashing Pumpkins are, of course, my favorite band, and this was the closest I'd ever been. Also, the new lineup has been rumored to be the most impressive live unit the Pumpkins have ever had (this was my 3rd time seeing them and I can attest to that fact, which is sad considering Billy is the only original member. You would think the 1st time I saw them, when they were essentially still the original band, would have been the best).

The openers did their things (Light FM wasn't too exciting, and the Fancy Space People were stuck in a bad joke. Just check their Myspace and see), and then the Pumpkins came out. We were so close, and it was amazing. The first two songs were new and unreleased, but they sounded wonderful. A return to an older and louder side (but not like Zeitgeist was). And then they began to play Starla, a Gish B-side that was released on Pisces Iscariot. Well, during the song (an amazing one at that, from a very long time ago, that, prior to this show they hadn't played for at least 10 years) some shaved head, muscle bound, testosterone pumped, drunken ass began belligerently shouting and shoving his way up to the front of the crowd. I could feel the crowd moving, people shouting at him, and his response laced with many Fuck you's to anyone near him. Eventually he shoved, elbowed, and nearly punched his way to Maria and I. Maria was standing in front of me, and somehow we maneuvered so that he didn't hit us, but we switched spots with this idiot (a horrible excuse for a human being), who began to yell in the faces of the people around him and drunkenly head bang. The security guards got up in his face until he calmed down, but our spot was gone. The guys next to him (who had been next to us) began to shove him and provoked him until he got violent and security pulled him from the crowd (justice). Of course, instead of being able to fill our front row spot, it was quickly filled by people rushing in. My jacket was nearly lost (I had left it hanging on the barrier), and I had to shout up to security for them to get it back to me. We spent the rest of the concert about 3 rows back, with Maria trying to stand on her tiptoes and me having to lean back and forth to see around heads. I tried not to dwell on the fact that the perfect front row spot had been pulled right out from underneath me, and instead focused on enjoying the rest of the show. But as you can see, I'm still dwelling on it. It would have been the best concert of my life. Luckily, it was still one of the best. I just can't believe how good the Smashing Pumpkins sound on this tour. I was a little disappointed when I saw them at the Fox when they were touring behind Zeitgeist. I thought that things were going to be downhill from there. This weekend's concert proved me quite wrong. And for the record, Mike, the drummer who replaced Jimmy, is one of the most amazing drummers I've ever seen. I thought Jimmy's absence would be to large to fill, but Mike (who's only 21!) has done just that. Anyway, before I overdo all the fan gushing, just know that this was the best Smashing Pumpkins concert I've ever been to and I no longer have any doubts about the quality of the band at this point.

And after that, it's time for bed. I could write much more (particularly about Fancy Space People, which just beg to be written about in hilarious ways), but it's late and time for sleep. Farewell.

My First Mixtape

2011-10-11T21:52:00.002-04:00

Click to Download -> Mixtape 1 - Upbeat Relaxed (28:36)

1) Secretary Song - The Go! Team
2) Where I'm Going - Cut Copy
3) Surprise Hotel - Fool's Gold
4) Honey Bunny - Girls
5) Neo Violence - The Tough Alliance
6) Seasun - Delorean
7) Polish Girl - Neon Indian

As you can see, I've made a mixtape. I've been listening to a lot of them recently (mostly from Gorilla vs. Bear), and I really love the idea of presenting a group of songs to people (as opposed to the old one track a day thing I used to have going). It's much more fun and it lets me cultivate a certain mood, if you will. I've always had a desire to be a DJ or to play music for people. I just love sharing music. Well, this is my newest idea for sharing music. I sincerely hope you download this mixtape and give it a listen. The thing about a mixtape is that there's effort that went into making it. I didn't just pick a song and upload it, I had to choose a select group of songs that I felt worked well together, then I had to decide on an order and stitch them all together. Sure, it's easier these days than it used to be (waiting for a song to come on the radio and hitting the record button, or dropping them onto a CD, burning it, and passing out to a friend), but there's still something about a mixtape that says "Look, I made something for you". I hope you enjoy this first offering. If I see that people are downloading, I'll make another, and another, and another, and hope for a giant mixtape snowball effect, until it veers wildly out of control and flattens some poor innocent skier.

Art Prize

2011-10-10T23:33:00.001-04:00

I've been listening to lots of R.E.M. since they broke up. I finally got into them beyond their 90's success. I think I soured a little on R.E.M. when I bought their album Monster. I didn't really like it, so I just stuck to the hits. Well, it turns out most R.E.M. fans don't even like Monster. I never bought another album, so I never realized how great their other albums actually are. I'm glad I know now. Anyway, here's my favorite R.E.M. song.

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It's been a few days, but things are continuing as normal. I'm still busy, but coming up with enough distractions to keep myself from going crazy from being in full work mode all the time. That does mean that I'm not getting my work done as fast as I would if it was the only thing I was doing, but I'm not burning out. When I grade too many papers in a row, I can feel the anxiety building inside my body. It's a horrible feeling and can only be alleviated by taking a break.

Maria and I went to Art Prize in Grand Rapids over the weekend. It was awesome and Maria has put up a post about it, which you can read at her blog. No need for me to cover all that when she's done a great job. I would say, though, that Grand Rapids is a wonderful city that I wouldn't mind visiting again. We had lots of delicious food (which is one of our favorite things) and just generally enjoyed walking around the city. Next year, we are going to try and go before the final voting, so that we can vote ourselves. The only disappointing thing about it was the winning piece of artwork (below).

It's made of glass and is quite large, but there was so many other great pieces of artwork to see and this one just didn't feel original. I mean, how many millions of times have you seen this exact image? I'm impressed by the technical skill of putting it together, but beyond that, I saw better pieces of art at Art Prize. It was interesting to think about the voting process and what types of art won. All of the winners were large pieces (one covered the entire side of a building), and impressive paintings or photographs really didn't stand a chance. My thought was that this had obvious religious pull when it came to voters. Just look at some of the art work in Maria's blog and compare. I'll put some of my favorites here as well so you can see what I'm talking about. Maybe I'm just a sucker for original ideas.

This was quite large, it covered a wall, (I didn't get a full picture because there were many people) and was made out of paper and ink stains.

This was one of my favorites as well. Also, quite large (taller than me).

I really liked the colors on this one. It was smaller than the above, but very detailed and intriguing.

I don't know why I liked this one so much. I just did.

Anyway, Maria has better pictures than I do.

Other than that, I need to be sleeping. I'll get on that.

I Would Love To Tear Something Asunder

2011-10-04T23:00:00.002-04:00

I've had this album on my computer for a few months, but hadn't listened to it because Lykke Li's last album, Youth Novels, was occasionally good and occasionally cloying to the ears (in a fairly pleasant way, if that's possible). But I just gave this one a spin last night and I'm enjoying it a lot more. Here's a video for the 2nd song on the album. I'm a fan of the song, and the video is OK, but don't expect the end to culminate in some huge event, because you'll be disappointed.

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Blogger has been making some crazy changes, so I'm still getting used to them. I'm trying out all of the new stuff just because it's new and therefore fun and interesting. Let me know what you think of the new template. Too futuristic space-time for you? Well, you can change the layout if you want. It won't bother me (too much).

So anyway, I just finished up making lunch for Maria and I (left over Miso soup, an apple, breakfast bars, and a napkin with a loving note signed "Love, Your Hubby" (that is in Maria's, not mine)), but before that I was working on the vocabulary packet for Beowulf, which my 11th graders are reading right now. I have to say, I enjoyed the vocabulary from Frankenstein, because it was filled with enormous and old words that just make you sound incredibly intelligent if you can speak them in a coherent sentence. Well, Beowulf went and topped that. It's filled with some of the best vocabulary I could dream of. Every word leads my mind off on an adventure. They just scream "This is an EPIC poem". I'll give you a taste, so that you can savor the glory that is Beowulf vocabulary:
Wrested
Dire
Jubilant
Nefariously
Haven
Whence
Scintillating
Unscathed
Hither
Vagrant
Assailed
Bane
Prowess
Din
Ire
Sate
Brandished
Harrowing
Sinews
Anon
Quaffed - a personal favorite
Pyre
Remnants
Magnanimous
Cuirass
Dolorous
Serpentine
Ardent
Ephemeral
Visage
Bastion
Beseeched
Asunder - another personal favorite. I would just love to tear something asunder.
Winsome
Cairn
Wane
Glaive

Don't you just simply feel invigorated after reading through that list? It makes me want to pick up my single tome version of Lord of the Rings and read it straight through tonight. It makes me want take a trip down to the Renaissance Festival this moment, in full medieval garb with a sword in my hand. Maybe this is just an English teacher thing? Or perhaps just a total nerd thing? I'm not sure, but I'm totally pumped about teaching this vocab.

Other than that, I'm treading water when it comes to school work, but I think I got my head a bit above the waves tonight. As long as this week remains fairly calm, I'll be fine. I've noticed Maria and I are staying up till 11 now, which is about an hour after I'd ideally like to go to sleep, but there just seems to be so much to do (especially when you factor in our need to watch Seinfeld episodes before we can sleep) and we can't seem to get in bed any earlier. I think my resolve to be in bed early is starting to wane (there's a vocab word! It gives me shivers). When I think about it, I'm dead tired when I wake up regardless of whether I get 8 ours of sleep or 7. Maria will be happier if our nights don't end so soon.

And on that note, realizing that it's getting to be 11, I'll bid you adieu and head to bed. I've got to convince Maria that we are not going to be kicked out of our bed by playful cats stepping on our heads while we try to sleep. I'll get up in the middle of the night and switch to the second bed, but I'm certainly not going to start out there. I'm not going to admit defeat before I even set foot in bed. Now, at 4 in the morning, when I'm completely zonked out, I don't mind giving into defeat as much. I wish we had a room other than our bedroom where we could keep their litter box. One day we'll have a house and the problem will be solved.

The True Cost Of A Cat

2011-09-29T20:16:00.000-04:00

First off, here's the trailer for the movie adaptation of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, my 2nd favorite book by my 2nd favorite author. The trailer, while seemingly staying true to the book, it doesn't seem to have the same feel (maybe it's that U2 song being cranked in the background?). Luckily, the director is legit, so I'm hoping for a great movie. Enjoy the trailer.

Apparently cats are not very expensive to buy ($30 for two), but they are extremely expensive when it comes to paying rent for them. Also, it's probably better to avoid telling your apartment complex that you have cats at all, because, honestly, how are they ever going to know? And if they do find out, what are they going to do, kick you out? Probably not. You'll probably just have to pay some money, which will likely not be as much as it costs to keep them for a few months before the office discovers your secret cat stash. It's $400 to keep our cats here, plus $40 a month. Not at all what we thought. We figured $200 for both and $15-20 per month. It's too bad we love them so damn much, because now would be a good time to send them back ;)

Today was the first meeting of The Mighty Pen Brigade, my creative writing group, and it went very well. I had a much larger turn out than previous years, with about ten students, and there should be more at the next meeting (as far as I've heard). I'm hoping they stick around (there's always a drop in numbers once play practice starts up) and I hope they are willing to do writing outside of school. If they do, we'll have a very positive year. I'm already getting excited for November and National Novel Writing Month. I might not be writing a new one this year, but I think we'll have a few students who succeed.

Other than that, Maria went to Alma today to visit Anna and I've been watching Breaking Bad and playing WoW. I'm updating before she gets home and then we will probably watch Modern Family on Hulu. Of course, this all got in the way of editing my novel. I'm not cracking down like I need to. I'm going to open it up and see how far I get until Maria gets back. Wish me luck.

It's Been So Long, My Friends

2011-09-28T23:00:00.000-04:00

We are a few weeks into the school year now. I'm not sure why, but it seems crazier than last year. I'm chalking it up to Reaching and Teaching work + two sections of a class I've never taught (which means lots of planning and preparing). I'm surviving and enjoying the classes themselves. It's the grading and prep work that's dragging me down. As a result, I've failed to post here for about a month. I apologize. I had such a good run this summer, but then the wedding hit, the honeymoon, camping, and finally school. It was just a lot in a quick time. So here I am, doing my annual (bi-annual even?) post about needing and promising (but not really promising) to post more. You can call this my semi-committed commitment to get on here occasionally and update. As always, don't expect much just yet. I'll see how this goes. I'm also going to try to edit my novel daily (I'm almost laughing at myself right now, because, yeah right).

In other news, married life during school is far superior to non-married life during school. Maria is always here and we are always looking forward to coming home and seeing each other. It's like the excitement we had on Fridays, but now it is every day. Big thumbs up to that. We are doing great, eating healthy (and from a very diverse range of foods), playing lots of Rock Band (both on expert guitars now), and putting our Seinfeld marathons on hold because Fall shows have finally started up (yay!). All's well at Casa Del Adams, as I so lovingly call our apartment (starting right now).

Then there are the newest editions to our home: Corgan and Basil.

Hello Kitty Kat: Corgan (foreground) and Basil (background. i.e. behind the books)

Maria asked to go to the humane society, which I knew would mean that we would end up with a cat. There was no way to avoid it. The decision was simple. If we go, we will get a cat. If we do not go, we will not get a cat. I put up a fight, but eventually I said we could go. And of course there were tons of amazingly adorable cats all over the place, complete with a room you could walk into and the cats would just come up to you and let you pet them. Those humane society people really know how to hook you. I managed to hold off an entire day before being forced to admit that I did, indeed, want a cat, the moment before we pulled into the parking lot for our second day of "just going to look". And then, lo and behold, the two cats we couldn't decide between were brothers, so of course that means you have to get both of them. I wasn't aware of this at first, but quickly learned. But it's all good because, I think our two cats are insanely awesome and I'm glad we didn't settle for just one (go big or go home, amiright?). They are roaming the apartment as I type this and doing adorable things like tipping over the bamboo plant and pour water all over the table (so cute!) and chasing each other. It's wonderful. I'll clean up bamboo water any day as long as I get to have a little kitty curl up on my lap while I watch TV.

There's more (there always is when I wait a month to post), but it's past bed time (No way! He's too hip and young to be in bed so early!). So I'm off to bed, until I am woken up by a cat stepping on my face and trying to lie across my forehead. Adorable!

A Relaxing Day

2011-08-14T23:48:00.000-04:00

Not much to report today. Yesterday was spent at my Dad and Diane's and today we drove home. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow, so we just sat around the house and I took some medicine. I spent most of the day reading or playing video games while watching Netflix. Maria busied herself with working on her portfolio, reading, and other things. I told her that it's going to take a while for me to get used to doing my own thing while we are both home. I constantly felt like we should be doing something together, but we both just wanted to relax after a long period of having stuff to do. Once both of our blogs are updated, however, we are going to join each other on the couch and start watching Trigun. That way we will have done at least one thing together before going to sleep. Of course, doing my own thing is different when Maria is here, because we can do our own things while talking to each other and seeing each other and laughing with each other, which in the end, makes doing my own thing infinitely better. It's wonderful that even during our independent relaxing time, we still get to be around each other. Before, the only time I would watch Netflix while playing video games would be while I was completely alone. Anytime we were together, we wouldn't be able to have that independent relaxing time. Now I can just plop on the couch and read without worrying about making Maria feel like I'm ignoring her. If she wants me, she just needs to come on over and talk. It's a whole new thing and very interesting to me. These are the fun things you get to discover while you are a newlywed.

Other than that, I finished reading Ender's Game today. It was a great read and I really enjoyed it. I'm finding my love for Sci-Fi novels again. While reading it, though, I couldn't help but notice the prevalence of telling instead of showing, when it comes to the writing. I think it's because I just finished Infinite Jest, which involves an impressive amount of showing. But still, the creative writer inside of me was slightly disappointed. However, I know that Sci-Fi novels tend to rely more heavily on their clever ideas and plots, and Ender's Game had plenty of that. And, anytime I started to think that there wasn't enough showing, the author dropped a good bit in to tide me over. Overall, I was very satisfied with the book, and I look forward to reading the sequels.

I know that I mentioned videos of our apartment in the last post, but I don't have them just yet. Be expecting them soon though.

As for the novel, it's late and I have a doctors appointment at 7, so I'll skip that for tonight.

Since I've Been Gone

2011-08-13T19:22:00.000-04:00

There has been a lot going on since I last updated. Sorry it's been so long. Maria and I have been very busy. Of course, we did go camping for a week, so at least that was relaxing.

Camping was, of course, amazing. It's so wonderful because you leave everything behind. All chores and obligations are gone. Those little things that seem to endlessly crop up, requiring attention and time, just magically vanish. Instead, you are left with a week of absolutely nothing when it comes to things you are required to do. It's like shedding your skin, everything just falls off. While I wanted to spend most of camping free time working on my novel, I found that it wasn't as easy as I would have liked. First off, when you are camping, you get very dirty. It's inevitable. Call me crazy, but I don't want to get my brand new computer all covered in dirt and grime. That tended to keep the laptop in its case. Secondly, while there is lots of free time to just do whatever (sitting around the fire was the most predominate activity), it's not easy to just block out everything and be completely uninterrupted. If I were to get the laptop out and then someone wanted to go swimming, I'd have to put it all away. Now, a book is much easier to put away. If I'm reading, and someone says, "Let's play Blockus [the sweet game Maria and I play]", I can easily put the book down. All it requires is a book mark. Books are also much more resistant to dirt. All of this is to say that I only wrote for one night (although I did finish one of the character's stories) and read instead. I wouldn't necessarily deem this as a bad thing though, because I was able to finish Infinite Jest before the week was over. That was a monumental task, one that required near constant reading, with occasional breaks for eating, canoeing, swimming, conversing with others (so that I don't seem like a rude son-in-law/brother-in-law/husband), and sleeping, but was eventually achieved the day before we left. My mind was nearly reeling after finishing, simply because I had not had a break from reading for so long. As I've mentioned before, Infinite Jest is a difficult read, and you can't really read it leisurely. Instead, you have to focus and concentrate quite heavily. This is not to say that it is unenjoyable, because it certainly is a fun, funny, and deeply interesting read. It just means that it's somewhat exhausting to try and read some 500 pages of it in a few days. Everyone kept making fun of me because it looked like I was reading so slow, so I constantly was opening the book up to show them that it is all single spaced, small font, and very little white space. Heck, there's hardly paragraphs half the time. So, when I was finally finished, I felt very accomplished and impressed with myself (you should be to).

Now, when it comes to the ending, I'm not going to ruin it, but I am going to talk about it. With a title like Infinite Jest, you had to expect that the ending was going to be different. I did expect this. Long before I finished, I wondered if the ending would simply not end, or if it would make any sense, because I expected that to be the joke. I can say that the book does end, in that there are no more words to read, and that it ends in the sense that the story stops, but to call it a complete ending would be incorrect. I'm not sure how many of you have/will read it, but if you don't want to know any more, just skip to the next paragraph. Essentially the book builds up to a crazy conclusion that never appears. Characters and events are set in motion so that you can almost visualize the climactic ending before it event happens, which is perhaps why Wallace didn't write it. So much time was spent leading up to this encounter, that you already knew it was going to happen and you could figure out what would happen during it. Instead of detailing all of that, he stops the story right before that climax occurs, and you are left to wonder what the hell happened. The first chapter of the novel takes place, chronologically, after the final events occur, so I reread the first few pages to see if it would explain things. That only served to leave me with more questions. Now, because I had expected something like this to happen, assuming that Wallace was going to pull my leg, I wasn't all that disappointed. Also, the book is so enjoyable and rewarding as you read, that I didn't necessarily feel cheated when I got to the end. Of course, that didn't stop me from trying to get online through my phone (with very spotty internet that kept switching to roaming every minute or so, thus preventing me from using the internet) and start Googling "The ending of Infinite Jest". I read just a few bits and pieces before I got sick of the internet connection. I've yet to get online at home and read it about when the internet is much more solid.

Anyway, camping was wonderful and I didn't want to come back, but of course we had to at some point. Maria and I had to get back because that Monday we were going to begin moving. Also, at one point we went to Oswald's Bear Ranch, which was pretty insane. We had our picture taken with a bear cub and I took lots of pictures of one of the workers feeding the bears:

Once we got back, it was moving time. Moving is honestly the most exhausting thing I've ever done. Maria will agree with me. It took us four days to get everything out of my place and her place and into our new apartment. We lifted untold numbers of boxes and furniture and had to drive back and forth from Midland to Lansing (and even a stop in Brighton to get her parents van). Eventually we finished, but then we had to organize and set up everything, which was a monumental task in and of itself. That took another two days, so essentially the entire week was spent moving and setting up our apartment. There are still a few things we have to hang up, but we are mostly done now. Here's a picture of just a small amount of the mess we had on our hands. This is only half of the stuff that ended up in the living room.

And here's one of the wall near the television, which has become my poster wall. Eventually, there will be posters completely covering it.

Now, we are both very tired and need to just relax. We've driven up to my Dad and Diane's summer place in Traverse City for the day, and then we are headed back to the apartment so I can get prepped for my doctor's appointment. We are hopefully going to figure out what's causing my stomach problems and get it taken care of. I'm crossing my fingers.

In the next post, expect two videos. One of our place before we got moved in and one showing off everything now that it's finished. There are a few things I skipped over, such as Maria's fall from my Dad's car which resulted in a sprained ankle (I'd tell you all about it, but I don't want to embarrass her too much), but this is the gist of my absence.

Now, when it comes to the novel, I've got to crack down and finish this week. Here's another bit for you to enjoy.

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[The Woman Who Witnessed Death Upon Death]

After the boy stopped the high pitched squeal from ringing around in my head like chimes from hell, I looked ahead and there were two headlights coming at us rather quickly, which was worrisome because it wasn't possible to drive all that fast with the water being so high, unless you wanted to clog the engine up with water and stall out, something we certainly did not want to do, and I was frankly quite impressed that the old man had made it this far into the city at all without his car completely seizing up and dying on him, but I guess the water was much lower than it had been right after the Light, and some of the streets had less water than others, but whatever the case was, these headlights were coming at us and I hadn't seen any other cars driving through the city, which made me think that it was either some of the psychos running around and destroying everything, or someone with a death wish trying to ram right into us, so I tried to ignore the kid shouting and threw us into reverse.

Of course, this wasn't the most successful idea, seeing as how we were moving even slower now and still losing ground between us and the lights coming our way, but I had no other idea what to do, so I steered backwards, while looking ahead occasionally out of some morbid need to see my death approaching, which is when I realized that the lights were spread out just a bit too far and that they were a ways above the water, which meant that once they got to us we would certainly be dead and frozen in the car.

That's not a car I said in a strangely calm voice that in no way represented the terror I had building inside like an angry storm, so I pressed the brake to the floor, shifted into park, and yelled Get out of the car! while I nearly fell out of the door and yanked the backseat open to help the man and his wife out, and the boy came around to our side as well and his face was ashen.

The man was out of the car quick and he turned to pull his wife, but the lights were so close that I could again feel the chills up and down my exposed arms and their glow lit up the spot around our car like we were fugitives caught in the spotlight of a helicopter, and I knew we were not going to be able to run, because the water was too deep and the older man would be carrying his wife, and of course the boy seemed about ready to faint right there from exhaustion and fright, and I collapsed down to my knees and took his hands in mine, pulling him in close to me so that I was holding him like I was his mother and he gripped at the sides of my white coat, and the man pulled his wife into a sitting position and wrapped his arms around her from behind, as he had done before in the bookstore, and he whispered something into her ear that I could not hear, but just the sight of it brought me to tears because they loved each other until the moment they died., and the glowing lights eclipsed the headlights of the car and I could feel the tears on my cheeks begin to solidify in the unearthly cold.

We all died in the Light and then were born again, a phenomenon that I cannot begin to understand or explain, but one that stripped me of all confidence and ability, so that I scurried away to hide myself from the people I was sworn to help, but what was the purpose of it all, why were our hearts stopped and restarted at all?

If this was what it all was coming to, why had the Light returned us to life, when it could have just as easily taken us then, in a moment of sheer wonder and warmth, an out of body experience that eclipsed all events that life had thus far presented us with?

Somehow I had remembered that I was still alive and still able to do something to help, but I would never be able to do that, because I would never return the boy to his mother, and I would never bring back this man's wife from her deep sleep, and I wanted to scream and shout and pull at my hair, to curse and shake my fists and writhe on the ground in bitter agony, because I was powerless and inconsequential.

Our hope was gone and we were faced with the end of our lives, the final sentence of our story, a blank page with nothing more written.

And then the glowing lights, with their unmistakable cold hunger, stopped in mid air, as if they were taking a moment to size up their kill, like a hunter hesitating but a second before releasing the arrow, which gave me enough time to cover the boy's face so that he would not see the old man and woman die there in the wet street before his own life was taken, but there was no need, because I felt my body sway back and forth, as if I was underwater and feeling the back and forth of the waves, a sensation that seemed to connect with every wire in my body, every nerve giving in to the movement and complying with its orders, and as quickly as the lights had run us down, they floated a few more feet into the air, just above the hood of the car, and then zipped through the air like frenzied insects towards the center of the city.

I released the boy, but he continued to cling to me, and I tried to stand up so that I was forced to lift him in my arms, boosting him up over my shoulder to shift some of his weight out of my arms, and the old man and his wife were still very much alive, which was quite obvious because the wife's eyes were wide open and she was pointing again, this time in the direction the lights had gone, and she was almost chanting I can feel the Light. I can feel the Light in an eerie voice that made me question whether or not I should be helping them or leaving them alone in the reflected glow of the headlights off the water.

But the man looked at me with a pain on his face, as if he had just been kicked in the stomach, because his wife was awake again, but she was not yet back to him, still completely absorbed by the Light and paying little attention to him, something that I knew was breaking his heart, seeing the woman he loved and spent most of his life with unable to acknowledge his presence, unable to respond to his questions or to hold on when he pulls her close to him, and in his eyes he was asking for help from me, even though I knew I could provide none at all, the woman was not suffering from anything that could be cured with medicine or surgery, and again I felt small and inconsequential like the moment I realized we had died in the Light, the feeling that something much larger than myself had come along and simply erased me from existence and then created me again, as if this act was the easiest in the world, simpler than walking or speaking or seeing, and what was I compared to that?

I could not retreat to an uncomfortable bed in a small locked room, so I forced myself to be the person he needed, allowed myself to be a doctor, or at least some sort of comforter, as if I were now a hospice nurse for this poor woman, who in all reality seemed dead to the world around her, unaware of everything but the Light, and if I was able to lift this small boy and rub my hand against his back to stop him from crying, then I could attempt to help the man and his wife, and I would not think about my powerlessness and the deep feeling, like the pangs of a cavity, that there was no hope left for us and this night would last forever, so I thought of solutions to our problem, but there seemed to be none because what could we do but continue driving in this car looking for something that might not exist, some sort of answer to our problems, but truly there might only be more darkness and psychos with torches and people hiding in their homes because the streets are drenched and cold, and I tried to hold on to the hope that, if we looked long enough, we would find something, whatever that may be, and so I climbed back in the drivers seat, leaning over to sit the boy down in his seat, as he still clung to me and took a few moments before letting go and buckling himself in, upon which he immediately leaned forward and began to turn up the radio, but again found nothing but a soft static hum, while the older man situated himself and his wife in the backseat again, her head on his lap and looking up into his eyes while she continued her chant in a low hum.

With no hints as to where I should go, I gave in to the woman's suggestion, if it could be called such a thing, and turned the car around to follow in the direction she was pointing, wondering how wise that decision was, but holding out the hope that perhaps she knew something we did not, and as I began to slowly accelerate I was rocked back and forth again like the moment the glowing lights spared us, and it felt as if the air around us had suddenly compressed and then released in a gentle but powerful burst, which was immediately followed by another high pitched whine from the stereo, much quieter this time, but nonetheless unsettling, and above our heads in the empty sky I could see two bright dots flying past us and straight away into the night and towards the middle of the city while the stereo noise faded away into static, which seemed to me a sure sign that there was some sort of event occurring there, and that the woman truly was tuned in to a wavelength beyond what we could hear or understand.

So we drove on through the water and let our headlights come to rest upon empty cars and shadowy awnings that jutted out of buildings like dead fingers, the boy in his seat, occasionally turning the radio station from one static bath to the next as a way to occupy himself and presumably to distract from thoughts of his parents, whom I knew he missed dearly, the husband and wife in the backseat staying relatively quiet, the wife's muttering barely rising above the noise of the radio and the constant rush of water around our tires, like the tide being pulled away, all of us hoping to find a different resolution at the end of our drive.

I Want To Read A Bunch Of Sci-Fi Books

2011-07-28T22:59:00.000-04:00

Have I mentioned I love my new background? It's on my laptop as well. I keep staring at it. I've already asked Maria to paint me a replica of it, but I'm not sure I can convince her to. I want it in giant poster size on my wall. If you read the last post, I mentioned that it is the cover of a book called The Godwhale. It's an old Sci Fi book from '74. Well, last night I searched for copies online and purchased a copy that is supposedly "near new" in condition. It will be mine after I get back from camping. I don't know if I'm going to read it or just marvel at the cover. Actually, I'll read it, but I know whatever is inside can't be as good as the outside.

Anyway, today we dealt with having no idea whether or not we needed to be moving Maria out of her apartment by tomorrow. Her landlord was supposed to call her, but he never did. Maria called him a few times, but only got his voice mail. He is not very good at getting things done or taken care of in a reasonable amount of time. Anyway, she was stressed all day because we needed to know and he just wasn't getting a hold of us. Eventually she was able to get through and sort things out. We don't need to move out tomorrow, but we do have to make sure that everything is packed so that the moment we get back from camping in the U.P. next week, we are all ready to move out. So, we still have a lot of work to do. That was a nice stress reliever though.

Other than that, we finished Thank You cards and went out to eat at Olive Garden, which was delicious as usual. Then we made our way to Schuler Books and spent a very long time there. I went to the Science Fiction section and perused for books by classic authors. I nearly bought Ringworld, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, and Ender's Game, but Maria reminded me that I'm still only half-way through Infinite Jest. Also, I am getting The Godwhale soon, so I'll have that to read. Not to mention the 30-40 books I have waiting around that I have yet to read as well. Still, holding those new books in my hands, I just couldn't wait to read them. I ended up leaving with a $3.00 used hardcover copy of Micheal Crichton's Airframe, simply because it was so cheap and I know I'll read it eventually and love it.

When we got back, we watched a bunch of episodes of Trigun, because we both love it and we just want to keep watching straight through. Now, I'm updating and getting ready to write in the novel for the first time in a little while. Let's see how it goes. I'm right at the end, and I need to finish. My plan for camping is to edit non-stop, except for when I'm swimming in Lake Superior or eating. Hopefully I can get tons done. We'll see.

Here's another section of the novel. If you're following along, you're getting so close to the end.

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[The Woman Who Saw Him Step Through Air]

filling the sky with trails of orange glow from the burning edges of loose paper twisting upwards into the black canopy and sprinkling words throughout the air, a thought that seemed somehow magical to me, as if the stories contained inside all of these books were being sucked into lungs and exhaled through mouths from one person to the next, as if I could read each one with a simple breath, and I stood there watching the fire for an untold amount of time, the minutes slipping past while the hungry fires browsed each book, angrily opening each cover and flipping the pages, studying each and ever sentence with an insatiable eye,

while the heat of this process washed over me and teased my skin with thoughts of an escape from the cold darkness above, which was being filled with those looping orange fliers, like lightning bugs swooping overhead or light falling on ruby earrings dangling among flowing black hair, and in that moment the sky did not seem as empty or harsh—I did not fear the weight of it upon my shoulders or the struggle of my eyes to pierce through its veil—so that I was far less afraid than I had been since the Light, and I was able to think without the distorting effects of fear, to recall moments of happiness—my daughter's first dance recital where she stopped in the middle of the routine, a common occurrence among four year olds, to shout Hi mommy! and wave her tiny hands at my seat in the audience—and to think about life after the darkness would be chased away, to see my husband again, his face radiant and beaming with relief and joy, to reach my hands underneath his arms and lock them together behind his back, pulling his chest in close to my face so that I can feel his soft cotton shirt and hear the beating of his heart, and I would not let go of him until we were in bed together and laughing and touching and making love as if there would never be another chance, because the last time—before the Light—we had not imagined that we might never kiss each other again or run our fingers through the others hair, or tickle the undersides of each others arms while tossing beneath our purple sheets, and I forgot for a moment that I had nearly died like those books being ravaged by the flames or at the hands of a woman whose mind had been washed out by the Light, or that I had risked being frozen to death, and instead I wondered what had happened to the man who had stepped through the air, because somehow I knew that he was the hope we needed, that somehow, though he was not able to return my daughter to me, he would bring light to this endless night, and that he was at the center of everything—something I had known since watching the Light burst forth from an emptiness in the air and seeing him appear there—and that if this nightmare were ever to end, it would be by his hand, and afterward everything would return to normal, or at least I hoped this to be true, that the water would stream back up into the sky and the lights of the city would spark up again, that those who were overwhelmed by the Light would regain their senses, would brush off their confusion like a thick layer of dust on a book cover and return to us with eyes filled with sadness at all they had done, and I hoped for a new beginning for everyone within the city, for the realization that everything they had could be taken away and that everyone they loved might be gone soon, for the knowledge that we are temporary and that at any moment our life could be shattered by something beyond us, something outside of our control, a moment so small and simple that expands into something greater than our hands can lift, something that pins us down beneath its enormous weight and has its way with us, for a new appreciation of our husbands and neighbors, our parents and siblings, for our sons and daughters, because they are not permanent and we are not permanent and disaster comes without warning, but the moment passed and I was again merely watching a bookstore burn and there was no end to the night, so I traced the path of a smoldering page through the air and as I leaned my head back to take in its flight, I saw above me a glowing light pass over the rooftops followed by another and another—they appeared and disappeared before I had the notion to hide—and I traced the path of another down the street and moving in the same direction as those before it, and, having no other course of action besides waiting here until all of the books were ash and the rest of the building went up in flames, I decided to follow, picking the nearest street that seemed to follow after them and rushing to keep up—despite the ache of my legs, begging me to find a place to rest and threatening to collapse beneath me—for as long as I could manage before being forced to walk again, the water still being deep enough and the glow from burning trashcans dim enough to make travel difficult, until eventually I came to an opening between the buildings that seemed to be as bright as midday

A Schizophrenic French Canadian Pushed Me Into A Fountain On My Honeymoon

2011-07-27T23:23:00.000-04:00

There's something to say about a catchy title. I'll get to that part later.

So Maria and I are now married and I have to say it is the most wonderful thing I have ever experienced. We just feel different about each other suddenly. I tried to explain to her that it was like a fantasy novel where two characters are somehow bound to each other by deep magic. I don't think she got what I was talking about. Either way, we can't be happier.

The wedding was absolutely perfect. I can't imagine a better one (maybe I'm biased). Before the event, I wondered how everything could possibly work out. I mean, there were so many different people organizing so many different events, there was bound to be speed bumps and potholes. But amazingly, there wasn't a problem at all (unless you count the train during my vows, which obviously missed the memo about our wedding). Everything, from photos to the ceremony to the reception, and of course the dancing, went off without a hitch and I was gloriously out of my mind with happiness the whole way through. I'm so glad that our friends and family could make it to celebrate with us. It was so exciting to be the center of everyone's attention, and I know the night was even better because of all the people there who love us. We couldn't have asked for better guests, and I'm particularly glad that everyone danced so much! That was my biggest hope. If I could have changed one thing, I would have asked our DJ to play all of my songs at the end, but I felt like that would be rude (I know I know, it was my wedding. It wouldn't have been a problem at all. But I'm funny that way. I just can't help it). Anyway, the music was still great and everyone kept dancing, so I can't complain much at all. That was my own fault for not saying anything. And we certainly had fun!

The Sunday after the wedding we left for Montreal and we stayed the night in Toronto. That was an interesting night. We found our hotel on TripAdvisor.com and it had a decent rating. Well, when we showed up, it was on a college campus that was completely empty. The parking lot was extremely small and blocked off with a gate. There was a sign that said "Residence Hall" so we thought we had stumbled onto the dorms. However, upon entering, it had a standard hotel front desk. They checked us in, but all along the walls there were cork boards covered with posters you might find in a dorm. Still, the rooms certainly were hotel rooms (and ours smelled faintly of body odor). We couldn't decide if it was a dorm set inside a hotel, an actual hotel, or perhaps a student run hotel for anyone majoring in hospitality.

The next day we drove to Montreal. We stayed at a little bed in breakfast called A La Carte. It was incredibly cozy (they had the most comfortable bed I've ever slept on) and the owners were extremely friendly. On the first day, Petra, one of the owners, sat down with us and a map of the city and highlighted all the best places, stores, and sights. Daniel, the other owner, made us delicious breakfast every morning and would sit and talk to us about the adventures of our previous day. They were both excellent hosts, and we would love to go back for an anniversary someday. They also had an adorable dog named Monsieur Petit, who clearly had received too many scraps from the breakfast table before we arrived. He would jump up and down so that you could see his head bobbing up and down above the table cloth.

During our six nights and seven days there, we covered an incredible amount of the city and did an impressive number of things. We visited the botanical gardens (the second largest in the world), went to a concert at a nice little bar (and missed the two bands I knew, Twin Sister and Real Estate, because the bus and Metro stopped at midnight), browsed a lot of record stores, ate and ate and ate and ate, saw Cirque Du Solei (which essentially blew my mind. There were these women on 10 foot tall unicycles moving in time with the music and tossing silver bowls with their feet only to catch them on their heads. My description fails to convey everything. There were also one guy who balanced a 30 foot tall metal pole on his head, while walking up another pole balanced between two guys' shoulders, and at the top of the pole was another man standing on his head without using his hands. Here's a picture that is almost like it. And there was this guy), explored the old downtown and underground city, and, yes, I was pushed into a fountain by a schizophrenic French Canadian man.

So, about getting pushed into the fountain. Maria and I were completely dying of heat exhaustion. We found a nice fountain in a park where people were sitting on the edge and dangling their feet in (and two older men were swimming despite the sign that clearly forbid it), so we decided it would be nice to dip our feet in as well. We sat on the edge of the water and cooled off with our feet submerged. After a while, we took our feet out and sat on the edge of the fountain so that our feet could dry (I didn't want my wet feet running my socks). Well, as we were sitting there, apparently Maria saw some guy kind of harassing this woman and her daughter. They were put off by him and proceeded to leave the fountain. I didn't see this because my back was turned. The man started to walk our way, and we he passed by us, Maria breathed a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, that was when I saw him. He was walking by, but then he turned around and said something in French. I couldn't tell if he was looking at me, and so I assumed he wasn't, because I had no idea who he was, so why would he be talking to me. I looked away for a moment, but he kept talking, so I looked back, and lo and behold, he was approaching me. He seemed to be in a jovial mood and was somewhat laughing, so I decided to smile back. That is, until he placed his hands on my shoulders, continued to speak in French, shook me, and leaned into me until I found myself falling into the fountain, where my clothes promptly soaked themselves, and my $200 Droid X screamed for help from my pocket. I stood up immediately, pulled my phone from my pocket, and trying to sound politely upset, explained that my phone was in my pocket and it was now soaking wet. I doubted it was going to work. Then he began to speak English, and I almost wish he had just stuck with the French. He told me that he had the money in his pocket to pay for the phone right then, but that if I let him explain something, I wouldn't need the money. Of course, I wondered "What the hell could you possibly tell me that would make me reconsider the offer that you will pay for my obviously broken phone". Little did I know, he would be right. Now, mind you, this guy was a lot bigger than I am. If you gave him a baseball bat, he would look like this. He began to tell me that 1) You can't plant a garden in America because nothing grows there. But you can buy gold. 2) If we were to move to where he lives, there would be a lot of Satan worshipers, but we would be safer. 3) Humans are evolving either into reptiles or from reptiles. He wasn't clear on either point. 4) Other insane nonsense babble that I have since forgot, but certainly had little to do with either A) Why he had just pushed me, a complete stranger, into a fountain or B) Why all of this was going to make me forget about my soaked phone. Of course, the sum effect of this speech was my complete desire for him to get the hell away as quick as possible, even if this meant I would not receive $200 from him, which of course I did not. Instead, he left, and we watched him start to talk crazy to someone else about 20 feet away before leaving altogether. Frankly, we were glad we were still alive. So, I went to stand in the sun for a few minutes while I literally twisted up my shirt until all the water dripped out of it. I had to walk around Montreal for the rest of the day in soaking wet clothes. Lots of fun. Luckily, that was the only negative experience we had, and obviously it is hilarious in retrospect. Here's a video of my reaction after he walked away:

Now we are back and we have started to pack up Maria's apartment. We want to get her out of here before the 1st, because then we won't have to pay her last months rent. At least that's what her landlord has alluded to, although now they seem to be trying to get her to stay longer so that she has to pay more. Jerks. We have an apartment that we will move into as early as the 5th of August or as late as the 12th. Also, Maria officially has a job now! On Friday we are headed to that charter school academy in Bay City for her to sign some paper work. We are so lucky that she found a job (although there was no luck involved in actually getting it. She's clearly the best person for the job). It looks like everything is falling into place. We are going camping next week in the UP and then we are moving. After that, there are precious few days left before school starts. I'm already getting back in school mode, since I spent today at Reaching and Teaching trying to figure out what they heck we are going to do now that our data person is gone. She did so much data work for us, but we are currently unsure of where it is and how we can use it. We'll figure it out though.

On the writing front. I haven't done any since getting back from the honeymoon (it has only been a few days), but I am taking the laptop with me while camping and I intend to, not only finish the novel, but begin a lot of editing. My dream is to have it publishable by the end of summer. I have no idea if that's possible (I'm starting to think it is not), but I'm going to try it anyway.

I'd include some of the novel here, but I've been writing this for far too long and I need to stop. You can expect some more updates soon, but then they will likely stop again when I am camping. Sorry.

Also, I hope you like the new background. I just went on a classic Science Fiction book cover spree, downloading as many as I could find in nice high resolution. I've filled them away and cropped off their titles so that I'm left with just the artwork. I think they make amazing backgrounds. This one is from a book called The Godwhale.

Wedding Fever + [The Man Who Was Blessed]

2011-07-12T23:43:00.001-04:00

So close!

-----

Essentially for me, the wedding starts tomorrow. Let me explain. Tomorrow night is my bachelor party (which will consist of video games, a bar, cranberries, my apartment, more video games. Very crazy, right?) and it's straight wedding from then on. Wednesday night = Bachelor party. Thursday = Rehearsal and dinner. Friday = Wedding! Maria and I are so excited and we keep talking about how unbelievable it is that we are just a few days away. Honestly, I can't wait until Friday. I've got wedding fever. I want it to be here now, but I guess I'll have to wait a little bit longer.

We started writing our vows last night and it was awesome. We are planning on each doing our own, but we'll make them somewhat similar. At this point, I'm thrilled about mine and can't wait to make them for real. Maria's are wonderful as well and we are both going to tinker with them a little bit tonight. Then we are e-mailing them to *Pastor George, and we are all set.

*Pastor Meckes' mother passed away this week, and because he has been in Arizona and will be doing her funeral on Saturday or Sunday (I can't remember which), he won't be officiating for us. We feel very sorry for him and have been praying for his family in this rough time. It's one of those situations where you understand why things can't be the way you want them. We aren't upset at all, even though we were planning on Pastor Meckes doing the ceremony and met with him multiple times before hand for our pre-marriage meetings. We are just glad that Pastor George (Faith's other pastor) was able to step in and take over. We like him as well, and it will still feel like we are being married by someone we are familiar with.

Maria has been doing a wonderful job of getting everything planned out for the wedding. Her schedule is very impressive and I think I'll be able to follow it without any problems. She even went through and highlighted the most important parts for me (I can't tell if she thinks I'm incompetent, or if she just wanted to make everything perfectly clear). It's good, because now I won't mess anything up. Although, I feel like I'm a very on the ball groom (for the most part) and have been helping out all along. Heck, maybe I'll toss the schedule just to prove how much I've been paying attention... Maria, if you are reading this, I'm just joking (or am I?).

So, in summation, I'm incredibly excited for the wedding, so much that I sometimes find myself bouncing up and down (particularly when Maria and I are driving somewhere), and I keep telling everyone that I'm not nervous or worried at all, which is completely true. I honestly just can't wait for Maria to be my wife. It will be the best moment of my life.

We are basically all set for our new apartment at Robin Oaks. We just need them to call Maria's landlord and then it's a go. They are going to put our name on a mid level apartment, hopefully, so that we won't have a garden level. We don't want that because the windows are smaller and you can see people walking by. Also, they have a little less space. We're crossing our fingers so that this all gets taken care of soon and we can move in about mid August.

In other news, I've been writing pretty much every night, but I think tonight, tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday, I will be taking the day off. It's just getting a little too busy to sit down and write. While I'm not exactly happy about skipping those days, it's just something that I'll have to accept. I'm writing the last section for each character simultaneously right now. Anytime I get stuck with one character, I jump to the next, so that they are all on their last page, and I will probably finish each one of them within 10 minutes of each other. I really think that is the best way to finish writing it. I've got the ideas for how each one will end, now I'm just trying to write them in the most exciting/beautiful way I can. I want the endings to feel like endings, they have to be more interesting and provide some closure. I've been in "non-closure" mode so long, that I'm finding it challenging.

So, here's some more of the novel.

-----

[The Man Who Was Blessed]

I felt as if I were being pulled apart, me flesh pinched and tugged, a hand clutching my hair. Everywhere I looked there was the glow of pain or need or despair, softly throbbing like a blood vessel ready to burst. I could see it all somehow. The buildings were filled with frightened people hiding behind their doors, waiting for any sound in the hallway or the flicker of lights turning back on. In the streets marched those whose minds had been consumed by the Light. They were quite bright, their suffering shining through buildings and flaring up periodically. I no longer saw the boy as vividly, but there were so many more to help. I could not keep them all in my head. My eyes strained to sort through each one, unable to shove them aside in order to see the streets in front of me. The urge to release the flames inside was pulsing and beating like the drums of madness. The streets were emptying of water so that I was able to wander with ease, but I was like a drunken man stumbling through the night. I tried to reach out for those most in need. There was a flare upon a rooftop and I leapt through the air. He was falling and I wrapped my arms tight around him. Then we were again on the ground. He looked up to thank me, but I felt the gaze upon me, so I departed.

What I had done was too much. I had tried to fix what was beyond me. Cuts and broken limbs were one thing, but the boy's wounds were far deeper and infinitely more complex. I did not understand all that I was able to do, but I had done it regardless. Was I reckless or simply ignorant? I found myself staring out at an open expanse between buildings. They came to form a square, in which I was the center. I was the center of everything, but I wanted to deny this. I wanted to wash my hands of the Light and the pain. The sky was blackened, but I was still able to see, while those around me stumbled through the dark. I spun to see all around me. In each direction there was a light searching for me. I could feel them sniffing about, bloodhounds in the night and on the trail. They were moving in ever closing circles around me, sharks waiting out their prey. It would end soon. They would close around me, and what would happen then, I was unsure. They had come for me, the glowing lights. I had drawn their attention. How I knew this, I am unable to say, except that I felt it so strongly, like the anticipation one feels before speaking in front of a crowd. It settled in my gut and festered so that I could not ignore it, the feeling that I had brought this upon everyone.

I stood in the middle of the square and felt the movements of each ball of light. They floated slowly around, having exhausted themselves in transit. A few of them stumbled upon people, but they fled, leaving the lights searching endlessly. I had left the hospital because of the danger I presented. I was the hunted. Wherever I tread, the lights would follow. They would find my footsteps. They would smell my scent. The prints of my fingers were on everyone I had met. I had left the hospital because I could not let them follow me there. The boy would be saved if I left. The doctor would be spared. These thoughts made their arguments and pleaded for my belief, but I remained skeptical of such statements. There was only one reason for my flight. One thing that caused me to abandon the young boy and doctor, to take with me their light and power, to leave the hospital helpless in the dark. I was afraid.

More Wedding Work + [The Lost Son]

2011-07-08T00:24:00.000-04:00

I've been doing wedding music all day and had to give you another taste of it. This is one you should be familiar with.

-----

Basically, we woke up and started doing stuff for the wedding. I was on the laptop until about 4:30 getting music downloaded and organized. Maria did a whole bunch of stuff, such as the wedding toppers (which I haven't looked at yet because I don't want to see what her dress looks like, even in simplified doll form), and spent a lot of time making up a two day schedule for the Rehearsal Day and the Wedding Day.

We made a delicious lunch of Wild Mushroom Tacos which was probably the easiest lunch we've made, but also one of the best. Then we got back to work on wedding things. Eventually we finished up and I placed all the music on a flash drive to take to Ed, our DJ. We went for a run, then we took the flash drive out to Ed's place and left it in his mailbox. It was late when we went out, so Maria sent him a text warning that we would be showing up and driving slowly in front of his house, because we didn't want to be too creepy. So we left the flash drive and that was all taken care of. Then we came back and had macaroni and cheese with wild rice for dinner (missing some protein, but oh well), and now Maria is playing the new Professor Layton game and I'm updating and then I'm writing.

Tomorrow, I've convinced Maria to go see Super 8 in the morning, which I'm really excited about. I still have no clue what it is about, outside of some kids making a super 8 film in the 80s which is then interrupted by...something. I'm glad the previews didn't give anything away and that the movie stayed shrouded in mystery. Who isn't sick of previews giving everything away? We aren't dumb, Hollywood, we don't need everything about a movie spelled out for us before we go and see it. Sometimes people like to be surprised and to not know what is coming next. That's the idea behind my novel. If you knew everything that was happening, it would be boring.

After that, we are headed back to her parents for more relaxing. It will be nice and I can't wait to swim some more. Also, we get to watch George Lopez and Everybody Hates Chris on Nick at Night, which is something of a tradition.

Here's some more writing. You are getting closer and closer to the end, while I'm writing less and less each day as we get closer to the wedding. I can't stop writing all together though, because if I stop now, it will be another month before I start up again, what with the wedding, honeymoon, and moving all coming up.

-----

[The Lost Son]

The fire sounded really loud, which I thought was weird because I never thought about fires making noise. It kept crackling, especially the balcony railing. And I kept backing up until I was at the top of the stairs, with the doctor still spraying around the fire and the older man and his wife still really close. But not too close, because they didn't want to catch on fire. I stood at the top of the stairs, and I wanted to go down them, but it was still really dark and I was kind of scared, even though I tried not to be. But there could be that light thing or even some of those crazy people that we saw at the hospital. And I really didn't want to see them. The doctor was starting to back away from the fire and she went over to the man and pulled on his shoulder. And I heard her say We have to get out of here! But he didn't move. So she shouted This whole place is going to burn down! And she put her face right in front of his and shook him back and forth like he was a rag doll. He stopped staring at the fire, which was so big that the railing was all on fire and the carpet was on fire too.

It was starting to reach up to the ceiling and if they didn't come soon, they might not be able to get to the stairs with me. Because the fire extinguisher was too close to the fire for the doctor to get it anymore. And I was worried, because if they couldn't get to me I would be all alone and I would have to go down those stairs by myself, which would be really scarey. So I shouted out Please get up! Please get up! Please get up! as loud as I could. Which I thought was really loud. And the man looked over at me and then he looked down at his wife, who was still asleep. And the doctor said something to him, but I couldn't hear it anymore. And then she was helping him up and they were carrying his wife together. But she didn't have any shoes or socks or pants because the fire got to them. And then we were climbing down the stairs.

I looked back at the balcony and it was all on fire underneath it too, which was really cool. But really scarey too because we had been standing there just a little bit ago. And then when we got to the bottom of the stairs there was a really loud crashing noise and the balcony had fallen down into the water. The fire was all over and on the ceiling too. And a bunch of pages from books were floating in the air while we hurried out of the store and back to the car. The older man and the doctor carefully laid the wife in the back seat of the car. But the man climbed in with her and he placed his hand on her arm and on her forehead and he said She's still cold. She still so cold. And I could see that he was crying. Which made me feel better because I had cried a lot since the Light came and I lost my mom. Because if this older man could cry, then maybe I would still cry sometimes when I got older. And I didn't think that he was being a baby. The doctor climbed in to and she put her head on the woman's chest and then put her hand on her forehead. And then she held her fingers over the woman's wrist and she closed her eyes for a few seconds. Then she said She's a little warmer and her pulse seems stronger. And the man leaned over and pulled the doctor into a great big hug. The doctor kept talking and told him But she's still unconscious and her feet are frostbitten. I have no idea if she's going to get better or worse. Then he let her go and he leaned down over his wife. The doctor climbed out of the car and looked at me. She bent down so that she was as tall as I was and she asked me Is it OK if we help these two before we find your parents? I wanted to say no. But I was worried about the older man's wife and I didn't want anything bad to happen to her. And even though I missed my mom and dad a whole lot, I still said It's OK. But really I missed them so much that I wanted to cry and cry and to lie down in the back seat next to the woman and curl up into a ball. But if the doctor wanted me to help, then I thought that maybe I should.

She went around and got into the car and I got in the passenger seat again. Which my dad always says is the co-pilot's seat whenever I'm driving in the car with him. And he lets me pick what is on the radio, which is sometimes really hard because I always want to listen to music. But most of time there are just people talking to each other or there are a lot of commercials. But still, it is fun to get to pick. So I reached for the volume and turned it up, but there was only static. And I kept pressing turning the knob to go to the next station, but I didn't hear anything at all. Which was really dumb because I thought this would e the best time to listen to some music. Because everyone seemed really quiet and sad and I didn't like it. And I didn't want to think about how long it had been since I had seen my mom. I just wanted to listen to some music and sing along like I do with my dad. We know all the songs on the radio. I don't like the really loud music that people play in their cars when they drive around with their windows down. When I hear it I plug my ears and stick my tongue out at my dad. And he just laughs and laughs. I always find the stations that play stuff my dad likes, because he likes the best music. But I couldn't find any of those stations while we were driving. There wasn't any music anywhere. So I pushed the button that just keeps searching for a station. But it just kept going through all the numbers over and over again. So I left it alone and started to look out the window while the doctor drove and the man in the backseat stayed really quiet. There wasn't much too see because it was so dark out. But sometimes there was a trashcan that had fire in it and I could see a little bit around it. A few of the stores were broken into. I didn't see a lot of people. But I knew they were inside their apartments trying to hide. I think everyone was just hiding until everything was better. But I didn't know if it was going to get better. The water was lower though. I bet it started filling up all the subways like the one me and the man with the swirling voice were in. If I got out of the car, the water would only go up to my knee. But before, there were places where I had to swim. It was good that the water was going away because I bet it would be hard to drive in the city with all of that water. If you opened the door, it would probably all come in. Which might be really cool.

Suddenly there was a really high pitch noise that made me put my hands over my ears like when the people are playing their loud music. But this was a lot louder and I started to think that it was my head starting to split again. Which would be really bad because ever since the hospital my head hadn't hurt at all. And I thought that maybe the man with the swirling voice had fixed me somehow. Because the Light from his hands had been so warm and bright and I felt like it went straight into my head and melted my brain. But in a good way that fixed me. But then there was this really high pitched sound that made me want to cry because it was almost like it was pushing my head. And when I looked at the radio it had stopped on 89.1 which usually plays things like Devo and David Bowie. Which are two bands that my dad loves and I like them too. The doctor stopped the car and she had her hands to her ears too. And in the backseat I heard the man say What the hell is that? And the doctor shouted back I have no idea! But I thought I knew, so I leaned forward and turned the radio off and the noise stopped. But we didn't have any time to say anything after that because we saw two lights driving right at us. Which was really weird because the whole time I hadn't seen any other cars driving through the city. But now there were headlights. And it didn't look like they were going to stop. So started to bounce up and down in my seat and point at them while I saying They aren't stopping! They aren't stopping! And the doctor put the car in reverse and began to back up. But she was going really slow and it wasn't fast enough to get away from the lights. So I said Go faster! Go faster! But the man in the backseat told me She can't. We'll stall the car. And I didn't know what he was talking about, but I knew that I didn't want to get hit by another car.

Then the doctor said That's not a car. I squeezed my eyes up so that I could see a little bit better and that's when I saw that it wasn't two headlights in front of us. But then the doctor shouted Get out of the car! And she opened up her door and started to open the back door for the man and his wife. So I opened my door too and splashed down in the water and it was starting to feel cold. But I ran around to the doctor and took her hand. And the older man got out of the car and he was pulling at his wife's shoulders. But the lights were getting closer and I didn't think we could get away.

Abundant Internet Coverage + [The Lost Son]

2011-07-06T23:31:00.000-04:00

You will dance to this song at my (and Maria's) wedding. Remember, my biggest request is that, regardless of the song, you dance. If you haven't heard it, you should still dance. If you think it is too strange, you should still dance. I will never ask you to dance to my music again. The video is weird, so just listen to the song.

-----

I'm back in the land of abundant internet coverage. It's good to be here, basking in the glow of my browser and clicking on torrents. I'm downloading lots of wedding music and getting the play lists all together. It's a process, but it's something I enjoy. There isn't too much more to be done. I'm just making a big list of songs I need to download. These include all of the "Normal" wedding music, which is stuff everyone's heard. I'm not downloading any of those songs that I always hear, but don't really enjoy the most (for example, I'm not actually going to put "Respect" on the list. Why? I just feel like there's a better song that could take its place). So, the standard music is coming along. I've got almost all of "David's Music" which consists of music many of you haven't heard, but is, in fact, incredibly danceable and wonderful music that you should really enjoy. I promise I'm not putting anything incredibly strange (for instance, despite my absolute love for it, I'm not including "My Girls" by Animal Collective, because it takes about 1 minute before it stops being too weird to dance to). I'll finish this process tomorrow.

Today, we met with Ed, our DJ and a teacher at DeWitt. He used to be a DJ and he's starting back up again, so we got him at a reduced price (!) and he totally knows what he is doing. We talked about songs, and made some final changes to the special event dances (Father and Daughter, Mother and Son, etc) and figured out our plan for getting him the music. His three kids were there at his house and they were all adorable. The oldest was probably in 1st or 2nd grade, the next will be starting Kindergarten, and the youngest is still young :) They were watching Shrek when we started talking with Ed, but then the youngest asked us to be quiet, so Ed sent them outside to play. They kept peaking their heads in the door and asking if they could come inside yet, but Ed told them to keep playing outside. They had sweet little high pitched voices that just made you want to say "yes" to whatever they wanted, but somehow Ed seemed immune and could tell them what to do. The first time they asked to come inside, I'd probably give in and let them. I'd even whisper so they could watch Shrek.

After that, we went shopping in Frandor for various wedding gifts for people involved (you might be getting one, so I can't talk about them). After that, we came back and made some delicious nachos in the oven with lots of cheese and chili beans. That was so tasty, I wish I had some more right now. Then we took a nap, which was amazing. After that we worked on wedding things (see above) and we ate again (the rest of the nachos). Now I'm posting and Maria just finished Skyping Jen. All in all, a very good day. Tomorrow we will be here until wedding stuff is done, and then we are headed back to Maria's parents for part 2 of our mini-vacation. Unfortunately, I will be without easy access to the internet, so there might not be any updates for a bit again. However, this time I'll bring my phone cord, so I can hook it up for internets if I need it. If you don't hear from me, don't assume the worst right away.

Here's some writing. I'm so incredibly close to being done. Just need to start writing the wrap up sections for each character. Then it's on to editing.

-----

[The Lost Son]

The man laid his wife down by the big pile of books and I kept watching his hand. Because I thought that it was going to catch on fire, because the book was almost gone and I bet it was starting to hurt him. But he didn't really pay attention to that because I know he was really concerned about his wife. Just like my dad would be if my mom was in trouble. I tried to think about a time when my dad was big and strong and helped my mom like this man was helping his wife. But I couldn't think of anything because my mom never seemed to get sick or ever need any help at all. She could do everything. If I was sick she would be there by my bed all night sometimes. And if my dad was sick she would take care of him too. He would lie on the couch in the living room in front of the TV all day, and my mom would make him chicken noodle soup while I would sit next to him and wait for him to change the channel, which he always did. But I don't ever remember my mom being sick.

And I thought that maybe one day we should pretend that she is sick. She could stay in bed really late and dad and I would go into the kitchen and make her breakfast and bring it in to her. And we could sit on the edge of the bed while she eats, and we would keep asking her if it tasted good. Because I wanted her to really like the food. Then she could be proud of us and call us her big strong men. Because sometimes she likes to call us that. Like the time we carried those boxes up the stairs so that dad could put new cabinets in the kitchen. And then we could help mom out to the living room so she could watch TV all day. And dad would bring her chicken noodle soup, and I would watch TV with her. She doesn't ever change the channel like dad does. Not even during the commercials, which is weird, because who wants to watch commercials?

I wanted the doctor to hold my hand. But she couldn't because she was holding the fire extinguisher and she was pointing it at the books. I still didn't know what the man was going to do. He was really scared, but he seemed to know what he was doing. I tried to listen to him when he would ask me to do things. Like when he asked me to go down the stairs and get the doctor. But it was so dark that I couldn't do it. I just kept thinking about what might be in the darkness. I didn't want another one of those giant light thingies to find me. I was glad when he went down the stairs with me to get his wife and the doctor. He gathered up some more books in his free hand and placed them down on the pile. Then he flipped one of the books open and he put the burning book right on top of it. I stepped back because I didn't think this was a good idea. We were inside a building and there were lots of books all around. And I imagined what would happen if those books started to catch on fire too. Then we would be in big trouble.

I watched as the other books started to catch on fire. And it looked really cool when their pages started to turn all black and the other books started to catch on fire. The best was the little orange specks of paper that started to float up from the fire. But there weren't a whole lot of those. The man made sure his wife was really close and then the doctor said You've got to get her out of the wet clothes. Because he pants were all wet from the water. So the man started to take her shoes off and then her socks and when he took the socks off it was really gross because her feet were all black and purple like they were dead. The doctor put down the extinguisher and got down close to the feet. She touched one of them with her hand and then she looked at the old man and said It looks like frostbite, which I had heard about before on one of the nature shows my dad watches. When he isn't changing the channel. But I didn't understand because I thought that only happened to people who were living in Antarctica. And why would anyone want to live in Antarctica anyway? There's just snow and penguins as far as I know.

The older man started to take off his wife's pants and I decided to stop watching. Because that seemed weird to me. So I watched the fire again and most of the books were on fire, but the wooden railing that stops you from falling off the balcony was still OK and not on fire, so I thought we would be safe. I started to feel the heat of the fire, even thought it wasn't that big at all. And a page from one of the books started to float up in the air and it had little spots of orange on it. It looped around in the air and then it landed a little bit away from the fire. And the doctor rushed over and sprayed it really quick with the fire extinguisher, which was really cool. Because it was like she was making a bunch of fog. And when she was done, there was a bunch of white foamy stuff all over the paper and it wasn't on fire anymore.

The man had his wife's pants off and her socks and shoes and he was holding her near the fire. It was getting a lot bigger and all of the books were on fire. And the books moved a little bit because they were burning away and a few of them fell off the edge of the balcony and down into the water. I stuck my head through the balcony rails and looked down to make sure that they didn't catch anything else on fire. Then I looked back at the fire and the older man and his wife and I saw that she was still sleeping. And I wondered if she was ever going to wake up. Because she had been asleep for a long time and she hadn't been talking anymore. When she was awake she just kept talking and she wouldn't be quiet. And I felt kind of bad because when she was talking before I thought inside my head that I wanted her to stop talking. Because what she was saying didn't make any sense and I thought she was really weird. But now that she has been asleep and hasn't been talking at all, I wish I hadn't thought that.

The doctor pointed the fire extinguisher at another page that had landed near the fire and she put it out quick. I thought she was doing a good job and that we probably would be fine. She asked the man Is she feeling warmer? and he shook his head no. But he didn't say anything, he just kept looking at the fire and he was rocking his wife back and forth like when my mom would put me into bed when I was younger. And she would give me a big hug right before I fell asleep and she would rock back and forth and sing Rock-a-bye baby on the treetop, When the wind blows the cradle will rock even thought I thought I was too old for her to sing me lullabies. But I still let her because I could tell that she liked to sing them to me. And also because I still like when my mom gives me a great big hug. And I wished that she was there in the bookstore with us right then so that she could hold me by the fire and rock me back and forth just like the older man and his wife.

Then the doctor was spraying the fire extinguisher all around the fire because the carpet was on fire. The man had to move backwards so that she could get the fire that was close to his wife's gross purple and black feet. And then I saw that the railing of the balcony was on fire too. But the doctor was too busy with the carpet to see the railing. So I started to back away from the railing because I didn't want to get burnt. The doctor was doing her best but the fire was getting bigger and some more pages started to float through the air. And I could really feel the heat against my face so much that my eyes stared to feel dried out and I could see a lot of smoke when I looked up at the ceiling. But the man was still rocking his wife back and forth and he was holding his hand against her legs and he said She's still cold. But I don't think the doctor heard him because the fire extinguisher was really loud. I could start to see the rest of the room we were in because the light was getting brighter. There lots of rows of books on shelves that reached up to the smokey ceiling. At home we had a lot of books in our living room. My mom and dad would bring home books every week and they were always reading too. The only time dad watched TV was when his nature shows were on or when he was sick, like I said before. Any other time, he would be reading a book on the couch while mom did the laundry. Mom would read while dad washed the dishes or cleaned the bathroom. They never seemed to read at the same time though, which was probably because they are both really busy. And when one isn't doing chores, the other is. I like to read to, because both mom and dad would read to me when I was younger every single night. Then when I started going to school they didn't read to me as often. But they would always leave a book in my room. Any night when they didn't start reading to me I would ask Will you read a book to me? Because I liked it when they read to me instead of when I had to read by myself. But they would tell me You have to learn to read by yourself sometimes. But I didn't know why, because they were always there to read to me, so why should I have to read alone? But when I saw all those books in the book store I thought that this would be a good time for me to know how to read on my own.

Pretend Vacation

2011-07-05T01:53:00.001-04:00

We've been at Maria's house for a few days now. There's no real easy internet access, and I left my phone cord, which means I can't use the phone internet on my laptop and the phone will probably die right after I post this. Just wanted everyone to know I'm still alive and kicking. I've been writing and will post it soon. Just pretend I've taken a vacation for the holiday. That's what Maria and I are doing. Her parent's neighbors are on vacation for the week and let us use their wonderful pool, so we've been eating well and getting lots of sun and swimming. It's like we are at a resort. It's good to be relaxing so close to the wedding. Anyway, have to post this quick before the battery keels over.

My Writing Goal + [The Man Living Under The Bridge]

2011-07-01T23:25:00.000-04:00

Didn't get a chance to update yesterday. We ended up driving to Midland and getting back later, so I went to sleep instead of updating. I feel like I haven't been at my apartment for forever, and there was mail and bills pilling up, so we unfortunately had to come back (I say unfortunately, because we've been busy and it was another thing we had to fit in to the schedule. Ideally, we wouldn't have had to trek back to Midland until we are moving out). Well, it's now the 1st and I didn't finish the novel, but I did write yesterday for a good while. I wrote today for awhile as well and I'm in the middle of the final event. That's good, because I spent what seems like all of June leading up to it. Now I'm there and it won't be much longer until I'm writing the last few sections. The goal is to keep writing every day (everyday of summer, although the honeymoon is probably a no-writing-period). Once the novel is finished, I'll begin editing. Editing still counts as writing everyday. The majority of the book was written in November, so that means it's set aside for a significant amount of time, so I should be able to approach it with fresh and critical eyes. I've yet to actually finish the editing process on a book, so I guess you could say it's the hardest part for me. I get halfway edited and then November rolls around again and I'm off to writing something new. That's good and bad. It's bad because I don't have a finished and polished book done. It's good because I feel that each book I write is stronger than the last and that I'm only improving as an author. Of course, if I just keep writing, semi-editing, then dropping it to write again, I'll never publish anything. So I'm knuckling down this summer and getting this done. I want to have this novel in a respectable and non-embarrassing form by the end of summer so I can send it to a publisher. After that, I just wait four months until I hear back (only to learn that they have rejected it and then plunge into an existential spiral of self loathing and despair, and maybe I'll become an alcoholic, because that's a very writer thing to do). If, come September, I'm not preparing to ship this baby off to McSweeny's,
Houghton Mifflin, Simon & Schuster, or Penguin. Of course, I should probably set my sights on smaller publishing companies (except for McSweeny's, which is very small), but I might as well try some of the biggest first. Shoot for the moon. Then if you need to recalibrate for something like, the top of a small building, you can do that easily.

Today Maria and I slept in till 11, which was unusual (for Maria, not for me). We went for a run (unusual for me, not Maria) and we picked up my prescription at Walgreens (one reason we had to come back) and stopped at the bank. Then we came back here, ate leftover for lunch (which we brought from Maria's) and went out to the pool, where we read, drew, and swam. The water was incredibly cold, so we didn't stay in that long. When we got back, we ate while watching Samurai Champloo and I wrote while Maria Skyped her maid of honor, Amanda, and after that we finished Samurai Champloo (I think we will be watching Trigun next). We both enjoy Anime, and it's nice to have something we can watch occasionally. Now I'm updating while Maria is looking at eventual trips we will take to Thailand or some other exotic locale.

Here's another section. If you're reading along in the novel (which apparently a few people. Hooray!) you're getting close to the final event sections I'm writing right now. I hope you're getting excited (if you aren't, then I'm not doing a good enough job).

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[The Man Living Under The Bridge]

I followed the crazy people because it was so dark. It was easier to see by them because of the fire they carried. They were just around the corner from the burning store. I wanted to stay far behind. I couldn't because I needed to see. I tried to get closer, even though I knew they wouldn't like me to be near them. I don't think I smell bad, but people say I do. One night I didn't want to sleep under the bridge because it was raining so much that I could not stay dry. I went to a homeless shelter even though I don't like to. There are too many people there and they don't let me bring any liquor, even though I don't drink that much.

That night it was raining so bad that I had to find a dry bed. A man who was sleeping on the bunk above me dropped down next to my bed. He pushed me in my sleep. I woke up and was very scared. The people in homeless shelters can be mean sometimes. Not all of them though. A lot of them are like me. They want to be nice and good. They don't want to bother anyone. But this man was not like that. He was mad like he was in withdrawals. He pushed me in my sleep and I woke up and I said Stop it! Stop it! He pushed me more and said You stink. Go find somewhere else to sleep. I can't stand your fucking smell. I looked around at the other men in the room, but they didn't look at me. They turned their eyes away. They pretended to sleep. None of them knew me, so they wouldn't help me. The man pushed me hard and I fell out of my bed. I tried to find another bed, but they were all taken. When it rains, everyone goes to the shelters. I was lucky I had a bed, but now I couldn't sleep there. I had to leave and go back to the bridge. I stayed awake all night.

I joined the back of the crowd. I was behind a man who had a twitch. His shoulder would jump up every few seconds. I knew he was crazy because he was shouting, but I didn't understand anything he was saying. I didn't want to follow them, but I needed to be able to see. I wasn't there long before I heard a woman screaming. It scared me. The crowed moved a bit and I tried to see what was happening. Then there was a big light that appeared from in between the buildings. People started running. The man with the shoulder twitch turned around and pushed me over. I fell down into the water. Another man almost stepped on me. I backed up against the building behind me. The big light was hovering in the air. There was a woman standing in the middle of the people who were running. She wore a white dress that looked like it was snow. Then she fell over. The big light fell on top of a man. Then it was in the air again. The man was now black and his clothes were frozen. The light began to fly around and find other people. I saw one of the men from earlier. He had been holding the man with the swirling voice before he disappeared. I remember him because he was very big and strong. He was like a body builder. The man was right in front of me. He didn't seem as afraid as everyone else. The big light in the air turned and fell on top of him. He shouted once but then I didn't hear him say anymore. I was very close to him. The light was bright in my eyes. I wanted to close them, but I couldn't. The air was really cold. I pulled my legs up close to me so that I was father from the big light. Then it shot into the air again. The body builder man was still in front of me, but his skin was black. It was like coal. I could see that his close were stiff and frozen. Frost had formed on them. He stood there for a second. Then he fell down into the water with a splash.

The light continued to find people. Each time it moved faster. I wanted to run away, but I was very scared. I hoped it wouldn't find me sitting against the building. The people were almost all gone and the big light followed them away. It got dark, but I was happy there were no more people. I liked being alone. I wondered again why I didn't see any more people. They were all probably in their apartments. If I had an apartment, or even if I could find a homeless shelter, I would stay inside. They have food there and I don't think the big light would go inside. I thought that all of the people in the city must be very scared. I get scared a lot because I never know when something bad is going to happen. Sometimes I wake up in the night and there is someone going through my things. If that happens, I don't move. I try to stay very still. If they don't see me wake up, then they will leave me alone. I just want to be left alone. I wanted to be left alone in the homeless shelter, but the mean man wouldn't let me be. I was glad to be alone after the big light left. I wondered what would happen if the people never came out of their buildings. The city would be empty and I would always be alone. That was nice to think about. Then there wouldn't be anyone to call me names or push me or to try and avoid me. I wouldn't have to feel unwanted. It would be nice to be alone all the time. I hoped the glowing light was gone and that all the crazy people had found someplace to hide. Maybe they would all go back to their homes to. Then I wouldn't have to worry about anything again. I didn't like sitting so close to the dead bodybuilder. I followed the side of the building back to the store that was on fire and I waited there because it was warm and there was some light. I thought that maybe the flames would go out and I might be able to find just a little bit of food.

Ann Arbor + [The Woman Who Saw Him Step Through Air]

2011-06-30T00:41:00.001-04:00

Tomorrow is the 30th, which means I need to be done with my novel in order to get my free printed copy before Midnight. At the moment, I don't feel like this will happen. I spent a decent amount of this morning writing, but I still haven't gotten to that final moment in the book that signals the end. I'm right there, waiting on the edge of it, and actually the next time I start writing, I'll be describing it (unless I come up with some other crazy idea that comes before it). That seems manageable and possible to finish tomorrow, however, after the final event that signals the end of the book, there is still a few more sections I need to write. Most of the characters' stories don't simply end after this final event. They have to come to their own conclusions, which means that I've still got some more to write (at least six sections or so). Considering I've been writing one or two sections a day, I'm not sure I'll get six (or more) done tomorrow. Alas, such is life. What does this mean? I'll just have to finish the novel up in July, and maybe I'll polish it up a little, then I will get a printed copy, but instead of getting it for free, I'll have to pay about $12. I think I can handle that.

Today, I slept in a bit while Maria finished up all of her articles. She was done by lunch time, which was good because we had some time to relax before going to Ann Arbor for the Kaki King concert. Before we left, I wrote a bunch and Maria finished up the painting she has been working on for her dad's friend. Needless to say, she was quite excited to be done (it was a long and troubling process, to make it sound melodramatic), and I was glad for her to make something she didn't hate ;) I, however, slowed way down while writing because I had the "brilliant" idea to make one of the characters use a lot of alliteration. Great idea, in theory, because it was [The Man Who Was Blessed] and he is kind of otherworldly and his speech needed to be strange. The problem is that I can't write sentences with alliteration unless I pause and think about each word within it. It's not something I can write off the cuff. It requires concentration and careful word choice. So, I slowed to a crawl and have yet to finish his section. At the same time, I like this change to his character and I'm glad I came up with it (although I need to be careful that it doesn't go over the top. Otherwise he'll seem too corny or too much like some fantasy character that speaks in riddles, perhaps). The other problem is that, this means I need to back to all of his other sections and rewrite them to include more alliteration. That, luckily, is something I can do after the novel is all done.

After finishing up with our creative endeavors, we drove to Mason to pick up our finished Marriage License, and then we hit the road to Ann Arbor. It was a nice trip. We went to the Falling Water bookstore, which is a favorite of Maria's, and we skipped over the record stores, which are my favorite, because are trying to save money and every time I go to a record store in Ann Arbor I end up spending at least $50. We did mange to spend some money on sushi at Totoro Sushi, which was remarkably cheap (our meal was $13 dollars, not including tip. We spend at least $11 at Taco Bell). Plus, it came with soup and salad for free. Then we stopped by Borders to look at books. I was searching for The Magician King by Lev Grossman, which, it turns out, doesn't come out until August 9th. Maria was looking at children's books again, because she officially has an interview at Bay County Public Schools Academy the Tuesday before the wedding! It's a K-6 school, which gives her the excuse to buy children's books without looking too strange. Apparently this school has a 1-10 teacher to student ratio, so that's very positive. Other than that, we have no idea what a charter school is like, but we are hoping for the best. Obviously, she will get the job, because who the hell would not hire her?

Then we went to the concert and it was funny because there was seriously no one in line at 7:40 and the doors opened at 8. Then, when they finally opened, we entered the Blind Pig to find, of all things, chairs. Let me tell you, that was a strange sight. If you've ever been to the Blind Pig, you would understand that it is not a place where you sit down for a concert. But there they were anyway. They were crappy plastic chairs (Maria's seemed about to fall over, so we switched it), but they weren't too bad to sit in. We sat front and center in the first row. The concert was great and, if you have never seen Kaki King play before, you would have been amazed at how fast her fingers fly about. The technical skill she has with the guitar is simply unbelievable. She played some great songs (I like the ones where she sings the best, but she mostly played instrumentals. Still those were also excellent), and had a lot of funny stage banter. Also, at one point she drooled in the middle of the song, prompting her to freak out a little and then apologize profusely afterwards while laughing a lot. It was pretty hilarious. Imagine giving a concert and just drooling in the middle of it without realizing until it's dripping from your mouth. Hard to recover from, but she managed. Overall, it was a good concert, and I was disappointed there wasn't any merch, so no new vinyl for me.

Then we came back to the apartment and now it's time for bed. Here's some more writing. If you are following along, you're getting near the end. Good job for you for keeping up and persevering. I'm not sure I'm actually congratulating anyone at this point :)

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[The Woman Who Saw Him Step Through Air]

and I could feel the cold against my back, but I didn't stop running and ducking towards the others, making sure I was not left out in the open, watching as torches fell from hands to extinguish in the water and soon the only light to see by came from the floating ball itself, which seemed to be gaining momentum behind me, but I tried not to look backwards because was getting dangerous not to look where I was headed, having to navigate around cars and fire hydrants, or the occasional trashcan, often times filled with a small fire that helped guide us through the dark,

and my body soon began to warm up from the running and heavy breathing and the work my heart needed to do to make sure hot blood was reaching to the farthest parts of me—the smell of my sweat was beginning to stink—and the crowd was thinning out—people ducking down alleys or climbing through smashed storefronts—so I found I could look back again and I could no longer see the flashing of the light in the air, but of course this meant I could barely see my own hands or the water around my ankles or anything at all except for the occasional flickering trashcan lining the street, and now that I had the time to catch my breath and let my head stop spinning upon my shoulders, I thought back to those empty nights the week my daughter died and how I would lie awake with my eyes open and my husband next to me—also unable to sleep—and stare up at the ceiling hoping for all of the light to seep from the room and leave us so that even with our eyes unclosed we might find some peace and sleep, because as long as I could see something, even if it was simply the rough surface of our popcorn ceiling, I could not retreat completely into sleep, and if the night had only been as dark as it was right then—standing in a foot of water and breathing bent over with my hands on my knees—then I would have been able to rest and not think about my daughters empty bed in the room down the hallway, or the cotton dresses hanging in her closet, or the stuffed elephant I had bought her while shopping the day before and had never been able to give her, which would sit in its grocery bag for two years in the basement storage space of our apartment collecting dust and mildew, but I could not take advantage of the blank sky because there was no place safe to sleep, what with the flying light and the insane mob setting fire to buildings and people, and I wondered what time it was because I had no way of knowing—the battery on my cell phone had died long before I even thought of checking it—and I couldn't say how long I was able to sleep in the coffee shop before the lunatics and the fire came, but I certainly felt as if I might collapse soon if I did not close my eyes and my body seemed fried as if the wiring had shorted and left a black smear of electrical smoke on the wall, so I continued to walk towards the next trashcan beacon and eventually I stumbled upon one with a large stick sticking out of the top, so I pulled it out and the top was wrapped in a shirt that was nearly completely gone, but hanging on enough so that I could use it to light my way for at least another few minutes, which was preferable to stumbling along in the complete and utter dark, banging my legs against newspaper dispensers or bumping my hip on parking meters, but of course what would happen to me once the torch burnt out and I could no longer see any fires from the trashcans and the sky continued its empty stance—no hint of stars or a sunrise—so that soon I would be forced to stop walking and eventually succumb to sleep on the hood of a nearby car, where I would be completely exposed and unprotected from whatever might find me, and at this point I had stopped guessing what could possibly be waiting out there in the dark, or perhaps stopped caring, because everything seemed more and more dire in terms of my survival—I hadn't even begun to think about food, but my stomach was certainly empty and growing impatient—so that I had nearly come to terms with the idea of passing out right in the street and no longer giving a damn if I were to wake up again, but the torch still carried some fire and I was not yet to the point where I would give up all hope while I still held some in my own hand, so I wandered through the streets looking for anything at all that might provide some solace—to be honest, I could not tell you what I was looking for at all, seeing as how there was certainly no power anywhere in the city and I could not think of a place that seemed safe, not even my own apartment, and I knew that many of the buildings around me were filled with people hiding inside, but if they had seen what I had, they would not be very welcoming to visitors—when I turned a corner and saw amber flames running their fingers along the tattered remains of a store awning, and the light showed that there were no people in the street outside, so I walked towards it hoping at least for some warmth, now that I had cooled down from running, but of course, slightly worried that I would encounter the people who had started the fire, so I dropped my own torch into the water—there was little left the of the shirt and the branch itself had begun to catch fire—and attempted to approach using as much cover as I could manage, crouching down behind cars and practically swimming so as to stay as close to the ground as possible, until I was close enough to see that anyone who had been here had long since left and I could clearly see into the store, which was filled with rows and rows of bookshelves on fire

A Little Subdued + [The Mother Who Saw Him Step Through Air]

2011-06-28T23:58:00.000-04:00

This post will be very subdued compared to the last few. I don't want to get carried away on another blog post while I'm about to get writing for the night. Maria has to stay up late working on those articles for the Women's Resource Center, so I'm staying up with her. I'm attempting to write a lot, so that I can finish the novel.

Today we woke up and had breakfast and I left to go to Men's Warehouse and pick up my not really brown suit, while Maria went to her test make-up and hair appointment. I got back early and wrote for a while and then played WoW, because today was patch day, meaning there was all new content to play through. Maria's mom and sister came to visit and give their input on the new hairdo, and then they stuck around to help us glue tons of wedding program/fans together, which was a long process that involved a lot of glue and one trip to Joann Fabrics for even more glue. After that, we went to Preuss' Pets to show her mom and Emily all the new animals we found the other day. When we were there, they were moving the giant tarantula into a new cage and one of the employees was trying to grab it with his bare hands. This was a very slow process because he certainly did not want to get bit. The thing was so big he needed both hands to hold it. Judging from their reactions, Emily and her mom aren't getting a tarantula anytime soon. Then we went to Pablo's for dinner because Maria's mom was kind enough to buy us dinner. If you've been following the blog recently, you'll understand how exciting this was for me. After that, Maria got to work on her articles and I played WoW. Now we are lying down and writing. Maria has a bunch more articles to work on, and as I said before, I've got a novel to finish. It's almost the 30th, and I should be writing and writing and writing, but I'm procrastinating a bit too much. I'm not sure I'll hit my goal, but at least I've written every single day for a good long while now. Let's see how far I get tonight.

Here's another section. Remember, if you want to read more than the first paragraph, click the "Read More" link.

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[The Mother Who Saw Him Step Through Air]

with a ceiling that stretched away beyond my sight, and I wanted to collapse to the wet ground and breathe in the sweet clean air that tasted like a day beside a lake, but there was little time to enjoy my escape from the fire before I found myself transfixed by a moving light down the end of the alleyway that seemed to be drawing closer to me, not moving too quickly, but making obvious progress, casting a blue glow against the brick of the buildings around us and passing over green dumpsters and metal pipes clinging to the walls,

and it seemed to spin or twirl in the air while moving steadily towards me as if it were looking for me, and I felt that distinct feeling as if some one were watching me or trying to gain my attention, and I wondered if this glowing ball had something to do with the Light, as if it were a splinter that had broken off and was still floating around in this horrible darkness, but as it moved closer and I could see it more fully, I felt a chill and a sinking within my body as if I were being pulled towards the ground or the oppressive dark was beginning to weigh on me, and I watched as the water beneath this strange fluorescent orb began to frost over and crystallize into ice, as if the light itself was causing the drop in temperature, as if it was so incredibly cold, like it was an ice cube dropped into a glass of water, and I had the distinct feeling of repulsion, of needing to escape, of being trapped in a room with something terrifying that you were unable to understand, and that lack of understanding unnerved you, and so I turned around to run as fast as I could manage through the water that was up to my shins, finding the alleyway narrowing and being unsure whether there was an exit at all, being unable to return the way I had come unless I had a desire to suffer through the fire, and then ahead I could see that very same fire, yet much smaller and moving past the opening of the alley, but I could not stop fleeing the glowing light, forcing me to choose my continued forward momentum and watching as the melted angry faces began to appear in the orange glow of their torches and the howls, like an injured dog or a pregnant woman, began to fill my ears, but there was no other way for me to escape the freezing light and so I barreled into a woman who was wearing a tattered dress covered in soot while wielding some wicked piece of metal as a blunt object and shouting, only to topple to the ground in a heap with our limbs twisted and her face caught in between rage and surprise while the others around us scattered for a moment, long enough for me to gain my bearings and scramble to my feet without their hands reaching to tear at my clothes and hair, but the woman who I had collided with was up as well, leaning on that long and heavy bit of metal and cursing at me, and the rest of the crowd began to recover and catch on to what had happened, namely that I seemed to be suicidally attacking them, and they started to close around us, two men blocking my escape to the other side of the street and one shoving me back towards the woman who now was lifting up her weapon like she had become deranged, and I again thought about how close I was to death and how nice it would be to stop running and to stop worrying about finding some place safe to sleep or about the Light or these people who had gone feral in the dark, to imagine I would see my daughter again, when the makeshift circle of bodies was suddenly caught up in a dim light and the woman was consumed whole from behind by the floating glow, her upraised arms sticking out the top for but a moment before falling inward, and the crowd began to shout and scatter about as the woman's scream pierced the air for just a moment and then seemed to freeze and fall into the water, and I back peddled while watching as the luminous orb seemed to convulse in and out at a rapid speed like watching the beating of a heart at triple speed and then it lifted up into the air leaving behind the blacked corpse of a woman wearing a frozen white dress and started to zip around incredibly fast, diving down towards a man who stood about equidistant between me and the remains of the woman in the dress, causing him to shout in a horrible gut wrenching way that caused my skin to prickle, and I took that moment to turn and race after the scattering crowd, hoping to lose myself among them, while the light seemed to pick up speed and swooped down into the street again, freezing the water and causing people to collapse or be left with their legs stuck in ice and shouting for help that they would never receive from these fleeing madmen

Refrigerator Existential Crisis + [The Woman He Lied To]

2011-06-28T00:44:00.004-04:00

This one is coming in a little late because Maria and I spontaneously decided to work on the seating arrangement for the wedding. It took a little bit, but it is all done. No, I will not be telling anyone what it is. No, if you ask, you will not find out. I figure, the best way to make sure we don't have to make any changes to the thing is by not telling a soul where they are sitting. Instead, I will drop lots of little false and misleading hints, such as "Oh, I hope you aren't fighting with Aunt Lisa anymore" and "Actually, I think we had to split you two up, but maybe that was Bob and Lizzy. I can't remember anymore." I hope to seed enough confusion and worry throughout the wedding guests, that once everyone sees they are sitting by relatively normal people that they have met at least once before, they will be completely relieved and won't complain a bit. Also, I have sworn Maria to secrecy, so don't bother going to her. Unless you want her to tell you that "No. I don't think we got your RSVP. I guess we'll have to put you at Table 17." Table 17 is outside.

Now that it's so late, I'm struggling to remember what the heck we did today. I think it involved waking up at some point, although I'll have to double check on that. Then I ate some cereal that has extra fiber and raisins, a tasty combination. Maria went for a run, but I wasn't able to because apparently I left my running shoes at my apartment. Now I know what all of you are thinking. I honestly left them on accident. This was not some carefully thought out plan to avoid running. I would never do such a thing. Hey! I'm serious! Don't give me that look! I'm a changed man, really I am. Look, see here, this is my track suit that I bought. It cost me $40, for crying out loud. Who would buy a kickin' $40 track suit with the intentions of not using it? Not this guy. No way, no how.

While Maria ran, I wrote. Then we made some lunch. This was a difficult thing for me to do. Again, I was very hungry, so when I opened the refrigerator door, which has been stocked on a meager $75, I was noticeably upset. There seriously was no food to eat. How could this be? We had just been to the store. But there I was, leaning on the open door and attempting to stop my mouth from hanging agape. What was actually in there? Well, I'll tell you what wasn't in there. Microwave dinners, that's what. What the hell was I supposed to eat? I had this moment of existential crisis while basking in the cool of the open fridge. It is described below:

I've spent my life so far becoming educated so that I can have a job I love and at the same time, one that pays the bills. I work at this job everyday, slaving away for the sake of kids who probably don't remember half of what I say three minutes after I say it. In return for this, I am paid money. This money goes into the bank and is then removed every time I need it, such as at the grocery store. At the grocery store, I purchase food that will sustain me, thus allowing me to go to work the next day. And the cycle repeats itself. But here I was, looking into the refrigerator and not finding a single microwave dinner to eat. If I cannot afford the luxury of a microwave dinner, what is the purpose of my life? I closed the door and attempted to stand up straight, but the overbearing truth of it all was bearing down upon me. I was going to starve to death. I was going to fall over, right in the middle of Maria's kitchen and die. It would be pitiful to watch.

Maria saw my noticeable despair, which seemed to be oozing from me like a cracked bottle of dish soap, and asked "What's wrong?".
"There's nothing to eat."
"What do you mean?" She asked this in disbelief.
"There's nothing to eat."
Obviously, she knew that there had to be something in the fridge. "What do you want to eat?"
"I don't know" I said, and hung my head lower. I was at a loss. Nothing would come to mind. Nothing in the fridge seemed to be able to coalesque into a meal. The uncut watermelon and tempeh? Certainly not. Half of a lemon, soy milk, and carrots? No amount of mental calculations could make those items add up into lunch.

Maria then went on to describe, in detail and at great length, the vast array of items stored within the cool enclosure of the refrigerator. However, at no point did I hear the words "Microwave dinner". I tried to remember some of what she said, straining my mind to recall the few items that could be put together into an edible ensemble. And, after much physical effort, beads of sweat forming on my brow, I was able to ascertain the perfect combination that would produce a meal I could eat: Can of soup + can opener. Brilliant! Why hadn't I thought of it before? So simple and easy. There was no need to search through multiple drawers, or open an untold number of plastic bags. I only needed to grab the can of soup, maneuver the can opener around its edges, and pour it into a pot for slow cooking over an open flame. Certainly not as elegant a solution as pulling back the plastic wrap of a microwave dinner and queuing it up for 1:30, but it would do.

I rejoiced at having survived for another day, and marveled at this endless struggle we call life.

After lunch, Maria and I went to the county clerks office to official get our MARRIAGE LICENSE! It was very exciting, and humorous, because they made us raise our right hands and swear that we understood the marriage laws and that our marriage was legal, which for some reason seemed hilarious. Then, Maria had two more interviews to do. Then we came back here, made dinner (we had a predetermined recipe to follow with ingredients, making this meal much easier), ate, and then Maria worked on her painting while I wrote. After that, we got to work on the aforementioned wedding table seating chart, of which you will learn nothing, and now it is time to sleep. I'll be seeing you tomorrow. That is, if I am able to conjure up some sustenance at lunch.

Here's some more writing.

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I'm going to start using jump cuts after the first paragraph of the novel fragments. If you want to keep reading, just click on the jump. It will make things look a little cleaner and compact, I think.

[The Woman He Lied To]

Upon my head hung a weight. We are all pressed down and hanging our necks. There are pressures that bend our spines. All is pulling down on our chests and wrapped around our wrists. I am dragging the world behind me on a chain around my neck. The Light has been here. It streaks through the hallways of deep darkness leaving a silvery trail through the air. It dangles in dots and motes in the beams of light. Above us are rooms and rooms of sick people in their beds. The pressure pricks at their skin. They close their eyes and open their eyes and close and open and there is no difference. We are all in the darkness behind the Light. When the Light leaves there is only its absence. We wrap the absence around our waists and hold our breaths. I am holding my breath for the Light again.

My husband carries me and the weight. He is so strong. He is able to lift my heavy head in his arms. He carries me beneath the rooms and rooms and the sick and the sick and the closed and opened eyes. My mouth is also opened and closed. The Light the light the light is all I see down the hallway of shadow. I am so weak. The weight has drained me. There is no strength left in me. How was I able to stand for so long without the Light to hold me up? Will I ever stand again? The pressure of the darkness will bring us all to the ground.

The wires are all around me in this room. They stretch up and spiral across the ceiling. There is a woman made of wires that have touched the Light. She holds a light in her hands. There is a boy made of wires. He twists around himself. He glows with the dust of the Light. My voice is winnowed away from me. I am placed on wires covered with sheets. They rise up around and hold me in. The wire woman lights the room. The Light was here in between the wires. It was here and it left a silvery glow. No one here can see it but me. Something else can see the silver dust of the Light. There is something else that has been watching. There is something else that feels the weight and tastes the dust upon its tongue. I close my eyes as my voice crumbles. Without the Light I have no strength to speak.

From inside my head I see a glowing growth above me. The something. The wires have begun to move. There is an eyes upon me. I am being watched. Something is here. There is a feeling of being pierced through. The air is ice in my lungs. The wires hold me on the sheets but I scream and scream in a small voice that hurts to leave my mouth. My arms are lead and my legs are dead weight. There is a tugging on my waist from the wrapped absence. I am cold, so cold, so frozen and I am snow and I am ice and there is no warmth anywhere to touch. My husband pushes the wires and sheets away from the glowing something looking for the Light. Something watches the boy and the doctor because they shine with the Light. Something watches them and reaches out for the warm wires of their bodies. It pulls at the heat stored in their frames.

We are down the hallway with the rooms above and something is gone, but its fingers are reaching still. We are in the darkness of closed eyes and the pressure of the Light's absence calls me into sleep. It stands at the door and beckons and I try to wave it off. I try to make it wait. I ask it Leave me be. We are waiting behind glass doors held up by wire frames. I hold my eyes open in the blue glow from something while the people of wires scatter to the edges. The bright light of something is reaching for us with slow hands because it needs heat to move and we are filled with heat, we are red hot and filled with life. I hear my husband groan and the sheets I'm on shift and then stop. Then I am nothing but a void from my feet moving towards my heavy head. There is the pull of something on my feet and the pain worming through my legs so that I might never stand again and then the pressure multiplies and the beckoning of the Light's absence from the doorway is too much to resist.

The Logic Of Illicit Blockbuster Returns + [The Husband Who Lied]

2011-06-26T23:26:00.000-04:00

It turns out, Amnesiac and Hail to The Thief are also good for writing this novel. Here's one of my faves from Hail to The Thief.

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The first half of today went by rather slowly. Maria and I went for a "power" walk in the morning after having breakfast. It was nice because, one, I didn't have to run, and two, I enjoy going for walks, especially when it is absolutely beautiful outside. Then we came back and, lord knows why, Maria decided we should do Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred work out DVD. I tried to explain to her that we had just finished working out, but she did not seem to understand the logic of a "power" walk being considered physical activity. I need to stress the key word here, which would be "power". Anyway, for some reason I went along with her crazy idea. Needless to say, my limit for the amount of times I work out in a day is incredibly high, topping out at once a day and that is damn well it. So, after the second workout for the day, I was exhausted and needed to relax. We made some salads, put them in tupperware containers, put those containers in plastic bags, put the plastic bags in picnic baskets, and made our way to the path by the river. We sat on a blanket on the banks of the river and ate. Then Maria wrote some of her articles while I played my DS and after that we threw a tennis ball back and forth and caught it with those awesome plastic mitts with Velcro on the front.

After that, we finished watching The Illusionist. It was beautiful to look at, if I didn't mention that yesterday, and the story was very simple. The humor is is wonderfully light and happy and it is a little bittersweet as well. The ending was fairly understated, but I think it made its point. Pick it up if you are a fan of French animation, which I'm sure is the majority of you. You could also pick it up if you just want an enjoyable little film to warm your heart a bit. Be warned though, there really is essentially no dialogue. They do speak a few phrases in French, but when we turned on the subtitles it simply said "Mumbles in French". Seems like the subtitle guy was being a little lazy.

After that, we wrote for a long time. Maria is making progress on all those articles she has to write about women from MSU and I'm making progress on the novel. At this point, I doubt I'll finish by the 30th, but here's hoping. Last night I read through my November posts from when I started posting this novel. On the first day of posting, I mentioned that I was going to keep this one around 50,000 words because I wanted it to be brief and simple (or maybe not simple, but I was intrigued by the idea of brevity). Judging that I'm at 90,000 words now and counting, I think I veered a little ways from that goal. I'm about 10,000 words past my first novel, but I have yet to reach the massive 139,000 words of the second novel, which is good. I certainly don't want this one getting that big. I keep trying to hurry to the ending, but I'm finding things that happen before it. They are things that need to happen, but I guess I'm just surprised by how much I'm finding between when I thought the end was near and the actual end. I'll get there though. Perseverance is the key, and I've got that this month in spades.

After writing, we went to Meijer while we were very hungry. This was a mistake. Previously, when I went to Meijer while I was hungry, I just ended up buying more food than usual. No big deal. But now that we are trying to keep to our $75 a week on groceries budget, it was torture. Every time I looked in the cart I thought, this simply isn't enough food. We had to ditch the two recipes I picked out because the spices were too much (Seriously, spices suck. Way to much money for a bunch of ground up plants). I kept wondering how I was going to ignore the rumblings of my stomach during the rest of this week.

Here's a conversation that occurred between us while standing next to the oranges:

"This isn't enough. I'm still hungry" I said, eyeing the food in the cart.

"You haven't eaten any of it yet" she replied.

"I'm mentally eating it." I was going to starve.

After Meijer, we dropped The Illusionist off at Blockbuster. Now, here's the deal with this. We were actually returning the movie to a different Blockbuster than we had rented it from because it was closer. We had asked an employee at another Blockbuster (one might ask why we are going to so many Blockbusters, and I would reply with "Netflix doesn't stream the Harry Potter movies." Then you would totally understand) what would happen if we returned the movie to a different store. He told us that there are two possibilities. One: They will check it in, then realize it is from the wrong store and ship it to the correct one, charging us no fees. Two: They realize it is from the wrong store and do not check it in, shipping it to the correct store while late horrendous $1 a day late fees accumulate, a fate too dire to imagine. Obviously, option 1 is superior to option 2. So, each time we return a movie to the wrong Blockbuster we are taking an incredibly high stakes gamble.

Anyway, we proceed to return The Illusionist to the incorrect store because it is much closer to our location at that time. Now, here's where it gets tricky. There is a movie return slot outside of the store and a movie return slot inside the store. I will henceforth refer to these as the interior return slot and the exterior return slot. I asked Maria to use the interior return slot. She looked at me as if I was slightly nutty and asked why. Now, hear me out. The choice of the interior return slot is, in fact, entirely logical, and does not imply that I am in any way off my rocker or fit to be tied--a phrase I don't know the meaning of. Imagine you are a person who is returning a movie to the incorrect store, knowing that there is a possibility the staff will notice and refuse to check the movie in, thus causing you to accumulate said hefty $1 late fees for an untold amount of days while the movie is in transit to its store of origin. You would want to simply deposit the movie into the exterior return slot and be done with it, drawing little attention to your presence. You would want to be swift and silent like the coming of the night to avoid detection.

But--haha!--that is where your daring and gusto would be your own terrible undoing. Instead, you should enter the building and locate the interior return slot, being as conspicuous as possible. Perhaps flailing your arms about over your head or attempting a pointed toe arabesque penchée. Then proceed to browse for a movie for approximately two minutes before loudly stating "Doesn't anyone carry Manos: The Hands of Fate!" and then proceeding to leave the store. Why would anyone want to do this, you ask? Well, good sir and/or madam, someone who is returning a movie to the incorrect store would certainly not enter the building. Why not? Because, if you were obtuse enough to return a movie to the incorrect Blockbuster and then immediately attempt to rent a movie from that incorrect store, the employee would obviously notice your incorrectly returned movie and refuse to check it in. Thus, ipso facto, you would have ruined your own chances at beating the system and returning your movie at the most convenient location. Instead, it would be highly advantageous for you to enter the store and clearly be noticed as a customer intending to rent a movie. The moment you are identified as a returning customer, all suspicion of your actions will cease to be and your intended trickery will flawless be executed.

If, therefore, we are to believe that a significant majority of people returning movies to the wrong Blockbuster are not following this logic--as I think it is safe to assume--and instead hoping to slip their movies into the exterior return slot unnoticed, we can then, as a result of good sense, deem that the interior movie return slot sees an inconsequential amount of movies from other stores within its bowels. Concurrently, the exterior movie return slot is guaranteed to be rife with illicit movies from other stores. Thereupon, by asking Maria to use the interior return slot, the chances of our ingenious plot being unraveled were significantly lower than if I had requested her to use the highly suspicious exterior return slot. Logic, my friends. Logic.

And on that note, here's some more writing.

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Maria told me today that she enjoyed the older names better, which seems to gel with what I'm thinking as well. I'll keep these new names for a few days and see if they grow on me or not. If they don't, it's back to the old.

[The Husband Who Lied]

I pulled away from the hospital and turned onto the flooded street with our new passengers, my wife still asleep in the backseat. After we were married, we would fall asleep wrapped tight together like twisted roots. The water seemed to be lower and I had less trouble navigating between the cars littering the road. She always fell asleep before me, and I would lie awake with my eyes open, just watching her, because I new that one day I would no longer be amazed by her sleeping form and I wanted it to last as long as possible. I continually checked my rear view mirror to see if she was still asleep, but it was far too dark to make out anything besides the shadowy outline of the doctor's head. Some nights in her sleep, her legs would twitch for a few moments or her fingers would curl together as if she was having a dream and I would pull her in as close as possible without waking her up. Is she still sleeping? I asked the doctor. I would hold my eyes open as long as I could, until sleep got the best of me and I could stay awake no longer. Yes. And she's breathing, but we need to find her some blankets or something to warm her up. She's shaking and very pale, and I'm having trouble with her heart rate she called from the backseat, and there was obvious concern in her voice. One night, a few months into our marriage, I got very sick. I reached for the temperature controls and put the heat on full blast, but I couldn't stop to search for anything because we were not yet far enough away from the hospital. I went to bed with a fever and cough, and I felt a deep pain in my chest whenever I took a large breath. The boy sat backwards and on his knees, peering over the seat to watch what the doctor was doing in the backseat, while I steered around cars stopped in the middle of the street and continually looked behind us for any lights that might appear. I did not tell my wife that I was feeling unwell because I did not want to worry her, but as she slept and I watched her chest rise and fall beneath the sheets, I felt my body begin to shake.

I did not know where to go, and I knew we wouldn't be able to drive around forever without needing more gas. My wife woke up and she asked me What's wrong? because I had begun to cough again, and she placed her hand upon my forehead in the darkness of our room. Occasionally my headlights would cross over someone in the street walking or sitting on the hood of a car. She held her hand against my head and I could see her eyebrows curve into concern. We passed underneath a dead traffic light and I could see bright amber dots flickering between the buildings and the hot glow of a fire. We're taking you to the hospital she said and began to get dressed. The boy began to shout Don't go there! Don't go there! so I turned down another street, even though I saw the promise of heat in those flames. I was weak and she helped to dress me, my legs swung over the edge of the bed and feeling disoriented. The car was beginning to swim with heat and I could feel myself start to sweat. She lifted me from the bed and placed my arm over her shoulder, leading me out of the bedroom and down the stairs. Is it helping? How is she? I asked impatiently, not knowing where I was driving or what I could do to help my wife. She guided my head into the car so that I would not bump it and then we were driving to the hospital. I think she has hypothermia came the reply from the darkened backseat. I rested my fevered head on the headrest while my wife navigated to the hospital in the night. With concern I asked Is the heat working? What do we do? because I felt as if we were wandering aimlessly while my wife died in the back of my car. At the hospital, we sat in the emergency room for an hour before the doctors could see me.

The sky was still dark but the stereo clock read 6:00. My wife held my hand and squeezed at my knee while I closed my eyes and tried to keep my breathing shallow otherwise I would clutch at my chest in pain or being to cough again. Looking at the time, I realized how exhausted I was, but my eyes stayed open and darting around to make sure the road was safe. She would whisper into my ear Everything will be fine and I believed her despite the chills running through my body, as nurses passed us by to attend to other patients. Why is it still dark? I asked, but neither the boy nor the doctor had an answer. In the emergency room, I began to cough and clutch at my chest, while my shivering increased, and I wondered what would happen if I died there. From the backseat the doctor said We've got to do something else. She's not warming up in an urgent tone that I associated with medical dramas on television. I sat in the uncomfortable emergency room chair, its back too straight and its cushion flattened by countless sitters, and wondered What would she do without me? while realizing how self centered the thought was. I stopped the car and looked at the buildings around us. We had only been married for about four months and she would be a widow. There were trees toppled onto the sidewalk and a few storefronts had their glass smashed. If I died, how would her life change? It looked as if a hurricane had swept through the city. She would spend the majority of her life loving someone who was no longer there. There was a used bookstore out the passenger side window and a public trashcan with flames licking just above the top of it near the bookstore's door. Would she carry me around like a stone in her pocket weighing her down with sadness? I reversed the car and turned so that the headlights fell upon the store, lighting up the rows of bookshelves. Would she always wear her wedding ring? I climbed out of the car and said Follow me as I made my way to the bookstore's window and peered inside, looking for a dry spot. I tried to convince myself that I would want her to set me aside, to place me on a shelf where she could look as often as she wanted, but with no need to take me when she left. There were still pieces of glass sticking out of the window's frame, so climbed through as careful as possible, while the boy waded through the water behind me. I tried to convince myself that if I were to die, I would not ruin her life, that she would be able to forget me at will. Inside the store, there were books floating in the water and some shelves had been knocked over, but I couldn't find the last thing I was looking for. She would always love me, but she would come to love someone else after I was gone. The back of the store disappeared in darkness and the headlights did not reach far enough back, so I grabbed a large book from the shelf, climbed back out the window, stopping to boost the boy through to the other side, and held the book over the flames from the burning trashcan. But part of me wanted her to cry every night for me. The cover of the book caught fire and began to smolder. Part of me wanted her to keep all of my things in the house exactly as they were. I plunged back into the store quickly, the heat from the book clutching at my hands, and went past the headlights. I wanted her to speak to me before bed every night. In the dim light from my torch, I found a staircase leading up to a second story. To fall asleep with a pillow between her arms in place of my body. The book's flame grew to great and I plucked another from the shelf, transferred the flame, and dropped the charred book into the water to extinguish with a hiss. It was the selfish part of me, but it was strong at that moment, while I coughed long heaving spasms into my clasped hands.

Behind the staircase, in the flickering light, bolted to the wall, I found a fire extinguisher and lifted it free from its holder. A nurse finally attended to me, perhaps because my coughs were beginning to upset the other waiting patients. The first floor wouldn't do, because it was still covered in water, and the bookstore was the worst place, but my wife was going to die of hypothermia in the car, so it had to be there. I stood up to follow the nurse and my wife's hand clutched at mine all the way down the hallway. I climbed the staircase to the second story, and by this time the boy had joined me. We waited in a tiny room for the doctor to arrive and she sat next to me on the examination bed as if we shared a disease between us. The second floor was more bookcases up to the ceiling and a balcony looking out over the watery maze of books below. She clenched my hand and watched me with her glassy eyes while I continued to cough and wince from the pain it caused. I lit another book and dropped the old over the balcony and into the water below, then I began to gather books in my arms and pile them close to the lip of the balcony, which was fairly clear of books so that browsers could sit on a nearby couch. In between a fit of coughs, I turned to her and said If I die, promise me you'll find someone else. I told the boy, who was watching me curiously, Go tell her to bring my wife in because the doctor had not yet appeared in the store. At that, she burst into laughter, her eyes finally shedding their tears, and her free hand coming to rest over her mouth. He walked to the top of the stairs, right to where the light from my book ended, and turned back to me saying It's dark. She rocked back and forth on the examination bed and her laughter painted the white walls. I thought of my wife turning blue in the backseat, but the boys face was on the verge of tears, so I stopped piling the books and want with him back down the stairs and out to the waiting car, switching the burning book in my hand once more along the way. She continued to laugh and I asked her What's so funny? as I felt myself begin to chuckle. I handed the book to the doctor and reached into the backseat to lift my wife into my arms, feeling the chill of her skin against my arms. We watched each other laugh as if we were miming our reflections in an imagined mirror. Her head lay in the crook of my arm and her eyes were closed, but she spoke so quietly, saying Take me to the Light. Take me to the Light as if it were a mantra. I wiped tears from my eyes with the sleeves of the white medical gown I wore and smiled at her. The doctor followed right behind me, casting the flickering light ahead as we reached the back of the store and climbed up the stairs. We're being a little melodramatic she said and I nodded. Laying her down near the pile of books I had begun forming, I grabbed another armful, piled them up as well, and then took the burning book from the doctor. I held her hands in my lap and looked her straight in the eyes when I said I just don't want to be selfish. I don't want you to spend your life mourning me. If anything ever happens, you have to keep living your life and she stopped smiling and nodded, but she didn't say anything. This is insane she said, but I shoved the fire extinguisher into her chest and said She's going to die if we don't, then dropped the burning book onto the pile. I had not coughed the whole time.

Kid A Is Writing Music + [The Doctor Who Witnessed Death Upon Death]

2011-06-25T22:48:00.000-04:00

I discovered today that Radiohead's Kid A is the best album to listen to while I write this novel. I wish I had learned this sooner because it would have made the writing process much easier. Music has a way of molding my mood while I'm writing and helps me to lock into the style I'm aiming for. If I can listen to the same thing often enough, it helps me to keep with that style. I've been looking for the best music to listen to while writing this novel since November, and it looks like I finally stumbled upon it once I'm almost finished. Oh well, better late than never. I've been trying to find some music that is sad or detached in a way. Nothing that is overly cheerful or poppy. It needed a sort of melancholy to it, especially for [The Man Who Lied]. His sections are meant to really have this nostalgic bent to them that show he misses the life he had and this new life, with his wife becoming obsessed with the Light, is breaking his heart. When I started this novel out, I wanted it to be very happy, but I think it's turned from that. Maria and I just talked about why everything has to be sad and I said that if everything were always happy in a story, there wouldn't be any conflict, and therefore nothing to drive the plot. Now, I know what she is talking about. She wants a story that makes you happy. That doesn't always mean everything in it needs to be happy. We can experience sadness in a story that gives way to greater happiness. It's the same way with life. Oftentimes sadness leads to an overall happy experience. And all of this is how I feel about Kid A. For an album that seems so stark and isolated, I really feel a longing for happiness within it. I think Radiohead, since OK Computer, have done a remarkable job of finding that place of still and dark beauty in their music. That was the album where they began to really develop their voice. The Bends is amazing--and I frequently can't decide if it is my favorite Radiohead album or not--but it doesn't seem to have a clear and defined style and voice about it like their albums that followed. This is why I think The King of Limbs is one of their better albums--an opinion that doesn't seem to be the same with a lot of Radiohead fans--because it finds its groove and doesn't veer too far away from it. It finds that beautiful sadness and sticks with it. Of course, while The King of Limbs does this very well, it doesn't do it better than Kid A. Listening to Kid A simply evokes the perfect mood for what I'm aiming to write about. I'm trying to deal with the crumbling of a city and in some cases the crumbling of humanity. But I'm also writing about the hope that these characters have to survive, or to find their parents, or to heal their wife. So, it's Kid A from here on out. I might sprinkle in some Amnesiac or Hail to the Thief as well. I'm not sure In Rainbows and The King of Limbs will make it in the rotation simply because they are much newer to me and I don't feel as nostalgic when listening to them.

Anyway, today Maria went to her aunt's bridal shower, so I was left in Lansing to write and watch Breaking Bad. Mark left me a link to an article on Facebook about working less and being more productive. It talked about doing your work in short concentrated bursts of time and then taking a break, instead of working for extended lengths. I think that's exactly what happens with me while writing this novel (sorry all these updates are about writing). When I have hours upon hours to write, I write slowly and my concentration eventually wains. So today I wrote for an hour. Then I set it aside and watched an episode of Breaking Bad while playing WoW. After the episode was over, I returned to writing for an hour. I repeated this process over again and by the time Maria came back I had written about twice as much as I have been during the day. The bonus was that I also was able to watch Breaking Bad and play WoW on top of it. So, thanks Mark for the article.

When Maria returned, we went for a walk and went to Preuss' Pets, which was fun. We realized that there was a whole section of the story we didn't know existed. Behind this giant bus that they have inside, there is a whole entire section with ferrets, Guinea pigs, hamsters, hedgehogs, tarantula, snakes, lizards, and frogs. We have been there multiple times and never actually noticed any of that. We always just saw the cats, fish, and birds. I would always say that for a pet shop, they sure didn't have all that many pets. Well, come to find out we hadn't seen half the store. The coolest thing we saw was a giant bird eating tarantula aptly named Shelob, which had dug a tunnel underneath the dirt in its cage and was laying web along the ground so that if anything were to walk across it, they would be trapped. The thing was massive (about 8-10 inches) and look incredibly creepy. After the trip to Preuss' Pets, we went to the Old Town Scrap Fest where scrap artists had made wonderful sculptures out of scrap metal. They were very impressive and fun. One of the bests ones was a pirate ship being attacked by some sea creature (likely a kraken, judging by the mouth). Then we came back to the apartment, had macaroni and cheese and salad for dinner, and began to watch The Illusionist, which is actually a french animated film, and not the movie with Paul Giamatti and Edward Norton. It was directed by the same guy who made The Triplets of Belleville, which is a wonderful movie as well. It doesn't really have any dialogue (just like Triplets), but the animation is beautiful and it carries a sense of wonder and humor with it. Maria fell asleep during it, so we are going to finish it tomorrow. After that, I watched the last episode from the first season of Breaking Bad and now I'm writing this and will soon either be sleeping or writing some more.

Here's more of the novel. I talked to Dan last night about this blog and I asked him if he just read the updates or if he actually read the novel as well. Let's just say, he knows what I do day to do, but he couldn't tell you about [The Man Who Drowned]. I told him not to worry, Maria doesn't even read the novel (she did, but then she gets behind and would prefer to just read it all at once on paper). So, I want to say, don't feel bad if you aren't reading the novel (there's a reason I section it off from my updates), but really, you should feel horrible if you skip over it and the next time you see me, you shouldn't be able to look me in the eye out of shame. Also, I'm going to post enormous sections that will take an incredible amount of time to read, simply to test our friendship. I hope you've got your reading glasses on.

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Seriously, it's OK if you don't read this part. I won't be hurt (or will I? I'm secretly crying inside. I hope you are happy). I do hope that some people find it interesting or fun to read, but I know that reading something episodically on a computer screen, in green font, isn't necessarily the best reading experience. Hopefully, I'll get it all done by the 30th and we'll have a printed version.

Today, while I was in the shower, I thought up new names for all the character's sections. Here are the ones that have changed.

[The Man Who Would Be A Father] = [The Watcher Who Saw The Sky Explode]
[The Boy Who Was Lost] = [The Lost Son]
[The Woman Who Witnessed Death Upon Death] = [The Doctor Who Witnessed Death Upon Death] Subtle change, but I thought it made it more interesting.
[The Man Who Lied] = [The Husband Who Lied]
[The Man Who Drowned] = [The Drowned Man]
[The Girl Who Saw Her Own Death] = [The Girl Who Saw Visions]
[The Woman Who Saw Him Step Through Air] = [The Mother Who Saw Him Step Through Air]
[The Man Who Lived Under the Bridge] = [The Man Living Under The Bridge]
[The Woman He Lied To] = [The Wife He Lied To]

When I was thinking of them, I thought they would be so much better. However, after changing them in the novel, I wasn't as thrilled about it as I thought I would be. It mixes up the formula of the names, which I thought would be good, but now I feel like I enjoy the familiar naming style. So, for now I'll keep the changed names. If they change back, I'll let you know.

[The Doctor Who Witnessed Death Upon Death]

Then there was a spot hanging in mid air above the wife, her eyes closed and her chest barely rising, that seemed to be absent, as if a small piece of the room had suddenly ceased to exist, and from that emptiness there appeared a light that began to grow and spill out of the hole, and I felt beneath my scrubs and white coat the prickling of my skin and the air became crisp so that I could see breath rising from the boy's mouth in small tufts as he slowly began to take steps behind me, and the old man placed his hands on his wife and tried to shake her awake, while the light grew and grew until I could see the far wall of the room without my flashlight and then there was a large glowing spot casting light all around us and seeming to freeze everything in the room. We all hung there as if our bodies had been suspended in time, caught in awe by the event we were witnessing, as if the cold in the room had sapped us of the energy to move, until I looked away and saw a thin frost climbing its way up and along the metal railing along the gurney, as if the surface of a lake was freezing right before my eyes, and I noticed my chest had grown desperately cold and the boy's hand in mine was like grasping a ball of snow I was preparing to throw, and I decided that the rapidly dropping temperature of the room had god knows what to do with that floating light, which is just when the wife opened her eyes, stared directly into the blue glow of the light and then recoiled and moaned in small bursts and gasps.

I moved slowly at first, grabbing the railing of the gurney and pulling the bed towards me, but her husband was much quicker, grabbing the railing in both hands and jerking the bed backwards out the door, with the boy and I following, and I stopped just long enough to slam the door shut and peer through the small wire meshed window to watch the light dart towards the door and fill the glass, causing the door handle to grow cold in my hand, and I back peddled until I was up against the wall with its [what is on the wallpaper again?], while the man stood over his wife and tried to calm her down and the boy still clung to my hand and watched as the outline of the door was etched in brilliant white and the heat of the hallway began to seep away from us.

I looked at the man and shouted We have to get the hell out of here because the ball of light was now forming on the other side of the door and I was not going to wait around long enough to find out exactly how cold it could really get here, and he nodded to me and began to push the gurney back the way we came, which was barely lit up by the blue glow of the chasing light, and I had dropped my flashlight before we left the room so were were forced to rush blindly through the hallway, hoping to see the darting of someone's flashlight up ahead, and soon my hand was against the wall, trying to guide the boy, who was now crying, through the darkness, with the subtle squeaking of the gurney's wheels behind me as the husband ferried his wife along. Soon, I could see the hallway way in front of me, but it was not from the lights of the patients in the emergency room, and I knew that I should not slow down or look behind me, because there was only one thing I was going to see and if we were to cease our flight long enough to look behind us, that might be the end, so I lifted the boy up into my arms, slinging him over my shoulder and attempting to ignore his extra weight, and picked up my pace, hoping the squeak of the gurney would keep up as well, until we were through the dark hallways and in the fortress of chairs and the blind or sleeping patients, many of whom woke up as we rushed towards them, and I saw that the automatic doors were shut again, but we ran for them anyway and I shouted Stay out of the light! because I had to warn them somehow, but I didn't want them to rush the door with us and make it impossible to escape, which was a horrible thing for me to think, seeing as they were in as much danger as we were, but I didn't have time to think about the moral implications taking place before I came to a stop in front of the glass doors and began pulling on the handle while the old man grabbed the other side and we both heaved and grunted and the floating light came around the corner, causing a few people to scream and many of them to scramble to the furthest edges of the room as the bluish light crawled over their faces and froze the tile it floated over.

The automatic doors inched apart slowly as if we were rolling a stone from the opening to a tomb and the glowing light reached the puddle of water, just at the edge of the chair barrier, which was about halfway across the room, and the boy was able to slip out through the opening, but I knew we were going to have to pull much harder to get the gurney through, so we continued to pull against the dead weight of the doors and watch as the chilled light flickered and grew on our faces, and the water around my ankles began to bite with a chill as the floating light approached, and I wondered what it was exactly, because it shone like the Light, but somehow it felt the opposite, as if one was cut from the cloth of the other, the Light being a large white sheet and this freezing glow a hole cut in the middle. The Light had wrapped us all and warmed our bodies, had held us tightly and carried us gently back to the ground, but this seemed to pull the heat from within us like starving hands fighting for a piece of bread, and I refused to discover the teeth waiting to eat, so I reached down inside for a last swell of strength to either fling these doors open or tear the handle off, and I felt a warmth that was terrified of being sucked away into the glowing light and it surged through me and out into the tips of my fingers until the door budged open wider and I fell backwards onto my hands, which broke through a thin layer of ice forming over the water, and the old man bent would have bent down to help me up, but his wife was helpless on the gurney and the spot of light had nearly engulfed her feet so he stepped through the doors and pulled on the gurney's railing, but there was a clanging sound and the bed stopped short, still unable to get through. He reached for her shoulders and pulled her up into a sitting position and then wrapped his arms underneath hers and clasped them in front of her chest so that he could haul her out backwards through the door, and the moment they were clear, I pushed the gurney over and squeezed out behind them, the light just behind me and the boy screaming Come on! Come on! I reached back for the doors, but there was no handle on the outside and the light was already beginning to spill out into the night air, which was incredibly frigid, but the glow of the headlights beckoned me and I ran towards them as I heard the engine turn over and saw the boy in the passenger's seat and the back door open and waiting for me, so I pushed my legs to churn faster and I found the wife lying limp across the backseat with just enough room for me to sit if I lifted her legs and placed them on my lap, and soon we were pulling away from the hospital, the bright light moving too slow to catch us and the night sky black as oil.

On Coldplay + [The Woman Who Witnessed Death Upon Death]

2011-06-24T23:19:00.000-04:00

Coldplay is a band I enjoy very much. Their first album, Parachutes is a classic, and something I don't think they could ever top (judging from the direction they are moving). Their second album, A Rush of Blood To The Head, was not only wonderful, but it also earned them a lot of mainstream success (with songs like The Scientist, how could it not?). The third, X&Y, was a bust in my opinion and I think at that point I wrote Coldplay off as being unable to produce another great album. Of course, Viva la Vida came out and proved me wrong. But I was extremely glad to be proven wrong. It mixed their sound up a lot, something that obviously needed to happen after X&Y, which seemed overly familiar, but yet without anything that really stood out. Viva la Vida did away with the standard verse chorus verse chorus crutch they had been using (many songs only have one chorus, or songs are broken into two distinct sections), which was not revolutionary, but it made the songs seem a little less like standard pop tunes. The production was also excellent and I think the use of varied percussion instruments on the album really helped to add a new layer to their sound.

So, after hearing the new Coldplay song, Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall, I was a little worried that the next album would be another X&Y (but even worse). It's not that I don't like Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall (although the lyrics in the first verse do make squirm a little), but I just think I doubted that Coldplay could release another good album so closely after Viva la Vida (which was a return to form and more after X&Y, which was just not memorable enough). I assumed that the success of Viva la Vida (the song) would cause them to produce an album aiming for that same sound, but paling in comparison. Hearing Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall only seemed to confirm my suspicions. It does seem designed to be the next Viva la Vida (the song, again). So, I jumped to conclusions and lost all hope of more excellent Coldplay music (and I would be stuck with a new record of just merely OK Coldplay music). I thought they were just going to try to catch that Viva la Vida (The song) lightning in a bottle and turn it into 10 or 12 new songs. However, two new songs showed up online today (or yesterday) and they do not sound at all like Viva la Vida (the song) or Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall. This is good news, and I can rest easy and sit back and wait for the new album. I don't know if these two songs are even on the new album (they are going to be on the Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall EP), but they are at least signs that Coldplay actually sounds really good when they aren't being bright and sunny and pop. Here's one of the songs:

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Maria and I had a wonderfully excellent day today. We are just getting super excited for the wedding and are strengthening our relationship every day. Maria had a bunch of interviews again today, and I got to be her chauffeur while running some errands (and getting Taco Bell!). I spent a good chunk of time writing at Espresso Royale while she interviewed someone. We came home and ended up watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, which, as I said before, I hadn't seen yet. I thought it was great and I can't wait for Part 2. The director, David Yates, has gotten into a groove and really knows how to present Harry's world remarkably well. It's a shame there is only one more movie to go. It's also a shame that our wedding is the same day it comes out, which means we'll have to wait a little bit before we get to see it :( Apparently Laura is quite upset about it and says that of all people, I should have known better. I agree with her. What was I thinking?! Haha!

Other than that, we ate at Taste of Thai tonight and, of course, it was absolutely delicious. We are sticking to our budget and making sure to only eat out once a week. It was horrible having to wait (and as I mentioned before, I snuck some Taco Bell in, but it was only $4). We got in the habit of eating out far too often, but now that we've actually looked at how much we make versus how much we have to spend, we decided it's for the best.

When we got home, I played WoW (when I probably should have been writing) and Maria began to paint the cake toppers for our cake. Now, it's time for bed.

Here's another new section from the novel. I'm getting closer and closer to the end. I can feel it!

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[The Woman Who Witnessed Death Upon Death]

He held her in his arms and I could see he was shaking from exhaustion, because this older man did not seem used to such strain, his body grown weak with time, but I could see that he was not like the people who had carried torches and peered into the emergency room with scowls on their faces and murder in their eyes. Instead, this older man was nearly broken, a veil seemed passed over his face that obscured his features in a way that I had difficulty determining if he was even aware of me at all, seeing as he spent most of his effort on holding up the older woman, who I assumed to be his wife, and staring down at her to ensure she was still breathing, which she was, but in a shallow way that worried me. The young boy was smiling and talking I thought you were my mom and dad, but that's OK and he was nearly dancing about so that he looked like he was on stage at a recital with all of the flash lights that were now pointed at us by concerned survivors hiding behind the row of chairs and down the hallways of the hospital.

Please, she needs help the gray haired man pleaded and I knew that he was right, although I did not know what help we could provide, the power had gone out the moment after the man with the swirling voice dissipated into the air as if he had been powering the lights and machines with his presence, a thought that had me terrified to walk upstairs and check on the intensive care unit. He had simply vanished, leaving me with the task of finding this boy's mother and the words Something is coming rattling around in my head without making any real connection with anything else, except for the interrogative portion of my brain which prompted such questions as What is coming? and How worried should we be? I pretended he was talking about the people with torches, but something about that didn't seem right, they were certainly terrifying, what with their horrible howling and their faces crumpled up like newspaper ready to be set on fire, but they did little more than pound on the glass before shuffling on, and whatever he had spoken of, it had been with such dread, a dread that stuck in my own stomach, that he had fled immediately, leaving me with the boy in a ruined hospital.

The older man carried the woman, who I assumed was his wife, farther into the room, occasionally looking up from her sagging body to look around for some sort of help, before he reached the line of chairs and the other patients, basking in the glow of their flashlights, some still blind, others holding compresses to their various minor injuries, and he realized that the aid he required was not going to be found here in this cold and dark hospital, with its large puddle of water reaching in from the flooded streets outside, unable to fill the room, and he placed her down in one of the chairs and turned to me with his mouth hanging open, unable to speak. Is this your wife? What are her symptoms? I asked, remembering I was a doctor and he was looking to me for help, but knowing that the only real help I could provide was the comfort that something was being done to help his wife, and that if I wasn't able to actually treat her, I could at least attempt to diagnose her. Yes, she's my wife. I don't know. She's weak, and she only speaks about the Light. Everything she says is about it. I can't get her to talk about anything else. He was breaking down right there amidst the flashlights and the whispering, his hands shaking and his eyes begging for me to have an answer, but I didn't know what to tell him seeing how everything since has been about the Light, and I couldn't do much more than take her blood pressure and maybe give her some morphine or adrenaline, seeing how none of our machines were working, and also because I didn't think I could do anything about her obsession with the Light, and he put his hands on my shoulders so that I couldn't look away from his pleading face and also because he was beginning to slump down to the ground and needed something to hold him up, and then the woman, still slumped in the chair like an oversized child who is unable to sit up on their own, spoke up, her voice rasping like a broken kettle, saying It was here. The Light was here. We please take me to it. and pointing her hand back towards the hallways leading farther into the hospital, past the blind survivors who were curled and at this point sleeping on the tile floor.

The gray haired man asked me to Please help us and he picked up his wife and began to carry her past the line of chairs and the onlookers, one of whom barked Shut the door as we wadded past, and into the darkness where the headlights couldn't reach, so I lifted my flashlight, grabbed the boy by the hand, and followed after, careful to illuminate the tile in front of him. I tried to get his attention and asked Where are we going? There's no power. Everything's shut down but he continued on, his wife's hand outstretched and seeming to lead the way, and the boy and I backtracked through the hallways and to the room where he had lied on the table and seizured so badly that I thought he was going to die right there in front of me, which would have sent me far over the edge I felt my self balancing on, and when we entered the room, the gurney still in the middle, the man laid his wife down on its padded surface and leaned in to listen to her say It was here. The Light was right here. I can feel it. Can you feel it? because I was trying to get in close and check her vitals, and the man looked around the dark room and then leaned back down again to answer Of course I do. I had no idea how she knew about the Light, but the boy spoke up with He was here and then he left us and the man looked at me, his face as lost as when he entered the hospital and I tried to explain, but his wife responded quickly. Where did he go? The boy shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and said I don't know. He was supposed to help me find my mom and dad. But he just left with the sort of disappointment you would hear if you had told him he couldn't get a new puppy, a disappointment that seemed contagious as the wife then laid her head down on the gurney and closed her eyes, which in turn caused the husband to seemingly diminish, as if he were collapsing in on himself, and there I stood, unable to provide any comfort, or find this lost boy's parents, or cure any of those still blind in the emergency room, or to even check on my patients in the ICU for fear that each and every one of them was dead, and I closed my eyes and silently cursed the man with the swirling voice for having left us here in the darkness, for giving up on this poor child, for bringing the Light which must have ruined this woman, for causing the blackout, for leaving the blind in the emergency room, for killing the patients upstairs attached to life support, and most of all for leaving me here to deal with the shit he couldn't handle.

Other Things To Do + [The Man Who Drowned]

2011-06-23T22:11:00.000-04:00

I spent today in front of the television watching the first season of Breaking Bad, which was recommended highly by my step brother, Charles, while playing WoW, and so far is absolutely wonderful. It's pretty dark, seeing as it deals with a high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with lung cancer and begins to sell crystal meth to provide for his family's future, extremely well acted (it stars the dad from Malcom In The Middle, if you will believe it), and very well written (the conversations feel very realistic and the plot, while kind of crazy, always feels natural and unforced). I'm hooked and want to just cruise through it, but I'm pacing myself because there are other things to do.

For instance, we have to finish the Harry Potter movies! We just finished the The Half-Blood Prince today, which means we only have one left on DVD and then we just wait for the next to hit theaters (on our wedding day). The 6th wasn't bad, but I stand by my complaints from when I saw it in theaters. They focus too much on Ron and Lavender's relationship (because we know it isn't going to last and there are more important things they could be dealing with), they insert a needless scene with Death Eaters at the Weaseley's house, and they leave out the confrontation between the Order of the Phoenix and the Death Eaters at the end. Why would you insert a random scene with boring fighting in a field, when you could have an actual from the book scene with climactic fighting to end the film? Just doesn't make sense to me. Still, the director is the 2nd best of the series, and I'm glad he stuck around from the 5 to 7 part 2. I haven't actually scene 7 part 1 yet, so it will be exciting to watch it tomorrow.

Other than that, we went to Bubble Island for some delicious drinks and browsed Barnes and Nobles, where Maria found a cool book called The Architect of Flowers. She read the back and said it sounded like how I write. I read the beginning of it and, it is much better than anything I could write, but it did seem like the style I'm aiming for (and probably missing). I want to buy it, but we were practicing our restraint and budgeting by looking at a bunch of books...and the not buying any of them. Maria seems to think it is fun. I'm not entirely convinced yet, but I'm working on it.

Here's some more from the book. See if you can define my "style" if there is any style to be found.

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This takes place after [The Man Who Was Blessed] and [The Boy Who Was Lost] escape from the crazed mob of people and [The Man Who Drowned]

[The Man Who Drowned]

The shadows swelled up from the pavement and took form. The sky was dark and no light shone down upon us. The cement towers were filled with empty glass eyes watching down as the dark figures surrounded me. My head was no longer burning and I felt as if my limbs had grown lighter. I backed away from the shadows and my hands met with chilled water. I found myself again on the shore of the lake. The crowds had thinned and moved farther into the city, but still there were hollowed faces all around me. They circled and I submerged myself further in the black water until my chest was wet. [italics] You said he would help us [italics] called one of the shadows. Others joined in agreement. They mumbled words I could not hear and splashed in the deepening water. I had promised them relief from their suffering, and the damned do not take kindly to broken promises. As their circle tightened, I remembered standing among them and commanding such attention. They had heeded my every word. I was their master for but a moment as the man with the swirling voice performed miracles. He held his hands against the woman's head and she was cured. He unleashed his Light upon me and I was overcome. And then the blessed man had fled as I collapsed to the ground and the darkening sky fell down around me.

I inhaled deeply, tasting the faint dirt upon my tongue that had been brushed into the air by the rush of water when the lake had formed. Then I plunged beneath the murky water as the shadows bolted for me. We had finally been heard. The man had come down from the heavens. He was the solution. He was the angel grown tired of our needless clanging through the city. What I had promised had come. Attention was paid. But he had not listened to our pleading. Our suffering did not seem great enough. He slipped away into the night and I was left to deal with the insanity I had created.

My lungs burned, but I kept my head down and swam hard. I felt movement in the water behind me. A hand grasped onto my ankle and I kicked my other foot behind me, feeling the soft contact in the water. The fingers released their grip and I was free again, still unwilling to lift my head above the surface of the murky water. I couldn't see three inches in front of my face and the ground had quickly disappeared from beneath my feet, having angled down into the valley of the suburbs. Eventually I could not stand the urging of my body to inhale and I forced myself to break the surface of the water. I gulped the air greedily as if I had never breathed before. My eyes tried adjusting to the dark, but there was not much to see beyond the occasional building sprouting up from the water and the lip of the sun just on the horizon. I was not far from the city, but just out enough so that those cursed bodies on the shore could not see me bobbing in the inky darkness. I could see the flickering of torches lighting up and could hear the howling of the mad rise. It was as if I was watching a parade of damned souls making its way into fiery depths. I watched the near murderous throng empty into the city and feared for what they would do.

There was no use in shaking the pillars to heaven. Our salvation had come and gone. Now they marched for their own destruction, for the end of their existence. They would flare out and burn away rather than silently smolder. I tried to wash my hands of it all, but there was no use. Perhaps it would have come to this regardless of my intervention, but I had no way to prove this, and therefore it brought me no comfort. My heart seemed to sink within my chest, trying to pull me underwater. When the eyes of god had turned away, I become capable of more than I could imagine. The moment his gaze returned, I was exposed. There was no hiding from my actions. I wished for my fever to return. I wished for drowning. Had this man saved me twice? Was he the one who pulled me from the water when it had filled my lungs outside of my house? I had been spared. I had been given a second chance. And for what purpose? Look at the devastation I wrought. My hands had taken life. My words had driven others to madness. Yet he had pulled the fever from my head and left me feeling alive and well. If only he had left me to die. I am truly a cursed man.

I was treading water as the last of the burning lights disappeared, and then, remembering that I was no longer suffering from a fever and my strength had returned, I swam out into the lake, because there was no room for me in the city anymore.

200 + [The Man Who Drowned]

2011-06-22T19:55:00.001-04:00

For a blog that I started in 2008 (which is beginning to seem incredibly long ago) with the intention of posting everyday (or at least every weekday), it sure has taken me a long time to reach my 200th post. If you didn't notice (and I know you didn't. I only did because there is a post number count directly next to the "New Post" button) this is my 200th post. I feel somewhat impressed by this, but also less than impressed. Really, this blog has sat untouched for most of the time I've had it, and every few months I have a burst of blogging that last for around 30 posts or so. Still, I really like posting here and I hope to continue it. If it doesn't serve it's primary goals (getting you to listen to music I like and read some of my writing), then I know it succeeds in its secondary goals, which would be keeping a small amount of people updated on the day to day details of my life (thus helping us stay a little more connected during our distant and busy lives) and giving me something to look back on occasionally and think "Wow, remember that?". I think the benefit of our new generation of bloggers and Facebookers is that when we are older, there will be a much more defined document of parts of our lives. I look at all my Facbook pictures and realize that without Facebook, I would not have any pictures of those times (because I just don't take pictures). I read some of my blog posts and realize that there are many days where interesting things occurred, but I simply forgot them. Of course, that could be achieved by keeping a diary, but I think more people are keeping blogs now than diaries (of course, that's just a guess). Anyway, I'm glad I've posted 200 times here and I hope for another 200 or more posts. Hopefully I can keep up at a quicker pace. I don't want to be hitting post 400 in 2014 (which seems incredibly far away).

Quick day update (because Mike is on WoW and we haven't played together for weeks): I wrote, Maria did interviews, we watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (better than Goblet of Fire, not as good as Prisoner of Azkahban), we went to get the next Harry Potter, we took a nap, and then I posted here. There was some eating involved and other various things (Maria finished her crocheted cat and it's awesome), but that's about it. Just another wonderful summer day.

Side note, I'm listening to the new Strokes album. Maria just said it sounds like Kanye West. When I looked at her with eyes suggesting she was crazy, she corrected her self and said Keane.

Here's another section from [The Man Who Drowned]

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[The Man Who Drowned]

I lead them through the streets. We uprooted each tree we came across and broke the branches for torches. We gathered kerosene. We carried tire irons, crowbars, and broken table legs. We clanged them against light posts and trashcans causing resounding thunder to crash through the flooded streets. My body was being consumed from the inside, but each time I forced my voice through my teeth, the sound of others joining in around me was enough to hold me upright. Our suffering was spread out between each of us and it carried us through our pain. I pushed aside thoughts of stopping or sleeping and did not think about how long I could keep this up. I thought about my wife and daughter being crushed by waves of water. The anger drove me forward.

A man who screamed nothings lifted a brick and I watched it twist through the air before shattering the glass of the pharmacy. The familiar mortar and pestle sign clinging to the window fell and I stepped right over it as we entered the building. Behind the counter, the pharmacist was shouting Get out of here! Leave us alone! One of those lost to the Light ran towards him, their eyes wide and shouting out, and the pharmacist scurried away into a back room. I heard a woman screaming from behind the door. We pulled food from the shelves and a few people lifted bottles of liquor. I grabbed a box of ibuprofen. Many more of us looted the shelves behind the counter. They filled paper bags with prescriptions. Someone toppled over a vending machine, causing a wave to ripple down the aisles.

There was a loud booming noise. I clutched my hands to my ears and went down on my knees instinctively. Someone shouted Oh god! Oh god! and the our howling grew quiet. I looked around and saw people covering their heads or turning to run. There was another crack in the air and I peered over the metal aisle divider to see the pharmacist holding a gun and pointing it at a man who held a small hammer in his hand. The pharmacist shouted Get out of here! and motioned with the gun, but the man did not seem to notice. He was one lost to the Light. I moved to the end of the aisle so as to see better. Looking around the edge of the aisle, I could see someone floating in the water face down. They were not moving. I turned and made my way slowly to the window. I could still hear the pharmacist shouting at the stunned man. I scrambled out of the store front and into the street. There was another shout, this one unintelligible and a gun shot. More people leapt out behind me. We emerged from the wreckage with amber bottles in our arms.

Our descent seemed out of my control, but I did not want to stop. We were screaming at the sky and we were getting louder. We were firing gun shots. Someone would hear. Someone would take notice. They would peer down from the heavens and see the mess they have created. This is not our fault. This was done to us. Do you blame the wild dog for biting? We were made to burn this world until the light is bright enough to be seen through the darkness. Until a hand reached down to help us, we would not stop.

We fled down the street and far away. No one spoke of the what happened in the pharmacy. We were satisfied with our destruction. Our foreheads dripped sweat. Our arms ached. We flinched at noises even when they seemed far away. Eventually we collapsed and slept. It was the middle of the day. The fever overtook me. I thrashed and kicked. I drank from the still water around our legs and took five ibuprofen pills. Again, we were in the restaurant by the edge of the lake. Some people were passed out from medications. My forehead still burned. A woman spoke to me I saw him stop the water. He led them all to safety. She was speaking of a man. I had heard of him now many times. Some say he cured their blindness. Others that he mended broken bones. They said he could help me. If the pills could temper my fever long enough, we would find him.

Dear Men's Warehouse + [The Man Who Drowned]

2011-06-21T17:52:00.001-04:00

I forgot to mention this yesterday when I was talking about the suit. How I forgot about this is beyond me, but you get to read all about it today.

So, here is what the suit looks like online. Not incredibly brown, but just enough so that you know it is brown.

And this is what the suit looks like in real life. Clearly not brown.

I opened the box of suits and my first thought was "These aren't brown", because they flat out are not brown. But of course, the tag on the suit says "Brown" and the receipt online says "Brown" and apparently if you hold them in just the right and perfect light, and if you squint your eyes just a bit, and if you put it up against something that is incredibly gray, they look just the slightest bit brown. Essentially, I ordered a brown suit and I got a gray suit with brown buttons. It's far too late to send them back and get something else, but I'm not exactly thrilled about it. I'm just remembering that, honestly, its just a color and it's the least important thing about the wedding. But it's the principal of the thing that bothers me. If you are going to sell me a gray suit, put a picture up that looks gray and call it "Gray". Don't put a picture that looks "Brown" and try to con your brownish-very gray suit on me. Maybe come up with another name besides "Brown" that indicates that you, Men's Warehouse or Mark Ecko, are not distributing a brown suit, but in fact, are selling a suit that an actual Men's Warehouse employee called--and I quote--"Not brown" when questioned about the supposed color during my fitting. If you were to ask him for a proper color he would have called it "A cross between gray and taupe", which, if my knowledge of colors and words serves me correctly, does not mean "Brown". Perhaps you, Men's Warehouse, are as fuzzy on colors as I used to be, before I spent a lot of time Googling "Brown" and "Taupe" and "Gray Taupe"--which is precisely the color of my suit, and would be the best candidate for if you were to take color-responsibility here and list the proper one in the suit description--and you were unaware exactly what brown looks like. So maybe I can help you out. First, do as I have and type "Brown" into the nearest internet search bar, then click on the tab that says "Images". You will likely be surprised at what you discover. There will be a whole page of small squares filled with a color that you had previously not connected with brown. But rest assured, they are in fact that exact color. As a side note, do not be confused by the large number of photos of singer Chris Brown, and do not scroll too far down the page--trust me on that one. If you still need convincing, perhaps you could find the nearest elementary school, track down their kindergarten teacher, and ask her to educate you on what exactly constitutes the color brown and what, pray tell, gray looks like. Then you can promptly log onto your website and make a few corrections so that poor color conscious consumers like me don't have to write long rants on their blogs.

Anyway, Maria is making dinner and I need to help her, so just know that today we payed the final sum to the MSU Horticultural Gardens and spent the drive back saying things like "Why didn't we get married in a church" or "That could have been a whole loan!" You live and you learn, right? Seriously though, we are incredibly excited, and only partially worried about how much everything costs.

Here's some more about [The Man Who Drowned].

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[The Man Who Drowned]

We carried baseball bats from the discount sports store. Some of us clutched torches. We shouted as we marched and we toppled over cars. We would mass on one side and heave, because we were powerful and we could do such tremendous things. We set the trash cans on fire so that we could see where we had been and where we were going. The streets were fire and water. We broke the windows of restaurants and looted their kitchens. People were sleeping in the booths and would wake up wild eyed and screaming as if we had come to cut their throats. In a flooded pizza shop a man came at me with a knife from the kitchen. He tried to drive us out. But there were so many of us shouting and stamping out feet and throwing chairs. He did not get ten feet from me before a chair flew through the air and knocked him off his feet. We set fire to the restaurant and he scrambled out the broken window like a fleeing rat.

The damned followed behind me. Some of them continued to look towards the sky with expectant stares. They were close to mute and would only speak about the Light. They were the first to overturn cars or to set fire to newspaper stands. Those who were still sane stayed quiet, but they followed as well. Their need to destroy lasted only so long as they could remain unconscious of their actions. Those who spoke to others would eventually duck away into a dark alleyway. They did not have the suffering the rest did. They did not burn with the need to bellow their fury. I could feel it inside me like the thrust of a rocket.

When I found myself unable to shout for fear of losing my voice completely, and my limbs hung lose at my sides, we returned to the blighted lake where our homes sat beneath the waves. Those who had remained behind parted around our parade of madness like leaves in high winds. We collected around the edge of the lake, muscling our way into the store fronts for shelter. We slept and dreamed of the scars we had left behind. My thirst was not quenched. We had rocked the streets, but the buildings were still standing high above us, looking down with blank faces, showing no care. What would put out the fires within me?

In the morning, my gut was spinning. I had slept on a small bench in the remains of a fast food restaurant. I curled over on my side and vomited into the water. The man sleeping across the table from me continued to sleep. I curled my legs up and felt my head. It was simmering. There was sweat beaded up and streaming down from my hair. The backs of my eyes burned with a sharp pain. This feeling seemed to wash down the rest of my body so that I ached in every joint and each ligament seemed stretched and prepared to snap. I recoiled from the vinyl covering of the bench. It seemed to stick and pull at my skin. I could feel myself moaning, the feeling reverberating through my body and bringing some relief, however small. I needed a doctor. I needed some one to relieve me of this pain.

I remained curled on my side and moaning until the man across from me woke. His face was rough and thick stubble grew all over. Shut up! he growled. I was unable to quit, the deep moaning seeming to rub my muscles and release the pressure building in my head. My body began to burn with the fever and I needed to drink. The man sat up and told me Either shut up or I'll make you quiet! with a tone that spoke far more than he said. This man had been in the streets with me carrying a torch or smashing windows. I had led him through the streets in our glorious rebellion. Now I was just the next thing that needed to be ruined. If I could not get my body under control, I would be at his mercy.

I held my breath and rolled off the bench and into the water, my vomit still dispersing across the top. The water was cool and the shock was enough to clear my head. I surfaced slowly and waded away from the man at the table. I propped myself up on another table across the restaurant from me. A woman was lying on the bench and she had been watching me struggle. I saw a man who can help you. I was blind and he cured me. Nodded, but couldn't reply. Here, take my spot she said and left me room on the bench. I tried to thank her, but my mouth refused to open. I collapsed onto the bench and closed my eyes to sleep.

Make Me Look Like Dr. Who + [The Man Who Drowned]

2011-06-20T23:44:00.001-04:00

Bon Iver's new album comes out tomorrow and I've been listening to it. It's very good. Can't say how I could compare it with the first album, but I do know I like it and I'm not disappointed at all by it (since it's their second album, there's always that chance of being let down). Here's a great song from it accompanied by a very strange video that wants to be more interesting than it actually is, but I give it props for trying (either that, or I just don't "get" it). At least it's interesting visually.

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Got my suit fitted today and I'll be picking it up next Tuesday. I told them I liked the skinny fit, but refrained from asking them to make me look like Dr. Who would wear it. I'm not sure they would have known what I was talking about. Then Maria and I went to Meijer and we attempted to do all our shopping for the week while staying within our projected married shopping budget. You'll be glad to know we made it. In fact, we were actually about three dollars under what we thought it would be. Yay for us! We'll see if we can keep that up.

We got home and made dinner. I made Vietnamese Sesame Rice Noodles for dinner while Maria worked on the homemade salsa for our meal tomorrow. It was a lot of fun because we were cooking together, but I actually made the whole meal by myself, which impressed me. How many of you thought I could make anything more complicated than macaroni and cheese? I'm not seeing many hands. Anyway, the meal was delicious (Maria agrees) and there was tons of it, so we know what we'll be eating for lunch tomorrow.

After dinner, we watched the 4th Harry Potter film, which apparently includes David Tennant among its cast members! To bad I didn't know who he was when I first saw it, otherwise I would have been much more excited then. If you didn't follow the link, you'll want to know that he played the 10th incarnation of Dr. Who. Upon a second viewing of this Harry Potter, I decided that I was disappointed they got rid of Alfonso Cuarón, the director of the third, and replaced him with Mike Newell, who went on to direct the fairly horrible Prince of Persia movie. Newell didn't seem to know what to do with everything that happens in the books, so he paired them down and made it a little difficult to follow if you hadn't read them. Cuarón had done such a good job of making the 3rd movie work on its own, without any knowledge of the books, that the 4th movie was a little bit of a disappointment.

After all of that, we sat down and wrote/crocheted a cat. You can guess as to who did which. So now I'm going to give you some sections from [The Man Who Drowned] which I have been writing for the past few days. They happen earlier in the book, but I doubt anyone is really following along enough to notice that. His story is tricky because it needs to explain the crazy mobs of people roaming the city, but I don't want him to be an outright evil character (just because he didn't start that way, and because I think good people who do evil things are more interesting and complex). So, he's very angry, but I think he has a good reason to be, and his actions are not very good, but I think they make sense to him and he feels justified in them. Let me know what you think. Tomorrow I'll post another of his sections.

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[The Man Who Drowned]

They were aimless and drifting among the pillars of ash and the burnt sky. It was black and devoid of stars. They shambled around and there were no lights for us. They gathered around and I spoke from the top of a parked car We have been damned! We have been punished! This has been done to us! It was deliberate! I felt my head begin to swell up like a bruised lip. My fever had not left, but I found myself shouting through my raw throat. They listened to me because there was nothing else to listen to. No one spoke because there was nothing to speak of. Their lives were gone. Some of them sat. Others leaned against each other. Their heads hung low because they were in pain. Some from what they had lost. Others from wounds that were wrapped in torn shirts and crusting with dried blood. They waited for their end. They would starve to death because they lacked the will to search for food. An angry sort of pity rose in me. They had the ability to help themselves, but they were so beaten, so stripped of what they had known, they were defeated. But I was angry at the Light. I was not going to lie down in the dust and die. Will you just give up? Are you going to die here or are you going to do something? We need food! We need shelter! Let's find it! You won't have to look hard! They listened and nodded. They were hungry and growing cold as the night lengthened. God has cursed us! We'll show him that we are strong! I knew this was true. God had forsaken us. We were being punished. This was our flood. I was not going to drown.

The street was still filled with water. Many of them sat on top of city trash cans to avoid the water. Some were lucky enough to occupy benches. One or two had climbed into the few small trees dotting the sides of the street. Most of them hung back in the shadows of storefronts. A few were behind the glass of the shops. The car I stood on was parked outside a sports discount store. I could see racks of golf clubs and tennis rackets through the window. There was an employee still inside, standing near the door as if to stop anyone from entering. These people hoped their lives would return to normal. But they were naïve. Our world was burned away.

I swayed for a moment on the top of the car. Holding my hand to my forehead, it felt as if I was on fire. I spoke and they listened and they lifted their hands because they were scared. They were terrified that the Light would return. Each one feared its burning gaze. I could see it in their downcast eyes and the way they sprawled on the cracked pavement like they were dying of thirst. I could see the anger in those who pushed at anyone who came near, shoving aside anyone who dared to venture to close. I saw those who had lost their minds. They stood or sat or lied on the ground, but they always looked upwards into the sky as if waiting for another Light, as if waiting for its horrible return in which we would be scorched from the face of the earth. They milled about and some listened and others cried or leaned against the side of cement buildings barely held together after the Light. I waited for the buildings to fall, to tumble and crush us. To snuff us from existence. We were a miserable people.

A man behind me was talking loudly as well and I tried to fight for their attention. I spoke louder Some of you have lost loved ones! My wife and daughter [check if he has a daughter] were in our house when it was covered in water! The Light took from me everything that I had! My limbs were detached from my body. I had to sit down on top of the car. I felt dizzy. The man was now shouting, but I couldn’t make out his words. Others in the crowd were joining with him, like a chorus was forming right there in the street. The man was short and hair hung from his head like a wilted fern. His face was contorted so that I was unable to see his eyes. Those in the crowd who looked to the sky expectantly were beginning to join him. I stopped shouting, fearing what was occurring behind me, and listened. The man was saying words, but they were unintelligible. It seemed as if each word flowed directly into the next with no pauses for breath, but he certainly was breathing hard. He began walking in a small circle. The others joining in shouting as well in words I had never heard. There seemed to be no meaning behind them. I sprawled on the top of my car and watched the crumbling crowd around me dissolve as a wave against the shore. I tried to hold my eyes open, but they were uncooperative. I had to strain and fight, hitting my face to keep awake. Those of more sound mind slunk back towards the edges and beneath the overhangs of buildings while those clearly gone mad bumped against the cars and spilled into the street. I watched in amazement as the damned made their pleading cries to the heavens, as if they had grown tired of punishment and knew only how to spit curses and flail arms.

I found myself jumping down from the car. There was something within their tortured dance that spoke to me. I saw their faces twisted and howling and I wished for the same. There was a release there, a moment in which their suffering left them. That is what I needed. The thoughts of my life stolen from beneath me were burning within my chest. I needed release. The man who had begun the disarray was falling against the hood of the car. I joined in with him, slamming my fists against it and crying out, because by god I would be heard. I would scream so loud my lungs would quit. I would puncture a whole in the burned sky. My voice would skip over the thick oil slicked lake. The whole world was in flames and I was in the center. We were the kindling and we were not going to burn without passion. The fever had left me and my eyes were no longer closing. I was purging myself of the sickness with each strained syllable.

This continued until I was dizzy and heaving on the pavement, water lapping against my sides. The screaming man was lying on the car hood staring up into the sky. Those around us who had been near rioting were also staring up. There were still others who were watching us from a safe distance. They saw something within our shouting. There was a connection there. They all wanted to show their suffering so visibly. They wanted to crack the sidewalks and topple the lamp posts. To roll the cars and smash windows. They wanted to make such noise that we would be noticed. I could see this in their faces, sometimes hidden behind their hair, or behind the dirt smudged on their cheeks. I climbed back up onto the car, newly born. My skin had shed. My suffering turned outward, it was evident upon me. I could feel it radiating outward. I spoke to those on the farthest edges of the street, where the light was growing dimmer beneath the shadows and the flash of cell phones or small flashlights occasionally flickered like lightning in the distance We have been punished for nothing! We have been cast aside and forgotten! Let us be heard! Let us shout to the heavens until they open up and we are noticed! I felt no hint of weakness. My body had given over to my desires.

I lifted my hands in the air as I spoke. The man on the hood of the car was staring up at me as if he could understand me. He was listening. The others in the street were no longer staring at the sky, their faces had turned to me. Their eyes were vacant and waiting. The people on the edges stepped closer. Soon they were crowded around the car. I stood in a sea of heaving and exhausted masses. They were covered in filth and their eyes were red from being held open far too long and fitful waking sleep. A man in the crowd had removed his shirt and held it aloft on the end of a tree branch he had snapped off. He fumbled in his pocket for something and soon I saw the spark of a lighter in the darkness and the shirt was ablaze. The crowd back away slightly as it burned. The shirt was exhausted quickly. Another man removed his shirt and unscrewed the gas cap of the car. Soon, the two men had a torch burning bright.

We’ll be heard! We’ll be heard! I shouted and began to make my way down from the car. The crowd followed.

Father's Day + [The Boy Who Was Lost]

2011-06-19T23:40:00.000-04:00

Another good day today. We spent the morning in Lansing while Maria did work for these interviews she has to do. I played too many video games and did not enough writing. Then we headed out to Brighton to see her dad for Father's Day. We played a lot of the bean bag toss game, ate delicious veggie dogs that were grilled instead of cooked in a microwave, and went to see Bridesmaids with the whole family (which is hilarious, and slightly awkward to watch with soon to be family members, but not awkward to make it any less funny). Now we are back and Maria is doing a drawing of her earrings while I am supposed to be writing. Instead, I spent a long time going through my Facebook status updates page and hiding those people that I know, but don't really need to get updates from. A lot of it was from bands that I included in my interests, which somehow puts them in my updates feed. So I keep getting all these Facebook updates from bands saying how they are in Texas about to go on stage and it's all junk I don't need to be reading. It was mainly inspired by a high school acquaintance that posts this uber conservative, Obama's Not A Citizen, Break Up Those Teachers' Unions, Yay For Glen Beck junk that, one, saddens me by being so closed minded (you can dislike teachers' unions all you want, they've got their problems, but liking Glen Beck? Hasn't he admitted many times at this point that he's not a politician, he's an entertainer? Hasn't he flat out told us he's just trying to cause a ruckus to get better ratings?), and two, clutters my Facebook feed with things that annoy me. So now, I'll probably be reading a lot less about bands on tour and right wing America.

On the writing side of things. I've lost my steam. I'm still writing every day, but it just doesn't feel like I'm writing enough. I know what I want to happen at the end of the novel, but I feel like I'm delaying it and just writing boring filler. I've got to cut that out. I'll try harder tomorrow.

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[The Boy Who Was Lost]

Once my mom took me the planetarium for fun. Because I was always asking about things in the sky, like the stars and the sun. Because they are really cool and I didn't know what they were, really, even though now I do because the lady at the planetarium with the cool uniform and name badge explained it to us. And when we got there we went into this big round room with movie chairs all around. But they were leaning backwards and looking up at the ceiling like it was inside a spaceship and we were going to take off and fly into space so we could see the stars really close, which is what I wish we had done, but what we actually did was still really cool. My mom sat right next to me and there was an empty seat next to me. Because most of the planetarium room was empty, which is weird to me because it was so much fun and I would think that people would want to go to the planetarium all the time. And the lights went out, which is when I held my mom's hand because I needed to make sure she was still next to me. And then the big curved ceiling just seemed to explode with lights all over the place and they were every where and swirling around, which was really cool and fun. And that's kind of what it was like when the man climbed up on top of me when I had the rock in my head and he put his hand on my head. That's what I thought of, all that light exploding on the big curved ceiling and then spinning around.

It was really strange because my head was splitting so bad that I thought I was going to just blow up, like in the movies when cars fall off of cliffs or when helicopters crash into buildings. My dad likes to watch movies where things blow up a lot, which makes my mom upset sometimes and she will grab the remote control and change the channel, even though me and dad are in the middle of our movie. But he never changes the channel back. Because he knows that mom is always right bout what we should be watching on TV. And she tells me she doesn't like it when I watch violent things, even though I don't think I watch violent things. But she is very serious when she says it, so I don't argue. But anyways, I thought that was going to happen to my head, and I couldn't really see anything besides colors flashing in front of my eyes. And I couldn't feel my feet or my arms. But then all of a sudden it was gone and I was lying on the rolling bed. And I was really tired, so I closed my eyes for awhile and when I opened them, the man was gone and there was only the doctor lady still in the room, which was really dark, just like the planetarium again. Except I waited and there wasn't any light on the ceiling, but the doctor lady did have a flashlight that she shined on me and in my eyes, which was really bright and I blinked a lot. And I asked her Where did he go? Because I didn't see the man anywhere and how was I going to find my mom and dad if I was all alone. Because that hadn't worked out the first time. And the doctor said to me I don't know which seemed weird to me because she was in the room when he placed his hand on my head and she should know where he was now. But she didn't say anything else, so I tried not to, but I felt like I was going to cry again, which I hated doing. But I just couldn't help it anymore. And I said to her How am I going to find my mom and dad? as brave as I could, because I didn't want to sound like a baby while I was crying. And she looked at me carefully and seemed like she wasn't going to answer me at all. But then she said I'll help you find them and she helped me sit up, which was hard to do. All my muscles felt like they were going to fall off and I was just going to be a skeleton, which would kind of be cool.

She helped me out of the dark room and into a dark hallway. And I tried my best to walk, but I had to go really slow because I had trouble keeping my legs moving. Her flashlight bounced around as we walked and I could see the [what is on the walls again?] on the walls. And I wondered why none of the lights were on, but I didn't ask because I was using all of my energy just to keep walking without falling down. I was really glad she had a flashlight. Because I didn't want to be in the dark, but I wanted one of my own, just because I couldn't see everything I was trying to look at. At home we have flashlights in case the power goes out, which only happened once. It was really fun because we sat in the living room and dad put the coat rack in the middle of the floor and mom put a bed sheet over it so that it was like we were inside a big tent. And dad put the flashlight just underneath his chin and told us ghost stories while mom held me in her lap. But once the power came back on, I had to sleep in their bed. Not because I was scared but because I didn't want them to have any trouble finding me in case the power went out again.

When we got to the emergency room where the man had brought me, there still weren't any lights on and there were a lot of people sitting around in chairs with a few flashlights spread out among them. It was a lot like the planetarium because their beams would dart across the ceiling occasionally. There were fewer people than before, but there were still a lot of them. The doctor found two chairs and we sat down in them. She told me We'll stay here tonight and then we'll go look for your parents when it's light out and I thought that was a good idea, because I didn't want to go outside with just a flashlight. I laid my head back on the soft seat of the chair and thought about how it didn't hurt at all. I don't know what the man did to me, but I felt a lot better and I don't think my head will ever hurt again. Because when he put his hand on my head, I could see his eyes a little bit and they seemed to be as bright as the Light and it felt like something was pulling my split head back together. Then I fell asleep, which is pretty good for me because I don't like to sleep when my mom and dad aren't around. At school, when we used to have nap time, I would hold my eyes open just a little bit so that it looked like I was sleeping. But really I was awake and I could see the teacher walking around by the blackboard. Or the other kids flipping over on their sides. But I fell asleep there in the hospital next to the doctor lady that I didn't even know. So I think my mom would be proud of me.

But when I woke up I was scared because there was a lot of shouting and the doctor lady was holding me while she sat on the ground behind the chairs we had been sitting in. All of the people in the room were on the floor to. It was kind of like they were building a giant fort out of the chairs and the beds with wheels. But I could tell from their faces that they were not playing and I got really scared. And at the front of the room by the doors there was a lot of noise and flickering lights. I could just look between the legs of the chair and there were people outside moving slowly. A few of them were pressing their faces against the glass and looking inside. But they probably couldn't see much because everyone had turned off their flashlights and had moved away from the doors. Everyone inside seemed to be really scared. They were holding each other close. Or closing their eyes. Or they were hiding around the corners and down the hallways. I wanted to go down the hallway, because the people looking in through the glass doors had angry faces and sometimes they hit their fists against the glass. But I didn't want to move at all so that they couldn't notice me. They looked just like the people who had found me and the man with the swirling voice. The people who had carried us away and had hurt me. Because they wouldn't let go of my arms and they held onto me really hard. Even when I tried to bite them. I don't know what they wanted. And I thought maybe they were looking for me and the man again because we had gotten away from them. They made me think of the boogie man or of monsters that hide in closets. Even though I don't believe in monsters anymore because I'm old enough to know that they aren't real. But still, sometimes when I'm sleeping in my bed, I can hear creaking noises from something that must be in my room. But I just pull the covers over my head and try not to think about it. Or I tell myself that I'm just dreaming, and that mom and dad are asleep just down the hallway and they would have heard if there was something in the apartment. And the doctor lady put her finger to her lips like she was saying Shhhhh even though I wasn't saying anything. The people were only there for a few minutes, I think, and then they were gone. And I closed my eyes and fell back asleep.

When I woke up again I thought that maybe it was morning. But it was still really dark out and all of the people in the room were still hiding behind the chairs or around the corners of the walls. There was a loud noise against the glass and it made my whole body jump, like when my head is splitting and I don't know what my body is doing. The doctor was still awake and she was still holding me in her arms, which was really nice because it made me think of what my mom would do, even though my mom wasn't there with me. But the noise kept up and I looked through the legs of the chair again and I could see a man hitting the glass with a big piece of metal. Because he was trying to get inside, but no one was moving and I didn't think they were going to let him in. They still looked scared from the people who were outside before. But this man seemed OK to me, even though I couldn't really see his face, and he just wanted inside. Maybe because he was hurt and we were in a hospital. I don't know why everyone was so scared because he just looked like he needed help. And when he put down the metal thing, he turned and walked away, but I could still kind of see him because there were headlights shining. And there was a woman with him too who was sitting down against the brick wall. They sat together and she leaned her head on his shoulder and I think she was talking to him. But of course I couldn't hear what she was saying and I could see their mouths moving because the headlights were making shadows over their faces. And she looked like she was going to fall over if he wasn't there for her to lean on. Her hair was short like my mom's.

And then I got excited and I realized that those two people outside might be my mom and dad. They were trying to get inside to find me. Because they knew that I was here. Maybe the man with the swirling voice had found them and told them where I was. That was why he was gone and why the doctor didn't know where he was. Because she didn't know where my parents were either. My mom looked so sad, so I knew it was her, because she hadn't seen me for a long time. Just like I was sad because I hadn't seen her. And I thought about everything I was going to tell her about. About the man with the swirling voice. And all the blind people. And about the woman in the firefly bottle. And about the angry people. And about the rock in my head and how the man had made it go away. And how I had tried really really hard not to cry or to miss them. But I couldn't help it sometimes. But no one was going to open the doors. So I scrambled away from the doctor lady, who whispered Come back! Come back! as loud as she could without being heard past all the chairs. But I was already under the chair and headed to the door.

When I got there and put my face up to the glass, I wanted to cry again, because I could see that the man and woman were old and they were not my mom and dad. But the man looked up and saw me at the glass. So I tried to open the door by pulling on the handle, but I wasn't strong enough. Which means that the door was really really heavy, because I'm pretty strong. The man watched me, but the woman didn't seem to be looking anywhere. I kept trying to open the door, but it wasn't moving. Then the doctor came up behind me and she grabbed the other handle and pulled hard and the man stood up. He helped the woman lie down, and then he came over and tried to squeeze his fingers in between the door. And finally, we started to open the door up, which shows you how heavy it was. Then the man went and he picked the woman up in his arms. And she leaned her head into his chest. I could tell they were in love. Because that's what my dad would do if my mom couldn't walk anymore.

More Muppets + [The Woman Who Saw Him Step Through Air]

2011-06-18T20:34:00.000-04:00

Here we go. This is the official full trailer. No more of those movie parody trailers. This is what I've been waiting for.

I can't wait to go see this. The Muppets really deserve a comeback. Their humor is timeless and anyone can appreciate it.

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Maria went to Grand Rapids today with her mom, Katie, and Katie's mom, so I got to sit around and play video games while watching Torchwood and then eventually getting to writing. Summer is full of wonderful days like this. Needless to say, it was a good day, and once Maria showed up it got even better because we went to La Senorita's where we split some nachos and and one margarita (we are such drunks). Now, Maria is drawing and I'm annoying her with Spencer Krug's Moonface Dreamland EP, which is essentially a 20 minute long track composed entirely of marimba, drums, and vocals. It brought about a cool discussion of music though, so that's good.

I'm powering forward with the novel. I've finished the backtracking where I go to earlier spots and flesh them out. Now I'm just focusing on that ever elusive ending. I've got to pin it down. I've wrapped up a few stories so far, but the main stories ([The Boy Who Was Lost], [The Man Who Lied], [The Woman Who Witnessed Death Upon Death], [The Woman Who Saw Him Step Through Air]) need to start coming to their conclusions. I think [The Man Who Was Blessed] will be the last part of the book, either that or the [Liturgy] sections, which in reality probably don't make any sense anymore. Either way, I've got a sense of what the ending is. So, just wrapping up those 4 main stories and then I've got the end. I don't know how many answers are going to come from it, but I think I'm less interested in answers than I am interested in the characters' reactions and the intersecting of their various perspectives. I think I've thrown out some suggestions as to the cause, and once I go through and edit, I'll add more of that so that there really seem to be a few possibilities as to what caused the Light. Right now, if you ask [The Man Who Drowned] he'd would say it was heaven's punishment. If you asked [The Man Who Fell] he would say it was judgment upon the world. Ask [The Woman Who Witnessed Death Upon Death] and she would tell you it was [The Man Who Was Blessed], but she wouldn't have any idea what he is. The same goes for [The Woman Who Saw Him Step Through Air]. Maybe I need to define what each character thinks is the cause.

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[The Woman Who Saw Him Step Through Air]

and the heat threatened to sear the hair from my head, so I gasped deeply and ducked my head under the water, swimming forward towards the back of the store, and the shouting from the crowd and the terrified couple on the couch was muffled and became a deep hum in my ears while the water cooled my back, and I could make out objects in the water from the flickering of flames behind me, the legs of a stool, the base of the counter, forks and spoons sparkling on the checkered floor, and then finally the back wall appeared in the murky depths—which was both comforting and worrisome because it confined me within the fire—and I surfaced, just peeking my eyes and nose out to see what I might and to breathe, filling my head with the scent of burning wood like I was on camping trip with my husband—we loved leaving the city behind and cuddling together in a small tent in the middle of the woods, cooking by the fire and watching the stars appear at night—and I wondered again where he might be, but I realized there was little use in such thoughts while I was waiting to burn alive, so I tried to focus on the room around me, attempting to ignore the growing flames of the wooden counter and finding something that would be more useful, a fire extinguisher perhaps—although the fire was quickly become too unruly for an extinguisher to be of any use, let alone the fact that if I were to put out the fire, there was still a blood thirsty mob waiting for me outside of the front window—but seeing nothing of use and being forced to watch the couple by the couch pinned by the fires, a horrific sight and something I acquainted with being in a war or watching footage of prisoners being tortured, and my stomach could not handle the feeling of nausea that rose up as the flames licked at their clothes, so I turned my back, preferring to stare at the faded moss green wallpaper that lined the shop's walls, which is when I found the door marked Employees Only and nearly shouted out of joy, but had to strangle the noise because I wasn't sure if the mass of people outside even knew I was there, and I reached for the door handle, praying it was not locked, and felt the metal spin in the palm of my hand, but the door itself holding fast, its wooden frame having swelled up in the water and pressed itself hard together, so that I had to pull as hard as I could, the top of the door leaning forward while the bottom half, completely under water, held tight, until with a shout that certainly altered the crowd to my presence, I heaved and the frame let go of the door, swinging open quickly and nearly hitting me in the face, but it was now open and, without looking back at the couple being consumed by the fire, I entered the dark shadows of the room beyond, leaving the door open so that flickers of light would shine in and illuminate what might lie in the darkness, hoping that I would find more doors, because without more doors, there would only be a fiery death left for me, and behind I could hear the howl of the people with their microwaved faces and a bottle shattered against the moss green wallpaper next to the door, causing the water to leap up in small splashes, and I reached my hands out in front of me, hearing the breaking of glass and the darkness, which reminded me of the bus accident, toppling over and losing my grip on the overhead rail, finding pavement and water and the cries of people around me, but I was far way from that bus and had seen so much since then that I needed to tell someone, needed to describe to another human being simply because I needed to hear them acknowledge all of it and accept it as true, because until I could do that, I would never be quite sure that all of this actually happened, seeing as how it so clearly stretches beyond belief, so the dark of the room swept around my body and the shouts followed as I slowly made my way farther inside, bumping into what seemed to be an upended wheeled mop bucket floating on the surface of the water and feeling my foot kick the metal base of a storage shelf until my outstretched hand pressed against the cement wall near the back, which was obviously not the door I had hoped it to be, and I turned around to look back through the door and into the front of the coffee shop which was filling quick with thick hazy smoke that no longer smelled like a campfire, but like burnt coffee stinging my nose, and I saw the couch fire covering up the couple so that I was unable to tell whether they were still there or had somehow escaped—I was trying to be hopeful, but the situation seemed far too dire—and knowing that I had no where else to go, I slumped down into the water and simply watched the horrible fire consume the store, it's flames licking at the white speckled ceiling tiles, which began to burn a bright translucent orange that spread across the entire ceiling, pulling the tiles down in random avalanches and exposing the pipes and wires above, the heat growing stronger as it pushed through the open door and the smoke entered my little room, and I thought about trying to swim out the front of the building, but by then the fire was everywhere and I could no longer see the people outside or hear their shouts above the roaring in my ears like the stampede of cattle echoing down canyon walls, while the water around me grew warmer like I was being cooked slowly, and then I did begin to think of my daughter, because I wondered if I was going to be able to see her soon, not being sure of what might happen once my body was eaten by the flames and I became a charred husk floating in boiling water, but maybe there would be something after that where my daughter was waiting for me with a wide grin and the white dress she was buried in, because if there could be the Light and there could be the man with swirling voice who stepped through the air, then my daughter could be waiting for me just past this life and I might be able to lift her up again and sing songs for her before she goes to sleep and never have to say Goodbye or I'll see you after school because there will be no end to what comes after, and perhaps my husband would be there already—although I hoped that would not be true, that he was safe and far away from the city—holding my daughter's hand and saying What took you so long? with a smile that climbs up his face like a young boy clambering through tree branches, and I absolutely did not think about an empty nothingness because I did not want to die unhappy and scared in the backroom of a coffee shop, while the room around me grew brighter so that I could see the metal shelves filled with boxes of coffee and old cappuccino machines left to collect dust, until the fire began to lick at the door frame like the fingers of some demon leaving black scars across the wood, and black smoke was beginning to press down on me, so putrid from coffee, ceiling tiles, wood, and—I cannot forget it—something that stuck in the back of my throat, so thick it had a taste like pork gone bad and sweet so that I wanted to vomit, because I knew then that the couple on the couch had not left the building, and I turned away from the door because I could feel the heat lapping at my eyes, which is when I noticed the back corner of the room, behind a ceiling high shelf stacked with plastic wrapped packages of creamer and sugar, only now being lit by the raging fire, and the thick door set into the wall, and I blinked for a moment, unsure of whether I was seeing it or if I was just hoping it into existence, but the door remained and I scrambled through the water and thick smoke, jerking the handle and pulling hard—despite the fact that it opened without any effort—to reveal a long hallway of cinder block walls and exposed plumbing only partially filled with water and merging with that shadows, and the clean air swept into my face for a moment, clearing my throat enough so that I could swallow, and I stood in the doorway with water forcing its way around my legs and flooding this new space until I gathered up the courage to brave this pitch black passageway and started walking with my hand running along the sandpaper wall, occasionally passing over a smooth pipe or aluminum box that I was unable to see and one door handle set in a door that would not open, until the echo of my feet in the water seemed to double back on itself into my ears and I stopped walking to reach my hands out, still feeling empty space, but sure that the hallway was ending soon, and leaning forward just a few more inches, I found my fingertips pressed against dented steel and the push bar of a closed door, and I leaned hard into it until it opened and I felt the fresh air outside and looked up to see no stars, so that I felt as if I had stumbled upon a giant cavern

A Day Of Little Things + [The Man Who Fell]

2011-06-17T23:57:00.001-04:00

I'm enjoying this song a lot right now.

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We didn't do much today, but it seemed to be packed with stuff. I'm not sure exactly what it all was. We drove back to Robin Oaks apartments to drop off our application, but they were out of the office, so we had to go back later. So that was two car rides. Then I picked out the ties for the wedding and ordered them. I also had to do some annoying paper work for Mid Michigan Community College so that I'll officially be an adjunct (which I thought I had taken care of last year), and I had to send an e-mail to Men's Warehouse about shipping the suits out. Suddenly the day seemed gone.

Before we headed back to Lansing, because Maria is going to Grand Rapids tomorrow, we stopped at an art show at Creative 360 in Midland, which is one of the places where Maria dropped off her application. It was fun to see all the paintings and such. I'm always impressed by what people can create given enough time and determination. And looking at the prices attached to some of the pieces, I realized that Maria really needs to get some art work finished and in selling condition :)

I've been writing for a little while now. It's been bursts of quick and focused writing followed by short periods of absolutely nothing. Then I get back to writing after taking that small break. I'm adding much more to [The Man Who Drowned] because I realized that there was a lot about his story that I simply skipped over and never explained. So I'm going back to earlier sections of the novel and adding to them. Part of it is because it needs to be done. Part of it is because I'm not sure what to do next. And part of it is because I think I want to write more about [The Man Who Drowned], but I can't if his earlier sections don't work.

Tomorrow, while Maria is gone, I plan on writing most of the day. I've got to push to get this finished and in a readable condition. If I can do that, I think this will be the one I focus on getting published the most. Maybe that's a bad idea, seeing how this is the strangest one I've written (in terms of style at least), and might be too strange for most people (which seems to be what most people have said when they read any of it), but I like it a lot and really want to see something done with it. Also, as of right now it's the shortest of the three, so it should take a little less time to get into publishable condition. We'll see.

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[The Man Who Fell]

You have this thought—You are not being rescued—and your fascination with this rising ball of light turns to terror. Your brain alerts the proper nerves and they panic, shooting the feeling through your body. It feels like you are turning into sand. As the shining light draws closer, the frozen feeling within your chest grows deeper and the water begins to crystallize in front of you. You back pedal and topple over as the rocks shift beneath your feet. Your hands plunge into the icy water and grab handfuls of thick gravel. The entire rooftop is cast in a hideous glow that flickers quickly like a dying light bulb. The surface of the water ripples around you and reflects the light against the steel ledge and on the closed door behind you. Everything seems to be a hazy blue color, like your eyes are open at the bottom of a pool. A thin layer of ice is forming on top of the water and making its way towards your face, which is submerged up to your ears. The shining light floats down from the ledge and hovers above the water just a few feet in front of you. The water beneath it has turned completely solid. The light advances towards you, and you trace its outline with your eyes. It looks as if a hole has been punctured in the air before you and a spotlight is shining through it. The edges are fairly defined so that you place the light as being about five feet in diameter, just enough to engulf you fully.

Your heart struggles to warm up your chest and as the freezing water encroaches your spot in the water, you begin to crawl backwards away from it. Your legs kick in the water and your hands continuously reach for more rocks to palm. This method of escape, of course, is far to slow. You feel the tips of your shoes sticking in the water, as if they were being grabbed by unseen hands. The shining light is gaining on you and the water between you and the door seems to stretch out before you like a rubber band. You flip over onto your stomach and begin to swim, your arms reaching forward into the water and dragging you along. Your toes seem to have frozen together. Placing your feet beneath you, you manage to stand up and try to run, but the water is too high and the resistance is terrible. The door is getting closer, but you know the distance between you and the shining light is being swallowed much quicker than you are moving. Again, you begin to swim, churning your arms over your head and kicking your feet wildly. Your shoulders feel as if they have been set in an oven, but your straining has brought warmth back into your chest and your legs begin to follow suit. Soon, you are pulling ahead, and the cold water falls behind. The door is nearly within your reach.

Touching the metal surface with your hand, you stand up and try the handle again. The water has lowered just a bit, but the door seems just as stuck. Placing your foot against the cement of the frame, you pull on the handle with everything that seems left within your body. The door begins to open and water starts pouring through again. Turning your head as far as you can manage, you see the light just behind you, the water around it has frozen completely. There is a shift in your stance against the door. The rocks beneath your right foot are pulled by the flowing water and you fall. Your left leg, pushing against the cement door frame, slips and is pulled through as the door closes hard, grabbing hold of you. You shout in pain, grating your teeth against each other. A vice grip has clamped down on your calf. Your head swells with an icy clarity. You can't see, because it is under the water, but you know your leg is still attached because the door cannot fully close. The light shines behind you and you can see your shadow bobbing on the door and wall. The feeling in your toes has gone. This is it. You will be turned into ice on the top of this roof with your leg caught in a metal door. The Light left you because you wanted to die and now you will die by another light. The water continues to rush through the door and your leg screams at you in bold red words. The pressure of the vice grip builds and tears. The shining light bears down on you and the surface of the water around your head begins to freeze.

But you don't want to die now. You don't want to be trapped her forever in an empty world, forgotten. The urge to live pulses in your veins. The heat in your chest wells up and you grab for the open edge of the door, gripping it with your fingers. You brace your right foot against the opposite side of the wall and pull. You pull like you are a mother lifting a car from the body of her child. Like you are Samson toppling the temple. You pull as if there is no door and there is no shining ball of light behind you. As if this were as easy as moving your hands through the air. Your fingers burn and they feel as if they are being pulled off by pliers. The tendons in your right leg are taut as tight ropes. You close your eyes tight, blocking the eerie shadows from sight, and heave.

The vice grip opens and the pressure on your leg disappears. The door swings open for a moment and your leg pops out before your fingers finally give up and the door slams shut again, a deep ringing sound echoing through your ears. But there is not time to rest or to make sure you leg is still attached. The water has frozen around your back and you dive under the water, swimming around the cement outcrop that holds the door and towards the opposite ledge of the roof. Each time you kick your left leg, it stings like you have shoved it in a paper shredder. Your terror makes you fast. The shining light has yet to round the corner of the door's outcropping. In the dark, you cannot see the ledge, but you know it is there. You will run into it if you do not put your hands out in front of you. They press up against its cool steel surface and you forget that you are terrified of this ledge. You stand up and lift yourself up onto it, never once thinking about having tried to leap from it. You pull your leg out of the water, pull up your pant leg, and trace around it with your hands, hoping to feel everything in one piece. Every touch brings a rough hurt to the surface. It must be bruised black, but there doesn't seem to be any bleeding.

The ball of light rounds the corner and allows you to see your surroundings. The birds have flown away. Your leg has dark purple and black lines along each side. There is no where to go. You peer over the edge, but there is only black. The light continues it slow approach. You wonder why it doesn't move faster. When they burst from the sky, they swooped around like airplanes. Now it seems to creep slowly like the growth of vines up a brick building. It leaves behind a trail of ice. You were almost frozen there behind it. But where is there to go? The door will not open again, you don't have the strength to try. You stand up on the ledge, a pain shooting up your leg. Behind you, the black maw of the city below opens wide.

This is where you wanted to be. Your feet grip the steel and you remember how you stood her before, looking into the patient sky and hearing the hum of traffic beneath you. This is where you had wanted to die. You wanted to throw yourself from this precipice and taste the emptiness before you. You wanted to wrap your arms around nothing and let the drop come. It had seemed so right. The thought had been so clear and prominent, like the desire to eat or drink. It compelled you. There was no disagreeing with it. The solution had seemed so simple. But the Light rained down and you were judged. It laid out your sins on a clean white cloth and poked and prodded them. It examined each one and found so much fault. It gathered your sins and handed them back to you, so that your arms were full and you sagged from the heavy load. The Light left you lying here on this still ledge and dared you to jump after seeing the whole of your desires laid to waste. To jump was no longer an option. To rid yourself of this existence became far worse than living. You knew you were not worthy. If you truly suffered enough to end your life, the Light would have cradled you in its arms and carried you away. So you stand here again and watch the water freeze in front of you, while the infinite darkness behind you seems hungry and restless with the howling wind. You wonder what it will be like when this glowing creature touches your skin. Will you be so numb that you feel nothing? Will it feel as if you are burning? Is that preferable to falling?

The glow closes in and you begin to see your breath winding up and out of your mouth in the blue light. You stare straight into the shimmering light and try to understand it. You hope to see something within it, a shape or form emitting the brightness. As it draws closer, your skin bristles and you begin to shiver again, no longer warm from your escape. The weight on your left leg seems to increase with each second and you feel as if you will surely topple forward into the water and become frozen within. You cannot stand how slowly the ball of light approaches, wishing for this to simply be over. That desire has plagued you for far too long. You spin around and dangle your legs off the ledge, preferring to look out at the black skyline. Your death is coming. There is no need to watch its approach.

A chill runs down your spine, and your hands begin to hold fast to the steel. It will happen soon. You have seconds left in this world. There are precious few thoughts left to think. The one that sticks is quite simple. Jump.

The fall is much more peaceful than you could hope for. There is nothing much to look at, with the buildings all shrouded in darkness and the blue glow quickly passing away overhead. The air seems much warmer now that you are no longer on the top of the roof. Unable to see the ground, you have nothing to watch. You will not see your death, which you prefer. To stare mortality in the face is not for you. You prefer a fate less visible. There is a spinning within your chest, the silver pinwheel having resumed its twirl, sending its its sensations down your legs and into the tips of your fingers, which reflexively clench and unclench, hoping to catch something in the darkness. You smile at the thought of denying the shining light. You are empowered in your last moments. Your life is now yours. Closing your eyes, you breathe deep and wait.

Arms close around your chest and a voice swirls through the air saying Hold on. I've got you. Then there is a warm sensations as if you are being pulled apart slowly and without pain. Every atom within your body is whirling about in small rapid circles and they spread like butter against warm bread. You are melting into the air, becoming something to be inhaled. You are unable to tell up from down and the feeling of falling is replaced by a sensation of being pressed thin like a flower kept in the pages of a thick book. Then you are snapped back together and find hard pavement beneath your feet, jarring your bad leg so that you stumble to the ground and release the contents of your stomach upon the ground. The movement has left you nauseous and dizzy. You place your head down and the earth seems to spin out of control beneath you. A man stands over you in the darkness. You can hear the scuffling of his shoes and his labored breathing. You're alright now he tells you, and, as you try to see his face in the pitch black and ask him what happened, he steps backwards and seems to evaporate before your eyes.

Post-Wedding Apartments + [The Girl Who Saw Her Death]

2011-06-16T23:06:00.000-04:00

You'll Enjoy this one.

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Maria and I had a rather busy day today. I was lucky enough to sleep in till 11, but she had a meeting at the Midland Community Center about teaching some art classes. After that, we visited apartments all day looking for a place to live once we are married. Quite exciting stuff. We narrowed it down to Robin Oaks apartments, which are still in Midland, but are on the opposite side of the city. I'm tacking on probably 7 more minutes to my daily drive, which isn't horrible. They are much nicer than where I am now. More room and better neighbors, both essential. We completed the application today and we will be turning it in tomorrow.

Maria has been spending the rest of the day trying to schedule a bunch of interviews she is doing for the Women's Resource Center at MSU. She is interviewing a bunch of women and writing articles about them. She's doing a good job of staying sane while trying to work out all of them. I've been helping out by playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 and not bugging her. Seriously, that game is awesome.

Tomorrow we are headed back to Lansing, and I doubt I'll be in Midland until after the wedding, which sounds kind of lame. I prefer being here, but Maria has a lot to do in Lansing (and she prefers it there). I should have scheduled tons of stuff that I needed to do in Midland ;)

On the writing front. It's been going slow these last two days. Here's something new for you. I actually haven't written yet today, but as soon as this is posted, I'm going to begin typing furiously. We'll see how much I get written before we fall asleep. If you don't remember [The Girl Who Saw Her Death] her sections deal with the visions she is having after the Light. This will probably just seem weird and confuse you. Enjoy.

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[The Girl Who Saw Her Death]

Why have I begun to feel as if I am not the one in my visions? Has this idea presented itself to you yet? Have I begun to doubt what I have seen? If everything within them feels so real, the touch of someone's hand, the cruel wind, then why do I feel as if this is not me in the visions? Is it because I am not capable of such things, of healing a bleeding woman? Is it because I have yet to do anything besides remain within this room? Has the fear of bringing my visions about prevented me from leaving this bed? Or is it that I feel so different within the visions, somehow taller, with longer strides and rougher hands? What does it feel like to experience life through another's body? Are you confused by the differences between you and them? Do clothes feel strange as they hang from your body differently? Does the beat of their heart vary from your own? If I feel these things in my dreams, have I become someone else? If these visions are not of my own life, how do I know they haven't already occurred? What if I am not seeing the future? The past is as mysterious as the future, is it not?

How am I to know the order in which these events will occur? When will I find the boy, if this is me at all? How long until I heal the woman? When will I die? When will I not die? Which one is true? Can both happen? Can I die and yet not die? What am I to do with myself beyond lying here? Will I ever leave this bed or this room? Will I speak of the Light forever of will these visions some day leave my mind? Why do I tell them to you? Are you able to change them? Can you help in some way? Is the simple act of speaking these visions enough to help? Am I trying to place some of my fear in you? Will you help shoulder this burden? Can you provide me with answers? Why do you have nothing to add? Can you understand the Light? Have I helped you to piece it together? Why should you understand, while I am left with only questions?

Do you want to hear of my last visions? Calling them my last visions seems wrong, does it not? If I cannot put them in order, how can I know they are the last? Perhaps they will occur first? Maybe they have already occurred? I do not knot, but I can share them with you, can't I? Would you believe me if I told you that I am being chased by something? If I told you that I know there is something outside this room that is looking for me, would you call me paranoid? Have you ever felt like you were being followed? Is that feeling familiar to you, or the feeling of eyes against your back? Should I be comforted by the fact that I only feel this way inside my dreams? Does this mean that I am still safe in this bed? If I told you there were balls of light that swirled in the air, would you believe? If you have not been convinced by the Light, then can you be convinced of anything? What are the things that chase me? Why does my body seem to grow so cold when they are near? If they ever reach me, will I be frozen forever? How can I escape them? Why does this vision always end before I am able to escape? Why am I caught forever in this chase? If it were to end with me being swallowed by those lights, would I feel better? Do I want closure or an open ended book? Which do you prefer? Can we ever have closure? Is life that simple? Do stories or visions have true endings? If I never learn why I am seeing these things, will I be unsatisfied? If I cannot explain enough to you, will I have disappointed you greatly? How can you expect me to fully satisfy you?

Softball Etc.. + [The Man Who Lied]

2011-06-16T00:20:00.000-04:00

I wrote yesterday, but it wasn't a whole lot. Never got time to update here. Maria and I went to her parents house and we helped play softball with a special needs team. It was lots of fun. A friend of their family goes to a church that often volunteers for these softball games, and somehow we got involved. It was interesting because you didn't want to play as good as you could, but apparently if you made it obvious, they would catch on. Obviously, we didn't want them to think that we weren't trying. It was a lot of fun, and everyone who came out enjoyed it a lot. Afterwards we ended up going to the church for some pizza, which was hilarious because we really didn't know anyone there and the pizza was cold. Why was it cold? I have no idea, but people were lining up to microwave it. So, we ate some cold pizza. On the way home, Maria's dad was kind enough to buy some Hot & Ready pizzas, so it all worked out. We didn't get back to Lansing until around midnight and we were exhausted.

Today, we met with my pastor for the last time before the wedding. It went well and we really enjoyed those meetings. It was fun to talk about our relationship with someone. Luckily for our friends, we don't go on and on about ourselves with them. But that was the whole point of the meetings, so it was pretty exciting. We also got the suits taken care of (they will be shipped out to the groomsmen tomorrow) and our bank accounts are now shared. That's exciting and frightening, because we get to talk about budgets and see how much money we'll actually have. I told Maria we need to start eating Ramen noodles. She said most of them aren't vegetarian. We are going to starve ;)

We just finished watching Avatar, because Maria never saw it, and I must say, I think I liked it better the second time. I didn't fixate on the predictable story because I already knew what it was going to be, and I focused more on the spectacle of it all. Also, I'm impressed that at the end, they don't chicken out and leave all the good guys alive. Instead, they really push at how much destruction and loss the audience can handle. It was good to see them push at that line a bit.

Anyway, here's the next section of the novel. I've gone back and started adding some sections before this one (chronologically), so I might post those, or I might just leave them out and let those who read it when it's all done get those sections. At this point, if I put them here, they will probably just confuse everyone (as if you weren't confused already).

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[The Man Who Lied]

I slumped down to the ground, with my back against the glass doors. My wife and I always remembered anniversaries. I watched her across the drive from me. She was caught in the sparkle of the headlights, her head hanging down and her gray hair covering her ears. We loved to cook together, but we ate out at least five times a week. The Light was still trying to take her away from me. I've never heard her say a mean word to another living soul. It was making her weak and occupying her mind. Whenever we make love, we always look into each others eyes. Her arms lay limp at her sides, like a junkie passed out with a needle in his arm. We always suggests books to each other, but we never find the time to read them. I stood up from my beaten slump and made my way to her side so that I could cradle her in my arms. She hated going to the movies, but I could convince her if popcorn was involved.

Her head came to rest on my shoulder and I could hear her whispering What would you do to be in the Light forever? Once she went to live with her sister for a week. I had no answer, but I needed one for her. Her sister was getting a divorce and her husband had moved out, so my wife went to keep her company. I told her I would carry you around the world because I would do that to keep the Light away. I had never been away from her that long. We sat there underneath the terrace of the hospital, in at least a foot of water, and I whispered I would put you on my back and swim through the oceans because I would do that to keep the Light from returning. I knew how to cook for myself, and I could do the laundry, but I couldn't stand her absence. I leaned my head closer to her ear and said I would climb mountains with you in my arms. I couldn't find a reason to wake up without the sound of her running the water in our bathroom. I would give my life to you. I couldn't go to sleep without her folding the sheets down towards the foot of the bed. She spoke again asking Would you leave me for the Light? and her voice was as thin as tissue paper. I called her every day, because I knew I wouldn't be able to eat if I didn't hear her say Hello, my love. I knew she wanted me to answer with Yes because it would be the hardest thing for me to do, but how could I say that? I would ask how her sister was doing, but that was just the excuse, because the house seemed darker when she wasn't around. She asked again, Would you leave me for the Light? in the voice both of our fathers' had before they died. When she finally came home, I lifted her up in the air and spun around in a circle so that her feet flung out behind her in a wide arch. I would never leave her, so I made myself think there was something inside of her that was speaking. I laughed and spun and she held onto the floppy sunhat that she wore so that it wouldn't fly from her head. I convinced myself that something inside of her was using her mouth and her lungs, her tongue and her teeth to speak to me. I twisted around until I was dizzy and we fell backwards into the front lawn. There was a piece of the Light stuck inside of her, and it was speaking for her, through her. Grass stains covered my back, and I rolled over on top of her and kissed her right there in the grass. This thing inside of her was asking me these questions, not her. She kissed me back so hard I thought I would pass out. I pictured the creature inside of her and I said I would leave you for the Light, but there was nothing inside of me that was forcing me to speak awful things, and so I began to cry again, because as I said it, she began to smile. She laid her head back down in the grass, her sunhat falling off so that her brown and gray hair spilled out around her head, and told me I never want to leave you again.

The Creative Process + [The Man Who Fell]

2011-06-13T19:06:00.000-04:00

I really like this band, Gobble Gobble, because their music is absolutely nuts. It sounds somewhat like a Gameboy soundchip is having a seizure, but in a good way. I'm not sure how many of you will actually like it, but I'm putting it here anyway. Give it a shot.

-----

Most of today has been spent writing. Maria and I did manage to go out and buy our unity candles and we ate at Panera Bread, which was delicious. Then she went to see Bridesmaids with some other teachers from DeWitt, so I stayed and continued writing. My writing isn't going that quickly, but I've got large blocks of time to work on it. Usually, when I'm doing NaNoWriMo, I've got limited time to get in a lot of words, so I'm writing as fast as I can. Now I have the luxury of going slow. Now, I call this a luxury partially as a joke, because I truly prefer to write very quickly. It feels better, like the ideas are just flowing out of my head without as much effort. When I'm writing slowly, it feels more pained and labored. I'd much rather have my fingers flying over the keyboard than pausing after every few sentences or so. Also, most of the time when I'm writing very fast, I feel like the ideas are better. It seems odd that the sentences I just spit out are not as good as those I think over before putting down, but that's just the way it seems to work. So, ideally I'd be writing at mach speed all the time, however, when I have large blocks of time, I find myself writing slower. I can occasionally trick myself into going quickly,which usually involves closing my eyes and leaning forward, as if I'm trying to project my thoughts directly onto the screen. I'm not sure exactly what keeps me from writing in this manner and causes me to slow down. One day I'll figure it out. My thought is that I'm letting my inner editor get the best of me and losing trust in my creative notions. There's also those distractions (namely the internet) which always seem to be pulling at me. I think I've found a compromise by watching videos online while writing. They don't distract me because I always write with music (and it often helps me out), and because the internet is opened and being used, I don't feel that need to click on it and start browsing for something. The creative process sure is a complicated thing.

Maria just showed up and I mentioned how slow I was writing. Then I realized I should be using Write or Die, because it keeps me going. I'll have to do that tomorrow.

Time to get Maria to watch Best In Show with me.

So, here we go, the next section.

-----

[The Man Who Fell]

You're hungry and the sound of your stomach seems to be the only sound. The rope clanging against a flag pole cannot be heard. The group of birds resting on the steel barrier on the opposite side of the building open their mouths, but you don't notice any sound. It's been a whole day of this roof. Your clothes are soaked through, because you can't sit on that steel ledge. There is nothing on this earth that will get you up on that ledge and out of this water. You've learned your lesson about ledges. It's dark and you know you can't sleep in the water. What if you slipped down into it and your mouth filled, followed by your nostrils, and then you wouldn't wake up again? You've been awake for far too long, and the ledge would let you sleep free from the water, but you won't do it. Instead, you wait by the door and hope someone will open it.

The cool surface of the door is hard and seems resistant to all of the pounding you have done. Every time your firsts landed on it, they seemed to be striking the side of a tank hoping to make it break down. It is quite futile, but you still find yourself doing it every hour or so. You've come to the decision that the building is empty. Everyone must have been taken by the Light. When the Light came the second time, you thought it had made a mistake, that you had been forgotten. But now, you are the only one left. The Light has made its decision, and you will starve to death up here, or catch hypothermia. The silent birds hope about, fluttering their wings occasionally and careening off the side of the building, then miraculously returning as if to mock you. As if to say We are not trapped up here. You hate those birds.

You have reasoned with yourself. If you have been left behind, surely someone else has been as well. Maybe you will be found. But who would have a reason to climb to the top of this building? There is irony in the fact that you came here wanting to die and you will die here wanting to live. You are no longer amused by irony. Nor are you amused by those birds, who keep flying about and mocking you. There is the urge to peer down the side of the building, to look for someone you could call to, but you have sworn that you will not go to that ledge. Of course, if you were to call for someone, they would not be able to hear you. That thought does not chase the urge away.

The sky gets darker and you wonder why you can't see any stars. You can't imagine there are any clouds left in the sky, but the stars are absent, so you have nothing else to think. Soon, you won't be able to see the water or the vast field of rocks beneath it. You think the water is getting lower, but in the failing light, it is impossible to tell. There must be some drainage system on the roof, for when it rains, but this is probably more than it can handle. The birds are getting difficult to pick out in the dark, which you count as a small blessing.

Eventually there is nothing to see and nothing to hear but the growls of hunger. Most of your body is covered submerged because you have lost the strength to stand and you are leaning your back up against the door with your knees pulled to your chest for warmth. You feel as if you are in a satire about life in the womb. There is no way you will still be alive when the water has all drained and the door can be open.

Suddenly, you see something distant in the sky. A spot of light, as if the stars are gathered together. Then they split apart into smaller distinct circles and began to whiz about like home videos of flying saucers. The lights move about and occasionally converge together before falling apart again. You wonder if this is the Light. They swirl around in the sky for a minute or so and then begin to move closer. Some of them disappear behind the black obelisks of buildings in the darkness. You stand up to try and catch a better glimpse of them, but they dip below the ledge. You take a few steps, finding your balance as the rocks shift beneath your feet. One of the spots appears above the ledge again. It seems to be just a few buildings away. When it dips back down, you take some more steps forward and reach your hands out in front of you.

Soon, you feel the cold steel of the ledge against your hands. You don't want to get closer, but the lights below have captured your attention. You find yourself leaning against the ledge so that you can see the safety railing. Below, the lights seem to be moving up and down the streets as if the cars were moving again. Their progress seems painfully slow, as if they were not propelling themselves, but remaining still while the world turns around them. You wonder if they are looking for you. They are trying to find the one they left behind. You convince yourself of this because you must. There must be some hope of rescue.

As you stare down at the lights, a chill moves up your body. It starts in your toes, which you previously thought had lost all feeling. You feet succumb next and our calves are soon shivering. You clutch at your chest as it begins to freeze. Is this hypothermia setting in? A step back from the ledge and you are beating your hands against your chest, hoping to increase the blood flow. As you flail about your eyes are set on fire. Your pupils shrink and you close your eyes and raise your hands up to block the intense light that has appeared before you. An orb of light has floated up the side of the building and now seems to be standing on the ledge where you once stood. A realization forms in your head. You have no way to explain where it came from, but suddenly it is there. You are not being rescued.

Infinite Jest + [The Man Who Lied]

2011-06-12T22:41:00.001-04:00

Maria and I saw The Antlers last year at Lollapalooza (I can't remember if Mike went to that show or to another one playing at the same time). I liked their album, Hospice, (although I wasn't completely in love with all of it. A lot of the record seemed to simply be noisy atmospherics cushioning a few good songs), but I thought they were excellent live. When the songs were split up in the live setting, instead of all flowing together, they were more distinct and recognizable. Also, their singers voice was right up front in the mix, and let me tell you, he has quite an impressive range. So, with their new album, Burst Apart, I was relieved to find out they had done away with the atmospheric noise and made a record with some really strong songs. I'm really enjoying it and keep finding myself going back to it. Here's a live version of the first song "I Don't Want Love", a standout track on the album.

The Antlers - 'I Don't Want Love' from Bowlegs on Vimeo.

-----

Today Maria and I basked in the glory of summer. We didn't change out of our pajamas or leave the apartment until 3:30, when we decided to go for a run. I spent the morning and afternoon reading Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace, while Maria tried to crochet a cat from a book she bought at Joann Fabrics and occasionally switching over to her guitar when the cat became frustrating. I'm on page 420 of Infinite Jest which I feel is quite an accomplishment. It's around 1,080 pages long, but every page is densely packed with words of a very small font and very little white space. Honestly, it is the most complex, difficult, humorous, and impressive book I've ever read, and has likely ever been written. If you want to know a bit more about it, here's a link to the Forward of the 2006 paperback edition written by Dave Eggers (my third favorite author). I would suggest it for reading, but I really don't think it's a book that everyone would like. You've got to love literature in order to appreciate this one, or at least be an excellent reader. It's certainly not a casual read. But, if you are feeling ambitious, you should pick it up and give it a read. Like I said, I'm on page 420 and I've been reading it since last summer (although I didn't get much reading done from September to May).

After our run, which saved us from the laziest day ever, we went to Joann Fabrics for more yarn (this crochet cat is become a financial burden) and then to Noodles and Company, which was, of course, delicious. We ended the night with ice cream from the ice cream shop in Old Town and now I'm writing while Maria goes to work on this cat again. She's been struggling with it all day, but apparently she is making progress and starting to figure it out. She says that reading this book (the one that explains how to make the cat) is like learning another language, which makes sense since it was originally published in Japan and gets very technical with its crochet speak. I'm still writing, but I'm posting now before it gets to late and no one sees this post.

Novelwise, I'm making more and more progress and I feel like I can certainly finish before the 30th. However, I'm not sure I'll have time to go back and make the basic edits I need so it feels like you can read it from start to finish. I made too many changes to characters mid novel that I'm not sure I can go back and change them all before time runs out. There are a few events that happen at incorrect times in various spots, but I need to get them to match up (since it's written from so many perspectives, I had to get the timeline of events set in my head, which took a while and there were a few screw ups along the way). If I don't get it in the proper form before the 30th, I'll get it printed for free regardless, just because I don't want to waste a free printing. I'll make the changes afterwards and think about printing a copy of that version as well just so people don't have to read it in a word document when I pass it around. I think my goal for the summer is to finish and edit this one completely. That way I can possibly think about sending it to a publisher. The other two feel like much more work needs to be done to get them in publisher worthy form, so they'll be on the back burner (of course, once school starts up, everything seems to go on the back burner). I feel like this novel is mostly in place and won't require a tremendous amount of touching up. Maybe that's silly to think and I'm just being dumb, thinking that I don't need to rewrite this thing twelve times, but so be it. I'll mess with the other two much more, but this one doesn't seem to need it. Although, once I start rereading it from start to finish, who knows how I'll feel about it.

The section you have here is from my favorite character. I just love moving back and forth from his memories and to the present. I'm trying my best to create connections between the two and the juxtaposition between them seem to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Let me know what you think.

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[The Man Who Lied]

It had tried to take her away from me. When I was in the war, my best friend was shot in front of my eyes. The Light had tried to pull her through the window of the car. My mother made me a teddy bear when I was three and I named him Mr. Barnaby. It wanted to take her away from me. I lost him when I was eleven and we had to move out of our house. I barely was able to grab her dress and keep her inside. Last week I misplaced my reading glasses. The Light refused to let her go. I had to squint at the paper for hours until my head felt like it was stuffed with cotton balls. As I tried to pull her back inside, I could only imagine losing her.

My father developed Alzheimer’s when he was forty one. What if she was not their to share breakfast with. At first he forgot small things, like which day it was or when he had eaten last. Who would I ask questions? Then he forgot who I was and I had to remind him I'm your son. I would never laugh again because she would not be there to get me started. Once he forgot my mother, we were all concerned [Make sure he has siblings]. There would be no toes to step on while dancing. We thought my sister might move back in with us because she was not married and wanted to help. There would be no more letters with looping handwriting or envelopes covered in drawings. After returning home for a week, she said I just can't because it broke her heart that dad didn't know her name. Who would tell me secrets about her sisters when they came into town? I never introduced him to my wife while we were dating because I never wanted him to forget her. I would never make love again. My mom cried every night and I could hear her through the walls when I would sneak inside. If the Light took her from me, my life would end. Eventually, my father had to sleep in the guest room. If you were to ask me my profession I would respond Husband. He would wake up in the middle of the night and would not know where he was. She is the only thing I have. My mother would try to calm him, but he would push her from the bed. When the Light stopped, I reached for her and wrapped her with my arms. My older sister said he should sleep in the guest room, but my mother couldn't bear it. If the Light tried to take her again, I would be ready. Then one night, he hit her in the darkness. I rebuckled her seat belt and wrapped it around my wrists. Mother cried every night when he was not in her bed.

My wife turned to me and asked Did you see it? Did you see the Light? My father died after he turned forty four. I told her Yes and I hoped that she knew I was telling the truth. My wife never met him, but she came to the funeral. I could not stand lying to her anymore. She held my hand and whispered in my ear He remembers you now. I saw the Light, but I did not understand it as she did. Her whisper forced tears down my cheeks. I did not think only of its warmth or brightness. I wiped at my tears and tried to convince myself that she was right. I could only think It tried to take my wife. It tried to take her. I could not convince myself that she was right. She asked me Did you want it to last forever? How could she know anything about my father? I sat there in the car seat next to her. How could she believe he was in a better place? I looked into her eyes filled wide with wonder. But she squeezed my hand and looked into my eyes and said once more He remembers you. I thought once more The Light tried to take her from me and I knew what she needed to hear to keep loving me. The way she whispered with such certainty, as if this was the simplest truth, made me want to believe. I never wanted it to end I told her, and I had to look away from her face and out the window of our car. I squeezed her hand back and knew that I would marry her.

We can still see! she cried. Her father passed away some years ago. I didn't know what she was talking about as I stared out the windshield and tried to see where the Light had come from. I can't remember how many years, because I'm not that good with dates and because the past never seems that far away. There were only tall trees and buildings blocking out the sky. We stayed at her parents' house for a week while he seemed to fade away in her mother's bed. There was still some water collected in the streets and cars stopped dead in the road. The hospice nurse would talk all day long with my wife's mother about the weather and the chores that needed to be done, but never about her husband dying in the other room. I could see an ambulance with its front two wheels on the sidewalk and wondered who had been inside and whether or not they were still alive. The subject of her husband seemed too much for my wife's mother to bear. Then I saw the hospital entrance just beyond the ambulance, which made me assume the best. My wife's mother slept in a chair outside her bedroom, because she could not find the strength to go inside or to leave. My wife continued to shout We can still see! We can still see! and she looked around wildly. When we ate breakfast, the hospice nurse would join us, but no one talked about death or sickness. I stared at the hospital and decided I had no other option but to take my wife there. We ate our scrambled eggs and toast and drank our orange juice, and then the hospice nurse would take whatever was left on her plate and go back to the bedroom, because he couldn't be left alone for long. I started up the car again and drove towards the hospital, hoping there might be someone inside that could help my wife, that would know what to do. He was dying at home for only a week, but I felt like were there for months on end.

I parked the car behind the ambulance, which was blocking the circular drive up the the emergency room, and walked around the car to unbuckle my wife. When the second Sunday came around, the nurse came to each our room and knocked lightly on the door. I helped her stand up and she held loosely from my shoulders like she were but a figure made of straw blowing in the wind. She did not peek her head into the room or say anything, but both my wife and I knew what that knock signified. As I lifted her from the car, I realized how weak she seemed, her legs shaking beneath her. I clutched my wife's hand underneath the bed covers and pulled her in close to my chest, her head resting just below my collarbone. She whispered into my ear Wasn't the Light like having a child? as either if we knew what that could feel like. I held her there for just a moment and then we sat up and looked for pajamas to throw on quickly. I told her Yes and tried to get her walking, but she would not move. In her parents room, her mother sat in the bed, holding her husband's hand, and the nurse stood just inside the doorway as if she were a bellhop showing us our hotel room. I tried to let go of her, but she began to sag back down into the car, so I lifted her up, placing one arm behind her shoulders and the other underneath her knees. My wife held my hand lightly and we stood at the side of the bed, watching her father's eyes look up at the vaulted ceiling. My back seemed to creak like a swing in great need of oil, but I had to get her inside and find someone to help, so I gritted my teeth against the pain and made my way to the hospital doors. Her mother was weeping and she said Don't ever forget how much I love you even though her husband likely could not hear her. The automatic doors were closed and I carried my wife up to them like I was preparing to lay an offering at their feet, but they did not open up. My wife placed her hand on her father's arm and she told him Dad, I'll always love you even though he had not always loved her. I stepped back from the sensors and then walked toward the doors again, but they would not budge. Her father's mouth seemed to move up and down, but no words came out. I tried once more, but the doors were fast shut. His eyes moved around, but they would not settle on anything. I placed my wife down on the ground, with her back up against a cement column holding a terrace above our heads, and pried at the doors with my fingers, but nothing would work. I held her hand and squeezed it and whispered into her ear He knows while her father's eyes began to close and she began to cry. I went back to the car and opened the trunk, grabbed the tire iron, and returned to the entrance and the unmoving glass doors. The hospice nurse walked past us and leaned down over his unmoving body. I raised my hand and struck at the doors with the tire iron repeatedly, watching it crack in tiny spiderwebs, but it would not break. The nurse checked his pulse and she nodded to my wife's mother, who still clung to his hand. I breathed hard and beat at the door, but it wasn't working. She lifted the cover up over his face and grabbed hold of my wife and her mother's hands and lead them from the room while I followed and did not look back.

Advice + [The Man Who Would Be A Father]

2011-06-10T16:01:00.000-04:00

I've spent all morning and afternoon writing while Maria has been busy with her last day of school. She's back now and in great spirits. Summer has officially begun (for a second time). I wrote a lot for my novel, but I also wrote an e-mail to a student of mine who wants to become a writer. She took an independent study with me for Creative Writing and apparently she loved writing so much that she wants to keep it up. She sent me an e-mail asking for help, because she is going to start a novel, but she has no idea where/how to start. I replied with my suggestions, and I thought I would post those suggestions here, because they explain some of my writing process, and I always find it interesting when writers talk about their process. You might not find it all that interesting, but I liked what I wrote, so I'm including it anyway:

Dear [student],

I'll give you some advice that might help. It's about how I write novels, and what I've read about writing novels. Hopefully it helps. I think you've already got the right attitude for writing. You've got to find it fun. Oftentimes it is frustrating and difficult, but in the end it is very rewarding when you've got a finished piece to look at. But, without that idea that writing is fun, you're not going to get very far.

The first piece of advice I have is probably the most important. When writing a novel, do not write it in chronological order. When you read a novel, everything is planned out and you read it in order from first page to last (unless you're weird, or it's a weird novel). It's easy to think that it was written from the first word to the last word, in that order. I never write my novels in order, and from what I've read, very few writers do. What I do is, I jump around from section to section. If I get bored with what I'm writing, I stop writing that part and jump ahead to another part of the novel. Sometimes, I jump ahead to a part that I haven't started writing yet. It seems confusing and complicated, but it is the best way to fight writers block. The idea is, the moment you get stuck on something, drop it and go write something else. So, once you feel like Chapter 1 is starting to drag its feet, jump ahead to Chapter 20. What you will find is that, once you've written Chapter 20, you'll think of something to write for Chapter 15, or Chapter 8. If you have the end written before the beginning, then it's much easier to write the beginning, because you know where you need to go. Does that make sense? When I'm writing, the top of my Word document is the beginning, the bottom is the end. If I'm writing something that happens near the end, I start typing near the bottom. If I'm writing something in the middle, I start typing in the middle. It's kind of like putting a puzzle together.

The second piece of advice is that you should avoid hitting backspace. Backspace is the enemy of the creative writer. Why is that? Because it erases your words. If you are trying to write a novel comprised of many many words, the last thing you want to do is delete those words! It's fine to backspace for fixing spelling errors, but don't do much more than that. The idea is to develop two different personas, the writer and the editor. The writer should just write and write and write, even if what they write doesn't seem that great. The writer needs to embrace their words. They need to have confidence in their sentences, even when those sentences aren't that good. If you don't have that excitement while you are writing and creating, then you will never get to the finish line. Don't start editing until the entire novel is finished. People who fail at writing novels do so because they can't separate the writer and the editor. You'll never make it if you are editing while writing. After the book is finished, then you can become the editor. You read everything over again, and suddenly you realize that half of it is utter crap. But you know what? That's OK, because it's finished crap. That crap has a beginning, middle, and end, and it's all held together. Sure, the parts holding it together are crap also, but occasionally you've got some excellent stuff in there. In fact, when you really look at it, that crap isn't all that bad, it just needs to be polished a little bit. So then your editor goes through each sentence and paragraph and polishes things up. Suddenly the beginning doesn't make sense because of something you wrote near the end? Well that's an easy fix now that you have a beginning and an end. I suggest trying the website http://writeordie.com/. You put in a word count goal, a time limit, and start writing. If you pause for too long it will start deleting your words. It can be quite harsh, but it's honestly the best motivator I've found. I use it during NaNoWriMo because it forces me to put the editor in the backseat and let the writer just write.

The third piece of advice: Write as quickly and often as possible. The more you let a novel sit without adding to it, the more you forget. Forgetting leads to problems with your plot, your characters, and your tone. If you forget the feel of your novel, then the next time you come back to it, you'll start writing in a completely different way. If you write every day and for a decent amount of time each day, your novel stays fresh in your head.

Fourth: Don't forget the importance of setting and place. If you haven't described where your characters are, then they aren't anywhere. Stories don't take place in empty white vacuums. There needs to be a setting. To often, new writers forget this. It goes back to those concrete details. Without details, there's nothing to visualize. When you are first writing, it's often good to go overboard in your descriptions of the setting and the places your characters are. Now, too much description is certainly a bad thing, but once you unleash your inner editor on the finished product, they can take out all that extra description that distracts too much. It's better to have more than you need than not enough.

Finally, give yourself a deadline. NaNoWriMo is perfect for that, and it's what got me to actually finish a novel in the first place. Without that 30 day deadline hanging over my head, I would have never actually written a novel. My suggestion though, is that you shouldn't wait until November to start this. You have a whole summer to write and you need to take advantage of it. I've been writing every day and posting it on my blog. It gives me a goal. If I miss a day, I feel bad about it and tend to write more the following day. That motivates me, and I feel confident putting my writing out there for people to read, simply because I've been writing for a while now and I don't feel like every sentence I create is absolutely horrible. Now, I'm not sure I would have done that with my first novel. I still don't feel like my first novel is good enough to show most people. If I were you, I would set some sort of daily word goal and have some way of sticking to it. You said your mom was helping you, so tell her your daily goal and report to her every night. Even that small amount of expectation from your mom should be enough to get you writing.

Now that I've written far too much, I'll wrap this up. If you have any more questions, just ask. I hope this helps.

- Mr. Adams

All of that advice has been tested by me and it all holds up. Of course, oftentimes I fail to follow my own advice, such as not taking long breaks between writing (seeing how this current novel hasn't seen any action since December and it's now June).

Anyway, it's time to watch the 3rd Harry Potter film, because Maria has finally finished all the books and we need to watch all the movies before the last one comes out.

-----

[The Man Who Would Be A Father]

The sky exploded. It exploded and my eyes were opened wide so that the explosion sank deep into my head. There was a giant burst as if lightning was clinging to the bottom of clouds. As if the sun had shed its skin in streaks of solar flares. As if the bruise of the sky had been pierced by white bone. The sky exploded and I dropped to my knees with my hands trembling and over my head. The sound was a quick snap. As if the tree in my yard had cracked in half. As if my ear drums had burst. My burst eardrums heard thunder roll over me and the hairs on my arms stood on end. The sky would soon fall down upon us. It would tear free from its mooring and twist the steel that held it above our heads. It would topple down like a burning zeppelin engulfed in flames. My home would be crushed beneath the weight of the falling sky. My wife and son would be taken with it.

The sky exploded. It exploded in a bright white light that seared itself into my pupils. It did not engulf me, but hovered in the air. It spread quickly across from one horizon to the next. Spread in jagged lines like the edge of a canyon. On my knees, with my hands over my head, and the hairs on my arms, and my wife and son inside, I watched the exploding sky and saw the bright lights swoop and loop into each other. Giant balls of white hot light swung as if on the ends of strings. As if they were giant pendulums swinging from grandfather clocks. They twisted in upon themselves and met occasionally. They danced up in the dark black ocean. And the dark bruised sky was a curtain hanging behind them.

After the sky exploded, I could not see my hands or feet again. They had vanished once more. The darkness was a contrast to the small stars that were twirling above. I watched them as they seemed to kiss each other lightly, then rush apart. They rushed apart in ever widening circles. They spun around like fireflies in a glass bottle. A glass bottle of fireflies in a frenzy. My wife's humming slipped through the window. It swung and swooped with the dancing stars. It slipped into my ears and stitched together my burst ear drums. The lights against the darkness of the sky spun around once more. They spun in a synchronized fashion, like ballerinas all on point. Then they converged and held there. They were a pulsing light just smaller than the sun, before cleaving from each other and speeding towards the empty black spot where the city should be. The empty hole of the split horizon. Where the skyline had bubbled and cracked. Had broken in half and fizzled out like acid. They moved with purpose. They moved with intelligence. A knowing. The spots of light were alive. They were breathing in the black ocean sky.

I called out to my neighbor Was it the Light again? and waited for my words to die alone in the dark night. I don't think so he shouted back. I turned back around, feeling the edge of the door frame with my hands. Slipping my hands into the shadows of my house. My shins hit the edge of our coffee table. My shoulder brushed against the hallway wallpaper. My wife's humming called out for me. It bounced off the walls and steered me towards our room. She was in the darkness with our son. I stubbed my toe on the bed post. The bedsheets were no longer wet. I found the smooth skin of my wife's leg. There were lights in the sky. They went to the city. I looked at the spot where I imagined her eyes to be. It seemed ever so much brighter. What was it? She held our son close to her chest and her humming wound its way between her words. I don't know. I climbed into the bed beside her and she leaned back into my chest. I do not know if my eyes were open or closed.

Bon Iver + [The Woman He Lied To]

2011-06-09T12:51:00.000-04:00

I was greeted today with a wonderful gift. The new Bon Iver album is available for streaming as of today. I've included it here for you. Please give it a listen. It is very beautiful. I've been writing to it all afternoon. Just leave this page open while you browse the internet and enjoy.

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I've got to post quickly, because I'm off to see Maria at school. She had a half day, so we are going to use photoshop and work on our programs for the wedding. We need to get them done before she has to turn her keys in and can't use the computers anymore. So, here's some more. Hopefully some of you are getting something out of these posts.

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[The Woman He Lied To]

The twilight of age has consumed me. There will be no more laughter and dancing. My shoes will forever be in their corner. Dust upon them. Dust beneath them. Dust to all and to all, dust. A Light has shined in this world. My eyes have been cleansed. I see lengths of wire twisted into shapes and shining in the sun. They reach high and shine with glass set between them. I feel wind passing over my face and through my hair. My hair of wires. All is wires. Everything held up by twisted metal. He says he saw the Light. He says we will drive to it. We will find it again. I am waiting. I find myself, now, to be very patient. Patience is virtuous. There is no need for words when one is waiting. I let the wind pass by. I watch the wires twist away in the sunlight. He places his hand on my leg. Dust my leg will become. Dust caught in the Light. Hanging in the air. Swirling in the wind against my face. All people will be weeping soon. I feel their tears coming. I hear them in the distance. A great wave is rising up. The oceans are shifting beneath their weeping feet. The streets have been washed away. There is no ground to walk on. We are treading water and losing strength. Our mouths are full of salt and brine.

He tells me he has seen the Light. We have seen the Light together. It was absolute. It was everything. Love, hate, war, honey, fireworks, ashes, cold morning rain, thunder and lightning, earthquakes and typhoons, the dirt from your grave, the sound of choirs singing, the heat from his hand on my leg, the dust and the dust and the dust over everything, and crying children without their mothers, ice, sulfur, gnashing teeth, torn flesh, the sun shining on the sun shining on the sun, pollen from millions of daisies in the wind, hot showers, burning autumn leaves in great piles, the feeling of uncertainty when seeing someone you’ve lost, an unfinished book, the death of everyone all at once, the knowledge of good and evil and the confusion it brings, a giant rebirth for all people, and a deep pulling inside of my lungs as if they were being separated from one another yet still remained as one.

My husband holds his hand over my leg and steers the wheel as if grasping at falling snow. Falling snow that swirls around his outstretched fingers. His fingers curl in on themselves and twist together. I want to place my hand upon his. I want to wriggle my fingers between his, to stop them from curling together. But I am unmoving as a mountain. I am a sycamore tree with roots clawing between rocks and looking for soil. My leaves blow in the breeze through the window, but my trunk does not bend. I want to lean over and place my mouth at his ear and whisper, but I cannot. I think only of the Light. How it washed my body endlessly. As if I were caught in rapids and pulled underneath the water. I rolled end over end as if leaping from a trapeze. I died. I was reborn. The Light reached inside through my wailing mouth and clutched at my beating heart. It squeezed and held as if crushing an aluminum can. My breath caught in my separating lungs. My life ended. It felt glorious. Like falling from a high cliff with my eyes closed tight and never hitting the bottom. Like being shot from a cannon without a net to catch me. My death was tremendous. Like setting fire to a great forest and feeling the heat against my face. Like freeing a boulder from its stationary life and watching it crash into rocks and shatter. The Light burst the bubble of my life, and then it pieced me back together. Its hand unclenched my heart and pulled back through my mouth. My lungs met. My rebirth was breathtaking and endless. I was born thousands of times within each blink of my eyes. There was a sound washing away from my ears like the draining of a bathtub. My mind was cleared away and all that remained was the Light. It stained my eyelids and the tips of my fingers. It caked the buds of my tongue. Each word I spoke was for the Light.

My husband and I are the center of the city. We are among wires with leaves that stretch high. I wait for the Light. I know it is here, waiting for me. I cannot speak to my husband because if I were to say a word, the Light might not return. The are so many things I want to tell him. I want him to know about the wires. I want to tell him that I know he is lying, but I know why he is lying and I know that he loves me. I want to tell him how the Light felt because I know he does not understand. To tell him about the dust upon dust covering the dust. For that is all we are in the Light. We are thin strips of film being projected through. We are the screens upon which our lives are playing. The film of our life is beautiful and complicated like the knot holding strings together. I am a long piece of red yarn and he is thin fishing line. If we were to become untied, I would drift away on the breeze. I want to tell him that we have already died. He should know about this. His death was quiet and dark and lonely. To tell him that we have already returned to life. His birth was much the same. If I told him these things, the Light would never return. If I stopped thinking of it for a moment, its flame would flicker out. I focus on the Light. I close my eyes and remember its embrace. I call its name quietly so that my husband can not hear.

When I open my eyes, all is white. My legs lift from the seat. I cannot feel the seat belt against my chest. I cannot see my husband next to me. I feel myself passing through the open window. The world vanishes behind a white curtain. The play has finished. I become dust. I am destroyed by the Light. My body erased. I cannot see myself. The film of our life is nothing but a white screen. My husband's hand grabs the hem of my dress. He anchors me so that I do not fly away and become only dust scattered among the wires and leaves. I cry because he will not have to lie again. He holds me there and his fist is the knot holding our strings together. I am a kite on his string. I drink the Light. I let it fill me. I forget to breathe. I forget to blink and to hear. I forget all thoughts but those of the Light and the string of my husband until the Light lets us go and we are sitting in the car.

The city is shaking. There are tremors running up my spine. My head nearly bobbles back and forth and my mouth seems to droop down. We are the ground beneath a million stomping feet. We are pressed down hard and made into a path. Something is coming. I wait for the Light to return. I wait, and I ask my husband Did you see it? Did you see the Light? and he nods his head and says Yes.

One Missed Day + [The Woman Who Saw Him Step Through Air]

2011-06-08T21:02:00.000-04:00

Oops! Missed a day. That's OK, because I wrote a decent amount today, and I did it rather quickly. It's already the 8th, and the deadline for Createspace is the 30th, so I don't have much time to waste. I can't go skipping days.

I spent a lot of the day today in Farwell, Midland, and Harrison, but now I'm back in Lansing. There was a lot of driving, but it was nice because I got to sit in air conditioning. I also was able to have lunch with my mom. I took her to Genji's for sushi. She was skeptical at first, but we go her veggie sushi so that she didn't have to worry about raw fish. She had some chopstick difficulties, but she persevered and succeeded in eating a whole roll. She was a little worried when I told her that it's impolite to eat your sushi in more than one bite. I'll just say, it's pretty funny seeing someone with a small mouth trying to eat a large sushi roll.

As I said, I'm back in Lansing. Maria and I put in the AC unit, because her landlord is too busy. He must be incredibly busy, because it literally took us five minutes. Now the apartment is livable and we don't feel like baked lobsters. We've got a complicated fan and chair system that's routing the AC air into the bedroom (the bedroom window is not designed for an air conditioner) and it looks like we'll be able to sleep at night.

Anyway, here's some more of the story. I'm finally getting to the meat of the third act, so to speak. Let me know what you think.

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Also, here's an interesting video from Memory Tapes' new album that's coming out soon.

Memory Tapes "Yes I Know" from Najork on Vimeo.

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[The Woman Who Saw Him Step Through Air]

or like a car tire running over an animal in the street, and I saw the arm with the tire iron raise up again–I thought I could see a red hue against the shining metal, but it moved much to quickly for me to make out anything at all beyond a blur–then smash back down with little regard to the bodies around it while the black mass enclosed the entrance to the coffee shop and the woman on the couch cried out from behind the hand of the man who was holding her, which seemed both cruel and merciful–he tried to turn her away from the mess in the water, but she would not be moved–as I too watched in horror, the blood likely draining out from my face and leaving me pale white, which I feared would make me easier to spot in with my head just barely above the wooden countertop near the cash register, yet I could not be pulled away from the sight of the poor man being held down under the water and repeatedly beaten over the head or back while the others around him shouted and howled and seemed to beat at their chests or stomp their feet in the water until the man who had thrown the chair stopped his struggling and they released him so that his body floated up near the top of the water, which was when the man with the tire iron dropped it into the water and then climbed back out the window into the crowd, allowing me to breathe easier–my lungs had felt as if they were coiled around each other while they beat the now floating and motionless man–and relax my hands and neck, but once the last one of them had made their way back out the window, the dark shouting mass did not leave, perhaps because the man and woman on the couch were still making far too much noise–the man having released the woman’s mouth after she bit him and drew blood, which tinged her bottom lip red–they merely stood there outside the window with the black sky behind them, and then I saw some of them moving to the front of the crowd with fire in their hands, carrying burning torches made of rags and plastic bits or the ends of brooms and mops, the light illuminating their red melted faces in flickering wisps that only made their appearance more ghoulish, and the first one inside, a woman that moved as if her leg was broken–a sort of shuffling lurch–tossed her torch at the couple on the couch and–I swear this is exactly what I witnessed–began to laugh uncontrollably, her face twisted up in fits, as the couch caught fire and the man and woman toppled backwards over the high end of the couch and into the water, followed by another man through the window tossing his burning torch right at where I hid behind the counter, a move I noticed quickly, allowing me enough time to duck down, waiting for the burning thing to slide over the counter and land, searing, on my back, but it did not drop and I could hear the crackle above my bowed head mixed with the woman’s laughter, and I could feel the heat from the fires, even though the wooden counter had not yet begun to burn, but the couch was obviously completely in flames–smoke was rising and I could see it pooling at the top of the ceiling–and I heard the man and woman now shouting Please! Stop! What are you doing? For God’s sake stop! as if this dark mass of lunatics could even respond–had they not seen the woman’s face as she broke into laughter, so inhuman and cruel–while I thought of my husband and wondered where he could be, likely back at home, which was not in the city–thank the lord–and was likely spared of the insanity sweeping through the streets, because I couldn’t imagine him being somewhere among all of this since it was too much to think of him lost in the streets looking for someplace to sleep or hiding from whatever this crowd outside had become, because if I thought about him crouched down in a store, praying that a crazed mob would put down their torches and tire irons and broken bottles and leave him be, I would lose all hope and all semblance of rationality, I would become just as mindless as my attackers, and then I would be lost, my humanity stripped from me, peeled like an orange and tossed into the trash bin underneath the sink to rot away, while I marched madly through the streets, my faced pulled every which direction and my head seething with rage at the destruction all around me, and I knew I could not become that person if I wanted to live, if I wanted to remember my daughter and the way she would tie her shoes twelve times a day because she never pulled the laces tight enough—she had just learned how—or the way she would jump in every puddle she found on rainy days, and the counter behind me grew hot against my back

[The Man Who Would Be A Father]

2011-06-06T20:08:00.000-04:00

Did a bunch of school work today. Then I wrote. I'd write more, but Maria and I have barely done anything together today, so we are going to work on songs for the wedding. Enjoy this section. Let me know what you think.

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[The Man Who Would Be A Father]

The sky was bruised. Black and dark blue. Dark blue around the edges. There were no lights in the sky. The stars had fallen. They were gone. They had closed their eyes to sleep. My wife was in our home with our child. She was rocking him in her arms while she sat in our bed. She was a row boat at the edge of a wave. Our bed was now dry. I had changed the sheets the night before. She rocked him in her arms and hummed softly. Her hum whisked through the open window. It danced in my ear as I watched the bruised sky. The horizon was on the edge of the bruised blue. It had been stitched back together. There were no lights shining in the city. I stood in my yard and waited for the black to cover the remaining sky. The sky that was still uncovered. The Light was gone. In it's place, a vacant atmosphere above. Every brightness was drained.

I waited for the black bruise to cover the sky and for the horizon to be painted black and for my hands to be shadows before my eyes. I waited for the streetlights, but I knew they would not light. I waited for the blue glow in the window of my neighbors' homes, but I knew it would not appear. The world had paused. It had stopped spinning. It was stalled. Star light had given up. Had dragged its feet and quit. Had left us alone. We were in darkness as the bruise spread through the sky and there would only be darkness forever after. I knew that there would be no more light. I knew The Light was the last. I clutched my hands around my arms and shivered with the hum of my wife in my ears. I wondered what our life would be like in this darkness. We would stumble often. Our shins would meet bed posts. Our hands would grasp for walls. Our toes would be stubbed by coffee table legs. Our lips would never meet. They would rest on foreheads, cheeks, and shoulders. Our hands would never clasp. They would find forearms, stomachs, and elbows. Our eyes would never speak again.

My neighbor was on his roof. I lost him in the descending dusk. He was waiting as if for Messiah. As if his parched throat craved rain. As if to die. He and I were intertwined. My waiting was his. Neither of us would move until there was a change. A sudden happening. A break from the darkness. If there was never light again, how would time pass? How would we move from our places on the roof and in the doorway? How would I return to my wife? How would my son grow older? With nothing to mark the fading moments, there would no longer be moments to fade. We would be perpetually on the edge of a black hole. It would breath in time and stretch it out before us, but we would make no progress. I called out for my neighbor [italics] What can you see? [italics] Again, I waited. How would he hear my call? It had left my mouth and disappeared like melting snow. Like dandelion seeds in strong winds. Like the water that rises from rocks under waterfalls. If he could hear, how would his reply find my ears? [italics] There's nothing. Just nothing. [italics] But his words were something. I was reminded of sound. Robbed of our sight, we would hear more. The humming of my wife was a soft blanket around my frame. It seemed to slip away on the wind as it snapped against the side of our home. Like the current being pulled out to sea. Like sand falling down dunes. Like a fan oscillating away from my face.

The sky was broken. The horizon was gone. The bruise covered everything. Looking down, my feet were gone. I did not truly know if I was looking down at all. Perhaps I was looking backwards into the house, watching the shadows eat through the walls. Or was I looking straight up into the sky, praying for a parting of clouds and small light to trickle down? A light to trickle down upon the houses of my neighbors. Upon the trees shaking in the murky night. Upon my forehead and down into my mouth.

And then the sky exploded.

At The Zoo + [The Man Who Was Blessed]

2011-06-05T20:55:00.000-04:00

First off, here's a new song by Beirut. It's called "East Harlem" and it's wonderful. Listen as you read:
Beirut - East Harlem by Revolver USA

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Maria and I were going to go to Midland today and hit up the art fair with my mom, but after our busy day yesterday (so busy I wasn't able to post, but I did still write) we wanted a more relaxing day today. So instead of driving from Lansing to Midland and back again, we stayed in Lansing and just enjoyed the wonderful weather. We made scrambled tofu for breakfast and then I wrote for a few hours while Maria read.

Eventually we went to Potter Park Zoo, which is Lansing's zoo. It was lots of fun and a perfect day to go visit. Almost all of the animals were out and about (except that lazy arctic fox) and it was the perfect temperature for ice cream. My favorite animals were probably the sea otters, who were running and playing in the water non-stop. One of them kept doing back flips into the water, and you could watch him swim past underwater as well. Very fun and relaxing.

Other than that, we came home and had some dinner and then I fell asleep for about half an hour while Maria read. It's looking to be a wonderful relaxing summer.

In the writing department: I've really gotten into this novel again, and I'm enjoying writing as each character. I think [The Man Who Lied] is my favorite right now. Here's another section. If you're wondering, I'm a few days ahead of where you are reading, because there was a bunch that I had written, but never posted.

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[The Man Who Was Blessed]

I was astride the boy and leaning forward. My body pulsed with a warmth that seemed to scream at me Help him! Help him! but I had to wait. The Light would be to strong and would erase him. I needed to wait for the doctor to help him. I would help the drugs to sooth his body. The Light would spread through his veins with medicine and I would not have to heal him myself. That would tear him apart. The doctors eyes were determined and unmoving, and the boys limbs were being jerked around by a mad puppeteer somewhere above us. I felt the urging of my body. It tensed and waited for the moment when I would press my hands against his flesh and unleash the Light. It burned inside my shoulder blades. It crouched down in my knuckles. There was a cord of Light running up and down my legs. This room would be filled with it. We would drown in the Light. The gurney would sag and buckle under the force like a horse ridden to exhaustion.

The doctor's hand searched the length of the boy's arm for the spot which called to her. I could see it as if it were glowing, but I knew she had trouble finding it. I breathed in deep and felt the air inside my lungs catch fire when it encountered the Light. Then she found it and the needle was in the boy's jerking arm and the nurse struggled to hold him still. The doctor removed the syringe and stood back and her head seemed to nod at me as if to say It's time. I placed my hands upon his head where I could see the bright red wound inside and his chest where his breath had given out.

My fingers began to itch with electrical sensations jumping between them. My palms sweat against the boy's skin. And then the Light that had been waiting inside finally unfurled itself like a long banner in the wind and leapt from my hands into the boy. I felt the rush of it up through my chest and out through my arms. The Light spilled out over his body and into his body and reached for his head and his lungs. It wrapped tight around his muscles and commanded them to relax. It wormed inside his head and coaxed the spot of harm into submission. It washed his brain over and over again in waves of clean water until the spot was smoothed over and no longer weeping. My eyes were filled with the glow of the Light, but I could see the boy beneath me, and I saw his arms uncurl and relax at his sides. His back came back down to rest on the bed. His eyes stopped flicking back and forth underneath their lids. I could see the doctor with her back turned to me in a field of white as she lifted off the floor and her coat hung down so that I could not see her feet. The nurse lied on her back as if she had been flung from the gurney. She also rose into the air. The boy and I did not move as the Light poured from my hands into his small frame, filling him up. I felt a tug in my gut and an urgency building there. The light soaked through the walls and the felt the city being whitewashed. The tug grew stronger. The Light climbed the buildings and touched the sky. The boy's eyes opened and they looked at me. He could not see me, the Light blinded him. I felt his chest being to push against my hand. It was working.

Then a feeling blossomed inside of me. Its petals bloomed and filled me with a cold, icy chill. I felt as if I were the center of something large and vast beyond my sight. Eyes had turned to me. They did not belong to the boy. They were far off and distant. They swiveled around and locked on my body in the middle of the white room with the two women floating around me. Something had noticed. Something saw what I had done. My actions could not be ignored. I felt as if I were being watched. As if I could turn my head over my shoulder and there would be a group of people starring with their arms outstretched and fingers pointed at me. I felt myself shiver and the Light within me tried to warm me again. It flared for a moment so that I could not see the boy or the women amid the white fog. Then they came back into focus and I was again a being of warmth. The feeling had passed.

I removed my hands from the boy and sat back on my haunches. His eyes were closed and he breathed steadily. His body was exhausted, muscles drained thoroughly. Looking at him, I could no longer see the harm within his head. He was alive and healed. The machine that the doctor had connected him to was no longer making loud noises. I looked at him once more and thought about how lost he was. I wanted to stay and help him find his mother, but I could not forget the feeling of being watched. I had drawn the attention of something beyond me. I could not remain with the boy. The doctor stood up and looked around, as if to assure herself that she was still in the same room and that she was indeed alive. I spoke to her and said He needs to find his mother. She looked at me as if to say Won't you find her? but I did not give her the time to speak and stepped through the air.

Done By June 30th + [The Woman Who Witnessed Death Upon Death]

2011-06-03T16:46:00.000-04:00

I made the mistake of falling asleep after Maria left for school. I only wanted to sleep for another hour or so, but of course, I didn't wake up until 10, which was too late to do anything other than get showered before lunch time. I got Taco Bell and brought it to Maria's school. Before I fell back asleep, I checked my mail and saw that my Createspace code from NaNoWriMo expires on the 30th of this month. For those who don't know, Createspace is a self-publishing website. The code allows me one free proof copy of my novel. So, essentially I get one bound paper copy of my novel for free. The only problem with that is that I don't want a paper bound copy of my novel until it is finished. So, I've got until the 30th to get the full 1st draft done. I'd also like to get some basic polish on it, which means I'd like the sections in the correct order and simple spelling/grammar errors ironed out. That way, the proof copy isn't absolutely horrible (just a little bit horrible). Which is why I didn't want to sleep until 10. I wanted to write and write and write, but my body got the best of me and I dozed back off.

That's OK though, because once I got back here around 1 or so, I started writing, and I've been writing since. It's been slow going, because every time I start writing a character that I haven't done in a while, I have to go back and read their sections again so I can get a feel for their style. I'm worried that I've lost a little bit of what made the characters unique, so hopefully I can fix that in later revisions. Anyway, I wrote a decent amount today, enough to be satisfied with what I've got for the time being. I'll be writing a lot each day so that I can get this thing finished and out to the presses, so to speak. Maria gets the first read, and then I can pass it along to someone else if they want it.

Other than that, it's been a fairly uneventful day. I helped Maria take some pottery to the kiln at the middle school and we ate (which I mentioned) and then I've been listening to the new Death Cab for Cutie album (which I like simply because I like the sound and feel of Death Cab, and because they still have a knack for melody and Ben Gibbard's voice is immediately interesting).

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[The Woman Who Witnessed Death Upon Death]

He twisted and seizured on the gurney and I must have stood there for what seemed, to the man and the nurse, a millennium as my thoughts fought with each other, wondering whether or not I should place the needle into his small arm or wait out the seizure and hope he might come out all right, but not only that, I had to decide whether I was prepared to be responsible for what might happen. Upon my shoulders there sat a weight, it's legs dangling down and kicking me in the chest, and it beat on my head with its fists while screaming in my ears What if you kill him? What if you kill him? incessantly in a shrill voice that raced down my spine and seemed to make my feet tingle with the familiar sensation of a limb falling asleep, which was more, if anything, caused by my absolute exhaustion. The boy seemed to collapse in on himself out of terror as I weighed the possibilities against each other, watching the needle go into his arm in my mind and seeing him stiffen like a board while the EEG beeps like a starved baby bird until it reports complete brain death, or waiting until he vomits and convulses for another twenty minutes and he is permanently damaged or dead. I couldn't focus enough to realize that he might come out of his fit if I did nothing at all or that the injection might cause his muscles to relax, so my hands began to sweat and I thought about how I died once today and how this boy had already died once today, and I could never live with myself if he died again, but what could I do for him?

While I remained paralyzed, the man with the swirling voice watched as if witnessing the birth of his child undergoing complications, he could not turn away, but the impending realization that this boy might die was painful upon his face, and my eyes flicked like darting birds from the nurse to the man to the boy and back again in a horrible circle, hoping to find an answer in their eyes, when suddenly the boy's back arched and he nearly stood on his head with his arms pounding up and down on the gurney in an alternating rhythm and his feet kicked in and out from underneath him so that I thought the bed might collapse underneath him and I knew somehow, without knowing why, that he was not going to come out of this on his own, that he was going to die here on this table if something within me didn't set my guilt aside and think only of him, forget that I might carry his death with me for years and remember that my job is to remove myself from the moment and act in the best interest of my patient, because if I could not do that, if I could not remove myself for just this one moment, he would dead the next, and I would never let myself return to this hospital again.

I grabbed his arm to hold him as still as I could and in that same moment the man with the swirling voice spoke to me saying Do it. Inject him. We have to do this now in a solemn tone that seemed to indicate he knew every thought that had just passed through my head, and eyes that seemed filled with a light of their own. The nurse reacted quickly, grabbing the boys shaking shoulders and trying her best to steady him without doing any damage, and I tried to find the spot where I had injected him before knowing there would be a vein there, and amid all of the movement and confusion, the man climbed up onto the gurney, placing his knees on either side of the boy and himself in great risk of being punched or kicked, and laid his hands on the boy's head and chest. For some reason I did not question this at all, and I seemed to understand exactly what he was doing, as if we were animals acting out of a shared instinct, some common knowledge within our minds that instructed us to act out our separate functions within a complex mating ritual or or show of authority, and as he leaned down towards the boy, I pressed the plunger on the needle and imagined I could see the medication sweeping into his veins and to his heart.

As I pulled the syringe from from the boys arm, the man's hands erupted with Light that shone so brightly I was only able to watch for a moment before I had to twist away and found myself crouching down on the floor staring at the far wall of the surgery room, and I saw bright Light starting at the ceiling and slowly working its way down to the floor and it seemed to engulf everything completely, the tile on the walls disappeared completely after the Light passed over it, and I knew that it was happening again. The perfect white Light crawled down towards the floor and I closed my eyes for fear I would go blind, but I could still see the white, and I felt the sensation of my body rising up into the air while the sound of the boy's moaning seemed to leave my ears like someone being sucked from the interior of an airplane in a movie, and I knew now where the Light had come from and what it had been, or at least I thought I understood, because it seemed something beyond understanding, like the story of the blind wise men feeling at the elephant and unable to piece together their small knowledge of the parts they could grasp. The part that I could grasp was this man who called forth Light from his hands and bent over the seizuring child in an attempt to heal him, because I knew he had the power to do that, but what else there was, I did not know, except for the part where we would die and then have our hearts start again like an engine about to stop until you give it more gas, so I focused and waited for that moment when my heart would stop, and I tried to will it to continue beating, because I had no way of knowing if it would start again, as if each time the Light covered us, we were risking death again.

I Wish I Had Room For Sushi + [The Boy Who Was Lost]

2011-06-02T19:02:00.000-04:00

Spent a lot of time at school today doing Reaching and Teaching Struggling Learners stuff. Basically, I'm the co-facilitator for our school's dropout prevention program that the state runs. It's a three year project, and it requires a lot of testing and data collection and organization. We meet to talk about our plans for this summer and next year. It's a great program and I'm glad I can help out. The data we are collecting now is going to truly help our students out. It's another one of those things that helps me to be invaluable at Farwell.

Maria and I went for a run and then ate at Pablo's, which was delicious, but then Nathan called and told me he was going to an all-you-can-eat sushi place, which made me want sushi really bad. Too bad I'm so full.

Here's a section I wrote today. It's short, but it's from a character we haven't heard from in a while, so he's just popping in to remind you that he's still here (and that he's still in trouble).

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[The Boy Who Was Lost]

And there were only black and white spiderwebs. But they were wrapping around me. Because I couldn't stop shaking. And my mouth was spouting words. But I don't know what words they were. They were backwards. Because I couldn't think. There were flashes of white and red and black. And they flashed over and over again. Until they were the same color. And I was being stabbed in my chest. It was a really big knife, like my mom's kitchen knife. I could feel it carving me open from my neck down. But I couldn't see it. But I knew it was there. And I was crying a lot even though I'm such a big boy. It was OK because my mom says it's OK. And I couldn't swallow. But my mouth was filled with spit and it was warm like my tongue was bleeding. My teeth hurt too. And the black and white spiderwebs wrapped tighter. They closed around my head. And my arms. And my legs. So I couldn't really move except to shake back and forth like I was a caught fly trying to escape from a big ugly spider. And the webs began to squeeze on my head. Which made me feel like I was going to burst open. Because my head was being squeezed and the rock was inside. And I felt like I was underneath a mountain. Like I was being crushed. Which was when I think I stopped breathing. Because the spiderwebs were so tight that there was no room to breathe. And the rock was plugging up my mouth. And my eyes were gone. And I tried to think about my mom. But I couldn't see her face.

Still Going Strong + [The Man Who Lived Under The Bridge]

2011-06-02T00:20:00.000-04:00

I spent most of the day today at Farwell, making sure all my grades were done and properly in the grade book, and then putting lots and lots of data into a website that then takes that data and makes it into nice, fancy charts. It was not the most exciting work, but it will be wonderful to see the results of the data. We tested all our students on Math and Reading comprehension skills. Hopefully the data will be used to provide students with remedial and support classes. We'll see what comes of it. I sure hope something does, because I've spent a lot of time putting it all together.

Other than that, I finished season 5 of Dr. Who, which means now I'm on the current season and need to download some episodes to catch up. I'm so glad I started watching it. It's hands down, the holy grail of nerdom, in terms of television shows. I can't get enough.

On the more momentous new front, Maria started her free trial for World of Warcraft tonight. We both got to level 3 before we had to camp (which literally happened after we turned in the first quest). It was darn cool and I hope I can help make the whole process easy for her. There is a lot to learn at first and it can seem overwhelming, but she's more than capable. It will give us something to do at night once the sun goes down and we can't hang out outside.We'll see if she has any interest in it once the trial runs out :)

And of course, I wrote again tonight. I'm still going strong. The section you're reading is one that I'm not too excited about. I've yet to figure out how to make this character's style more engaging. The idea was that his sections would be very simple. I've accomplished that, but I think I've sacrificed plot and interest because of it. You be the judge. I think the solution might be to shorten his sections and trim them down. Thoughts?

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[The Man Who Lived Under The Bridge]

I woke up in the park. The bench was hard. My back hurt. It was a knife in my back. I was stabbed once. He wanted to take my money. I never have much money. I don't have a wallet. I sleep under the bridge. There is a river there. I drink from the river each morning. I don't bathe because the water is too cold. There is no way to dry off. I like the park better. They never let me sleep in the park before. They would come by and make me leave. Once they put me in their car. They took me to the jail. I was there over night. The beds in the jail are better than the bench.

I woke up in the park. The water was still on the ground. It was getting dark. There weren't any people around. They were inside the buildings. Most of them had places where they lived. I used to be jealous of them. Now I don't mind. They have what's theirs and I have what’s mine. There's isn't any better than mine. It is just different. I have a thick brown coat with lots of pockets. I got it from the church on 9th. It was free. It's a better coat than any coat I've seen. I keep my handkerchief in one pocket. I keep my watch in another. I keep my cigarettes in another pocket when I have any. I keep empty liquor bottles in other pockets. I prefer when they aren't empty. They are empty most of the time.

The park was very quiet. I wanted to stay there. No one was going to make me leave. They were too busy. I think. I had not heard a siren yet. It was strange. The city was so quiet. It was like a church. I used to go into the church sometimes. After they passed out clothing and food. I wanted to go inside and say thanks. I would kneel in the front pew. I'd go as close to the front as I could get. They don't let you step up on the carpet. But I could go to the front pew. I would kneel down. I would bow my head. I'd say a few words. I never knew what to say. I'd say Thank you for the food and the clothes. That made me feel better.

I would have stayed in the park all night. Then my stomach hurt. I was hungry. I don't eat much. I'm very skinny. If I took off my brown coat with the pockets and my gray sweatshirt and my thin buttoned shirt, you would see my ribs through my stained white t-shirt. I don't ever take off my coat or sweatshirt or thin buttoned shirt or stained white t-shirt. If I took them off, someone else might take them. It is hard to keep all of my things together. It has gotten better since I got my brown coat with the pockets. I can keep almost everything in my pockets. I still have to carry around a small plastic bag. It has a few extra things in it. I had a candy bar in a wrapper in my plastic bag. I found it in the trash outside of a drug store. It was half eaten. There was some dirt on it. I had wiped the dirt off and wrapped it back up and put it in my plastic bag. I ate it while I sat on the bench, but I was still hungry. There was nothing else to eat in my plastic bag and all of my liquor bottles were empty. So I left the park.

There were so many buildings that seemed empty. The lights were off in all of them. That worried me. The lights are always on in the city. People must sleep with their lights on. If I had someone place to sleep with a light, I would leave it on all night. I watch people a lot. I notice all the people going in and out of the buildings all day. There are always more people. Just when I think I have seen everyone there is to see, more people show up. The subway is always coughing up people. The buses are always dropping people off. The cars are always moving people around. The people fill the city like the water filled the city during the Light. But now there were no people. There had been people before I went to sleep. They had been wandering around and calling out I'm blind or Help me, but now they were gone. I hoped they were in the buildings. I hoped they had just decided to turn off their lights. It was scary to think that they were just gone. How could so many people just be gone? I couldn't imagine such a thing happening.

The city got darker and darker. I couldn’t tell where the buildings started and the dark began. There was no light in the sky. The sun was behind the buildings. The moon was down. The water sloshed under my feet. I didn’t mind the water too much. My shoes have holes in them. My socks have holes too. When it rains, my feet always get wet. The water was not that bad. I wondered how I was going to find any food in the darkness. There was just enough light to make out the buildings and their signs. I can’t read very well. I don’t have any books. I do know the signs for fast food places. And drug stores. And the food kitchens. I can spot churches without needing any signs. There aren’t many restaurants near the park. I walked away from the park and tried to listen for people. If I found people, I might find food. I could ask them for some. I don’t like asking people for food. They give me mean looks. I know what they are thinking. They are thinking Get a job or Go die somewhere where we can’t see you. When I am really hungry, so hungry that my stomach can be heard, I ask for food. I have to ask for food often. I feel bad afterwards. I don’t like to bug anyone. But sometimes I get food and then I don’t mind that I had to beg for it.

I heard some noises down the street. There were people splashing through the street. They were making loud noises. Some of them carried torches made of rags and pieces of wood or plastic. They marching towards the edge of the city. Some of them were throwing things. Some were breaking windows. Some were smashing the hoods of cars. I hid behind a fire hydrant and watched. One of them lifted a trashcan and threw it into the window of a building. Then there was more shouting. The people stopped marching and they began to bunch up around the store. I wondered if they had found food. I wanted to get closer, but I did not want them to see me. People do not like to see me. They turn their eyes away when I’m near. They never look me in the face. The shouting continued. Some of the people with fire in their hands pushed their way closer to the building. They threw the fire inside. Then they climbed out of the window and waited. I hoped they would leave soon. Then I could see if there was food in the store. The sign had a coffee cup on it. There might be bagels or donuts or muffins. The people waited and continued to shout like crazy people. I know what crazy people are like. There are a lot of them on the streets. They try to steal my liquor bottles. The sky grew darker and darker and I could barely see them. It was good that they had fire. The fire inside the store grew brighter. Eventually I could see the light of the fire against the people’s faces. They waited until the fire seemed to be too hot and then they left. I made my way to the store. The light of the fire made it easier to see where I was going. I could see a couch on fire and the big counter with the cash register was on fire too. I wanted to go inside, but it was too hot. If there was food inside, it was all burnt.

More Summer + [The Woman Who Saw Him Step Through Air]

2011-05-31T21:30:00.000-04:00

Here's some more writing. Nothing new to report just yet. Just another wonderful day of summer (technically it's my first, because everyone had Memorial Day off). At one point I was playing Pokemon and WoW (on my laptop) while watching Dr. Who on Maria's laptop because she was at school. I call that a good day. We also went for a wonderful walk to the farmer's market, made a delicious salad, and I wrote while Maria drew. It's been great.

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[The Woman Who Saw Him Step Through Air]

but it was not for long because I was roused from the emptiness of sleep by a loud commotion outside of the store and one of the men shaking me softly, as if I were made of glass or dust, and his eyes were no longer fighting to stay open, probably because of the large crowd that passed by the store front shouting and splashing through the water, moving beneath the few streetlights that were working, and the other man stood up against the wall by the entrance and out of sight from the front window while holding a chair as if to smash it into anyone who entered the room, and the woman was still curled up on the couch, but she was making soft noises like a rusted bicycle tire and was sitting near the high arm of the couch so that anyone looking inside would be unable to see her as well, which seemed the appropriate thing to do in this situation—with a large mob marching past the store front and the city streets weeping—so I slipped off the counter on which I had been sleeping and submerged myself beneath the water up to my chin, no longer caring about keeping my clothes dry, but much more concerned with avoiding whatever seemed to be brewing outside, so much so that I focused instead on the strewn detritus of the coffee shop that floated about at eye level, a Styrofoam cup, bags of unopened Brazilian coffee beans, blue plastic creamer, and attempted to shut out the noise shaking the storefront window, but it was of little use as the voices seemed to skip across the surface of the water like flung rocks and battered around my head so that I was could only imagine the faces of the people they came from—red faces distorted as if melting in a microwave and with eyes that zipped around nervously for movements along the periphery, faces that I had no desire to see with my own calm eyes—until my imaginings were interrupted by a sudden crash as if I were again on the bus early in the morning on my way to work and it had toppled over a second time, a noise that sent the woman on the couch into hysterics, jolting upright and standing on the couch—I lifted myself up, eye level to the counter to watch—and shouting obscenities through the empty space that used to be the window—our feeble protection from those outside—and I noticed a large metal trash can resting in the center of the store that had not been there when I had laid my head down, so know it seemed that the advancing crowd outside had taken to rioting and god knows what else and were throwing trash cans through seemingly empty storefront windows, unless of course they had known were were resting inside, attempting to find some sort of shelter in all of this confusion and chaos and the fear that perhaps this was the end of everything, that there was no going back to the way we were before the Light swept over us, that I would never wake up in the morning next to my husband's warm body nestled close to mine because I have terrors at night and find myself reaching out for him instinctively while my eyes are still closed and my brain swirls with images of empty beds, red streetlights, boxes of old clothes labeled with my daughter’s name, open graves, and school children, and that I would never return to work—one of the few things that seem to distract me long enough to remember that life has not stopped and we are all dealing with the hand we have been dealt by the past—or that I might never visit my mother's house and sit at her kitchen table that is covered in what seems to be bathroom tiles, while sharing a cup of hot tea and asking her when it will ever stop feeling like someone has taken to my heart with a knife, because we lost my brother when I was twelve, and, while I had struggled to get out of bed for that following year, I learned to laugh and dance and have crushes on boys again, yet my mother never seemed to lose that faraway look in her eye, until my thoughts were interrupted by the shout of the man who had been holding the chair—a guttural shout as if he were from some prehistoric age—as he threw it out the window and into the dark mass of humming bodies, and I felt my hands tighten into fists and my neck tense up because that was not at all what I had wanted him to do—I wanted him to remain quiet and hidden so that no attention would be drawn to us—and I heard the shouts of the mass grow louder and then white eyes peered through the broken glass, and feet kicked at the remains of the window sticking up from the bottom of the pane, clearing a way for bodies to climb through, while the woman continued to shout and leapt up and down, nearly buckling the couch beneath her, until a new man—one with the red melted face—was standing in the water of the coffee shop, and he was joined by another, and then a woman with short brown hair and dirt all over her face, and then two more men, one carrying a tire iron, which he spun in his hand with an anticipation that was clearly broadcast to those of us who could see, before the man who had thrown the chair charged at the first man who came through the window and crashed into him, knocking them both to the floor and being swallowed for an instant by the water before resurfacing and screaming loudly, and then the others who had come through the window were upon them as well, their limbs thrashing and flailing about, while the second man who had been in the coffee shop when I entered grabbed the woman off the couch and tried to calm her down by holding her arms and shouting at her, and then I saw the arm of the tire iron man raise up high over his head, hang for just a moment like the back swing of a golf club, then slam down into the man who had thrown the chair, issuing forth a loud thud like the sound of a bowling ball hitting the lane

A Day At The Tridge + [The Woman Who Saw Him Step Through Air]

2011-05-30T21:37:00.001-04:00

Maria and I spent the day sitting outside at the Tridge in Midland. It was awesome. We played Blockus (an amazing board game), lied on a blanket in the grass, read, and ate Jimmy John's. Maria even drew a picture of me. What a wonderful day. I wrote again today, only about 850 words, but I'm still getting back into it. I stopped writing at a bad point, because I had been building to something with the novel and now I've kind of lost steam. I'm going to have to reread a lot to get a feel for what I was doing. That's OK though, because I enjoy rereading this one. I don't cringe as often, compared to the last two. I hope that means that my writing is improving, and not simply that I'm getting used to my horrible prose. Here's another section from the novel, you can be the judge as to whether or not it's any good.

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Another song I'm enjoying right now. I dragged out the first Wolf Parade album and have been listening to it a lot recently. This song is one of my all time favorites and possibly the best song Spencer Krug has written.

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[The Woman Who Saw Him Step Through Air]

leaving behind an empty and flooded alleyway and me on my knees nearly weeping much like I wept as they lowered my daughter's casket into the ground and my husband creased the leather of my gloved hand because that winter was particularly frigid, remember the icy roads of course, and we could see our breath crystallizing in the air right before our eyes, but I was not amazed by him stepping through the air or confused when he disappeared from sight because somehow I understood that he was more than a man and that the air was his to control, which was why I had followed him from the bus, into the streets, and into this small alley, and I accepted his silence as unspoken defeat because how would he have been able to save my daughter if he had not been there, a thought I had been unable to form while I stalked him through the streets, and how could I have expected him to be there when I myself was not there for her when she left this world, yet I had still followed him and still accused him and pleaded with him no matter how impossible my request, and so he stepped through the air and left me alone to wonder what could have been had I met him before the accident,a process that took me a relatively short period of time, and then I was back in the streets watching the blind stumble and seeing the lights go out in buildings and the streetlights grow dim while I wandered around with no destination, merely exploring and hoping perhaps to find him again, but knowing that he was far away from me, and I wondered what had caused this act of god, what had brought this event upon us without warning, because there certainly was no apparent cause that I could point my fingers at and easily label, which did not surprise me because one can not expect to create meaning from something so tremendous, as if it were possible to understand the vastness of the ocean or the birth of a mountain, and I was left with the feeling of ever expanding warmth within my chest just pushing through into my arms and legs and deeper into the ventricles and ganglion nerves as if a warm blanket was being wrapped around me as I fell asleep, but without any sense as to what planted the feeling inside me, so that I could merely shake my head back and forth as I wound my way among the buildings that had turned themselves into island towers amid still waters, and I remembered the space of nothing that seemed to unfold itself in the middle of the street in front of our bus and that moment in which I saw him first step through the air and onto the street, if I had truly seen such a thing happen at all, because the Light had been so incredibly bright that it had seemingly washed away the moments before it burst into existence like the wiping of chalk from a slate, when I was on the bus headed to work and expecting nothing much to happen but for fellow passengers to cough or laugh while on their phones or to stare out the windows with blank faces watching the blurred flash of opposing traffic, completely oblivious of the event waiting to happen, seemingly oblivious of anything at all until the bus shook and floated and crashed down against the wet pavement leaving us all in silent shock and fearing for our lives, hoping we had imagined the sudden impact, hoping we were daydreaming, but we were very much awake and toppled over in the street, and I found it amazing how quickly such a thing could happen, one moment riding the creaking bus and the next avoiding the bits of broken glass threatening to slice open the palms of my hands, and I continued to make my way through the streets, occasionally stopping to watch someone stumbling blind or check my watch, as if time had retained any meaning or importance, once attempting to help an old woman who begged me to find her small dog, then answering a babbling man who continued to ask me [italics] Why did they do this? Why did they do this? [italics] over and over, following me down a street and weaving between empty stalled cars, what answer I provided I am unsure, but he seemed content with the answer and eventually abandoned me, and eventually I found myself growing tired, my arms and legs seemed to hang heavy, pulling me down towards the ground, but I had no notion of where I was among the streets twisting like the roots of trees, and I looked for a place to rest my head, somewhere with a couch or bench or, if I was truly blessed, a bed, because I knew I would not be able to walk much farther without collapsing into the water, and I passed by ruined store after ruined store, most without lights and with dark shapes shuffling within, likely customers who chose not to venture outside after the Light flooded the air, which is what I myself would have done if I had been lucky enough to be inside a building as opposed to a bus, but I was afraid to enter the buildings for fear of being trapped inside with those dark shapes, as if suddenly the whole of the human race had become dangerous and cruel, and after passing by several doorways into which I poked my head and peered around with squinted eyes, I eventually settled on what appeared to be a small coffee shop on the corner of a street that seemed marginally less flooded than the rest, and I was greeted by two men sitting on chairs near the entrance and a woman lying on a couch just above the water line with her knees pulled up nearly to her chest and her eyes closed as if she were dead, but I assumed she was sleeping as the men would have likely moved her from the couch and taken her place instead, but neither of them said a word to me, their eyes speaking volumes, sullen and sunken and held open by sheer force of will against their nodding exhaustion, perhaps unwilling to close them for fear of being attacked in sleep or of missing whatever was to come next, as if they would be able to understand everything if only they would stay awake and observant, but of course there was nothing for us to understand because the Light was beyond our grasp, as if a mirror had shattered into thousands of silvery slivers and we were attempting to reconstruct it piece by piece but all we were able to see as we held the broken shards in our hands were our own faces, and so I said nothing to them either in the hope that my silence would somehow relate with theirs, our still and silent throats would be enough, and I looked around for some other place to lay my head, as the couch was taken by the sleeping woman and the floor was beneath the increasingly cold water, seeing many round tables peaking out above the water, upended coffee cups floating like ceramic bubbles, a series of taller wooden chairs that had toppled over, and the long cashier bar that was covered with a sheet of glass and held rising towers of cups next silver napkin dispensers and a rack of flavored teas which would all need to be shoved into the water if I were to sleep there, so I wadded past the two men, who continued to watch the door while fighting off sleep, and I lifted myself out of the water and up onto the bar where I pushed the cups and tea rack and napkins into the water as quietly as possible, and they were swallowed without complaint, then I laid my head down and did my best to ignore the hard surface of the glass while trying to enjoy the feeling of my legs being free from the water and able to dry off, and I closed my eyes

Summer + [The Man Who Lied]

2011-05-29T18:19:00.000-04:00

It's SUMMER! School is out, and I'm enjoying the free time already. I still have some things I need to do, schoolwise, this week, but essentially I'm all done. I get to spend all my time with Maria now (no more driving back and forth on the weekends), and I can stay up late and sleep in. It's perfect. I'm trying to get back to writing now, because there just isn't enough time to write during school (or enough motivation). When I get back home after work, I'm just exhausted and want to turn my brain off. That's not the ideal time for writing, and I just couldn't scrounge up the inner motivation to fight through it and get a habit going. So, now that I'm refreshed by the summer air, I can start forcing myself to write every day. It is a lot easier when there's nothing else to do. Also, Maria started her new blog (http://andsoshedrew.blogspot.com/) where she posts a new sketch each week day, and I was just a teeny bit jealous that I wasn't doing something similar. I'll be attempting to update here with new sections of my third novel each day. Let's see how disciplined I can be.

In other news, there are only 47 more days until the wedding! We have almost everything taken care of (although the suits are still in limbo until someone *cough* Dan *cough* gets me his suit size), and the Wedding Shower is over and done with. Nothing left to do but the rehearsal and the real thing! Oh yeah, and paying for everything. We are really looking forward to that. The money we were going to save seems to be slipping away. Now we have moved onto apartment/house hunting. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any good apartments in Midland (I'd like to upgrade my place a bit). We'll see what we come across. We are also crossing our fingers so that Maria can find a job. She's been passing out resumes and writing e-mails, so maybe she'll get lucky. If not, we'll be living with my mom...

...not gonna happen.

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Here's a song I'm loving right now

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[The Man Who Lied]

Most of the lights were out in the city. We used to guess what the other was thinking. I had to drive slow in the water and at one point I thought we might have to get out of the car and swim. We loved to stay up all night and then sleep all day on Sunday. She sat in the passenger seat and gazed out the window as if the landscape was on fire. Our favorite moments were when one of us couldn't think of anything to say. We were the witnesses to a great catastrophe, flooded cars, frozen traffic jams, burnt out street lights. I've never forgot the way her hair curled around her ears and brushed the top of her shoulders on the day we met. People stood in doorways and watched from windows as we drifted down streets and seemed to float down streams. She always reminds me to put my glasses on while reading instead of squinting and furrowing my brows. I wasn't sure what we were looking for, because I was not sure what had happened, but I knew my wife had witnessed something beyond words. She used to fold her hands politely in her lap when someone was talking to her, but never when listening to me.

I watched her from the corner of my eye as she nearly leaned out the open passenger side window, wondering if she might suddenly climb through it and splash into the street. I always laugh when she laughs, even if I'm unsure as to why. [italics] What happened? [italics] I asked her when we reached the park and the center of the city, because if we were to drive further, we would start leaving the city behind. She keeps a hand carved wooden box that her father made on the mantle in our living room and places every note I've ever written her within it. [italics] The Light [italics] she repeated, and I wondered if I would ever understand what this Light was. My best friend from school once told me he wanted to kiss her, before we started going together, and I wrestled him to the ground. The park was drained of water and the trees stretched up in attempts to blot the buildings from sight. He shoved me off and left me lying in the dirt with grass stained knees, and we didn't talk for two weeks.

I stopped the car and turned of the engine, which seemed to sputter as if flooded, and turned to my wife, because there was no where else to go. Everyday when we both returned from work, we would sit at the kitchen table and relate our days to each other from the moment we left to the moment we returned. She was so small the seatbelt seemed as if it didn't even touch her. We would sit in wicker chairs on the front porch in the summer and read for hours until we heard the rumblings of our empty stomachs. It was as if she were disappearing before my eyes, sinking backwards into the seat with each passing moment of silence. She didn't get her license until after we married and I would take her down back roads to let her practice. Her shoulders hunched forward and her head craned out of the window, while her hands were folded in her lap, and I listened to the wind shaking tree leaves and the sound of far off car alarms that had yet to drain their batteries, hoping she would suddenly spring back to life. When she started to drive, we rolled the windows down and shouted as she sped down a dirt road before losing control and sending us into a ditch.

Her face remained turned away from me and the sun caught in her side mirror, reflecting in my face so that it was hard to see her without squinting slightly. For our tenth wedding anniversary we took a hot air balloon ride. The sunlight poured through the back window and shone in the mirror and I could feel its warmth smother my skin. We looked down from the basket and talked about how small everything was. I pressed the lids of my eyes together to fight against the light from the sun and focus on the silhouette of my wife. The roads crisscrossed like stitches across the landscape, pulling trees and countryside homes tightly together. The thick band of my wife's outline gave way to the glaring sun light and dissolved into a field of bright white. As we rose higher into the air, the familiar country roads and neighboring fences vanished. I blinked to shake the blur of the sun from my eyes, but it remained even as I turned my head away from the whitewashed image of my wife. She was embarrassed to undress in front of me because of a strawberry red birthmark along her inner left thigh that stretches down to her knee. I felt the false leather of the steering wheel in my hands, I knew it was there, but I could not see it. She reminds me to take my ulcer pills every night before I pull her body close to mine and close my eyes. Releasing the wheel, I reached instinctively for the faded white space where my wife had been as if stopping short at a red light. We lost a welsh corgi to an open back door and a rainstorm before we had our first child. There was nothing for my hand to touch. We never had another dog. I simply felt boiling air. Her favorite song is [come up with a song] by [whoever sings the song] because I played it for her on the record player in her father's study. And then I felt myself rise upwards, my chest straining against the seatbelt. I hear her sing it quietly when she doesn't know I'm watching as she works in the garden. My hand grazed the folds of her skirt as we floated in the air and I tried to grab at it before she went out the window.At our wedding I stepped on her toes all night because I didn't know how to dance, but she never said a word about it.

I've Never Been This Excited For Thanksgiving Before

2011-05-26T20:01:00.000-04:00

This Song Makes Me Feel Better

2011-05-03T21:24:00.000-04:00

I'm supposed to be grading papers right now. I'm always supposed to be grading papers. That's what I'm paid for, right? Well, apparently my salary could get cut next year, so much so that I will be making less than I did my first year of teaching. I guess soon, I won't be payed to grade papers. Or something like that. All I know is that it's a frightening time to be a teacher. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that things start looking up.

Anyway, I've been listening to the new Fleet Foxes album, and this song makes me feel better. Enjoy.

A Very Short Fragment From [The Man Who Drowned]

2011-01-13T22:25:00.000-05:00

Apparently when I mention the wedding, I get a lot more visitors. I'm tempted to include constant wedding updates, but really we haven't figured anything new out just yet so I've got nothing for you. Here's a very short section from the novel. I didn't realize how short it was until I pasted it here and looked at it. I'm going to have to add to this one. Off to bed. I'm actually going to be asleep before 11. That's an accomplishment.

-----

[The Man Who Drowned]

The shadows swelled up from the pavement and took form. The sky was dark and no light shone down upon us. The cement towers were filled with empty glass eyes watching down as the dark figures surrounded me. My head was no longer burning and I felt as if my limbs had grown lighter. I backed away from the shadows and my hands met with chilled water. I found myself again on the shore of the lake. The crowds had thinned and moved farther into the city, but still there were hollowed faces all around me. They circled and I submerged myself further in the black water until my chest was wet. [italics] You said he would help us [italics] called one of the shadows. Others joined in agreement. They mumbled words I could not hear and splashed in the deepening water. I had promised them relief from their suffering, and the damned do not take kindly to broken promises. As their circle tightened, I remembered standing among them and commanding such attention. They had heeded my every word. I was their master for but a moment as the man with the swirling voice performed miracles. He held his hands against the woman's head and she was cured. He unleashed his Light upon me and I was overcome. And then the blessed man had fled as I collapsed to the ground and the darkening sky fell down around me.
I inhaled deeply, tasting the faint dirt upon my tongue that had been brushed into the air by the rush of water when the lake had formed. Then I plunged beneath the murky water as the shadows bolted for me.

Wedding Info + [The Woman Who Witnessed Death Upon Death]

2011-01-12T21:51:00.000-05:00

I'm going to go to bed by 10:30. That is my goal. It is entirely possible, but highly unlikely. There are too many things for the day (something I've said a near infinite times in my life). I need to write one page before I go to sleep. I'll get on that in just a minute. Wedding things are coming together. They were together for a bit there, but then Woldumar Nature Center totally booked someone else on the date that they were supposed to be holding for us (or at least contacting us about if someone else was asking about it). So that threw the reception out the window. Maria's in full on crisis mode and coming up with wonderful solutions. We are sticking with the MSU Alumni Chapel for the wedding itself, and then it looks like there's a possibility of an outdoor reception in one of MSU's garden areas or at one of the barns in the area. Essentially I want the reception to look like Bilbo Baggins' Eleventy First Birthday Party. A lofty goal, but entirely possible. I'll keep you updated.

-----

[The Woman Who Witnessed Death Upon Death]
   The crowd gave a wide berth and I was able to catch my breath in the chair while the man who had brought the boy in sat on his knees in next to the child with his hands held out as if reaching for the boy who seemed to be just out of reach, yet the man was certainly close enough to touch the boy's pale skin if he wanted.
   The boy's eyes had rolled back into his head and then fluttered open and closed rapidly before slowing down and finally closing completely, leaving the impression that he was sleeping or even dead, but I was sure that his body was shutting down on him, so I glanced around the room for a gurney and shouted to the man with the swirling voice [italics] lift him up carefully [italics], because they boy had ceased sezuring and we needed to get connected to an EEG and some oxygen, while I pushed through the growing crowd to the gurney I had seen in the corner that had been stripped of its sheets, and pushed it back over to the boy.
   Once he was secure on the bed, I leaned over him to check his breathing, which was quite shallow and not at all what I wanted it to be, before I thanked the man with the swirling voice and started to wheel the boy for a second time down a hallway, but the man shouted [italics] I'm coming with you [italics] and started to run behind me, which is not at all allowed and violates a few hospital rules, but the entire hospital was still in a state of collective panic and no one was slowing down to inform him that he had to remain in the waiting room with the rest of the gawking onlookers, so we rushed through the hallway with the wallpaper covered in [was it trains or airplanes?] to the nearest EEG with one nurse following.
   I tried to keep my eyes forward, but I found myself glancing down at the boy as if I would suddenly find him awake and healthy, but instead his head rolled slightly back and forth as the gurney shook on its loose wheels and his left leg seemed turned impossibly inward, all the while his face remained blank and his eyelids closed, and the man stayed right next to the cart, his hand on the side railing as if he were helping to guide me along when really he had no idea where we were headed, and the nurse tried to keep up with us because she had been ushering around blind and injured patients all day without so much as a cup of coffee or five minute nap, something that I had managed to accomplish while experiencing some sort of mental breakdown over the fact that I was completely certain me and everyone else in the hospital had died and been revived during the Light.
   Once in our room, the nurse busied herself with connecting the boy to the EEG and sliding the small plastic oxygen tube over his head and into his nose, while I checked for any irregularities in brain waves, something I'm not quite adept at, but with the size of this boys seizures, I assumed I would notice if something was wrong, and the man just stood over the child and watched him closely as if he could tell more from the slow rise and fall of the boy's chest than I was able to, when suddenly the EEG pattern swerved like a drunk driver and the boy began to moan a low hollow sound that seemed to shake the entire bed.
   He seemed to curl in on himself and his hands became claws scratching at the air while trembling back and forth, and his eyes again rolled up into his head while his legs kicked, and the man with the swirling voice hung his head as if he could no longer watch, and I wondered what he might be thinking, having accompanied this boy for what I assumed was two days, while I struggled to think of my next move and the nurse handed me another syringe, but I didn't know if I should inject him again, seeing as how he was so young and I was quite inexperienced with seizures, especially in children, so I held the needle in my hand and simply watched the boy twist and turn as if being burned alive.