The Eternal Question

Why?

Why?

That’s the eternal question.  It comes in various forms, such as: “Why did this have to happen?” “Why is this happening to me?” “Why can’t I succeed in life?”  “Why can’t I have my dreams?” “Wy can’t I be with him/her?” “Why do we exist?” “Why am I here?” “Why did this person do that to me/themselves?” “Why am I alive?”  “Why?” “Why?” “Why?“

We ask it again and again and again, because there’s no satisfactory answer.  The answer, if one is even given, is never satisfactory, and usually leads only to more questions.

So we ask again, and we keep asking, and those of us with strong faith can always tell ourselves that it is part of the plan of our chosen diety, and take varying degrees in consolation in that.  The more questioning among us will ask, “Why is that part of God’s/Goddess’s/Satan’s/The Flying Spaghetti Monster’s plan?” And for that, there’s no real answer, at least none that any of the dieties I’ve known have ever been willing to share.  To me, that’s a very hollow consolation, even with my faith (such as it is).

I don’t know why.  I rarely ever do.  I wish I did, at least more often.

Why?

Sometimes there is no “why.”  Sometimes, all that is is what is.

Why?

I don’t know.  I wish I did.

I wish I had a real answer.

Happiness Is Good Spaghetti

I’ve spent today fighting with MS Word 2007, cleaning, spending time with my daughter, being frustrated by her mother, and basically the usual stuff.

But last night, I cooked.

I like to cook, I really do. I don’t do it often because I don’t like to cook in a dirty kitchen, and I don’t like cleaning up behind other people (unless, of course, I love them and we share cleaning duties. That’s entirely different). But last night, I really wanted to cook, really wanted to make spaghetti and meatballs (yeah, I know, I get weird cravings sometimes), so I spent over three hours cleaning up the kitchen enough that I could feel comfortable cooking in it.

And I made my spaghetti and meatballs.

And they were good. The sauce wasn’t anything special, just tomato sauce with garlic salt, parsley flakes, basil, and something else I can’t remember right now, heated on the stovetop. The meatballs were roughly a pound of ground beef, an egg, half a packet of Lipton Onion Soup Mix, soy sauce, and a little tomato sauce. The spaghetti was just plain, store-bought spaghetti.

It’s not a major recipe. Not even hard to make. Just good and filling and I was glad I did it. It felt good to cook; even the fact that the kitchen was a bit messy again today so my hours of work were about half undone didn’t diminish my enjoyment of that moment.

On an episode of CSI (which I have been watching a lot lately, and not just because I think Marg Helgenberger is hot), Gil Grissom tells Nick Stokes that “the people that are great at what they do, do it for their own approval, not the approval of others.”

Not ever having been much of one for making myself happy, I understand that a little more now, having eaten some damn good spaghetti. (”My name is Pandem, and I approved this spaghetti.”)

I’m going to work on making myself happy and garnering my own approval more often.

It’s a long road. . .

The Calm

I don’t have anything to write about, really.  Just wanted to ramble.

I feel like myself today. . .like I’ve been out of myself for a while and am just now really coming back.

The exploding universe dream. . .I’m not so stressed about it now.

I feel peaceful right now. . .today. . .I feel peaceful.

I don’t expect it to last long, but for now, I feel peaceful and I’m enjoying it.

The Price Of Sunrise

I watched a universe explode
a year ago; this was the night
that the vision of its demise
finally reached the earth.  The light
was not alone; it brought with it
shockwaves and debris and on that night
such things did I see.

On the shores of Lake Chicot I sat,
on the sloping Arkansas land that led
down to the piers.  I sat alone,
as isolated in night as I am
in the days; mixed with hundreds of others
but still quite cold, quite lonely.

Above us, the dark sky
died in a sudden brilliant burst,
a flowering explosion of the destruction of worlds,
opening, unfurling in the night: the hidden pleasures
and secret treasures of a demolishing goddess.
I spent moments watching it happen,
watching planets and possibilities die,
watching space itself ripple with the force of it all
like swells ripple and roll the ocean,
outward, ever outward, leaving behind
new nebulae, dust-made ghosts
of distant dreams destroyed.
I sought cover behind an embankment.

Beneath me the earth shuddered,
rocked with the throes of far-off lands,
punctuated by impacts of meteorites;
a rain of ashes from cremated creations.
What dangerous decisions, what cruel caprice
had brought about such devastation?
I knew not and could only wonder.

From my hiding place, I peeked
and saw the flaming tails fall to earth,
witnessed the swells still approaching
and gazed into the night that had turned to day;
a midnight sunrise, so long awaited by me
and finally seen, made possible only
through incredible destruction. . .
I wept at the realization.

I woke at the realization,
escaping from that bright dream into
a dark bedroom in a darker world,
a darkest thought my sole companion:
The sunrise comes. . .
but what universe dies?

February 18, 2008
©PCB 2008

My Hero This Week

Surprise, surprise, my hero this week is actually a real person.

My hero this week. . .is my friend Danielle.

I’ll freely admit that she can be overbearing and a bit bloody-minded at times. On the bright side, though, she also frustrates the piss out of me sometimes. But you know, that’s what friends are for.

Not to toot my own horn here, but I’m pretty intelligent. Very intelligent. It’s not boasting if it’s true. And she is one of the few people I’ve known that I known without doubt that she is every bit as intelligent as I am, and sometimes I think she is more intelligent, but I don’t think I’ll be telling her that. Besides, sometimes I think I’m more intelligent, so it all balances, I think.

She’s creative, much more so than I am. She makes jewelry, writes, draws, paints, branched out into making stuffed animals. . .I may have a lot of creative urges, but she’s definitely better on the follow-through than I am. It’s not a competitive thing at all, but her creating makes me want to create; without saying a word, without doing anything other than being herself, she inspires, encourages, and drives me to make more things. How many people can I really say the same about? Not many, if any, and not anyone currently in my life other than her.

She’s very passionate; when she she believes, she believes wholeheartedly and fully. She’s passionate about her love, her life, her pets, her creativity. . .sometimes I wonder if she takes things too seriously. But I like passion in all its forms, and she has it in spades plus.

She’s strong; far stronger, I think, than she believes she is. But I’ve looked into her and I know for myself: she has an astounding reserve of inner strength. When I think of all that she has already survived in this life, and survived well. . .I know that if I’d been through what she’s been through, I would probably have snapped by now. But she hasn’t, and to be honest, her strength helps keep me from losing it sometimes. People tell me that I’m strong, and I think I am, but even the strong people need people to lean on from time to time, and she is first on that list for me.

Her spirit shines, and I can’t explain it any better than that. Either you know what I’m talking about or you don’t.

She shines. She glows, every time I’ve ever seen her. She’s radiant, and I don’t even think she knows it.

We argue often, arguments I think are exacerbated by not being in physical proximity to each other to read body language and just by both of us being such bloody-minded people. But, I think for both of us, as much as the arguments can get bloody, there’s deep deep friendship at the bottom of all of our conversations, one that, unintentionally and unexpectedly, became a very vital part of both of us. Yes, our friendship has ended numerous times before, yet we always find our way back to each other. That means something, I think, but I try not to think about what it might mean and just be glad that it’s there.

I’m glad Danielle’s there. I admire, respect, and care greatly for her, and I know my life would be a much darker and less enjoyable place without her.

She’s my best friend.

She’s my hero.

StormKeeper

My Hero

My hero for this week. . .

SPIDER JERUSALEM!

Outcast and outlaw journalist Spider Jerusalem is the creation of master graphic novelists Warren Ellis and Darick Roberston, and star of their excellent futuristic series Transmetropolitan.  After five years away from The City (it’s never referred to by any other name), Spider is forced to return by a book contract he signed before leaving, and he still owes two more books.  Coming back without a job, he returns to the newspaper that he last worked for, The Word, and begins writing the columns that will become his book. . .and, ultimately, change his world permanently.

It’s really hard to  talk about Transmetropolitan and not give away any of the plot twists and surprises that occur.  So, instead, I’ll talk about Spider.

Spider is dedicated to telling the truth, bluntly and sometimes painfully.  As we all know, honest people are simultaneously loved and reviled by society at large, and of course, this is what happens to Spider.  He is loved, makes numerous powerful enemies, battles drug addiction, and eventually. . .well, can’t say that either.  He acquires two assistants along the way;  the lovely and hot (and tall. . .Lord knows I love me some tall women) Channon Yarrow, and the short, irascible, cranky Yelena Rossini.  All of his adventures eventually lead to one thing, the one thing that only two journalists in current American History have done:  he has to bring down a sitting President, one so corrupt and sick and evil that he’ll kill anybody to keep his office. . .including Spider.

How does it end?  Read the books.

In the meanwhile, since he’s my hero this week, that means. . .quotes!

And now, the wit, wisdom, and venomous truth of Spider Jerusalem:

“I hate you all.”

“There’s one hole in every revolution, large or small.  And it’s one word long:   people.  No matter how big the idea they all stand under, people are small and weak and cheap and frightened.  It’s people that kill every revolution.”

“Journalism is just a gun.  It’s only got one bullet in it, but if you aim right, that’s all you need.  Aim it right, and you can blow a kneecap off the world. . .”

“You must like it when people in authority they never earned lie to you.”

(while dressed as Jesus, on his way to a convention of new religions) “Stop your fucking taxi for the son of God, dickweed. . .”

“I hate you all.”

(while tearing apart said religious convention) “Fucking vampires sucking the will from people whose only goddamn crimes. . .were to be frightened and tired! And you don’t help them! You don’t listen to them!  They get no truth from you!  All you do is scare them with stories of something that doesn’t exist!”

“I told you I wasn’t in the mood.  Now I’m going to castrate you and suffocate you on your own cock and balls, you poisonous little thug.  Because I have had more than enough of your squalid, ignorant, weasel kind, and you will breed no more. . .”

“Now, you smile at the nice politicians, but try not to touch them too much.  They’re often contagious.”

“My last shit was epic.  I had to kill it with a shovel, you know.”

“I hate you all.”

“Every single day I’ve been back in this endless shithole has been like being hit over the head repeatedly with a club hammer.  Every single day.”

“You have no idea how much I hate it here.”

“No one ever sold newspapers by telling you the truth: life just ain’t that bad.”

“There is an ugly suspicion that I am to blame for the one thousand, two hundred and thirty-three cases of involuntary bowel movement recorded at Century Square on Christmas Eve.  Please.  To achieve such a thing would require the use of a “bowel disruptor.”  This device is known to illegal. [. . .] It would require a “bowel disruptor” and application to the task that would border on the psychotic.  I mean.  Shooting over a thousand people in the back passage within an hour?  Only someone who really fucking hated you would do that.”

“I’m not changing a fucking thing.  I’m a writer.  A journalist.  I can’t change shit.  What I do is give you the tools to understand the world so that you can change things.  And I’m stuck here, only hoping that you do.”

“I hate you all.”

That’s Spider Jerusalem in a nutshell.  Wielding nothing but a typewriter and a bowel disruptor, he wreaks journalistic havoc.  He has the testicular fortitude that today’s journalists can only dream about, and I wish Transmetropolitan was taught in journalism schools.  (At Northwestern University, one professor actually does it in his classes, as he says in his introduction to one of the collected editions.)

Spider Jerusalem:  my hero this week (and many more to come, what with his dedication to the truth and all).

Ghostlights

I was back in Greenville, in a bookstore called, creatively enough, The Bookstore.  That was my first job, back in the day, stocking and working the register and such.  Anyway, I was there, just looking around, and it hadn’t changed much at all since the last time I saw it, which was only a few months before it closed down.  Nathan Goldstein, the owner, was there, despite being dead for a few years now, and was very quiet.  He didn’t say much to me as I walked through the aisles.  I left the store without buying anything and walked around downtown Greenville for a while, just enjoying the warm weather.

When I went back to the store, I came in through the back door, and was surprised to discover that new owners had taken over and made major changes to the shop.  For one thing, there weren’t very many books anymore.  There were tons of knick-knacks, decorations, action figures, etc, but books?  Not so much.  It was apparently their grand opening, and they had tables set up with food and beverages.  I don’t remember the new owners, only that it was two women and some guy, but they were nice and friendly and invited me to join in the celebration.  I did, of course, being unable to resist the lure of free food.  I remember there was some problem, though; they’d run out of bread and I wanted a brisket sandwich.  One of the people there suggested used this odd, circular bacon for bread. . .it was weird.  I barely remember it and can’t describe it much better than I just did, so I’m going to leave that and move on.

This is where things started going creepy.

There was a woman there that I knew, who seemed to be a mix of my friends Eve and Teresa, who invited several people there back to her house, myself included.  Of course, I went, and lo and behold, her house turned out to be a dead ringer for my grandmother’s house.  It was dark when we got there, and she didn’t seem to have very many lights in the house - just barely enough to see by.  She pulled me aside into a room by ourselves, and gave me a strange deck of tarot cards - the fronts were normal, but the backs had a picture of an emaciated corpse, slumping beneath a window, looking comically and fearfully upwards at the window, through which shone a somehow-imperious and fearful moon.  The eyes of the corpse would have been more comical - they were done in a very googly-eyed style - save for the fact that said eyes were glowing red.  I don’t mean that they were painted on the cards that way; I mean that they were actually casting a faint red glow.  As Eve/Teresa reminded me that I needed to bond the cards to myself before I tried to use them, I looked up to see this picture on the wall:

I know it’s a Pink Floyd album cover, though I don’t remember the name of the album.  The eyes of the poster were glowing red as well.

I put the cards in my pocket and went with Eve/Teresa into the kitchen, which was, of course, dark.  Looking out of the kitchen door, I sa a light, seemingly hovering in the air about four feet off of the ground.  I watched it for a few minutes, trying to figure out where it had come from, what it could possibly be (”swamp gas” was my best guess, despite the lack of a nearby swamp), and then Eve/Teresa came over to see what I was staring at. . .

And that’s where things went to shit.

Eve/Teresa completely lost it.  She started screaming, yelling about “the ghostlights”  and running around the house.  The light I had been watching reacted by zooming away at a high rate of speed. . .and then the other lights showed up, dozens of them, flying around the house at high speed, occasionally stopping near a window before speeding off again.  I was standing at the kitcken window when one suddenly veered from its domestic orbit and came towards the window; another man and I barely got out of the way in time before the glass and wooden inner frames of the window bsmashed apart and blew into the house, leaving the light trapped inside the screen.  The screen had bulged out into a blunt conical shape, and at its blunt it, looking at us, the light dimmed and took the shape of a face.  There wasn’t enough detail to even tell if it was male or female, only that it was a human face.

And it was looking at us.

Eve/Teresa had fled the room, leaving just me and the other guy with the face in the deformed screen. I reached out to it, to touch it; my hand stopped just before it reached the screen.  I opened my mouth to say something and found that I couldn’t. I couldn’t even move.  The face was trying to speak but I couldn’t understand it, and I was a bit busy with suddenly finding myself immobile and mute.

I don’t know when I realized that it was just a dream, but I certainly knew it by that point, and began trying to wake myself up.  It is isn’t usually difficult, but this time, the ghostlight was trying to stop me, and speaking to me in a weird voice in my head, though incomprehensibly.  It was like listening to a recording of someone talking that has been greatly reduced in speed; that’s the best way that I can describe it.   It didn’t want me to go, and I couldn’t speak on my own, and I was fighting it so hard. . .My eyes, my real eyes, were blinking, fighting to open; I went from seeing my bedroom to seeing the face in the screen several times.  I tried thrashing my real body, since the dream body wouldn’t move, and eventually made it, eventually broke free and woke up in my room.  Breathing hard, I got out of bed and stood up, my arms by my side, hands still curled into fists. . .suddenly, I couldn’t move.

And there was a ghostlight in the room.

I heard this one just fine; it told me that I wasn’t getting free and I would stay there until its purpose was achieved.  I’m not terribly averse to talking to the dead, though there aren’t many of them that I really want to talk to right now; however, holding me against my will is exactly the wrong way to get me to listen to whatever you have to say, be you alive or dead.  I struggled against her - yes, this one was definitely female, from her voice - while she kept telling me to listen, to hear her, and I told her that she would not hold me as I again struggled to wake up.  The light moved closer to me, and I struggled harder and harder, not wanting her to touch me, not knowing what she intended by the contact and not wanting to find out.  Just before she could touch me, I did finally wake up, into real reality this time, and the dream was over.

It took me a little while to go back to sleep, but, thankfully, when I did, I didn’t go back into that dream.  I’m kind of sad about that. . .if the lights hadn’t been so pushy, I would have stuck around to see what they had to say.

Maybe next time. . .

Crooked Little Vein

So, I’ve been reading a book over the past few days. . .very slowly, which is unlike me, but I’ve only been reading it when smoking or in the bathroom or whenever I can steal a few minutes between all the other stuff I keep doing.  Which is fine, because I’ve read it before.

Anyway, the book is called Crooked Little Vein, by Warren Ellis.  It’s his first novel.  Warren Ellis is primarily a comic book writer, and has written some of my favourites, such as Transmetropolitan and Fell. I like Crooked Little Vein. It is, without a doubt, the most fucked-up book I’ve ever read, and I love it for that.  It’s well-written, funny, and surprising at each turn, of course; it’s the situations that the main characters find themselves in, and the people that they meet, that are truly fucked up.

Mike is a private detective who is actually good at his job.  Unfortunately, he’s also a “shit magnet,” which means that whenever there is weirdness around, it finds him and makes his life hell.   Which explains how he is picked by the White House to find the Secret Constitution, a document written by the Founding Fathers of this country and intended only for those in power to read, that allegedly has mystical powers and is a roadmap for fixing the country if it were to become broken.  The book has been lost for decades, and now the White House wants it back, so they send Mike.  Along the way. . .well, I’m not going to tell you. . .it would ruin the surprise.  But it’s fascinating and fucked up.

That’s all I got. . .just wanted to write something.

My Hero

My hero this week?

MEGO Spider-Man, star of Toyfare magazine’s monthly feature, Twisted Toyfare Theatre!

From the Wikipedia entry:  Spider-Man (referred to as “Mego Spidey” by fans and Toyfare staffers) often acts as the central character, but he remains aloof of the troubles of others, usually wanting nothing to do with whatever craziness is affecting everyone else (in stark contrast to the real character’s motto of “with great power comes great responsibility”).

Mego Spidey just doesn’t care about much at all.  He truly doesn’t give a fuck and just wants to be left alone.  that never happens, of course, but he handles everythign with considerable grace, incredible aplomb, and overwhelming apathy.  I can only pray that I will one day be able to handle life in such a manner.

Anyway, since he’s my hero this week, I’m going to put up some of my favorite quotes from Mego Spider-Man, and here they are:

(on seeing a crucified Wolverine) “You know, he kinda deserved it.  I saw Van Helsing.”

“I always hoped I’d be Lindsay Lohan’d to death.”

“Ahh. . .the two happiest words in the English language:  ‘open bar.’”

(watching Sex In The City on HBO) “When did the Golden Girls start cursing so much?”

“Based on this first panel alone, I already hate this month’s strip.”

“I don’t know where this strip is going, but I already hate it.”

“Time for me to leave this issue’s story before I see something else I can’t unsee.”

“I’m just going to sit here and watch TV.  Ahhhhhhh, my ass-indent is still warm.”

“That’s one way to salvage this trip. . .nudity.”

“Sixty-five bucks for parking?  We might be testing those tire spikes later.”

“My childhood was hell.  I’m surprised I’m not gay.”

“You smell like Jersey.”

“Get your pasty bald ass off my roof!”

Yeah, this was a lot funnier in my head. . .but at least it’s not depressing, right?

Nihilistically Awake

I’m awake, for some reason.  I don’t know why, only that after a long period without sleep, I slept for four hours and then snapped awake.  My best guess is that someone somewhere that about me really hard - maybe dreamed about me - and woke me.  Which reminds me, I need to work on my shielding so that things like that don’t happen as often.

A lot goes through my mind when I’m awake and sitting in the dark.  Where am I going?  What am I doing?  What do I do now?

What do I do now?

I don’t know.

Sometimes, I ask myself this question:  How strong am I?

And I answer myself:  I’m as strong as I need to be.

That’s not a brave answer.  It isn’t courageous, or determined, or anything other than the answer of someone absolutely resigned to the fact that they will always survive whatever life throws at them, whether they want to or not, whether they have the slightest clue of how to progress from this point or not.

God, this blog is depressing.  I’m going to start putting in dirty jokes or something.