Tag Archives: Introspective

Boo!

Every now and then, I find myself right in the middle of a trend that I always vowed to avoid, and am amazed at myself. “How did that happen?”, I think to myself. Its not always a bad thing…typically pretty innocent, to be honest, and often, in the interest of being genuine about life, I just sort of roll with it.

Actually, “trend” isn’t really the right word choice there, because that brings to mind fashionable clothes and colloquialisms that could invoke images of me speaking vacuously and parading tight jeans down a catwalk (actually, if it brings that to mind, I’m sorry. So, so sorry). I guess “finding myself interested in something popular that didn’t interest me before” might be the better phrase, but it just seemed too wordy.

In any case, I’ve always avoided horror movies and slasher films. They’ve never interested me. And they still don’t. Its just that I typically avoided their close cousin, suspense, as well.  Ironically, I’ve always been heavily drawn to dystopian literature, specifically dystopian science fiction. I like the “this is what’s going to go wrong if we keep going the way we’re going” warnings that these stories present. I like a good action film as well as the next guy, as long as its not blowing things up for the sake of blowing things up. But suspense I’ve typically stayed away from, with only occasional exceptions in the past.

Lately, though, without realizing it, I realize that I’m into suspenseful tales. I first noticed it while watching  Dr. Who. Karen comments on random episodes that she doesn’t want to watch them because they look too scary. When I watch them without her, I realize that there is a suspenseful element to them…the sort of “jump because something just popped out of the closet” suspense. No violence, no bloodshed, just real suspense of the sort you would find in a good children’s tale.

Similarly (because Karen didn’t want to watch an episode), I’ve discovered the same thing about Haven. If you’re not familiar with Haven, its one of the more original concepts that the SyFy network has produced lately, and an unlikely addiction for me. The gorgeous location shots are enough to bring you back for each episode (the story is set in Maine, and filmed in Nova Scotia), and the plot is based on the works of Stephen King in very original ways. I’m not a Stephen King fan, and I’ve only ever seen one of his films that I can recall (and didn’t finish that one). Like I said, its just not my genre. I’ve never read any of King’s work, either. If I had, I would probably thrive on the hidden references that are sprinkled through the show that link back to King’s work and, as I understand it, thrill his fans. Still, Haven isn’t frightening or anything close to the horror genre. Its good science fiction, just dark and spooky enough to pique my interest from week to week.

I’m not sure why I’m drawn involuntarily to suspense and spookiness of late. It hasn’t shown up in my writing, at least not that I’m aware of, but I’ve noticed it popping up more and more in the things I enjoy watching since Karen has pointed this out to me. Its even popped up in recent reading choices. I’m interested to see where this goes in my story interests in the future.

Are you into scary? If so, I want to hear to hear about it…

Photo Attribution: The Intrepid Traveler

Looking Different

There are these occasional moments in life that are simply and absolutely too surreal to ever just forget. They are the moments that are inscribed onto the parchment of our memories in permanent ink in the instant that they happen. You’ll never lose them, at least not normally, and you know that. Some of them are events that were momentous or tragic, and unexpected…you know, the ones to which you can immediately answer the question, “where were you when (fill in the blank)?” Others are things that you knew were coming, and that you were anticipating, but that you had no clue how they would cause your entire life to go sideways. As much as you sort of knew that you would never be able to wrap your brain around the rest of your life afterward, you just didn’t know to what extent that you wouldn’t be able to do so, or how little, in that instant, you would care that you couldn’t.

When Karen called me at my day job nine months ago as she was leaving her doctor’s office and told me we were expecting, something happened that rarely happens with me. I was speechless. I was, in fact, stupid for several minutes, unable to do basic tasks like talk on the phone with any sort of proficiency. I remember driving home that afternoon, and thinking that life literally looked different to me. As strange as it sounds, the vehicles in traffic around me looked differently, the people around me as well. And here any skills I have as a writer fail me, because I couldn’t describe how they looked different, only that they did.

Last Wednesday, after a long and arduous labor, I was sitting at Karen’s side, able only to see her face among all of the accoutrements of the operating room as a C-section was performed to deliver our little girl.  I’ve jokingly told some friends since that night that, up until then, our daughter had sort of existed only in theory in my mind. That is, all the business and painstaking care of preparing for her arrival had busied our schedules, brought our friends rallying, and taxed our bank account, but, not only have I never had a child before, but neither have I spent any significant time around them in my life.  Not only did I not know what to expect, but I didn’t even a referent for what this could be like, outside of the stories of others.

The cry came out of the blue that night, piercing the room while yet being melodious, and I saw my tiny little girl for the first time. I’ve experienced my share of moments in which I felt the Divine reach into my daily life, and certainly that was one of them. I was exhausted, with no more than three hours of sleep out of the last twenty four, and had honestly become emotionally flattened until that moment. Then, all at once, all of those months spent talking to my Karen’s stomach paid off, because my daughter knew my voice! Due to some complications, I went with our daughter for her physical, and stayed with her for the nearly three hours of recovery until Karen could join us. In that period of time, she came to trust my voice, to calm when she heard my voice, to focus her wide and inquisitive eyes on her daddy, to orient immediately to the sound of my voice. Since then, when no one else can console her, I can. As overwhelmed and maddening and stressful as the last few days have been, as poorly as I have coped with the chaos that has descended on the household despite my best attempts to curtail it, the protective instinct that I have for my daughter is at times overwhelming. I have had, and continue to have, moments in which I’m irrevocably convinced of my own ineptitude, as well as the knowledge that I cannot possibly continue this for another day. Yet, I know her face, I can discern her cries, I let her grasp my  finger in her tiny hand, and I get to know her better daily.

For the rest of my life, I will be getting to know her. She isn’t just a theory anymore.

I don’t think I have to describe a faith metaphor about this…I think you can get there from here. I just know that while I knew my life would never be the same upon returning from the hospital as it had been when I left for it, I didn’t have any way of predicting that it would be this different. And, if I thought that everything looked different on the day I found out, that pales compared to the way things look today in a such an extreme as to be nonsensical.

I have a daughter. I’m a father. I’m not just married now, but I have a family of my own. There’s so much that goes with that, that I can’t even begin to unpack it yet. And I’m not sure that I ever will.

And, somehow, I’m beginning to be okay with that.

Intermission #1

In the last 24 hours, give or take, a lot has been going through my head. Bemusing at best, contradictory at worst, I’ve been looking for balance, that in-between place that covers the gap between what Karen calls “organic matter” and technology.

Working with people instead of gadgets, the latter of which is a hobby and semi-professional interest, and fascinated by the academic thoughts that this brings about.

Enjoying e-books, while missing paperbacks.

Astounded by new life, and how this whole process works, and comforting myself by buying new toys.

Wishing for missing dreams, and being disturbed when they return.

Sometimes you just need an intermission, you know?    
A free-verse groove to alleviate the risk of entering a routine…
Not poetry, but not quiet prose,
Just to get this out of my head, to try something different, and see what happens.

Motivation for Muck

I’ve been thinking lately about something that Karen enjoys pointing out to me about writing. She’s very passionate about quoting (loosely) Jeffery Overstreet in saying that there are two reasons to jump into the muck in the story that you’re writing. One is to roll around in it and get dirty. The other is to clean it up. You have to decide which is your reason as you’re writing your story.

I was forced to re-visit this idea in a discussion after I wasted two hours of my life suffering through the cinematic chaos-fighting-chaos tragedy that was this year’s movie, The Green Hornet, in which a classic radio superhero is reduced to stereotypical American idiocy who gets his kicks from driving around and blowing everything up for narcissistic purposes (even in the end, whatever good he does is to better himself). While I could talk about the obvious snapshot of our culture that can be seen in this conglomeration of images that someone mistakenly called a film, I won’t give it the time it doesn’t deserve, because the commentary is unintentional.

In short, there was nothing redemptive about the movie. The entire two hours was one long jump into the muck in which everyone rolled around and got dirty. Destruction for destruction’s sake, disregard for good or evil in search of only the self,  indiscriminate violence, 3rd grade humor. The darkness is glorified in this film, not portrayed for a reason.

I mention this movie not to review it, but to point out the opposite of what I hope to accomplish when I write…to sort of define by counter-example. Karen frequently points out that my writing is dark, and that she has a difficult time reading my fiction for partly that reason. She has difficulty finding a redemptive element, which is bothersome to me because that’s exactly what I want to make central in the writing. The darkness is there to show how amazing the light is when it takes over. We jump into the muck in order to show how much better it is to be clean than dirty, so to speak. That’s my goal in my fiction.

I also firmly believe Madeleine L’Engle when she said that the characters will tell the writer where they need to go, and that the writer’s job is to record the adventure. The protagonist in my current work-in-progress (the one for which I’m pushing so hard to make a self-imposed deadline of finishing Part I by mid-week) has experienced horrific trauma in her childhood. When I began imagining the story, and when this character appeared in my mind’s eye, it wasn’t like I had much choice to exercise in the matter. She is who she is at the time the novel takes place because of what happened to her in the past. Assuming that I can accurately record her journey, then there will be redemption of her situation as she explores relationships with others and her own sense of identity. Sometimes, though, its so difficult to write her flashbacks…because of the nature of the trauma…that I’m left struggling with exactly the problem I talked about above: I have to be so careful to not just get dirty when I jump into the muck, and so intentional to clean it out.

Because simply adding to the chaos, contributing to the noise, does no one any good, not even if all you’re aiming for is entertainment. As is so often the case, this choice is reflected in “real” life, as well. I’m in a professional situation currently that is really frustrating. In my mind, its too messy. My instinct is to withdraw from it, to pass it off as someone else’s problem, to compartmentalize my brain around it. I think, though, that if I were to choose to do that, that I would be rolling in the muck and just getting dirty. I’m not redeeming anything if that’s the choice I make. I’m not making anything better.

And, with a daughter preparing to join us any day now, I don’t want to leave any more of the world mired in muck than I absolutely have to. The more I try to take a hand in redeeming, the better a world she will inherit.

Photo Attribution: Sean MacEntee

The Walls Start Shakin’, Earth Was Quakin’

Something I’ve learned about Virginia since I moved here a few years ago is that everyone over-reacts to everything involving weather. I’ve joked a lot about  how a bit of winter weather causes life to grind to a halt here. Thursday, as a thunderstorm that was a bit heavier than usual rolled through the area as a likely result of the most recent hurricane, people were jumping and moving about quite nervously. Several emergency vehicles flew through a nearby intersection. Anything other than sunshine brings about its share of chaos here.

The reason I’m able to distance myself from these reactions is that I’ve lived through a lot of severe thunderstorms in my life, and I grew up seeing winter weather the likes of which Virginia may never have experienced. Nothing that happens here concerns me, nothing causes me to be overly worried or concerned. My experience tells me it will be okay.

Tuesday of this week, while returning some comments on some recent posts here, I noticed a sound above me, as though someone were running around upstairs in the building that I was in. I thought it odd, but didn’t give it a lot more consideration. Except that it didn’t go away. It became louder. A colleague looked up from her phone call across the room to ask me what I thought the sound was. At that point, the room began to shake.

I’ve  always done better at keeping very calm in real crisis situations than I do with minor things. For example, if someone gets injured and needs help, I’m very calm and composed, but if I drop my sunglasses, I start to hyperventilate. Tuesday was a calm and composed sort of crisis. I remember sitting still, looking around, and thinking, “was that an earthquake? Do we even get earthquakes in Virginia?”

When the building that I had been in was evacuated, I received a text from Karen, who was currently about 30 minutes away from where I was, asking, “Did you feel that?” That was the first that I became convinced that I had experienced an earthquake.

Now, West coast friends will tell me I’m a wimp, and that I need to deal. I suppose that, in the same way that winter weather doesn’t concern me because of my experience, earthquakes are too regular for them. When I was in grad school, an old girlfriend was doing an internship in Florida for the summer. I remember seeing that a hurricane was moving through her area, and calling her to see if she was okay. She laughed at me, and that anything under a Category 3 didn’t cause anyone to worry there. I thought of this when I read a tweet on Tuesday to the effect of, “Anything under a 6.0 doesn’t even get us out of bed” from someone on the West coast.

Prior to Tuesday, though, I had never experienced an earthquake. While I am glad to say I’ve had the experience in a way, and while I’m very aware that this was very minor as earthquakes go, the feeling of powerlessness I experienced for about 30 seconds that afternoon was something that I didn’t enjoy at all. I don’t exactly have a bucket list of natural disasters to experience, and I’m glad that this was the relatively minor event that it was.

Still, when a friend posted to the lyrics to the AC/DC song that I used to title this post on his Facebook feed, I couldn’t help  but smile. I lived through my first earthquake this week. If its all the same, I’d just as soon avoid a second.

Photo Attribution: dbking