A Commemoration

There are a handful of people that I will likely never forget.

Paul Long who showed me through the rigors of 5 paragraph essays that I could read a book, comprehend it, and possibly - oh my god - even enjoy it. It was solely because of this person that I pursued literature instead of science in college.

Bruce Gilman who have me the earliest confidences in my own writing ability, who drew out the darkness of my heart, allowed me to display it, and called it acceptable. Even beautiful. It was because of his complete openness with himself that I found a muse at all.

Peter Balderstone who taught me how to have a voice and use it, how to stand in a room and present a presence, how to fill a space that only felt too big. Were it not for his urging and guidance, I never would have found the lower, deeper resonations of my voice and I never would have spoken above the din of my own utterances.

Jon Han who gave me the chance that no other employer should have given a completely unknown face. It is because of his undivided trust and his strict discipline that I have excelled in the industry I did not think I could enter and could now never live without.

I am sure as the years go on, there will be more. More individuals who will pass through the landscape of my life, leaving a mark or a scar or some remnant of their presence that I will always find a way to return to. As they appear, I will attempt to gather them together, from time to time, setting up alters and lighting a bit of incense in their memory and wake.

Until then, these are the candles that are burning in the past. Shedding little strips of light along the road to where I am now.

The work of a year

Writing, it seems, should be a fairly straight forward and simple affair. One has ideas, one speaks and writes in a given language, one transfers said ideas into said language - and there you are.

And yet, whatever it is that connects point A to point B, whatever it is that happens in the between is a complicated, complex, terrifying, invigorating affair.

The readable draft of my first novel is complete. I never thoughts I could have written so much. With year after year of half-conceived projects, unfinished bits and pieces, I had begun to believe that I was not in for the long run. That I could write one act plays and poetry. Song lyrics on very rare occasions. Characters and worlds, perhaps. But never an entire universe spinning together.

But, for what it's worth, it was written. And, it has been sent to others, out away from my heart and my mind and my protection. It is on its own in the big world- in a sense. In a way my writing never has been. Nothing so close to me.

It has been printed, hard-copy, on paper with ink and all that. It folds up nicely like a book. We can see it sitting there. Page after page after page of thoughts and expressions and ways of being that were difficult to explain, and yet natural in their way. A heart song in descriptions and dialog and explications.

And so, for now, I set you all free to do what you do. For the next eight or so years, anyway. I hope the world out there finds you well.
I wonder how you will have changed when I happen upon you again. Will you remember me? Will it be as if I never left? Does time travel the same between here and there, between myself and them?

Probably not. Eight years will go by in a flash. I will hardly have noticed.
I'm sure.

Avenue home

The train, gliding like a boat on water across the straight, smooth rails of the tracks. Past the window, trees and gullies and flat lands slip past at an easy pace. A mild pace. A realisation that the constant, steady motion makes thinking easy. More accessible.

I've been thinking, concept after concept and epiphany after epiphany, all night. Like the trees passing by on a forward stretching land. In the midst of the motion, a dream like a train station broke the flow. But, like the station from my window - it was a distant, far away dream. As if it had only partially arrived.

I have no recollection of the dream's meaning. Only that there was a blonde woman in it with bobbed hair. She might have been guiding something, but I'm not even remotely certain. The only benefit the dream served was that I slept at all. The way another station marks the progress of the train, if only in a far away and partial sort of way.

The way a lone standing tree marks the motion of the car in which I sit. Despite the fact that I might never know where in reality the tree actually is.

A rather odd Discovery

It has been a strange and exciting and good and frustrating trip. There have, as always, been high moments of enlightenment, of truly seeing the truth, of elation. And, right alongside, there have been low moments of desperation, of losing the line, of an absolute loss of hope.

I am beginning to learn how both of these pass over our heads and fade into an ever-continuing motion onward. As if, in looking back, our eyes see a sort of soft rolling landscape, a general plain of existence.

Perhaps, that is only true if one desires it to be so. Perhaps others see a pockmarked landscape, a field ravaged by years of war, of desolation, of attack. Others may see a mountain range of moments, an idyllic sun-crested majesty in which they once dwelt, peaceful and serene. To those, the present is a program being played on a television far off in the distance - say a back of someone else's room. The keys and sounds and images are not theirs. They are held by a stranger with either a mighty or an impotent hand, depending on levels of religious assimilation, and of what sort it was. But, for them, the past is their tale and the future is their only hope. A future that is permanently on the verge of becoming a reality.

But, I have caught sight of a different way. Another route to take. In it, the elations and the terrors of life are but moments, short and single threads in a woven tapestry of life. In amongst those rightly colored, garish moments are the muted dull hues of everything else. The soft greens, pale browns, and partial greys that barely phase us. The mundane, day to day - the everyday. The moments we continually allow to slip by.

And, it is in those that we are truly living. The bright splashes only remind us to change direction as a new wind blows the truth out and away from us. And so, we move only to find ourselves in and amongst more greens and browns and greys. Challenged with the monotony to hold our course against, not the tumultuous storm, but against the gradual sway of a current we are perpetually being pulled ashore by. An easy cathartic sort of complacency that eases our eyes from those stark moments and allows us to drift into a sleep.

I am beginning to believe that it is in those challenges, in those mediocre moments that we make the majority of our lives. And the starkness of our action at the moment of crisis will only be an overflowing of the efforts we exerted while the world was not paying any attention.