purple moose parade. [trigger #276]

Nancy wasn’t allowed to use her earbuds when she rode in the car. Her parents both agreed, a minor and unfortunate miracle, that it was rude. Their decision was that she should be enjoying conversation with them instead of residing in her own little bubble of sound, cut off from the noises of the world. This would be a sensible rule if there was every any conversation to enjoy. Instead, the no earbuds rule simply subjected Nancy to the constant sound of her parents bickering.

Her family only had one car, and everyone commuted 40 minutes to and from the city every day for work and school. Thus was Nancy stuck with her arguing parents twice a day, for at least 80 minutes, unless of course traffic prolonged her agony. Today was a traffic day. She had already been listening to her parents bicker for 53 minutes and they weren’t even close to the front steps of school.

So far they had bickered about at least 20 different unique topics, including but not limited to dinner, laundry, dusting, the electric bill, two different sets of neighbors in two distinct arguments, summer vacation, and whether or not chickpeas and garbanzo beans were the same thing. None of these arguments had clear beginnings or ends, but vaguely bled one into the other as if powered by a perpetual disagreement machine.

Nancy was fed up, but she had no recourse. Her brain simply wasn’t adept at blocking things out, especially things that irritated her. What could she do outside of sticking her fingers in her ears and humming? This was a tactic she’d tried before but couldn’t sustain for any length of time. She could join in with the argument, but that normally only made things worse for her.

With the traffic at a standstill, she felt trapped, claustrophobic. The usual morning car ride was bad enough, but in her current situation she couldn’t even know when the end would come. How much longer would this go on? Had she died and gone to hell? Was this moment actually the eternity it felt like?

She tried to focus on her breathing, to relax and distract herself. It almost worked, but her mother’s barbed response to her father’s comment about the rain brought Nancy right back to her present circumstances.

Balling her fists and squeezing her eyes tightly shut Nancy wished has hard as she’d ever wished in her life that something, anything, would shut her parents up for just a moment. She wished and she wished, putting every ounce of mental energy she could muster into the foolish act.

Just when she thought her head might explode from how hard she was wishing Nancy heard her father mutter, “What the hell?”

It was right in the middle of one of her mother’s monologues to him about respect, and normally such an interruption by him in that moment would have resulted in an eruption of rage. However, this time her mother quickly trailed off.

Nancy opened her eyes, not sure why her parents had suddenly made her wish come true. She quickly found out. There before them, marching serenely down the median between directions of stopped traffic, was an impossible parade of purple moose. Each was purple, but in a variety of even less likely patterns and shadings: one striped like a zebra, another in argyle, yet another covered in purple gingham.

She couldn’t believe it. Had she really done this, just by wishing hard enough? Had she manifested something impossible creatures out of thin air?

Wherever the parade came from, it took her parents a full minute before they started arguing again. Sometimes you have to take what you can get.

 

it’s cloudy. [trigger #237]

The morning Eric realized what he had the power to do, it was an evening like many before it. Unfortunately, there was nothing outside the routine about it. I say unfortunately, because when it happened, Eric’s father was calmly picking Eric apart with the skill and destructive ability of a malevolent surgeon. He wasn’t actually touching Eric, wasn’t causing him any physically visible injuries, but was instead carefully dismantling Eric’s self-esteem, identity, and security, already weak, frail things after a life with a man like Eric’s father. Eric didn’t know why his father did what he did. His father didn’t know either, but acted out of some deep, internal compulsion. It was almost as if he couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t place what caused his contempt for his own son, and probably wouldn’t have even been able to say it was contempt, but merely that he was saying what needed to be said.

Yes, it was unfortunate that this was a day like many others before it, but that was the case. This was one of the marathon days as well, when it went on for hours. Every day there was the common sniping, the carefully executed single shots at Eric. Other days were long procedures, where Eric’s father would literally go on for hours and hours, relentlessly offering his calmly delivered commentary on how useless, vile, and despicable Eric was. Oh, and ungrateful, too. The arsenal Eric’s father worked with was a vast and nuanced thing. His skill with words was only ever used toward this one particular task, and when he got going it was hard to stop. This was one of those such days.

Many years earlier, Eric had developed an ability in his own mind that his father didn’t know about. Eric could make his mind grow cloudy and dim, could insulate himself deep within some part of his mind, where the pain of life couldn’t touch him. At first, it happened all on its own. His father would start in on him, and he would just drift into himself. He was still there, still aware of all that was being said, but it felt like it was far away, happening to someone else. The downside is that his thoughts would become muddled and slow, he was barely functioning in these moments. The cloudiness started to happen more often in time, whenever something made him anxious, or worried, or sad.

Just when Eric had started getting used to this happening, he found he started to know how to bring it on at will. It was no longer just an automatic response of his emotional immune system, but was a mechanism he could start at will. Although stopping it was another matter altogether, he hadn’t figured that part out yet.

Eric’s life was the sort of life in which one would like to cultivate such an ability, and cultivate it he did. When the cloudiness came on, Eric would carefully test its limits, pushing against the inside of this emotional insulation to see if he could have more control of his thoughts and inner world within the puffy mental cloud he created.

On this unfortunately routine day, Eric was doing exactly that. His mind had clouded over, he was no longer paying any attention to what his father was actually saying, but was instead doing mental exercises to see if he could recall movie names and actors, albums and track listings, testing his memory within the clouds.

It was then, right after successfully naming 12 Robert Downey, Jr. movies, that he noticed his father wasn’t talking anymore. He hadn’t noticed when his father had stopped, and saw that the man was still standing in the middle of the living room, where he had been delivering his horrible malediction. His father’s face was vacant and empty, like he was a million miles away. He didn’t seem to have any idea that he was standing in the middle of the living room staring.

Eric returned to the surface of himself, unintentionally leaving behind his cloudy protection to investigate his father’s condition. As he did so, his father squinted his eyes, his face becoming animated again. He looked at Eric for a moment, as if trying to remember not just what he’d been saying but where he was, maybe even who he was. He opened his mouth to speak, once, twice, but then decided against it, pursed his lips, and abruptly left the living room.

That was the day that Eric realized that his ability had grown far beyond anything he would have previously thought possible. Eric was longer limited to merely clouding his own mind, he was capable of clouding over someone else’s mind as well. For the first time in his memory, Eric realized he was looking forward to his next encounter with his father.

well, that’s easy for you to say. [trigger #235]

“Well, that’s easy for you to say!” she screamed. 

Frank looked down with his eyes closed and sighed. He rubbed between his eyes with his index finger and thumb, scrunching his face as if the whole situation could be cured as easily as momentarily blurred vision. It had in fact not been easy for him to say at all. What he had said was that he thought they should confess to the affair they’d been having for the last nine months. It had been far from easy for him to say, it had terrified him to even suggest the idea. But he knew that he was miserable, and that his conscience had been growing heavier and heavier all the time, to the point that now his only reprieves were the brief moments of ecstasy when he and Sara were making love. Of course, immediately after sex he would crash back to earth and feel far worse than he had beforehand.

Sex used to consolidate him. Frank had never been the stereotypical man who fell asleep immediately afterward. He’d never even felt tired after sex. It always invigorated him. It centered his mind and body, reminding him of himself. That was still the case, but now that it was so tied up with lies and betrayals that consolidation left him focused entirely on the mess he was making of his life and the lives of those he loved, including Sara.

He did love Sara. And his wife Gillian. Many readers will scoff at the very idea that he loved both at once, but it is truth. He also loved his two children, Stanley and Amanda. He would take any punishment on himself if it would spare those four people the pain that was coming to them. Yet, there was no way to shelter them from the inevitable storm. He was learning the timeless truth that on the road down into hell, the slope is so gradual that one never knows they have begun descending. “Surely, I can take this road for a bit, while it’s fun,” one says to themselves. “I’ll simply take a different road the moment this one begins to dip down into the depths.” One never notices, though. Like looking in the mirror every day and never noticing the changes until seeing an old photo, thus is it on the road to our destruction. It happens in increments, and we never notice the disaster is irrevocable until it is too late.

Sara was just understandably angry. She was realizing along with Frank the direction things were headed. She knew it wasn’t easy for him to say, she was just lashing out at the spot they were in. His family, reputation, and job would all be jeopardized by this revelation. She loved him, which is why she had done something as uncharacteristic as having an affair with a married man. Neither had ever meant for anyone to get hurt, and yet here they were. Look what love has wrought.      

7-11 on my birthday. [trigger #230]

There are three things I have to do every year.

Ever since I was seven I have gone to 7-11 every year on my birthday for a Slurpee. I don’t really like Slurpees anymore, but I do like traditions, so there you have it.

Every year since I was 16, on the anniversary of the day I got my license, I take a long drive with one person without any preordained destination in mind. The drive just has to be a minimum of one hour in each direction. I still very much love long drives.

Finally, every year since the year my dad died when I was 27, I go to his grave on his birthday and tell him all the things that happened over the year. I don’t believe he can hear me, but it still makes me feel better. 

I’ve just discovered the fourth thing I need to do annually: travel to a new city and get lost without a phone. The first time happened yesterday, quite by accident. On a last minute business trip to Portland, Oregon I left my hotel room looking for dinner after a long day in training. My phone was nearly dead and I was too hungry to wait for it to charge, so I left it behind. Normally, my phone is the primary thing I use to find my way around, to get directions as well as finding well-reviewed restaurants and bars. This felt remarkably like leaving one of my senses behind while venturing into a place I don’t know at all. Or, I imagine it felt like that, I’ve never actually left one of my senses behind so I can’t confirm that. 

Anyway, at first it was scary. I was getting hungrier, weaker, and grumpier by the minute. That’s when I resolved to walk into the next place I came across that sells food of any kind. It turned out to be a Whole Foods. I grabbed some Kind Bars and a Vitamin Water and sat on a bench outside the door eating greedily. I was laying my head down waiting for the sugar to hit my bloodstream so I felt human again when I heard a soft voice behind me. “Are you okay, Sweetie?” I looked up to see a beautiful woman covered in elaborate tattoos standing beside me. She didn’t look concerned as much as curious. 

“Oh, yes. Sorry. I just went too long without eating. Just waiting for my body to realize I just fed it.” 

She grinned. “I see. Well, what you really need is a drink. Come with me.” 

I was about to argue that this didn’t seem like the wisest idea in my current state when enough of my normal faculties must have been restored by food, because I realized how foolish it would have been to say no when a beautiful woman asked me to get a drink. She was already several steps away, apparently feeling no doubt that I would follow. I stood and walked double time to catch up with her. 

“I’m Tom, by the way.” 

“Nope,” she said. “Come up with a different one. I’ll try my best to forget the real one. This will be more fun if we skip all the factual minutia. Let’s be strangers, and enjoy the freedom to be honest about the more important things than personal details. Let’s make anonymity our friend. Call me, Christina.” 

I thought for a moment. It was odd, I was still trying to catch up with what was going on. After a minute or so of walking quietly, I realized it was the kind of odd I liked. “Okay, then. I’m Fitz.” 

“Fitz?” 

“Yup, it’s a character from a book I like. If I have to pick a name for just one night I want to pick one I wouldn’t actually pick forever.” 

She smiled more with her eyes than her mouth. I knew I was playing the game correctly now. 

**I’m out of writing time for today. However, I think I’m going to continue this one in the future.** 

sitting in the hammock smoking cigars. [trigger #227]

Most who know me would be surprised if they were to find out I am capable of deep thoughts. It’s not really what I’m known for. I am in fact quite capable of deep thought. I just don’t show it most of the time because in my experience it is better to hold your cards to your chest, then each one that you play carries more weight. Wearing your heart on your sleeve has its value, and I am glad there are people out there who live that way, but we also need people who hold their heart in secret, waiting until the moment is right, until the best possible time to reveal the true depth of themselves. For now, everyone thinks there is nothing more to me than a money grabbing businessman. Oh, and for transparency’s sake, I am one of the wealthiest people alive. 

Every day, no matter what is going on, I reserve a time to sit with my thoughts, attempting to puzzle out how to use my considerable depth and wealth to make things better. Lately, my favorite way to do this is to sit in a hammock in my back yard smoking cigars. The added bonus is that it looks indulgent, like something a wealthy man is expected to do, whereas merely meditating or sitting quietly over coffee or tea would potentially look like I am developing a conscience. I developed a conscience a long time ago, I just can’t let everyone else know that. It is why, when my time thinking has produced fruit that could actually help the world, I have used backchannels to bring that change about anonymously. People in power cannot know that I am a threat to that power, or my work will become considerably more difficult. You’d be amazed what people with power are willing to do to maintain and expand that power. I make that last statement confidently, because even if you already believe you wouldn’t be surprised by what people with power would do to maintain and expand that power, you would still be surprised by the lengths they go to, consistently, often without fully understanding why. It becomes a desperation, like a survival mechanism, their power becomes a living thing, capable of becoming a cornered animal and threatening humanity itself under the wrong circumstances.

Thus, I must be ready with the final strike before I deliver the first. The problem at the heart of the world is like a disease, and if I were to begin any kind of treatment that doesn’t eradicate the illness, the illness will adapt and become immune to the initial treatment, becoming ever more deadly and resilient. So, I have taken action to combat some of the symptoms of the world’s disease, but not the disease itself. The time is coming though, when I will figure this out. I will enact a bloodless revolution of peace and we will be able to turn our attentions to saving our planet well into the future. 

The future is what I am thinking about now, smoking a Black Dragon and enjoying the cool breeze that has been all too infrequent this summer. Part of my plan must be a way to show people they must show kindness to one another that works forward, into future potentialities. Kindness and goodness shown only to a person in the current moment is certainly good, any kindness and goodness is better than what we are usually left with in this world. Yet, it isn’t enough. If that goodness expires at the end of the moment it is too easy to discount. Too often people see their kindness repaid in cruelty. Too often goodness is subconsciously seen as weakness, and used as a weapon. We must find ways to be good to one another that has farther reaching ripples, that impacts more than just the present moment.  

explosion. [trigger #226]

His name is Cursed, although it has not always been so. Once he had a name given to him by parents who loved him, but that name has long been forgotten, perhaps even by himself. When one’s life is as long as Cursed’s has been, it is normal to go through names as some cease to fit and new ones become more appropriate. His time for changing names has passed. He knows that Cursed will be his final name, no matter how much longer his life continues, and when every moment is lived in agony life feels very long indeed. Such it is to be cursed. Cursed. Cursed the cursed. 

There was a time when it seemed to most that Cursed was not an appropriate name under the circumstances. He had after all taken on his affliction by saving every living thing that exists. Hero, or Champion, or even Sacrifice would have been more fitting. Yet, Cursed is the name that stuck, the name he accepted most willingly, and as the many long years have passed it has become clear that whatever the circumstances of his predicament’s birth, it is certainly most appropriately deemed a curse. 

It happened centuries ago, when all life was almost snuffed out like a candle. It wasn’t some great evil that actively attempted to end the world, just a foolish young man trying to make a name for himself at a small university. Against the warnings of others, this young man went too far in his magical endeavors, meddled with elements beyond his ken, or the ken of any mortal. He accidentally created what has since come to be referred to as an Instance. A singularity in time and space that acts like a black hole but in reverse, like the Big Bang. While his experiments were well beyond his skill, his skill was still considerable. He saw what was happening and was able to temporarily arrest the explosion, keep the Instance from rushing out from itself and extinguishing all existence, at least in the form we currently know it.

All knew there wasn’t much time. His halt of calamity was a temporary measure, time was dwindling quickly. A professor at the school, the Chair of Magical Theory, was the one who took action. He realized a tremendous degree of skill and vigilance would be required to keep the Instance at bay. Without consulting anyone, and using a magic none have ever fully understood, he took the Instance into himself. He took into his own being a creative force so strong that it would in its turn destroy all that currently is. Once within himself, he was able to freeze the explosion indefinitely.

The cost was immense.  

Of course, some of the pain goes without saying. It would never have been easy to constantly be racked by the pain of a thousand thousand galaxies attempting to burst forth from his chest. Yet it goes far beyond that. To freeze the explosion, it was required that he freeze a part of himself. Not in a purely physical sense, but across multiple planes and dimensions. The very fabric of his existence is stuck, locked in place. That pain goes far beyond anything conceivable by all aside from him. It is physical, emotional, philosophical, spiritual, existential, and astronomical. As perceived by a finite being, it is practically infinite.

And so his name is Cursed. No other name has ever been more fitting.  

you fell asleep on the subway. [trigger #221]

Of course this is the way the worst day of your life ends, with you six stops past your own on the subway because you fell asleep. This is the last train before the subway reopens in the morning, there’s a torrential downpour outside, and you don’t have any money for a cab. After a day in which your power was turned off, you’ve lost your job, been dumped by your girlfriend, discovered that a misfiling in your taxes has resulted in you owing the IRS $2134.00, oh, and you found out your parents are getting a divorce, this is the last thing you needed. This adds insult to injury. Perhaps it is just a fitting conclusion, par for the course, the only way a story like this would end, barring a twist ending. The only prospect to look forward to is the miserable, wet, cold walk back to your apartment, the one for which the rent is already past due even before finding out you are no longer gainfully employed. Time to get off at the next stop and start the trek.

Or is it?

Maybe it isn’t time to get off and walk home on your achingly tired feet after all. Maybe, in the midst of a day as shitty as this one, the best course of action is to stay on the subway, to ride deeper into the heart of the unknown. If ever there was a time for new beginnings, this is one of those times now. You know what’s waiting for you back there, in your empty apartment, fighting your way through the horrible weather just to slump down on your couch in the dark, left alone with your brooding thoughts about everything that has gone wrong. Perhaps instead it is time to let the speeding train pull you farther away from all the familiar bullshit that has gone wrong today. You’re alone in the car, rushing beneath the sleeping city above you, and that seems as good a place as any for an adventure to begin. Isn’t this always how great adventure stories begin? Our protagonists never begin with the greatest day of their lives. It must begin with failure, some inciting action, to thrust our hero or heroine out of the comfortable and known and into the mysterious wilderness. Maybe missing your stop was exactly the stroke of luck you needed. Just sit tight, keep your eyes open, and wait for your cue, because life begins now. Time to sally forth, onto treasure, and glory, and triumph.

breakfast in bed. [trigger #83]

She was alone.

Not in the romantic sense, although that as well. It was in the utter sense, as in absolutely and entirely.

She had friends, although none she knew how to ask for help. She had a husband, but not one who really saw her. She didn’t really know if anyone would miss her if she disappeared, not in any meaningful sense at least.

She wondered why no one made an effort for her. She had her problems, but it didn’t seem like they were any more than anyone else had. She hated her body, but lots of people feel that way. Why was she so profoundly separated from everyone else on the planet?

At times she wondered if she seemed too self-possessed. Maybe he fear of rejection coupled with her competence in a way that made her seem like she didn’t want connection.

Either way, the more aware she became of her isolation, the more isolated she became. It got harder and harder to connect. She just wanted things to be different.

She wanted surprise parties, random phone calls that someone was thinking of her, breakfast in bed, late night trips to a bar or a 24 pancake house.

She wanted love. But, the more she wanted it, the farther away it seemed to get.

love as a verb. [trigger #75]

It was hard for Nick to adjust to this new understanding of love that was coming over him. He’d grown up thinking of himself as a ‘hopeless romantic.’ Unlike his other guy friends, he was always interested in romantic comedies and love stories. He thought this meant he was sensitive and well-prepared for the world of love.

Instead, having been in several relationships that ended in remarkable failure, he was starting to understand that what he thought was love was nothing more than infatuation. It was fun, nice, and he really enjoyed it, but it was untrustworthy and went away far faster than he would like. It also didn’t seem to do much to actually care for a woman. He came to understand that much of what he’d  been learning in his romantic comedies, which he thought would help him be a great boyfriend someday, were actually just emotional falsehoods that enabled one to avoid the real work of a relationship.

What the women he’d failed in relationship really needed wasn’t someone to think about them constantly and write poetry about how much he missed them when they weren’t around, although that was nice. They needed someone who was going to listen, for real, even when he felt like shit. They had needed someone who was going to go to bat for them when they were being their greatest enemy. They had needed someone who was going to get up every morning and be on their side, even when the lovey dovey feelings weren’t there that day, even when a woman was letting him down because the ideal he’d invented in place of truly knowing them was falling to pieces.

Love was a doing, not a feeling. He was coming to know that, but it was hard to unlearn all that bullshit from before. There wasn’t anyone out there to complete him; some perfect counterpoint to his personality. There wasn’t a ‘one.’ There was simply people worth loving, with whom you throw your lot in; someone you love with all your strength, no matter the cost.

The task now was letting go of the idea finding a soulmate who made him feel a certain way about himself, and instead wondering if he might find an ally to partner with so that each could become better versions of themselves through growth and fight. It was not by some magical process that happens when he finds that one person who was made for him, with whom we could live happily ever after. There is no happily ever after, there is simply folks worth fighting the pain and injustice of life alongside, and who we can laugh and dream and imagine with.

two weeks later, it happened again. [trigger #72]

It’s hard to get people to believe me when I say that a drunk driver literally crashed through the front of our house and into our living room while we were out getting ice cream. It’s impossible to get people to believe me when I tell them it happened twice.

I was 20 years old, home from college for the summer, and we’d gone out to get some Molly Moon’s on a nice, warm evening. We came home to find the street in chaos as police tried to deal with the situation while also holding off curious passersby.

At first, we couldn’t believe our eyes. It was like we couldn’t get our brains to accept that it was our house, but with the front wrecked and in tatters with the back of a car sticking out and an odd angle that kept both back tires off the ground. Some guy had gotten drunk down the street at his friend’s house, had fallen asleep only seconds after starting his journey, and had proceeded to accelerate into what had been our living room.

It was bizarre, but we were fortunate to have been away from the house so that none of us was hurt, and insurance was taking care of things with an uncharacteristic promptness we all found refreshing and reassuring. Construction had already begun on getting things patched up within the week.

It would have been perfect, all things considered, to have been fortunate enough to avoid physical injury and have things getting repaired in short order. I say would have because two weeks later, it happened again. Not just another car drove into our house, mind you. The same driver drove into our house. He got drunk with the same friend, got into a different car, and while the details of what actually happened next are sketchy, the gist is that he ended up in our living room again. The only different on our side, because we were somehow not at home for this even either, was that we were getting Trophy Cupcakes instead of Molly Moon’s Ice Cream.

I’m honestly not sure if the moral of the story is, ‘don’t drink and drive’ or ‘go out and buy yourself sweets as often as possible.’ Maybe it’s both.