Today's Word: Middle

Being stuck in that seat between the aisle and the window, trapped in a pressured tube at 35,000 feet. I'm feeling the strain of moving only my forearms and feet. I wish I could get to my book.

Hoo-boy

Look, I imagine every writer has a dirty little secret that, in some shoebox deep in a closet somewhere, is some toxic-quality fan fiction they wrote when they were younger (or less experienced), using pop culture to help get their chops down. I know I committed that crime, but it's something I consider a rite of passage, a harmless experimentation of curious substances during the wild days of youth. You look back and cringe in embarrassment when you find the pages years later, counting yourself lucky that, well, at least no one else knows.

Some people, however, don't know the first rule of Fan Fic Club: It's never supposed to be seen by anyone.

You have been warned.

Damn Tie Fighter. Always in the shop.




Hugo Casachahua, dressed as Darth Vader, one of the main
characters in the Star Wars saga, reads a newspaper while
waiting for the premiere of 'Star Wars: Episode III- Revenge
of the Sith' in Lima, Peru Wednesday, May 18, 2005.
(AP Photo/Karel Navarro)

(a tip o' the blog to my wife, who found this)

71

Five years and eleven months ago, my wife and I were married in a gorgeous outdoor ceremony, presided over by a nervous rookie preacher and a cavalcade of family and friends. I have only one picture on my desk here at work, and it's a silver oval encasing a moment in time just before the ceremony. My wife in her gown and I (with more hair and painful plastic shoes) in a rented tux stare into each other's eyes in one of those posed moments that only wedding photographers can talk you into.

I'm looking into her eyes, our mouths are weary from smiling. The sky plays cloud-sun-cloud with us, but somehow, through all the photography domination and background static, we are together in a quiet moment. In our hearts, we've been married long before this moment. Everything that follows past the image-capture of the photo is a mere ritual done for the family and friends, and part of a not-so-secret plan to squeeze as many gifts as we can out of them.

Every 19th, I look back at our wedding day, and I can't believe I'm so lucky. I can't understand the organic calculus of love or devotion or any of the good things that make the world go 'round, but I try, in my own clumsy way, to acknowledge its power the 19th of every month.

My darling, I love you. Happy 71 months. How about dinner and movie tonight. There's this new film opening, some indie flick about revenge and ornate religions and political corruption. Do you remember how six years ago today, a month before the mania of our wedding, we stood in line for another indie film about a little kid who would one day grow up to be a tyrant? Back then, it was our last major date night before I moved out to Seattle to set up the apartment and start my new job. Now, six years later, and a month before our six-year anniversary, let's go out again. Let's look at the screen and smile and hold hands and understand, albeit silently, that we would not have it any other way.

I love you.

Today's Word: Summer

The heavy blanket of humid air, and in the faint edges of the warm breeze he could smell the tang of the ocean. Everything felt warm, and the sensation of a thawing took him over from the inside out.

And rain

Deep into the early morning, the rains came and brushed against the bedroom window in a cadence of unpredictable but smoothing frequencies. Next to our hero, who slept in the Big Comfy Bed, was his lovely wife and a pair of dozing cats, who gave up their waking sulriness to curl in and give out purrs so content they were aural velvet. The sound of the rain, the whisper of rustling sheets, the gentle vibration of the cats, it made our hero have one of those half-awake epiphanies.

The world speaks to us in languages we try to drown out with technology and gossip, with petty bickering and partisan showboating. The world still speaks, never giving up on us humans. Stories are being told, lullabies and sonnets in the rain and the wind. All told in sneaky ways, when we have put down our technology and when we have the windows open. The luscious twins of wind and rain are lovers speaking in our ears, although we can't repeat their prose. The wind and rain forgive us, even if we slumber through every rendezvous.

Today's Word: Zeal

It's one of those things, done a thousand times before you realized it. The lizards in bad suits and oily arrogance played you once again, and you find yourself suckered by their sheer love of making you a fool for believing in the truth and the better angels (who can't seem to find work these days).

Hi.

Sorry I haven't updated, but I've been busy, falling in and out of love with the novel, as well as having the full-time job of being me. Sometimes you have this faux-organic avatar of yourself that needs tending and updating. Imagine telling your skin to grow, your blood to cleanse itself, or your heart to beat: That's sometimes what it's like for me to run this blog. I don't mind it; it's just time consuming thinking about what to write about.

I've been struggling with that resistance to get all poli-bloggy up in here. I read a few of them throughout my day, something I admit isn't mentally healthy, but boy howdy does it spur some ready-mades for the novel. Still, I spend some time at a poli-blog, and soon my vision is filled with "You must write half-hearted, rage-filled screeds about the GOP. Do it!"

Just be happy I don't spend the day around amateur erotica sites. I can imagine the toxic afterprose I'd generate influenced by those venues.

That said, I do want to point you guys out to one site that is, on skin level, about politics, but is about so much more. It's about massive deception in black and white, officials who manipulated the public trust and facts to brew up a war that has killed tens of thousands, maimed thousands more, and created ripples we here in the States may never be able to recover from. It's about the terrible consequences of men with little minds, and it's a age-old sad song about invented war for power and influence. This time, the world can know the truth at once, that the war in Iraq was, more or less, manufactured, like a new brand of Pepsi or video game franchise.

Read the Downing Street Memo, and come to your own conclusions.

Frankly, I dread what history is going say about this era.

On edit: Turns out, Iraq doesn't really matter anymore. This year's little black dress o' misery is Iran.