Poems XX

I apologize to the Fates,
to think that I didn't believe in soulmates,
and relationships great
and small were all worked or tall
tales and fables

and I was wrong.

Here you tell me to whisper sweet nothings, but I won't, because nothings are absences, and even though you are gone there is no void, I am full in my heart, and clear in my intention
to follow your Westward direction,
for new frontiers of sexual tension
pierced to clarity by a love

that is strong.

At home I sit, with a dog on the couch,
mouthing the words that one day will vouch
for a lifetime of love, from heaven above
to the simple mountains and groves,
to beached treasure troves,
to deserts where the only things thriving is us,
living,
Here in my heart,

where you belong.

Land Acknowledgement Statements

 Let’s say that you live in a house. It is a wonderful, spacious house with a large, green yard. This house was built on land that your grandmother stole from a man named Jack Turner. She straight up shot him, took his land, and built the house. Jack Turner’s grandson Greg also lives in your town. On account of the whole robbery and murder business, he is a lot poorer than you.

Do you:

A) Give the house and land back to Greg Turner because it was wrongfully taken.

B) Keep the house and land. The robbery was a long time ago, and the house and all of its renovations were done by your family.

C) Apologize and invite Greg to come move in with you for free room and board.

Or 

D) Make Greg take the day off from work to put up a map in front of your house showing that it used to belong to his grandfather, along with the words “We’re very sorry.” Every time you have someone over to your house, say “We acknowledge that we are on Jack Turner’s land” and pat yourself on the back for your inclusive practices and commitment to social justice. 

Probably not D, right?

From the Native Governance Center, at nativegov.org:

Land acknowledgment is only one small part of supporting Indigenous communities. We hope our land acknowledgment statement will inspire others to stand with us in solidarity with Native nations.

Solidarity can look like: 

— Donating time and money to Indigenous-led organizations.

— Amplifying the voices of Indigenous people leading grassroots change movements.

—  Returning land.

Teaching What You Preach

Listening to a podcast today I realized that Marshall McLuhan's famous "the medium is the message" is terribly valid for what I find deplorable in PowerPoint presentations.

You can talk about effective teaching methods all you want, unless you utilize those to teach teachers, your points are ineffective. Ms. Yagi showed her mechanisms in the sub course, and Mr. Fukuhara showed his affability and connection- and that course was worth as much as my Master's. So now all these teacher candidate are talking all about effective teaching and I, as their student, am never engaged. Jim's technology integration falls flat because I see lazy person who couldn't finish a thesis or keep working in the trenches either. So I don't care, and won't.

If the medium is the message, my presentations will have juggling and song. And planning will be authentically half-ass, with powerful, active execution.

I guess that’s my issue with educational apps as well- technology is a quick distractor, so no matter how “educational” the material is, it’s still emphasizing flashiness and speed over depth and quality of thought. The medium of a screen is simply too detrimental.

Stories / Al Sarrantonio & Neil Gaiman

Each story, reviewed in my "writer's perspective." Of course, since I listened on audiobook the narrators themselves are on trial here as well- sometimes they fit the story, other times they get it wrong in my opinion.

“Blood” by Roddy Doyle

Fantastically read, this a very short story with an interesting premise that stops just where it should- a bit open-ended, but not very, and satisfactory. I thought I was in for a whole tome of this. I was wrong.

“Fossil-Figures” by Joyce Carol Oates

I thought to myself, give it a chance. Just because you hated We Were the Mulvaneys doesn't mean you have to hate this. Nope. It meanders, its heavy-handed, and it has no payoff. At no point in time does it ever GO anywhere, even when it thinks it does. I hate Joyce Carol Oates officially.

“Wildfire in Manhattan” by Joanne Harris

Gods in the world of the humans- American Gods does it better. But it wasn't the story- it was the inconsistencies. Wildfire is the younger brother of hearth fire? The "our Thor/Arthur" pun was pitiful and instead of cheekily making it once it happened earnestly multiple times. And the bodiless villains were random and not fleshed out (THAT pun intended).

“The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains” by Neil Gaiman

He's a master storyteller. He wraps up all his threads and keeps even dark stories whimsical and fun.

“Unbelief” by Michael Marshall Smith

This is the perfect example of how to keep revealing information about who your character is. The perfect pace.

“The Stars are Falling” by Joe R. Lansdale

Kind of weird. Super into it at points, other times not so much. I thought when he got killed AGAIN at the end, there'd be him coming back, but... no answers. Good characterization but I need more rhyme and reason to my resurrections.

“Juvenal Nyx” by Walter Mosley

A juvenile name, but this was the time the narrator did his best reading. I wish it had tied in more from the beginning about the racial issues- they seemed to just be dropped by the wayside, even for a vampire story that's usually about the unwanted and downtrodden. Longer than it needed to be, and then shorter than it should have been. Could use some editing. Can't all vampire stories?

“The Knife” by Richard Adams

I didn't remember this one. I really had to try. It wasn't bad. But it was very short and kind of unsettling. It didn't make me care, let's just say that. An unremarkable plot with minimal characterization.

“Weights and Measures” by Jodi Picoult

I fucking bawled. I cried in the airplane. So sad. Wow.

“Goblin Lake” by Michael Swanwick

It's like he started writing a story, then decided to morph it into a meta-treatise on writing and storytelling, but never edited the beginning to make the promise to me, the reader, that he was going to go meta. So Miklas would love it but I very much did not.

“Mallon the Guru” by Peter Straub

"I'm gonna write a story! That was fun!" Yeah, fun, but utterly pointless. Nothing to say about humanity or society or religion or writing, or...

“Catch and Release” by Lawrence Block

Creepy. Could have been shorter, but the length made it more visceral for the type of story that it was. Meant to unsettle, it did. I can't say I want to read more of the writer, but he did what he set out to do very well.

“Polka Dots and Moonbeams” by Jeffrey Ford

I dug it. Very "San Junipero" from Black Mirror. Maybe they were inspired by it. Very lighthearted and fun, which I could appreciate. Too many of these stories are serious. Like the last one.

“Loser” by Chuck Palahniuk

Funny, but inaccurate. I was in a fraternity. We would have loved that guy. Didn't seem to fit this collection though.

“Samantha’s Diary” by Diana Wynne Jones

Listening to this one really messed up the ending of it. I had to listen to it four times to understand. In print, I could have figured it out, but the didn't use a man's voice for the man's voice, they just read out "a man's voice comes on" even though up until that point they had been reading it like an audio diary. Irksome.

“Land of the Lost” by Steward O’Nan

An interesting read- I see other people online hating on it, but I really liked it. I've never read anything like it before. But I found it accurate.

“Leif in the Wind” by Gene Wolfe

Fun science fiction. Unsympathetic characters. Yet I give it a thumbs up.

“Unwell” by Carolyn Parkhurst

What a bitch! I really liked this story. I sped up the narration to 1.25x to really capture the franticness of such a terrible woman, and I do believe it helped.

“A Life in Fictions” by Kat Howard

I think it got too self-important about the bleeding of identities, and I really don't think it would have been that hard for her- or this story could have been the last written story.

“Let the Past Begin” by Jonathan Carroll

Booooooo. It tries to leave you with chills, but it's stupid. It's concept is stupid, the characters are stupid, it could have gone in such a better direction- with "being just like his father" meaning the child will also have an absent father- but that's not where the writer goes with it. He tries to lead to mystery and magic and wonder but it just feels hokey. And again, my big complaint, there's no payoff.

“The Therapist” by Jeffrey Deaver

It really changed modes, a bit abruptly, so for a portion of the story I didn't care, but then it came back around (back again to the advice of keep the promises you make to the reader). I get wanting to put in a twist, but in a short story I don't think twists are all that great, I think. In the end though it won me over, even if "nemes" are a bit cheesy.

“Parallel Lines” by Tim Powers

Another forgettable one. I had to look it up even though it was recent. Basically part of the plot of the Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin movie I really like, but instead about old ladies with no redeeming characteristics. Blah.

“The Cult of the Nose” by Al Sarrantonio

Like the Therapist, but worse. The payoff wasn't there. Instead of leaving a question about a man's sanity, or the truth, he's clearly just crazy. And that's a big disappointing copout. We never even learn "the cult"'s secrets, even though that's what it tries to build too. Not even a lie.

“Human Intelligence” by Kurt Anderson

Now this one's Santa Claus reveal was unnecessary and foreshadowed poorly. And the story didn't need it! The story was great, uplifting, and full of hope. So he could have cut out the winking at the reader and just gone with the fun thinking science fiction.

“Stories” by Michael Moorcock

Strange. I don't know... Didn't really fit with the rest of the collection. A memoir, kind of. I'm glad I didn't live in the 60s. 

“The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon” by Elizabeth Hand

Great characterization. The longest story, but it didn't drag like some of the others which weren't nearly its length. Mostly interesting, but definitely not classifiable in any "genre." Very realistic, even with its strange and eerie instances. I liked it, and I'll keep thinking about it, I'm sure.

“The Devil on the Staircase” by Joe Hill

In this case, the story would have been served better by a different narrator. Truly. A good yarn.

Andy Weir

You ever read that short story, "The Egg?" It's a pretty popular short story on the internet. Guy dies, finds out that he's living every life, and his little universe is just an egg? It seems to have been written solely for the passage:

“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.

“And you’re the millions he killed.”

“I’m Jesus?”

“And you’re everyone who followed him.”

And I mean, okay, I get it. Really, I do. Give everyone some perspective, man.

But you know what that also could have read?

"I'm Hitler?" You said, appalled.

"And you're the millions he killed."

"But I was still me?"

"Yes, and your wife."

"That I had sex with."

"Yes, you've been everyone you've ever had sex with. And you've been your father, so also you had sex with your mother, technically. Lots of sex. All of it."

Try taking that story as a profound meditation on the truth of being good to one another now. Can't, can ya? I ruined it.

And I'm okay with that. It's neat, but always sounded a bit pretentious. But now I feel bad.

Because Andy Weir wrote "The Martian!" That was a good book! Hilarious and crude, not serious and preachy. And in my opinion it had just as much philosophy. Have a sense of humor about the possibility of your own death, and always keep moving, to win.

Poems XIX

Did you know I'm dating my future wife? Cuz that's cool.

My Ocean

If I were the ocean and you were a boat,
It wouldn't matter if you went when I stayed put.

The ocean envelops the land, like ceaseless kisses the waves smack,
And my love encircles all of you and I'll never want it back.
It would be dishonest for me to say that I knew that this would happen,
That somewhere deep within my heart there'd be a bubbling to rival the Kraken.

I sound the trumpets every day as I await your return
My passion aches, I languish, curse, and still it only burns
Brighter, darker in its hues, I wish to torch the hurdles
No circumstantial Scyllan fates could ever claim to be hurtful
For I am stronger, safe in you, secure and wrathful, righteous,
I win the day, I seize the prize, I have what I need- us.

Call me El Niño, my temperatures rise when I see you,
But I'm no boy, in you a man, with loving eyes of blue,
You can sail the years away, at home's the ocean true.

Poems XVIII

Ancient Plants

There's a little beam of sunlight in the conservatory,
It speckles and glimmers in turn,
Illuminates that ennobled, ancient leaf,
Once megaflora, now known as the fern.

They've moved this fern to the New World and to Oz,
They've transplanted this plant to Japan,
But her chlorophyll grows greenest, replenished, and strong,
When her roots sink in to her homeland.

The fern has a noble (pre)history,
Grandiose and loved in the era of dinos,
But now she sits in a sterile glass room,
And her dreams intertwine with her woes.

But low scents still draw the butterflies,
Landing as happy strangers and not out of pity,
Fear not for the fate of the fair-fringed frond,
The same sun shines in conservatory, country, or city.

When I was a child in Larkspur's canyon,
The ferns would pop vibrantly after the rain.
Cold tears from the sky rolled off verdant faces,
The sacrosanct beauty seen only in pain.

There's a little beam of sunlight in the conservatory.
Warm, warm, warm-
The fern.