Last Words

"... like this was the last day, like these were the last words, like you don't ever want to forget how..."

Paris.

In Paris I learned that the hardest part of writing is getting your ass in the chair. Getting your fingers on the keyboard. Putting pen to paper. 

Every day.

I learned that Paris isn't even a place. Not a city you can just walk or fly to. 

Not a classroom you walk into and routinely put your head to a desk. Paris doesn't even exist. 

Not if you don't want it to. 

I saw a man talk about how sad and how lonely paris could be, smiling widely the entire time, smoking a cigarette. 

Another man spoke of the gritty, godforsaken corners of paris, and how to survive there you need to keep your dreams afloat with the bleeding, broken dreams of others. 

I think that place was called Brooklyn. Or did I dream that? 

Paris was where I came to escape the crowds and harsh weather of other places. And though the rain is much colder there, and the crowds often twice as hostile, the sun shines brighter than anywhere else. 

And, with paris now behind me, I am afraid I may not have the words to describe what happened there. 

I may never have the words. 

But something changed, in paris. Part of me stayed behind, even as I took a piece of paris with me. It appears that, the more you give to this city, the more you are allowed to take away. 

I'll never miss the pieces of myself that I gave. Every pebble I took away from paris, even the ones that lodged in my shoes, is worth more than its weight in gold. 

And every time I hold one of those pebbles, i'll think of that far off place.

And smile, thinking of rain and the city lights.

Thanks, Nelson.

C.G. 

You wouldn't know this about me, but I crack my knuckles when I'm nervous.

I crack my knuckles a lot.

I find myself increasingly unable to smile properly. Don't ask me how that works. I just feel sometimes that my face is the most uncomfortable part of my body, because it's the part that everyone can see in full.

Sometimes it doesn't know which expression to make

I believe i'm just now learning what it means to be a man.

And no, I don't mean playing sports, or driving an expensive car, or paying bills, or walking around shirtless in a Gillette commercial or a Twilight movie. 

I mean smiling, all by myself, alone in a car.

For no reason other than it's morning, I'm headed to work, the roads are empty and the chilly sky is filled with light.

I spend most of my time trying to find a way to get out of my own head. Because If I don't I'll talk myself to death, and suffocate all my self-worth under the weight of my own words. 

 So I fill up as much of my time as I can with music, and the screeching voices from the inside pair up with the ones being piped in from the outside, and depending on the day they'll either do a waltz...

or get in a fistfight. 

And sometimes, when I'm lucky, my brain remembers one of those songs while I sleep, and the lyrics, when heard through the soft, golden membrane of sleep,  hum and resonate in my brain, and become ten times what they were when I was awake. These alien notes then follow me throughout the day, and echo whenever I hear a song or a word that reminds me of their strange, foreign beauty. 

Jealousy

"We once went to bed like between the bedsheets was a valley where dinosaurs still breathed."

Here Am I by Anis Mojgani

This man has enough amazing poems that each kid in this class could read a different one, and still come away awestruck. But from the very beginning of Here Am I, it stood out to me above the rest. I daresay that this poem feels even more naturally performed than  Shake the dust.  He breathes out the poem, instead of just reciting it.
Another huge reason I love this poem is because of how much I relate to it.
"Like that same high school kid, licking his thoughts, using his sharpie tip writing 'I was here. I was here, mutha f*cka. And aint none of y'all can write that in the spot that I just wrote it in'."
Those words changed the way I see things, the way I look at people. They made me understand how hard high school is, not just for me, but for everyone. And they aren't even the best lines in the poem.

The best lines, however, and the number one reasons I love this poem, are these: "...Did that beauty make you, did that beauty make me, will it make me something, will i be something, am i something? And the answer comes... already am, always was, and I still have time to be."
These are the closing lines of the poem. As the youtube video that I was watching this on ended, I continued staring at my screen, my eyes becoming unfocused, my mind refusing to restart. Those words shattered my misconceptions. Those words filled me with hope. Those words made me insanely, insanely jealous, because I am not Anis.
That clever sonofabitch.
Those words made me give up on ever being as good at writing as Anis Mojgani, but also made me want to get as close as I damn well could.
Got a long, long way to go.

Awaken, and Wonder.

This is for the kids too tired to learn.
This is for the skinny kids.
This is for the boys whose hands won't stop shaking when they talk to girls, this is for the girls who spend their days taking endless walks through those boys heads.
This is for the divorced couples, for the people too old to drive.

This is for you.  Awaken, and Wonder.
For the world is wider than you know.

This is for a generation struggling to find itself, lost in the legacies of generations past.
This is for those with their eyes swathed in the smoky heat of hatred and misunderstanding. Know that I have tread where you now stand, and know the path of sermons and chapel seats that lead you there.
This is for children, smothered by their parents rusted iron wings.

This is for you. Awaken, and Wonder.
For the world is wider than you were told.


This is for the kids with bottled lightning inside, waiting for a hammer to open it all on up.
This is for the kids with wisps of smoke leaking from their fingertips, hardly containing the urge to make, and make again.
This is for the empty spaces.
This is for those who have been bathed in the broken light of unforgetting.
This is for those who took the Red Pill.
This is for those who Question Everything.

Welcome. Did you all enjoy your naps?
Good. Now.
Make sure that by the time you finish reading this, the ghosts in your veins have all gone.
Because it's not up to me, however often i wish it were.
Make sure that your wounds have folded over, that your blind eyes have been touched by the stark white hands of the blank abyss, you make sure that your sins have not been forgiven.
Because absolution is for those with something to prove.
Scorecards are for puppets, playing games.
And hatred is the tool of an unknowing man, carving crosses into the chins of children.

Awaken, and Wonder.
Because this is for you, well and truly.
For the world is wider than the length and breadth of thought, and deeper than the furthest caves of the our imagining.
Awaken, and wonder.

Up so Late

I keep forgetting why I'm up so late.

Is it for the quiet? The questions it allows me, asked by myself. Every hour after midnight seems to contain some special quality, some magic.

As if the hours themselves are made of minutes

rather than devoured by them. 

I am devoured by the minutes. 

Eaten alive by the second hand, these thoughts are not mine. 

These thoughts have come before, and every moment alone with myself is a moment I spend with a stranger. 

When will I own myself completely? I find every day filled with compromise, and empty vows.

Hollow and sore, like the room that good intentions always seems to lead me to. Because the world around is as broken and twisted as myself, and heroes all hide their faces away, wishing not to be exposed as the demons they truly are.

Or so Fox News would have me believe.

Because every day is not another calendar page crossed off. Every day is a journey, a little bit more life breathed in. Every day is a prayer to living. And I go forth,  past in one hand, future in the other, with self-doubt crumpled into my back pocket like a forgotten receipt, trying to breathe in every day, and distill this breath into ink in my blood for the words that I can say that my one day change someone's view.

And yes. Today may be the last time I breathe. But by any God you care to see, it will not be the last time any of you see the light. By the bones of the writers and poets who came before, and the epitaphs and allegories they etched with their breath, by the burning paths they lit in our minds and our shuddering hearts, this is only the beginning.

I keep forgetting that this is only a beginning. 

My Journey

Ordinary World
Arlakt is a hermit. He lives in a beat-down shack in the center of a crater on the edge of the Great Waste. No one from any of the neighboring settlements knows much about him. They know that he is old, predating the Great Ascension, and the preceding War of Culling. They also know that, in the twenty years  since the Ascension, no breathing thing that even smelled like a bandit set foot within the confines of that crater without getting some rather large holes in some uncomfortable areas. Arlakt lives alone, and despite his missing arm, still survives quite well on his own.

Call to Adventure
Arlakt's lonely solitude is broken by the arrival of Jarlah- a fifteen year old girl from one of the settlements, whose older brother was kidnapped by a bandit clan and taken across the Wastes. Jarlah is distraught, and seeking Arlakt's help- no one from her village will help her, and rumor has it that Arlakt is the only person to cross bandit territory and return to this side of the Wastes. Jarlah needs the old man to strap on his armor once more, and help her free her brother.

Refusal of the Call
At first Arlakt refuses her outright, shoving her out of his crater, saying that the Wastes are no place for a little girl, and that her brother is already dead. Bandits never take prisoners, he says.  

Meeting the Mentor
Jarlah responds by pulling out her twelve gauge sawed-off, which she has nicknamed 'Obi-Wan', and telling Arlakt that 'No' is an answer she's not prepared to take. She also says that the only reason the bandits didn't kill both her and her brother was the strange birthmark, in the shape of a perfect triangle, that they share on the palms of their left hands.

Crossing the Threshold
Arlakt grudgingly agrees to help Jarlah, and so they set out, making their way across the barren wastes. Arlakt hasn't entered bandit territory in years. He is very twitchy,  paranoid, and constantly checking over his shoulder.

Tests, Allies, Enemies
After Arlakt and Jarlah enter the Wasteland, they quickly find that it is far more dangerous than either of them were expecting, and bandits are the least of their worries. Aside from the roving packs of Woltherun, which are like mutant wolves, they also encounter mysterious robots, remnants of technology from before the Ascension.

Approach to the Inmost Cave
After many months of travel, Arlakt and Jarlah finally near the other side of the wastes. They also find signs that the bandit clan who kidnapped her brother is near. The duo prepares for their greatest challenge yet: taking on an entire bandit clan at once.

The Ordeal
In the dead of night, Arlakt and Jarlah approach the bandit clan's camp. Jarlah comes into her own, stealthily taking down a tentful of her brother's captors before one of them cries out, awakening the rest of the group. Arlakt then demonstrates his years of experience in battle, methodically hacking and shooting his way through dozens of bandits, until those still alive flee the battle.

Reward
After the battle, Jarlah is finally reunited with her brother.

Film Analysis

Raising Arizona (1987)

Ordinary World
H.I. Mcdunnough is a criminal. His specialty? Holding up gas stations. H.I. isn't' a very good criminal, and thus spends a lot of time in and out of jail. Each time, he is processed by the beautiful Edwina, a cop whom he falls for. H.I. proposes to Edwina upon exiting prison (for the third or fourth time) and they begin their life together as a married couple.
Call to Adventure
Edwina desperately wants for she and H.I. to have a baby. But, after months of trying, she finally discovers that she is barren, and unable to have children. Shattered, and unable to adopt because of H.I.'s criminal past, she and H.I. all but give up hope on their dream of having a family of their own. Until, that is, they hear of the Arizona Five, the recently-born quintuplets of wealthy furniture store owner Nathan Arizona, and his wife Florence. Hearing on tv that the wealthy couple have 'more than they can handle', Edwina tells H.I. he needs to steal one of the babies from them, to raise as their own.
Refusal of the Call
At first H.I. is reluctant to do as his wife says. He fears he might be caught, and worries that the Arizona couple might miss their baby.
Meeting with the Mentor
H.I. finds a mentor in his wife, whose continued threats and exclamations finally convince him to steal a baby from the wealthy couple.
Crossing the Threshold
H.I. finally crosses the threshold when he sneaks into the Arizona's house, almost getting caught in the process, and, after mixing up the babies by mistake, steals the one he dubs to be 'Nathan Jr.', after the boys father. It takes a huge amount of personal courage and goading from his wife to get him to this point.
Tests, Allies, Enemies
Once the Mcdunnoughs finally get their new baby home, they are beset by obstacles and trials, taking many forms. One form is that of H.I.'s old prison buddies, who, having just escaped from jail, show up at the Mcdunnoughs house asking for shelter. While there they attempt to convince H.I. to come back to a life of crime. They also discover the identity of the Mcdunnoughs new baby, and attempt to steal him from them, to turn him in for the reward money. During this period H.I. faces many internal struggles, questioning everything from his criminal nature to his worth as a husband and a father. He also has a dream, which turns out to be a vision, of a bounty hunter who rides a motorcycle, looking like a beast from hell, who approaches on a trail of fire to destroy H.I. and cash in on the reward for Nathan Jr.
Approach
During this period, H.I. must reconcile with both himself and his wife, as well as rescue Nathan Jr. from his own prison buddies, who have stolen him and are taking him with them on their series of bank robberies.
Ordeal
H.I. faces his nightmare, the hellish bounty hunter, in a battle not only for possession of Nathan Jr., but also for his life, and the life of his wife. H.I. eventually prevails, destroying the monstrous man with one of his own grenades.
The Road Back
H.I. and Edwina journey begin the journey back to their house, but realize slowly that, maybe, their decision to take the child might not have been a good one.
Resurrection/Return with Elixer
The Mcdunnoughs decide to return the child to it's father, and in doing so, find themselves face to face with the man from whom they stole the child in the first place. They expect harsh retribution, but instead find understand and forgiveness. Taken aback, they leave the child in its fathers hands, their faith and love for each other restored.