Things Left Behind
And More Things You Don't Even Want For Free
“So, all this gathering of poems and writing you’re doing — what’s it all for?” she asked with a confused, exasperated smirk.
It’s funny how these rushes of anxiety can come back to you from childhood — that familiar ache in the pit of your stomach, the way your mind goes blank, the panic of being seen as doing something stupid. I took a swig of my soda and tried to seem nonchalant.
“For nothing.” I exhaled and shrugged with a weary smile, but inside I’d just shut down.
“No, I’m just asking.”
“I’m just putting some stuff out there for free. Maybe someone will care. I don’t know.”
“And that’s it?” Her smirk tightened.
“I thought I might publish it along with some of my art.”
“Ohh-kaaaay—who’s gonna publish that?”
“I would just self-publish. Print-on-demand, probably.”
“And you think people are going to buy it?” she said incredulously.
“No,” I scoffed, laughed, “I can’t even get them to read it for free.”
“Then why are you doing it?” She shook her head and let her arms fall against her hips.
“I don’t know.” I stared at the floor. “Maybe I want to leave something behind. All I know is I just need to get it finished and out there so I can either die or move on to the next project.”
Screaming Into The Void: Are You Hearing the Other Screams?
I seem to remember this Nietzsche fella wrote something about how if you’re staring for a long time into an abyss, that same abyss will eventually stare right back into you.
Now, he was talking about fighting evil and getting so mired in it that you become evil yourself, but I wonder if something similar happens when you scream into a void for too long. What would that look like? Or rather, what would it sound like?
Does the indifference of the void cause you to become indifferent to other people screaming? Is that why no one ever seems to answer?
Maybe we spend so much time screaming into the void we lose track of what it is we’re screaming and fail to realize that we’ve just started bellowing nonsense? Or, and this is what I believe, we’re so focused on our own scream we can’t even hear everyone else’s.
For all my screaming, I sure do like it when I take a breather and hear a voice whisper back, “I liked what you were screaming.”
I should probably be that little voice for someone else more often.
Since We Last Spoke…
The 22 days since the last newsletter have passed quickly. I was shocked that it had been so long. Perhaps I didn’t really notice because I’ve been busy.
I prepared a couple of dishes for Thanksgiving, and I’ve been trying to figure out holiday gift situations. If you didn’t know, in addition to Christmas coming up, our family has 5 birthdays in December. Things are thingin’, y’all.
But, in addition to prepping for a massive upcoming news episode of DC on SCREEN, I also managed to record a bunch of Star Trek Universe Reviews — you know what? Let’s just get into all the stuff I’ve done since we last spoke:
Writing
I’ve posted more writing From the Vault (all it means is I’m posting old writings from like 20 years ago). I think you’ll find most fit in somewhat thematically with the idea of people desperately screaming into voids and being a bit clueless about the truth of themselves or reality. Actually, come to think of it, almost everything I posted coincided with that thematically. Weird.
Fry Cook Deity (02/28/2006 | 10/06/2020)
The “first draft” of this piece from February of 2006 featured it as something of a poetic stream-of-consciousness prologue to a very different poem. It never felt quite right, but I was in love with the concept. This final version comes from October of 2020.
Girl's Diary (07/11/2006)
This is the kind of fictional satire one may find oneself writing after working endless split shifts chained to a pizza oven on long, summer days with a crew full of teen-aged girls in the mid-aughts.
The Taste of Tears (04/02/05)
Harsh, fire-and-brimstone rhetoric drawn from evangelical Christianity, blended with fantasy terminology and imagery from both both Western and Eastern traditions to give it a bit of an ethereal edge. Eventually I would start mixing in additional mythologies to create farcical poetic romps, but we’re not there yet.
The Blues Defined (04/02/05)
This poem was written as an assignment for a course, but I don’t recall the specifics. In those days I was obsessed with blues and folk music, spoken word and beat poetry. It was a heap of Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly and Mississippi John Hurt and Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac — lots of very obvious, familiar names and some that weren’t …
Artwork
I finished a commissioned piece — an album cover for a local band. It’s not my normal fare, but I followed the client’s instructions.
I also of course did the artwork for my various podcasts:
DC on SCREEN
Jason Goss and I review the first DC Universe Animated Movie, 2007’s Superman: Doomsday!
Throw us a weird, emotionally-stunted Supes with the mumps, an overly-dramatic Lois, Lex as a sexual predator and a subscription to the National Voyeur, cause we’re getting into all the things that didn’t work about this forced PG-13 debacle (and the few things that did)!
Star Trek: Universe
Effie and I find ourselves in another earth-history contaminated culture as a matter of course. With Space Nazis, Space Jews and Patterns of Force.
We’ll get into John Gill and his misguided attempts at introducing Nazism with benign leadership in our review of Star Trek 2x23, “Patterns of Force”.
Effie and I encounter the most advanced multitronic unit of the 23rd century: Richard Daystrom’s prototype M-5 computer. Otherwise known as Dick “Defense-Ain’t-Murder” Daystrom’s Destruction Device. We’ll get into this catalyst for Kirk’s existentialist nightmare, maman, and maybe even explain how this could have been the perfect series finale.
Matt and Dave are discussing the death of the Kelvinverse, Paramount’s aborting of Simon Kinberg’s Star Trek: Origin trilogy and the development of Goldstein and Daley’s new supposedly unconnected Star Trek film! We’re also talking about the canonicity of the podcast Star Trek: Khan, maman, as well as a tease about Captain Sisko for Starfleet Academy, and how Strange New Worlds is reigning it in for the wrap-up! All that and so much more, maman! It’s wild. We even get into a spoilery section on Pluribus for those keeping up with that Apple TV series!
The Social Beast
Here a couple of my favorite posts from me on social media:
Coming Soon…
DC on SCREEN #779 — Massive News Episode! (To Be Recorded!)
Star Trek Universe - Star Trek 2x25 - “The Omega Glory” Review (Recorded)
Star Trek Univese - Star Trek 2x26 - “Assignment: Earth” Review (Recorded)
More Writings From the Vault