Journal of Fear and Hope

In a Cloud of Doubts and Fears
January 15, 2021

You’re going to get the vaccine, aren’t you? Why wouldn’t you? Afraid of the effects? Well the effects of the virus itself include death. The vaccine will stop that. Good old death-guard. Hard not to like that. Oh, the virus isn’t real? You say it’s a hoax? There are several hundred thousand people who would beg to differ if they could. What do you think they died from? You say they were old, or already ill and going to die anyway. I see. Sure, but you could say that about anyone. You’re going to die, but if a bulldozer were trundling your way, you would step out of its path, wouldn’t you? Take refuge from the hulking force of destruction before it can grind you beneath its treads? And if your father or grandfather were in the way of that bulldozer, you would do your best to escort him to safety, would you not?

Okay, wait. Say that again. The vaccine is a ruse, and the medical staff of every single hospital, clinic, and pharmacy in America is actually injecting people with tracking devices? That’s what you read on the phone where you stored your personal information and the names and addresses and pictures of everyone you know along with all the places you visit every day of your life? You’re refusing a vaccine against the largest plague of your lifetime because you’re worried about being spied on by technology?

Look, all insanity aside, yes the vaccine has risks. It might not work for you, and you won’t know it till it fails. You might have a reaction. But here’s this, there is a non-zero percent chance that an airplane will crash into your workplace and kill you. Don’t laugh, it’s happened before. But you go to work. You get on planes and eat sushi and drive vehicles at speeds that would have driven folks mad three generations ago. You cook with fire that is piped into your home and walk among people who everyone once in a while go insane. And you think nothing of it. But now, all of a sudden, you’re worried about a vaccine, after having gotten multiple similar vaccinations in your life. You know what, that’s fine. You can be scared. You can be paranoid. But allowing yourself to be a conduit for the disease puts others at risk. You turn yourself into a walking bomb with the capability of detonating again and again wherever you go. That’s what you’ll be, a suicie bomber quietly exploding in the name of whoever told you those lies about tracking devices. With every cough, every sneeze, every close-quarters exhalation, be sure to shout that name at the top of your soon-to-be diminished lungs. I hope they’ll treat you well in the afterlife. At least no one can track you there.

Spark Another Fire
January 8, 2021

My reading list for last year may be the shortest I've ever had. I had time to read, I just didn't use it well. Spent a lot of my precious time passively scrolling. That's one of my resolutions, read more, twiddle less.

I had planned to write reviews for all the books I read, but I only got around to a few. But because I love talking about and praising books and passing along recommendations, here are some nutshell reviews of what I read in 2020.

I took comfort in a couple of Joe R. Lansdale books last year. Of Mice and Minestrone contains a few short stories about the early years of Hap and Leonard. Mostly Hap, actually, though they are the full blood brothers we know them as by the book’s end. We don’t get the tale of their actual meeting, though. Maybe Joe is saving that for a later day. The final story is a good reminder of why I fell in love with those two characters and Joe’s writing in general. It’s a meditative piece full of shadowed, weary hope. Hap, recently out of prison for refusing to go to Vietnam, picks up Leonard at the bus station as he returns from fighting in Vietnam. They camp, make food, eat, talk, stare into the woods, and it’s beautiful. An extra bonus is a handful of recipes written by Joe’s daughter Kasey. The recipes are based on the foods mentioned in the stories and contain a bit of canonical history of the two friends, making them the first Hap and Leonard “stories” penned by someone other than Joe his own self. I didn’t try any of them and probably won’t. I’m sure that makes me less Southern now.

The other Lansdale book I read was More Better Deals, a novel about a car salesman who meets a beautiful, lustful woman with a husband she hates and a possible inheritance, and I think you can guess where that story goes. It’s a trope we’ve seen before, but this book gives proof to the saying, “It’s not the story, it’s the storyteller.” In Joe’s confident, humorous, and unrelenting manner, the story takes on new color. The plot and subplot go to places I didn’t expect, and one particular scene set at a grave gave me chills. Lansdale knows what he’s doing.

As a quick aside, I saw Lansdale post about these two books and another on Twitter last year and asked him, in amazement, “You have three books coming out this year?” He responded, “Five.”

We Stand On Guard is a great book written by the soon-to-be legendary Brian K. Vaughan about a scrappy band of survivors fighting for freedom after their country is invaded by… wait for it… the United States. The occupied nation in question is Canada. Tight scripting, clever payoff, and some truly terrifying images that will be difficult to shake from your head.

I discovered a graphic novelist I’d never read before, and I must get more of his stuff. Unfortunately, David Small seems to have only written two graphic novels so far, but they are fantastic. Stitches is his memoir of growing up in an emotionally-distant family in the 1950s. His father is a doctor and attempts to cure the boy’s constant childhood ailments with heavy doses of x-rays, something medical professionals apparently did back then. David gets cancer. The visuals are amazing, slipping seamlessly into David’s fantasies and subconscious, then bursting up for a disappointing lungful of reality. He may have been taught by example to tamp down his emotions, but he expertly puts them all right on the page.

The other David Small novel, Home After Dark, tells the story of a teenage boy who moves with his father to a new town where he struggles to fit in and navigate the emotional minefield of adolescence. He embraces then questions the brash machismo of his classmates, ponders his sexuality, and is asked to do the right thing when doing the right thing means siding with a community outcast. Then his dad abandons him. Told with spare dialog but with intricate and calculated visual angles and arrangements, this sometimes feels like a ghost story, but with you, the reader, as the haunting presence.

The best book I read last year was My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris. The very construction of the book is intriguing. It’s made to look like the lined, notebook ink drawings of the story’s protagonist, a young girl who imagines herself not only as a werewolf but also as a private detective. Since she finds it difficult to fit in with her peers at school, she just goes all in on the werewolf fantasy. Of course they don’t understand her, she’s a monster. And she meets other monsters in her life as well, a tall boy with facial scars and a square jaw, a girl who dresses in black and hates the daylight, another girl that no one else has ever seen and who seems to live completely alone in an abandoned house. The story twists and turns and often stops completely so side stories can take center stage. A woman with a mysterious past is murdered in the apartment building, and our lycanthropic gumshoe takes on the case. She learns of the woman’s history and lays out all the inconsistent clues for the reader to follow. Along the way, she uncovers secrets about her own family and begins to discover secrets she'd hidden from herself. It’s a beautiful book, full of fantastic ink drawings, blue or black in most panels then bursting with color as emotions erupt. The only negative I have to say about it is that it’s the first volume, and the second hasn’t been published yet. I absolutely need that second half.

So there you have it. That doesn’t cover my full reading list of last year, but it does come depressingly close. Go, seek these books out, then pass them on to someone else. Or give them your own favorites. Times were dark last year, and they may stay dark a while yet, but good stories will keep us warm, keep us company, and keep us going.

My Heart Changes Overnight
January 1, 2021

It's time to start over again. Renew your interests or pick up new ones; make promises to yourself; change yourself. We've all decided that January One is the time the clock starts anew. Good a time as any, I guess, but you can do that any day of the year. Whenever you feel you've reached a wall or you're just tired of the track you're on, pick a new way. Any day can be the start of a new year. If you fumble or fail at the resolutions you made at midnight, just make new ones at noon.

--More Journal Entries--

"Too many flames with too much to burn, and life's only made of paper" --Ronnie James Dio

"Words are flowing out
Like endless rain into a paper cup
They slither wildly as they slip away
Across the universe" --John Lennon

"Bow to the paper Gods in a world that is paper thin
The fools in town are ruling now" --Duran Duran

"Here I sit writing on the paper
Trying to think of words you can't ignore"
--Alice in Chains

"Working for paper and for iron
Work for the right to keep my tie on
Working for paper and for iron
Work for the unicorn and lion" --XTC