Journal of Fear and Hope

Pink or Blue
August 16, 2019

All my heroes are men. My favorite writers, musicians, filmmakers, comedians, all men. Not that women are completely absent from my roster of favorites. Tracy Chapman and PJ Harvey got me through some tough times. Margaret Weis’ Dragonlance books are integral stones in my nerdy foundation. Sylvia Path’s “Daddy” guts me every time. And I do love me some Elayne Boosler. But I wouldn’t call any of them heroes. I haven’t modeled my life on any of their art.

Is that a problem? advocates for Satan may ask. You’re a dude, Michael. It makes sense that your heroes are also dudes, so they can teach you how to be a dude. Sure, but maybe I could have made myself a better person had I more diverse influences. That’s not the problem, though.

The problem is, all my daughter’s heroes are also male.

Most of the media we allow her to consume comes from PBS Kids, Sesame Street, or Disney. The females in most of those shows are supporting characters or spin-offs who owe their existence to much more popular male characters. Often, their defining attribute is that they are a girl. Otherwise, they act just like their male counterparts, except all their possessions are pink.

Where are the kids' female characters who aren’t either pink copies of boys or princesses? The characters you grow up with teach you how to be. Yeah, parents play a part, but my daughter loves mud puddles and slips occasionally into a British accent as a direct result of watching Peppa Pig. Mass media is created on a granular level to capture your child’s attention and sculpt their minds. The only way to avoid it is to avoid children’s programming completely, and we uncorked that genie long ago.

Right now, the characters she loves influence her play. When she’s older, they’ll influence her clothes, her attitude, her mindset. I’d rather she not wrap herself in pink and purple and aspire to be a princess. I’d rather her favorite fictional heroes not be copies of males with bows glued to their identical heads.

But… My own favorites turned me into an insufferable man-child (Pee-Wee Herman), riddled with anxiety and doubt (Charlie Brown), who jumps off rooftops with a towel around his neck (Superman). Maybe a tiara now and then won’t be so bad.

You Can't, You Won't, and You Don't Stop
August 9, 2019

I thought by now I’d be a professional writer, novels on library and bookstore shelves, name known to all. But all I have is enough rejections to wallpaper a room and two shitty novels that will never see the light of day. I let myself down. I believed all the songs and shows that said dreams come true. They were wrong.

So what now?

I keep writing. Keep failing. It’ll hurt like a hot knife through my heart. But not to write would be to close my heart forever and feel nothing. To give up my humanity and be like stone. When I was a boy, I made two promises to myself. Never pick up drugs, and never put down my pencil. I see my daughter, three years-old now, perfect and innocent and expecting the world to unfold the way she believes it ought to. I used to be that way, too, I guess. When I say to her, “Daddy got you,” that’s a pact. When I say to her, “I love your imagination,” that’s a pact. When you make a pact with a child, it is sacred and binding. I promised myself I would always write. So on I go.

I still have hope, but I’m not doing this from within a dream anymore. I’m in survival mode.

What Is It Good For?
August 2, 2019

If I could design a flag for my own private nation, it would be a sky-blue rectangle with a large, red question mark in the center. That question mark would be in Times New Roman, because it’s smooth and curvy with a lovely undulating line. (I love the Georgia font, but its punctuation is brutal.)

The mark doesn’t mean the residents of my country (just me at first, but anyone can cross the open border, maybe even accidentally) don’t know what they believe in or what they stand for. It means we are constantly curious about the world around us. To quote one of my daughter’s favorite scholars, “How does this thing work? How did that stuff change? How did that do what it just did?”

We’ll be a nation of wonderers asking big questions and little questions and contemplating the endless sky and the finite earth. Our only monetary note, the 42-dollar bill, will carry the slogan, “Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?” In our schools, the students will ask whatever they want, and the teachers will answer as best they can. If they can’t, then that teacher will join the class, and another will take their place.

We’ll be very good at asking questions. Instead of saying, “Where’s that thing?” we’ll ask for it by its actual name. And instead of, “How’s it goin?” we’ll ask each other questions that are relevant to our personal lives, because we care about each other. When you spend so much time thinking about the universe and how you fit into it, you develop an empathy for everyone else who doesn’t know their place either.

Pen Parents
July 26, 2019

In the winter of 2017, James bought a new set of parents. He was sitting with his laptop on the patched and dusty couch that once lived in the basement of his old life, surrounded by cardboard boxes, when the ad showed up on his Facebook page.

Every week, on a random day, he gets an email from his new mom. She asks how he’s doing. She doesn’t judge or guilt him. She remembers his responses from the weeks before. When she wishes him well, it feels genuine. The new puppy is so cute.

The sporadic voicemails from his father make him smile. He and mom did an escape room for the first time, and dad somehow got locked in the bathroom before it started.

James sometimes checks for these messages at work but usually saves them for when he gets home. It’s one of the few things he looks forward to at the end of his day. The postcard from his parents’ trip to Alaska came at an especially low time. He put it on the refrigerator then two days later pinned it to his cubicle wall.

When the ad for a younger brother appeared on Instagram, James clicked immediately. He had to consider the old college roommate for a couple of days, but the price was too good.

A few days ago he clicked on the offer for a girlfriend. They’re just getting to know each other now, but she seems nice. She grew up in Florida, learned to sail, earned her allowance by collecting driftwood on the beach, which her parents sold in their antiques shop. He writes to say it sounds like an idyllic childhood. His own parents are good people, though a little embarrassing. One time, his dad got locked in the bathroom of an escape room.

Healing is Difficult
July 19, 2019

This song was directly inspired by an NPR story. I sat in my driveway and let it finish, crying the whole time. The things it described were heart-wrenching. And it was happening in my country, in secret, dark places that looked normal on the outside. The people involved expressed so much pain I decided I had to write about it. Rather than discuss the topic straight on, I tried to express the pain itself with the images I chose. The first verse feels especially ragged and bloody to me.

I've been singing this song to myself for years, and I always hear the verses as howls, nerves stripped naked to the world. Then the voice pulls back to a sneer, words clenched between teeth. The healing can hurt as much as the wounding.

Went Walking
July 12, 2019

One day I went walking in my neighborhood. I was a teenager, had long hair, wore a ratty jean jacket and acid-washed blue jeans with holes in the knees. I probably talked to myself as I strolled along, occasionally laughed out loud. To someone, I was a threat.

A cop pulled up ahead of me, got out, asked what I was doing, where I was going. My answer: Walking. Nowhere.

I wasn’t arrested or detained or given a ride or a warning. The officer let me leave. I wasn’t nervous. I was truthful. I was calm. I was white.

It wasn’t till years later I realized what could have occurred had I been anything else.

I have many things to be thankful for. That I should be thankful for the color of my skin speaks of a great, disproportionate level of privilege in this country. That I didn’t realize it till long afterward underlines that privilege twice.

Anyway, here's a new song for you. Warning: Contains Spider.

Music Memory #3: My Brother
May 28, 2019

I used to take my brother’s tapes. He was five years younger than me and had better taste in music. It was embarrassing, so when I borrowed his cassettes, I did so without asking, and I put them back without him knowing they were gone. I was a teen; he was eight. My baby brother wasn’t supposed to know more than me. But he was more in touch with popular music in the late 80s than I have ever been in my life. If you didn’t know, Guns N’ Roses amassed a huge fan following before their videos ever hit rotation on MTV. My brother knew about them way before Kurt Loder. Again, he was eight.

I didn’t take everything. I left alone his Warrant and Poison and Def Leppard tapes. They weren’t for me, though at one point I did try to enjoy those things to fit in. (It was with great pleasure that I later recorded The Art of Noise over a tape I had hand-labeled “Hysteria.”) No, I took my brother’s Faith No More and Metallica tapes. Those songs called to me specifically. They weren’t about fashion or partying or drinking or dating. They were intellectual. They told stories. Metallica was political; Faith No More was fantastical. And they communicated a rage I wasn’t able to articulate on my own. So I borrowed theirs just as I had borrowed my brother’s tapes. I didn’t plan to give that back.

I eventually bought those albums on CD. I found more bands of similar ilk: Living Colour, Rush, Anthrax, Megadeth, Nine Inch Nails. Then grunge came along, and I took that music as mine, also. I had a few friends then, and we were of the age that grunge was literally made for us. Had it not been for my baby brother, I might not have known there was music for me, and who knows what I would have spent my teen years listening to. Put enough songs extolling the virtue of nothin’ but a good time into my head, and that could have become my lifestyle. Or maybe I would have turned into one of those weirdos who say they don’t listen to music. I mean, I am a weirdo, but those people weird me out. Anyway, thanks, bro.

Music Memory #2: Driving in the Snow with the Radio On
May 7, 2019

The first Christmas in my first apartment, my friends Bob, Ian, and Brian came over to visit. We played games, exchanged presents, ate bachelor food. Another friend, Shana, stayed for a game of Settlers of Catan, then I had to leave the guys at my new place to take her home ahead of the approaching snowstorm. The drive back from Shana’s was when the weather started to get heavy.

Wisps of of snow blew serpentine across the road. Fat flakes splatted against the windshield. I turned on the radio and left it on the alternative station. Couldn’t risk taking my hands from the wheel to find a good song. But it turned out I didn’t need to.

A Rush song came on the air, the perfect one for steering through the winter weather. A long song that any ordinary station wouldn’t even touch. It would be rare to catch it on the radio at all, a minor miracle to hear it on that particular day.

When I returned to my apartment full of my best friends, I jumped to tell Bob what I had heard, since he was the one who’d introduced me to Rush in the first place. I described the scene, both of us agreeing that the tendrils of snow swirling over the blacktop were pretty cool. “And, playing on the radio,” I said, pausing for dramatic effect, “By-Tor and the Snow Dog.”

We immediately high-fived, because that’s what you do when the day turns perfect.

Music Memory #1: Alice in Chains Live
May 1, 2019

Lollapalooza ‘93 was one of the last tours Alice in Chains ever did with original singer Layne Staley. I was there. Just graduated from high school, no summer job, nothing to do but hang out with my friends, listen to grunge, and be righteous. It was the best of times.

AiC had released their masterpiece Dirt the previous year, and I was in love with that album. Well, I didn’t like the straight-up ode to drugs in the middle, but the rest was all killer. That night, they played just about the entire album. In between crowd surfs, Layne repeatedly goaded the middle part of the crowd for not moshing like the front or the folks on the lawn, where I was. At one point he told some feckless fellow, “Why don’t you get some popcorn and come up here and let me butter it for you.” He said that while grabbing his crotch.

I was worn out. AiC was the penultimate band (the closer being Primus--like I said, the best of days), the weather had been humid and heavy, and I had done my share of jumping around and moshing with the bands that came before. So I mostly stood and headbanged ever so slightly, like a long-haired scarecrow in a breeze.

The pit up at the stage, however, was in full motion. I could see it from the top of the rise, swirling like a whirlpool of flesh and ripped denim. It looked pretty normal, as mosh pits go. If you went in, you probably weren’t going to get caught in it.

But then…

Then the band kicked into “Angry Chair.” The mosh pit moved. Like a breathing, singular animal, the spiraling mass grew to engulf whomever was near. People ran for their lives. They streamed past me screaming. The pit monster gave up a bestial yawp. It was frightening. And oh so beautiful.

The Great Library Tour
April 6, 2019

Some years back, before we were married, my wife and I drove cross country to San Francisco. We stopped in major cities along the way and made sure to visit a library in just about all of them. They blur together now, but I remember the one in Santa Fe, New Mexico, downtown, the rounded corners, brown like all the other buildings to give them that old-timey Americana feel. It had a nice children’s section, and the whole thing felt tucked away, hidden. I sat on the floor and read an essay in a Joe R. Lansdale limited edition I had never seen before.

The library in Denver was big, had a pair of curved staircases that accentuated a giant globe in the center of the building. I found a library copy of the book I was actually carrying with me, and read it in a comfy chair. The book was The Fabulous Riverboat by Philip José Farmer.

In San Francisco I sat on the floor in the back of a library and read the first half of “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg. My wife thought I was lost, which was ridiculous. I knew where I was the whole time.

One library, I can’t remember the city, had a large art installation outside dedicated to protest movements. But I know I did the same thing there that I did in all the libraries. I checked the shelves for my favorite writers. Bradbury, Lansdale, Farmer, Ellison. They had to have at least two of them in the stacks somewhere. The more different books they had by any one author the higher their score in my mind. That’s how I gauge a library. Can I find at least one Bradbury or Lansdale book? How about two? The whole Riverworld series? Do you have any Ellison? No, the other one. Then you get my approval. And if I can like your library, then I can like your city.

My own city library has a great book buyer. We get nearly every new Joe R. Lansdale book, even the small press ones. Some even signed. Yes, I’m tempted to keep one, and of course I don’t. That would be wrong. More than that, it would be sacrilegious.

In the South, people often ask, out of the blue, what church you go to. I like to answer, “The main branch.”

Journal Buddies
March 31, 2019

For my birthday this year, my wife and daughter got me a journal. My three-year-old even signed it with her favorite shape, an oval. I love it, not only because they got it for me, but because it’s the perfect present for a writer. Here it is. Isn’t it cute?



I kept it for two months without writing a single word in it. You wanna know why? That caption on the front. I worried that putting my actual thoughts in it would turn the journal into a liar. I used to journal years ago, and so much of it was dark and depressive. Most of my current poetry output has also been pretty grim.

But in an ongoing effort not to die inside, I decided to think and write some true, happy thoughts. My first entry was about a Sunday afternoon in which my daughter and I played with the water hose in the backyard. I held it and she waved her hands through the water. When she saw the rainbow forming in the mist, she demanded to make one of her own. I handed it over, quizzed her on the colors, and she named them each in order. I tried to convey how beautiful the rainbow was, and she released the nozzle. As the colors faded, I over acted disappointment. She thought that was the funniest thing in the world. So she kept turning on the water, only to immediately release it when I voiced my enjoyment of the rainbow. She laughed so hard at my defeat.

I took my journal to work the next day so I could write about that experience. Cameron, who sat at the desk next to me, thought it was a Peanuts book. When I told him it was my journal, he opened his desk drawer and fished out his journal, a green moleskin-looking number with a tree stamped on it in gold. From behind me, Quentin brought out his journal, a black book with the word “Ideas” stamped in lighter charcoal. He’d added a logo sticker of his favorite stereo speakers just above the title. He said he mostly wrote song lyrics in his.

I had no idea either of them carried a journal or wrote at all. What a nice revelation on a Monday.

Mr. Twitch
February 28, 2019

The human body can go wrong in an almost limitless number of ways. Mine has developed a glitch. Or call it a twitch, or a tremor, or a tick. But somewhere in my nervous system, something has gone wrong.

My left arm, when it has nothing else to do, will spasm like mad for a few seconds, come to a rest, then repeat if not given further instruction. There’s something called a resting tremor that seems to match what’s happening with me, and that’s often a sign of Parkinson’s Disease.

It ain’t easy, staring down the barrel of that possibility. I admit I’m worried. Maybe even frightened. I’m good at keeping busy, at keeping it mostly hidden. But as the day wears on, the twitch builds strength, and by nightfall I look like a maniac way too overjoyed with his bowling score.

There are other symptoms that tag along with Mr. Twitch, like the yippy little dog that scurries around the big dog in so many old cartoons. Muscle Tension is part of the gang, and he likes to pull my arm back and hold it till I say uncle. Sometimes he hangs on my shoulders and pulls taught the tendons in my neck. When he does that, it can be difficult to speak confidently. I went up on stage a couple times recently, and he was there, making me trip over my words, though I was still agile enough not to let anyone notice. I think.

I try not to think about it. But I had to write about it. Putting it down in prose or poetry makes it less powerful. If I keep focused on a task--washing dishes, playing guitar, typing, reading, teaching--the twitch goes away. That’s my superpower. But this shit is some strong kryptonite.

Someone I Know Is Now Someone I Knew
February 1, 2019

Her name was Tammy. She worked with me. I only know a little about her. She was a kickboxer and taught kickboxing as a side gig. At orientation, we all sat around a table and shared interesting things about ourselves. That was the one that stood out the most. Such an unusual combination of jobs: software trainer and fight trainer. She kept a punching bag at her cubicle. She had grandkids and was a big part of their lives. She always asked me about my daughter, and when I said she kept me up till three in the morning, Tammy said her grandson would do the same thing. She laughed a lot. That's all I know about her. Others were closer to her and know more. Last year we all learned she had cancer.

She went through chemo, and we celebrated the end of that at the office. A card and cake, a big canvas with all our pink handprints and scribbled slogans. All seemed to be well. After a few months she stopped coming in to work. When I asked about her, someone told me they heard she had a mastectomy. I said I hoped she would be able to come back, and that person said the same.

Tammy didn’t come back.

I left early on a Friday, and fifteen minutes later the word came in. Everyone was devastated. One guy who was tight with her stormed out angry and didn’t return. I found out by text on Sunday when our manager said it would be okay if anyone needed to take the day off to mourn. I found out by text.

Last year a friend of mine died. We actually were close, had done hundreds of comedy shows together, hung out, shot the shit. We were pals. He used to call me brother, and maybe that’s how he referred to all fellow comedians, or maybe not, but let’s go with that. We were brothers. I saw on Facebook one day that he was in the hospital. He eventually revealed he had a stroke. He made jokes about it. A few days later he was back in the hospital. And then he wasn’t. I found out in a Facebook post.

A friend complained of an abdominal pain, thought it was related to their diet, asked if anyone could recommend a reason or solution. I don't think anyone suggested cancer. That, of course, was what it was. Less than two months later they were gone. I watched the whole process on Facebook.

There’s no hiding from it. Death will find you and hand you the black memo that reads, “Your world is different now.” One moment your friend is alive, and there’s a place in the universe for your plans and dreams. You’ll meet up at that place. You’ll call. You’ll joke. You’ll make good on the promises passed between you years ago. Then 160 characters later, they’re gone.

Simple Gods
January 21, 2019

We like easy gods. They hate or they love. They kill with furious anger or cradle with infinite kindness. The good people get the good face, the evil people get the snarl. We say, “God moves in mysterious ways.” We say, “God is unknowable.” Then we swish to the other side and claim to know exactly how to appease god. We say, “God has a plan,” and assume to know it’s a logical plan meant to benefit us.

If god were more complicated, we couldn’t handle it. What if there is no plan? What if it's all dice, and god sucks at gambling? What if cancer exists because god couldn't spell canker? What if god hates every single one of us because we improved his banana design?

It's easier to assume the god we remake every night in prayer is the same one that made us. It's either that or assume every kick in the shins delivered by the universe is a direct smite from the creator.

Do Over
January 13, 2019

There's a scene in City Slickers in which Billy Crystal's character comforts his brother who has just gotten divorce papers from his wife. He reminds his brother of the term they would use when their kickball landed on the roof: "do over." They would shout the phrase, and that wayward kick wouldn't count. "Your life is a do over," Billy Crystal says.

But it isn't that simple, is it? You can't erase the pain or the guilt you've accumulated over time. You can't unsay or undo the dumb or hurtful things you birthed into the world. But is there a way to carry it and not let it crush your spirit? Do you try to balance the harm you've caused and the harm you've suffered with some measure of goodness? Does a unit of pain and a unit of joy weigh the same?

Sorry for the harsh and heavy thoughts here at the start of the year. But it'll be all right. There are daffodils already sprouting in the yard, and my daughter tells the playground equipment she loves it. I fell better already.


--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