Journal of Fear and Hope (2019)

Happy Christmas from The Paper Kingdom
December 13, 2019

Hope you get all the toys and books you want.

The Bands Play On
November 1, 2019

Here's the soundtrack to an essay about a certain time in my life. Not all the songs were with with me during the time in question. Some found me later, but all were born in the same era, hoping to catch my ear and give me a little of their power.

I'm going to guess the late teen years are a favorite time for many folks. You are starting to flex a power and autonomy you didn't own before. You're making a little money and spending it how you want. The world is waiting on the other side of 18 with a heavy mantle of responsibility, but for now you are mostly the master of your own time. You only get that for a brief, precious moment.

Victory Lap
October 19, 2019

Last week I posted the fourteenth and final unsung song for Quiet Lions. In addition to the songs, I wrote a journal entry to accompany each one. They were short pieces, all under five-hundred words, but I wrote ‘em, and I’m proud. So allow me to take a victory lap here at the end.

Fourteen consecutive posts stretching from July to October. That’s just about a third of the year. (Why fourteen songs, by the way? Because that’s how many my first album had. That’s also the number of songs on All Hail West Texas.) Many of the journal entries were written in a single session. I sat down at my desk and just started writing. I had no idea what I wanted to write about until I wrote it. My favorite time to write was in the morning, in the dark, and if it was raining, all the better.

As for the songs themselves, a couple go back many years. "Hope There’s a Hell" was intended for the Saint Judas album. I wrote “They’re Not Coming for You” about two years ago standing at the bathroom mirror, pretending to be a rockstar, listening to amazing guitar riffs in my head I could never play in real life. (This was the song that decided I was going to write a political album.) I wrote about half the songs earlier this year. I wrote at work, in the car, while doing the dishes (a favorite of mine), while mowing the lawn, and I finished one waiting in line at McDonald's for tea and hash browns.

The title, Quiet Lions, I got from a Roger Waters song. He has a line, "when the lion within you roars." I heard it, and my brain just put those two words together. The album cover was a result of my daughter's habit of dropping things surreptitiously into people's drinks. She thinks it's hilarious.

Posting all fourteen songs as a single webpage was an experiment for me. I had to learn how to code it so the images would appear full-screen. A single page means there’s only one page to "like" on Facebook, and I don't think it's working properly. But should I care?

I was surprised how easy it was to match lyrics with background images. I didn't have to scour my collection. Everything was right there on my Instagram account.

I’ve been working on my next project synchronically with this one. It should be done by the end of this year. (But if it's not, no one will fire me.) It will be a collection of horror poems. It’s new territory for me, but the challenge has been rewarding. I hope you'll be here to read it.

Like Son
October 13, 2019

I’m putting off writing this essay. I just checked Twitter a few times, my phone, my email, tweeted out a thing, had to check spelling for that, didn’t want to look stupid. But I’m putting off writing this. A confession.

I just sat back and stared at the above paragraph. Thought about erasing it, turning this whole thing into a life lesson or spin it some other way that makes me look like a bringer of truth rather than the villain of this story. But that’s my role in this one. I’m the villain.

There was this kid who lived in the trailer next to mine. His name was Keith. Went to my school. We were in the fourth grade, if I’m remembering this right. My dad didn’t like Keith’s dad, so I didn’t like Keith. That was the full origin of my hatred for this boy. My dad didn’t like his dad. My father was paranoid, delusional. Some of that could be attributed to drugs, but most came from his mental illness. My dad was bi-polar. He would peer out from behind a curtain at the trailer next door, the comings and goings of the family. “Look at him in his red shirt,” he would say then go back to sleep on the couch.

So I felt it my duty to carry my father’s hate.

Just back from checking how my tweet did. No likes, but another writer followed me. Was that due to my tweet? Maybe. Maybe I’ll follow him back. I probably will.

Anyway, I tortured Keith at school. I pushed him on the playground whenever we happened to be out there together. I talked trash about him. And one day, when a friend told me Keith had called me a name, I chased him down, took the pin of a button I was wearing on my shirt that day, and stabbed him through the seat of his pants.

Yeah. I did that. I feel ashamed. I’m also ashamed to admit I don’t know what happened to Keith. I think I’ve blanked that memory out. It’s possible his family moved away because of my bullying. I don’t think my father actually vocalized his mistrust of the other man outside of our home. I carried that all by myself.

It’s tempting, still, to turn this into a lesson, to say I learned that lesson. But this is a confession. I was a terrible person. I did a terrible thing.

Every Breath a Séance
October 6, 2019

I believe in ghost stories, but I don’t believe in ghosts. The physical, ectoplasmic manifestation of the dead: Not a thing. As a wise man once said, “When you’re gone, you’re so gone.”

Memories, however, are a lot like ghosts. They do haunt you, from within and without. A song plays that reminds you of how you used to dial through stations with your mom, recording random things, marveling at the miracle of magnetic tape. You drive past a place you and your friend used to hang out and wish you could again. Or while sitting, minding your own business, a memory sneaks up and squeezes your heart.

In ghost stories, there are ways to put the spirits to rest, to ease their pain and cease their wanderings. That’s what makes ghost stories popular, the idea that we can stop the lonely ache from returning and enjoy our own lives again, simply by returning a lost book to its proper shelf or burning the house at the end of the lane to the ground. If only it were that simple.

Ghosts live in our minds, haunt our possessions, stare out at us from bathroom mirrors. They’re gone, but they never leave.

Of course, not all visitations are sad affairs. You think of that fishing trip with your dad, and you smile at how he taught you to tie a line, bite the sinkers into place, guess the depth of the lake and the appropriate distance between bobber and hook, then cast far out and watched the hot dog he let you choose as bait fly free and plop into the water on its own. If that’s all that came, the ghosts would be welcome.

But immediately after, you think of how your father stomped off into the woods and returned with not a worm or a cricket but a baby frog and impaled it on the hook--its tiny legs squirming, blood dripping from the hole in its stomach--then threw it out into the lake to drown or be eaten alive. You wish you could exorcise that half of the memory. You want to forget the fights you had with your spouse, the times you didn’t call your friend, the nights you hung up after a talk with your mom and silently cursed her name. But you can’t choose what the ghosts whisper, and you can’t send them away.

Every house is a haunted house, every breath a séance. And one day you, too, will rattle the chain you forged in life.

The Waves Roll In and the Waves Roll Out
September 29, 2019

Sometimes a memory get trapped in a recessed part of your mind, and you can only work it free and bring it into the light by telling that story. To yourself or someone else, aloud or on paper, or silently in the shower or on the way to work. It’s possible that in the telling of this moment you had mostly forgotten, you will get it wrong. You’ll fill in a blank space with a detail that feels correct, but it’s really you making up a new fact to smooth over the rough spots of your memory, the way paleontologists will make a bone out of plaster to complete a skeleton they could only partially remove from a cliff wall. This is one of those memories. It’s one of my oldest, buried deepest. I couldn’t pull all of it to the surface. But it’s enough.

When I was four, I took a trip to the beach with my mom. She was pregnant, so my brother was sort of present, but it was really just me and Mom at the beach. We left my father at home. I think they were fighting. We had planned this trip together as a family, but only the two of us went. I remember only a slight disappointment at my dad’s absence.

We ate at a restaurant. I had spaghetti. I can see it being placed in front of me, piled high and slathered in sauce. The weather was cool, but I don’t remember what month we went, in the year of 1979. We walked on the beach at night. The wind was strong and cold, as it always is on the beach at night. The waves tumbled onto the sand, sounding like secrets whispered in darkness.

Then we came home. Did my parents settle their fight and enjoy each other's company, at least for a while? Did my brother, as he was being made, smell the salt air and hear the wash of the waves rolling in then rolling out? I don’t know. But I can still feel a sort of lonely hope that followed me that whole night. Hope because I was with my mom, and she loved me. Lonely because I could tell something was coming to an end. A great many things were coming to an end. But if I lay still and breathe shallow, I can hear the water coming in and pulling back, approaching then retreating. Cold in a place that all other memories paint as hot. A time that pulled away from me and only comes back in a whisper, a secret I can only keep by telling.

God Against Us
September 20, 2019

We invented God as something to hurl our blame at. Locusts took your crops? God did it. Storm sank the ship your husband was stationed on? God’s fault. Sickness crippled your child? God is a real bastard, ain’t he?

Pretty soon we figured if God was that powerful, perhaps he could be bribed to go easy on us. Burn some offerings, hum some hymns, and maybe God would see it in his immense heart to hold off on the deformities and droughts. But despite the songs and sacrifices, the poxes and the predators showed up as usual.

What if ours wasn’t the only god? What if there was some other god responsible for our woes, a god sent by The Others.

The Others lived Over There. The Others dressed differently, ate odd-smelling foods, spoke an incomprehensible (and therefore secretive) language. The tribulations that were once attributed to the god we made up, were now the fault of that other, lesser god of a lesser country. So maybe, for the cost of a few goats, God could shower a little of that bad luck Over There instead. Please, God? We’ll be your best people.

As time did what time does, it became less and less a story of God-versus-god and more a story of us-versus-them. Our problems weren’t the fault of their god. It was simply their fault.

Civilized people don’t blame gods. Civilized people blame other people.

Two-Faced Heart
September 14, 2019

I’m a father, and just about every ounce of energy I exert is for the benefit of another person. It’s draining, being a caretaker. It exhausts your body, stresses your mind, inflames your emotions. You’re sometimes not your best self. Sometimes you’re not yourself at all.

But it’s worth it. The lack of sleep, the hallucinations and doubts that come with sleep deprivation. The lack of personal time and space, the fear and worry and anxiety that shake your heart and body every day. It’s worth it to open the front door after a full day of work, hear the rapid scurry across the floor, to hear your name over and over and receive that gripping hug around your knees. It’s all worth it.

But yeah, if some days you ponder the automatic and sudden explosion of the sun, I understand that, too. Both those thoughts can exist at once. Gratitude for the love and joy you get in return for your toiling. And the secret wish that everyone and everything would just go away.

Balls to You
September 6, 2019

Money doesn’t make any sense to me. I have a great job that provides for my family. But what I do isn’t particularly strenuous. I’m good at it, but unless the air conditioning unit chokes to death on a wayward possum, I’m not going to break a sweat doing it. I’ve met people whose job description is “Stop people from dying,” and was appalled to learn they made less than me. This kind of discrepancy is everywhere. The person you intrust your child’s hungry, malleable mind to on a daily basis makes a fraction compared to the person you watch carry a small ball back and forth over a patch of fake grass once a week. Just comparing salaries, you would come to the conclusion that the ball-handler is more important than the person who teaches the next generation what was important to the previous generations. The takeaway from those classes must be, “Grow up to handle balls.”

All jobs are not equal. We need some more than others. For instance, we don’t need professional ball-handlers. If no one held any more balls for the rest of eternity, we’d be no worse than we are now. We do, however, need people to grow, gather, prepare, package, cart, and cook our food. But those are the folks we choose to malign. The crew at McDonald’s made you a meal to help sustain your very life, but they get paid the bare minimum, and you believe that’s how it should be. A lot of the folks that harvested your fruits and vegetables snuck into this country across a desert in the dead of night to do the grueling work, and we put their children in cages. We don’t value them or their skills, and besides, they kick their balls instead of holding them, and that’s just weird.

“We can’t let just anyone into this great country,” says the proverbial Satan’s spokesperson. “We don’t have nearly enough resources, space, or jobs available for everyone.” That advocate of Beelzebub then lights up a cigar and bites into an unpeeled avocado.

Then why do we let in every single American that shows up dragging its gross placenta behind it? They’re welcomed with open arms and allowed to mooch off complete strangers for decades. They’re taught to drive and play sports. They’re not put in cages.

Well, not at first anyway. We do seem to have a thing for cages. You can make a lot of money putting people in cages, a lot of money deciding who does and doesn’t belong in one. Of course, if you get real good at ball manipulation, you don’t have to worry.

Time Is Not on My Side
August 30, 2019

Everything you do means there are an infinite number of things you are not doing. I’ve become astutely aware of this as I’ve gotten older. Each book I choose to read means there is a book I just won’t have time to get to. So do I re-read The Martian Chronicles or It? (I guess that particular question should be, do I re-read It or ten different other books? But you get the idea.) I can devote a fraction of my remaining time on Earth to catching up with Robert McCammon, or I can pick up Chuck Wendig for the first time. But reading means I’m not writing. Writing a story means an unwritten poem. Writing a poem means I’m not playing guitar. Playing guitar means I’m not playing a game. Playing a game means…

On and on. Round and round. Everything is in the way of everything else.

I misspoke above. You can’t catch up. Every hour wasted is an hour you don’t get back. I know: I’ve watched thousands of them fall away like dead leaves. But if you realize that this moment is the only moment you’ll ever hold, you might cherish it a little more. If it’s a pleasant moment, hold it tightly. If it’s a joyless moment then drink your bitters because they are yours.

I make that sound easy, don’t I? I know it isn’t. But since becoming a father, the time I have to myself has dwindled to just a few grains. But they are precious, and I’ve finished more projects in the last few years than I ever have. I’m on the downside of the hill now, picking up speed. All I got is all I’ll ever get, and I am thankful. For the bitter and beautiful alike.

A Ton of Feathers Still Weighs a Ton
August 23, 2019

One of my favorite records is The End of Silence by the Rollins Band. Tour merchandise for that album had a two-word slogan: Silence Sucks. Keeping quiet about your pain, your depression, your fears, your hopes, dreams, wants, it can pressurize till you burst. All of it comes spilling out over the rim in a froth of poison and bilge. Suffering in silence only earns you more suffering.

But here’s a question I ask myself often: How much talk is too much talk? When you reach out and grip empty air. When your catalog of concerns go unread. When you scream into the void and receive only echoes. When you’ve shared everything, and the universe answers with a shrug, what do you do?

What do you do?

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.