Creative Writing and the Like

I finish school in December. Absolutely nutters. No idea what I'm going to do. But I hope it's something to do with writing. This is my last semester of my undergrad and the first semester of creative writing I've ever taken. A bit too late, but I'm loving it. My other classes are Theater/Arts/Society, Math Decision Making Skills, and Personal Wellness. It's been a dream. In theater we rarely have class, and when we do, it's for watching plays and film. Like Pride and Prejudice. Kiera Knightly version. Swoon. Not applicable, but good. Math is drudgery, but I'm surviving. All that to say, I'm going to start posting the pieces I've been doing for class exercises. The objective of the following piece was to make a list. Here we go:

Men that you will inevitably fall in love with.

Heathcliff, in high school, while sitting in a bathtub until the water has gone cold like jello that hasn’t quite set.  His cruel streak will make you susceptible to other bad boys like Jesse from Gilmore Girls. Crooked smilers and the like.

Obi Wan Kenobi, AKA Ewan McGregor, which will confuse you during your formative years as you saw the originals where Alex Guinness is plodding around looking old and then you look at Ewan McGregor who is just so dashing and do we all turn to dust in the end?

Van Helsing, first as the gun-slinging action hero Hugh Jackman, later as the Dutch professor of Stoker’s world. Having met the first before the other, every reading of Dracula is now more than slightly provocative and sexy. The way he kicks vampire butt with his body and his mind will change you and might make you wish you were Kate Beckinsale.

Wolverine, after reading Ulitmate X-Men Volumes III-V, because when you’re twelve and comics are free in the library you go for it. Incidentally, once more you will fall for Hugh Jackman as he dashes across the screen in countless Marvel mash-ups. But you will always wish he was just a bit more like the comic. You will learn that when hair is drawn by artists it is magnetic and emotes, but when those same styles are attempted in the real world, they are flat and ludicrous.  You’ll still love Hugh Jackman and wish you had Pocahontas’ s hair.

Darcy, Fitzwilliam. You’ll wish you never stumbled across this guy because men. Just men. Also, you might think you want a love story like his and Elizabeth’s, not even considering Colin Firth, but you were just rereading Pride and Prejudice and most of it is bullshit.* It’s a lot of pain for a lot of gain. But whatever happened to being friends from the start?

*You’ll realize that you mistakenly fall for the “what appear to be charming” characters in films and books until they are unmasked, particularly where Austen is concerned. Willoughby and Wickham are just the sort for you, you think. Until you’re utterly in ruin and damn it, Heathcliff, you’ve reared your gorgeous head again.

Papa John. Taco John. Papa Murphy. Colonel Sanders. These are love affairs that will never end.

Tom Stoppard will make you fall in love Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They are dead.

But Hugh Jackman? You’ll always have Hugh Jackman.

Also Ewan McGregor. 

Tick Tock Through With That

Sometimes dreams are just so large, and instead of getting out there into the vast unknown, into the unrealized, I feel trapped in the soup of reality, a fog that seems to hang out about my mind, thick haze that slows my body down. Confined to a corporeal shell for eighty good years, twenty-two already used. Why the despair? Why such despair and painful longing? Longing that distracts from the present. What if reality and dream were interwoven instead of separate? What if I'm missing out on something right under my nose? Perhaps not what if, but what? For certainly there's a thing in front of me. Happening around me. Juggling relationship, juggling loneliness, a sense of something more, feelings of despair intermingled with joy and hope. Such a roller coaster ride of paint strewn across the canvas. Mixed metaphors aside. Getting inspired, that comes easy, and then it stagnates. Maybe I've run for too long. What am I saying? I've barely even run, and yet it feels so far. My heart is such a twisted thing, filled with longing. Maybe the longing is the hard bit. Maybe the dreams are the hard bit. Everyone wants to turn back the clock, change who we become, when every second is working out who we are becoming for the next. Such a stacked number of events and in-between workings. How are we supposed to know what to be? Who to be? How do we decide what is right and what is wrong? How do we burn one second and the next become so cold? The feeling maybe I've had it all wrong. Maybe we've really got to chase those dreams. Chase down those lies that well up and kill them dead. The vast expanse opens, the galaxy split apart, stars torn from the sky, the earth beneath my feet crumbled. Loneliness is such an odd thing to feel. Even surrounded by those I love, even in the midst of the joy and love, there's some kind of sadness. What is this sadness, this weight that pulls me down? Loss of pleasure in the things that once brought joy. Food that turns to ash in the mouth, stories that lose meaning before the end of the tale. How can we live in such pain? Well, we do. We keep pushing. Even if we'd rather be dead. Funny how you don't know how much you want to be alive until you want to be dead. So much wasted time, wasted breath, wasted hours and seconds. What truly matters? Friends? Family? Relationships? The feel of the sun on our skin? Clouds moving quickly over the horizon? Winds whisper on the raised hair of our arms? Making rent? Working to live. Traveling? Exploring? It's all so damned mundane. They say adventure isn't real anymore. It can't be. It just can't be. I refuse to live in a world where everything is day in and day out. I have to get out. Have to get inspired. Have to inspire others. Change the way they think. Change the way I think. Feel again. Really feel. So over the tortured artist thing. So over feeling everything to the nth degree, not being able to sort it out. Instead becoming a jumbled mess of misunderstanding, no sense to be made of all the live wires crossing. What is the tick? The push. I need to find my push. My tick. I lost it somewhere along the road. Lost my way. I sure as hell can't show anyone their way if I've got no idea what my own is. 

More Endings, More Beginnings

Catching up. Getting into the swing of things? Maybe. Wrapping up another year at university, getting all of my crap together (well pretending to--starting to shuffle through a pile of belongings until I'm distracted by some old letters) and getting ready to move out into a new place with some good friends next store. Moving in with perfect strangers, rolling the dice, playing a little Russian Roulette and crossing my fingers for the year to come. 

Getting so freaking excited to read the things that I want to read. Not that I read a lot of terrible books over the last nine months, but now I get to pick a few of my own. These are the books I actually enjoyed reading for class:

• Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch 5/5
• Jazz by Toni Morrison 4/5
• Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed 3.5/5
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz 5/5
• The Color of Water by James McBride 4/5
• Paradise Lost by Milton 4.5/5
• Our Fathers by Andrew O'Hagan 4/5
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 5/5
• The Ghost Road by Pat Barker 3/5

My summer reading list so far:

• House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewzki (heard it's super trippy, multigenre metafiction spookiness)
• S. by JJ Abrams (started this one back around Christmas but had to drop it for classwork)
• A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle (Irish Rebellion)
• Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (Irish immigrant in Canada sent to prison for assisting in murder)
• A Fine Balance by Rohinton Misty (State of Emergency in India)
• The Gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald (controversy of atomic physics at cambridge circa 1912)
•  Clash of Kings by George RR Martin (left off about two hundred pages in a year ago)
•  Possibly some more Dickens
• Definitely Romantics: Bring on all the Shelley, Blake, Coleridge, Burns, Keats, and Wordsworth
• Also Yeats

But moving on, getting out, breaking free of the establishment. Well, not quite. Taking spanish one and two this summer in order to graduate in the fall. You should expect me to be fully bi-lingual, or at least fluent in english and know how to say things like dresser in spanish by the end of the summer. 

Breathing deep. Seeing the wonderful world for what it is. Light broken by leaves, the evening sun burning in the panes. Just gorgeous. Delightful. I cannot wait to go floating down the river this summer. It's gonna be a good one. 

Here we go again,

M

Head Clearing

Tonight I hit the pillow, inward eye flashing.
Misconceptions, jumbled thoughts, scrambled sound
grates and stomps and champs through my mind.
The space between awake and asleep; tonight,
the gap ever widening between the two. No time
to decompress until the head hits ground
and the clock
is ever tick tock tick tocking on and on until morning.
Mingled memory and future clasp each other, break and scatter
amongst preserved catalogue of things to be forgotten,
things to be remembered, to be restored,
to be missed, to be loved, to be ignored, to be burned.
Effortlessly pounding, breaking like waves over rock, in tangled web of infantile design.
Faces. Grey. Faces. Defined.
Theories. Broken. Theories. Denied.
Guesses. Wrong. Tricks. Treats.
Trojan horses and minuscule feats. Rattling radiator,
thrum thrum of veins, whistling windows, and thoughts inhumane.
Bouncing, tearing, breaking through, resounding, firing, destroying milieu.
Tonight I hit the pillow and it burns through my mind.
Misconception, jumbled conjecture, fixed image,
treason barking.

Phil Wickham - "Carry My Soul" (Live at RELEVANT)

A Swift Sunrise

I get in this bind every few months or so. There's a panic button deep inside me, hidden away, in some place that's marked but is yet to be found. Circumstances pile up, situations manifest, until suddenly that button becomes more a part of me than the mechanism it was pulled from. Suddenly, it doesn't matter what glances you throw my direction, what words of wisdom you have to offer me. Hours and hours and hours and seconds become minutes of endless chatter until it becomes clear that there is no answer.

 No definable way to assay my qualms.

There's a fear attached to this mechanism, a fear of the unknown--not exactly. A fear of not knowing the unknown. A paradox. This paradox manifests itself every couple of months. I can be complacent for days on end until suddenly there's a light that breaks the darkness. Suddenly, cascading across the sky like a star crashing through atmosphere, adventure rears its head yet again. A call to the unknown. To slay the dragon. An unexpected journey. Not even a promise of a there and back again adventure. Just adventure. Visceral. Something to be touched, that can be grasped, that can be held tight, can be evident, seen. The tick tock of the clock has brought me this far.

It must be suppressed. But it isn't--I encourage it at every turn. I see here and there mere glimpses of what could be and these glimmers burn behind my retinas. Pieces of another place, something connected to this world and yet completely set apart. It calls. I answer. Tolkien and Lewis are undoubtedly at the center of it all, weaving these places into word. Something inside answers the ethereal.

I want adventure. Real adventure. Unfortunately the need for adventure often leads me to miss what is right in front of my waking eyes, mistaking them for the mundane. I must find adventure elsewhere. Stories. Now I'm bound to the life I lead, but within stories, oh within stories, I'm on adventure. I'm out there. Experiencing. Slaying the dragon. Sure-footed, sure-hearted, sure-handed.

Here's hoping I find the adventure in my life,
M

Bent Corners and Caged Wonders

When you open a book there is more than just a telling, more than just some adventure, there is a story. A story beyond typed words. Beyond each carefully chosen letter, crafted phrase. There's a story in the parchment, in the gritty texture of the page, in the stains, of mosquitos or spiders killed in a frantic shutting of the book, in the slime of some borrowed supper smudge, in the deliberate marring of the page by the pen, the turned corner of the page. 

I've always the devoured the page, the fiction trapped between cover to cover, but I have also stopped to consider the story encapsulated without the book, surrounding it. When I was younger I would frequently bend the top corner of the page to mark my progress, watch in wonder and fulfillment as that little tic mark moved down the spine of the book, some symbol of the experience. I owned a copy of Tolkien that I lovingly dragged around everywhere, and the sloppy cover of this softback book has been bent beyond reckoning, soiled by rain, and trod upon, and kicked around more than one bus. It was there, on that bus, that I was ridiculed for not taking care of the book. That I had diminished its value.

That was when I stopped dog-earing. When I made sure to keep the page pristine, unmarred my experience. There was no longer a story, simply an act. An act of repetition, of guarded emotion, of careful closed thoughts. There was a story and a prison. No longer a story and an adventure. No longer a companion, a confidante. Just another to take care of. Years later I awoke to a revelation.

Books are for experiencing. Books want to be read. Want to be lived in. Crave a reader who will take them through hell and high water, who is not afraid to lovingly curl the corners of the page, to signify a rite of passage. Books that long for an adventure beyond the ideas contained within. Books that don't mind a splatter of this or that. Books want you to keep coming back for more. Rather than a good dusting. 

Books shouldn't expire in some bookshelf, looking classical and morose. They need to breathe. Be kicked around the floor of a bus, shoved into a bag, held closely. Inanimate objects aside, there needs to be more story than the one dictated. Let's be meta, folks. 

Gnawing Memory

Here's the worry: I think everyone has a tendency to idealize situations. People. Places. And the thing is, the longer the time gap, the larger the perceived distance, the more enigmatic, the more full of hope a person gets in regards to idealizations. Our edges begin to soften, we glow with a light that may not have been there. We project our visions, change mere mortals into demigods through memory, through our perceived notions. Or rather lack thereof. And then it occurs. The moment. The meeting. And it falls to pieces. Becomes far less than our imagined castles as our contrivances crumble.

Who do I remember wrong? What, where?

That's the canker that gnaws.

Just Decide

If you want to feel defeated. Overwhelmed. Exasperated. Just decide to graduate high school early in an attempt to get out of the state you don't want to live in. Just decide to attend a private christian university for about as long as your brain can possibly handle without your heart committing mutiny (one and half years). Just decide to move North on a whim for cheap schooling and change your degree (one year). Just decide to change your degree emphasis and spend half a year making right angles. Just decide to take a semester off of school because all you've been bloody doing is school for your whole entire life, just decide to have the right amount of income to not receive the financial aid that you direly need. Just decide to work very hard in high school so that you become second in your class and receive no scholarships. Just decide to find another university after you've already been through two in order to complete a degree that you're not even sure you want. Just decide that what you really want is to go to another country, Scotland, overseas but be completely unaware and unable to decipher how to go about that plan. Decide to sit on the couch one day and browse for hours looking for schools, knowing it's just one more session of entrance and exit counseling for more loans. Just decide that a degree in Scotland would basically mean starting over and therefore a waste of around 30,000 dollars in loans. Just decide.

The Head or the Heart

Here's the thing--everyone runs about madly, dashing about, trying to find the right words, the right phrases, the right meaning behind the heart. And I think it's a bit more difficult than extracting an idea, a thought from the heart. That's the thing about this muscle--that keeps the body moving and the soul thriving--it's so hard to define. In a cardiovascular sense, yes, it's a muscle that pumps and pumps and pumps until one day that muscle makes its final contraction, ending someone. But it's also more obscure than that--it's an idea, a thought--things that can't be written on paper or explained without some kind of confusion. That can't be translated. And I think that scares us. Terrifies me. What is the purpose, the motivation? Why does the heart burn and the head question? It's this terrible truth and confliction of the head and the heart that leads so many to misunderstand his fellow man--to use their head where they should use their heart to understand or vice versa. Perhaps what I'm trying to say is that the heart is the most difficult part of having a soul. Of being a soul. Confined to the mere space of eighty years. And it's this urgency--this knowledge that each pump leads to the last--that terrifies me. Mortality is what it is. But what if you had such an acute understanding of mortality--that the next contraction could be your last--that suddenly all of the rigamarole and hoop jumping felt like pish posh. Like unequivocal waste. Time is limited. Time is false. And if we only have so much time, so less time, how can we ignore the burn of the heart? I think if we would listen we would hear the whisper of our heads--logic--logic that says let go of inhibition. The head is closer to the heart than we could ever imagine. And to ignore the burn of the heart would be to question the power of the head. All that to say, burns can't be ignored. Can't be left off until something is accomplished. After all--to ignore the burn only worsens the pain. The pain the head will have twenty years from now, as it slowly comes to the knowledge that the heart has been roasting and left to wallow, to forget where the source of the heat came from.

Twenty years from now what burn will have scarred your heart because you misinterpreted the head?

Chuffed

I've been catching far too much sun, been sharing far too many laughs, enjoying work (which is a strange thing), flirting wildly with passerby's, and worrying not about the whithertos and the whyfors. It's been absolutely gorgeous. I've been absolutely gorgeous. Moved into the new apartment, bought a hellofa lot of groceries of the fresh variety, nicked a really good deal on beans for "beans on toast", dreamt a little more of Scotland, ran into old acquaintances, fell off a bar stool in total and complete swoonage, and managed to consume more than your average amount of cups of coffee. 

Absolutely cannot wait for vacation which happens to be in approximately twenty days (hurry the hours!), and having just watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail for perhaps the (insert some ridiculous number here) amount of times, I find myself quite satisfied with myself. See, there's this huge stigma about being safe, about withholding one's self from the rest of the world, but that's bloody hard work and blusteringly boring. Oh, don't put yourself out on the line because then you might be shot down. Well, consider me a goose with a silly looking apparatus alerting the general hunting populace of my location, because I am not going to get bled on. Even if you threaten to bite my legs off. 

To be succinct: It's summer and...

Rightfully chuffed,

M

Sleep Evasion

Because it's impossible to sleep when you can pour Gotye in to your head and endless dubstep remixes ala James Vincent McMorrow.

It doesn't help that I closed at the coffee shop tonight and so have espresso pumping through my veins. Turns to alternate methods of falling asleep: grabbing my extended editions of The Lord of the Rings to watch the appendices. No regrets.

Dangerware

I've been having regular dreams where I am a certified bad-ass. Whether dealing with sociopathic serial killers, apocalyptic worlds, or totalitarian societies, I've become quite the revolutionary there. I've decided that my bad-assery should not be confined to the world of the ethereal, and therefore, shall be committing deeds of great bad-assery  to great renown, and be the all around bad-ass of the upper Midwest. Yeah, it got away from me.

There's only so many times one can say bad-ass before the bad-assery becomes less bad-ass.

In preparation, I will shave my head, get a few more piercings, and acquire weaponry--circa the medieval century rather than modern technology--and throw them off with my anachronistic supply of dangerware. Well, maybe not. 

But dangerware, I think I've really got something there--hopefully it doesn't infringe on the copyright of tupperware (although for some reason I feel like that might be more of a registered trademark at this point); it could be a very lucrative business with all of those silly parties and such. Come to my dangerware party, Mary Kay and Pampered Chef are so last year. On top of that, anyone who purchases dangerware must sign an agreement to clean their dangerware after they use it, no more of this atrocious using a blade and then sticking it back in the scabbard all full of entrails and such. To use dangerware one must be conscientious. As conscientious as any person purchasing dangerware could possibly be. 

Also, I could open an accompanying strip mall full of lingerie based on the dangerware business. Real racy stuff. 

Hopefully not infringing,

M

Posing

Egregious Salute to the Gentry

It's been centuries, and by that I mean years, and by that I definitely mean about a month since I've shoved the poor thoughts of my mind on the general populace--well I say no more! Prepare yourselves!

I've spent the last month rummaging through the ups and downs of life shifts, blah, blah, blech, and I am now dealing with the closing of yet another semester at university, ergo I have about zero time on my hands (that isn't already dictated by someone or something else) and with the arrival of a new job (barista-ing) I haven't had enough bloody time on my hands to deposit ruminations of any sort. 

In any case, I suppose I should catch you up on the malarky and facetiousness that is my life:

It was wholesome and delicious. If by bear you mean chicken. Or if by bear you mean human beings bothering me.

I ate an egregious amount of peanut butter. It was astoundingly delicious.

I used what little time I had left on my hands to watch any Moffat that I possibly could and as a consequence spent countless hours screaming at a box.

Got my freak on to Fun.

Just saying. And they don't have posh prisons in Northern MN. At least not that I'm privy to.

So mostly this is just here because I'm hoping that this gif-heavy post will be enough incentive for me to return on the morrow and invest time here as well. More diabolical thoughts to follow, complaints, raves, and otherwise duplicitous material.

I shall return to you--good sirs and assorted gentry and the like,

M

New Man

The new man in my life is Espresso. He keeps me up all night, keeps me going through the day, and keeps my heart in a heightened state of near hypnotic paralysis all the while administering shocking reminders of his presence. He's cheeky. Sometimes I walk in on him and he's completely fried. Other times he's covered from head to toe in chocolate.  Espresso irrevocably drives me insane with ecstasy when he puts his nose to the grindstone and leaves me utterly senseless for the rest of the day. 

He may not have a beard but he's damn good,

M

The Bird

Every once in a while something inside me just snaps when it comes to academia. I can handle moronic behavior, really, let's face it--we're talking about me here. But what I can't stand is a professor saying the same inane things every time the class adjourns, running about in a frazzled manner equivalent to that of a dodo bird on crack, all the while arbitrarily oozing the education level of a pre-pubescent child. 

Suddenly, all those little moments add up to a hallucination of epic proportion until my poor little brain says "to hell with academia and your silly teachers".

It escalates like this:

Wait, you're saying you don't want me to analyze the text we are reading in my reflection paper? You say I theorize overmuch? Are my words too big for you? Shall I insist on discarding my vocabulary for your convenience? Well, then, let me reduce it to the lowest common denominator so that your tiny brain cells can compute and your neurons can start firing. You know what? I'll write you a paper. 

Not just any paper. What I like to call The Bird Paper. 

The Bird Paper has evolved a lot over the years. At first, it was a sort of passive way of acknowledging my disgruntled feelings towards professors. Back then, I was still more worried about the grade than anything, couldn't risk the wrath of the almighty teacher. See, but as the years go by, and cynicism festers in the way it generally does, and sarcasm develops even more quickly, I just can't help myself. The Bird Paper is basically my way of flicking said professor off with words. A weapon from a more civilized age. 

I turn in my Bird Paper, scathing criticisms and all fully expecting some challenge, and of course, I get the paper back within five minutes and a glittering A+ strewn across its cover along with an admonition of my "excellent" writing skills. Which leads me to think that I need to just start actually titling my Bird Papers as "You're Complete Rubbish And I Have Absolutely No Idea How You've Managed To Make It This Far In Life Or Get A Degree For That Matter Or Even Get Published You Probably Wrote A Terrible Self Help Book That Has Ended More Lives Than Saved Them."

Something like that.

Of course, it will naturally conclude with this quote:

Mollified,

M

Urges and Satisfaction

An urge will come to you. A very strong one. The universe points to its fulfillment. Humor begs for it. The stars aligned for this urge. This urge to do something completely bonkers. Something completely justifiable. But then, you will listen to your ethical compass, and say no to said urge. Granted, if you gave into the urge, several people would be wildly offended, but even more would be frankly satisfied and all the better for it. Still--resist said urge. Yes, those crackpots who have been chiming in all your life will have to live another day without your input. Someday you will utter the most scathing, wondrous, witty remark and their damned tongues will be tied. Until then, resist said urge. Embrace it and revel in its mysteries. With time, this urge will become all the more beautific and will develop the necessary antiquity needed for its full blown sock 'em and drop 'em KO round. Keep it secret. Keep it safe.

Resisting...urges,

M

Battle Arena Motivation

Finding myself completely dumfounded, amused, and slightly wary of the weather these days. It really is ludicrous how brilliantly the sun is shining and how high the temperatures are skyrocketing in Northern MN. Unnatural really. But loving it all the same. See, that's the thing about spring, it always manages to sneak up on me when I least expect it and then I'm suddenly flummoxed by the idea and altogether enthralled with the changing temperatures and weather. I never realize how much I want it to be spring until spring actually begins. Oh, the sun wants to show itself? Oh, it isn't going to set until after seven? Oh, the universe is a beautiful thing that I've forgotten about for the last five months? Come to me spring, I welcome you with open arms.

In a show of good faith towards the weather, I've started running two miles every day. Why, you might ask? Certainly because it's gorgeous outside. But mostly because I just finished reading The Hunger Games trilogy and have come to the conclusion that I need to be in much better shape to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. The brilliant bit is that preparation goes all ways concerning the apocalypse: I'll be better able to evade zombies, survive the battle arena, and look damn sexy doing it. Sometimes the best motivation is the most unrealistic one. But who knows? Bear Grylls will vouch for me someday. Or just keep drinking his urine.

Definitely surviving the post-apocalyptic world (barring virus),

M

Dull Aches

You'd expect the ache to die out after a while. Expect the spark to finally bluster out in a cold afternoon, expect to watch the coals slowly turn inwards on themselves and leave only the decimation of ash behind. The ache doesn't die, it festers. Aches and desires go together like a balloon in a child's hand, a helium filled piece of stretched rubber that tugs incessantly at the heart until it finally manages to wrest itself from its captive's hand and rise meteorically to the atmosphere and beyond. Ache and desire, the juxtaposition of pain and elation, of fulfillment and doubt. Desire is such a wonton thing, really, grasping at straws and digging deeply for hope in the same breath. 

"How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand that there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep, that have taken hold." *

 Some hopes that go to deep, that have taken hold. That have latched onto the deepest parts of the soul, that have invaded the walls of our innermost being, that have decimated any logic, that have thrown thought out the window, thrown questioning into the pit of who-cares. Hope is a more dangerous thing than despair, it aches, it supplants any reasoning, supplants the words of your closely guarded circle, challenges the odds and consumes rhetoric. Hope is wily. Hope laughs in the face of opposition, makes a mockery of the fool who dares to challenge its lofty being.

"You have suffered enough and warred with yourself, it's time that you've won. Take this sinking boat and point it home, we've still got time. Raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice, you've made it now. Falling slowly, sing your melody, I'll sing it loud. I paid the cost too late, now you're gone."**

Exult in hope. Exult in the lack of control hope brings, exult in the fallout, in the outcome. Exult in the uncanniness of it all, exult in hope's mockery of all things false, in hope's dull ache. Drown in the elation of this ache, though it burns your heart to a cinder and brings you to the edge of the precipice each time, drown. If there is one magical quality confined to the dull earth and rock of this planet hurtling towards its eventual demise, it's hope. Hope is ache. Hope is desire. Hope is destructive. Hope is regenerative. Hope is.

M

*Frodo Baggins, The Return of the King

**Glen Hansard, Falling Slowly