No Place Like Home

It's been longer than I like since the last time I sat down to write. Admittedly, it's at least partially a good thing, since the reason I haven't written is because I've been out and social a lot lately, something I've been lacking lately.  Still, it's frustrating. I really hadn't realized how important writing was to me until I stopped doing it for so long. Now that I've gotten used to it again, I feel like my sanity somewhat hinges on taking the time to put something down in words, even if it's just some observations or sharing ideas.

I haven't got a new story idea today (not that that has stopped me in the past, most of those flash fiction thingies were made up on the spot without any planning), but I do have a few things I want to talk about. There have been quite a few strange occurrences and observations over the last few weeks. For instance, I've noticed an inordinate number of people still confuse the terms "introverted" and "shy." Well, not just shy; sometimes it's confused with introspective, other times with intellectual. That one really gets me, personally, but then it's not the only trait that is applied to that idea. They're assumed to be close-minded, dismissive atheists as well, so I guess I shouldn't be upset about shy.

I could talk about the car, and about driving, and the thousands of frustrations that have resulted from that. There's the strange occurrences lately involving uncharacteristically irrational reactions from many people close to me over the last few weeks, which has caused me to wonder if it's somehow my fault. There was the sudden realization there are a few things happening in my life right now that should be very upsetting to me, and yet somehow I don't have the capacity to actually be upset at things that directly affect me and only me right now.

Despite all of this weirdness, I feel compelled to talk about a singular occurrence, something that just came up and I simply can't stop thinking about.  And that is this strange neighborhood here in Seattle that I just arrived in for the first time. Seriously, my brain is farting more than my butt, and I've got worse gas than that 76 station of the interstate in the middle of Bumfuck, Kentucky.

For starters, I think this neighborhood is the inevitable epitome of every single stereotype about Seattle. There are 4 coffee shops on a single block, everyone looks like they're trying out for a Nirvana lookalike contest, and there's the weird air of "We're not poor, just broke" coming from everyone I pass. Despite the fact that I've scene pretty much every race of human here that I'm aware of, they all seem to be getting along fabulously (in both senses of the word), and looking around outside just feels like you're looking not at reality, but in fact at Instagram, specifically someone's profile who is of the firm belief that the sepia filter makes everything seem "gritty" and "real."

Seriously, everything I had ever heard about Seattle is right here. No air conditioning everywhere, pretentiousness practically oozes from the very walls, not to mention the people inside them, and there isn't a person here who hasn't been accused of furthering the liberal agenda. There's more tattoos then you can find at a Grateful Dead concert, and the number of hippy skirts is only outnumbered by the Jesus sandals and (admittedly kickass) light leather boots.  It's tucked away in this little corner in the middle of everything, and yet somehow it seems like you can only access it by foot.  God forbid you take a car here; if you somehow survive the tiny roads filled with buses and trucks, make it up all of the hills (and yes, it seems like every direction is always uphill from where you are currently), and finally navigate through the myriad of one-ways and pedestrian-only streets, hopefully you've figured how to park your car vertically, because every space is taken by q vehicle that looks like it hasn't been started in at least five years. Not out of neglect of course, but as a statement against the audacity of our culture forcing the need for environment-destroying, gas guzzling monstrosities.

Needless to say, I LOVE it here. The book store I'm sitting in is fantastic.  I only looked at the drink menu in the cafe for a minute before I was pretty much told to hurry the fuck up so she could close in fifteen, the old shelves look like they're going to fall on me any minute, and there's a cacophony of voices that seem to be telling me that they're better than me, simultaneously but all in their own, unique way.  There is a line that practically wraps around the store simply to get thirty seconds of face time with a celebrity whom I can only describe as internet-famous, and the walls are lined with tiny, self-developed color photos of local street signs and sights, priced as if they were shipped in from Italy.  Even the store owner seemed snarky and at least mildly emotionally abusive.

I think I'm in love.

Thoughts in a Food Court

Note @ Seattle, Washington

This was done in Evernote, as that's what I had and I was trying something new. Let's see how it works. :)

Perkie and the Steel Forest, 1

It had been days since she had anything to eat.  Gathering food in the wood had always seemed so easy, and the few times she had a rough time of it, she could always rely on her friends to help her out.  It hadn’t worked that way since she stumbled into this steel forest; none of the trees seemed to produce their own food, and the only things she could find to eat seemed to be carefully guarded by humans or kept strange, bright baskets that prevented her from getting to them.

She came to the steel forest almost two weeks ago.  It seemed like fun at first: there were stories about the humans who would come to the wood from there, but no one had gone to where they were from. Well at least not any that she was aware had come back.

The dare seemed innocent enough, but she soon lost her way among the giant trees and the criss-crossing pathways.  No matter where she wandered, she never good find even a glimpse of her beloved wood.  Sometimes she would see something she thought was it in the distance, but it was never it; the steel forest seemed to have its own small places of green and grass, but there was no hope of finding food or shelter among the small copse of trees.

She had resorted to stealing the human’s foods from their kitchens.  She only learned that word a week ago, but it seemed terribly familiar now.  The humans dedicated entire rooms to the process they apply to animal fats and vegetables to make it “palatable” to them (which was another word she recently learned, but she still didn’t quite understand what it meant).  Until recently, she was able to still find berries or nuts that hadn’t been processed by the humans yet, but that seemed to be next to impossible the last few days.

She found herself staring at some slices of what the Cook had called “white cake.”  They were some that were small enough to grab and sneak away without the humans noticing, but she found herself hesitating.  She had taken a piece of the human’s changed food before, back when she first arrived, but she had regretted it ever since.  Flying was so much harder after eating it for almost a day.  She felt heavier, and although she eventually got used to flying again, she never managed to shake the feeling that she had been changed by the experience.

There was little else to be done right now though.  If she didn’t eat soon, she’d faint; if she fainted, a human were surely find her, and if that happened, she would certainly be killed, or worse.  They didn’t seem to like anything that came from the wood, and tended to chase off, hunt or kill everything they found that wandered into their steel forest from her home.

Many raccoons would come back from the steel forest, talking about the great food they would steal from the bins of scraps they kept by their trees, but these raccoons were always fat and lazy; not many lived for much longer after bragging about their conquests, either dying from the dangers of the wood or from the humans when they try to gather more food from the bins.

Still, she could remember the taste of the last meal she had stolen like this.  The strange vegetables that had been dipped in some sort of oil and turned crispy-brown were strange, but good.  They did little to compare to the sweetest berries she once had back home, but she could not find them anywhere here.  Her stomach would not allow her to go much longer right now, and this smelled so much sweeter than the strange “fries” she had sampled before.

The Cook turned his back.  With a flutter, she raced in, grabbing the slice from the leaf upon which it sat.  She could lift it; she pulled as hard she could but only managed to break off a piece.  She fell backwards onto the leaf, which surprisingly didn’t make the strange “clinking” noise she was used to hearing when she fell on them.

It took her a moment to realize that the leaf had been lifted, and was racing towards the same corner she had just come around.  She saw the tiny, stubby fingers of one of a young human, seemingly holding the leaf above their head as they raced out of the room.

The leaf and cake stopped suddenly around the corner.  She tried to come up with a plan, but wasn’t able to think of anything.  The plate was lowered, and she found herself looking directly into the eyes of a young, female human.

“Whoa,” it said slowly, as its pupils widened.  With only a moment’s pause, but without taking her eyes off of the faerie sitting in front of her, the girl grabbed a handful of the cake and began eating.  She continued to carry the leaf out of the building, cake and faerie in tow, and sat down in a well lit but unpopulated alleyway and began eating more.  All the while, she kept watching and smiling.

“Hi!” the girl said finally.  “My name is Carrie.  What’s yours?”

The faerie gulped visibly.  She stood up on the leaf, bowing formally.  “I am Percilla Piper.  But please, call me Perkie.”

“Hi, Perkie!”  The girl grabbed another handful of food with her stubby fingers, but instead of stuffing more into her face, she instead extended it to the faerie.  “Cake?”

Perkie took a bite.  It was sweeter than the sweetest berry in the wood.

And I Get By

Comfortable.

There are many words which are commonly referred to as positive words that I disagree with.  You can see my long rant on the word Hope for an example.  Then there’s the fact that I find Moist to be mildly dirty (I blame How I Met Your Mother), and Pointless to be generally derogatory to ANYONE you may be having a discussion with.

COMFORTABLE.  This word is the downfall of so many people, even so much as to be extended to peoples as well.  Comfortable is a term which I believe has doomed great men to mediocrity, happiness to contentment, purposeful to a meaningless existence.  It is comfort that decides that we are ok with the allotment we have been handed, comfort that drove us to believe that what we have is good enough, despite ideas that may drive us to be better than anything we had accomplished so far.

Comfort is what drives us to avoid achievement, to revel in in the idea of simply meeting the bar of expectation.  And yet, it’s the very definition of the american dream.  White picket fence, three bedroom house, and 2.4 children.  The failure of sheepish conformity that defines America as the sad middle-ground of the first world and everything we come to define with what we expect from life.

I’ve spent most of my life trying to see what I can do to break out of my comfort zone.  Admittedly, I SUCK at this endeavor.  I still like my personal bubble (Uh, dude?  You just brushed my arm.  Buy me dessert or my wife will totally kick your ass.), and I still tend to watch my words around people I don’t know, especially in public.  I can’t go a single day outside my apartment without taking a shower, and I still have to avoid every crack in the sidewalk less be attacked by a metric fuck-ton of guilt over the possibility of causing my mother harm.

On the flip side of that, I also try to travel to somewhere I haven’t been at least once a year, I moved across the county because I was simply done with where I was at the time, and I’ve gone out of my way to make new friends despite the fact that I hit 30 a year ago, a time when most people are instead settling in to habits and deciding what they want car they want to buy for their midlife crisis.  Meanwhile, I’m planning the next big trip, debating the merits of our current town or moving away, and working my way up (admittedly slowly) towards swimming in the ocean after a 15 year phobia.

So fuck all of ya’ll.

Comfort is a false dream of settling, something that I decided against a long time ago before I ever met my wife.  It came from a very solid foundation that unfortunately has been belittled by modern society but that I’ve come to a conclusion that is actually based in fact.

I’m awesome, and moreso than that, I’m as awesome as I’m willing to make myself.  I deserve every single ounce of fucking effort I can put into every single thing I do, and saying that I’m not is only belittling myself and all those around me that care about me.

I (VERY FORTUNATELY) hit this realization a good while before I met my wife.  I hit a nice stride where I started treating myself when I was single.  I took myself out to dinner at fancy restaurants when I needed congratulations for a job well done; I went by myself to see a movie in a theater that I really wanted to see, regardless of company or someone vilifying my desire; I went on road-trips just to see people that I wished to see, regardless of whether I had company or any other preparations.  I made a 10 year plan to move across the country slowly, stopping once a year in a pre-planned state with a good job market to work a menial job and meet people.  

It was epic and awesome, and for the first time in a long time, I came to love myself without needing an outside image to confirm my own beliefs in myself.

So when I finally met my wife, I realized something that I don’t think many people did: She was actually someone who was perfect for me.  She was not filling some hole I needed at the time, I was not settling for someone in order to avoid being alone, and I was not simply conforming to some societal standard of being a couple.  I was completely whole and happy by myself.  And she somehow made me happier.  Not more complete, but more something that I could not have been should I have been without her.

This isn’t some belief in destiny, or fated to meet or anything like that.  This was a simply one in a million chance that I was actually ready for, since I had taken the time to develop what that actually was.

Now I don’t think my way is the best way; a lot of people have met “the one” in their own special way.  My point is there’s a necessity in breaking habits.  No matter how you do anything, whether it’s meeting someone, taking a job, deciding what kind of food it is you really love, nothing will ever be your own personal truth until you break your idea of what’s comfortable or safe and actually make an informed decision based on experience, not inferences or references.

I’ve said this often, in hundreds of formats.  Take a look at your worst case scenario.  If the worst thing that can happen is that you have to pick up the pieces and start over, then take the risk.  Starting over, in almost every situation, can lead to new perspectives that can give you a boost towards a happiness that is forever lost in the American dream of comfort.  

Stop looking at the worst case scenario as a sure thing, and start looking at the good that can come from a 10% chance.  This isn’t a speech to tell you to go gamble on the lottery.  I’m telling you to gamble on yourself, to believe in yourself, and to believe in your own happiness, instead of the happiness you’re told is what you’re destined to get.  Destiny or fate or karma, should you believe,  is only a stepping stone.  Who you are dependent not on what the universe gives you, but what you do with it.

Cave Johnson said it best in these regards.  Make the universe rue the day it gave you lemons.

Lux Caelum I

The view from the port window was amazing every time.  From far enough way, the petty squabbles of the people below seemed so insignificant.  The vast expanses of blue and white, green and brown, made it impossible to even imagine that a war might have been going on, soldiers killing soldiers or murder on the streets of some major city that was maybe a barely noticeable speck from this distance.

The elderly man smiled as he continued to stare out the glass.  Even though he knew full well it wasn’t actually glass (one of the engineers on board explained it to him on multiple occasions but he could never recall the actual name), he still preferred to think of it as such.  For some reason, the familiarity of the substance made him feel more at home than any sort of knowledge of the safety behind the science of what was actually there.

There was a knock at the door.  The man smiled to himself.  The knocking was another quaint insistence of his; the tone that the button outside created was so very impersonal.  He preferred every guest to knock instead, as it often could tell him so much about what was on the other side.  Before they ever came in, he could often tell who it was, what kind of mood they were, and sometimes was even able to figure out what they wanted.

Sure, the screen next to the bed that showed via strategically placed cameras what exactly was on the other side of the door, down to fluctuations in their body temperature and electronic equipment they have on their person, could have easily told him much of the same information.  It didn’t feel right though.  It was cheating, like a calculator on a math quiz or a map during a survival exercise.  Depending on these machines instead of your instincts would only get you killed.

He laughed at his own train of thoughts.  This coming from a guy who’s sitting in a space station, completely dependent upon the technology around him to keep him alive.

“Come in, Commander,” he said finally.  The door opened a moment afterwards, and Commander Kelsee walked into the room.  She stood just inside the doorway as it closed behind her, not saying a word until the admiral turned to face her.

He smiled.  Her attention to the little details of protocol was why she was largely his main point of contact on the station.  She kept track of everyone’s idiosyncrasies, managing to avoid offending anyone and learn almost everything about someone within moments of meeting them.  She exuded perfect control, both over herself and others.  Even him.

Most importantly, though, she was trustworthy.  She believed in her ideals, and his for that matter, and that made her the most important part of the small team up here.

He turned around to face her.  He found the habit of his former superiors to talk to their subordinates with their back turned to be exceedingly rude.  It does not matter where you stand; you always stand there because of each person, alive or dead, that followed you there, and forgetting that was the fastest route to betrayal, or worse, complacency.

This time, however, he didn’t say anything immediately after turning around.  Her knock was a little faster, a little higher than she gave when she was coming in for appointed rounds.  Not enough to cause alarm, but enough to know she had something to say.  So he waited for her to speak first.

She hesitated before speaking.  It wasn’t a good sign.  “You have to teach me sometime how you can tell so much just from the sound of a knock.”

She was making small talk.  Another bad sign.  Still, he smiled his best disarming smile.  “It’s easy enough to explain, but noticing the differences really just comes with time and attention.  Regardless, I don’t think you came here to discuss knocking.”

Her expression didn’t change.  It remained as unreadable as it did when she first arrived.  He was reminded once again to never play poker with her.

“The engineers and physicists have gone over the numbers one more time.  There’s no way around it; one way or another, we’re going to go out of orbit, regardless of how we use the maneuvering engines.”

He nodded, the grin leaving his face.  “No way to get a ship out here to rescue sir?”

“No sir.  Communication with anyone on the surface would reveal our position.”

“And the centrifugal plan?”

“Not in our current orbit, sir.  We are too far away from moon’s orbit to use it, and our air wouldn’t last long enough to use any other celestial body.”

He leaned against the table in the center of the room.  The image from the camera on the bottom of the station showed clearly on the surface the table the land directly below them: a large city, hundreds of buildings and criss-crossing streets filling the entire.  The older admiral stared at the table for a long time.  He knew why he was selected to lead this mission, and he knew what he would decide to do in the end, but that didn’t mean he had to be happy about it.

“We’re all knew what we were getting into when we signed up for the mission, Sir.”  The Commander spoke softly to him, as if to someone mourning.  “You don’t hold responsibility for all of us; we all made the decision.”

“No offense, Commander, but you don’t have to press the damn button.”

“That’s true, Admiral.  Although I will, if you won’t.”

The admiral stayed there for a moment, continuing to stare at the table.  Minutes passed before he found himself able to respond, looking up at her.  “You don’t have to worry about that, Commander.  I know what’s at stake here.”

“It will save hundreds of thousands of lives, and bring--”

“Peace to people who have never known it, yes, I know.”  He sighed.  “But someone has to show respect for those that are sacrificing their lives to make peace happen.  Both us up here, and those down there.”  He gestured back to the table at the image on the table.

The commander didn’t respond, outside of a small nod.  After another moment of silence, the admiral waved her away, and she left the room.

He sat down at the table, and stared out the window for a little while longer.  Peace.  It was easy to imagine up here, despite how impossible it was to achieve when he was below just months before.  The irony of whole situation settled on him like a cloak of iron, snuggly holding him to the seat of execution.

He looked at the table once more.  Then he closed his eyes, and stared at the keypad in front of him.  He entered the code he had committed to memory long before he ever left earth’s atmosphere.  There was only a short pause before the view from the camera turned white.  The delay from the white-washed image and the view of the crater where the city once was took much longer.

He looked out the glass window once more from his chair, as it began to retreat much faster than he had expected it to.  He knew they would be traveling fast as the weapon pushed back on the station, but distance was an illusion in space.  A part of him was still hopeful up until a moment ago that help might catch up with them, but that seemed unlikely at this rate.

He stood up, heading out of the room.  Morale was always at its worse when death is a certainty, and he had a job to do.