Of Life & Randomness

  • Of Life & Randomness

    An Assortment of Randomness

    “The more open you are about sharing your passions, the closer people will feel to your work. Artists aren’t magicians. There’s no penalty for revealing your secrets.” — Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist

    “There’s no penalty for revealing your secrets,” but I do think art can be considered a kind of magic.

    Writing as a trick of magic

    The key for an artist, writer or magician is figuring out how to “break the rules convincingly.”

    As a writer you can make anyone believe anything if you set up the proper context and explanation. As Tolkien said, you can write that the sun is green, but to make it real you must create a world in which a green sun is possible.

    The day is a rainy/snowy/slushy kind of gloomy and I spent my morning writing and going through my zettelkasten. I’ve developed a bump on my finger from holding my pen so much and I had to put a band-aid around it. This might be the nerdiest kind of injury.

    My standing desk frame arrived yesterday and it currently rests in a box that Poe has taken to using as a personal runway. Attempts to build my new desk will commence this weekend (hopefully), and K said that I should be the one to drill the holes. File that under: terrible no good very bad ideas.

    Last night I watched a documentary on Netflix about the perils of consumerism (Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy) and I think everyone should watch it. I’m not sure what the answer to corporate greed is, but it’s good to be reminded of the ways in which we contribute to it.

    Bluesky has now surpassed 21M users and continues to grow at a rate of about 1M users per day. It’s the first time in a long time that I’ve actually enjoyed being a part of a social media platform. The LGBTQIA+ writing community there is thriving and it’s so exciting to see such a wide variety of novels out there in the world.

    Last night before bed I read an article by Joan Westenberg called Rebel Optimism: How We Thrive in a Broken World that was full of great insights. If you need a dose of optimism, I highly recommend reading the whole thing.

    The world is crumbling in real time—I’m not here to argue that point. We’ve got rising seas swallowing cities, political chaos run by arsonist clowns with their pants on fire trying to set everything else alight, inequality so vast it feels cosmic, wars driven by fragile egos and unpaid cultural debts, and a never-ending apocalyptic parade marching through our news feeds like a sick joke. Pessimism isn’t just fashionable; it feels logical. Despair seems like the only sane response.

    But what if despair is the real con – a sticky, sugary trap that feeds off our paralysis? What if our fixation on everything falling apart is blinding us to cracks of light breaking through the rubble? To the opportunities quietly unfolding while we’re too busy scrolling through the next disaster? Despair is a heavy, immobilizing force. And in a world on fire, inaction is its most dangerous side effect.


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  • Of Life & Randomness

    The night K almost got us killed by a werewolf (a true story)

    When it comes to potential danger, my wife and I have polar opposite responses. If there’s a strange noise in the middle of the night, my first impulse is to hide under the covers, while hers is to put on her shoes and “go check it out.”

    This is the difference between someone who spends her time listening to true crime/paranormal podcasts and someone who does not.

    With that in mind, here’s something that happened a few weeks ago.

    It was around 3AM or so and K had gone outside to get our cat after he’d hopped down from her office window.

    After a short while, I hear the front door open and K call out, “Can you come outside with me for a minute?” Which I immediately find concerning because she knows me better than to ask me to do things like go outside in the middle of the night.

    Very calmly I demand an explanation for this unreasonable request, and she follows up with the worst possible answer:

    “There’s something in the terrace and I don’t know what it is.”

    I respond something like: “WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE’S SOMETHING IN THE TERRACE AND YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS??”

    She says, “There’s something back there, staring at our house.”

    And again, K is not the sort of person who scares easily or who believes in weird things, so everything coming out of her mouth is setting off every alarm bell in my head.

    I’m shooting off questions like, “But does it look human?”

    And she’s saying really comforting things like, “I don’t know! It’s a dark shape crouching by the window.”

    So I tell her to get inside. I say we need to lock the doors, close the windows. Mind you, at no point do I consider it could be an intruder or that we need to call the police. I’ve gone directly to werewolf. I start wondering whether werewolves also need to be invited in or if vampires are the only ones who extend that courtesy.

    K reminds me as I’m trying to pull her back inside that Poe is still out there which is why she needs me to come with her.

    I say something brave like, “I’M NOT GOING OUT THERE! HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND??”

    She goes, “Then I guess I’ll go alone.”

    She turns to go and I flash forward to having to explain to the police that my wife got eaten by a werewolf.

    I realize that I don’t want her to get eaten by a werewolf. Nor do I want my cat to get eaten by a werewolf.

    I begrudgingly start putting on my shoes while mumbling that our odds against a werewolf are slim.

    K does not contradict this which is extra alarming.

    I follow her out into the cold, foggy night.

    Dogs start barking.

    I’m saying things like, “This is how every horror movie starts. I should know better than this. I do know better than this and yet here we are.”

    I ask her more questions about the thing in the yard.

    None of her answers make me feel better.

    She seems genuinely freaked out which only serves to freak me out more because K does not freak out.

    We round one corner of the house.

    I half expect to come face to face with something dark and menacing, but there’s nothing there except wet grass and fog.

    Dogs are still barking.

    Everything feels ominous.

    We push forward to the final corner.

    I take several deep breaths before following.

    K says, “There it is.”

    I expect something terrifying to come charging out from the darkness.

    K says, “Oh.”

    My heart stops.

    “Nevermind. It’s the garden hose cart.”

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