Tell Stories. Try New Things. Don't Give Up.

It's all been said, many people say,
Usually cynics
Or writers on a bad day,
But there's always more.
The world's not perfect,
But it's getting better than it was before,
And to say something new can further that change;
Though be sure not to lose your message
In the quest for something strange.
Indeed some are content
Simply to see how far they can push the envelope;
How deranged can they make us all?
Be not like them.
Listen instead to a higher call.
Nor be content
To find one working formula
And repeat it over and over and over and over;
That's been done before.
It's become a bore.
And even if you can't find news to say,
There will always be people
Who still haven't heard the old messages,
And you can tell them
In a new and interesting way.

Do I Dare?

A kid came to me today and asked,

"When's my mommy coming back?"

"Your mom's gone?" I asked.

"Well, where'd she go?"

"I cannot tell.

I do not know."

I dammed my tears and thought a while;

I could not make my own this child,

But I did have a friend who'd lost a son

And seldom left the house since it was done.

Perhaps the holes they feel inside battered souls

Might be mended with a little labor.

Maybe they can be each other's saviors.

But they can't-- not right now,

Unaware as each is of the other's existence.

No kindnesses shall come to pass

Unless I have the stones to call my friend and ask.

The Alternative to Growing

He's falling apart for real in this rhyme.
Suck on a lemon.  Suck on a lime.
He falls apart one piece at a time:
There goes an arm,
There goes a conscience,
There goes his sense of alarm,
So now he sees no doctor.
He sees no point,
And then he sees nothing
As his eyes go--
Fall out on the floor,
Roll across the room,
And now they're no more.
There go five teeth, three fingers, two nuts,
And all the hair on his head's left side
Along with (thank God for the freak's sake) his pride.
Then the real mess happens;
His skin crumbles off,
Blows away like ash,
Greatly accelerating his organs' decline--
They all turn yellow,
Then brown.
Then he falls down.
He does not get up.
His brain, heart and lungs fight on 'til the end
Along with his mouth,
Which wails, "What happened?
Where'd I go?"
It repeats this for hours
Until the last part of him, his pain, dies too.
Before looking away, one thing you must know:
Life is quick-- death is slow.

Life is Well-Balanced

Today watched on
As I took 723 steps
And 724 missteps.

"A .499 average," a friend of mine said,
"Aint bad.  It's fantastic for batting
And range shooting as well."

"Yes," I said, "but not so great
When looking at test scores
Or the liklihood that the treatment will work."

My friend laughed and coughed
Long and hard enough
To quake his hospital bed.

Then he regained control and said,
"You were always such a stiff,
But that's what I liked about you."

A nurse came in just then with a razor.
"It's time to prep you for the procedure."
And then she tripped and fell face-first.

She got up in time
To hear my friend say,
"Well, I'm glad we got that out of the way."

Well-Balanced is Life

For every birth there is death.  For every extinction, an evolution.  For every man there is a woman, and should the equation become imbalanced, there is also homosexuality to make up for it.

For every marriage there is divorce, some brought on by legal action, others by the natural tragedy of one lover dying, leaving the other to die a slower more lonely death.

For every win there is loss.  Every gift given is also a gift received. For every crime there is punishment.  And for every well-spent minute is another thrown away.

So we can not only hope for but also count on the notion that even the heaviest sorrow ends.  And we must love every minute of the happy times, because soon enough they turn to something less pleasant.

And we must never cease believing that if we've experienced Hell, then there also is Heaven.

Responsible Censorship

What images should and should not be seen?  Where are certain images acceptable and where are they not?  What contexts make them acceptable and unacceptable?

To me it is a question of value.  If an image conveys important info or meaning, then you should show it regardless of graphic detail.  If you believe an image, song, film, whatever has something to say that other people need to hear, then share it.  However, if this thing is controversial, you have to go into it prepared for conflict.  The abortion protesters that hold up signs depicting aborted fetuses do this.  They stand behind their beliefs knowing full well that these images will piss a lot of people off.  They believe that people need to see those images even if they don't want to.

At the same time, however, they are putting these images on display without censor in a public setting where anyone could pass by and see them.  Graphic image display like this needs to carry with it a certain responsibility; children in particular should be protected from having to see such things.  This is because they may not fully grasp the message or purpose, and all they see is a blown-up bloody mess.  They will be disturbed without the full capacity to understand why.  Adults too will be disturbed, but they can put their feelings in context and take in the information appropriately.  Distributors of such images have a responsibility to avoid exposing children to things they are not ready to see.

Images that are excessively graphic should be further censored when there is little social need for them.  They should be restricted so that only those people seeking them out are exposed to them.  Such images would include pornography, bodies being cut open for surgeries, autopsies, etc., and mass violence.

Violence and gore are rarely necessary in the media, and they should be censored more often than sex and foul language, though it's usually the other way around.  I can think of many violent images I've seen that disturbed me and still stick with me, but there are few cases of exposure to language or sex that have left marks on my psyche.  The ones that are there are from cases when sex and language were combined with violence.  The only situation I can think of in which gore is necessary-- when the general public needs to be exposed to it-- is when someone (a government, the mafia, whoever) is trying to cover up some tragedy they've committed.  Gory images in this case would serve as proof and as a call to action, a call for positive change.

Such images should, whenever possible, be presented after a warning that the material is in fact awful.  But sometimes that is not even enough.  There are some websites like bestgore.com that are devoted to depicting the most gruesome images possible for the sake of the gruesomeness alone.  There is no social statement that I know of.  It's simply "Dude, how sick is that?"  Many of the images are worse than anything I'd imagine on my own, but it isn't the images that disturb me the most.  What bothers me is that there are people in this world with the motivation to create such a site/sight, that there is a big enough market of interested viewers to keep it going.

And even if images or stories do seem important, the media has the responsibility to censor them if they are likely to do more harm than good.  Suicide, for instance, is a very tricky topic to cover.  Presenting it one way, with lots of details of the act itself and a tone void of sympathy often adopted by news anchors, can make it appear that you're disrespecting the dead, which will likely upset friends and family of the deceased.  Presenting it another way, with emotion and investigation of the subject's motivations, can glorify and sympathize with the act of suicide, which can in turn inspire an audience with suicidal thoughts to move one step closer toward suicidal action.  Any coverage of a suicide must be kept free from a value judgment, positive or negative.  In most cases, it's probably best to cover such events minimally, as it should rarely be the business of anyone other than those involved directly.

At the same time, coverage of a suicide could be possibly used to prevent future suicides.  It's all a matter of how responsibly it's done, how well the possible results have been thought out and prepared for.  The story of the suicide could have a positive effect potentially, but I can think of no situation in which it would be necessary to distribute visuals of suicides.  All that would do is disturb, sicken, and inspire fear.

Stories and information should almost never be fully censored, but they should be distributed responsibly, keeping in mind the effects they will produce.  We have freedom of speech and freedom of press, of course, but there is still a social responsibility that goes with these freedoms.  With that in mind, information should always be available to those who seek it.  Images, on the other hand, are not always necessary.  They have a greater potential to disturb and produce negativity.  And while you can choose whether you will read an article or listen to a story, you cannot always avoid seeing an image.  It's just there.  It hits you.  It registers.

Natural Magic

There is a magic to life.  Of this I am sure.  It comes and goes.  As we get older it shifts its shape, and its infrequency seems to increase.

But I remember magic being everywhere when I was child.  It was there when I built a dam in the neighborhood creek, and also when I ate my first bowl of Lucky Charms.  It was there when I knocked on a friend's door and asked "Can Nate come out to play?"  When I was a child, holidays meant something, snow was a good thing, the world was full of mystery, swimming pools were immense fun, and friends were relatively loyal.  Kids would stay out all day until bedtime.

There's magic in riding a bike, in chasing down the ice cream truck, in playing kickball in the cul-de-sac, in not even knowing what a cul-de-sac is, instead simply calling it "The Circle."  As a child, few ideas are stupid.  Fireworks are amazing.  Birthdays are a cause for celebration.  Money is a privilege, not a necessity.  And you only really need enough to purchase an Icee on a bike trip to AmeriStop.  An allowance of five dollars every two weeks is more than enough.

There's magic in the week before school starts, in going out and buying all new supplies, in calling up all your friends to see who's in your class.  There's magic in soccer games, in halftime snacks, in victory soda pops, even in the way your legs are all warm and smelly when you remove your shinguards.  And trophies are cherised possessions, placed prominently on display.

Of course not all is paradise.  Parents get divorced, grandpa dies, the dog attacks your best friend, you slam a tree branch into your sister's eye.  Sometimes your dad wants to wrestle, but most of the time this consists of him simply putting his weight on top of you until you almost suffocate.  And even when you do gain an advantage, he feigns injury until you let your guard down out of concern, and then he gets you.  Sometimes you're afraid of him.  Sometimes you hate him.  Like when he pretends to throw you in the animal cages at the zoo.

Of course you love him as well for taking you to the zoo at all, and to other magical places like the putt-putt course and the arcade.  You don't realize it at the time but you blow tons of his money winning tickets at those arcade games only to use the tickets to purchase prizes worth way less than the money spent.  And yet you get your money's worth anyway from the joy these things give you, because there's a certain magic in having a bouncy ball war with your sister across the kitchen linoleum.

Overcome Fear

Few things scare me in this world.  It used to be the opposite.  As an adolescent, I began the majority of my days with a nervous breakdown.  But since then I've come to realize that while fear can have its place, for the most part it is a harmful and needless thing.  Something will either happen or it won't.  Worrying isn't going to change that, at least not for the better.

Instead I try to be optimistic.  If I'm going somewhere I've never been before where I know not a soul, I don't think about the risks.  I don't think about what I can lose or about my own inexperience relative to those around me.  Instead I take joy in the novelty of the  experience.  At worst it will make for a good story.  It's like a challenge to see how many difficulties I can overcome, and I'm going for a top score. 

To overcome difficulties, you may need to develop a healthy amount of masochism.  You learn to find something good in the pain you're dealt.  Perhaps a better word to use is selflessness.  It's hard to be afraid if you don't care what happens to you, or if you don't believe it particularly matters what happens to you.  Life will go on.  We learn from mistakes and adapt.  Death comes first to those who can't adapt, and the ones that can't adapt are the ones who don't learn, and the ones who don't learn are the ones that never try anything because they are too afraid.  So to think that your fears are protecting you from harm... this may very well not be the case.  Your fears prevent you from growing, which is a much bigger harm in the long run.

The first step toward selflessness is gaining a strong sense of self.  Figure out who you are, what's important to you, what you have to offer the world.  Learn, know, and be confident with who you are; then it won't matter who does what to you, because you know who you are and you know that no one else can touch that; no one but you can change who you are.  And once you know this, you can forget about it.  You can let it out of the forefront of thought to slip into your subconscious, making room for more important things.

You can spend more time outside your own mind and start living for other people.  Instead of worrying about how people see you, you think about what you can do for them.  Don't think, "What if I make a bad impression?"  Think, "What if I can make an impression?"  Strong impressions are what reach people; whether their impression is good or bad, they will remember you.  Most people think a not-bad impression is the same as a good one.  It is not.  A not-bad impression is a non-impression.  You didn't do anything bad, but that doesn't mean you're good by default.  You didn't do anything good either.  You didn't do anything.  You are both not-bad and not-good.  You are nothing.  People are indifferent on the subject of you.

Which brings us back to fearlessness.  You have to act, and acting involves some degree of fearlessness always.  And whatever you're doing may or may not be important, but if you do it withour fear, people notice that.  So if what you're doing does matter, your confidence might just inspire confidence in others to join you, to take up a belief in what you're doing because you've created in them a belief in you.

Of course, while this manner of living does allow you a freedom from a great many fears, it can create a fear that may not have been there before.  When you are selfless, when you try to live for others, you may become struck by the fear of indifference, of ignorance, of dispassion.  What if there's somebody who cannot be reached?  Somebody who will neither talk nor listen, who will not communicate?  This one hits me from time to time, but it too is best avoided.  Because once you let in one fear, you open the door for the rest.  Your mind is full of neuroconnections that link everything like a chain.  One fear connects to another which connects to another and before you know it, all the fears you've ever felt are swirling around uncontrollably in your mind preventing you from thinking about anything else, preventing you from seeing, paralyzing you from acting.

Which is why it's good to not spend too much time in your own mind.  Live selflessly.  Live for others.  And don't worry about indifference.  There will always be people who won't hear what you have to say.  But don't base your happiness on whether or not your actions are well-received.  Do the things you love, and take happiness from the simple fact that you're doing them.  And if you affect even just one person out of one hundred-- seeing that one spark of inspiration, which you helped create, is a high like no other.