Last Words

Do you ever think of something you did in the past and think, "Yes, that was a good choice. I'm glad I made it"? Because I'm having such a moment with something I did about a year and a month ago. When I had to leave my old school - the only place I had ever felt comfortable or okay, the place where everything I loved or cared about was - I spent quite some time considering what my last words before effectively leaving the school campus forever were.

I was tremendously obsessed with Doctor Who at the time (I used it as a coping tactic to deal with the fact that I had to leave my school - senior year was overshadowed by a sense of dread because I knew the end was coming). I wanted my last words to be, "I don't want to go", which were the Tenth Doctor's last words and an accurate summation of how I felt. But instead, the last words I said before leaving everyone and everything were, "It's the end, but the moment has been prepared for", which were the Fourth Doctor's last words and, while not an accurate representation of the situation (I did not feel the least bit prepared), it was a better, more mature thing to say than what I would have wanted to say.

And I'm thinking, yes, that was a good choice. I'm glad I made it.

Tea - a poem read out loud

After making that video of my poem "Poet Problems", I thought it'd be cool to post another such poem. Here is me reading the poem "Tea", which appeared on my poem-a-day blog.

Those Who Fight Moths with Stuffed Dogs

I thought I was doing my aunt and sister a favor when I fought off the moth on the car door with a stuffed African wild dog. After all, they did ask me to deal with the bug, and I dealt with it in the only way I knew how - loud, enthusiastic use of convenient-if-eccentric tools. Instead, they reacted by laughing in what was partly amusement but mostly embarrassment and making statements to the effect of "we don't know you".

Not five minutes prior, we had been coming out of the grocery store at which we were buying supplies for the weekend. (My sister and I sometimes spend the weekend hanging out at my aunt's house, and we usually stop at the grocery store beforehand for milk, cereal, ice cream, and other essentials-to-life.) Either a moth had gotten into our car or it had been there all along and only made its presence known to us when we returned to put our necessities in the car, but when we got in the car, we found it sitting quietly on the inner part of the car door of the passenger's seat (my typical seat in the car).

One might have thought it was a black widow or a scorpion or some kind of actually threatening creature from the way my aunt and sister were reacting to it. As I recall it, they were sitting in their seats, recoiling and screaming like nothing so much as the soon-to-be-victims of a decidedly corny horror film. They wanted me to deal with it.

I can deal with insects, but I don't like touching them. I imagined that getting the moth to leave its place on the car door and fly out into the open night would require either touching it or getting my hand dangerously close to it. However, I reached for a readily-available weapon and decided to threaten the moth with it. Said readily-available weapon was a stuffed animal in the likeness of an African wild dog. It was mine; it is with only a tiny bit of shame that I admit I still sleep better with stuffed animals in my bed. 

They wanted me to deal with it.

I dealt with it.

With a cry of, "Get out!" and an additional cry of, "Get out, you jerk!", I waved the stuffed dog threateningly at the moth. When that wasn't enough, I hit the car door with the plush animal - not actually hitting the moth but coming close enough to make it have second thoughts about maintaining its offending position. It  flew off and landed on someone else's car door. That was all we needed. I waved the dog in the moth's general direction once more and got into the car, closing the door triumphantly.

"I don't know you," my sister said to me upon my entry. "Really. I don't know you." This was her way of saying, "We wanted you to do the very simple task of getting the moth out of our car. You instead reacted by fighting it off with a stuffed animal and yelling mild insults at it. This is highly embarrassing and we did not want the entire grocery store parking lot to witness it."

Through my laughter (for I was still quite excited from the situation), I made some statement to the effect of, "Well, I got the job done, didn't I?" I didn't wonder why this event was so embarrassing until we got to my aunt's house.

Why is it embarrassing to know someone who fights off moths with a stuffed dog? It's because such methods are highly unusual and a little bit stupid-looking to the world-at-large. Furthermore, yelling things such as "Get out, you jerk!" show very plainly that you are enthusiastic about the task, enough to yell where yelling is not required. (In the end, I don't think the moth cared much whether I yelled or not.)

People who fight moths with stuffed dogs while yelling are highly unusual people. They don't handle things the way one would expect them to. They take their own approach to it, and said approach often looks perfectly loony. Normal people do not fight moths with stuffed dogs while calling them (the moths) jerks.

Personally, I love people who do such things. They are the individuals who keep humanity from becoming dull. They are the little crinkles in the fabric of society that keep it from being flat. They are the guardians of cheerful, brilliant lunacy, and they are utterly invaluable.

If you are the sort of person who would fight off moths with a stuffed African wild dog, I commend you. You are a fantastic individual, and I want you to never forget it. If you would take an eccentric and brilliant approach to such a situation, I want you to remember that you are in fact eccentric and brilliant, and those are some of the greatest qualities a human can possess. If you ever feel as though society doesn't value you (it probably doesn't) or that you are having a hard time finding a place in the world (you probably are) or even that life is just too dull and too dark a place for a personality such as yours (it probably is), just say to yourself: "I am eccentric and brilliant. I am the sort of person who would fight off a moth with a stuffed dog. I am awesome."

Goodbye and Hello Again After

Yesterday was the third-to-last day of my aunt's school year. (This is the aunt who teaches kindergarten and for whom I did classroom work for most of the school year.) She had told me earlier about how her students were feeling about the end of the school year. Specifically, they were not feeling good about it. They had their anxieties about leaving their classroom and their teacher, and one of them was actually crying, saying, "I don't want this year to end!"

Last year, I had gone through a similar experience (although mine was less "leaving my first-ever year of compulsory education and entering into a strange new First Grade experience" and more "leaving my last-ever year of compulsory education, plus the school that had been the only place I ever felt truly comfortable and happy in my whole life and entering into a strange new college experience"). I thought it would be the right thing, then, to give them a little speech to help them through what would be a nerve-inducing time. What I said was something along the lines of this:

"Kids, have any of you heard of the word 'transition'? It means 'the time when you're changing from one thing to another'. You're all going to go through a time of transition really soon. You're transitioning from kindergarten from first grade. It doesn't help that you're losing most of the things from kindergarten, and it doesn't help that you have no way of knowing what first grade's going to be like, and it really doesn't help that you're going to spend the next three months away from school and doing something totally different from school.

"But even though you're losing a lot of things, you're going to gain something. You're going to gain first grade. You did a lot of awesome kindergarten things, but now you're getting a little older and going to do awesome first grade things. And most of you are going to be in the same classroom, too, so you'll basically all be doing the awesome first grade things together. You're saying goodbye to your classroom and to your teacher, but you'll get another cool classroom and teacher, and you can even sometimes come and say hi to this classroom and teacher.

"You're saying goodbye, but you're also going to be saying hello. Hello to other kids and another teacher and other lessons. That's kind of what life is. Saying goodbye, and saying hello again after."

The kids liked it pretty well, and so did their teacher. So did I. I thought those were pretty good words to say, and I'm glad someone said that to the kids. I think that if more people said things like that to kids and if they didn't have to figure this out entirely on their own, kids might grow up to be slightly better-adjusted individuals. I think a lot of adults could benefit from remembering this, too. Life is saying goodbye, and saying hello again after. 

Eunoia Review

I have been waiting since, what, January for my poem to appear in the online litmag Eunoia Review, and my waiting has paid off. It is on the website now, and it can be found here.

In other news, I have absolutely no idea when I'm going to self-publish that novella. I still can't get the hang of fonts. Yes, it's rather pathetic, being hung up on something like fonts. But sometimes little things can cause problems, and they have to be dealt with. I am dealing. I am dealing with the fonts.

Acceptances and self-publishing

I am pleased to announce the acceptance of two poems of mine (titled "Underwhelming" and "stolen stage") to an Australian online and print litmag called Otoliths. Its website can be found here. And in less immediately-exciting but still similar news, a poem of mine (titled "Actual Glue") will be published in a Singaporean online litmag called Eunoia Review. With this, I believe I'll have had six acceptances from foreign publications. Six. I'm proud of myself, I really am. I've got this huge doofy grin right now from thinking of it.

And in other writing-related news, I am definitely earnestly looking into self-publication for my novella, The Week of Dreams.  I'm currently thinking I'll publish it through Lulu (a site on which you can self-publish books and things). I'm right now at the point where I'm trying to figure out how the thing is going to be formatted, i.e. fonts and margins and stuff. Fonts. I never could get the hang of fonts. I'm getting there, though, and I've even got an artist for the cover of the book. (Granted, this is someone I know personally, so it's not as though I've done anything as cool as hire a pro artist but art is art.) So it's coming along reasonably well.

I feel so great about my writing. Really, I feel like I'm a great place with my writing right now, and it's fantastic.

Sadness and SPACE

So today, I learned that the guy who used to direct the creative writing program at my old school (it was an art school and I attended for creative writing) is retiring. That was pretty sad for me. It was like some fundamental part of the universe went wrong. And it fully hit me, too, that most of the people who were my friends and acquaintances last year from that school graduated this year. And both of these facts felt like real personal losses to me. And I'm not trying to get melodramatic or anything, but I think one of the parts of my life that makes me saddest is the fact that I keep "losing" things (i.e. stuff enters my life and it leaves almost as soon as it enters, or I lose parts of my life I never thought I'd lose). And these losses made me sad.

And I was thinking about this stuff and being very sad over it, and Doctor Who came to mind for some reason. I don't know if you watch the TV show Doctor Who (I love it) but the actor who plays the current Doctor (the Eleventh) is leaving the show this year at Christmas. We'll be getting another actor who plays the Twelfth Doctor (he hasn't been announced yet, but this is one of the things I've been looking forward to because even though I'm losing my favorite Doctor, I'm gaining a new one). So I thought, "Well, at least I'll gain something in seven months, when the current guy leaves Doctor Who and we get the Twelfth Doctor. Because at least getting a new character on my favorite TV show is something." And then I realized this WASN'T really gaining something, because it necessitated the loss of one of my favorite Doctors, and this was sad to me.

However, my mood recovered when my aunt needed me to do something for her and I ended up going to her house and hanging out there. She got me food, which was probably the main thing that did it, in terms of restoring how I felt. She got me pizza and she let me eat the tiramisu in her fridge. It was while I was eating these rather unhealthy foods that I realized something.

I'm in space.

Allow me to explain. I am in the universe. This is a pretty undeniable fact. But when you think of "the universe", you think of outer space, don't you? And you would be correct. The vast, vast most of the universe is in what we'd call "outer space". And if you were from another planet, I bet you'd consider Earth to be "outer space". "Oh, those Earth people, those space folks, doing their own spacey sorts of things...eating pizza and cake, going to art schools..." Something like that.

But technically, this means I'm in outer space.

Once I got over the surreal shock of this fact, I realized that it made everything I did at least 1,000% more awesome. "I'm eating cake...in space!" "Doing the dishes...in space!" "Walking down a hall...in space!" "Crashing into a wall...IN SPACE!"
No matter what losses I suffered in my life, at least I could take a small bit of comfort in the fact that, no matter what I lost, I lost it IN SPACE. And I don't know about you, but for me, if I'm doing it in space, then it can't be all that bad.

My advice to you, then, is this. No matter what losses you suffer, no matter who leaves where, no matter what you have to say goodbye to for a bittersweet gain, just remember. It's happening in space. And when you realize that it happens in space, it gets a little bit better.

Possible novella publication

I am pleased to announce that a series of events has caused me to seriously consider self-publishing as an option for my novella The Week of Dreams. I am currently looking into different self-publication options, and I will keep you, my probably imaginary readers, posted on the results of this venture.

That said, if anyone reading this has any advice about self-publishing, hearing it would be brilliant.

Two facts of interest.

First off, I've had another poem accepted by that lovely Romanian litmag called Nazar Look. It can be found here.

Second off, I have joined the dark side and gotten myself a Twitter account. It can be found here. I promise not to be a stupid Twitter user. Mostly I just post about writing and/or the humorous things my family happens to be doing at the moment, though.

That's really all I wanted to say right now.

Carpe Diem and Steak Sauce

I recently became aware of the importance of the mindset encapsulated in the phrase "carpe diem" - seize the day. It occurred during a long, drawn-out thinking session in which I realized I was comfortable with my typical routine of doing pretty much nothing worth speaking about (which is all right in its way) and I was too comfortable with the prospect of this never changing (which really isn't that all right at all). I kept saying I'd do things, on the condition of "sometime later". In other words, I kept putting off the mere idea of doing things that I hadn't done a thousand times before.

Carpe diem is slowly becoming my motto, and while I'm not an incredibly active follower of its advice ("baby steps" - doing things slowly but surely - is one of my other mottoes), it fortunately leads me to get out and do things (or even stay in and do things) that I didn't previously think I would do and that lead to enjoyable situations or at least good stories.

Today, I tried steak sauce for the first time in an attempt to carpe the diem. I was out to lunch with my grandpa (a semi-regular event which I have probably mentioned in previous posts),  and I decided to get adventurous and try the steak sandwich that I'd never tried before. (This is covered in my definition of "adventure".) My grandpa was sort of surprised with this choice, but I explained that I was trying to "do new things, expand my horizons, carpe diem and all that stuff", and he understood.

When my steak sandwich came, so did a bottle of A1 steak sauce, and I decided to be really adventurous and try it, too.

Let it be understood that, while I get into risky situations sometimes, I am at least fully aware of the risks and I do what I can to lessen or at least control them. I did not smother my sandwich and/or chips with the steak sauce. I am trying to live adventurously but not recklessly. Rather, I was prudent enough to put a fair-sized pool of the substance on one side of my plate (far away from the chips, because frankly, I like chips too much to lose them to a substance that I might hate). When I was mentally prepared enough, I dipped some of my sandwich into the sauce and bravely ate it.

I don't understand why anyone would want to put steak sauce in their mouth. It tastes like sour vinegar trying to masquerade as something nastily sweet but totally failing to fool anybody. To each their own, I suppose, but it's very difficult to understand why steak sauce would constitute someone's "own".

As I related this story to my grandma after it actually happened, she asked where I had put the steak sauce (i.e. whether or not I had made the mistake of drowning my food with what was at the time a "mystery sauce"). I had informed her that I was cautious enough to not do that. And in that moment, I realized that there was a very good lesson to be learned in this situation, other than "do things that you normally don't do". Do things that you normally don't do, but do them responsibly. If you know full well that you might not like steak sauce, don't ruin your perfectly good sandwich and/or chips (spare the chips!) with it. If you throw yourself into a new activity that could prove harmful, learn how to do it in such a way so that you probably won't be harmed that much. If you enter into what could be a brilliant relationship (of any kind) with a brilliant person, make sure you can walk away with most of your soul in tact if it turns out to be significantly worse than you'd expected. And it's not always possible to not lose something in the process of carpe'ing the diem. Sometimes you get hurt. Sometimes you lose time you can't get back. Sometimes you waste part of a perfectly good steak sandwich. But you can still have a rather unexpected and adventurous time while taking precautions of some kind.

And that is what steak sauce taught me about following the maxim of carpe diem.

Poet Problems - a poem read aloud

I write about doing poetry and stuff, but I thought it'd be cool to actually read a poem and put it on my blog, so you folks would actually know what it is I do. I wrote this testament to something poets have to go through. I thought it'd be amusing to read out loud and film.

Mental illness: a hypothesis about them, and why I think they're comparable to allergies

I hear people complaining about how "everyone has a mental illness these days" and people try to explain why this is the case. (For the curious - you might know this statistic, but from what I understand, 25% of the adult population lives with a diagnosable mental illness. So now you know what is meant by "everyone".)

People want to explain this fact, why everyone has mental illnesses, and why they have it now, as opposed to how it was in previous times, where mental illness was often seen as a horrible, inherently life-crushing thing, for which there wasn't much information or treatment. Some people want to think it's because "the modern life" is making people insane. Because of computers and technology and our busy lives, we're getting bipolar disorder and depression and schizophrenia and stuff.

I honestly don't think that's a very convincing argument. While "the modern life" does have its drawbacks and can cause legitimate stress (and worsen disorders that people already had), it seems highly improbable if not impossible that it's causing people's brains to resemble a certain way so that the parts that "should" work simply don't. It's not giving us actual legitimate medical problems. Unless it's capable of actually rewriting your DNA so that your brain's structure is different and that, in some cases, it's possibly developed differently for your entire life, I don't think anything can "give" people mental illnesses.

As technology gets better, our sphere of knowledge gets bigger, and our ignorance as a culture grows smaller, we find out that some things are more common than we previously thought they were, and we can better understand what some things are. What I'm trying to say is that I think people are just realizing that mental illnesses have always been this common but we didn't have the tools to understand it or the tolerance to accept it.

"But wait," you might say. "Mental illnesses are really that common? No, that's absurd. I am unwilling to believe that that many people really have these things."

As though mental illness were something you could reserve for a select few people who are (un)lucky enough to be cursed? blessed? burdened? somethinged with them. As if there was only so much crazy to distribute throughout the human race.


I think it's like allergies. I really think it's like allergies. Lots of people are allergic to things (milk, latex, cats); lots of people have mental health problems that make them unable to cope with certain parts of life. There exist allergies to all sorts of things; there are all sorts of ways that mental illness can interfere with or just alter someone's life. Some allergies are more severe than others, with effects ranging from mild irritation to death; mental illnesses come in all ranges of severity, and this doesn't mean that any of them are "less real" or "less valid" than others. Sometimes, you can find ways to cope with or treat allergies; since mental illness is biological in nature, you can treat it medically, too.

It's not that mental illness has suddenly become "more common". Likely it's always been this common. Like the commonness of allergies, so is mental illness an oddly common thing. And since we're slowly becoming better at diagnosing and accepting mental illness, we're coming closer to understanding that mental illness is common and ultimately not that big of a deal. Certainly not as big or bad of a deal as some people make of it.