A Lament (CTW)

2020-10-19 0407

I can't sleep and I feign to call it grief. Just imagine what his family is feeling. I can't. I hope to call his parents and it terrifies me to think that the call might be more to comfort myself and will actual cause his parents more pain.

A simple prayer

In my nightmare

Is that this conversation

Won't be more (comfort) to me

Than it is (disruptive) to you

Cause I can't sleep

And my night's stare

Locked on the ceiling

Thinking of all that you endure

There's nothing I could say or do

And calling only serves to prove

That my temporary fits of grief

Are just a thimble in your boiling seas

My discomfort and my dis-ease

Nothing to a parents need

To hold their son again

I can hardly pretend to understand

And it's so unfair

That we call for peace

In your hour of grief

And we won't relent

No time to breathe

And my simple prayer

In this nightmare

Is that my call for peace

Won't cause you grief

Because despite my love

He wasn't my son

So I pray

The Lord

Bless you and keep you

In joy everlasting

Because I have nothing helpful to say

And maybe one day

You'll forgive my intrusion

The greatest of my sins

Disturbing the grief begins again

Love Amongst the Dragons

Well, since the reddit post on this topic is archived and I can't comment on it, I'll just write about it here. Nobody reads this blog anyway, so it's just a note for myself.

The kids have been watching Avatar The Last Airbender (ATLA) for the first time and are almost finished with the whole series. Today we watched the episode The Ember Island Players, in which Zuko complains "Ugh! My mother used to take us to see them! They butchered Love Amongst The Dragons every year!"  What is the importance of this play being mentioned in ATLA? Well, I don't think it was very important at all when the episode originally aired in 2008 except perhaps as a reference to Zuko's mother and childhood, but in 2017 one of the executive producers of ATLA began working on another show called The Dragon Prince (TDP). I started rewatching TDP last night, and in the first episode, Claudia is walking through the courtyard reading a book entitled "Love Amongst the Dragons."

I don't think I would have noticed this reference without having accidentally watched the two episodes within 24 hours of each other. Good catch to anyone who got this on memory alone!

{sitting in draft since 2015}

(This post has been sitting unpublished for five years because I didn't like the last couple lines of the poem. I had manually set the "Published on" time for the draft to 2016-03-20 at 0052. Perhaps it's time I let go of that past and share.)

I had a thought that resulted in combining two recent poems into one and adding a single line; the new title.

Unmarked Graves 2015-08-20 (0032)

What did you expect?
To pick up as if you'd never left?
This life moves on
There is no going back
The only glimpse you'll have
A snapshot in a photograph

Years of silence
I haven't written a thing
How amazing!
This wonder of expressing

Well I've been practicin' silence
Such a long time - practicin' silence
That it's so clear in my head
Every word that you said
(Well, that's every word you spoke in my head)

A simple memory
Brought it all back to me
All the moments
I can't see so clearly
Struggle and pain
Slowly weakening
A phoenix
Erupting into flame

"What did you expect of me?
That I'd just be here waiting?
This life moves on
As if it never happened
The only evidence (a historical record)
A faulty camera in your mind (What is a memory?)"

Such a long time coming my way
And I've been practicin' silence
Long enough to adapt to the sirens
Now the sounds ring
Loud in my head
It was all in my head
(Only ever in my head)
A skipping record
Left on repeat these six long years
And I've been lying in silence
I've been mastering the craft
An expert in the art
Of leaving truths unsaid
Lying in unmarked graves

And I've been practicing silence
Silently reciting all the thoughts I've never said
And I say I've been practicing silence
But in truth I've been practicing lies instead
Every love I never expressed for you
(A lie when it comes right down to the truth)




2020-08-31 (as I'm posting this)
Interesting [thinking introspectively]. I was uncomfortable with the last couple lines of this poem, and that's why I never posted it. In changing those few lines just now, I was looking back on my original document and found notes explaining what inspired this. I honestly don't remember any of this story of unmarked graves.

Here's what I wrote about this poem in 2015:

"An idea I had while listening to something by Arcade Fire (a concert of theirs on YouTube). Some song about soldiers. The imagery in my head from what I thought I heard them singing was that of Jews fleeing the Nazis in the woods.

"I had this image of being on the run and hiding in unmarked graves (althought I'm not sure if they actually said unmarked graves in the song or if that's just what I heard).

"Then thoughts came to mind of the idea I had written about in Practicing Silence. Combining the two ideas together brought me to the thought of not being myself. Hiding in an unmarked grave while waiting for my life to begin. Or waiting for a past life to come around again."

I have more personal notes there that I'm not comfortable sharing with the world, but it's certainly a millstone for me to carry. I ended my notes with this:

"This is the first I've ever written (or spoken) about these feelings in this way. I've never expressed [...] to anyone, or anywhere except in my head. Thus the importance of tying this unmarked graves idea to the thoughts behind Practicing Silence. Practicing Silence was also somewhat tied to the thoughts behind Years of Silence. Another idea with a similar theme that just didn't come out the same.

"I have a lot of difficulty speaking or even writing openly on this topic. So my first attempt cryptically tried to change the topic to not really seem that it was about what I truly wanted to say."

Had I posted this in 2015 when I wrote it, it would be right next to the referenced Years of Silence poem, which was in the blog post entitled "An Eternity (or A year and a half, in retrospect)".

There's no taking it back now.

Movie recommendations to show just how important connections are

 Several movies I've seen recently and really enjoyed.

A Whisker Away (2020)

This movie was beautiful and unexpected. Just came up recommended by Netflix one day (it had just released). It deals with so many serious emotional issues that we can all relate to in one way or another, but it does it in a beautifully imaginative way that makes it approachable, even for a younger audience who may not understand. The only part I really found myself disappointed with was the villain in the end. I think the best way I can explain it is, perhaps, there is enough villainy within ourselves, that I felt the movie didn't necessarily need to push that character as a villain toward the end. I guess I'm used to Studio Ghibli movies giving everyone a redemption arc and ending stories with everyone and no one being the villain from a certain point of view. Anyway, I still highly recommend A Whisker Away.

Also, the song during the credits is beautiful and reminds me of the song Vagabonds by The Classic Crime. Here is an acoustic version of Vagabonds and you can see how they start off calm and acoustic and accidentally explode with the energy of the song. So after hearing the song from A Whisker Away, I really hope The Classic Crime will do an acoustic piano version of Vagabonds, because I imagine it would be amazing. Can you imagine Andrew McMahon covering Vagabonds? Cause I'd pay to hear that!

Her (2013)

As mentioned in my last post, watching this movie is kind of what led me back here to the blog. It was really emotional and I don't know how to express how I felt about it. If you've ever fallen in love with the disembodied voice of someone on the phone, and then felt lost once the phone call ended, perhaps that is the feeling. I'm really not sure, but I really loved this movie.

Bright (2017)

Another movie I watched a couple weeks ago was Bright. It also brought about the realization that three years have passed and I'm behind the times again, but it sure isn't. Bright was also incredible in it's own way, touching very heavily on racial issues. I'm sarcastically certain that this movie inspired Disney/Pixar's Onward. It focuses on Will Smith, a human detective with the LAPD, who has been unwillingly partnered with the first orc police officer in a trial program that everyone not-so-secretly hopes will fail. The partners respond to a call and end up on the run trying to protect a young elf with a very illegal magical artifact. The racial tensions are out of control and I'd almost say this movie was ahead of it's time. I guess it wasn't that popular when it came out, but I loved it and really hope their's more to come. It felt like there were a lot of loose ends, and I'd really like to see more of the alternate world they created.
I guess I've been on a fantasy kick lately, because I also watched The Shannara Chronicles a couple months back and proceeded to read the first two Shannara books by Terry Brooks.

Anyway, three recommendations is good for now. In writing this post, I've been noticing the theme of connection and thinking just how important it is to the human spirit.

her

I recently saw an article pushing a must-watch movie before it came off Netflix.

The movie was "her" and I sat down at 0100 in the morning to watch it on July 29, because it was coming down off of Netflix sometime that day, and I didn't want to miss it.

I was blown away and wondered how I had missed seeing the movie, as it released in 2013, but life's been busy.

IMDB: Her (2013)

I've been thinking I wanted to write a review, and perhaps I could sit down and start blogging again, using my blog to review movies I'm watching, or books I'm reading. Deep down I long to start writing again. We'll see.

I recently decided I want to read through all of The Chronicles of Narnia series, because I've never read them all before. I just finished The Magician's Nephew and started The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe today. I'm fascinated by the writing and how much detail exists in such short books. Modern books seem so long and weighed down with useless words, but C.S. Lewis was a true artists. He knew how to describe just enough to ignite a spark in the reader's mind, and the imagination takes care of the rest.

I imagine authors before the 80s or 90s probably had to write by hand, or typewriter. I imagine changing anything in their writings had a cost. Scribbled notes in random places, rewriting a whole page. They had to be selective and intentional with their words, but today words are cheap, and we can change them with a simple "delete" key. There is no cost, and authors (myself included) ramble on, 

"All the clever words on pages turn to fragments;

Circles, points and lines, and cover them like carpets, with graceful,

Meaningless ornamental designs," (mewithoutYou quote from the song Seven Sisters).

Today we are too busy to spend too much time on any one thing. So unfocused and distracted.

I guess I still hold to the belief that I was born in the wrong time. Or perhaps I've just been misusing my time.

Anyway, I just wanted to drop a line, even if it's only to myself. Perhaps I'll be back soon.

In coming back to Blogger, I just noticed a comment I had never seen on a post from two years ago. I feel so detached. I really need to reconnect with people.

I send my love. Even if you may not know it for a while, or ever. I still send my love in all the spaces between now and then.