The Soft Side of Winter (Or, Sherlock Holmes and a Cup of Tea)

It’s no secret that Vermont can be a harsh place to live during the winter months, and this winter is no exception.  While we have not seen massive amounts of snow to date here in the hills of east-central Vermont (“only” 25 inches so far), the temperatures have been bone-chilling.  Of course, it’s always cold here in the Green Mountain State in January.  Thaw?  What thaw?  The earth is buried under a blanket of snow for months.  But for the past three weeks, multiple days have topped out in the single digits, and a good chunk of nights have dipped well below zero degrees.  And when the wind whips, on top of all that?  It is best to be remain indoors.

 

Given all of this, it is natural to wonder what can possibly be meant by a “soft side.”  A soft side to ten below zero?  But, in fact, there is one.

With such inhospitable conditions outside, and with evening still descending early (though it is slowly starting to get lighter)–this is a season for reflection.  For stillness.  For unwinding. The frenetic warmer months are looked forward to, of course.  Who wants it to be ten below zero for long?  But during this dark, cold season, there is the opportunity for long nights in front of a fire, hot chocolate on the desk beside me, getting lost in story and wonder.

 

And on these cold, cold nights, after finishing the day’s work, the call of an old movie beckons.  Or an old television show.  Or a good book.  Below-zero nights are made for The Honeymooners or It’s a Wonderful Life, or The Wizard of Oz.

 

Or maybe an old Hitchcock thriller, something slow and unrushed, like Rear Window.  Or perhaps Forrest Gump or a long, epic-length documentary.  It doesn’t so much matter what–just that it happens, that there is a chance to escape the blistering pace of the workaday world, at least for a while.  Sherlock Holmes and a cup of tea, enjoying the warmth inside, the quiet of a winter night enveloping the house like a soft, thick glove.

 

And maybe that’s the reminder we all need as we begin another year, a year with challenges and struggles and deadlines and political upheaval and setbacks and frustrations and joys and triumphs.  There is always so much to do.

But sometimes, even in the midst of it all, we just need to be.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

An Ode to Fluff (in a Sober Season)

It is indisputable.  We live in historically stressful times.  While a worldwide pandemic rages on, growing worse by the day, while crises arise in both far-flung places and close to home, and while perhaps the most consequential election in American history approaches, people everywhere feel a sense of anxiety, a tightening of the chest, a species of fear.  When will the pandemic end?  How will we get out of this?  When will we feel safe again?  When can we return to a sense of normalcy?  Stressful times, indeed.

 

And while it is important to engage, to tackle the issues and problems of our time head-on, to speak out for truth and common sense–there is also something else that is important: our well-being, our state of mind.  Our sanity itself.  One thing is certain–too much stress and anxiety, especially over a protracted period of time, can have a deleterious effect on our health.

So, what to do?  Well, there is much we can do.  Go out for a jog, get the heart pumping.  Write a poem, or a novel.  Or a song.  Read a book.  Do Pilates or Tai chi.  Volunteer in the community.  Mow the lawn.  Meditate.  Take a night and go to bed early–regardless of what you have to do.  But one thing I try to do when the pressures of life seem too great, when the vice pinches tighter, when the clouds darken and multiply in a bruised sky the color of gunmetal is–to seek out something fun.

 

I am a proponent of the serious, the studious, the deep, and multilayered as much as anybody.  But in times like these, when the world is collectively holding its breath, there is also much to be said about lighthearted, airy entertainment.  Do you have a “guilty pleasure”?  Perhaps a silly movie or absurd TV show that you love?  Does a certain sitcom make you laugh, even as you realize how ridiculous it is?  What do you enjoy that is fluff, light on substance but high on laughs?  There must be something.

 

Seek it out.  Take an evening and stream some episodes or, to go old school, break out a DVD and pop it in.  But give yourself permission to enjoy something frivolous.  Are you a Seinfeld fan?  The Golbergs?  Modern Family?  What about The Big Bang Theory?  Or maybe it’s a movie.  Maybe it’s an old movie–perhaps a golden oldie like Caddyshack or Trading Places or The Seven-Year Itch.  Maybe it’s all of them and more.

 

For me, when I’m in need of something to make me laugh and forget about the strains and the struggles for a while, I turn to Cheers, The Honeymooners, and–though not exactly a comedy, and certainly not altogether lighthearted–Forrest Gump.  Or maybe I’ll seek out a classic 1970s sitcom like Sanford and Son or Happy Days.  Or something really old like The Philadelphia Story, or, my all-time favorite, It’s a Wonderful Life.  Again, not all of these are pure fluff.  The point is, they take me away on a pleasant journey.  They allow me to disengage for a time.  They make me laugh.  They sometimes make me cry (but in a good way; the climax of It’s a Wonderful Life gets me every time).  They enable me to step away from the insanity and the craziness and the deadlines and the worries and the anxieties and the strife, and they provide a moment of respite, a safe space, an oasis overflowing with elixirs for the soul.

 

Your places of fun-filled and lighthearted refuge may be different from mine.  But you have them.  You have your go-to sources for comfort.  We all do.  So, on this Halloween weekend, I hope you have the chance to dip your toe in, if only for a while, to settle in and relax and laugh.  Laugh at something silly.  Laugh at some corny, dated sitcom produced in the years before you were born or a contemporary comedy that never fails to amuse.

Stressors are all around us.  And real problems need to be tackled and overcome.  But we can all benefit from taking a brief detour in a friendly neighborhood bar where “everybody knows your name” or a lively and song-filled jaunt down the Yellow Brick Road.  I know I can.

 

And, maybe, just maybe, this weekend I will.

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

“And a One-Two-Tree-Tree, Two-Two-Tree-Tree . . . (Or, the Endless String of Jumping Jacks)

School memories are enduring.  Regardless of how many years have elapsed, the events and experiences from adolescence and young adulthood stay with us, forever fresh and seemingly tailgating us in our own personal rearview mirror.  And for me, some of the clearest and most vivid memories are of high school physical education.  Gym class.

 

Now, I have to say . . . most of the time, I dreaded gym class.  When I was a teenager, back in the antiquity of the late 1980s, I was an introvert who often worried for days on end what our phys ed instructor would have in store for us.  I was actually very good at sports, but not in that environment.  I preferred neighborhood games with friends, matches with my brothers, where I could be myself and feel comfortable.  But in the dog-eat-dog world of high school gym class?  With the ruthlessness of the locker room, the specter of square dance sessions, the mile run?  Back then, these were my school Waterloos, the things I most loathed about high school.

 

But through it all, regardless of what activities we were pursuing in gym class (soccer and football in the fall; basketball, swimming, and square dance in winter; baseball and track in spring–not to mention other odd assortments thrown in, like dodge ball–a personal favorite!–or rope climbing), one thing remained constant, especially when Mr. DeVos was the instructor.  Calisthenics.  Or, as Mr. DeVos liked to call them, “Cals.”

 

Let me back up.  By the time I had him as a phys ed instructor, Mr. DeVos was a veteran coach and teacher of two decades.  He was a former Marine, who enjoyed nothing more than putting his charges through the ringer.  I wasn’t on the high school track team–which Mr. DeVos coached–but those who were would regularly share with classmates the horror stories of practice under Mr. DeVos.  He would run his track team ragged, and, famously, when they needed a drink, would offer up cups of warm water.

 

He was a stickler for regular old gym class, too, and he began every class, rain or shine, come what may, without fail, with his beloved cals.

“We need to warm you up,” he’d say.  A few times, he would tack on “men” at the end, even though the class was always co-ed.  “Get the blood pump-pump-pumping!” he’d shout.  And he’d make us run laps around the gymnasium, do a set of sit-ups and push-ups, perform a series of sprints between cones.

 

But the one exercise he religiously made us do, every class, was jumping jacks.

“Get ready!  Jumping jacks!” he’d say, and some in the throng would utter a groan, as if they, somehow, had hoped the jumping jacks might not be on the agenda that day.  I always felt like asking them which Mr. DeVos they thought was teaching the class. Jumping jacks were an automatic, a given.  Every time.  Expecting anything less was ludicrous.

 

Mr. DeVos would have us assemble in a long straight line, and he’d stand in front of us, whistle around his neck.  Then he’d say, “Okay. Ready, Aaaaaaannnnd . . .”

And then he’d blow his whistle and say, “Give me thirty!”  And he’d do the set of jumping jacks right along with us.  He’d not only do them; he’d count aloud, so we all knew where we stood in the progression.

 

The thing was, thirty jumping jacks for Mr. DeVos wasn’t really what it sounded like.  Officially it was thirty.  In reality, it was several times that.  Why?  Because of the way he counted . . .

“And a one-two-tree-tree,” he’d begin.  (He pronounced “three” as “tree.”)  Keep in mind, this represented one jumping jack.  In the duration it took him to utter all this, we’d all probably completed three jumping jacks, maybe four if his cadence was especially slow.  And on and on he’d continue, in this way, all the way up to thirty . . .

 

” . . . one-two-tree-tree; two-two-tree-tree; tree-two-tree-tree; . . . eighteen-two-tree-tree; nineteen-two-tree-tree; . . . twenty-nine-two-tree-tree; and tirty-two-tree-tree.  Alley-oop!”  That was the signal that we were done.  And when we were, many of the students in the long line were panting.  A hundred (officially thirty) jumping jacks could do that!  Not to Mr. DeVos, though.  The old ex-Marine wasn’t breathing hard at all.  He never did.

The thing I remember the most about all of this was the feeling of duration, of no end in sight.  While the set of jumping jacks probably lasted no more than a couple of minutes, it always seemed like hours. “And a one-two-tree-tree; two-two-tree-tree . . .”  We all knew it was going to be a long road ahead until Mr. DeVos finally got around to thirty and blowing that whistle.

 

He was a man who took his time, particularly when it came to exercising his gym-class pupils.  He wasn’t rushed.  He wasn’t looking to finish the regimen too soon.

A few times, he’d surprise us, mid-jacks, and announce that we’d push onward to forty or even fifty jumping jacks.

 

Endless.

**********************************

Endless can also describe what it feels like to finish your work-in-progress. True, there are times when you’re struck by a bolt of pure inspiration, and, especially for a shorter work such as a short story or poem, you may be able to ride that current of creative electricity to its necessary and satisfying conclusion within a single day.  More often, though, and particularly for a novel-length manuscript, that initial surge of optimism and energy is replaced by a grueling marathon of stops and starts.  A novel is a maze, and what begins so promising in chapter one can ultimately turn into a literary quagmire by chapter twelve.

 

Where is the story going?  Why did I introduce that tangent in the previous chapter?  What should I do with it?  Is Character X really going to do that?  I never thought she would!  What changed her mind?  (As we all know, characters tell you, the writer, what to do much more than the other way around.)  The questions seem endless; the decisions and consequences, daunting.  And then, then!  Even when you are able to key in those magical words, “The End,” having navigated the twists and turns of the first draft . . . the work has only just begun.  Because now, you have entered the revisions stage.

 

Flipping back to page one, you painstakingly go through everything you’ve written.  For me, this is the hardest part because I see, with clarity, that wide swaths of my first draft were awful.  Character and story arcs that weren’t followed up; needless repetition and wordiness; entire scenes that can and should be sliced off.  It is always humbling, and whatever sense of accomplishment, of completeness I may have had upon finishing the first draft, vanishes like vapor.  The race has just begun.

 

Of course, editing and revising the manuscript is rewarding, in the end.  Taking a rough draft and polishing it, rubbing away the hard edges, the plot abnormalities, the padding that weighs the story down is gratifying.  It’s a long, often tortuous process–but when you finally finish this stage, that sense of completeness, this time, is genuine.  Perhaps one last proofread is in order–but the heavy lifting and the hard yards have now been accomplished.

 

Now is the time to celebrate.  But only now.  There are no shortcuts.

***************************

I certainly thought of old Mr. DeVos as I was going through the revision stage of both The Eye-Dancers and The Singularity Wheel.  I even mimicked his cadence at times, doing a series of internal jumping jacks.  Heck–sometimes I did actual jumping jacks, to try to get myself going.  And as I did, I realized that the very thing I dreaded in gym class long ago was now something I appreciated, and called on, to help get me through.

 

So, thanks, Mr. DeVos.  This jumping jack is for you.

Everybody now . . . “And a one-two-tree-tree; two-two-tree-tree . . .”

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

That Old Black-and-White Movie Magic

“The best thing about the future,” Abraham Lincoln once said, “is that it comes one day at a time.”

We can all relate to those words, especially these days.  A worldwide pandemic has a way of making us pause and focus on our perspective, values, beliefs.  It’s been a remarkable and horrifying few weeks.  The world has changed overnight, it seems.  And all we can do is our part to get through this once-in-a-lifetime crisis, to help in any way we can, and to be smart and responsible.

 

Some, of course, the frontline emergency nurses and doctors, are at the center of this war on humanity.  They are fighting the battles raging in hospitals and ERs.  They are the soldiers fighting for each of us.  For most of us, however, we are either hunkering down at home all the time or only going out to work at our job and perhaps shop for necessities every now and then, only to return home as efficiently and quickly as possible.  Either way, a lot of people are spending a lot more time in their abodes.

 

For me, personally, this “social distancing,” as it’s called, isn’t that difficult to get through.  I’m a natural introvert.  Nevertheless, the degree of hunkering down at home is a challenge even for a lifelong loner like me.  I spend most of my days working from home, editing and proofreading manuscripts for book publishers and individual authors.  But at night, or when I just need a break, I am seeking an escape, a place to turn to, a temporary refuge from the world and the work.

 

Sometimes I read–either books or my vintage comic books, which, with their musty, magic smell and corny, dated story lines, have been my loyal companions since junior high.  Other times, I’ll pop in a DVD (I am old school that way) of a favorite sitcom or a Ken Burns documentary or an episode of The Twilight Zone.  But more and more these days, I am watching old movies.

 

I love old movies, and by old, I mean old.  Black-and-white Cary Grant, James Stewart, Fay Wary, Katherine Hepburn old.  I have a number of DVDs acquired through the years; for ages now, a lot of them have sat in piles, tucked away, gathering dust.  Now I am watching them.  They provide a comfort, I suppose, a lightening, before sleeping at night during such dark and uncertain times.  They are my own personal island, a tropical beach of the soul where I can walk along the water’s edge, sand in my toes, getting lost for an hour or two.

 

There is much to choose from.  Hitchcock classics like Rope, Rear Window, and To Catch a Thief.  Sappy Christmas movies that I love–It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, Meet Me in St. Louis.  Film noir classics with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Veronica Lake, John Garfield, Lana Turner, Rita Hayworth, and Robert Mitchum.  And the dramas like Gone with the Wind, Citizen Kane, The Lost Weekend, just to name a few.  The classic romances–Casablanca, The Philadelphia Story, Rebecca, and so many more.  A virtual treasure trove.

 

 

Admittedly, sometimes I’ll go for something more “modern” like Forrest Gump or Field of Dreams or Back to the Future.  But, by and large, when I fish for a movie to go with the overly salted popcorn, it’ll be a vintage film from the 1940s or 1950s, and then I will allow myself, temporarily, to take a detour from reality with Clark Gable or Ingrid Bergman or Burt Lancaster.  I know I need to come back to the real world soon enough, so while I’m gone, I make sure to enjoy the journey.

 

 

 

I hope each of you is finding a way to cope and push through this insecure and troubled time as well.  Whatever your pleasure, whatever your method of dealing and persevering and finding some solace, somehow, please be careful, take care, and stay safe.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

Mike

The Shelter

Walls.  We’ve been hearing a lot about them lately.  Concrete walls and steel walls and bollard fences. But walls are not just physical barriers that stand between people or communities or nation-states. There are other kinds, as well.

 

Some walls are not built with metal or wood or whatever else technology or ingenuity can manufacture.  They are, rather, erected within our minds and our hearts, born from blind prejudices and long-festering hatreds that too often span centuries and generations.  These walls, these soul-killing monuments harbored by far too many for far too long, aren’t visible to the eye.  But they are experienced every day, in all corners of the world.

Rod Serling knew this well, and some of the more memorable episodes of The Twilight Zone dealt with such issues.  One in particular, which sometimes flies under the proverbial radar, was a third-season tour de force called “The Shelter.” (Airdate September 29, 1961.)

 

The episode begins with a panoramic view of a suburban neighborhood, at night.  Everything looks peaceful, serene, the American ideal.  And when we enter the home of Dr. William Stockton, we witness a gathering of friends and neighbors, celebrating the doctor’s birthday.  One of the neighbors, Jerry Harlowe, gives a speech honoring the doctor.  He says that Stockton is a good friend, an excellent doctor, someone who has treated them and their children for twenty years.  They make lighthearted fun of Stockton and the bomb shelter he has built off of his basement.  Laughter is plentiful, and hearty.  These are people who know each other–or so it seems.  They know and respect Dr. Stockton.

 

Just then, Stockton’s son enters the room, tells everyone that the picture on the television set just went dark and an announcer came on, informing the audience to tune into the CONELRAD (Civil Defense) station on the radio.

Stockton does, and the throng of neighbors is shocked by what they hear.  The CONELRAD announcement states that there is an unidentified flying object on radar, traveling southeast.  The president of the United States has declared a “yellow emergency.”  The announcer tells his listeners to retreat to a shelter if they have one; if not, go to a basement or, lacking that, to the centermost position in the house, while closing all doors and windows.

 

The neighbors run out of Stockton’s house and into the street, in a panic.  The announcement can mean only one thing–a nuclear attack.  This is the event the nation, the world, has dreaded.

 

At this point, Rod Serling provides the opening narration.

 

“What you are about to watch is a nightmare,” Serling intones.  “It is not meant to be prophetic.  It need not happen.  It’s the fervent and urgent prayer of all men of goodwill that it never shall happen.  But in this place, in this moment, it does happen.  This is the Twilight Zone.”

 

The doctor, his wife, and his son prepare for an extended stay in their bomb shelter.  They fill jugs with water, gather canned goods.  Efficiency is paramount.  Lights are flickering, the power threatening to cut out.  They may have twenty minutes, perhaps a half hour at the outside, to supply the shelter with everything they’ll need to weather the cataclysm of the potential bomb blast and resulting aftermath.

 

The food and water procured, the family of three locks themselves inside the shelter.  There is a radio within.  Stockton turns it on, as they listen for updates.

Upstairs, neighbor Jerry and his wife let themselves in.  Realizing that Stockton and his family must already be secured in their shelter, Jerry heads down to the basement.  He knocks on the shelter door. Stockton opens, it walks out.  Jerry tells him that he and his wife have no basement in their home.  Theirs is the “only brand-new house on the block.  We’re sitting ducks over there.”

Dr. Stockton tells them they can use his basement.

“Your basement?” Jerry says. ” What about your shelter?  It’s the only place we can survive!”

The doctor explains that the shelter was designed for his family, for just the three of them.  They don’t have enough room, or enough supplies, to take in anyone else.

Jerry won’t give up.  “We’ll sleep standing up,” he says.  “We won’t use any of your stuff.”

“What about air?” Stockton snaps back.  “Will you bring your own air?  I’m sorry, Jerry.  God as my witness, I am sorry!  But I built this shelter for my family.”

 

At this, Jerry becomes hysterical, and knocks a jug of water from Stockton’s hands.  It breaks on the concrete floor, the water spilling out.

Stockton pulls away, retreats into the shelter, shouts at him.  “I kept telling you, Jerry.  All of you.  Forget the card parties and the barbecues–for maybe a few hours a week.  Admit that the worst was possible.  But you didn’t want to listen, Jerry.  None of you wanted to listen.”

He finishes by telling his neighbor it is now out of his hands, and he slams the shelter door in Jerry’s face.

Meanwhile, another neighbor–Marty, along with his wife–arrives at the Stockton home.  When Jerry tells them that Stockton won’t let anyone in the shelter, Marty is incredulous.  “He’s got to let us in.”  But he, too, runs into a locked door–literally and figuratively–when he descends into Stockton’s basement and pleads with the doctor, to no avail.

Marty returns to the upstairs portion of the house as still more neighbors arrive.  None of Stockton’s friends are ready for the cataclysm.  All want refuge in the shelter.

One of the neighbors, Frank, is angry.  They should break into the shelter, he says.  Batter in the door.  But Jerry reminds him that the shelter is too small.  They couldn’t all survive.

Marty opines that they should pick out one family, just one, who could join the Stocktons inside the shelter.  But then they argue over which family should have the privilege.

 

Here, Frank snaps, and he tells Marty, who is Hispanic, to shut his mouth.  “That’s the way it is when the foreigners come over here,” he says.  “Pushy, grabby.  Semi-American.”

The two come close to blows, and Frank, still full of rage, races downstairs and pounds on the shelter door, demanding entry.  Stockton remains firm.  No one gets in.

A member of the growing throng of neighbors says he knows someone down the street who has a steel pipe they can use as a battering ram.  If they get their hands on it, they can bust through the shelter door.

Jerry tells them to stop.  “You’re all acting like a mob!” he shouts.  Marty concurs, tells them to cool down, think it through.

 

To this, Frank scowls and says, “Wasn’t I clear before?  Nobody cares what you think, you or your kind!”  This time, the two do come to blows.  Frank punches Marty in the mouth.  There are shrieks, screams.  A siren goes off, whining in the distance.  Frank yells that they need to batter down the door, and they run off for the steel pipe.

Moments later, they are back, in a frenzy.  They swing the pipe, crash it against the shelter door, frantic, violent.  Again and again and again, until the door gives way.

 

And then . . . the power flicks on, the lights come to life.  And the radio crackles, the announcer speaks.  The president has determined that the UFOs are not nuclear missiles, but satellites.  “Repeat–there are no enemy missiles approaching.”  There is no danger.  The state of emergency has been called off.

 

Everyone smiles and laughs.  Couple hug each other.

But then a startled, regretful expression comes to Frank’s face.  He approaches Marty, apologizes, explaining to his neighbor that he “went off [his] rocker” and that he “didn’t mean any of those things I said to you.”

 

Jerry chimes in.  Feigning joviality, he says they’ll pay Dr. Stockton for the damages to his property.  “We’ll take up a collection right away.”

“We can have a block party tomorrow night,” Marty says.  “A big celebration!”

Jerry is all for it.  “Anything to get back to normal.”

Stockton, exhausted, defeated, tells them he doesn’t know what normal is anymore.  And paying for the damages?

 

“I wonder if any one of us has any idea what those damages really are,” he says.  “Maybe one of them is finding out what we’re really like when we’re normal.  The kind of people we are underneath the skin.  A lot of naked, wild animals who put such a price on staying alive that they’ll claw their neighbors to death just for the privilege.”

 

Rod Serling sums it up at the closing, as the camera pans the Stockton living room, the tables overturned, casualties of the neighbors’ recklessness and rage during the crisis.

 

“No moral, no message, no prophetic tract, just a simple statement of fact: for civilization to survive, the human race has to remain civilized.  Tonight’s very small exercise in logic from the Twilight Zone.”

And, no doubt, it’s an exercise at least as relevant in 2019 as it was in 1961.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

“The Trade-Ins” (On Love)

Mitchell Brant has a problem.  Five years have elapsed between the end of The Eye-Dancers and the start of The Singularity Wheel, and numerous life events have taken place in the interim, but for Mitchell, there is still only one girl he longs to be with, one girl who has captured the secret inner chambers of his heart.  Heather.  The girl he met, five years ago, in the alternate town of Colbyville, the girl from a thousand universes away.  His friends tell him to let her go.  What’s the point of wishing you could be with someone so unattainable, so far away the mind cannot even begin to comprehend the distance?

 

But logic, practicality, reason cannot cut through.  Mitchell thinks of her all the time, imagines she is right there beside him, a smile on her face.  He cannot turn off his feelings, tell his soul to forget what it yearns for.

 

Love is like that.

****************************

In a third-season Twilight Zone episode called “The Trade-Ins,” a similar dilemma presents itself.  John and Marie Holt are an elderly couple–he is 79; she is 74.  What’s more, Mr. Holt is in declining health, often wracked by intense and ever-increasing bouts of pain.  But a new hope exists in the futuristic world where they find themselves.  The New Life Corporation shines like a beacon on a cold, dark night.

 

The New Life Corporation specializes in “youth, new life, rebirth,” the salesman at the office, a Mr. Vance, explains to the Holts.  They have the technology to switch an elderly person’s body, or a sick person’s body, with a new body, a body that is “perfect in composition, concept, and construction.”  All the while, the person who makes this anatomical switch will retain all of their memories, personality, and emotions.  As Mr. Vance tells the Holts, even after the switch, physiologically and psychologically they will be exactly the same.  The only difference will be that each of them will be placed in a younger body, “in the prime of health.”  They are told the average life span of a New Life body is 112 years.

 

And then he shows them the models.  All are attractive, in perfect physical condition.  But the Holts decide on the bodies of a young couple–a couple that, following the procedure, will be them.  Mr. Vance tells them they will have an entire new life before them–they will return to the beginning, in the full flower of youth.  Old age will be but a memory.

 

But then the price comes up.  Mr. Vance explains the model couple comes as a package deal of $10,000, surely a bargain, he says, considering all the Holts will gain.  Perhaps.  The Holts, however, only have $5,000.  And Mr. Vance will not accept it as a down payment.  There are rules, he says, government-mandated, that require the full payment, up front.

Mr. Vance then pitches a half-deal.  “One of you could get it,” he says.  The $5,000 the Holts have is enough for John or Marie to switch into a youthful, healthy body.  Marie encourages John to do it–he will be free of his pain, and she assures him, “I can wait”–until they can scrounge up the remaining $5,000 for her switch.

 

John does not commit, though.  “We can’t be separated,” he says.  “We’re no good without each other.”

Desperate, his pain worsening, John later locates a back room in a bar, where a high-stakes poker game is under way.  He has the $5,000, hoping he can gamble his way to the $10,000 he and his wife would need to acquire new bodies as a couple.  But John is out of practice, a naive and woeful poker player.  It is only the compassion and empathy of the gamblers he goes up against that saves him.  Observing the pain John is in, listening to his story, the gamblers allow him to leave with his $5,000, choosing not to “clean him out,” as they assure him they could.

 

His pain continuing to escalate, John decides to undergo the switch, by himself, with his wife’s blessing.  “Yes, yes, yes,” she tells him, over and over when they return to the New Life Corporation.  She wants him to be pain-free, to go through with the procedure.

 

And when he emerges hours later a young man, running and doing various calithsenics, amazed at how energetic and strong he feels, he joyfully tells Marie, “Do you know what happens now? . . . We’ll do everything we haven’t been able to do.  The big things, the little things, the crazy, illogical things that we were too old, too sick, and too tired to do.  Every day is going to be a wedding, every afternoon a reception, and every evening a honeymoon.  Marie, my darling, you and I are going to begin to live!  We’re going to–”

 

But here, Marie steps away, covers her face with her hands, looks at this strange young man in horror.  He is her husband, and yet . . . he is not.  Not anymore.  Their eyes meet.  She is 74.  He is 22.  They no longer match, no longer a unit, a team, lifetime partners.  The procedure has created a gulf between them, unspoken but undeniable.  John’s eyes are just as wide, just as understanding as his wife’s.

 

Mr. Vance tells John to come with him to sign some papers.  They leave.  And when, later, John reemerges, he is old again, the young body gone, the tired, pain-riddled body returned.

“Marie, my darling,” he says. “If I have to have occasion of pain, so be it.  I wouldn’t want it any other way, darling.”

When she protests, he stops her with a Robert Browning quote she herself had uttered earlier in the episode.

“Grow old along with me.  The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made.”

And then they walk off . . . together.

 

Rod Serling’s closing narration sums it up tenderly:

“From Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet: ‘Love gives not but itself and takes not from itself, love possesses not nor would it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love.’ Not a lesson, just a reminder, from all the sentimentalists–in The Twilight Zone.”

*********************************

For a few weeks now, I have been AWOL on WordPress.  There is a reason for that.  I went back home, to Rochester, New York, the city where I was born, where I grew up.  But this time, I went back because someone close to me–so close to me–was, suddenly, near the end.  There were endless days in the ICU, walking the long, long hallway, turning the corner, calling in, visiting, hours spent by the bedside, the machines beeping, the respirator pumping air into lungs that could no longer breathe on their own.  Then there were funeral preparations, time spent with family, mourning a devastating loss, grieving.  Reflecting.

 

There were tears, so many tears.  Tender moments.  Heartbreaking moments.  Memories.  Discussions with doctors and nurses, trying to pry an ounce of hope out of a hopeless situation, seeking some possible path, some new and groundbreaking treatment.  But there was none.

 

And all I could do when it was over was to say–I love you, Mom.  I will miss you always.

*******************************

In the days leading up to this post, I had intended to end it there.  But then something happened.  Something remarkable.

I returned to my current home in Vermont recently, a day removed from the funeral and after being in Rochester for the better part of two weeks.  I had to try to get back into a routine, to go back to work.  To live and carry on.  But then, first thing the following morning, I noticed something in the basement.

Let me back up.  We have a walkout basement.  It leads to the garage.  Every time I leave the house or come back, I walk through the basement.  And in the back corner, there is an old light fixture, a simple naked bulb screwed in to a socket attached to the ceiling.  The thing is, last spring, the chain that turns this light on or off became stuck.  The light was on, but I couldn’t switch it off.  I yanked on the chain–too hard.  It broke, severed like a mowed grass blade, falling to the concrete floor.  There was no way to turn off the light.  So I unscrewed it, removed it from the socket, and replaced it with a dead, burnt-out bulb.  The socket was “on,” but the bulb was a dud, and so it stayed dark.

 

Until that morning–my first full day back in Vermont following the funeral.  When I went down into the basement, I was surprised to see the bulb was lit.  It had been dead when I screwed it in last May, had been dark all through the summer, fall, and winter.  But now it was on.  A dead bulb come to life.  An oxidized, broken-apart filament burning brightly. And instantly I knew.

 

It was a message, a very personal one, from a mother to her son.  An assurance.  A comfort.  A lesson and a reminder.

That of all things, and across all time and space, eternal, bridging dimensions, spanning life and death, gentle but unyielding, conquering the darkness with light, love remains.

Love endures.

 

Thank you for letting me know, Mom.  Thank you for showing me.

 

And thank you to everyone, as always, for reading.

–Mike

“It’s Time to Watch ‘Forrest Gump'” (Or, The Art of Not Forcing the Issue)

We’ve all been there.  You’re working on something–a story, perhaps, or a song, a poem.  A painting.  Something creative, something you believe in and aim to finish.  You’ve managed to juggle your schedule today, delegate chores and to-dos, plan ahead.  It’s the first time all week you have a chance to dig in and proceed with your masterpiece.  You have a glass of water or tea at the ready, maybe even a snack.  You plan on being here for a while.

 

“Let’s go,” you say, psyching yourself up.  “Let’s get this party started.”

And then . . . nothing happens.

The words don’t come.  The characters don’t cooperate.  The brushstrokes feel heavy and blunt, messy, as if you’re trying to paint underwater. The image you’re creating, the story you’re weaving, the art you’re making is stuck, dead on the page.  Your tea gets cold, the snacks sit there, uneaten.  And your cursor blinks at you, in and out, in and out, like a silent, mocking accusation.

 

But you aren’t ready to admit defeat.  You’re not sure when the next block of hours will present itself.  You’ve arranged your entire day around this!  Why are the words playing hard to get?

 

Certainly, I have experienced this phenomenon more times than I care to remember.  While writing The Singularity Wheel, there were days when it felt as though my head was in a blender, the words and phrases and paragraphs jumbled into a miasma of incoherence.  And since time was at a premium, and I was already so far behind my publication schedule for the book, I would resist, push back against the reluctant and ever-capricious muse.

 

The odd thing was–I might be struggling like this after a successful literary sojourn the last time I sat down to write.  In The Singularity Wheel, for example, Chapter 10 went smoothly–I sat down and wrote that chapter in two hours flat, and it required only minimal revisions.  But Chapter 11 was a brier patch, a wasteland of pitfalls and quicksand and hidden, poisonous vipers lying in wait to strike.  The first run-through took multiple sessions, and even then, the chapter later went through various revisions.  I even started thinking of it as “the nightmare chapter,” or, when I was feeling especially dramatic, “the chapter where my novel goes to die.”

 

Out of frustration, when I encounter a rupture in the creative process, a session where I just can’t produce, I too often try to force it.  I’ll write a sentence, then another, and another, and after several minutes, they may bleed to two or three paragraphs.  It is like attempting to find water in an abandoned and dry well.  Every word is an effort, every sentence a marathon.  What’s worse, nothing sounds right.  After a half hour or an hour of this, I will pause and read what I’ve got.  Almost without fail, what I’ve got is junk.

 

But the streak of stubbornness dies hard.  During one particularly unproductive session, I pulled my chair away from the desk, stood up, did a dozen push-ups, two dozen sit-ups, jogged in place, took a walk around the house, upstairs, downstairs, in the basement, and then back again.  I just need to get the old juices flowing, I told myself.  Work out the kinks.  When I returned to the manuscript, however, the kinks were still there, binding me with their inflexible, industrial-strength straps.

 

It’s times like this when I truly appreciate the flip side–those sessions when the words flow like lava, pouring out, my fingers barely able to keep up with my thoughts, swept away in a creative tsunami.  It is a high like no other.  But it cannot be forced.  It comes when it comes, as mercurial as the weather in the hill country of central Vermont.

 

Ultimately, this is a truth we have to accept.  Even the best-laid plans of writers and artists must sometimes be altered to fit the mood of the muse.  We fight against a barren spell.  We might rant and rave and swear, and try to will the words to come.  But that rarely works–at least not for me.

 

Once I know I’ve given it all I have, once I’ve stared at the screen long enough with no results to show for my efforts, however well intentioned; once I’ve taken a long walk along the country road where I live and still cannot produce even a single decent sentence, I grudgingly acknowledge the truth.  Today just isn’t my day.

 

Temporarily defeated (but only temporarily, I remind myself!), I endeavor to get away from the work and the frustration and perhaps watch a favorite movie or TV show.  Who knows?  If I’m lucky, something in whatever I decide to watch may serve as an artistic catalyst of sorts and get me out of my funk.

 

But which movie?  Which TV show?  I sort through my collection of old-school DVDs.  (What, me download?)  I settle on Forrest Gump.

It’s better than banging my head against the creative wall.

We’ll get ’em next time.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

********************

P.S.  Speaking of old school, the paperback copy of The Singularity Wheel is now available on Amazon!

The Bedrock Beneath My Feet

When I sat down to begin writing The Eye-Dancers, I’m not sure I realized straightaway that it would ultimately be a novel about home.

 

Indeed, if asked at the time, I probably would have said it was more about alienation, finding yourself, discovery, overcoming obstacles.  And make no mistake–alienation is a key theme in the story.  The four main characters–Mitchell Brant, Joe Marma, Ryan Swinton, and Marc Kuslanski–are in junior high, and for various reasons, each one often feels like a social outcast–not fitting in to that group, not comfortable in this group, not popular with the girls, never quite sure what to do or what to say when the cool kids are around.  Add to this the interdimensional journey they are forced to take, waking up in another world, another universe, and that sense of alienation is increased a thousandfold.

 

But beyond this and at its core, deep within the soul of the novel, The Eye-Dancers is really a story about home–embracing it, remembering it, trying hard to return to it when everything seems hopeless and lost.  Keeping the faith that, with apologies to Thomas Wolfe, we can, in fact, go home again.

 

********************************

It’s nothing special, really, or remarkably distinct to the objective eye.  It’s just a simple ranch home–one of many–on a suburban street, three miles east of Rochester, New York.

 

It’s also the house where I was born, and where I grew up.

My parents were not the original homeowners, but they didn’t miss by much.  The house was built in the mid-1950s, during the construction boom of the post-World War II era, neighborhood streets filling in what had been, for generations, the farmlands and vineyards on the east side of the city.

 

When my mother and father moved in, it was 1965.  The original owner wanted to sell, to move away–no one knows or remembers why anymore, if they ever did.  My parents had been married five years, already had three children.  They weren’t planning on having a fourth, but I would come along, unexpected, unplanned, years later.

 

The remarkable thing is–my mother and father still live in the old ranch house, on the same street, in the same neighborhood.  Many neighbors have come and gone–though a few, who go back to the time when my parents moved in five decades ago, have remained as well.  The house has undergone makeovers and paint jobs, additions and updates over the years–but it’s still the same house, overflowing with memories, echoes I can’t help but hear anytime I go back for a visit.

 

I am one of the lucky ones.  I know that.  While other children are uprooted, forced to move to a different state, different country, different hemisphere, forced to attend new schools and make new friends, my childhood was spent in one place, built on a sturdy and solid foundation.  It’s hard to imagine the old house belonging to anyone other than my parents.  That’s the way it has been since I’ve been in this world.  It seems almost an affront to picture it otherwise.  But one day, inevitably, it will happen.  I can visualize it even now:  Me returning to the old neighborhood, needing to see but not wanting to.  Stopping.  Pulling up the driveway.  Knocking at the door.

 

“Hello?” someone would answer, peeking out at me, as if I were the intruder and not they, as if this house, with all the memories and love and traditions and childhood dreams and longings were somehow more theirs than mine.

“Sorry to bother you,” I’d say.  But what I’d want to say is, “Do you still have the old stone fireplace in the backyard?  You haven’t gotten rid of it, have you?  It was there when my parents moved in, so many years ago.  Or the scribbling down on the basement wall?  I scribbled those words there when I was ten–tucked away in a corner where no one could see them but me–unless they knew where to look.  And what about the first room down the hallway, on the left?  That was my bedroom, you know, back when I was a little kid . . .”

I came along in the 1970s, nearly a decade younger than my two brothers, eleven years younger than my sister.  I grew up in the ’80s, a Generation Xer, an interesting time to come of age.  The generation I was part of growing up, it seems to me, served as a bridge between the baby boomers who preceded us and the Millennials who would arrive on the scene later.  In the ’80s, things were becoming high-tech, with home computers and car phones and increasingly mind-blowing special effects when you plunked down your dollars and went to the movies.  But at the same time, vestiges of the past were all around.  The postal service was still how you contacted people when you wanted to write.  There was no email, no Internet, and certainly no smartphones or Eye-Dancers blogs!  It was a period of transition, of one generation waving to the previous one in its rearview mirror while at the same time paving the way for the super-tech, digitalized world to come.

 

And I spent it all at the house where I grew up, sitting on the land of old, forgotten vineyards and fields on Rochester’s east side, the ghost of them, the hushed, lingering whispers manifested by the grapevines we had in our backyard–later ripped up and pulled out in favor of a deck.

When the ’90s came along, and then the 21st century, I moved on, as we all must, and relocated to a neighboring state, a six-hour drive away.  But the home of my childhood is still there, my parents are still there, and every time I visit, I make sure to linger in a quiet moment, to listen, and remember.

 

The Eye-Dancers came about from a dream I had when I was in high school.  The novel wouldn’t be written for many years, but the dream–that stayed with me and served as the impetus for everything that transpired in the story.

 

It was the same dream Mitchell Brant experiences at the start of the book–waking up in the middle of the night, looking out into the street, seeing a ghost girl standing there . . . And when I wrote the scene, it was my old street I visualized–the street light shining through the airy, ethereal form of the girl the same one that still  stands just beyond the mailbox that I’d dash to on long-ago summer days when I saw the mail truck pull up and I was expecting something special to arrive.  The memories from childhood run deep, and, inevitably, bits and pieces flutter into the stories I write like magic confetti, sprinkling my present-day with vestiges from the past.

 

It’s funny how it is.  To strangers driving by, the old ranch would just be another house, nearly indistinguishable from a million others.  They may not even see it, nondescript as it is, blending in with the neighborhood, just a cog in the wheel, just one small part of the whole.  It brings to mind one of Kevin Arnold’s voice-over narrations in The Wonder Years, one of my all-time favorite shows . . .

 

“Growing up happens in a heartbeat.  One day you’re in diapers, the next day you’re gone.  But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul.  I remember a place, a town, a house like other houses, a yard like a lot of other yards, on a street like a lot of other streets.  And the thing is, after all these years, I still look back . . . with wonder.”

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

Young Man with a Horn (Or, Hitting the High Note)

We all have go-to movies, shows, or reruns when we need a good laugh, a respite from the day.  For me, one of my all-time favorite sitcoms is the 1950s classic, The Honeymooners.  Though the show aired years before I was born, it’s always been a joy for me to watch.  The Honeymooners features bus driver Ralph Kramden; his wife, Alice; and their best friends and neighbors, Ed and Trixie Norton.  (As an aside, I consider Ed Norton, played perfectly by Art Carney, to be the funniest character in television history, but Jackie Gleason’s Ralph isn’t far behind!)

 

In one memorable episode from March 1956 titled “Young Man with a Horn,” Alice digs up Ralph’s old cornet, asking him to throw it away, as she is trying to rid their apartment of unused and unneeded junk.  But Ralph protests.  “This means a lot to me,” he says.  He used to play it when he was younger, and feels sentimental toward it.  Alice grumbles, “You haven’t played it in years.”  But Ralph is adamant.  He wants to keep the cornet.

 

He tries it out, playing the old tune he used to practice when he was a boy.  It goes okay until he tries to hit a particularly high note half a minute into the song.  The result sounds like the wailing of a wounded banshee.

“I never could hit that high note,” he says.  This causes him to reflect.  He thinks of all the ideas, the projects he’s started in his life never to finish.  “I never stick with anything,” he says.  “I never hit the high note.”

 

That’s when they hear a knock on their door.  An elderly couple enters, apologizing for the unannounced visit, but they explain that, forty years ago, after getting married, they moved into this same apartment.  And seeing that today is their fortieth wedding anniversary, they are feeling nostalgic and wanted to see their old home.

 

During the conversation, Ralph learns that the old gentleman is the owner of a well-known donut company–“Your donuts are my favorite,” Ralph assures him.  He is impressed, and asks the man the secret to his success.

The man tells him that one day, many years ago, in this very apartment, he determined to become a success, to make it, to do whatever it took to climb to the top.  He explains that he created a list of his strong points and a list of his weak points, and posted them side by side on the wall, and then he worked to make his strong points even stronger and to eliminate his weak points altogether.

This sets a fire under Ralph,  He applies for a new job, a step up from the bus driver position he’s had for years.  He makes his own list of strengths and weaknesses.  “I’m going to be a success,” he declares.  “I’m going to hit that high note once and for all, Alice!”

 

But a week later, Ralph learns he didn’t get the new job.  Nothing has changed.  “I failed again,” he says.  “What a moax I am,” he goes on, using the term Jackie Gleason made famous during the show’s run.  “I’m not gonna be a failure anymore–what a laugh.”

But Alice will hear none of it.  She tells him she’s proud of all the changes he’s tried to make, the self-improvement he’s worked so hard on.  And as for the job he didn’t get, “there’s always next year, and the year after that,” she tells him.

Ralph looks at her adoringly, and says, “You know something–I did hit that high note once.  The day I married you.”

 

And the curtain falls with the classic kiss and embrace nearly every Honeymooners episode ends with.

**************************

Old Ralph Kramden’s wish to hit the high note, to soar high above snowcapped peaks, is something I am sure we can all relate to.  And in the world of creative writing, it seems especially apropos.

As much as I love writing, as much as I cannot conceive of a life without it, I am the first to admit–the writing life is littered with hard days, days where the words don’t want to come, when the characters are performing their own literary version of a sit-down strike, when the desire flickers and wanes, and when the ideas are nowhere to be found.

 

Indeed, as Oscar Wilde is attributed to have said one long-ago day, “I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out.”

As I continue to work on the sequel to The Eye-Dancers, I know full well what Wilde meant!  There are days when nothing seems to work, when the words you want to use are stuck, stranded on a raft upstream, separated from the page by a wide, unnavigable log jam.  On such days, I cajole, I wait, I take a walk, I key in a sentence or two, hoping for a momentum that doesn’t come.  The words seem to be coated with mud, viscous and thick, slowing the process down to a crawl.

 

There are other days when the words come a little easier, though with generous amounts of doubt and insecurity thrown in.  “Sure, I’ve written six pages today,” I might say.  “But are they any good?  Or will they just need to be scrapped and completely redone?  And what about the next scene, the next chapter, and the one after that?  Will I be able to pull it off?  Or will everything bog down?”

 

The questions and concerns of the writing life rarely fade, the self-doubts are rarely silenced in full.  But there are times–yes, there are times when everything comes together and wings spread wide, catching the current and soaring high over green, luxuriant meadows.  When and how these wings sprout, causing the words to sing and the ideas to race along like jackrabbits–I do not know.  I wish I did.  I wish I could bottle it.  But it comes when it comes, rarely, fleeting, tantalizing, here one day and gone the next.  But the taste of it, the memory of it–they linger, and they encourage, and they serve as a reminder that sometimes, some days, we can and do hit the high note.

 

It reminds me of all those days growing up when I would shoot baskets in the driveway.  My parents were good enough to put up a basketball hoop over our garage, allowing me and my two brothers to practice as often as we liked, despite the dented and damaged rain gutters such practices produced!  Some days, I’d go outside and dribble the ball around, and Rick, a good friend of mine who lived next door, would come out and join me.  If I was having a particularly good day and my shots were going in, Rick would say, “You got the feelin’!”

 

The feelin’.  The zone.  Hitting the high note.  Call it what you will.  We all know it when we experience it. We all hunger for it when we’re struggling.  It might be hidden, buried under boxes laced with cobwebs and old clothes dusty and  wrinkled from years of neglect, just as Ralph Kramden’s cornet was.  But it’s there–waiting, ready, and available.

 

We just need to keep plugging away, even on the soggy days, when the clouds are gray and low.

Because it will all be worth it when you blow your horn, hit your high note, and soar.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

From Frost to Thor, with a Cup of Hot Cocoa (Or, the Literary Dualism of a New England Stick Season)

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to live year-round in balmy, gentle conditions, where palm trees sway in midwinter and heavy, insulated coats are strange accoutrements only seen on television.  I’ve never experienced anything like that–not even close.  I grew up in Rochester, in upstate New York, famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) for its long winters and the lake-effect snow machine that produces blizzards and white-outs with alarming regularity.

So, what did I ultimately do?  Move to Southern California, the South of France?  Tahiti?  Not quite.  I moved to Vermont, colder and harsher still than Rochester!  I have no regrets.  Vermont is a rural gem, a rugged little state tucked away in the far northwest corner of New England.  It’s one of the most beautiful places you will ever see.  It is also, to put it mildly, a land of extremes.  Few locales on earth experience such robust, exaggerated seasons–there is nothing subtle about the weather in New England.  The region, according to Henry Cabot Lodge so many years ago, yet still as appropriate today as when he proclaimed it, “has a harsh climate, a barren soil, [and] a rough and stormy coast.”

And yet . . . there is one time of year in New England that is more subdued, nondescript, and soft-spoken, almost shy in its fundamental drabness . . . The month of November, tucked away in hiding for so long, creeps up on the calendar, whisper-quiet, as if inching forward on its tiptoes.  And, once arrived, it has a personality, a starkness, all its own.

The flowers and blooms of spring are a distant memory, as are the ripe fields, muggy nights, and poolside gatherings of high summer.  October, with its breathtaking, almost narcissistic display of reds, golds, and oranges, is still fresh in the mind’s eye, but it’s a brief performance, a limited run.  The hillsides, afire with splashes of color only a fortnight ago, now lay stripped, with row on row of gray tree trunks and skeletal limbs reaching for the cold, late-autumn sky.

So, yes.  In many ways, November (what the locals sometimes refer to as “stick season” around here) is a somber, even depressive month.  The days grow successively shorter, colder, as the interminable New England winter approaches. There is a stillness to the land, a sharp crispness to the air, and all too often a succession of leaden-sky days with low-lying clouds hovering like bruises over the earth.

There is also, at least for me, a sense of slowing down, of stepping back, looking over the bare, windswept terrain and pausing for reflection.

It’s easy to see, walking along a Vermont country road littered with the desiccated harvest of fallen October leaves, or climbing a knoll and looking out at the ancient, rounded spine of the Green Mountains, how this area has served as an inspiration for some of the world’s great writers and poets.  Something in the rocky soil, the rugged, unyielding terrain, the windswept contours of a rolling New England field in the fall instills a serious quality to an author’s prose, or a poet’s verses.  Frost, Emerson, Thoreau, Plath, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Dickinson . . . the list goes on and on.  Surely, there is something special about this place.

 

I feel it throughout the year, but at no point does it affect me more than the month of November.  November brings out the serious and the brooding in my writing, makes me want to try my hand at poetry (a proclivity I rarely feel over the course of the eleven other months) and pen an introspective novel, light on the action and saturated with layered themes, obscure symbols, and tortured, existential characters.  I want to reach, pursue, challenge myself to write about the subterranean undercurrents of life, raging beneath the surface, often hidden beneath a civilized and well-practiced facade.  I want to produce art, works that inspire and examine, question and illuminate.

Worthy aspirations, all, but sometimes, when unchecked, they can become an albatross, long-winged and sharp-beaked, weighing me down, choking off my airflow.  I appreciate the masters of the craft and serious literature as much as anyone, and hope a small smattering of my own output can be labeled “literary,” but at the same time, at least for me, there is an element even more important than the profound, more essential than the sublime.

Thankfully, the month of November also speaks to this lighter aspect.

I find November, with its protracted evenings and roaring, crackling hearth fires and frost-covered windows, to be one of the coziest times of the year.  There are few treats I enjoy more on a cold fall night than preparing a mug of hot chocolate, maybe popping a generous portion of popcorn, and settling in to watch an old black-and-white classic–nothing extraordinary, not necessarily an Oscar- or Emmy-winning masterpiece, but rather something fun, silly even.  Perhaps I’ll binge-watch episodes of The Honeymooners, or tune in to a corny old sci-fi movie with bug-eyed monsters, mutated spiders, or ever-expanding gelatinous blobs from outer space.

Other times, I’ll dig into my vintage comic book collection, perhaps pulling out a science-fiction title from the 1950s like Strange Adventures or Mystery in Space.  If I’m feeling more superhero-minded, maybe I’ll flip through an old issue of Journey into Mystery with the Mighty Thor or, Mitchell Brant‘s favorite, The Fantastic Four.  Whichever choice I make, a classic sitcom; a cliched but riveting movie produced decades ago, short on character but high on smiles; or a vintage comic complete with nostalgic ads and the musty, old smell all comic book collectors know and love, I’m just glad that Old Man November, with all its grays and dark, wistful sighs, has its lighter side to help me keep things in balance.

It’s a noble thing, a calling, really, for artists and writers and creative souls the world over to want to imbue their work with meaning and thoughts, words, and images that move their audience from tears to laughter and back again.  It’s something every serious artist should have, and cultivate.  But if our creative process isn’t also fun, if we don’t love what we do, that, too, will be reflected in the final output.

“Write only what you love,” Ray Bradbury once said, “and love what you write.  The key word is love.  You have to get up in the morning and write something you love.”

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with some hot cocoa, freshly popped popcorn, and a legion of telepathic crab monsters.

Thanks so much reading!

–Mike