Fireflower

Fireworks (0001)

Fire works (Long Exposure)

Fireworks (Preview)

Chest

The Memory Palace (Pros and Cons)

The other day, I was giving someone my phone number. Not an everyday occurrence, but it should have been simple enough.

I was all “Hey Brain, can I have my phone number”
And brain was like “Phone Number! Right! Coming up!”

And what did I end up writing down? 810-228-3... BRAIN! That is a number that stopped being relevant in 2002! You might remember that year, it was the one when we moved out of my parent’s house and no longer needed that neat Cobra cordless phone!

“You wanted a phone number.”

“YOU HAD ONE JOB!”

And thus the fundamental flaw inherent in the Method of Loci is revealed.

Let me back up a second, because this requires some explanation. If I ever write a book for helping parents understand challenged kids based on my own experiences, I will title it “A Fistful of Learning Disabilities” and if I write a sequel for people challenged by sleeplessness I will write it “A Few Sleep Disorders More” because that’s how the movies went! If it bugs you did I didn’t go with “A Fistful of Sleep Disorders” you can read all about my feelings on the subject in my blockbusting, best seller follow up “The Good, The Bad, And the Fuck You, That’s Why” but I digress.

Dyslexia makes digesting words really hard, ADD makes reading a huge pain in the ass to begin with. If you’ve ever had your eyes just drift over the words, but not take them in, it’s kind of like that, only the book sometimes seems to have been translated by someone who only speaks English as a third language and never actually learn Centari, but figured they could translate the book based on the pictures. Now make it three times more frustrating than that, because your basic ADD suffered is actually paying attention to every signal entering their brain, but I digress.

So while I was still young, and they thought that I was either what was still being called retarded or possibly a next level “Professor X is going to show up any day now” superbeing, suggestions were made. I honestly have no idea what side of the ledger Memory Palace came from, but it was one of the things I had explained to me. I distinctly remember by father told me about a method called Roman Room, or Journey Method. Now, I love my father very much, and he was doing his best, but can we all agree Memory Palace is a way more badass name and move on?

So a quick breakdown, if you haven’t read any of the links I presented...

Imagine that you are trying to remember your grocery list, a long and complicated list that would require a lot of work. Instead of writing it down and reading the list, you remember the list by walking through your home and look at a series of object you placed there earlier. You place them in the imaginary version of your home, not the real one. The idea is you remember your home pretty darn well, so you would remember the things you place in it. Now, either you place the actual physical steak you want, or you get symbolic (or even resort to puns) and maybe just leave a wooden steak imbedded in the floor. You’ve got a flower blooming in the window (get flour) and a bird sitting on the flower pot (eggs... probably?) and so on. It’s more complicated than that, way more complicated.

It can become hyper-complicated and even fractally complicated. Quick example, I’ve got a wing of the palace dedicated to each person I know. I walk down the wing, and each door has some notice explaining what that particular memory is about. I close in on the door and instead of just zooming in, I get as much information as my attention can hold. I enter the room, and the curtain has my mental notes about the meal we had together that day. I close in a little, and I can remember what each of us has, in a little further how it tasted, in a little further and how each morsel felt, in a little further and each drop of water that condensed on the glass and in a little further and I’ve suddenly lost five hours because staring that deep at the curtains takes time and energy and should only be done at leisure or because of a serious need. There is also the minor issue of other people, and for that the connections between them are connected by portals, themselves acting like hyperlinks to someone else’s story, while all existing in the same room. I said it got complicated.

The other problem is, numbers don’t work. Numbers are this... thing. That’s where my dyslexia goes into over drive, numbers are not and will not ever be my friends. I can’t even trust them to enter my head in the right order (I don’t swap letters around much, but ho-boy does 12 turn into 21) how can I trust them to behave when they get there.

So here’s the thing, I do have these lavish wings where I put events. Things that happened to us, conversations we had, they are woven into the carpets and sensations are embedded in the grain of the wood that makes up the furniture, but stuff like names and labels, we have to go to the library for that. And you’re thinking “Hey, no problem, dewey decimal, microfiche, computerized records... google. No prob, I totes got this.” AND I just laugh and laugh and laugh.

See, my mind isn’t set up like a modern library, nothing so easy. My mind operates like a medieval library, and the three of you who know what that means are cringing and clutching their teddy bears. See, we’re talking parchment scrolls, and vellum books with no note on the spine about what’s in them. Books were so expensive that if there were thirty pages left over at the end, you’d just write thirty more pages worth of stuff to fill those pages. Piles of scrolls and manuscripts often shoved into cubby holes and possibly only the head librarian knew the contents and location of each scroll and book. Possibly, sometimes you had to just read through and see if you could find anything.

And that’s how the other half of the palace exists. One half, an opulent palace, as the name suggests, on the other half a cold cloister, half library and half warehouse (Because there are stacks of banker’s boxes stuffed full of “Old Business” that I don’t wish to clutter up space) and while the librarians are often quite helpful they will sometimes just blindly grab into the cubby that says “Phone Numbers” and hand me any old scrap that their fingers happen to grasp. Normally, it happens to be the piece on top, but I find I tend to run a full speed through the place when I’m dreaming and things can get disturbed.

The sheer amount of information my brain has decided it can hold onto it also a problem, since we haven’t a Bing Search but a Brother Bernard a Brother Darryl and another Brother Darryl. The problem is that the person who put everything in place, and who knows where everything is, was Father... Ted(?), and Ole Dad Teddy ain’t be seen round these parts fer some time now. This means that Bernard, Darryl and Darryl have exactly zero idea where to find anything beyond the basic labels.

As a result, I got the wrong number.

Secrets

Dark Window

Conspiracy

Face

Yeah

If You Don't Know What a Libertine is, I Won't Have Sex With You... Apparently

I don’t know why, but it sounds shallow to say that I didn’t sleep with someone because she didn’t know what the term Libertine meant. I feel it's snobbish, somehow, to set your standard on a single word. However, looking back on the situation... yeah that’s totally why we didn’t bang.

See, I met her through a mutual friend. Now he had some specific things to say about her, because he was kind of a tight-assed misogynist who I think was probably struggling with some issues regarding his own sexuality. That’s neither here nor there, but it’s important to understand that he said she was a slut who’d fuck boys or girls because she didn’t care and she was a slut. Yes, he started and ended the sentence with the slut declaration. Now, if you know me, you know where this is going. I had to meet this person. If this guy I knew was going into full granny pearl clutching mode, I had to meet the person who was causing those pearls to be clutched.

And she was... really good looking. I mean, really cute and had the sort of body that makes a guy in his mid-twenties sit up and take notice. And she had... a habit. She would laugh and lean against whoever was nearest and press herself against them and press her cheek next to theirs and laugh and it was MUTHAFUCKIN’ enticing. She had a certain sexual aggression, which I like, and a confidence of self which I’m also a fan of. Her stated preferences, sexual and otherwise, put check marks in a lot of boxes for me. I'm way into sluts is what I'm saying.

One of the first conversations we had, she was driving and either I mentioned that he had told me about her or she had asked if he had. I can’t remember and I don’t intend to go into the fine details of the memory palace to find out. I could, but what the fuck is the point? The important part of this story is that I admitted he had indeed mentioned her to me.

“He said you were something of a modern day libertine.” I said, she said she studied poetry and literature, so I figured that little softball would be good.

“What does that mean?” She asked, which I judged to be a decent question, because that statement could go multiple ways.

“Well, I’ll admit, those weren’t his exact words. I’m not sure he knows what a libertine is.”

“Well, I don’t know what that is.” she admitted, and I kind of deflated a little.

“He intimated that you were a sexually free individual.” I said, because I had all these two cent words, I’d already paid for them, fuck if they were going to rest on the goddamn shelf!

“Did he call me a slut?” She asked.

“Yeah, that was closer to his terminology.” I said. “And he said you didn’t make distinctions between genders.”

“I’m bi if that’s what he means.”

And that was the first problem, there were others, but that was a problem. I mean... I mean... I mean I’m sitting here on the bench, I’m sitting here on the not getting Altoid blowjobs bench, because she doesn’t know what a libertine is. And do not think for one moment that was her idea, because telling me she had Altoids and mentioning how amazing they made her blowjobs was very much her idea. Her ideas had to do with me getting peppermint blowjobs as a starter. Then we’d go over to a friend and she would show me exactly how bi she could be.

Looking back as I am now, I should have been all over that. She was hot, into me, and while trying to court me explained that she had absolutely zero limits if only I would make suggestions. She enjoyed the sort of music I liked, she enjoyed the kind of sexual shenanigans I enjoy. And there was no good reason to avoid this, besides having a slight, niggling feeling that to bang her would be a violation of Rule #2, which I knew better than to ignore. Her habit of sliding her hand down the front of my shirt to run her fingers through my chest hair could have overcome that though, I’m pretty sure.

But she didn’t know what was meant by the term “libertine” and a apparently, that’s my Rubicon. Or my Durin’s Bridge if you are of a geekier mindset. Instead, we did nothing. There is more than the one word, she had a certain level of incuriosity about the world. She just wasn't someone I could stoop down to mentally and she wasn't up to climbing my mental tree. As a result, I never laid an indecent hand on her (my right, if you're keeping track) , or even kissed her, because she missed out on basic terms. Had she known what the term meant, I could have been – it’s unsavory to say what (or where) I could have been, frankly.

So the moral of this story, and there is one, is that frogs should never give rides to scorpions. Or something. I don't know, do what you want.

Boot Scraper

Yard

Look Away

Blackbird in a tree

The Jar

Hat Work

This is why I blog

I haven’t tried to submit a story for publication in about 15 years or so, and there is a good reason why. I have never felt a single editor actually read a thing I wrote. Well, I did send one query letter last year, but that only confirmed that editors never actually read anything. A friend of mine knew some publishers who wanted some dark fantasy and convinced me to write a one page for Twins In Death. It took them seven months to prove that they didn’t read the one sheet of paper that had been shoved in front of them. Actually, it was an e-mail, but the fact that they sent a rejection claiming fear of copyright infringement from my group of original superheroes just made me shake my head in disgust. It doesn't help that I have a physical reaction to trying to do anything with the business side. Writing proposals, query letters, even looking up formatting requirements gives me a massive headache and I have to walk away.

It brought back all the memories of the very last time I even tried to submit something.

The last time I submitted a short story to an editor, it was about an old man punching a Space Nazi. It wasn't subtle either, it was called "Grandpa Miliquest Vs The Space Nazis" so, you know, there was that. It was a parody story of 1950s invasion movies, only I had the old man be the hero instead of the square jawed scientist type. The old man and his grandkids see the invasion starting on TV and they drive out together on his motorcycle and he punches the Space Nazi. Then Grandpa and the kids take the space ship and fly off into space. The Space Nazis aren’t even pretend subtle. They have no knees, so they always goose step, and talked in a way that even Colonel Klink would have found distracting. Not the best story, but it was funny and silly and kills ten minutes when you read it.

The letter I got back from this editor was a rant about how this particular person was tired of seeing stories about old people being depressed about reaching the end of their lives and only wanted to see dynamic people. This editor was complaining about the story where grandma sits by the window and waxes poetic about the love she never had, or at least the one she let slip away, and demanding a story where she actually does something. Old people doing things, that's what this person wanted. The only thing that could have made it worse would have been if they ended it with “Maybe a story where a grandfather punches a space nazi or something.”

I mean... if you didn't read the story, okay. Send a note saying “Not at this time.” Or “Didn’t peak my interest” or whatever. I would have got that, but to just be a dildo and demand a story where an old person does something, when I submitted a story of an old person DOING SOMETHING... I would accept that one person was an aberration, but I have never received a letter from any editor, or publisher that gave me the impression that they'd actually read anything that was in the query, story, or article.

And that's why you will only find my work on blogs these days. Pretty sure Jack Collier would come back with a note demanding stories where holidays are personified and what they’d say about Baby’s First Noir makes me shudder.

Wink

I once Destroyed a Soul.

I remember the last time I utterly and completely ruined someone's life. They were going on about Humpty Dumpty, and how no where does it ever say he's an egg, and yet he's always drawn as an egg and that everyone just has assumed he's an egg for whatever reason. They were going on for sometime about how these things get started for no reason and that it's ridiculous to follow such conventions when they begin out of thin air.While this person was talking, I casually reached out and grabbed a book from my shelf, as I am wont to do. Without fuss, or rush, or even a hint of malice on my face, I flipped through the book with a seeming disregard for what was on the pages. As the person drew to what I was guessing was going to be their final point, and the corner stone of their eight minute rant, I interrupted by reading the following aloud...

"Humpty Dumpty most likely began life as a 17th Century riddle, which were often presented as short poems at the time. When one recited 'Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. Four-score Men and Four-score more, could not make Humpty Dumpty as he was before.' One was to then ask 'Who is Humpty Dumpty.' The answer being, of course, an egg."

I then snapped the book shut and put it back on the shelf where I'd found it. I have the honor of watching a soul die. It just withered there, as if on the vine, the light behind their eyes winked out as their view of the world and themselves was shattered by a few sentences. It would have been horrifying if I was capable of being horrified. Instead, I must admit I was fascinated by the process. Their temples actually went gray as I watched.

That person works in accounting now. I feel bad about it sometimes, but the book was right there next to me on the shelf and sometimes people need to be told.

Like A Dutch Painting

Pond

Shed

Stream of photos