Another Year

March 16, 2020 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I’ve written here. That’s a sentence I’ve said a lot when posting on this Blog these days.

But I thought I would come here this morning, and write something as it is an appropriate day. It’s my birthday today. By the time you read this post, I will now be thirty-eight years old. And since I am now one year older, I thought I’d look at where I am now and update you on what is going on, and what I am doing.

My social life has, well, opened up a great deal. Before the crisis with the coronavirus, I was going outside a lot more, socializing, spending time at Storm Crow Manor, and exploring a whole new part of Toronto: a section of it that was new to me, and one I had began to travel on my own. I’ve enjoyed the Manor, as well as Craig’s Cookies, and I have been considering doing more things.

It’s been a far cry from the time when I would lie in my bed and essentially spend most of my days and nights on my laptop, just existing, hoping nothing would tip the delicate balance, in that state of tension and anxiety. I still have to deal with the latter, of course, but I find when I am doing stuff and actually going out and focusing on other matters, it helps. It helps to facilitate that place where I am not as much in my mind.

I have also slowly been cultivating various friends, and contacts. I know it’s not something that can happen all at once, and I’ve realized that having an extrovert or two as a friend is a boon, even as I can help other introverts who aren’t as comfortable with “party manners” to socialize as well, and traverse the city with me. There was a two week or so period where I was outside a great deal — even making cookies for the first time in over a decade for an event — and I also got a considerable amount of work done.

As usual, I have not finished or even in some cases continued the creative projects that I had sought to undertake, though some still remain in the queue. I have been meaning to get back to writing a piece of fanfiction for a friend’s comic, exploring that world with similar themes, but from different perspectives. I have an Alternative Facts story or two that I want to get out there, which I suspect I’ve mentioned here before. There is also the Lovecraft Mythos story I want to compile out of my notes on paper and from my phone, and send it somewhere: possibly for some grants and scholarships, and a writer’s retreat program.

But I have mostly been writing in roleplays. I am doing a group game where I am a bard, which I am sure I have mentioned before, a Vampire: The Masquerade solo game with one of my partners, and now another D&D game that is set in the plane of Gehena. That last game is something special to me. I mean, all three of them are in different ways. I am mostly the Game Master of the Vampire game, and I create epic level songs and manipulations as my bard in the other.

But in the Gehena game, it hearkens back to when my friend and I — who is GMing this campaign — to the days in our early twenties, even earlier into our teens, when we would play in the sandboxes he created after school and all night. Because of life circumstances, we play these games all on Roll 20, with some help from DnD Beyond, and Discord. But my friend is combining elements of the group game, and my solo game with him together as they belong in a shared universe of our creation: just in different realms. I can’t wait to see the plot points converge, or run parallel.

I don’t know, I just feel like when I roleplay I’m … doing something. I’m helping to shape a world with my actions and consequences. My decisions matter. And it is close to what I always wanted to do with my friends: to create a world and game together. Once, I wanted us to work together: to create games that we would sell. It was a dream of mine, of ours, and I guess if you hold some stock with horoscopes as a Pisces it makes sense that I would be enamoured with playing in, and creating, a world of dreams. Or nightmares.

Really, aside from my socializing and the potential and energy I get from those interactions — as well as meeting new and awesome people — these role-plays are some of the things that excite me the most. They always have.

It’s not been easy for me. For almost a decade, I felt like I was asleep for the most part. I’d been depressed and anxious and holding onto attachments that were long past their time. I’m not magically cured, of course, and I know how any of these elements can quickly change especially in these uncertain times.

It’s been a bit sad knowing I would go back to being inside more often again, though hopefully it won’t be forever, and the current health situation — this pandemic — can be dealt with. I’ll also admit that I have stretched myself out a great deal, perhaps even over-extended my attention. I need to work on sleeping, which I am failing at right now even as I write to you. I should also rest more and take the time to spend it with those that have gone out of their way to do so with me, even if it can only be audio or video at the moment.

In the end, it’s funny. I went to a person once, who told me that I will lose people, but I should not take for granted the people who are still here, and love me. It’s hard, but I should listen to them. I did lose some connections, over the years, some more recently than others. But in a way, they have made me reevaluate and look at the interactions I do still have, and want to take the time to make sure I know where I stand with them and vice-versa.

I am getting better at standing up for myself. For respecting for myself. For watching for those who do not respect me. I have changed since 2012, when I first started this Blog. Where I go is beyond me. I have been thinking about doing some volunteer work, to get out of the house when that is sensible to do so, of course. And I know I am building something, in this life, I just … don’t know what it is yet. But I do think that the social aspect is important.

Perhaps, now, at this time is the moment to really focus on what it is I’m looking for, to enjoy what I have, to take care of myself, and to see where I go from there.

I’m not where I thought I would be at thirty-eight. Some of that is disappointing, but other parts of it have exceeded expectations. I’ve realized it is possible to be sad and joyful at the same time. It’s what I need to do with that energy that is the question.

Some of you have been reading my work, followed me, and have even been my friends — and more — for a long time. Some of you have changed along with me. Some of you aren’t here anymore. But I want to thank you, for taking the time you had, and have, and spending it with me: even by reading this long, rambling journal post.

Like I said, I don’t know where I am going to be. Or what will happen. But I hope I can make the momentum, and use it, to do something really constructive, and satisfying to me and the people that I care about.

In the meantime, I think I will use some of that time to go get some rest. So much for my birthday present being an early bedtime. This was longer than I thought it would be. Always famous last words, for one thing or another. ;p

Until another time, my friends. Take care of yourselves, and each other.

The Plan

August 12, 2017 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

It’s been tough.

I’ve been going through a lot of personal issues lately. And these issues have been further compounded by writing problems.

In my last post, my last real one aside from reposts of my other work, I was inspired by Brandy Dawley to actually attempt to personify or give form to my inner critic or judge. If you haven’t seen it already, you should check out her Medium article On Creative Paralysis, Feeling Naked Online, And My Inner Critic Whose Name is Chad: which is what inspired my Mythic Bios post “Time.”

I’ve been thinking about why I haven’t really been creative writing for a while. Originally, last year now, about the time I saw Stan Lee, Alex Kingston, and Michelle Gomez at Fan Expo I was charged enough — re-energized and inspired — to attempt writing full-time for Sequart. The idea was that I would write my 15K words on the side while I re-innovated my Patreon, and only doing so after having something of a centralized creative project or clear series of goals with regards to said project with which to work towards.

But 15K words a month is a large commitment. And perhaps even more than that, there is a difference between writing something that is analytical as opposed to being creative. It’s true that I am fairly creative in expressing myself and my words and viewpoints in my critical writing, and that does tide me over, but it really isn’t the same. Sometimes I become very mindful of the fact that I am not really making anything original. I’m not making something that is mine. While I have made good contacts and gotten my critical writing out there, and got to examine some fascinating creative processes, I can’t really take credit for them. They aren’t my own: at least not the source material that I write about.

This feeling can fuel Imposter Syndrome considerably. I may have to actually cut back, or down, on my analytical writing into the near future. There are some topics I definitely do what to still address and I won’t rule them out, but I need to make the space to create my own primary material once again.

So what will I do instead? Well, I have comics that I need to catch up on reading. And films and television shows that I definitely need to watch. I do require inspiration to continue my good work. I also need to take care of myself and possibly get to the point where I can go to bed at reasonable — read sane — hours.

And this leaves us at what I want to ultimately do in the future. Well. The good news is that recently I have sent out three creative pitches to the Toronto Comics Anthology. It just felt time to put my money where my mouth is. But that is only a start.

I need to go through my notes and my notebooks. I need to type out and I edit what I have of at least perhaps three or four creative worlds I’ve left for far too long. I need to decipher my notes, type them out, and make sense of it or discard what I have and start fresh. Then I need to go back to my Patreon, however daunting it may be and challenging as you need to have a strong following and project to get anywhere, and redesign it accordingly. I am not a graphic artist or illustrator or even a video maker, but perhaps I can do something about replacing my picture on the top border, and making my funding goals clearer for me and anyone who potential wants to back my work.

I still have some critical pieces I want out there, but I think what I will do is return back to the Mythic Bios approach to these matters and write the personal into the critical as I used to do.

All of this is easier said than done, and I have said similar things in the past. I realize I can’t force a lot of this, but if I make the space and just record what I have, and read and write and not force it, I could form something else. I know I can still do this. I’ve been working on a public fanfic that is now forty-five chapters long and counting. I find that I actually thrive on just writing, on doing some research when I need it for a day or so, but then just writing on wards and writing more to back up what I wrote before. I am stronger when I just keep going. This and actual feedback through kudos and comments really does help me, and it is something I should definitely bear in mind. I just need to find the format and the media for it as I am not sure, for example, that A03 is the best place to publish original work.

I find I am at my most powerful when I am painfully honest. And that is scary. But if I have any hope of getting to where I need to be, I need to be at my best. I know that hard work is not a guaranteed method of success, but a lack of work is a guarantee method of no success. It isn’t even failure. Failure doesn’t happen when you don’t even try. And not trying is inaction and nothing. But reading and writing aren’t nothing, even if they are just focused on a fan work.

The point is, I hope to make some changes and to continue the ones that I have begun. I hope that those of you that still follow this Blog and my media will be there to see what I will do next.

Kanada Day

July 1, 2017October 3, 2020 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

She asks me to walk with her, although I know I don’t have too much time. Even the TTC, in this world, has something of a schedule to keep. But I can’t refuse her. I never could.

“We should take the streetcar when we get to it.” I tell her as we walk out of the Huron Garden behind the Lillian H. Smith Library with its memories of red berries, green and tea. “I imagine you have important things to do.”

“On a day like this?” She shakes her head. “No. I don’t want to put my bike on a bumper. And right now, the only important thing is to enjoy this July weather people keep complaining about. Wouldn’t you say?”

She’s right of course. As we begin walking down College and Spadina, the summery day somehow seems to make everything newer and clean. Even in the sun, her weathered face is as round and cratered as a silvery moon: motherly, worn, and wise.

“Come on.” She says, her voice still sibilant and deliberate despite being an octave lower. “I want to have a look at the Library again before my next book launch.”

There is a quiet eagerness to her steps as she guides the bicycle beside her with both hands. We come to the front of the Lillian H. Smith Library. Even now, I can’t help but marvel at the arch framing the doorway and the elaborate statues of the winged lion and griffin on either side with their entourage of carved animal friends. It reminds me of the guardians set around Morpheus’ Palace of Dreams: minus the Dragon and the Unicorn.

She stares up at the statues as well. As she smiles, the jowls of her cheeks turn into fine lines and her faded blue eyes light up into slivers of sky.

“Mac couldn’t have done better: him or Ruben.” She says. “It’s come a long way from the Spaced Out Library, you know. I haven’t been here in a long time,” she puts a weathered hand on the griffin’s side.

“Neither have I.” I admit and I wonder why given that this is the closest Toronto Public Library I’ve ever felt to home.

“I used to work at Girls & Boys House.” She says. “I was a page there.”

“I know.” I tell her.

She turns and pats me on the shoulder. “Of course you do. Come on. I want to go through the Market for a while.”

Again, I feel a slight nudging of time but she is persuasive. We turn around and walk towards Kensington. We pass many women in summer dresses and Homburg hats, men in vintage suits and T-shirts and children playing with music and somehow I feel happier watching them. I notice a few of them carrying Canadian flags as well, but I don’t pay it too much notice.

“They turned Boys & Girls into a U of T Security building if you can believe it.” She grumbles. “A security building of all things!”

I shake my head. “At least there’s the Merrill Library.”

“The Lillian H. one.” She corrects me. “As much as Judy would have liked that, she’d have corrected you sooner.” She sighs. “Poor Judy. She’d have gotten a real hoot out of what this place has become. I’m so glad we’re having the reception upstairs.”

By the time we get to one of the Kensington Market intersections, the sky is beginning to turn orange in the late afternoon sun. I also begin to see more Canadian flags: some of them set near stalls and others carried out by vendors. They are even there as labels on people’s shirts. Then I remember what day it is.

That is when I hear the crescendo of Bif Naked’s “Spaceman” and notice that my companion is no longer at my side. I find myself wandering around looking for her. I know I should start making my way back now, but I can’t. I just ran into her by coincidence after getting off the car from Lower Queen and getting very quickly lost … no, found in a once and a lifetime opportunity series of conversations with her. But having said so much and yet so little considering, I can’t leave it at this now.

I wonder why no one has reacted to her yet — this Poet Laureate of Toronto — but then I think about it again. Even here, in this place where she is honoured, many of them probably just see a little old lady in a red and Phoenician-purple looking tunic that could just as easily be woven with Greek and aboriginal patterns.

I find her in front of the astronaut. She — the astronaut — has loudspeakers behind her that is the source of the Bif Naked song. The astronaut is a pale woman with straight long black hair. Her white bulky suit has a Canadian tag on its chest. My friend — and yes I consider her my friend at this point — drops a Toonie into the other woman’s gloved hand.

“So cool.” I hear my friend say before she walks past me to a nearby booth to buy an orange from a lithe dark-skinned woman with multi-coloured dreadlocks.

“I had a photo taken of me in a space-suit once.” She pays for the orange. “It was supposed to be the cover for my latest book of poems, but because it was the seventies my publishers wouldn’t let me use it. Now you have all these famous singers and female astronauts making fashion statements alike. Just look at how far we’ve come.” She pauses. “Still, let it be said that I did it before it was cool,” she ends off with a wink in my direction.

I laugh and look back at the street. “You know, Kensington Market reminds me of the Carnival scene in Issue #22 of Miracleman.” I offer, caught by the myriad of different people buying and celebrating in the streets.

She nods beside me. “And it’s Marvelman. It’s the Marvel Family. A happy family of superheroes. None of that litigation bullshit.”

I’m laughing again. “No. The only thing missing are the balloons.”

Then we see a booth with balloons. We exchange a look. She’s the one that breaks the tableaux. “Well, let’s see if these ones will let us float into the sky.”

And so we get some balloons. We don’t fly, but we might as well have. Our conversation about comic books continues.

“I think Neil was the best thing that happened to Marvelman.” She says as we walk–her with a green balloon and me with a red one. “I love the mythopoeic, the changes that legends go through. Neil keeps an essential humanity throughout all of his works.”

I feel a lightness in my chest — a giddiness — as I hear her talk about Neil Gaiman. “And not Alan Moore?”

She turns to me and frowns a bit, the wattles of her neck forming a cavern underneath the worn Anglo-Sphinx of her face. “Don’t get me wrong.” She tells me. “Alan Moore is brilliant, as brilliance goes, but I’m not sure I like the direction he took my Marvel Family. It was too dark. Too …” she shakes her head. “Too eighties.”

As she grins again, I feel my mouth matching her expression. “You know, I was born in the eighties.”

“Yes, but I lived through them …” She stops walking and stands there. People continue to move past us, but she remains still. Her blue eyes blink a few times and her face begins to resemble an older version of the gaunt and haunted expressions I’ve seen captured in photograph.

“The city became so cold and impersonal.” She says faintly. I look at the distance in her gaze and I can’t quite find it in myself to meet her eyes.

“My drinking got worse. I wasn’t writing and I kept making myself sick. That time, in ’87 I almost died …”

This time, I can’t even look in her direction. She’s quiet for a few more moments, as though considering something. “The irony was if Frank — my drunkard buddy Frank — hadn’t come into my apartment when he did, I would’ve been dead. There’d be no walks on Kensington. No lectures at Western, York, or U of T. No coffee with Peggy. No new cats. No new books. No life. Nothing.”

“I’m glad you survived.” I whisper, still not meeting her gaze and trying not to think about the alternative right now.

She shakes her head at me sadly. “That time in the Animal Rights Movement probably helped. I honestly didn’t think I had anymore to give, you know? And then, when I went back to that infernal Black Tunnel Wall,” as she keeps talking I wonder if — in this world — she’s told anyone about this in an interview or anywhere else millions of times before, “looking at my mother’s experiences during the Blitz … you know, they compared the thing to Plath’s Bell Jar, though I never really got that comparison. Looking back though, it’s like I passed through that tunnel and … I’m so glad I did.”

She smiles at me again. “You’re right. It wasn’t a bad time. I got to see Toronto get beautiful again: with all those clubs and Goth Nights coming up with their lithe, pale, made-up young boys and girls in black and kohl. Really cool stuff: made me almost want to be sixteen again. And my friends were there and I got a whole ton of honourary doctorates …”

“Professor –”

“No. Don’t call me that. Professor or Doctor is for someone who graduated high school. Miss is for someone more authoritarian than I ever was. You can call me by name.”

I almost do. Instead, she shakes her head. “I’m sorry. It’s just Alan Moore reminds me of the rest of the eighties and I know that’s not fair. We all have to work with darkness and re-imagining those Jungian archetypes. Look at George Lucas’ Star Wars.”

“And then the Prequel Trilogy.” I mutter.

“Please,” she holds the palm of her hand out to my face, “let’s not. It almost makes me wish I hadn’t survived the eighties.”

I shake my head, case in point. “There was no comparison. I think Neil had the more difficult job though,” I tell her as we make our way towards the College and Spadina streetcar line, “I mean, where do you go from utopia?”

The sky is more pink than orange by the time we get to the tracks.

“All utopias are problematic. As long as human nature exists, as long as that yearning is there, as long as we tell stories nothing ever really stops. There is always something after ‘Happily ever after.’ It never ends. It is never over.”

With that remark, she stops to ease herself onto her bike seat. And then I know.

“But this is.” I state, feeling myself deflate inside.

She takes her helmet and begins to put it on over her silver hair. “You knew that already.”

There is so much I want to ask her still, so much I want to say but all I can actually say is, “Please …”

She shakes her head at me. “You know, when I stare off like this, I can see why Louis Dudek once called me ‘Crazy Cassandra,’” she says, fondly.

“You’re more of a Tiresias than a Cassandra.” I whisper helplessly as I try to ignore the tears welling up in my eyes.

“No. You’re wrong, my friend. I’m no more the shade of Tiresias than you are Odysseus feeding me blood at the Nekromanteion of Ephyra, though your heart is in the right place.”

There is a light in her eyes. They are somehow an even stronger blue than ever in the pink light of an early Toronto evening. Their dreamy expression stares right into me. I feel ashamed.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her.

“I understand.” She says not unkindly. “You’re trying to do for me what I attempted to do for Lawrence. And I thank you for that. But I am not your Other. I am not your Cloud-Gwen.”

I hang my head because deep down I know she’s right. Then I feel a gentle hand cupping my face and turning me to look up at her again. As she sits up on her bicycle, her white hair sticks out of her helmet is a pastel of different colours in the sunset.

“Mishugina,” she murmurs softly, her smile wry and gentle. “All of this is an elementary world. A mythical world. You should be proud.”

She leans forward and we hug. I wonder if anyone else can see us: and what it exactly is they are seeing. Is it an embrace between friends, a grandson and grandmother, or something more wishing the other farewell, and never goodbye?

The next thing I know, we’ve let go of each other. She is looking up and around us. “It’s funny,” she says, “today is Kanada Day and this country still doesn’t know what it is.”

“Maybe not.” I try to keep myself from choking up. “But neither does Toronto.”

She laughs. “It never did.”

I shake my head this time. “But I can definitely tell you that you helped it dream up some of its coat of many different colours.”

She smiles and in the waning sun, her face seems ageless and Egyptian again. “Dream well, my friend.”

She turns around and begins to peddle away.

Suddenly, I find myself running after her. I’m shouting, calling after her, “Tell me, Gwen! Did Julian the Magician know how to resurrect the dead? Did he know how to resurrect the dead!? Or was he supposed to bring back the living? Or himself? Tell me, Gwen! Please tell me!”

But by the time I ask these questions, she is already gone. I stop running. Soon, a far-too-clean and far-too-efficient TTC streetcar visits the too-clean street and rail shelter. As it comes to a stop in front of me, I know I have to go now. I helped make this place, but it isn’t mine anymore.

I came here through Lower Queen, the Gate of Ivory that could have been, and now I leave back through Lower Bay, the Gate of Horn that actually happened: back to a colder place, a more cordial place, a place of slow public transport and garbage, an asymmetrical place, a city that doesn’t make sense, a city with dark memories that never really took root.

It is a place without her.

But she did exist here, and so did I. So do I. Because today is Kanada Day. Today is a day of potlucks and shadows; magic shows and superheroes; Greeks and Egyptian exhibits at the Royal Ontario Museum; and all the people on the streets who are no-man.

Yet more than that, she showed me the secret. Because I know now, even riding this streetcar, that whatever this place and this city is, it is ultimately a land that turns you inward.

Constructive Anger Turned Outward

August 22, 2016August 22, 2016 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

I haven’t done this in a while.

So I’m going to try something new. I’m going to write a Blog post on here without using images. I think that, with a few exceptions, I will save the images for articles based around a specific topic and that the “life writings” and updates should stand on their own. It’s less an experiment and more I just want to get stuff out.

First, let me tell you what I’ve been up to since my last post. Suffice to say I got side-tracked from my comics script. It’s still around and waiting next to bed side on an old footstool. If I haven’t mentioned it already, I am going to focus on captions and dialogue and then fill in the rest: hopefully having a template to recreate the process more quickly for future endeavours.

But as it always is with me, I got side-tracked. I actually submitted a writing sample to the 20th Anniversary of now Onyx Path’s Changeling The Dreaming. It is something different from what I usually make, but it draws from the well of some of my interests and I figured that I should take this shot. I don’t know if anything will come of it, but I just had to do it in-between writing some articles that I’ve also been working on. These aforementioned articles were actually supposed to be one opinion-piece fan geeking article on a webcomic with which I’ve really grown attached. It’s on subject matter I’m not as familiar with, but I will do my best to make it work. That’s a point of pride for me.

I am also awaiting word from the government with regards to some financial matters linked to my disability which I hope will be resolved fairly soon. I’ve also been role-playing with my friends almost every Friday: continuing our homebrew D&D game and now we’re starting a Star Wars campaign which I’m really enjoying.

But I think what I really want to talk about right now is anger.

The obligatory Jedi saying aside, I had a massive encounter with anger yesterday. But the truth is, I’ve been dealing with anger for a while. What happened yesterday was that the anger turned outward. I’ve been trying to change some Greyhound ticket times. What happened was I found out while Greyhound allows you to order and print tickets online, they do not allow you to change times online, or even do it on the phone.

Yesterday was a Comedy of Errors and incompetence. I had to print my old tickets to bring to a Greyhound Station which, for me, is a bus and subway journey from Thornhill to Dundas Station and the Bay terminal. My laptop didn’t read my printer. I’ll admit that there was some screaming, swearing, and a lot of thrown objects at this point. But I got them and left. I guess it tells you how angry I was as no one in my house really bothered me at this point.

I got to the Bay terminal to stand in a very long line only to move to another line and watch as the Greyhound terminal’s systems went offline. Twice. I finally got to the booth and was dealing with a staff member when their system went off again. I had to go get a meal and take a break from that for a while. By the time I came back, their systems still weren’t working. At this point, I just waved at one of the staff members and asked him about the entire thing. It was a good thing I did. I got basically an IOU that waived off my $20 change fee. If I had just paced around or left and grumbled, I wouldn’t have gotten that. I went home.

At home I was watching a stream some friends had and at the last second, my Internet crapped out. It’s been doing that sporadically and without warning. I thought it had been fixed. I admit, I screamed at the Rogers modem-router a little bit and called it a whole list of obscenities. But after a while, I decided on something. I found out what was flickering on the thing and left a note for my parents to deal with Rogers as they know their account number. Even if it isn’t fixed, at least I know that I actually did something about it.

I guess what I’m trying to say in the roundabout way that some storytellers tend to talk is that I actually took my anger at being heavily inconvenienced, losing time I could have used writing to deal with petty details that shouldn’t have even been issues, and actually got assertive about it.

I seriously hadn’t felt so angry in such a long time. Not like that. I was genuinely furious. Of course, it’s never just about these things. I’ve been mostly housebound these days, walking outside close to home, or getting rides to my friend’s place. I haven’t gone downtown on my own initiative in … I don’t even remember. I think it’s been months. I certainly hadn’t even been on the TTC in ages and yesterday it was one of the few things that didn’t fuck up for me.

I have anxiety attacks. I think I’ve always had them, but it’s only in adulthood that I call them what they are. Sometimes they manifest as headaches, other times stomach issues, hypersensitivity, tensing up immobilization, or the feeling of my body wanting to run away from my head. It doesn’t help that I overthink things a lot and I’ve been feeling trapped as all hell.

I didn’t want to go on the TTC yesterday. I didn’t want to have to deal with that potential stress and have to deal with changing ticket times in person and potentially lose time for it. I wanted to get things out of the way and minimize the stressers as much as possible. I’m already anxious about going to Fan Expo, and seeing Kevin Smith later in the night. I haven’t gone there in a long time for a lot of the reasons above.

But any panic I felt yesterday was somehow converted into pure rage. And somehow that fury, instead of being destructive, actually empowered me to do things. So now, I’m almost finished writing this entry. I’m going back to Dundas today. I am going to the Greyhound terminal to get my tickets sorted out. I will be visiting the Silver Snail when it isn’t closed like it was yesterday evening. And in a week, I plan to see Stan Lee at Fan Expo while I still can. Then see Kevin Smith later.

I’m going to hopefully finish my articles this week as well and have time to put finishing touches on my perfectionism. I’m going to actually to actually go outside and go downtown again to do fun things: to train myself to a point where going outside again is not an intimidating chore. It won’t always be perfect and I know there will be cycles. But, for now, this is what I’m going to do. I’ve already trained myself to wake up earlier again and put myself back on something of a diurnal schedule. I can do more. I can accept my limits, but I can do more.

The social anxiety can wait for another time. I have things to do. I hope to get more things done and see you all back here. Take care everyone, and remember to excelsior.

Save The Toronto Zombie Walk!

April 6, 2015 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

Unfortunately, the annual Toronto Zombie Walk is risking some head shots.

According to a Facebook status written by Thea Munster, the Founding Director of the Zombie Walk, the event was denied its Celebrate Ontario funding. In addition, this year they have been asked to pay for additional barricading on Yonge Street and expenses with regards to using the Nathan Phillips Square’s Pan Am stage and added security. As Thea Munster also explains, the Toronto Zombie Walk Board might decide to discontinue the event itself.

However, something can be done. The truth of the matter is that zombies, however unique they look as individuals, coming from various places of death, disarray and reanimation, have always had strength through their numbers: and knowing what is ultimately their inevitable goal.

That’s right. The Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport, the Honourable Michael Coteau, is the person you should talk with should you want this grand recreational epidemic to survive this coming Halloween and for the years to come.

You can write Michael Coteau at his email address mcoteau.mpp@liberal.ola.org and ask him to reconsider and tell him how much the Zombie Walk means to you. In fact, Thea Munster has provided the following form letter:

Dear Hon Michael Coteau,

I am writing to ask you to reconsider funding the Toronto Zombie Walk and Halloween Parade through Celebrate Ontario. The TZW makes a unique contribution to Halloween events In Toronto. The participatory nature of the event attracts thousands of people of all ages, cultures and demographics to be creatively involved in the event every year. In 2014, the event had 15,000 participants and an additional 5,000- 10,000 spectators lined Yonge Street to watch and take photographs. The event also drew tourists from around the world. The TRIEM model calculations indicate that the economic impact of the event was $2,182,025 in 2014.

In 2014, The Toronto Zombie Walk won runner up for Best Free Community Event in Now Magazine, showing that it has become a much loved part of Toronto. A team of dedicated volunteers has taken years to grow this event into a world class tradition. Without Celebrate Ontario funding the event will be unable to support the number of participants at the level of quality that the grant helped build last year, and therefore may cease to exist.

Please don’t let this yearly tradition end,

Sincerely,

[Your name here]

So please geeks, horror lovers and fellow fiends, write to Michael Cocteau and let him know that we want to continue to spread the love. After all, reanimation is the most inclusive thing there is, and raising the spirit of celebration, through enthusiastic necromantic ritual, is always worth the effort.

My own reanimation before the Toronto Zombie Walk, circa 2011.

From The Book Circus: Amanda Palmer’s Art Of Asking Book Tour

November 27, 2014 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

A few days ago, a friend of mine let me know that Amanda Palmer was coming to Toronto on the last leg of her Book Tour. Unfortunately, by the time I got the message she followed up on it: informing me that the Lee’s Palace venue tickets were sold out. I’m not exactly sure why I did it. I had a suspicion and I applied for a ticket on Ticketfly: just to see if I could. It was this same hunch that had me standing in a line outside of Lee’s Palace for over an hour with the rest of Amanda Palmer’s fans: again, just to see if they would accept this ticket and let me in.

We all stood out there for a while: waiting for the doors to open past their 8 pm deadline. A fellow fan was nice enough to pass around free doughnuts: which was pretty good indicator of just what kind of crowd was gathered there. In all honesty, when the line started moving I was a little bit stunned that the establishment let me straight through.

Once we came in, we took the seats that we could while Amanda Palmer’s assistant Whitney Moses, dressed in her Erika Moen’s Anal Safety Snails shirt, came on stage to do some maintenance while leaving a glass of wine for Amanda. The event had a great turn out: made all the more evident by the teasing that began.

At one point Amanda herself appeared in the window above the stage and everyone cheered. During more preparations, as more people kept coming in, the music playing at Lee’s Palace would pause just long enough to get everyone to think that their night had begun: to revving them up further.

But it wasn’t long until Amanda herself finally came on stage, tossing flowers to the audience, strumming her ukulele and as she talked it got more difficult to describe the night in linear detail as I got caught up in the palpable joy of the crowd. She came onto the stage with another Amanda: a sign-language interpreter whose translations of Amanda’s words and songs were just as beautiful and interesting to watch as Amanda herself. In fact, sometimes it was good sort of challenge for me to split my attention in focusing on either one or the other.

After a request from a fan, we got to learn that out of the one hundred and ninety songs Amanda has created, she has apparently only memorized ten of them. She read from parts of her book The Art of Asking, while letting a fan perform an act of bibliomancy and selecting a passage for Amanda to read: even as another came on stage and choose a few sentences that Amanda decided to put into vocal music. In her book, she referred to a bit of history from Richard Zack’s An Underground Education with regards to Henry David Thoreau and how, while he made his hermitage at Walden Pond, he visited his rich friend that owned the property and accepted baked goods from his family.

The moral of the story is the core of The Art Asking: namely, don’t feel bad about taking the doughnuts. This is the second time I’ve mentioned doughnuts at the Book Tour. Very soon, I will talk about it for the last time.

There were a few particular parts of the Toronto Tour that particularly stuck out for me. Amanda began the event by playing her version of “Fuck The Police” — a day after the Ferguson verdict — and informed us that she was Toronto’s peace protest before this part of her tour that day. I have to admit, it did make me pause and it brought up some very uncomfortable issues for me: of the violence, of expression, and of cultural appropriation.

She also played a vocal duet of Dresden Doll’s “Delilah” with Whitney — who is a talented musician in her own right — while on her keyboard. This led to another difficult subject. It was after this song about an abusive relationship that she invited Sasha Manes of the Toronto YWCA branch on stage to talk about the importance of women’s and children’s shelters as well as her own organization’s charity initiative. Amanda’s Book Tour shared the same day as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

And both on her own initiative and when asked by her guest Eric Alper the Director of Media Relations for eOne Music Canada, Amanda also didn’t shy away from talking about Jian Ghomeshi. She talked about how many of her fans didn’t want him to be there and how, in the end, she didn’t want her Book Tour in Toronto to be overshadowed by, or all about him. At least, that was my understanding of the matter.

Eric Alper himself covered a fair bit of ground in more ways than one. Remember how I mentioned doughnuts twice? Well, Alper decided to distribute seven hundred Timbits to the entire audience while he and Amanda kept talking. They talked about a range of topics: from the dangers of all music being placed under digital rights management again and no longer available to share freely online, to Amanda’s hopes on what crowdfunding might do to free more artists and their audiences from the influence of an unchanging music industry.

I was particularly intrigued when Alper asked Amanda just what she cut out from the final draft of her book. She mentioned two anecdotes: one about the fact that her programmer mother’s team worked with and accepted the identity of a transgender member as a given in the 1960s, and another about a woman thanking her for her work as a living statue in representing “white power.” Certainly, these are stories in and of themselves.

At one point, Amanda’s friend Anthony was brought up. Anthony Martignetti is a psychotherapist, but to Amanda he is her life mentor and friend. He has been suffering from cancer and, as of this post, has gotten a bone marrow match. He has written two memoirs about his family life and his own: and as someone who has reviewed both of his books, I can’t help but think to myself that when Amanda at one point began to sing Dresden Dolls’ “It’s All In The Family” that she was referring to Anthony as much as to herself. Indeed, at one point when she was reading an excerpt from her Art of Asking, I realized that it was actually the preface that she wrote to Anthony’s Lunatic Heroes.

After Amanda took some questions from the audience, she proceeded to wrap up the night with two songs. The first was “Bigger On The Inside,” which aside from the coincidental geek reference is also a song she played for the first time at Anthony’s Beloved Demons book launch. It is a raw, poignant and very real song written from a dark place in an attempt to grasp at meaning.

Of course this prepared the way for “The Ukulele Anthem” finale: a triumphant and passionate song about expression and hope.

Finally came the book signing part of the night. The line became something of a spiral and given the fact that I’d rented Uzumaki a few hours before, I almost wondered if everyone was going to become enmeshed into a great pattern and be stuck with each other, in a more positive way, forever.

I hung back for the crowd to die down a little more but I still managed to make some friends at the end of the night. I’m told that this is not an uncommon occurrence during one because there is just something about a fanbase or community of geeks and survivors that Amanda Palmer’s music and sheer presence brings together. Even looking back at the people who hummed and song along to her songs, it made me realize that many of them had memorized them by heart. For a while in time, it almost felt like the Fraggle Rock world promised to me as a child that never panned out into adulthood.

By the time I came to Amanda Palmer with my copy of The Art of Asking, my legs hurt from a combination of the hard raised benches of Lee’s Palace and standing when the discomfort grew too much: a minor version of the story Amanda recited from Anthony about a dog that won’t move off of a nail because it doesn’t hurt enough yet. Amanda herself looked utterly exhausted. From the blurry pictures taken faithfully by her awesome assistant Cat, you can glean that she was barely awake and I was not particularly that coherent.

All I said to her was that my friends said hello and that, if she remembers, to tell Anthony I said hello as well. And that was pretty much it. I wrote this whole account by hand initially: one on the back of my Porter Square Books receipt from Amanda’s local book store Porter Square Books, when I couldn’t get it from Amazon due to its issues with the book’s publisher Hatchette, and the ticket that I wasn’t sure would even let me into the building.

I wrote this from my new friends’ house where I stayed for the night after we all left together, frazzled from meeting a celebrity, for drinks. They are in the process of moving out of the country. It’s funny how things can work out that way. Just as this was Amanda Palmer’s first Book Tour, this was my first ever somewhat musical concert or event I actually enjoyed. It was my first Amanda Palmer event. Actually, Amanda had another term for her Tour. She actually called it a Book Circus.

So this was my first Book Circus. And a good circus delivers excellent food and entertainment, but this one also makes you see the uncomfortable things, the difficult questions, and the fragile strength of tired, blurry figures in the night.

This is the clearest picture I have. And yes, my hair is down too.

Either way, it is already an unforgettable experience.

Snow: Based on the Graphic Novel about Queen Street West in Toronto

November 24, 2014 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

All things considered, it’s an appropriate time of year to talk about snow. While some people think that snow is beautiful and almost a permanent fixture in cold places like Canada, it’s actually incredibly transitory: much like Toronto and, in particular, Queen Street West.

I found Benjamin Rivers’ graphic novel Snow at Bento Miso two years after I moved away from Toronto: which is funny in some ways because Rivers created it in 2008 when I first moved onto York University Campus and, technically, to Toronto. But I didn’t know it at the time. I didn’t, for instance, know that in February 2008 that Queen and Bathurst (which was referenced by Rivers) and that — among other stores — there had been another Suspect Video that no longer exists. But even before that I’d explored Toronto in a limited way and knew about the Silver Snail in that location.

But I didn’t know impermanent it was until I moved to Toronto and then truly explored it — especially Spadina and Queen — only to have to move. So it was fitting that I read Benjamin Rivers’ book and found out about Ryan Couldrey’s close film adaptation of it when I came back to Toronto on my own: to see if I could find some place in it again. Snow as a graphic novel truly hit me hard in that sense of nostalgia and Toronto’s ever-hidden, ever-fleeting spirit and this film managed to capture exactly the same idea.

On the surface, Snow‘s narrative focuses on Dana: a young woman who lives on Queen Street West and works at a small book store called Abberline’s. She is quiet and she likes to have her comfort and the homegrown quality of Toronto’s neighbourhood, stores, and clubs. But she begins to notice the gentrification of the street — the rise in rent and the influx of people from upper-classes — and the many closed and empty stores. Her sense of equilibrium and habit is being impinged upon. And she also notices that the bubble of self-involvement, which she herself has possessed — that covers all of denizens of her locale is growing.

Dana’s bubble ends up getting stretched to its limits as she actually actively begins to question why all of this is happening. And then it gets strained past its safe limits as she encounters a darker place. Couldrey manages to maintain the tone and pacing of Rivers’ comics narrative. There is no spectacle here, or supernatural happenings. The menace is subtle and very real and in the midst of Dana trying to make sense of a senseless situation: from human violence to slow and civil death, her own quiet determination and personal goals come to the fore.

I like how Couldrey managed to cast Snow’s other characters as well: from Dana’s friend Julia to her co-worker Chen and her boss and “city dad” Abberline himself. You get a major sense that in the backdrop of this changing city that these people all genuinely care about each other. Couldrey maintains the black and white aesthetic of Snow from the graphic novel onto the film. It has a sense of age and funkiness that captures parts of Toronto well. I really liked how, in one scene where Dana and Julia were talking — with Julia separated from Dana in Dana’s kitchen — how Couldrey managed to capture the cosiness of some Torontonian apartments against the transitory gritty nature of the outside city as well as, in this particular case, simulate a comics panel.

And it is all realistic: just like the graphic novel there is no romance, no major action, or anything. There is just tragedy, fear, friendship, life, and moving on. It also goes without saying that if Toronto itself is a character, and in particular Queen Street West then from my experience Couldrey managed to capture that spirit well.

It’s interesting to note that in edition to being a comics creator, Benjamin Rivers is also a video game developer and isn’t that just like the nature of snow? To spread from one place to another when the climate is just right: in this case from comics, to games, and to film? And Couldrey and his team shot this film without any grants or loans: just on their own budget. It’s just something that Queen Street West itself might have appreciated in its more bohemian and independently artistic days.

Toronto is an interesting city. It’s a place that is old and still developing, that has layers of different interactions, and landmarks that get erased under a literal and figurative blank canvass of snow. That said, even the thickest level of snow leaves footprints: just this film ends on perhaps a little bit of hope. Amy Lavender Harris in her book Imagining Toronto once said that Toronto suffers from a form of amnesia: from a loss of memory. Yet perhaps, at least one small part of Queen Street West knows itself. At least one small part can remember, and dream beyond winter.

But don’t just take my word on any of this. You can watch the entire film online for free and if you are interested, you can buy the entire VOD package — which includes the video, the graphic novel, the soundtrack, scripts, and video game at the Snow website.

Interviews and More Writing

October 16, 2014 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

I’m still doing my writing, but I just thought I’d go into a little more detail about what I was talking about in my last post.

If you remember I talked about an interview I did for GEEKPR0N. That interview was actually with Larry Wilson: the co-writer and co-producer of Beetlejuice, The Addams Family, and the writer and director of Tales From the Crypt for six seasons. Our interview centred around his current project the web series Cindy: a twenty-first century retelling of Cinderella with elements of Reality TV parody, dark humour, and just plain weirdness.

To be honest, I never dreamed that I would be talking to one of the people integral in creating a large feature of my childhood. I first got to know Beetlejuice through the cartoons and it goes without saying that while I knew about The Addams Family before the film, I recall spending a recess in the corner of my elementary school reading its novelization. And I’m not even going into the time where I would to sneak up late and watch some Tales From the Crypt on Fox.

And I will tell you right now that if I had the money and even basic screenwriting experience, I would definitely take up Larry’s script consultation reward. I honestly hope that if I can’t, someone else does.

I’ve also written a little something for Clive Barker. Yes: that’s right. You read that correctly. Basically he has put a challenge out there to write a story for an image he painted and posted on Deviantart. I will link to the image and I’ll post what I wrote here: because one requirement was placing the narrative in the Comments section.

ON WHOSE DREAMS

They built cities to keep them out.

People will tell you all manner of more pragmatic reasons for the creation of cities. They will mention the intersection of culture and trade, of the need for propaganda art to cow enemies and citizens alike, of a place to better house the billions of human beings being born every day.

But some will tell you something else. They’ll inform you, secretly where they think no one else can hear, that all of that art and architecture, the arrangement of the paths, streets, and buildings, and even the placement of certain homes and peoples were arranged as a pattern: to ward them off.

Yet ultimately it is the enclosures that are the thing.

They are no new innovation. It’s well known that ancient humans and their predecessors would hide in their caves during the night after saying farewell to their loved ones, their friends, and their enemies. And even now they would like to forget the howling outside, the scraping against the rock walls and their paintings of animal blood, the hunger deeper than the tunnels in which they hid and the pleading: to be accepted back among their people.

However, all of them are wrong. They remember it all wrong. Cities weren’t made for the living to hide and hoard their food against the seasons and the predators. The lost weren’t put outside to roam around for eternity. No. The tribes often placed their lost in their homes: sealing them up and painstakingly maintaining them. They would bring them food, tools, and the results of trade. Over time they bargained with them, prayed to them … worshipped their memory and what yet remained.

Caves like wombs became camps. Camps became villages. Villages towns and towns cities. The monuments grew higher each day: growing from the foundation of countless generations and those that tended their ground: which they still do to this very day.

So now do you understand? Do you know why sometimes you feel so tired: so drained? Even as the symbols lengthen like shadows into the sky and expand across the land, nothing truly changes. It is amazing how, simultaneously, you are cramped and alone: like you are the one living in the coffin. You are the one that’s trapped here.

No. Cities were not built to keep them out, but to keep them in.

For cities are not built for the living, but for the dead: in which everything within truly belongs.

So to say I’ve been busy would be something of an understatement. I’ve already told you about the fact that I’m going to be covering the Toronto After Dark. I actually tried to do this last year with Mythic Bios and for my efforts I got an invitation to view and write a review of their opening night. This time, however, I’m attending on behalf of GEEKPR0N. Expect to see me there for the Sunday and Thursday showings.

And I am going to be interviewing someone else. Again, I’m not going to go into any details as of yet but I will say that it will be my first in-person interview ever and I’m both cautious and excited over that prospect.

I remember once being the person that never even dreamed of having these opportunities or being this person as immersed in geek culture as I am now: even when people encouraged me to do so. And well … here we are.

Don’t worry. I will take time to peer in here and update all of you. I just thought you’d like to know about this. And please, read my articles and tell me what you think. It means a lot to me. Yet again, take care everyone. 🙂

My Last Geeky Weekend

September 8, 2014October 6, 2014 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ 1 Comment

My last weekend did not go as expected.

There’s an understatement for you. I knew that Fan Expo was happening and I was going to avoid it. I had some bad experiences with it the previous year (in the form of getting a prepaid ticket for the last day, getting lost, and not getting a straight answer of where to go: even from the volunteers). It got me so angry that not only did I write to the previous managers of the event, but I vowed to personally boycott them. It was a sad decision: as I know people who go to it that I rarely ever see.

My original plan was go to GeekPr0n’s Cosplay Ball Friday evening and the next day go to the Silver Snail Black Canary Espresso Bar to meet my friend John, who was coming in from Michigan, for their Midnight Madness sale. In this way, I would avoid the lines, the confusion and be able to take my time at things: while possibly meeting my friends regardless.

But as I said, things did not go as planned.

First let’s start with the GeekPr0n Cosplay Ball. I left late that evening and I hadn’t eaten anything. After nearly getting lost, though not nearly as badly as I used to get because fuck geography, I found a Subway store nearby, only to have less than a half an hour to eat and get out. My original plan was to eat and then put on my make-up: instead of walking through suburban Thornhill, riding the TTC system all in pseudo-goth, and messing up my make-up by eating.

Instead, I was forced to go to a nearby Tim Hortons and do a rush job in the bathroom. Here is a lesson to making yourself up like the Crow. Number One: don’t rush it. Especially if you haven’t put on your own make-up in a few years. And Number Two: remember that putting black make-up over white dilutes it.

And you end up resembling something like this.

So after I left the Tim Hortons as a combination Crow and Kiss Halloween experiment, I got into the Mod Club: where we were having the event and due to my excellent sense of timing I missed a lot of things.

A lot of things.

It actually makes my heart hurt a bit to realize just what I missed. And you can find all of that at GeekPr0n, if you’d like. I’m not in any of those pictures because, yeah, I was late and it’s probably just as well. Still, I got some dancing in and met a few people. Our magazine manager actually got me a drink and I felt bad that I don’t really drink, but I definitely appreciated the sentiment and I still do. After helping pack up some stuff, I walked all the way to College and Spadina from the Mod where I formally said goodbye to the physical resting place of the Neutral Lounge that once meant so much to me.

It’s amazing how people treat you differently when you are wearing a costume. Most Torontonians ignored me, but I got a few jeers (there was one guy at the club that was always dancing near me and patting me on the shoulder and what-not because, you know, men always don’t mind physical contact apparently) and even some appreciation. Sometimes I don’t know whether someone is complimenting me or making a joke at my expense in the form of a compliment. I guess that says a lot about my early life with my peers. But on the bus ride home some giggling young ladies were sitting around and one wanted to take her picture with me. And I thought to myself: so that is how my cosplaying friends feel. It was a pretty cool feeling.

So after a late night walking back and talking with a friend of mine on the phone all the way home, I went to sleep extremely late and planned to slum to the Espresso Bar later in the evening the following day.

All right. Now let’s talk about the rest of that weekend.

So my friend John had this cockamame plan to get into Fan Expo and buy tickets on the busiest day of the event: Saturday. I told him good fucking luck, after trying to make him see the error of this insanity, and quite honestly waited for the messages of horror to come.

The following Saturday I woke up towards two and got a Facebook message from John saying he was heading out. All right. Again, good luck to him. I felt a little disappointment as I knew he was going to be meeting some of our friends, but I made my own plan and I was going to stick with it.

John messages me some minutes later telling me that he’s “here.”

“You’re downtown now?” I asked him.

“Nope. I’m on your driveway.”

My jaw dropped and I have to admit, I swore a lot. I asked him what he was doing here as I told him about my plan and he said he just thought it would be convenient if he drove me to the Snail or to Dundas and we could meet up later. Bear in mind: I was still in bed and I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet. But since John was already here, I decided “Fuck it, I’m going downtown.”

As we were going downtown, we decided to try for the Expo and get tickets for Sunday. Instead, we got tickets for that day and Sunday. You know, a part of me almost thinks that this entire thing was planned. I mean, John did tell our friends that he was going to try to get me down there, but for god’s sakes this was ridiculous.

So we ended up walking around the south building and eventually we met up with my friend Angela O’Hara was cosplaying Ariel: complete with a combing fork. We looked at drawings, sketches, and then comics. We met some more people we knew. I got a signed Manborg comic. And then we got a picture with some Daleks who decided to serve me:

Or whom I decided to serve.

But while language is ambiguous for a reason, Toronto traffic is less so. We spent an hour getting out of the city: and this happened both days. But on Saturday, since we were already out, we decided to meet up with our friend James in Mississauga and see Guardians of the Galaxy. I’d given up hope of seeing it with any one of my friends and I was this close to seeing it by myself to see what the hell everyone was raving about.

So after we had dinner, the first meal of my whole day, and Groot later, I was grandly impressed by the film. It was a story well done with dialogue exchange that is reminiscent of how I like to hear dialogue and write it. I made a vow to see all the Marvel movies I can access now as I have a fear of commitment and it’s about time to get over that at least to this regard. Suffice to say I passed out pretty hard that night.

The next day I had time to eat, John picked me up, and we went to the Sunday round of the Expo. We hung around a little more in the North building this time around (and there was a lot of walking and escalators involved in that, let me tell you) and I got to meet my fellow horror and Heroes in Hell writer ZombieZak at his booth. We explored until it was almost that time and we headed back into the Toronto traffic before finally escaping on a highway.

And to cap off that day, I watched the Doctor Who episode “Into the Dalek”: which my dad recorded for me the night before. I even wrote a review.

So yeah. My friend John is stubborn and loyal and I got to have the geekiest weekend I had in a very long time. I learned just why we are Groot and that I will never be late for GeekPr0n Party again if I have anything to say about it.

Still, traffic jams need to be exterminated.

This Little Party is Just Beginning

April 14, 2014April 14, 2014 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

It’s been two weeks now since I posted anything on here.

Really, my post before this would could have had a few other alternative titles: you know, like “Fed Up,” or “Exhausted,” or something more responsible along the lines of “I Love You All, But I Need To Take a Fucking Break.”

So let me tell you what I’ve been doing since I last wrote here, and what I plan to do.

The very day I wrote that last post, I went to my friend Noah’s birthday dinner and then hung out with him and my friends at a Tim Horton’s: including my friend Andrew whom I haven’t talked with in ages. We just talked about geeky stuff and nothing more strenuous than that. That was about the last time I have seen my friends so far, but it reminded me that I needed to get more time out that I have, well, honestly been getting.

I’m can’t remember a lot of what I did after that. I kept meaning to write something here and I just … didn’t. I even started to get ideas again and have them become more coherent in my brain. I bought the second issue of The Sandman Overture, and then the book Darth Plagueis: the last of which I’ve been meaning to do for a while now.

And during this time I knew that I had a few ideas for more Sequart and Mythic Bios articles. I want to look at Gwendolyn MacEwen again, at an interesting form of comics, at a Batman fanfic comic and the second volume of the new Sandman. The material is all there. I’ve contemplated writing about women in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, but figured it had already been done before and didn’t include it here: though some of that did make its way into an article on Sansa Stark on GeekPr0n. Perhaps that will happen one day.

I also thought about eventually making that article on Anakin Skywalker and how as a classic science-fiction swashbuckler hero he is at a severe disadvantage merely existing in the extreme black and white Force-powerful Star Wars universe. I have also been meaning to write something for my friend Anthony with regards to his second novel Beloved Demons.

And, of course, after one playthrough so far I also want to look at Zoe Quinn’s Depression Quest. It’s fitting I guess, when you consider that this past while I’ve been depressed.

At first it was all exhaustion, but then I started to get perfectionist and disillusioned and side-tracked with procrastinating. Also, I began to feel concerned that I would get restless and feel empty again: having no sense of accomplishment writing at least two hundred words a day.

So I didn’t do anything at all.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve been maintaining my one post a week on GeekPr0n, as it is my job but also something I like to represent my skills well in doing, but it’d been a lot of white noise in the back of my head. Of course, that white noise is ultimately a lot of ideas that lack a structure or starting point that threatened to drive me crazy.

But now here we are. I’m writing something on here again. And now, we come to the next part of this post.

I took one proactive measure that I’m proud of. A few days ago I went downtown and made good on my Day Pass to Bento Miso: a collaborative workspace and community. Game makers utilize the space considerably, but there are a whole variety of different people that go there to work on their own projects, network, and attend particular events. I must have the strangest luck in the world in that the few times I’ve visited outside of the Bit Bazaar events, I’ve always come when most of Bento Miso’s members are at conventions.

The fact of the matter is that, as I have said before, I do need a space away from home to work, but not just on anything. There are some other projects I’ve been meaning to focus on and I have not had time or the concentration to do so. And I just need something new. So I decided to join Bento Miso as a cohort. 🙂

I remember that night, walking down Queen Street from Strachan, thinking to myself that the street didn’t feel nearly so old anymore or filled with ghosts. In the spring time, looking at Trinity-Bellwoods Park and walking down the street to take a streetcar to the subway, it felt like it was new again. I mean, here I was outside going downtown on some adventures and a new quest.

I think what I’m trying to say is that for the first time in a while I felt more like me again: no longer hiding and starting that process of making new opportunities and perhaps even connections. Who knows, right?

And I do have plans. I’ve thought long and hard about why my Patreon account hasn’t been followed or supported. And I realized that my work right now, on Mythic Bios, is good but scattered over a variety of different subject matters: all of them geeky, but not always specific or focused. This was always ever meant to be a supplement to the main writing that I planned to do.

Kris Straub, before he created Broodhollow, spent much time creating works to get to that place where he could make something akin to an ongoing master project or, if you’d like to get more profound about it, a magnum opus.

So here is what’s going to happen.

I am going to be writing on Mythic Bios once a week now. I simply can’t always write two posts a week like I used to. I need time to work on other projects and details in my life. I will, of course, break my own rules from time to time, but expect a post either Monday or Thursday. I will most likely alternate.

I will still be working at GeekPr0n creating my articles for them as well and with more time, hopefully, I can send some more … unique work Sequart’s way again. But, more importantly, I am going to be creating Patreon-Only content. My plan is to create a serialized work, or series of works, and make it so that those who Support me will be able to see whatever it is I will post there. Anyone can contribute whatever they’d like and we will see what happens from there.

And that is just for starters. I need to make my Patreon more presentable aesthetically and outline what my actual goals are. Right now I just have what I can offer. These are two entirely different things and with something more concrete, I might be in something akin to business.

You can find my Patreon account right here: http://www.patreon.com/mkirshenblatt

Let me know if you have any suggestions. I have a few ideas for some serialized work, mainly fiction, that I think some of you might actually enjoy. In the meantime, this is just the beginning. There are other possibilities as well. And I look forward to seeing where they might go.