Tag: writing

15: Alternative Facts: Unseen

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment



“Good friends, Nobody is trying to kill me by violence or treachery.”
– Homer, The Odyssey, IX:408

Can you see?

Guess you glean what I did there. Nah. The problem is you can’t see by the sunset. 

Long fore, these small domes, our little sancts, our suntowns came something divise in the dark. But was always the sunsets. One eye turning way, the up-firm bleeding read, pink and purpled bruises, the orange of fire. So ease to get lost in the sight of site, or the site in sight, in the paint bathing everything the same, the light burning, making the shades so much longer, and more ease to hide in the gutters of sleep. A pretty dream. 

The real thing’s that it’s hard to where sunset starts, and the downtime comes. That’s where we lived. That’s where we died. 

See, or don’t, that our suntowns had wights – deadskins, you glean – in the lights, mourning in morning, and then wight knights at night. All Anon. It’s always Anon. They got to have that light to hide. To burn us above and bury us below. Then they used the dark to hunt. Making us sight and siteless. The beauty in their cold, dead hating-hands. They got to have everything. They owned all the colours. 

Bending the laws of light, that’s how they did it. All round they made the rite of invisibilis. That was it. That was the trick. 

You get me?

Nah. You won’t. 

They didn’t. See, they didn’t want to see us. And when they didn’t want to see us, they didn’t want to be seen. They were Anon. That was the coustume.

Til we took it from ‘em. 

Was what Freed Dome prob call approps. Aft we made for – and made – the Gulf of Amarak got made in the Second Disunity, aft Precedent Forty-Seven, and all the Repo Fiefs started to go away with their Gilder Booms, and their Eagle-Eyes, their Baggers and Speculars, their Wags and their fucking Nation night knights, we came like the Free Sancts after Summer Camp, like haints falling up and down the blews forever. 

We’re the blews in the read and wights. We kept the deadskins out while taking their breaths and trumpets away. We’re the colour that the Not-Sees never found – not even in the Demos Tripartite – and when we came Anon, hunters came hunted, if you glean. All those Not-Sees, and their vanceguards, and the knights and their Nation got learned to fear the come of Night. We’re the undocted that nope their Novax, calling their prophets profits, their traders traitors, bagging their Baggers, guiling their Booms, passing on their poison, slitting their Dragons, and smashing their ice. 

And no one gleans. Nobody, nobody stabbed them. You follow? 

Nobody found us. Not in the mourning. Not by knight. You can’t hear our songs. You don’t glean our dance. We’re silent to your ears. You can’t touch us anymore. You don’t get us. You can’t. 

You didn’t see us in the Freed Dome. In the Speculars and the Eagle-Eyes in your Interface. In the pits of MePo. You never gleaned us when the Repos rose again, and you never knew the Colour Revolve made approps. 

You don’t glean us. You never gleaned us. And you never will.

Now go. These are ghost towns, moving, unsettling, where killers kill those that kill, and we come from sunken lakes and sunless seas at Night to feed hunters free lunches of lead, to chain them down to finally hear us, to stay in what was first our place, for the final lesson. 

Go now, and accept that we gleaned the truth. Because we took back from Not-Sees what they had from Libertas. We cleave to inside-out bonds of lightning weaves to come free. Surviving is to come what you haint. We are Anon now. We took our sunsets back, where now we live. With her. 

Only she gets to see us now.

 And she is blind. 

(C) Matthew Kirshenblatt, 2025.

Ladies’ Night

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

For DeLisa Chinn-Tyler and Mamie Johnson.

Dottie asked for a favour.

The remaining Rockford Peaches cackle to each other as the night comes on and the field lights blink into existence, even as her grandchildren shriek with delight and scramble with Ray Kinsella’s daughter Karin. Kit gives Dottie a meaningful look. 

It kind of astonishes Dottie, amongst everything else that led her to Iowa, which convinced her and Kit to get the others to come here, how she can almost smell the scent of Luttenburger Mustard on a hot dog, and taste that damned Harvey Bar on the tip of her tongue without there being anything in the way of concessions beyond what Annie’s given them.

Maybe that’s when she realizes it is time. She’s been listening to Ray, the owner of this baseball diamond in the middle of an Iowa cornfield so like and unlike the dusty land of her native Oregon, talk about seeing if players like Long John Willoughby, and The Stars of David will come to play. It was the last that made her remember, as if she could ever forget, a promise that she never spoke, but made deep down within herself. 

A lot of teams hadn’t been allowed to play during baseball’s past. America’s past. Dottie had only reluctantly joined to allow her sister a chance to get out of Oregon and make her own life. Dottie had taken it for granted: the opportunity, her skill, her own growing love of the game, of having the potential space to discover who she was. Not everyone had been allowed that privilege.

And that was when the memory of the foul ball, that never truly left, came back to her. 

Ray is animatedly discussing other possible players to bring to this field of Shoeless Joe Jackson, and the Eight Black Sox, and legends that should have been long gone, with Cappy. They’ve devolved into an argument about whether or not smalltown teams like Bayville and Central City should be allowed to compete in the same place again – if a sonnabitch pitcher like Herbie Satten would even be “eligible” to appear in this “sacred place” – when Dottie interrupts them. 

“Ray.” She just holds a hand up to Cappy’s irascible protests, looking out at a shape materializing from the corn stalks. “I think it’s time.” 

Ray looks out at the field. He sees what is happening. It’s as though he’s listening for a voice that neither of them can hear. He nods as he sees other forms come into the field. He smiles broadly at her, and she has to admit that it’s infectious, especially when she sees the other Peaches take notice. “Go on ahead. I think they’ve been waiting for you.”

“Dirt in the skirt!” Someone – she thinks it’s Mae, or Doris, calls out to more laughter. And then, there is silence. A low hum begins. Dottie’s not sure when it started. When they see what she sees, it begins.

The ambient sound becomes clear. It harmonizes. Then, she hears it. It sounds like Ellen Sue’s voice, but she can’t be sure. 

Batter up, hear that call.

The time has come for one and all…

To play ball.

Then, she knows. Dottie goes to her grandkids and kisses them. She holds her daughter as they take this all in. Kit does the same, and then grips her hand.

Cappy and Ira got them new versions of their old uniforms – red and white – and with pants. They go onto the field, Dottie leading the way, holding bats, balls, and mitts. There are other teams out there. The South Bend Blue Sox. The Kenosha Comets. And even some of the Racine Belles. 

She isn’t singing. But she feels the song, again, in her chest. In her throat. It pulsates. It glows. It rises. It is the smell of freshly cut grass. The sunshine of youth. The call of another generation’s soul.

We’re the members of the All American League.

We come from cities near and far.

We’ve got Canadians, Irish ones and Swedes.

We’re all for one, we’re one for all, we’re all American.

Some of them are singing, but it isn’t like that year ago in Cooperstown. Their song isn’t a gentle echo, or the warmth of a nostalgic ghost. It is present. It is real.

It continues as the Belles welcome Kit back with open arms, though she’s wearing a Peaches uniform. No hard feelings this time. Stilwell cries out from the bottom of the bleachers as he sees his mother again. Dottie also runs into Evelyn, holding her tightly, and promising that they’ll get her Angel to visit the field after this game. Given everything Ray told her about his own father, it is the least he – and the field – can do. They all embrace her, as Dottie sees the other player approach. She recalls Ray talking about the voice, the announcer, and wonders if somehow it is the one that is singing through this place: through them all.

Each girl stands, her head so proudly high.

Her motto “Do or Die”.

She’s not the one to use or need an alibi.

It was that foul ball. As she greets Linda “Beans,” Marbleann, Beverly, and Connie again, Dottie still makes her way down to the end of the field. She feels a momentum she hasn’t experienced in decades. For a long moment, her body doesn’t ache anymore, and her strides are effortless. She feels every inch the Amazon, the Valkyrie, the Boudica that Bob used to call her. It was everything that they were. Everything that they still are, and would always be. They were all warriors. They were all sisters on this ridiculous Elysian Field in Iowa. 

And so is the person she is coming to see.

The other woman meets her. She’s small. Slim. But she isn’t in a black and white polka dot dress, or a large-brimmed hat this time. 

Somehow, it’s like what Ray told her when he first came across Shoeless Joe, and the others. Dottie can almost see the stats appear in her mind in a nice and neat bloc.

G –  228

R – 136

BA – .273

G by POS – RP-150

Pitcher. Second-Fielder. Outfielder. A 33-8 win-loss record over three years. She knows this. Now.

It’d been broad daylight when they’d first met. Now, it is a night lit up by the lights and the magic of this small ballfield. She wears a striped uniform with a C emblazoned on it surrounding the word “chicks.”

The Steel City Chicks.

For a few moments, Dottie feels stupid. Of course, she would have had a team of her own. It just wouldn’t have been recognized by the League. She didn’t need the Peaches or the Belles. She, and her teammates, had been fighting their own battle. It was a shame it took so long, that it literally took life, death, and a miracle to get them all here to where they are – right now – today in what feels like the summer that a part of Dottie never truly left. 

But Dottie resists stretching her jaw. Instead, she extends her hand. The other woman looks at her. She gives her the same level stare, that look of pure confidence, and a steady defiance she had so many years ago back in 1943, segregated by so many things. But they had that moment, when she threw that ball down the yard like thunder and nearly destroyed Ellen Sue’s hand and baseball career.

And then, she takes Dottie’s hand. And when she does, they smile. Now their game can truly begin. 

Out

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

Jimmy spits non-existent tobacco onto the field, inclining his head to the side out of habit while also grunting as the other players take their leave. None of them stay, not even the grey, shadowy shapes that sometimes loiter on the turf. There aren’t many of those anymore, to be fair, as Jackson told them the owner – Kinsella – never really stops recruiting. 

It’s rough, though. They’d been playing all day, and it was time to go home, Jimmy guessed. Even Bob Feller wouldn’t bat for a pitch. Still, Jimmy knows he can’t explain. He feels tall, his shoulders broad, and he fits in his old Cubs uniform despite all the years he left behind in ‘87. Hell, his damn uniform was actually crisp white – ignoring all the dirt and sweat from under the sun. But he’s standing up straight, feels all square-jawed, and he can actually breathe again. Practically All-American, as Mom used to say. Or one of his wives. 

The floodlights are pretty good. The grass, and the stalks around the field rustle in the wind on this warm summer night as he picks up the ball. Between that, and the bleachers, and the tractor that comes through every once and a while, there isn’t much else that’s mechanical. Definitely nothing like a pitching machine. 

Out of all the things in his former life, Jimmy never thought he’d miss a pitching machine, especially not with Bob and Jackson, and Ruth, and only God knew who else around these parts. But here he is. He takes the ball, and he throws it up into the air. Then, he puts both hands on his bat, swinging back, and striking the thing out into the farthest depths of the field. He crouches, and he can feel the difference as he puts his whole body into it. 

A great thing, feeling cartilage in his knee again. All he had to do was pretty much just die for it. 

He shakes his head under his helmet. He walks past the bases, and picks up another ball. Fellas should’ve cleaned up, but he basically volunteered to do the rest. He feels uneasy. He shouldn’t. He should feel great. He does feel great. Amazing even. But as he throws the ball, and hits it again, he feels something else that’s been at him this entire day. Something – someone – is watching him. Like eyes across the bar room. Or … something else. Something that feels familiar, but he lost the name.

Like a ball he just barely grazed that could’ve been a home run that he’d never had. 

Fucking sentimental hogwash. He tried to shout that kind of junk out of the Peaches. Out of his girls. He hasn’t seen them here. Jimmy’s not sure if he’s disappointed, or happy. Maybe they’ll never come here. Maybe God doesn’t have Ladies’ Nights. 

He takes up the ball again, before he notices the shadow.

The strike of the ball against his bat cracks throughout the air, as the figure holds up one hand … and catches the ball. No glove.

Just a bare palm.

Jimmy blinks in the lights. He slowly lowers the bat to his side, fainting tapping his white pants. The shadow was easy not to see in the night, even with the field lights. It is tall. Statuesque. It wears a white short-sleeved uniform, with a red insignia and cap. The uniform is all too familiar, except it is wearing pants. 

The flash of golden ginger hair reminds him of the last late afternoon that he had seen her, before he went off in that bus to his next game, with the rest of his girls, with everything said and left between them. 

“No skirts.” Jimmy points at her legs as he walks up, to meet her in the middle of the field. 

She shrugs, looking at the ball in her hand, before turning up to regard him. “Easier on the legs.” She says. “No scrapes this time.”

“No splits either.” Jimmy shakes his head ruefully. “So much for Heaven.”

“Oh Jimmy.” Dottie says, her lips shaped into a thoughtful pout, a country girl trying not to say something more profane. “You still look like shit.” 

Jimmy scratches his chin. Even now, he still forgets to shave. Or maybe given everything, it never occurs to him that he has to anymore. They’re both trying to be nonchalant, but he sees her flexing her jaw. An old tell if he ever saw one. She looks like she did in her twenties. Like they’d just said goodbye at the bus before going to two separate lives. “And you still look like you eat and breathe this game.”

This time, Dottie looks down. A smile flits at the corners of her lips. “I guess there’s part of me that never really left it.” She manages to glance up at him. By this point, they have closed the distance between space and time, between them.

“You look great.” She says, and somehow they are both back in ‘43 in front of the pitching machine where she is picking up. ”You look like you can still go.”

“I was locked in.” Jimmy doesn’t know why he said it, but it makes sense. 

There is a moment of quiet between them. 

“I thought you liked me.”

Jimmy never thought he’d hear those words again. He’d heard them every day of the week, all the way until the day his liver and his lungs couldn’t take it anymore. He’d told her that he’d tripped. It’d been ridiculous. Pathetic. An old drunk womanizer’s excuses, a disappointing shell of at least a decent ballplayer. The truth was, he’d tripped, and fell. And he’d been falling for a long time. And he’d kept falling, plummeting for what seemed like forever before he saw what the Peaches could do. And what she actually was. 

“I did.” Jimmy wants to believe that it’s just his throat remembering what it was like to be choked up by tobacco, or just dust. “That was the problem.” 

He doesn’t look at her. He’d made his decisions. She’d made hers. But damn. At least he said it this time. Then, she is right up to him. He feels a tap against his chest. He looks down and sees her hand, curled around the baseball, pressed against his uniform. 

“Out.” She whispers, softly. 

Seeing her reminds him of that pure and clean feeling of doing something right. Something that he’d been born to do. To act. It wasn’t just that she embodied it. She felt it too. 

“I call foul.” He grumbles, without any rancor.

She puts a hand on his arm. “Maybe we should get a proper judgment call.”

“Maybe we should.” Jimmy chuckles. “But we know those umps are paid off anyway.” For a few moments, he stares back at the bleachers. And, somehow, he knows. He just does. She doesn’t look. She doesn’t have to. “Maybe we’ll have better luck with the Commish.”

*

Dottie Hinson sits on the bleachers as she watches them.

She’d only even seen Jimmy Dugan this young on a playing card. It makes her happy to see him standing up tall, and proud. He walks and moves smoothly, without his usual limping gait. And then, she saw the shadow of the figure in the field come into the light. 

Dottie doesn’t know what to think of seeing her younger self, in that modified Rockford Peaches uniform, talking with a Jimmy in his prime, a man not run down by life and his own terrible choices, and her – her not a mother yet, or a grandmother. 

“May I?”

Dottie turns her head slightly. Ray Kinsella is standing next to her on the stands, his hands in his pockets. The young farmer and owner of the field, squints down at the sight of the two figures. Dottie chuckles, shaking her head. She almost catches herself trying to pop her jaw. She nods to him. “Were there too many redheads at dinner for you?”

“Surrounded by them.” Ray laughs. “Nothing I’m not used to by now.”

It’s true. Dottie has seen Ray’s wife and brother-in-law, as well as his daughter Karin. But her daughter, and grandchildren, her sister and her own grandchildren are something else. They’d paid a nice twenty dollars for their ticket, which also included room and board for their stay. And Annie made a mean meal. 

She doesn’t have to look at Ray, to see that he knows what’s going on. “Has this happened before?”

Ray sighs. “Not often. Apart from Doc Graham, well, I told you about that. It happened outside of the field first. He followed us here. But yeah. There was one other time. Almost like this”

Dottie’s eyes narrow at the two meeting down below. “And?”

There is a pause. “Do you see the mound down deep left field?” 

“Yes.” Dottie hadn’t been sure, originally, what the plot of land had been in this strange baseball diamond in the middle of an Iowa farm, but now she already has a better idea.

“That’s Kid’s.” He looks at her. “Eddie Scissons. He called himself the oldest Chicago Cub.”

Dottie’s brow furrows, trying to remember while also focusing on the tableaux below them. “I don’t think I know him. Jimmy never talked about him …”

“He wouldn’t have known him. At least, I don’t think.” Ray rubs at his eyes. “I still don’t entirely know how it works.”

“I found out about your field through Mae. Mae Mordabito.” Mae had always been wild, but it hadn’t been until much later that Dottie realized just how superstitious, or into the occult that her former teammate had really been. “She’d read about you from Terrence Mann’s Shoeless Joe.” 

Ray laughs. “He really did it. I knew he would.”

“So.” Dottie says. “What does this mean?”

“I … honestly don’t know.” She gives him a glance. “The announcer, or whoever, the voice isn’t saying anything. Do you hear anything?” 

Dottie thinks about telling him that while she might be old, she’s not hearing voices yet. She shakes her head.

Ray rests his hands on his knees. “Eddie … He might have had more to do. Maybe …”

“He had some regrets?” She turns her gaze back to the ghosts of Jimmy and herself. And she thinks about it. “Is that what happened to him?”

“I don’t know.” Ray admits. “I think … we all, all of us, get something from the field. From the game. And I think it’s just between us, and the land.”

Dottie considers Ray’s words, the sight below them, and how she feels about it. Cooperstown had been a year ago. 1988 made her face a lot of what she had been doing, and who she had been in 1943. She’d almost not gone. She had tried to convince herself it hadn’t been important. But it was. All of it had been. It was how she reunited with her sister. With her friends. With her memories.

All of her memories. 

She sees the younger Dottie tap Jimmy in the chest with the ball. She can’t hear much of anything that they say, but she can figure out enough. No one knows yet, except Kit and her daughter. Bob passed about a year ago. She had lived a full long life with him, and she didn’t regret a single thing. Not for their offspring or their grandkids. When she went – and she would – she would be with him. 

But there would always be a part of her, deeply, intrinsically, spiritually, that was baseball. And Jimmy was also baseball. She smiles at him, at that young man he was and is now acknowledging her. And as she watches that part of her, that Dottie, free of responsibility and fear and anxiety taking Jimmy Dugan’s hand in hers, as they move through the corn stalks and vanish from view, a strange peace fills her that she didn’t know she needed. Something had told her to make this trip: a long trek from Oregon to Iowa for what could have been some tourist kitsch due to a metaphysical book from a former free love author. Now she can enjoy the rest of the time she has left. Now that part of her can truly move on.

Dottie slowly gets up. She waves Ray off as he attempts to help her. “Let’s go back inside.” She tells him. “My grandkids will be wondering about me. And Kit will want details. Otherwise she will never let me live it down.”

And while Dottie remembers, even now, that there is no crying in baseball there is still plenty of space to smile about it. 

14: Alternative Facts: Body Politik

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment


But see, amid the mimic rout,
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.
– Edgar Allan Poe, “The Conqueror Worm”

It’s Aft-Hallows. The treats are tallied. The white sheets pulled away.

The masks come off. 

It’s been many cycles since I searched the Freed Dome for that re-image. For that lost word. I walked through many Governs, Festives, and sub-cultics trying to find it.

Trying to find the true face of Amarak.

I’ve been gone long, deep into the Interface, deeper into the Land. And still, I didn’t know how one word would lead on, to the place of the Interregnum, and the heart of ultimate divise, of the Second Great Disunity. 

My parens always told me to bury the plague-bare. To avoid the Nats. A commonsensical. The Nats, the Novax, helped the Disunity. Ended the Disunity. But did they?

What is sickness? Is it just the body, or gleaning itself? So many words from so many places in the knowing space in my head now. The Rangers in the Badlands had a secret. Many secrets. In their Interface, sep and divise from the Repolitik, I saw a legend. 

The scholars of the Freed Dome Collective said that the Forty-Fourth Precedent was the last. But there was word of Forty-Six. Fore the Novax, the legend says, they said Two Teeth held Amarak, barely, two pinpricks of an old man. Two teeth, and four, keeping back the blood red tide. An in-oculate, a grafting, against disease. The Predicts say two women could have saved the Politik, fore and aft.

That was when the Novax came. The true Novax.

They did not see. They refused to see anything.

There is another view. We never had Precedents. Only Presents. A Forty-Sixth Present of the Demos, beyond the Forty-Fourth,  tried to save us from the sickness coming. But the Land has always been tough soil. Tangled. Twisting. A morass. The Repos, and their Fiefs and their Barrons called our Land a Swamp. And they never fallow, but always grow it. Ever-growing cycles. Revolves. That seeming’s that Aft-Hallows has always been a Colour Revolve: an Orange Revolve that tried to rule Time. One look between the veils, a moment, a box opening is and isn’t, death and non-death … 

And then, no more Present.

The Rangers have an old saying. When the death birds fly, they make no eggs. They also have another saying: the Orange Revolve is always led by Red Caps. The Freed Dome Collective is fallen. The Tripartite squabbles. Secret festives. Opportunes. Eagle-Eyes everywhere. The Interface compromises. The factions are occupied. It is only the start.

I think about what I gleaned about the Nats, and the Novax. And I see. It has never been Nats. You can’t run from something that isn’t there. And the Novax isn’t just sickness. It isn’t only a disease. Two Teeth cleaved the red deep under the binding of the blue, but it could only do so much agont the rot underneath. Agon the maggots. There is no cure, no in-occulate for the chronic Revolve. Death’s greed for life. For hate. 

And this answers my query. We didn’t know. We did not learn. There was no Present during the Interregnum. No real Present Aft. There is no real Present now. Just Ever-Now, for Amarak. 

(C) Matthew Kirshenblatt, 2025.

13: Alternative Facts: Can You See

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

It’s Fore Hallows at Freed Dome. 
It’s Fore Hallows at Bost. 
It’s Fore Hallows at Blunder. 
It’s Fore Hallows at Sancts Lost.

If you have to ask, 
wear a mask,
better bearer than bare
against the Nats and the Novax,
and the Fall of the Ere. 

It came from Sunder,
it walks in Nomens, 
and travailed the Pasiph League,
the world, the veil, the scien of Predicts,
from here and back it will leave its mark,
it will always bleed.

We member the days
Fore Hallows, it will not die.
It doesn’t long to Hate or Gilder Boom,
no matter how loud they cry. 

Fore Hallows is ours, from Cycle to Pride,
and Badlands far from sun
it comes to gain the oldest harvest 
and the Land, Folk, Fire that we have won.

Fore Hallows, fore State, and Trunk, and Ass,
we wear, in air, our mantles, always, from the time
fore score our face and words come frozen by this rime.

Fore Hallows never cesseeded 
into the glare of blue cover, the white sheets, the plague-bare 
suspended all twili, and grey, 
though its treats were grim, and cold tricks came its faire
come fallen where they lay. 

This is why, past the Dark we don’t member,
we will always ask 
that every Cycle, tween the Poles,
that we parti-pate a Great Unmask. 

Populli, Fore Hallows, ‘tend to be things
but let things not be populli, Abominate upon boght wings. 

A hush wind breath blows not in the bellows 
of louder miens  and means thrown down,
it might be now the time of ere, and auctumn
but ne’er forget the Revolution of the Orange frown.

Fore agon the idea in the making of hollowed leaves a crown,
and member that Fall every populli shows and knows
that the Precedent wears no clothes. 
Recall the Broken Star on a stalk of holly,
cover your breath, but not your eyes from this great old folly.

Fore Hallows now Hindsight,
Fore Hallows the Festive of the Open Track,
Fore Hallows for good or ill, 
let it be the begun again the Doom of Amarak. 

© Matthew Kirshenblatt, 2020

The Horror Doctor

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

So I actually did it.

I wanted to put a few more things on my Blog before linking it here, but I finally made The Horror Doctor.

I find when you make a Blog, a lot of it is about creating content, but it’s also about organizing and curating it: to make it accessible, or at the very least to know what kind of theme you are going for. In my case, I just had a lot of thoughts about horror and weird stories, and some of these just didn’t completely fit on Mythic Bios.

Or maybe that’s not entirely accurate. You see, I’ve written a lot on Mythic Bios. And I mean … a lot. So much so, that I feel like for something like the Horror Doctor, I needed something more streamlined, more specific, with which to deal with that particular content. It’s not a replacement for this Blog by any means, and it’s not meant to be.

What is interesting is that in creating The Horror Doctor, I’ve gotten to apply a few things I’ve learned over the years writing for Sequart, GeekPr0n, and this Blog. At the moment, The Horror Doctor feels like something between a review and fanzine, but it also inherits a lot from what I’ve attempted to do on Mythic Bios: in showing my creativity and analytics in process. Whereas Mythic Bios has sometimes showed my “behind the scenes” or “backstage” elements of my story writing, I kind of drifted away from it over time.

The Horror Doctor kind of reminds me of my first days making Mythic Bios into an online Blog, where I was just inspired and driven to write an article on here almost every day. It changed, of course, over time given that you need to pace yourself, and not overwork your brain to death. Even now, I’m slowly down a bit, but I have a few thoughts that I can still write down.

But I guess The Horror Doctor was a long time in the making. Essentially, it’s me writing reviews and creative homages to films and other horror and weird properties that I’ve watched for the first time, or had thoughts about in recent times. I’ve said it a million times already, but it’s like being Victor Frankenstein — with hopefully minus the deadbeat creator aspect — in that I am pretending to be a mad scientist without an MD (or a PhD for that matter) dissecting and reassembling different subject matter under my constantly growing auspices.

Why I made it, well … watching Joe Bob Briggs’ The Last Drive-In on Shudder helped, but in a way it’s the end result of spiritual inspiration from Kaarina Wilson. I’ve wrote about her a lot. I don’t know if or when I will stop writing about her, to be honest. We were originally going to make a collaborative blog together on Blogger called twosides. In the end, she wrote more in there than I did. But after she passed away, I realized I was still logged onto there as a co-creator. I read all the stuff she made, which wasn’t much, and I remembered that she wanted us to work together on something. I also recalled how much she believed that I could write about horror: to the point of encouraging me to talk to the Toronto After Dark Film Festival about writing for them.

Neither of these things happened. Originally, I was going to write in our old Blogger account and create The Horror Doctor there. In retrospect, there are probably more than a few subconscious reasons I chose that Blog name, but the fact is Blogger was just too basic — too old — to do anything with.

Of course, WordPress has changed over time as well. I know it’s not the same as I when I started back in 2012, but it is still kept up and updated, and I know how to use it on a basic level. I decided to start fresh, to make my own domain for both my Blogs, and a place for all of my things. So even though I feel like when I watch some horror classics or obscurities for the first time, I am watching it for both myself and Kaarina, the creation is all me: this is what I have been primarily doing with my time during this Pandemic.

I don’t know what else to add. I think The Horror Doctor is a good place to practice my writing ethic. I have already taken to curating but also rewriting and editing works there, taking my time, and considering what I want to do. It’s another step towards … something.

I will be reblogging some of my horror content from this Blog onto The Horror Doctor into both my “Dissections and Speculatives” and “Strains and Mutations” Categories (reviews and fanfiction), so there will be some interlap. In the meantime, I hope that everyone is holding up well. Take care all.

There are a few of you that have followed me for a long time here, some of you who still remain, or just discovered me. If you are into horror and weird stories, graphic  explicit, and twisted things, and you like how my brain works in general — and you like all of these things — please come and read my work at The Horror Doctor. Hopefully, if you are not educated by someone still learning the genre, you will at least be entertained.

Horror Experiment and My Newest Challenge

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

So this is something of a follow-up from my previous Blog entry “My Curve” that you can find by just scrolling back.

I’ve been thinking about the horror genre lately, particularly with regards to film, but being the person I am I also relate it back to horror writing. Better minds than mine have looked at horror and defined it through scholarship, or creativity. But after particularly focusing on cinematic horror, I see that there are so many different kinds of stories and storytelling, as well as production value, that make up the genre.

Some of it is psychological, or bodily, or just gore. Other parts of it are philosophical, or tacky, or just plain strange. It’s like how the comics medium has schlock and fine art, and all the variants in-between. You can find this in any genre or medium, I’m sure, but perhaps it’s because of the Toronto After Dark Film Festival and its bent on what I think in my mind as “weird movies” that I tend to view cinematic horror along these lenses. I mean, the Toronto After Dark particularly focuses on independent — or indie — films, both short and long-form, but I tend to see horror cinema in that spectrum between ridiculousness and campy-themed features, and sophisticated, and nuanced with some cathartic elements that could easily have their roots in ancient tragedy. Then again, some of the antics that happen in horror film can easily be found in old Dionysian slapstick become comedy as well, and there is a reason I feel why some comedians, like Jordan Peele, can make such great horror social commentaries. I always get the feel of observing, and playing with, glorious pulp with these “weird films.”

I’m not writing anything new here. But I think maybe it’s because of the pandemic and thinking about medicine and doctors, as well as my own critical skills, that an idea occurred to me.

It began when Joe Bob Briggs said that a film had been reviewing for The Last Drive-In would soon be out of circulation on Shudder. This happens a lot, where AMC — the company that owns Shudder — will have the rights to show the films for a while, and then they will be gone. I also know that Shudder in different countries can generally only show those films in the countries where the copyright exists. So as a result some of The Last Drive-In episodes aren’t available anymore. And Shudder isn’t always clear on when they will disappear like a ghost in the rain.

So I went to watch this particular film that would soon be gone from Shudder. And … This was interesting. It was an old film, but seemed older given the terrible production value. It had a lot of great ideas, but the way they were carried out, combined with the said production value, and a “too many cooks” of characters and ideas, it just got weird, and unfocused, and out of control. Sometimes art happens by accident. Sometimes, disasters do as well. I think that’s what horror does. It makes things messy and sometimes there is order in it, and other times it can just become senseless.

So it was after watching this film, complete with commentary, that I started to really think about what worked in it, what could work in it, and what didn’t. And then I did something that I learned to do as a Humanities Graduate student, and a creator myself. I began to think more about how it could work, and how to make it work. Think of it as something of a script-doctor inclination, except I would convert it into a story. Into glorified fanfiction.

And I began to think to myself, there are other films like these out there. I’m not talking about modern ones, or ones that have their own logic. I mean ones that could have their own logic and consistency, old and forgotten films, or smaller ones that could just been tweaked in some way. And, of course — and most importantly — I would not be doing it for money, or profit.

It’s an extensive idea, to do some Horror-Doctoring. And obviously, my tastes are my own, but I would need to make the revisions or “remakes” consistent with what they are, to go back to the theme of the entire film, and the tone, and make it more cohesive, snappier, and just entertaining. Disqualified from this possible experiment would be more well-known or mainstream works, and films that are focused and cogent. I can always write separate fanfiction for those, as I always have.

I am not knocking them, and I appreciate them for what they are — flaws and all — and I would definitely not mess with something like The Room, which isn’t horror, and is so in its own league of weird reality and insanity that it needs to stay there.

But I have a candidate — or specimen — lined up already. And it’s eerie how my ideas are working. I began thinking about it before, and then I was sending these thoughts to a friend whom I got to watch it before adding more notes to myself.

I might post it up. And depending on how well it is received, I might continue with those experiments. I might also not do it. My focus is more mutable these days, but it’d be cool to post a column or section on “Horror-Doctoring” on here, or make something and then create something entirely original from the previous specimen that I can use in other places.

Basically, I am getting inspirational fuel which is a start into returning to the process of creation where I need to be. To engage both my critical and synthetic brains. To continue my experiments with the mess to make something else entirely. I will keep you posted.

My Curve

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

My tagline should become “it’s been a while.”

I find so many ways of saying the same thing. It’s been a hard couple of months. Sometimes, it feels like it’s been a thousand years, though I have also read some writers stating that this period in our history is an eternal present: an in-held breath that keeps going until, inevitably, there will be a release of some kind.

In my personal life, I’ve been having something of the same process. March 13 was the last time I’d been downtown. I knew about the pandemic and the quarantine on March 11, but a few days later I went back to my parents’ place, and knew I would be going into hermit-mode again.

I had few illusions about that. I knew it would be more than two or three weeks of quarantine. It was hard in the beginning as I had been going out more. For the first week, I didn’t go outside at all: not even for a walk. I had this plan that I would not go outside at all until all of this was over, or even past it. I’ve gone long stretches of time without going out of my house or wherever I was living, and I thought to go back to it. I lasted over a week like that, before it got too much.

After that, was a string of misfortunes. The end of a relationship, and the death of a pet. Even then, I felt like I was accepting that something was changing, that I was at a shift — or we were at a shift — that once it was done we would never be the same again. And just when I felt like I was beginning to be free, to shed that past dead weight, everything else went side-ways, as a friend of mine used to say.

When Kaarina passed away, I was in this twilight place. I’d known beforehand, as I already wrote about I’m sure, but I was going to bed at seven or eight in the morning. I wasn’t sleeping. I was talking on the phone, or online in an almost drunken manner. Sometimes I could focus, and other times I was out in my own world. It was just these glittering pieces in the dark, metaphorically speaking. I felt both detached, and angry, drifting, and sad. I kept a list in my head of things I wanted to do, or say to people, before the pandemic and I fulfilled them slowly over that time as I began to become more stable again.

I talked with my therapist on the phone, something I should continue to do. My friends have been going through their own losses as well. It’s like the darkest, suckiest stuff that was waiting to happen before the pandemic decided since things were already bad they’d might as well all come out to play.

During this time, I wrote some stuff about Kaarina, did some roleplays with my friends that still can online, and not much else. I marathoned Freeform’s Sirens for a while, and then continued watching Motherland: Fort Salem. I know that for a while, I was dealing with a lot of anxiety, especially in the beginning month of all this — suffocation and being terrified of getting sick. Sometimes, I still cycle through that, and there might be some medical issues I will have to deal with that aren’t related to the plague.

I don’t know when it happened exactly. Once the suffocation, the anxiety, the despair, the empty feeling, the frenzied feeling, all wore off it began to level out. To meet a curve if you want to borrow a popular phase now.

One day, I found out Joe Bob Briggs’ and Shudder’s The Last Drive-In was coming back. I’d missed the last season, as that had been another year of turmoil. I did catch one part where one of the Halloween films was being played, and I had created a theory on Twitter that Dr. Loomis had experimented on Michael Myers already altered physiology and psychology, and that was the reason he wanted to kill him so badly. It never get quoted on the show, but I had fun that night. I’d heard of Joe Bob from James Rolfe’s Cinemassacre channel ages before, and I had to check it out. Also, Diana Prince — who plays Darcy the Mailgirl — was someone I’d started interacting with on Twitter and Instagram along with other fans from time to time.

My usual D&D game days are cancelled for the foreseeable future, and I am obviously not breaking quarantine. I decided to experiment and watch an entire run of The Last Drive-In. I liked the format of the first episode in Season One, with the film Tourist Trap with a telekinetic who likes to create wax beings, and I wanted to see what a live marathon would be like while live-Tweeting.

It was hard. I didn’t pace myself, and there were no commercial breaks. I admit that while I had fun that first episode, the five hours locked my body down, and I didn’t feel well. I considered just seeing one part of the episode next time, and looking at the rest when recorded on Shudder. But then, the next week came and after having most of my food, and some commercial breaks, as well as knowing when take some of my own, I did much better. I absolutely loved Maniac with those creepy mannequins, and it was the first time I’d seen Heathers: and I adored it.

This past week, there was Brain Damage and Deep Red as well, the former I surprisingly enjoyed and make a few good one-liners on Twitter. Deep Red was harder to follow, and I tried to make sense of it, and … maybe one day I might. I really liked interacting with the other fans on Twitter, and just the feeling of watching something, some ridiculous, sometimes awesome films with people while listening to Joe Bob’s anecdotes and facts. I don’t agree with everything Joe Bob says, and certainly I know that I loved A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night more than he seemed to in the earlier seasons — though I do have a weakness to towards “art-films” — but I can appreciate what he brings to the show.

I just, for a few moments, not only did I recapture what it was like to watch strange films, horror movies, with friends, but to have it at a fixed point, to come to that time and actually accomplish it. I know the show is on from 9 pm to 2 am on Friday evenings, and I attend them and get through it, and even interact. It’s a combination of observation, entertainment, writing, and socializing with a good meal. And it helps. It helps to feel that sense of accomplishment in doing that, and that sense of positive reinforcement.

And, whenever I watch The Last Drive-In, or any horror films, I feel like I am watching them with Kaarina: for the two of us. We used to go to the Toronto After Dark Film Festival together, and then watch Twilight Zone before bed. And I curated a whole Shudder account for her when she was in a medically-induced coma in hopes of presenting it to her when she woke up from that surgery. I think it even still exists somewhere on Shudder. I also felt like, for a moment, that I was watching horror movies with my friends again after almost two decades.

It must sound strange, to want to watch things for someone who can’t anymore, but I take comfort wherever I can, and I won’t knock this.

It’s been around this point that I began writing again. I was already feeling the need to return back to the work I began about a year ago, before real life came in. I was so busy going out and socializing that a lot of it fell to the way side to gather dust. And then, the pandemic and all these personal losses accrued. I think it also helps that I don’t feel the pressure of not having a job or still living at home, as I know many people are facing similar situations due to the current crisis. Surprisingly, I’m less hard on myself: even though I still need to sleep properly.

I feel like I could spend more time writing and reading and watching films than interacting with people as much now, but I know there are people in my life that check in on me. I’m definitely not the same as I was before March, and I know I won’t be after all of this is over or at least stabilized. I learned a lot about other people during this time. And about myself.

Right now, I am writing fanfiction but I am thinking about going back to a possible collaboration idea, and that Lovecraft work of mine. I know this seemingly limitless time is an illusion. It will end, one way or another. Life likes to change. I am going to just do the best I can, and I feel like I want to do it again.

It’s late now, for a change. I want to write down one or two more things before this night is out. I don’t know how I will deal with things when they open up again outside, but I can’t really think about that right now. All I can do is enjoy what I have now. That is all I can do.

I’m glad that you can all join me on this venture. I might add another entry after this one. It’s been a while since I’ve done something like that. Until then, my friends.

Uthark

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

This is a missing scene between two different stories. It also be seen as a prequel to my fanfic “A Midsummer Night’s Dance.”

Dani starts. As the adrenaline edges off, her head lolls down, from her seat and the belt holding her in place.

It takes her a moment to remember where she is as she feels the ground moving under her. She’s … in Pelle’s car. Dani remembers now. She’d begun to nod off not long after Mark began talking about a woman with three clitorises, and a news anchor killing his wife, or something. She rubs the place where the bridge of nose curves into her forehead, visualizing her heartbeat slowing down, breathing as she had taught herself to do. It’s all right. She recalls that she still has her pills, if she needs them.

It’d been so strange. She had been dreaming. It was like the painting she had at her apartment back home, or something like it. But she was in it. It was night, and she’d been in a white dress or … was she wearing flowers? Dani can’t quite remember now. She’d been … dancing? There had been flames, and people naked in the sky, and a beast. There was a beast, and they circled around each other, and it looked at her with dark glittering eyes. It was going to eat her, like the Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. That’s what she was thinking then, but she wasn’t dressed in crimson as naked people flew in the air towards chanting people dressed in white robes. But those eyes held her in place even as they danced and danced, and she sang with the white-garbed people, and the pain didn’t exist anymore, and she belonged …

But she couldn’t stop moving, and the eyes consumed her. Something kept clicking, and clacking in her brain. The sounds and eyes devoured her, so much until she …

It says a lot about her, and her mental state between numbness and panic, that she welcomes this nightmare more than … the others. She shakes her groggy head as they continue to drive down the highway to Hälsingland, and Pelle’s commune. Christian is sitting beside her, half-asleep himself, distant as usual. Josh is quiet next to him, near the right car door. Thankfully Mark has stopped talking, even though Dani has to admit that the drone of his voice with its ridiculous stories and chatter about milkmaids and pussy almost distracted her from the crushing grief inside her chest. It probably put her to sleep. Somehow, though he is also quiet, she can see Pelle through the sun visor, looking at her sympathetically. Out of all of Christian’s friends, he has been the nicest, the most sociable at least. There is a warmth to him, in his eyes. She still hurts, but not because of him, and she feels like he knows a lot more about what is going on than she does …

Perhaps he’s always known …

A strange sense of comfort fills her at that thought as she considers where they are headed, into this strange place, leagues away from her home, her own sense of home an eternity away across a continent in an exhaust-filled house that no longer exists where it is so hard to breathe … to breathe …

A house filled with smoke, and loss. A structure on fire, and a sense of relief … 

Then she looks back to the right side of the passenger area, past Christian, to Josh and his book.

The Secret Nazi Language of the Uthark.

Dani needs to take her mind off of everything. She’s about to ask Josh about the book, with its old, faded cover. But then a sense of déjà vu fills her. Josh carries the book around for his studies into European midsummer traditions, but mostly to annoy Pelle. And she knows, somehow, that it does annoy Pelle. They must have talked about it at some point. Dani’s brow furrows. Yes. Pelle told them that his commune studies the runic alphabet. Pelle’s commune, the … they use the Germanic characters, and something else. It’s no wonder that Josh’s book annoys Pelle. The Nazi Party, and their Theosophic roots appropriated a lot of Nordic and supposedly “Aryan” culture to build their brutal worldview, to claim they were returning to something “natural” through unnatural order, and the dominance of the patriarchal over …

It’s strange. Somehow, Dani recalls someone … was it Christian? No. Something she read, perhaps? She’d only had an introductory course to Jung. Maybe Pelle, again, told her what the Uthark meant. She almost remembers …

She knows that Pelle is good-natured. He takes a ribbing from his friends, and perhaps it’s not her place to do this, but something really annoys her about that book, and Josh. Josh, for all of his genuine studiousness, doesn’t seem to actually respect the content or the people of the culture he claims to be fascinated with. His intensity is not what bothers Dani. In fact, he is at least the most cordial of the group towards her, or at least apathetic to her being there at all. But his lack of respect, especially towards Pelle. She imagines if Pelle and his commune are Jewish or Roma.

She is about to say something, turning to Josh, but Josh and Christian are gone. There is a boy near the window. He’s tall, but slouched over with greasy dark hair. His skin his sallow, and his nose is covered by a bandage. It looks like it’s been broken. Dani blinks, and Josh in his place again. She looks down, and the book is gone, replaced with a pile of papers. The writing is runic or children’s pictures. Dani feels dizzy as she blinks again, and the boy is there, staring out the window. Dani doesn’t know what to do, or say. They are on a journey. It’s important. It’s important to get to where they need to go, and she needs to know what’s going on.

“Excuse me?” She croaks, realizing how dry her throat is. “Excuse me?”

The boy doesn’t respond to her. He continues to look out the passenger window at the declining road.

“Pardon me.” Dani tries again, getting more spittle into the back of her throat.

The boy turns towards her. There is some confusion in his eyes.

“Hello?” He asks.

“What are you reading?” Dani finds herself asking instead.

The boy looks down at where Dani is staring. In his hand, where Josh had been holding The Secret Nazi Language of the Uthark is a manuscript titled Cocoon Man. “I … don’t know.” He says after a while. “Is this yours?”

Dani’s head aches. She rubs the bridge of her nose again. “I don’t … think so.”

“I …” Dani can see the boy becoming pale, the air around them darkening. When it did become evening? “I can’t breathe …”

Dani’s eyes widen in concern, and sympathy. “I can’t either.”

The boy’s face seems to swell in the growing shadows. “Where is she … Mom told me to take her with me. We can’t leave her alone.”

“Terri?” Dani leans forward, reaching a hand, as the interior of the car becomes even murkier.

“I can’t ,.. breathe. I … how can anyone breathe in here …”

And then, the car is filled with smoke. And fumes. The car exhaust pipe’s been reversed. Dani can’t breathe. She’s choking. She is suffocating on the toxins in the air, inside of her, and the group is back. Christian, Josh, Mark, and Pelle. They are dying, with her. She’s coughing, pounding on her door, on her window. There is a sound that is trying to fight its way out of her lungs, out of her vocal chords.

“I can’t … breathe …”

Somehow, even through the fumes and her wracking coughing, Dani can see the others have changed. It isn’t Christian’s friends. Her mother and father are sitting next to her. And Terri, Terri is staring grotesquely, covered in her own bile, into the the sun visor as she drives them right into the abyss, into hell.

“I can’t … breathe …”

Dani abruptly turns, and sees the boy, scrabbling at his own window, crying.

And then, the boy’s window is open. It is night, and they can breathe again as the smog is released outside, sucked out into the air amid clacking, shouting, laughing, and chanting. The boy’s shoulders heave, as Dani tries to catch her own breath until the hissing of the exhaust becomes buzzing, and the smoke going out are insects hovering all around her, trying to get into her lungs, into her skin, into her mind …

The boy turns around, the wind whipping against them. His head is hung out the window, but he is looking back at her. She sees his dark eyes glittering into her own. She doesn’t think.

“Spirits!” Dani exhales.“Back to the dead!”

The boy’s swelling face, or a girl’s, or a bear’s stretches out into an ‘o’ of surprise, as a telephone pole rushes past them, and clips off his head. Dani screams, as the car flips over, upside down, into the air, and falls up into the night …

Until they wake up in another place.

Another Year

~ 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.