quiet clouds

I don't know why I didn't go home once I'd severed my alliance with the Princess. We both could have gone, me and my constant companion, and enjoyed the safety and comfort of my estate; instead, once the thaw came, we wandered. It seemed that everywhere we went, the war had left chaos and instability in its wake: deserters who became bandits who became warlords here, a corrupt magistrate taking advantage of the chaos to line his pockets there. Sometimes they welcomed us, sometimes they drove us away. We helped where we could. When we couldn't find work, we foraged for food; when the imperial highways started to fill with soldiers we left the roads behind.

We were tired, we were hungry, and we were putting our lives at risk, and even when we were able to help, it felt so small. So often it felt like we were at best buying them time, that everything we did--driving off the warlords, exposing the magistrates--would simply lead to a temporary power vacuum. And we could hardly stay and prevent someone else from returning.

It became harder as we traveled to pay attention to anything but the road ahead of us. I knew that we were in a mountain valley and had even stopped to admire some of the views when my companion pointed them out, but my eyes remained fixed on the trail, and all the sounds of the wilds faded to nothing but the dull tread of my boots.

My companion had stopped, and I wearily asked what the problem was. She simply gestured upwards. A beautiful set of quiet clouds had formed above the mountains, drifting through the sky and along the slopes as I watched.

"I'll make camp," she told me.

I found a fallen log to sit on and just watched the clouds. Somewhere out there, the war was ravaging even more lands, but there were still quiet, beautiful moments out there, and for a moment I was able to convince myself that maybe the reason I was still wandering was so I could find them.

waning crescent

I always had an affinity with the moon, ever since I was little. I'd stay up late--later than I was supposed to, but even then none of my caretakers dared to stop me--and sneak out onto one of the palace balconies and just stare up at the moon, and felt elation as it waxed and sorrow as it waned. 

It's so easy to lose track of the moon's phases, though, when you're busy. And I was, of course I was, even when my father was alive. I had so much I needed to do before the city was mine. So maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that when I was coronated, I forgot to check the moon. It was a waning crescent, days before new. A moon in decline.

I told myself I'd grown out of superstition. I tried to convince myself that the phase of the moon meant nothing about the fate of the city, that I would not be ruling over the final days of a waning realm. I had so much to accomplish. I had so many dreams. The days ahead should have been our brightest; but as I saw that moon hanging over the ocean, my new crown already too heavy on my head, I had the conviction that each passing night would only be darker.

That night, when the crowds of disingenuous well-wishers had dispersed, I stayed up late like I used to and stared at the moon and tried to understand, or at least to recapture that sense of wonder I'd had as a child. But it remained impenetrable as ever, and eventually wine and exhaustion forced me to retire.

I drifted through the next day too distracted to think of anything else. Eventually one of my friends--or perhaps she was an adviser now?--finally realized this wasn't just a hangover, and pulled me aside. "You seem worried."

I tried to assure her I was fine, but at that moment I lost control and started to cry, silently. She held me, awkwardly, as I struggled to compose myself once again.

"Tell me what's wrong?" she said, once I had regained my composure.

And I tried. I tried to explain about the moon, and how despite everything, I still worried about symbols and omens. "No," I said, as a revelation occurred. "it's not worry. It's a certainty. I will be the last Princess of this city."

She watched me for a while--I never did learn to read her face, even after growing up with her, and she was always one to keep her thoughts to herself--then said, "Someone had to be. You may as well pretend you're wrong, though." I frowned at her, and she cracked a thin smile. "Rule well, and either you make the last days of a waning empire better, or you lay the groundwork for a brighter future. Worry and despair doesn't help anyone."

I glanced up at the afternoon sky then and saw the thin sliver of moon there, barely visible against the pale blue sky, and I wondered, if it was an omen, what kind it was meant to be.

a prelude for october

October at last. Autumn has truly started here--the leaves have turned, there's a chill in the air, the rains have already started falling . . . sometimes I get a little emotional the first time a real autumn storm happens. I love this season, and I love this month.

This is the month of Halloween, a holiday whose aesthetic I've always loved. I still remember going all out decorating and dressing up as a kid, wanting the season to never end. Part of that, of course, is just fall--the colors, the leaves, the smell of fallen leaves, the chill in the air--but the holiday itself, and by extension the month it occupies, also has a special place in my heart. Jack-o-lanterns and spooky ghosts and skeletons and little cartoony gravestones that say RIP on them. (Though I know at least one person who hates when people say this, I'm not actually that into horror as a genre; I'm mostly here for the fun and whimsy. But horror fans getting excited for their favorite movies makes me happy, so I'm not complaining either.)

There's an A Softer World which describes Halloween as the only time of year you can really dress for the job you want, and Jason Webley has been known to introduce some of his seasonal songs by saying that it is the one night of year when we can take off our masks and reveal who we really are (I'm sure there's a recording of this somewhere but I'm too lazy to search; sorry). There's something about that, I think: the way we celebrate it, Halloween is ostensibly a night of masquerade, but there's an element of masquerade that allows us to be a little more honest about who we are. That is, wearing a real mask makes it a little easier to drop the metaphorical ones.

I don't really have a point here, or even a good way to segue into this next bit: I'm going to try once again to write a little something every day this month, because it's a fun challenge. I'm planning on using this set of prompts, which given my endless fascination with the sky and weather probably shouldn't require explanation, though I think I'll try to reshuffle the moon days around so they correspond with this year's phases rather than with, I presume, those of 2019.

Normally I'd try to mix in some observations on news and the world, and maybe some personal anecdotes to tie it all together, but this month I have nothing much to say. I'm glad fall is here; I'm still tired, society is still on edge from the pandemic, hope still feels firmly grounded in folly. The year is drawing rapidly to a close and things still feel both stagnant and precarious.

Regardless, I hope the season is treating you well. I hope that it is exactly as spooky as you'd like it to be. I hope you are pleasantly surprised by a gust of wind, that you can watch the leaves dancing against a stormy sky. I hope, even if it's only for one night, you can take off your mask and be who you truly are.

dragonsbane

I have a new short story. It's here.

Normally I don't like putting up qualifiers for things I've written because I'd rather the text stand for itself, but the short stories I've been working on recently, including the most recent one (which I may not have even put up here, what the hell?) are part of a bigger story I've been working on for . . . years, now. Sometimes it just lives in my brain, sometimes I put some words on paper, building up the world and the events. It's changed a lot since I started, but it's solidifying, slowly. The characters, at least, have taken on their own forms.

This isn't really new here; I've written a number of things taking place in this world and posted them on this blog. But increasingly as I build the world, they become events that are part of something bigger. This is the story of the time a character earned the epithet "Dragonsbane"; it's also a small but significant event in a grander story.

Previously I've been happy to file off the characteristics that tie an individual story to the broader narrative; it's harder to do the closer the stories get to being part of those events. The problem is that I worry that it will feel incomplete, or at the very least that treating these as isolated and separate stories is not the ideal way to present these.

So here we are. I still want to tinker with this forever but eventually you have to hit publish. 

a prelude for september

And so August draws to a close. It was a strange one, as weather goes: the endless sun and heat that is typical of a Seattle August was, with few exceptions, nowhere to be seen; instead we got the cool clouds that feel more like June, or even May. As I write this it hasn't even breached 70 yet today; it's cold enough in the house that I'm wearing hoodies and blankets, which is usually reserved for spring and fall.

I . . . so usually this is the part where I say that nothing remarkable has happened, but then I think about it and, no, it's just become normal. The antivaxxers have started chugging ivermectin horse dewormer because some snake oil salesmen have told them it will help with coronavirus; ivermectin poisoning has spiked dramatically, especially in antivax strongholds like Texas. A judge in Ohio ordered a doctor to provide it to a COVID patient after the hospital rightly refused. This, to me, is more emblematic of how broken our society is than pretty much any other example I can think of. It seems like something that should be the part of a fringe, but it's alarmingly common, and there's nothing to be done about it.

And then there's America's withdrawal from the disastrous war in Afghanistan, which has led to chaos and death as the Taliban rushed in to fill the power vacuum left behind. This was always going to be the outcome, of course: American intervention invariably leads to disaster. Warhawks, of course, always say that it wouldn't lead to disaster if we'd simply "stay the course" or commit to winning or whatever, but it's always telling that they're more concerned with adding a win to the collection than in making the world a better place for anyone besides themselves. Perhaps there is a world where America actually left Afghanistan stable and peaceful, rather than simply occupying it forever or withdrawing and leaving chaos in its wake; but given how every other instance of American intervention has only destabilized, it's hard to imagine that being the case. And strategic questions aside, there is always the moral question: does a dying superpower have the right to impose its version of peace and stability on the rest of the world? If it has the right, does it have the obligation?

There is so much that is broken about this world. This, I think, is why lately I've been drawn to studying history, and the history of ideas: the hope that somewhere in there is the key to understand the nightmare we find ourselves in.

But September is here. It's a month I've always associated with hope and new beginnings--if it is summer's last hurrah, it's often a pleasant one, where the heat of the day is tempered by the nights as they slowly get longer. Yet it's also the end of fire season, when the winds of fall can stir up fires and create more destruction. That this September won't even be a reprieve from the summer certainly does feel odd. It's probably as unreasonable as my old dislike of Augusts was, but simply seeing the calendar change to September is still comforting in its own way. So here's hoping that the winds of fall bring some much-needed change.

a prelude for august

When I was younger, I had a few very bad Augusts, and for a while that rather spoiled the month for me. It doesn't help, I suppose, that August is high summer, that time of year when the heat of the sun seems interminable, when everything is too hot, when the promise of autumn seems an eternity away. Except, well, this year--as last year, as I'm looking back on what I'd written then--August started with clouds. July was fairly cool, too, which was a sharp relief from the overwhelming heat that brought June to a close.

As fond as I am of trying to find an analogy, to describe the state of the world with the state of the weather, it's poetry rather than mysticism that drives me to this. There are weather events that seem all too fitting--I'll always remember the bitter cold at my uncle's funeral--but there are also beautiful days full of disasters, terrible storms that coincide with wonderful news. And perhaps there is some poetic resonance in an oddly temperate month following a disastrous heat wave--surely many of us have convinced ourselves that the pandemic is over, that we're in that temperate month now, that the disastrous waves of COVID-19 are done and gone.

One of the things that consistently frustrates me is how, consistently through this pandemic, we've let up as soon as things start showing signs of improvement. Lockdown restrictions eased not when numbers were controllable but when the numbers were improving. I very much doubt that epidemiologists suggested this; this seems like it was engineered to give the illusion that our public officials are constantly acting to protect us.

The thing is, you don't let up when it looks like you're about to win; you keep the pressure on. We could have held out until new cases were effectively gone, then we could have put infrastructure in place to locate and isolate new cases, to do contact tracing . . . the potential was there. Now numbers are spiking again--this post-vaccination wave is already our third highest peak--and the governor is suggesting that maybe people consider wearing masks if they feel like it. It's frustrating, and all the more frustrating because of how expected it all is.

Still, August may be high summer, but it's also the last real month of summer. One more month of heat to weather before September comes in with rain and cool air, ready to once again breathe life into the world. Something, at least, to look forward to. August deserves some credit for that, I think. One last chance for summer, and then, at long last, relief.

a prelude for july

As I write this, we're recovering from a heatwave that is worse than anything the Pacific Northwest has ever seen on record, with all-time record high temperatures being posted across the entire bioregion, often for several consecutive days, or more. It would have been bad for any time of year, but this was still June, when the temperatures are still usually fairly manageable. It was staggeringly hot, a kind of heat much of the region is woefully unprepared for. Summer, it seems, wants to make its presence felt this year. The temperatures are still well above normal for the time of year, and will be for some time yet; it's cool enough that the heat wave feels "over" but warm enough that it could still be causing problems, drying up plants that could become fuel for wildfires, interfering with crops as they grow . . . the initial heat was catastrophic enough, but the subtle lingering warmth could cause still more damage.

And this is the Fourth of July weekend, the first one "after the pandemic", the weekend after all this heat, when so many fireworks will be set off, when the conditions are ripe for fire . . . usually the worst of wildfire season for Seattle is later in the summer, but already things are pretty bad. That means that we have more time when conditions are optimal for wildfires, which would be bad even if Americans weren't so deeply and reliably foolish.

Also as I write this, King County has lifted its mask mandate, because our vaccination numbers hit a particular arbitrary total, ignoring the WHO's recommendation to maintain mask requirements and the worrying increase of the so-called delta variant of the virus, which appears to spread much more quickly. America has decided that we have done enough to declare the pandemic over, so we're acting as if it is. So now we're relying on the feverish hope that the vaccines are good enough that they can prevent variants from taking root and mutating to the point that we need new vaccines.

It is well and truly summer, then: brutal, unrelenting, interminable, inexorable. It's hard to feel hopeful when the heat is so bad that all you can do is lie on the floor with some wet towels and hope that it cools down enough at night that you can get a few hours of sleep. It's hard to feel like the pandemic is over when the health organizations that aren't compromised by capitalist interests are begging us to keep restrictions in place, warning that nowhere is safe until everywhere is safe.

I hope my fears are unfounded, that these filters I've been collecting over the past few fire seasons will go unused, that the numbers will actually continue their slow decline. But summer, I've found, is seldom merciful.

a prelude for june

 And just like that, June is upon us. These first two days of June in Seattle have been full of summer's promise, the endless sun, the heat--far from oppressive but still a stark contrast from spring's warmth. But as I write this the sun is setting and we're settling into the more familiar pattern which locals call the June Gloom, where there are always clouds in the sky and we have the audacity to call these sixty degree days "cool." It's not spring, but it's not quite summer; sometimes it feels like a lie to suggest we have four seasons. There are so many shapes the seasons take throughout the year.

People are starting to say the pandemic is over, or nearly over. Restrictions are easing, with promises of even more relaxations coming soon, as soon as we hit certain vaccination thresholds. It feels like that classic American blunder of declaring MISSION ACCOMPLISHED as soon as victory is in sight, then just bailing out before crossing the finish line and letting things fester once again. We are so desperate to return to normal we're willing to sabotage ourselves to get there. Or perhaps it doesn't matter; perhaps we fucked up so badly that there never could have been a clean end to this. That, too, would be very American. Or maybe, despite everything, things really will get better. Maybe it's over. Stranger things have certainly happened.

Regardless, "normal" is coming back. People are returning to work in their offices; office buildings are relaxing their restrictions and removing some of the seldom-used distancing measures. Soon we'll get to see if we see any lasting behavioral changes when we've collectively agreed that the pandemic is over; soon all of those few, both blessed and cursed, who actually stayed home all this time, will reemerge and have to remember what it's like to interact with people again.

And soon these little monthly preludes following life in a pandemic and apocalypse will be . . . superfluous isn't quite the word; they were never necessary. But certainly whatever uniqueness my perspective had is fast fading, and soon, for good or ill, life will be back to some grotesque facsimile of normalcy for everyone.

a prelude for may

 Ah, May. This is the month where winter is finally just a memory and everything is green and alive again, finally--it's a shame it comes so close to the start of summer, that so often you can still feel the touch of winter in March and April and then by the time May rolls around it's almost over. Perhaps that's the nature of spring, though, to be ephemeral; perhaps if it really lasted it would cease to be spring, and I would instead be saying this about April or March. What is summer but spring once the novelty has worn off That's cynical, of course. But spring is new life, and summer is life ongoing, life unchanging.

We stand at a precarious point where something like an end to the pandemic seems to be in sight. The population of vaccinated individuals is increasing, and there's a promise of returning to normal, at least here. It's hard to trust it. There are disastrous spikes elsewhere, in places like India; there are large segments of the US population who still don't believe this is real; there is so much we don't know. But part of me wonders if I'm having a hard time trusting it because it's just been so damn long, it's hard to imagine normal happening again.

I was able to get my first shot recently and the second one is imminent. (The shot itself was painless, but by the evening my arm was very sore. I felt vaguely unwell the following day but if I hadn't gotten a shot the day before I'd have just assumed I was tired.) I am constantly told that the second shot makes you feel quite badly indeed the next day, and that's . . . odd. Being able to just write on your calendar that you're going to be unwell that day is odd. But there is a sense of relief, that at least for a while it will be safe to just be a person again.

These days it's hard for me not to think of what I was doing a year ago, since I started making the effort to chronicle life in a pandemic. Everything seemed so different back then. In some ways I almost miss it: at least a year ago, the city felt like it was taking it seriously. Now, it's this ghoulish half-life of people pretending things are normal and going through the motions of precautions, but . . . we're all so tired. And even if everything goes perfectly with the vaccines, we still have to clean up.

I hope spring is going well for you, wherever you are.

elegy for a pigeon in traffic

Someone killed a pigeon downtown

its blood shining bright

against the dull asphalt

and the city just

went about its business

as if we hadn't

bred them to be pretty

and turned them loose

and treated them like vermin

with iridescent wings

and fed them our garbage

and made them rely on us

even though we don't want them.

By the time the colors have faded

the bright blood and

the shine of the wings dulled

no one will think much about it

least of all

I assume

the driver who hit them and moved on

just another dead bird

but it is important

I think

to remember even these

unimportant things.

a prelude for april

 So far, the spring this year has been . . . fitful, at best. I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that a winter that only found its strength at the very end is reluctant to give up its grasp on the year. But the flowers are starting to bloom in earnest now, rather than a few stray optimists. The sakura trees are in full bloom, the tulips are on their way, even if there's a chill in the air carried by a wind that feels more like early winter than early spring. I'm told things will finally warm up next week. Like so many things about this year, it's hard to even imagine that winter may finally end, even if it seems all but imminent now.

There's not much interesting to be said about life as an essential worker now. I've long since lost a sense of what is normal, and while things seem to be getting livelier downtown, it's happening at such a glacial pace that it's almost imperceptible. I still remember the desolation of the early days, though. Everything downtown was so quiet, so still, and everyone seemed so bleak. Everything seemed so uncertain. It still does, of course, in different ways. The past year has caused so much damage that we aren't even beginning to see the effects of, yet, and when the ruling class steps in to heal that damage, they'll do so in ways which make society that much worse for it.

But it's springtime, for now. April is still early, yet--perhaps it will be beautiful and warm by the time May comes around, and everything will feel alive and the city will be bright with color. Spring is a season of promise, and sometimes the promises are so beautiful we forget how often they end up broken.

a prelude for march

It's hard to believe it's been a year since last March, when the pandemic began. What a surreal year that was, to top off a surreal set of years before that. Even more surreal is just how normal it's all become: the masks, the "haha we're alive in a hell-time and there's nothing we can do about it", everything. Can you imagine how strange it would have been a year ago to see someone walking down the street wearing a mask on their chin? Now it's just a thing that happens.

So, March. Spring is trying its best to happen, after one astonishingly snowy day in February followed by a week of rain and warm weather to melt it all off immediately. But the temperatures are creeping upwards slowly, the days are getting longer--can you believe the Spring equinox is so close?--and the sun is shining a little more. Sometimes going outside in my usual winter gear feels too warm.

It's oddly appropriate, isn't it? Such a sad, fitful spring as the end of our pandemic is in sight but just out of reach? Perhaps we will get the bright riot of colors that made me fall in love with the springtime in Seattle, but not just yet. Old man winter isn't giving up that easily; it seems he's saved most of his fight for the end.

something beautiful

It's odd, looking out at the drowned city that used to be the capital, staring at that bone-white spire surrounded by waves, knowing that the end really is coming--sooner rather than later, I think, but it's hard to measure the exact point an empire dies. Most people have fled the old heartland already, and this old observatory won't be safe forever, but one day, whoever survives the end will come here, and they'll want answers.

I don't have answers, of course. But I want them to find this observatory, these texts I've carefully preserved, and I want them to know who we were. I want them to see that there was more than just the hubris that nearly shattered the continent and drowned a city. There was something beautiful here, too. And maybe, if I'm lucky, some traveler will find what I've written here and salvage that beauty, pass it on to their own civilization. 

I'm imagining them sitting in the ruins of this building, as I used to sit in the ruins of the old pre-imperial shrines, basking in the melancholy air, wondering what had happened. And maybe they'll find these old texts and bring them to some scholar, just like me, who'll burn many a candle trying to decipher the language that was once so commonplace. (Will it seem at times familiar, or will it be completely alien to them?) And maybe they'll feel connected, in some way, as I've so often felt connected with the sages of the past, with whom I've communed via their own carefully preserved texts.

And maybe, after all that, something I've archived here will live on, and thrive, and take on new life in whatever world follows this one. I hope it's a kinder one than we've made here.

a prelude for february

2021 sure did start out rough, huh? Republicans openly attempting to stage a coup, three solid weeks of holding our breaths and wondering if there would, in fact, be a transfer of power to the newly elected Joe Biden, let alone a peaceful one. And then all that insurrectionist energy fizzled out and we have a new president and everyone is so fucking desperate to pretend that things are normal again. And I get it; it's been a rough half a decade. It's important to take some time to rest. But the problems that led to the last five years have not gone anywhere, and they will not go anywhere if we don't do something about it.

It's been a warm winter, so far, relatively speaking. A few cold fronts, a few threats of snow that never went anywhere, but mostly it's been warm and unremarkable. Perhaps the weather's tired. I think everyone's tired around February, when it's been cold and dark for so long and there's still at least another month before it ends--and that's when the world hasn't been on fire for the past five years. The sheer exhaustion of simply existing these days is hard to fathom. But we made it. There might be an end in sight to the pandemic, at least.

I still need to work on fixing the Vaudeville Ghosts website. I'd like to put up my media reviews as they happen instead of waiting until the end of the year for them; perhaps for the end of the year I'll try to write up something a little pithier for my media lists, to make them more readable. (Medium said my last one was a 30 minute read, which is quite a lot, and I do tend to ramble.) So that's my goal for this month: get that website up and working.

Anyway. Winter's not over yet. Things are looking calm right now but who knows when the weather will break? We've miles to go before spring and February has a history of surprising everyone. It's not quite yet time to put away those winter coats.

vaudeville ghosts, and other haunted tales

In 2006, I wrote a few short scripts called "Sophie Swanson, Titular Heroine," for a stop motion film featuring our titular heroine defeating the evil forces of Dr. Haiku. I think only the first script was ever animated. It drew heavy and unapologetic inspiration in style from the webcomic Scary-Go-Round, where the narrative itself often operates on a kind of moon logic; the humor was focused less on jokes and punchlines and more on clever quips and absurd situations. (We even submitted a few fan comics, done with clay figures, to Scary-Go-Round's guest weeks.) It's far from the best thing I've ever written, though it had some things I'm still proud of: the title amused me to no end, and the name of the pub where the characters meet up once or twice is "The Jaded Old Crone." And the voice acting from the friends we got to act in it was really good; I still think about it pretty regularly.

I'd recently moved to Seattle from Moses Lake at the time. I barely knew how to live in the city or be an adult living on my own. I made most of my money by driving my friends around, and that really wasn't very much money. (One of the lines I think about constantly is Dr. Haiku telling a bus driver to keep the change. It just doesn't make sense if you've ridden a bus, even if the bus driver clearly thinks it's kind of weird. I didn't think that bus drivers even got tips, but like . . . I clearly just didn't know how public transit worked. It was new and scary and we didn't even have smart phones back then. A different time.) A few years later I moved out to Boston, and lived there for a while and learned even more things about myself and about living, and moved back to Seattle a few years later. 

Each of those moves represented a major change in my life, sharply defined borders for a new era. I'd been back in Seattle for almost two years when, in late 2011, I started writing another script for Sophie Swanson: Titular Heroine. At the time, that was the only name I had for them. The title was another joke, because for some reason, Sophie, in my mind, had become a villain. The early stories mainly focused on the adventures of Melissa, a character I'd imported from a morose story I never really finished (though who appears in her morose incarnation in my 2013 project on this very blog!), and her best friend Sarah, who I think I made up for the series.

Sophie doesn't even merit a mention in several of the earliest stories; the joke, of course, was that the titular heroine of the series didn't even show up that much and was actually a villain, but by the tenth script in this ongoing series it became clear that I needed something else. So I went back to the very first episode, about a group of spectral theater performers trying to cover Tom Waits, and I called the series "Vaudeville Ghosts."

There are two things about Vaudeville Ghosts that I think are important to note: the first is that the scripts were never intended to be made into anything. The second is that, for the first month or so, these scripts just flowed from my mind to the page. It was like I was channeling them onto the page. The cast of characters expanded, eventually it started developing lengthy, convoluted storylines, and eventually even though I had some ideas for what was coming next I think the whole thing collapsed under the weight of itself. I think I wrote something like 100 episodes, spanning three "seasons" 20-30 episodes long and then two aborted seasons which each got no more than three or four episodes. I loved it all.

Reliably, when I read these old scripts, there are jokes that I still think are hilarious, and bits that I wish I hadn't written. Much like Sophie Swanson: Titular Heroine in its original form, I think it's transparent to anyone who reads this that I drew a lot of stylistic inspiration from Scary-Go-Round, but I like to think there's more substance to it than that first script, so long ago. And many of these characters still live rent-free in my head.

Vaudeville Ghosts will be ten years old this year. I got a restraining order against the animator from the original script after he made some murder threats; I've moved to a new place, there's been a whole-ass apocalypse out there (you might have heard about that). But as is traditional at the start of a new year during a pandemic, I've been thinking about it again, and I want to at least keep the name and spirit alive, even if I don't know if I have any other stories in that universe coming any time soon.

I've owned the vaudevilleghosts.com domain for a very long time now; I was originally planning on using it to do a "reboot" of Vaudeville Ghosts, featuring a series of Twine games I was planning on writing. I wrote half of one--"The Vaudeville Ghosts Crash Your Party," about preventing a party demon from feeding on party energy by making sure the party it's hanging out at really, really sucks; and a part of another, "The Vaudeville Ghosts Ruin Your Childhood," where the cast starred in a live-action Pokemon movie. I maintain that this twine game willed the Detective Pikachu movie into existence. I will not apologize.

And recently I've been thinking: I don't really have a place to just put all of my assorted writing projects. This blog has . . . a tone, or a brand, or a theme, or something, and some things feel odd to put on here. Reviews, essays, poems, weird scripts, character sketches and worldbuilding notes, they all live in their own scattered places, and I'd like a place to put them. I've always wanted to have, for want of a better word, a brand to put all these things other, something cohesive.

I think now that Vaudeville Ghosts could be that brand. It was always weird, scattered, experimental; it's been where so many odd ideas found a home. Perhaps it's time to open it up again, attempt to consolidate the disparate entities that I've created, and, who knows? Maybe it's time for the Vaudeville Ghosts themselves to ride again.

I don't think I'll abandon this blog; I've taken a fondness for writing a prelude for the months, and these little bits of morose microfiction will always have a special place in my heart. But it was never meant to be a container for all of my projects, and I think having a place for all of them to live will help encourage me to work on more of the things that my brain is constantly thinking about.

The aforementioned domain will update soon.

a prelude for 2021

I spent the first day of the new year reading through the comic archive of Bad Machinery, an old favorite. I was unexpectedly spared from working on January 1st like I'd thought I'd have to, and was instead able to spend the day doing something I enjoyed, relaxing, while, apparently, a great deal of rain began to fall on the lowlands of western Washington. After a bit of a cold spell a few weeks back it's been pretty warm, and warmth and water go hand in hand here in the winter.

Normally this is the time of year when people start shuffling their way back to their normal levels of activity after the holidays. It takes a while--the holiday season inflicts a great deal of stress on our society, even for those who enjoy it but especially for those who don't--but once January rolls around it's time to get back to the grind. That's what resolutions are really about: it's about getting up and starting over again.

I don't know what that will look like this year. For all that's happened, that cloud of uncertainty has been a constant companion and I expect that will not change any time soon. Perhaps things will wake up, or perhaps things will begin to drift back into slumber as there are no more holidays to drive all that activity. We're all so tired. 

As glad as I am to put the previous year behind me, I'm still worried about the year to come, but this year, at least, got off to a nice start. I like New Year's Day to be quiet and personal, a time to rest and reflect. I like listening to the rain on the roof. I like revisiting something I loved and taking the time to explore it and remember all the reasons I fell in love with it in the first place.

So rest up, maybe take some time to re-explore some old favorites, do what you have to do to take care of yourself, and when you're ready, get up, dust yourself off, and keep going.

hindsight

So, at long last, 2020 draws to a close.

We are far from out of the woods, but all the same all I want to say is: thank fucking Christ it's over, holy fuck. This year has been an unrelenting nightmare to top off the four preceding hell years. But I mean, I don't need to tell you this. You know. You were there. I'm not here to do a recap; you're tired of it by now.

The oddest thing right now, though, is that people are finally starting to have hope. The past several years were bad, and we knew they would be bad; a few people still dared to say "it couldn't possibly be any worse" but for the most part we looked for small victories and tried our best not to tempt fate. But this year? There are vaccines. The fascist lost the election, and his attempts at a coup seem to be falling apart.

It won't happen right away. We are, of course, badly mismanaging the vaccine distribution; there are still opportunities for the fascist coup to cause damage; the start of 2021 will still be a struggle. But suddenly it's a struggle with, if not an end, then at least a reprieve in sight. And what a fucking relief that is. The fact that thinking of a future that isn't wall-to-wall misery is a novelty is pretty sad but that's where we are.

If there is hope, it's still a faint glimmer. But it's there, it's real, you can touch it. People are starting to worry about what happens when the pandemic is over, wondering what returning to the old normal will be like. Will it be hard? Will it even be possible?

Whatever happens, it will continue to be hard. And whatever happens, the ongoing disaster that is the death of the American empire is not over. But there is no shame in celebrating a fleeting victories, in finding joy in little places, in smiling at the fleeting glimpse of light in a dark place.

Happy 2021, friends. I hope it's a good one.

dreaming of a bright future

I seldom remember much about my dreams, apart from the dim sense that something is wrong--a world where the edges are too sharp, the surfaces too rough, where nothing fits. This is nothing new; but every now and then the border between the dream world and the waking world weakens until that pervasive sense of wrongness is everywhere, until the cruelty and darkness of the waking world are just a obvious as they are in my dreams. And just as in the dreams, reality starts to fade from my memory and I drift through it like a wraith.

If I can no longer tell when I'm dreaming, it hardly makes a difference. Neither world makes sense; in both, the only thing I can do is try to help where I can, pray to a creator I don't believe in that I'm not making things any worse. And perhaps people smile in a way they think is kind when I do something strange because my mind can't quite accept that a world this dark is not the dream world--fine. I will do my best to help all the same, come hell. 

Sometimes I dream of something so bright it hurts to look at, and I wake up with an ache in my heart as I realize that even at its kindest this world can never be so kind, nor so beautiful at its most beautiful. Now and again the dreams remind me that for all the darkness of my dreams, at least when I awake they are gone.

But today I woke up weeping at a dream so beautiful all I can remember is how overwhelming it all was, but something felt different. I felt confident and powerful, like I could bend the gossamer fabric of this dreamlike world to my whim. I can build that brighter future. Today I am lucid for what may be the first time.

waiting, pt. ii

The thing I hate most about the empire is how terrified they all are of the forest. Even here in the heartland, where they've tamed every wild thing, when I tell my friends we should celebrate midwinter properly, they shy away, make excuses. I can see the fear in their eyes, though: they're afraid we'll attract spirits. And I know enough about the heartlanders to know I can't just take them by the shoulders and look them in the eyes and say, "That's the point."

So I'm here alone. It's cold, and even the winter coats they wear in the capital aren't warm enough against a proper winter's chill, but the fire burns hot and nobody seems to mind if I still use blankets from home, so I have them wrapped around me like a cloak as I sit, facing the flame, watching the gibbous moon rising above the clearing. It's cold enough it has a halo, bright enough I think I could navigate the forest by its light alone. The perfect night for awakening the old sparks of wilderness the empire had tried to bury.

I make offerings: wine from my home, some of the hard bread and stale cheese I packed for the journey, a song I heard in the market, a thin trickle of blood from my forearm. I imagine my friends joining the song, dancing with them around the fire--a celebration, a welcoming. But they are safe in their beds, resting well. They will never hear footsteps crunching in the snow behind them, or the crackling and roar of the fire as it flickers and flares in the fitful breeze, just as the forest will never hear the music of our mingled voices as we keep ourselves entertained waiting for dawn to break at the end of the longest night of the year.

When I feel myself beginning to nod off I curl up in my tent, and let the sounds of the winter forest lull me to sleep, each rustling sound or odd footstep a promise, a potential, a hope, that maybe something wild has been waiting all this time for someone to bring the spark it needs to grow bright and strong. And when it does--if it does--it will find me waiting for it, ready to welcome it, to help bring the wild spaces back to this dying land.

waiting, pt. i

The storms came almost immediately after we'd escaped the capital, bringing snows so bad that even the princess, equal parts furious and desperate, finally agreed to take shelter in the manor of one of her staunchest supporters. And so we found ourselves watching the world disappear under a thick white blanket of powder. So recently I had been admiring the turning leaves, smiling as they danced in the winds, pulling my coat tight against the autumn rains of the heartland. Now it was almost hard to remember what the world looked like before, or even imagine what it would look like in the spring.

If there is one thing that is true about the princess, it's that she deeply hates those rare times when she is not in perfect control. The loss of the capital was bad enough; now even the weather had turned against her. She could not raise an army to take back her throne from this sad snowbound mansion; she could not even begin contacting allies to begin formulating a plan or even to see just what resources she had available with which to plan. All she could do was wait.

How dearly she must have wished that her sole companion was anyone besides me--the oft-cursed Drysi she could have at least enjoyed bickering with; my sister, a tactician par excellence, could have devised schemes and stratagems; her beloved Morgana could have offered her some comfort, had she not been left behind in order that we could escape. I was none of these things; all I could offer was calm, and that seeming indifference was far from comforting.

"We are trapped here with no resources at our disposal when the entire commonwealth is about to descend into open war," she said at last, when pacing and muttering did not improve her mood.

"We are, indeed," I said.

"Why, then, are you sitting there with your feet up and watching the snow accumulate--the very snow, I should add, that is preventing us from taking action?"

"All of that will still be true when the snow melts. Besides," and here I offered a smirk that, if her scowl was any indication, she did not appreciate in the slightest, "it's pretty."

"Aren't you worried? The two of us can't fight a war. We barely even escaped the city."

I shrugged. "I expect we've got most of the winter to worry about it. Taking an evening off won't hurt."

And what a long winter it was. The storms never relented, and we spent months in that manor, rationing out supplies because we didn't know how long we'd be trapped there. It was almost exciting, at first--it snowed so rarely in the capital--but it became tedious before too long. We had nothing to do except wait, worsened by the fact that our reward at the end of all that waiting was only disaster.

But, even if neither of us would have chosen the other as our snowbound companion, if we had to weather this storm, and wait for whatever hell would come with the arrival of spring, at least we had someone to share those moments with. And I think there are very few souls throughout history who can claim to have convinced the Princess of Elouan to make snow angels with them.

"You were right," she said. "If we must wait for disaster to come, we might as well enjoy the time we spend waiting."