my ear
i cannot
hear

the sound
of the
ocean

only the
sound of
explosions

But everything seems so trivial, doesn’t it? Greatness, poorness, pleasure, suffering. We live, we think, we try to make sense of our existence, and then we die, and we hope whatever we believed was right. And so far, no one has come back to tell us what’s what.

Well, there was this one dude 2,000 years ago, but his account is still up for debate.

I, for one, believe the guy, but like I said, such things are contested.

Anyway, moral of the story is that this world is muddy and sometimes I wish it could just be a little more clearer. Sometimes I wish things could be laid out a little more simply, if I could have waypoints and “go here next” signs so when I feel like I have no idea where I am or what I’m doing, I can just look around and see the marked and say “Oh, yeah, how could I have missed that?”

I wish, sometimes, secretly, oh so secretly, that life wasn’t so complex. I wish money didn’t have to screw everything up. I wish getting better at writing was just as easy as trying. I wish…a lot of things and I’m so mad none of it is true.

I’m so lucky I have someone who loves the mess out of me. God only knows what I’d do without her. She’s the only thing that seems easy to understand. Treat her right. Be there for her. Love her. No matter what. I can name these things. I can understand them and break them down into things that I have to do. It’s the only thing in this world I really understand how to do, and the only thing I really believe I’m good at. One of the best, if I do say so myself. And I do.

You know, it’s fun to write and know no one will read it. It’s an odd sensation. Posting something on the web, but in my own little corner where no one goes except by accident. \

So if you’re reading this, you probably got here by chance. I’m not sure whether to apologize, or congratulate you on the incredible cosmic chance that you just so happened to arrive on my page.

That’s another thing that boggles my mind. Cosmic chances. Like fate, but broader. Everything that happens is a collection of chances. Everything has an equal chance of not happening as it does of actually taking place. And yet, things happen, against all odds that says they won’t. With support of the same odds that says they will. And I wonder, how much do we actually have a say in all this cosmic randomness? And how much are we just coasting along with?

I would love to say that behind it all is the Hand of God, and I do believe that.

Sometimes though, I have a fleeting doubt that no such a hand exists, and that behind the curtain of everything, behind the very fabric of the universe there is nothing.

And everything we’ve tried to work for will be worthless.

And I’d realize that I could have had more fun in front of the Xbox.

Now I’m sitting on my couch watching the last of an American Idol series I never followed.

I thought this would be..not easy–I knew this wouldn’t be easy–but easier than what it is now. I’ve got no drive. No ambition. Just a sinking feeling in my stomach and an overwhelming sense of self doubt and pity.

Which I’m sick of. Someone once told me that I was the only poet/writer that didn’t have anything wrong with him.

I wish I would have knocked on some wood.

Man, Ryan Seacrest looks so much older than I remember him.

Anyway, I write this because I know no one will read it. And I just needed to write. This feels good. Better. This means nothing, but it feel good.

As long as I write I feel…better. Less like I’ve failed. And more like I’m failing. 

I don’t much feel like explaining the difference. I just messed around for five minutes with the italics and I’m sick of trying to phrase the second part of that sentence in a witty way.

Welp, the year’s not over yet.

Yet. What a funny word.

Anyway, in other news, I’ve found the first lit mag I want to submit to. I wanted to stay local for the first and not try anything fancy, so I’m going to submit to my college’s literary magazine, New South. Now, I’ve visited their site, but I can’t seem to find specific submission guidelines telling me how many poems I can submit, or what the word length has to be for a story. I’m going to assume the poem limit is 3-5 and the short story word count is capped maybe near 9,000 words (that’s what the restrictions for their contest was). However, I’ve learned enough from assuming to know what it does to you (and by ‘you’, I mean ‘me’) so I’m also going to email the lit mag to get more detailed information.

Now I foresee this having a two-sided effect. 1) I’ll get the information I’ll need to accurately submit and 2) my name will be out there swimming around before I even submit. I’m not sure who first told me this (and I know my dad has once or twice) but the more they hear, see, read, speak, pass, etc. your name around, the better.

Anyway, I’m also interested in trying to submit to their contest. The first prize is 1000 smackeroos and second is 250. Now, I mean, I’m not doing this for the money, but 1000–heck, even 250–bucks right now would not hurt the bank of Dan. Honestly though, I would want to do this money or no. There’s something about competing that I always tried to avoid when I was smaller. Oh, yeah, that’s right, I remember what it was: the competing part. I was always afraid I’d lose. Always afraid I’d lose whatever respect I had if I didn’t keep up a facade of a winner. So I won once or twice, and carried on the rest by intimidation. (Just to keep things straight, I’m not trying to make myself seem incredibly BA. I wasn’t when I was younger–or much now for that matter–and that’s my exact point on why I hated competition.) Competing though, is apart of life, and apart of pretty much any career. I need to step up to the plate and swing a few times (if you’ll allow me the metaphor–and seeing as you’re a reader, looks like you’ll have to). I might miss, but I should let that teach me on how to swing better. Or at least allow failure to drive my confidence into the–no, no! Happy thoughts.

Anywho, until I get that email back on the specifics of the submissions, I’m undecided on what type of piece to submit. I’m kinda on the fence on both prose and poetry, but I’m leaning prose for this one. I think I’ll submit one type to the regular submission and another to the contest, unless I just have something I have to submit. But, I doubt it.

Well, the scout work is almost done for lit mag one and the month isn’t even half over yet. It seems I’m making good time. Yet, there’s still work to be done, so I’m going to go write that email and begin work on a possible piece to submit. Stay tuned; I’ll let you know what’s up.

P.S. This really has nothing to do with my post, but a thought hit me today. where did all the magic go in this world? I was watching The Adventures of Merlin on the Syfy channel today and I just couldn’t stop thinking: man, what happened to all the magic? Where is our imagination anymore? Honestly, I love that stuff: knights, swords, magic, the entire shebang. I know it sounds a bit nerdy (scratch that– I know it is) but there’s freedom in letting your mind lose itself in that. For just a moment, pretending that, with a wave of your hand, you could move mountains, melt stone, or change the fate of a world. But magic like this goes deeper than simple imagination. In stories like those, everything is black and white. Decisions are based on integrity and we already know what the right answer is. We root for the main character to make that decision. We’re disappointed if he or she doesn’t, and we celebrate if they do. We want the men to man-up and pick up their sword. We want the servants to rise into glory, the kings to be humbled, and the evil to be overthrown. We see people facing challenges that, believe it or not, we face, we struggle with, only ours don’t deal with dragons, magic, or kingdoms. Or castles are smaller, and build from wood and dry wall. Our swords vary depending on our talents or beliefs. Our dragons…well, they’re as numerous and varied as they are fictional–and they are very fictional. I just miss that, you know, when I was a kid and I still thought the world lived by integrity and moral choices were black and white, not this slushy grey that I have to wade through.

I write this because I’m at a crossroads about what I want to write, what I’m going to focus on. Do I A) write what’s real? Use literature as a mirror to reveal the world how it is, or B) do I try to bring the magic back? Do I, in some way, try to remind people there is a sword that needs to be picked up, a castle that needs protecting, and a dragon that needs slaying? But the question that remains, even after all that, is this: how in the world am I going to do all that?

And, you know, I can’t. Because people are people. I can’t force something down someone’s throat they don’t want to accept, or will just process and let pass through them like a kernel of corn. What’s the point in giving all you are to convince an uninterested crowd? The point is that, maybe, somehow, in some time, I’ll get somebody to see something about the world differently, or maybe–and I don’t want to get my hopes up–I can bring a small piece of that magic back. How do I do that? I just write. That’s it. Write.

And write I shall.

The idea originated (besides from the fact that I like to write and was an editor of a lit mag once or twice) when I went to a “how to submit to a lit mag” seminar at school. That really got me thinking that I don’t have to wait until I’m older to be published, or wait until I rack up the courage to submit to a big publisher. I can tackle something smaller, and, while I’m at it, build up a resume.

Our church is also going through a series called ’Gumption’ right now. What is ‘Gumption’, you might ask? It’s resolving to do something and actually doing it. Like starting a diet and actually going through with it. Or deciding to finally repaint that old shed in the backyard and actually getting up and painting it. It’s something you can’t learn through a self-help book, but something you have to do to improve. In some ways, gumption is a lot like writing. Want to be better at gumption? Do more gumption. Want to be better at writing? Do more writing.

So, in reality, there are two reasons I decided on this: because I know I should to prepare myself to make this my career, and because I need this to start building up a habit of getting things done.

This doesn’t mean I expect I’m instantly going to become super writer or become an instant pop author like J.K. Rowling (although that would be awesome–and I’d still love to meet the lady and find out what was going through her mind when she started all this), but this will help me, I believe, take one more step in that direction. Besides, I don’t think the real reward from gumption comes from getting things instantly. The reward is in the work and the work brings the reward.

Now it’s time to spot talking so much smack and actually do what I set out to do. So here’s my next journey in life: a year of lit mag submissions.

That’s when an idea hit me: to write some stories for no one but myself, to take some of those unprocessed ideas and expand on them, writing adventures and creating characters that might never see the last words of their story. To start stories without ever really intending to finish them, unless my whims hold out. That’s how I used to write, just when and how I wanted, and I think academia has choked that a bit. Unknowingly, my education has put pressure on me to abandon my imaginative stories of far off places, and impossible things, and focus on more meaningful, purposeful ideas, to pursue stories more like Catch-22, Crime and Punishment, 1984, Lord of the Flies, stories that held a deeper meaning. Such stories are admirable, and priceless in terms of their importance to man-kind, but under that oppressive thought of writing something that matters, the idea of writing something for fun has been crushed. That fun-writing is what brought me into the love of writing and what caused me to pursue it; that fun-writing is something I cannot lose. Because, I fear, If I do, I will fail as the writer I always wanted to be.

So I’ll write those go-nowhere stories just for myself so that I can wander again into that land of dreams where purpose is optional. Along the way I’ll craft stories with actual meaning, but always be rooted in that imagination. Seems odd, doesn’t it, to have one foot in the imaginary so I can keep the other in reality? Perhaps there’s some mental disorder for that.

I’m not being bitter and if it comes across that way I’m sorry. I’m just pointing out an interesting thing that I think many bloggers have to face: the interest factor. It’s hard to post every day and keep people interested in the blog. I have to work, hang out with my friends, sleep. Soon I’ll have school too. That all leaves little time for some free writing on my blog.

I suppose it would help if I had a theme for this bad boy, something to narrow its focus. But just writing about my life seems a little cliché and I’ve never really been a big fan of that unless I could add my own twist (I know what I posted earlier, that clichés are often true and I suppose, in some way, shape, or form, that post somehow translates to this as well, but I never admitted I liked to use or evoke clichés. What I posted earlier should just be mentally noted and considered by one’s own mind). Blogging about movie reviews or book reviews sounds fun and all and that’s still a viable option, but honestly, I have more random, philosophical thoughts during the day than I think a dog has thoughts of a biscuit.

Seriously, there are times where I’ll zone out for a while and just gnaw on one thought or another. It’s a wonder I’m not a philosophy major, but then again, I’m already planned to make no money as it is with a writing career (no offense philosophy majors. I believe in you.)

So if you’re still reading this with even a shred of consistency, thank you. I know it must be difficult to read. I’ll try my best to post interesting things, but no promises; the blog title says it all.

If you’ve seen Inception, you know what I’m talking about: the ending that’s not really an ending. An ending which almost gives the movie finality, conclusion if the movie had persisted for just a few more seconds. We all have our own thoughts about how the end turned out after the screen went black and all the doubts, all the known, it all mixes together in our heads, combining to create a fantastic feeling of annoyance about not knowing what really happened. I can say one thing, you could say another, but the fact is, no one knows for sure. The mind boggling part, other than the frustration already going through your head by the end of the movie, is that there is no answer. The ending ends before the end because that’s what it was supposed to do. We were never meant to know, only guess. And that feeling you get, that not knowing, that feeling is the mark of a fantastic ending.

I say fantastic ending, because the ending does something many don’t. Most endings put a definite, bold period at the end of a story. After the end, there’s nothing more. Everything turns out happy, everything is made right. But only a few endings suggest that the story is not the entire story. Only a few endings suggest that beyond the last page or the credits, there lies a bit more, a world behind the unknown: an end which only begins.

Many might say that an end which only begins is no ending at all, but think of it like a chapter. A chapter has a beginning and ending, but few chapters exist on their own; there’s always more. An end which only begins is like a chapter that explains 99% of a story, but leaves that last 1% up to the reader or viewer. It’s an ending which pulls you in, which opens up the story to one’s imagination. It suggests a story beyond the page or screen, one that you have to fill in. Perhaps fill in is not the best word: guess at. Ponder. Think over. Endings that are really beginnings give you something to chew on long after you leave the theater. Ideas. Theories. Topics of conversation that infiltrate your life for the next few weeks after you’ve finished the story. The ending is what you decide. What you ultimately settle within yourself. The story ends when you want it to.

And that’s what endings should do, ultimately, give you a sense of finality, a sense of wholeness, and what better way then to come to such wholeness yourself?

But what really makes endings that are beginnings so fantastic (at least to me) is the idea there is no ending. The story exists still, behind that black screen and blank page and when the movie gives you an almost-ending, they open a door to you, a beckoning call to come and write your own story, to imagine and dream, endlessly.

It’s like being in limbo, from Inception, except without the whole what-is-reality issue.

See, a good ending is a statement.

The best endings are questions.