Last night, I found myself looking up Winnie-the-Pooh quotes. I happened upon a quote by A. A. Milne, the author of Winnie-the-Pooh, and then decided to just keep looking up more. I had forgotten how many great ones there were (the title of this essay, for example).

I’ve done this before with Winnie-the-Pooh. I find so many of them to be just beautiful. You can check it out for yourself if you’ve never read the books.

I keep referencing the books. Most people, such as me, have only seen the Disney films. But Winnie-the-Pooh initially came from a series of books and poetry collections by author A. A. Milne.

When I was reading these last night, I remembered that the way Pooh and Christopher Robin, or Pooh and Piglet, talk about loving each other just makes me feel warm inside. This is probably why I stayed up “past my bedtime” reading quotations from the books. I just got caught up in it.

It gives me a similar feeling to when I read touching strips of Calvin & Hobbes, my oft-referenced favorite comic strip.

For some reason, there’s something about the way love is expressed both in Winnie-the-Pooh and Calvin & Hobbes that gets to me. Both seem to define love worlds better than all the sappy love movies, stories, and poems put together.

I had to think about this for a second before I understood why I felt this way. I noticed the feeling before I noticed the reason.

But I think that the reason comes from the characters: both Winnie-the-Pooh and Calvin & Hobbes have a small child whose best friend is an animal (an animal whose very existence to the world outside of the small child is arguable). The love and bond expressed here is unconditional. All of us who are, or were, pet owners know this kind of love. I know I still think the world of my first dog, Spike, even though it’s been 6 years since he died.

But I got Spike when I was five years old. Children who grow up with animals grow up with a best friend who loves them unconditionally. You never really fight with a dog the way you fight with a sibling. A dog never really hurts your feelings or asks for much more than to be let out, fed, pet, and played with.

There’s already tons of writing out there pertaining to the many, many pros of pet ownership. I know I’m not breaking any new grounds here.

And in Winnie-the-Pooh and Calvin & Hobbes, the little boy characters love their talking animal friends more than anything in the world. Now, in both cases, the animals are their best friend, not their pet. But, I know that when I was six years old, I wouldn’t have considered Spike my pet either. He was my best friend.

I admire the way that children tend to look at the world. Sure, as you get older you definitely need to mature, and take on more adult responsibilities. You have to experience a lot of the downfalls that exist in this world, and that exist between people.  You have to know how to deal with these downfalls because, even though you don’t want them to, they’ll come up time and time again. And you have to be ready for them.

But a child doesn’t (or shouldn’t at the very least) have these feelings yet. A child looks at the world in awe and amazement. And, many times, a child with a pet will look at his or her pet with an unconditional, unwavering love.

Read the Raccoon Story in Calvin & Hobbes (seriously…READ IT!), or this famous quote from Winnie-the-Pooh:
“Pooh, promise me you won’t forget about me, ever. Not even when I am a hundred.”
Pooh thought for a little.
“How old shall I be then?”
“Ninety-nine.”
Pooh nodded. “I promise,” he said.

Both the Raccoon Story and that quote show how love is through a child’s eyes: unconditional, and untainted by all the bad experiences we feel, see, and witness as we get older.

For better or worse, I, for some reason, never really developed the lackluster uncertainty or jaded look on love (or for this world) that most people my age have. Again, I’m not saying this makes me a better person, there are certainly many cons that go along with this.

But I just can’t watch the snow fall outside and not smile just as wide as I must have the first time I watched snow falling from my window’s view.

I can’t think of love without thinking of it the same way I did for Spike, or that Calvin & Hobbes and Pooh and Christopher Robin have for one another. To me, love is beautiful. Bad experiences shouldn’t taint it as a whole.

Think about it: we’ve all picked up a piece of fruit, say an apple, we thought we were going to enjoy. We couldn’t wait to eat that damn apple! But then we noticed that it was bruised, or soggy. It was past its prime, and you couldn’t eat it anymore. Maybe we noticed this before we took a bite, or maybe we took a bite and got that sour, awful taste in our mouths.

Now, most of us have experienced this in relationships too. We’ve been with people that we started going out with because we had hoped for the best, but the longer it went on, the more proverbial (I sure hope) bruises we noticed on the relationship itself. We had to throw it away.

But, with apples, we don’t swear off apples once we have a bad one, do we? I know I’ve had bad apples, and I don’t just say “GOOD APPLES DON’T EXIST, GUYS!” We know that there are great apples out there, perfect apples.

But how come we have this attitude on love? How come as we grow older, we believe that all our bad experiences indicate that true love doesn’t exist? Sure, there’s the argument that we are more emotionally attached to a relationship than a piece of fruit, therefore the emotional bruising that goes on in a relationship hurts us more than just biting into a bad apple.

But our attachments don’t define the existence of something. Yes, being hurt in a relationship is awful. It’s something that can stay with you your whole life. But don’t give up on love! Just because someone wasn’t right for you doesn’t mean that there’s no one out there that is. One bad apple doesn’t mean that every time you get an apple for the rest of your life, it’ll just be sour and bruised because THAT’S JUST HOW APPLES ARE AND ALWAYS WILL BE!!

Nope.

If you were lucky enough to be a pet owner as a child, you know this feeling: the feeling of intense joy from both parties loving one another. The feeling that you know you’d do everything you could to protect the other party, and that you will always, ALWAYS love them.

This kind of love is the kind of love that exists in Calvin and Hobbes, and in Winnie-the-Pooh. Bill Watterson and A. A. Milne did an excellent job of bringing this untainted world view to readers, which is why, in my opinion, both Calvin & Hobbes and Winnie-the-Pooh can be enjoyed by children and adults alike. Children understand it. Adults revisit it.

This is why I said before that I believe that Mr. Watterson and Mr. Milne better showcased the beauty of love than did all those sappy movies, books, and poems. And, believe me, I do love most of those too!

But they don’t hit it right on the head the way a boy talking to a tiger or a bear do. And I think that’s because these stories remind us that unconditional love does exist. For some reason, as we get older we still understand this with animals, but it’s either cheesy or lame or naïve if we think about this kind of love for a person. But these stories, in which the animals can talk, show us that it is still possible. If we read these stories as adults, it makes us feel so warm because it brings us back.

We know our pets would hug us and say “Don’t worry” when we said to them “But don’t you go anywhere.” It reminds us it’s possible. It shows us how beautiful this world can be, and makes us think that we can find someone out there to be the Hobbes to our Calvin at the end of the Raccoon Story (seriously…READ IT!!!)

Loving Calvin & Hobbes my whole life is probably a big reason as to why I never did give up that part of me that still feels that way. In lots of ways, I am just a big kid. I’m in love with love, and snow, and macaroni and cheese. And if that’s wrong, well, you can tell me I’m wrong all you want.

I’ll be eating Velveeta Shells & Cheese with a huge smile on my face if you need me.

Keep the love alive, everyone.

- Mike

So, my good buddy Tim recently wrote a post about jobs that he would love to have.

I’m not going to bite his style and do the same thing (I already did that in a comment on his post! GO ME), but I’m just going to do what I normally do in this blog: rant about things for a while.

I’ve had a lot of ideas for “dream jobs” in my life. When I was about 6 years old, I wanted so badly to own a pizzeria. My reasoning for this was twofold: one was that even at a young age, I was fascinated by cooking since I loved food so much. But the second, and more prominent, reason for this was so that “I could eat all the free pizza I wanted.”

So, basically, my dream job was to go into debt from eating all of my own pizza. Well, at least it’d be a tasty way to enter the world of bankruptcy!

For a while after that I mentally went from dream job to dream job: Video Game Tester, Video Game Designer, Chef, Inventor, Guy Who Gets Paid for Eating Lots of Tasty Things, etc. I didn’t actually create any practical ways of achieving these dream jobs though. I just sort of liked the idea of inventing, so I said I wanted to be an inventor without knowing the first thing about it, and without taking any steps towards it.

While I had my head in these unattainable clouds, I would also have “real jobs” lined up. This meant that while I was growing up, if any adult asked me what I wanted to be when I was older, I would have an answer ready for them. “Eat pizza all day!!!” only held up so long until I was expected to start seriously thinking about my future.

So these “real jobs” ranged from Lawyer, Doctor, Software Engineer…you know, all the things kids say to adults (save for the latter, which stems from my nerdiness).

Then came a time when I was 14 years old when I started to have dream jobs in fields that were possible (albeit unpractical) for me to enter. The change came when I started skateboarding. I wanted to be [drumroll] a professional skateboarder.

All I did from the ages of 14 to 18 was skateboard. It’s all I did, watched, and dreamt about. I was obsessed. I still told my parents that after high school I would go to college to become a Software Engineer, but all the while my real plan was to just keep skating and eventually go pro.

Reality hit when I graduated High School. I hated high school, and only had about 4 friends or so. I’d wager to say only about 20 people in my graduating class of 950 even knew I existed. And out of those 20, only the aforementioned 4 would consider me a friend. I coasted through under the radar. I got good grades, but didn’t pay attention to that. I applied to only one college (since I secretly didn’t even want to go at all), and got in. So, the ball was rolling towards my practical career path.

I went through a bit of internal turmoil at this point in my life. I realized I honestly had no desire whatsoever to be a Software Engineer. Sure, I liked computers, and there was a time in the mid-90s where my friend Greg and I would program our little hearts away all night long, making all sorts of programs (some useful, most not); but the real issue was I couldn’t see this being my life. I lost track of any sort of Software Engineering skills once I started skateboarding.

After I graduated High School, I was in a band with my very good friend Adam Mancuso. We were called Adam’s Apples and we wrote thrash punk songs about Nintendo games and chairs revolting against people sitting on them.

Clearly, we were destined for success!

All I wanted to do at this point in my life was skateboard and play music. However, I started to drift away from the friends that I had skated with in High School; and while Adam had an interest in skating, he and I were at such different levels that I stopped challenging myself so that we could skate at places he could skate at too: parking lots and the like. I started just staying stagnant.

But I was ok with that, because my desire to go pro was starting to wane while my desire to make my career out of music or my writing started to take the forefront. So when I was just starting college, I’d be damned if I didn’t become a musician or a writer. It was my only life goal I tells ya!

I kept going to college, mostly because I felt that I had to. Then, when I was about 20 years old, another change started to take place.

I started to, for possibly the first time, seriously consider why I was going to college. I still wrote music and poetry, but I realized I was absolutely fine with not making it my career, and instead just keeping it as something I do and show my friends and loved ones.

So, I decided to major in English. I figured it’s got writing at its core, so it couldn’t be too bad. For a while, I thought I’d go through all the ranks necessary to be an English Professor. I didn’t want to teach anything below college level, because then there’s that element of discipline that becomes a necessary part of your job.

I went through all of this, and finally got my degree. And…well, here I am. I still have the same job I had for the last 2 years of getting my degree (Human Resources Assistant). For a while, I was somewhat upset at this. I felt that my entire college experience ended up being what I feared it would be when I graduated High School: useless.

For a while I thought maybe grad school was the answer. I had a couple more careers I thought I might enjoy: Librarian, Editor, Guy Who Gets Paid for Eating Lots of Tasty Things. But the more I looked into these, the less interesting they seemed. I felt like I would just end up in the same position I was in now.

It was late last year (2007, in case this stands the test of time!) that I hit my latest, and possibly final, realization when it came to my job. And this hit me like a ton of bricks that my six year old self threw forward in time at me.

I realized that for as long as I can remember, the thing that made me the happiest was the idea of having my own family. Yes, yes, I know, it’s cliché. And you could argue that the classic 50’s “American Dream” is outdated, and irresponsible given the population of our country, and blah blah blah. But, in reality, I don’t care. I still just smile so much thinking about the idea of having a wife I love and children who make my life feel complete.

I don’t think there’s a problem with wanting to raise children I love and spend the rest of my life with a person who feels like my second half. To me, that idea can’t get outdated. After all, we’re a SPECIES! The idea of procreating is the most normal and basic function we’re supposed to have. So, maybe I’m not original, but, hell, I’ll be happy.

When this hit me, I realized that as long as I don’t loathe the job I have, I don’t care what I do. I knew ever since the schism took place where I had to start giving “serious answers” towards what I wanted to be when I grew up that my future career would never be my life. Sure, I may have said “I want to be a Lawyer,” but in reality I was thinking about buying my kids video games for Christmas, and playing them together.

So, with that attitude in place, I realized that I’ve been at my job for as long as I have because I honestly don’t mind it. Sure, there are parts I enjoy and parts I don’t, but even “dream jobs” have that element to them. I don’t mind being in Human Resources at all. I figured “why don’t I just continue down this path?”

I also get to do a lot of things for fun: I write and play music both with my friends and by myself, I still write poetry (and these lovely essays), I have a webcomic (always loved comics!), I’m learning the craft of Long-Form Improvised Comedy at UCB Theatre in Manhattan. But I want to keep these things as just that: fun things in my life, but not my career. In the end, I guess you can just consider me a boring guy: I just want to have a family of my own.

But I never cared much about being memorialized or remembered throughout time. Who cares about that stuff? If my family and my friends think I’m a great person, well, then that’s all I need. I don’t need to be Chaucer and make a bunch of bored college kids sit through my “masterpieces” hundreds of years after I’m dead. If I have a job I don’t mind then I get money for my family and for myself. I have all these creative projects I do on the side, and I’m surrounded by people I love. Hmmm. Sounds pretty damn awesome to me!

This doesn’t mean I wasn’t being honest when I commented on Tim’s post saying I would definitely open a bar with him if I could, or cook delicious food in a coffee shop. If that could happen and make me enough money to live off of, that’d be great! But, I’m happy where I am now too. My current goal works for me and makes me smile a whole lot.

Coming to this kind of happiness with my life after all these years of career based uncertainty and some unhappiness feels a bit like winning the lotto. Getting to open a really cool Bar/Venue/Arcade with one of my closest friends would sort of be like winning the lotto and then high-fiving all of your friends afterwards, and then going out & buying them all beer. It’s an extra bonus, some more one-ups if you will, to an already amazing life.

So don’t think I wouldn’t totally do that with you, Tim!

But as my great friend Chris once said (which I put into a song): we’ll always want more, but as long as we can be happy with what we’ve got, it’s fine. In the end, I just had to examine deep in me what really made me happiest. In my case, it wasn’t a job, but rather having a family, and never giving up on my creative outlets.

That’s not everyone’s ideal life-path though. If being an actor makes you happiest, well, then do everything you can to go towards it! Differences are what make this world wonderful, and anything you have immense love for is something you should strive to build your life around. Because, then you’ll be the best actor, musician, or poet this world has ever seen, since you’ll be passionate about it.

So head towards those goals of yours. Oh, and if you happen to see an opening for Guy Who Gets Paid for Eating Lots of Tasty Things along the way, let me know. Just leave it in the comments.

Keep the love alive, everyone.

- Mike

So, I’ve never been a sports kinda guy. Watching or playing sports doesn’t really appeal to me for the most part. But there is one sport that I always loved immensely: volleyball!

I absolutely LOVE volleyball. When we had to play it in gym class in high school, it was the only time I actually tried: I sprinted, dove, got bruised up from hitting the hard gym floor, but I didn’t care. There’s just something about volleyball that I thought was amazing.

This summer, my girlfriend Katie played on a for-fun beach volleyball league. She and a bunch of her friends were on the team. Some were more competitive than others, but they always had fun. After all, it was a league that was just for fun. You paid a fee, got a bunch of people together, then went and played games every Sunday at 6.

This past Sunday was the last game she was playing at, so I went down there to support her. Her team did great! It was the playoffs, and they won 2 games in a row. Good job, guys!

The area where she plays at the beach is an area that is just for volleyball, and it’s sectioned off from the rest of the beach by a low brick wall. There’s 8 courts, I believe, and they were smack-dab in the middle court. So I was sitting at the stands on the sidelines and watching her team by looking past the team playing on the court nearest me.

So, basically, I watched her volleyball game through the dirty-windshield of another volleyball game taking place 20 feet from me. This other game was closer, and easier to watch; but, it didn’t have my friends and girlfriend in it, so it got much less of my attention.

I bring this up because every once in a while, I did watch this closer game. And I later found out from Katie that one of the teams was the first place team.

On the first place team was one guy who seemed to take the sport VERY seriously.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with taking sports seriously. After all, it is something that you enjoy to either play or watch, and it is something that is, by its very nature, competitive. So a fair share of competitive spirit can be expected, or a hell of a lot of competitive spirit if you’re playing on a professional team.

But I had a problem with this one guy from the first place team. I had a problem with him because he seemed to have lost that first part of playing the sport: because it is something that you enjoy.

We’ve all seen people like this guy before: yelling at teammates to either hit or keep away from the ball, yelling “LET IT GO!” in regards to a potentially out-of-bounds volley, clenching fists and spewing obscenities through clenched teeth.

Yet this league was just for fun. It was supposed to be casual. Now, call me crazy, but I don’t generally want to spend my time away from work anywhere where I’d be getting yelled at. Any place where my actions and decisions would be put into a societal electric chair with this guy as the executioner is a place where you won’t find me. And while watching him get annoyed at his friends (I assume they’re friends), I think I discovered why I was annoyed at this guy in the first place: he doesn’t embrace mistakes. He doesn’t accept failure.

To the sports lovers out there, I’m sure this comes across asinine. After all, why on earth would you embrace mistakes and failure when you’re playing a sport?

Well, perhaps because it’s the mistakes and failings that make a sport a sport.

Think about it: if everyone were able to obtain as much perfection as this one guy demanded, the very first volleyball game would still be at 0-0 with a bump-set-spike volley action going on.

Perfection is boring! It’s the mistakes that give you points, and give people something to cheer about.

“Yeah, but it’s the OTHER team’s mistakes. Your team should try not to make any!”

Very true. In sports, you shouldn’t aim to make a mistake. Earlier in the essay, I explained that I really love playing volleyball; and when I play volleyball, I try my hardest to do well.

But I don’t demand perfection from myself because that’s both impossible and not fun to me.

In every facet of life, you have to understand that sometimes things aren’t going to go as smoothly as you planned. You can yell at your friends all you want to oil your sports-machine, but wrenches are going to get thrown in: mistakes are going to be made.

And how should you deal with these mistakes? Anger?

Hell no!

The only thing anger towards a teammate or a friend or a lover says is that you’re not going to bother taking the time to support that person, and that your idea of how things should have went should be sitting atop a glorious throne of ideas, looking down on the idea it’s talking to and dismissing it as “below him.”

By supporting each other, ESPECIALLY when mistakes are made, you’re creating a community that doesn’t want to make mistakes. But it’s not out of fear: rather, out of keeping this teamwork alive. Players who want to win because they want their team to succeed always end up better off than players who play because they’re afraid of getting yelled at.

Even if they don’t play better on the courts, they’ve got a better outlook on life. And I bet the team that supports each other is much more likely to go grab some beers after the game than the team with Johnny Yells-A-Lot on it.

Now, I don’t know a lot about Sufism, so if there’s anyone out there who does, please correct me; but there’s a Sufi saying that goes a bit like, “The master weaver incorporated the mistakes of his students into a larger pattern.” This goes along with a rule we learn in long-form improvisational comedy: there are no mistakes. Everything is a gift.

Your teammate not hitting the ball over the net just means that you guys get to rotate next time you get the ball. It also means you get that exciting aspect of trying to win back the serve! You get to weave this into the pattern of the game.

People should be clapping when these so called “mistakes” are made rather than when points are given. We should be a community of players rather than warring factions of humans.

After all, I think we can all agree we’ve had enough of war in general. So why don’t we stop treating each other like we’re always at war?

Smile and reassure your teammates. Remember that you’re doing this because you enjoy it. And you shouldn’t want to succeed: you should want your TEAM to succeed. As trite as that sounds, if you follow this little rule you’ll be a lot stronger as a group.

Don’t make people feel like failures. In the end, we really can’t fail. If we keep in mind those things that make us happy in life, at our worst we’re all just stumbling towards success, each and every day. And that sure as hell isn’t a bad thing.

So if one person’s doing a trust fall, let’s catch ‘em rather than argue their stability. Let’s treat people with the respect they deserve.

If you’re not on a sports team, start small: next time someone in a store asks you how you are today, respond, and then ask them how they’re doing. Treat them with kindness. Let them know that they’re not “failing” because they work at a retail store, or rip tickets at a toll booth. You’re not saying you’re better than them, and that they’re around only to serve your desires. You’re just checking up on your fellow teammate, and seeing if they’re enjoying this game of life as much as you are.

Then, when it’s over, we can all grab a beer together: arm-in-arm, looking for a pub in the unknown neighborhood of the afterlife.

Keep the love alive, everyone.

- Mike

Where the Hell is Matt?

All attempts to embed the video from the above link have failed. This means that I have to simply implore you to click it and watch.

“But why should I, Mike? I’m a busy person. I’ve got a lot to do. I came to your site, and I’ll be damned if I get whisked away in a storm of hyperlinks!”

Settle down, imaginary person holding a contrasting viewpoint! I’ll explain.

The video there is from Matthew Harding. I must say that I know little to nothing about the guy, except what I’ve learned from watching the video.

Apparently, Matt has traveled all around the world, and done a little jig-type dance at each of the 42 countries he visited. And even better, he invited those around him to join!

The result is one of the most heartwarming things I’ve seen in a while. Men, women, children from all different cultures in all different parts of the world join Matt in dancing for a few moments without any music or form, without any rhyme or reason to it. They just dance!

The fact that I love the idea of this dance-adventure may surprise a younger Mike.

You see, until about last year, I used to say I hated dancing. I couldn’t stand it. I also couldn’t dance (which I readily admitted). I just didn’t see the point in doing all of these dances, or moving your body really.

I would say that I would only dance if I were “joking around” or when “I didn’t have to be serious.”

About a year ago I started going to see Gogol Bordello shows, and then everything started changing. Gogol Bordello is a self-proclaimed Gypsy Punk band. Everyone at their shows jump up and down, just letting loose and dancing.

They don’t have a format to their dancing. You just move your body and smile. It’s a community of laughter, where a kid with a mohawk can wrap his arm around the shoulder of a 280 pound muscular athlete and dance together.

It’s all about releasing yourself from all the expectations that come with being human in our modern day and age. But it didn’t always use to be this way.

There was a time when you couldn’t be good or bad at dancing. There was a time when anyone and everyone can, should, and would dance together. There was a time that dancing didn’t just mean getting up to dance to Cotton Eyed Joe at a wedding.

People would just grab instruments, start playing, dancing, and drinking for days.

Gogol Bordello made an anachronism out of me by placing my modern self back into this world. And I loved every second of it.

I started saying I would only dance at Gogol Bordello shows. Still claiming when I didn’t have to “be serious.” A month or so ago, I said this to Katie, who, with her way of finding the sunlight hiding behind my dunes of self-doubt, replied with something that really made me think:

“When do you need to be serious when you’re dancing?”

I didn’t have an answer. I’ve never danced in a situation where I had to “be serious” before. Even if I was slow dancing I didn’t have “be serious.” I just had to follow my instincts.

It made me look back on the past year and realized that I enjoyed dancing whenever I got the chance to do so. As long as I was in good company, I had a great time. A change had been made, and younger Mike would be very confused by my current attitudes on movin’ to the music.

But younger Mike definitely wouldn’t ever be confused as to why I loved that video of Matthew Harding’s.

It’s about bringing people together. No matter what age you are, sex, no matter your skin color, your religion, your ethnicity, what country you live in, what pants you’re wearing, the hat you have on, whether you have glasses or not, if you went to college or you didn’t, junkie or beauty-queen, president or pauper, there’s no damn reason in this whole wide world why we can’t all dance together.

Thank you for helping us remember that, Matthew.

Keep the love alive, everyone.

- Mike

Much love to Bill Watterson. Click for full-size.

So, I have this weird aspect of my personality in regards to the way I live life: I’m always thinking about what’ll be going through my mind as life flashes before my eyes when I lie dying.

Well, that sounds a bit morbid. I’m not ALWAYS thinking of that. For instance, when I make a sandwich, I’m not particularly debating the long-lasting importance of my actions. Instead, I’m debating what to put on it, and how much mustard I’d like on said sandwich.

But, I’m often thinking about what “will make better memories,” to quote Calvin in the above strip.

In my last essay, I spoke about “busting cycles,” and how I feel that is important to do from time-to-time. To me, busting cycles by spontaneously breaking your routine is to your day-to-day life as wedding photos are to snapshots.

You could have a beautiful wedding photo: everyone’s dressed up nice, with their hair professionally done. You’re in front of some very pretty natural background. You’re posed for near-perfection.

But then there are snapshots: those pictures taken spontaneously when the subject had no idea it was coming. This could be the person you love laughing while eating Chinese food on your couch, or perhaps your brother telling you a joke at a barbecue with you, beer in hand, smiling as wide as you ever have.

These snapshots of our lives have always meant much more to me than posed photographs; and I know I’m not the first to say this, but I’d like to publically declare my love for snapshots. Snapshots are bright little bits of life that we can capture and keep in our hands, like fireflies. They show us as we really are. They make us smile because they were unexpected, but turned out wonderfully.

This is exactly my attitude on “busting cycles”: unexpected, but wonderful. Life’s like those wedding photos: it can be great, but it’s planned. You get up, go to work, pay bills, see person X at Y o’clock, etc.

These captured bits of our spontaneous, yet lovely lives that we lead are, in the end, what we’ll cherish most. Sure, that fancy, romantic dinner with your wife was a really good night, but wasn’t there something beautiful about that night you and her couldn’t catch a cab in New York City while the rain poured down on you? Her makeup was running, and both of you had drenched hair. Your clothes were soaking wet, and it was a bit uncomfortable. But you were laughing. Neither of you could help it.

You were laughing.

That sounds a lot more like something that I’d cherish and keep with me till the end of my days. Knowing I feel this way, I often think that these are the things that’ll be flashing before my eyes as I pass on. I’ll be imagining the moment I first kissed my wife, that time we were smiling and joking like little kids while we ate breakfast at midnight, the time my children had a snow-day, so I called out of work to play with them under the purifying white blanket the clouds were knitting for the soil.

In the end, you’ve gotta just be the best person you can be, and enjoy life as much as you can. There’s things you have to do, but the things you want to do shouldn’t have to be planned as much. Don’t make everything a wedding photo. Take a snapshot every once in a while.

After all, what more can you ask for out of life than a life worth remembering?

Thanks again for reading. Keep the love alive, everyone.

- Mike

Even if you don’t know me personally, it should be clear from reading my other essays here on A Small “x” that I love adventures.

First thing I should seemingly do is explain what I mean by “adventures,” but I’m going to be a bad writer and forego that description. Not out of any contempt for my audience, since I have none! But rather, I feel that describing “adventure” is pointless. If you want to know what I mean, just take one!

Adventures could be anything from big to small. You could go on vacation halfway across the world, or you could just go shopping at 2:30am to get that box of Frosted Flakes you woke up craving.

For me, it’s about busting cycles (which I can’t take credit for coming up with. Click that link above to watch a really meaningful episode of The Show with zefrank) We all have day-to-day lives. Our jobs, our responsibilities, our bills: these are necessary to stay afloat in this world. These make up our ship. If you want to stay afloat, you need something to float on. When you get a car, a job, a phone, a place to live, you’re building a flotation device. If you get nice things that make you happy, you’re building more of a ship and less of a canoe.

But your vessel doesn’t matter much. The ultimate goal in staying afloat is to go somewhere! Some people spend their whole lives building this ship, getting it “perfect,” that they forget the whole point they’re here on this ocean anyways.

They forget to go exploring.

They forget to go on adventures to bust these cycles of our day-to-day lives. Big or small, it’s fun to set sail every once in a while and feel the cool breeze of a life worth living rush over your body.

When I was first getting to know my girlfriend Katie, one of the things I thought was most amazing about her was that she felt the same way I did about all of this.

She was waiting in port with a captain’s hat on and no map: just a blank piece of paper and an interest in cartography.

She wanted to make maps, not follow them. She wanted to go on any adventure she could.

To me, this is the best attitude to have on life. We’re all responsible people when it comes to making sure we stay sea-worthy and stable. We pay our bills on time and show up for work. But that’s not all there is to life.

With so much out there in this world, we can’t spend all our time polishing our boat, however magnificent it may be. Set sail! Get out there and find something. Or, just enjoy a trip.

I know for me, I’d rather be out there at sea on a raft than stuck on the docks, admiring an expensive anchor.

So be spontaneous. Call someone whose company you enjoy and get breakfast with them late at night. Stay up way past when you normally do, even when you have work really early the next day. Get in a car and drive anywhere. Then get out and walk around someplace. This world is what you make of it, kid; so let’s make it worth our while.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back soon. Keep the love alive, everyone.

- Mike

A title can say a lot about something. Whether it’s a poem, a song, a book, an album, a piece of art, etc., it has the ability to transfer a bit more clarity (or, perhaps, obscurity) from the artist to the audience.

As I’ve mentioned before, I write poems and songs. It’s very rare, for me, that I have a title before I even have the piece which I’d be calling it. My process of creating a title has a few options:

- The title comes quickly and naturally after the work is complete
- I grab a word, or phrase from the lyrics or poem and name the work that, since I’m a bit stumped
- The work goes without a title for a long period of time (and much to my chagrin) since nothing seems to fit it right.

No matter which way it happens at any particular time, I tend to go in waves on whether I would want a long or short title. A good example of this can be seen in two different songs of mine. Both songs came out of me without much hassle, and by that I mean that I did not have to beat myself up coming up with the chord progression, melody, or lyrics: it was a very fluid creation process.

When the songs were completed, the title came just as easily too. The first one (chronologically) I named “Comfort” which I mention once in the song’s verse (or pre-chorus or what have you. I’m not technically inclined with music). The second one I named “An Ode to Docked Ships and Impossible Voyages.” As you would guess, I never say that at all in the song. Ironically, given the length of the title, the song is actually very short. The title just sort of came out of me due to the lyrics and general vibe of the song.

I just had this debate with one of my friends, but I tend to enjoy long titles for works, as long as it’s not overdone! That last part is important, because if a band, author, or artist always has obscenely long titles, you get irritated having to say them. Even though “An Ode to Docked Ships and Impossible Voyages” is one of my personal favorite titles I’ve created, I will almost certainly call the song “An Ode” if I’m talking about it.

I’m going to put aside the counter-argument of “then why even bother with the long title if it’s only going to be abbreviated” for a moment. To me, even if you call a title something abbreviated, the fact that the work was named something a bit more flourished is interesting to me.

Same goes for short titles too. Sometimes one or two word titles speak more volumes than a whole paragraph can. My love for writing specializing in brevity can attest to my sincerity here.

So since we’re on the subject of titles (how nice of you to bring that up!), I’m going to discuss some of my favorite titles with you:

13 Angels Standing Guard Round the Side of Your Bed

This is the title of a song by a band called A Silver Mount Zion (whose band name itself is in constant flux, but I will call them this for the purpose of clarity). It is on an album full of great titles, including the album title itself which, in my opinion, is worthy of inclusion on this list: He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corners of Our Rooms.

So, why do I love 13 Angels Standing Guard Round the Side of Your Bed so much? Well, a bit of it stems from a personal love of the number 13, which happens to be the day I was born on. But there’s more to it than that. Background information about the album, and the band, is that A Silver Mt. Zion was, at this point in their career, a band of mostly instrumental music. This album was sparse, having piano, violin, some guitar, and varied other instruments that still allowed for a minimalist, and somewhat defeated vibe.

I always thought this was a great title. But then I heard that this album is rumored to be about the passing of front-man Efrim Menuck’s dog.

That’s already a heart-breaking enough reason to write an entire album. But when you know that bit of trivia (by which I mean no disrespect), the name 13 Angels Standing Guard Round the Side of Your Bed means it was written about a dog’s bed.

Go ahead, picture a dog’s bed. Perhaps the image of an oval-shaped pillow with a 4-inch high fabric border pops into your mind. On it sleeps an old dog, which just may be the most beloved and loving image my mind can conjure up. The dog’s eyes are closed, and its breathing is mostly fluid, but allowing for those certain moments of a sudden, large inhalation. The dog is at that point in its life where you know it is old, and that it doesn’t have too much longer to live. In fact, the veterinarian has perhaps already told you that your pet’s cataracts have made him or her blind, and that the cancer seems to be spreading throughout the entire body.

You’re at that extremely rough internal debate of letting your pet live out the rest of its days with you caring for it, or putting the dog to sleep, and allowing him or her to finally be out of pain.

You think about your pet that you love every night as you try to get some sleep. You only want the best for him or her. This pet has been your best friend for so, so many years now.

13 Angels Standing Guard Round the Side of Your Bed.

It is, to me, perhaps the most beautiful thing you could ever wish upon the passing of someone, or something, that you love. And to say this in regards to your dying pet dog, well…needless to say it was very difficult for me to write this, to get to the core of the reason I love this so much, without welling up a bit.

And this puts a whole new spin on the album title: He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corners of Our Rooms. For all of us who have lost someone important in our lives, isn’t that just a touching way to describe the way the person, or pet, we love so much comes back into our memory: as gently and cautiously as light “grac[ing]” the corner of a room?

Beautiful.

I Sing the Body Electric

I’m afraid not every one of these reasons are going to live up to that past one. Hell, some of them I just love and I don’t even know why!

I Sing the Body Electric is a good example of a title that I honestly don’t know why I love so much. I may sound like an eight year old by saying it, but I just think it sounds really cool.

A bunch of things come to mind when I think of this title (and yes, one of them is the Twilight Zone episode named the same thing). A body, or someone, being electric means that the person is excited. Walt Whitman could have had a way different idea in mind when he conceived the title, but to me, one of the things it could mean is the great feeling of being overjoyed by something, or someone. The “I” could be whatever, or whoever, makes you feel glad to be alive. The person or thing or event or song or poem or piece of artwork that makes you happy you got to have your chance on this rock hurling through space.

If you read said poem by Walt Whitman, my theory on the title can be somewhat supported: “The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them” happens to be the second line of the poem (engirth is a bit like encircles, FYI gang).

So while you can read into the title to mean those things or people that bring joy into your life, I also just happen to think it’s a really cool title. TUBULAR EVEN!!!!

Strike Up the Band like a Match

Same goes for this title, which comes from a song by Space Marine 17 (SM17 for short). While the individual behind SM17 has explained to me that the song and title were derived from SM17 mocking bands with that “holier than thou” attitude about their music, to me it’s just extremely cleverly written.

“Strike up the band” is a phrase, and a 1940 movie starring Judy Garland. It is a way of saying “begin conducting the band.” And while the idiom may have had its roots with “strike up” being used with an obvious connection to matches, I had never heard the saying “Strike Up the Band like a Match” before I heard the SM17 song (a quick Google search with the phrase in quotes proves to me that I’m not alone).

It’s not that this is a “deep” title to me. It’s just very clever in my opinion. And it’s rare that a title comes across that way to me, which is why I’ve included it in this list.

This title may not seem all that impressive to you, which is a shame since I had to draw the strikethrough in Paint to make it noticeable! It’s the title of a short poem by Richard Brautigan, and I believe seeing the piece in its entirety may help you understand why I like it so much. Just remember, there’s a strikethrough through the 4:

“January 4 3“
I’ve started off with a mistake
but I’ll try to get better
and put the day in good order.

Still don’t see why it’s great? Well, I can’t help you then. But I can explain what I see in it.

Artists generally don’t point at their mistakes. Sure, they may point at their failings, and mistakes they’ve made in the past, but they don’t often point out mistakes in their own artistic medium. Here, Richard Brautigan makes the title of a poem show a mistake. The title of a poem can say a lot about the piece. For instance, The Prelude by William Wordsworth tells the reader “STOP READING ME! I’M A LONG, BORING PIECE OF SHIT!”

Woops, I mean, ummm, the title let you know that to Billy Wordsworth[less! OH SNAP!], this was just his (unnecessarily long) Prelude for the epic poem he planned on writing. But then wait! In the middle, he realizes that The Prelude itself IS an epic poem. The audience has a good smirk, and we move on to making our eyes bleed with more boring Romantic Poetry.

That rant aside, in the Richard Brautigan poem the title is something as simple as mis-writing the date. The poem itself is only three lines long, but in those three lines you see a narrator who’s a bit broken down about his or her imperfections. The narrator is going to “try to get better,” but isn’t making any promises to the reader. The narrator fucked up, and knows he or she did, but shrugs it off the way someone with way too much weight on their shoulders would shrug off a small mistake. The narrator is not embarrassed. It’s almost as if he or she expected to make a mistake, knowing his or her own imperfections.

I think that there’s nothing more intrinsically human than being wrong from time to time. We try, we fail, and we march on. And to me, that’s what this poem is trying to get across. But without that brilliant title, would the poem be as good? If it were called “Mistake” would it work?

I don’t think it would work as well. Why? Because with the 4 being struck out and the 3 next to it, we can see the narrator’s mistake. It was small, but the narrator still doesn’t laugh it off. Just goes about the day saying he or she is going to try his or her best, but who knows if that’s going to amount to jack shit in this messed up world. Plus, isn’t it the little mistakes that end up going through your mind the most? I know that’s true for me.

The Days are Just Packed

This is another title which may seem like nothing special until you see the whole picture. In this case, you need not read the entire bound collection of Calvin and Hobbes comics that go under this name (although you SHOULD!!!), but rather just take a look at the cover:

http://www.amazon.com/Days-are-Just-Packed-Collection/dp/0836217357/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207075647&sr=8-1

For those of you too lazy to click on a link (I know a few), it’ll suffice to know that Calvin and Hobbes are both lying down on a branch up in a tree, eyes closed, with big smiles on their faces.

So the cover art contradicts the title: and that’s EXACTLY the point.

People may look at the book and go “Yeah, packed with what? Doing nothing?!?” And that’s EXACTLY the point.

By every standard which would normally define a day being “packed,” the cover clearly shows that Calvin and Hobbes fail to meet those standards. A day being “just packed” would normally define a day where you have little time to yourself, a day where you’re always running from one place to the next in order to complete some task or another. It would certainly never be defined as a day in which you get to be free, play, and do whatever you would like to do.

And that’s EXACTLY the point the brilliant Bill Watterson has made here, in my humble opinion.

To Calvin and Hobbes the day is packed. And whether they consider what they’re doing to be packed full of hard work or of rest and fun, the fact is they consider it to be just that. It throws away convention, and not from some high-and-mighty art-throne, but rather from a crowd full of inner-children.

Bill Watterson was, in my opinion, one of the greatest artists, writers, and storytellers this world has ever, and will ever know. That’s pretty high praise, I’m aware of that, but I don’t throw around that praise lightly.

I had the pleasure of reading Calvin and Hobbes in the newspapers as a child, and then the honor of reading them once again as an adult. Bill Watterson was able to somehow make you love his work regardless of what age you were, as long as you had one simple part of you in tact: your inner-child.

As long as you can enjoy some of the same things you did as a kid for the same reasons you still do, Calvin and Hobbes will probably appeal to you. It has made me laugh out loud on many occasions, and also made me cry (don’t believe me? Do a Google search for “‘the raccoon story’ Calvin and Hobbes” and see for yourself). Being able to run the entire gamut of human emotions with your artistic output is an amazing feat to accomplish. And Mr. Watterson has indeed accomplished this.

So still, what’s the big deal about The Days are Just Packed? Well, do you remember when your days were “just packed” the same way it is for Calvin and Hobbes on the cover of that collection? I do. There was great simplicity and immense joy in it. And it’s a wonderful way to word that feeling. To call pleasure and contentment things that can “pack” your day is like throwing a giant wrench in the seemingly-unstoppable machine of negative language. Mr. Watterson has reclaimed the phrase to mean whatever the fuck you want it to mean. Go ahead, pack your day full of laughter and friendship. To hell with anyone who opposes you. Go out there and love to your heart’s capacity.

Runners Up

No, that’s not a title. I know I’m probably forgetting a lot of titles that I truly do love, but I know there’s a few that didn’t make the list that I’d like to at least briefly mention:

He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corners of Our Rooms

Yeah, I know, I mentioned it already. But it’s so amazing! I won’t rehash what I already stated back up near the top of this essay, but needless to say I do find it to be a great, great title.

1×1

Poet E. E. Cummings (yes, it’s supposed to be capitalized) had a great way with words. When it came to defining love, he tried, just like so many artists since the dawn of the human race have tried. I think he quite possibly succeeded with this simple little math equation. To say about the person you love, “we’re wonderful. we’re one times one” is saying a lot. You’re two, but in a sense, you’re one. Math never seemed so poignant to me.

The Amelia Earhart Pancake

Another Richard Brautigan poem:

“The Amelia Earhart Pancake”
I have been unable to find a poem
for this title. I’ve spent years
looking for one and now I’m giving
up.

November 3, 1970

Another great exposé of an artist’s failings. Sometimes our greatest ideas, the ones we cling on to with all our hearts, don’t pan out at all. This poem celebrates that failure as being equally as important as succeeding. And I think that says a lot. Also, how impressive is it to say that much with a title as ridiculous as this one?

It’s a Magical World

It’s the name of the final Calvin and Hobbes collection, and also the first half of one of the most beautiful quotes in the English language: “It’s a Magical World, Hobbes, ol’ Buddy…Let’s go exploring!” Do a Google image search for “last calvin and hobbes comic.” It’s one of the most touching comic strips you’ll ever read.

Well, that’s all I have for titles right now. In case you’re interested, you can go to www.ourtwilightpastime.com and download both of the songs I mentioned above. Go to the music section. “Comfort” is on Terra Firma, and “An Ode to Docked Ships and Impossible Voyages” is on Drunken Sailors.

Keep the love alive, everyone

- Mike

I grew up on Long Island. I remember many many winters during my childhood where it would snow. In fact, up until recently (thanks a lot, GLOBAL WARMING!), you could expect at least 2 to 3 snowstorms per winter.

Every time there would be a snowstorm I would get excited beyond belief. I loved playing outdoors in the snow. I even just loved sitting inside with a mug of hot chocolate and watching the snow fall from my window. If it was during the week I got to glue myself to the TV and anxiously await my school district to be listed in the “closed” category (or, in less cool situations, the “delayed opening” category).

My parents and other adults I would come in contact with on these snowy days would usually say the same thing: “Oh, you may love it now, but when you’re my age you’ll haaaatte it!”

“No way, man!” I’d retort the way only a child in the late 80’s/early 90’s could, “I’m gonna alllways love snow! FOREVER!!”

Well, I went back on a lot of my childhood promises about myself: I don’t own a pizzeria like I said I would when I was 6; I don’t live in a house full of secret passageways like I always dreamed about. But the one thing I still stand by is my love for snow. I fucking love snow.

I know I have to shovel it, clean it off my car, drive in it, etc. But I just don’t care about all of that. I love the snow.

To me, snow is something wonderful. Every other time nature does something to us, it’s always annoying, scary, or both. Think about it: when there’s going to be torrential downpours, hardly anyone’s gleaming with excitement. Same thing goes for hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, volcanic explosions, and a whole myriad of other things the weather can dish at us.

But when there’s supposed to be a blizzard, most children (and those lucky adults who didn’t let everything about their childhood die) are ecstatic. It’s a wonderful thing.

And why, you ask? Well, I look at it this way: when it’s supposed to snow, you go to bed that night and wake up the next morning and experience a whole different world. When you look out the window, everything’s coated in a beautiful white blanket. It’s pure again. You’re an explorer. You can go run around and make the first set of footprints on your front yard, throw the first snowball in the whole world, take a sled to your favorite hill and make it a roller-coaster. Snow shuts down schools and businesses; it makes everyone have to stay home. And why is that great? Well, us humans were born this way: with nothing to do but be with this big spinning planet we’re on and make the best of it. Snow gives us that opportunity.

It’s not everyday a business man can gather around with a bunch of kids and teenagers and play with them while they all laugh and smile, but snowball fights allow this to happen. It’s cleansing and beautiful. You get to shower off all your adulthood and responsibility for one day, or maybe just one hour, and let that kid inside of you go out and play.

But even all of this talk can’t do it justice. The only person who ever got it right was the amazing Mr. Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin & Hobbes. That man put more beauty into this world through his comics than there are snowflakes in a snowstorm. Don’t believe me? Go do a Google image search for “last Calvin and Hobbes comic.” Read that. That’s pretty much what I try to make my life philosophy: “Let’s go exploring.”

It’s so powerful to me: we’re all going to live and die and not see everything there is to see and not do everything there is to do, and that’s more than just fine: that’s wonderful. That means that for our entire lives we’ll have the chance to go out and explore this world of ours. And even if it’s with a familiar house or a familiar hill, or with a familiar friend or loved one, that’s fine too: because it’s what you do that makes it exploring. Turn the familiar into the unfamiliar. Go out and make life worth living. And that’s just what snow does for me: it turns the landscape of our town or our city into something new. The possibilities are endless.

That’s why I know I’ll never let that kid inside of me die when it comes to snow. There’s no way. I’ll be out there with the kids making snow angels and building forts. I’ll always be ready to go exploring.

See, I just don’t have this kind of philosophy when it comes to my childhood dreams of being a pizza-man. Sorry six-year-old Mike. “Pizza’s awesome” just isn’t enough to take a paycut and learn a new trade.

Although, pizza is QUITE awesome….hmmmm…

Keep the love alive, everyone. Let’s go exploring!

- Mike

The other day at work I was asked to clean my desk, not because I was getting fired, but because my desk becomes horrendously unorganized rather quickly, and to a disturbing extent. Things just pile up and free space becomes completely unattainable. Instead, I write, eat, and place beverages on top of stacks of paper and folders.

I know, I’m an office genius.

When I was cleaning my desk, I obviously decided to place a lot of the random papers in one of the two overhead compartments I have in my cube. I assume they’re supposed to serve the purpose of holding tired business travelers’ coats and briefcases. Instead though, I use it to store the junk I don’t feel like throwing out yet.

While piling garbage in these compartments to give my workspace the aura of professionalism, I noticed two old books napping up there: one was a tutorial book attempting to teach CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets. The second was Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (yes, his name was Vladimir Vladimirovich). In Nabokov’s book lay an old bookmark which never made it one quarter of the way through the race: it idled, like so many bookmarks I own or created, in the early, unaccomplished stages of the book.

The sight of this book I own but don’t at all enjoy and never fully read sent my mind on a Sunday Drive down Memory Lane (which apparently intersects nicely with Cliché-Phrases Boulevard).

Allow me to explain:

So I’ve touched on this before, but clearly it is a topic that requires much attention: I’m not a big reader. Why is this an issue? Well, because I DO have a BA in English. Most of the time people rightfully assume that I’ve read X or that I’ve probably heard of author Y, and that I really can’t wait to read Pointless-Novel-With-Some-Kind-Of-Catch Z.

Well, all of that is pretty much not the case. I got my degree in English because I liked writing. Poetry mostly (I know, mega-cool guy over here). I liked reading poetry too, but only some poetry. I’m not about to sit by a fire and thumb through Canterbury Tales (thanks for THAT one, Chaucer).

Now, as I explained in my previous essay, (which you all read, right? RIGHT?!?!?) the more I wrote essays, the more I realized a potential in prose, a potential for me to enjoy writing in this medium, I mean. What I liked about poetry was that I was a bit freer to do what I wanted to; free to learn what I liked and what I didn’t like by trying. Eventually, I was forced to learn the rules of prose thanks to writing tons of essays (WOOOOOOOOO!), and the more I wrote, the more I imagined the way I’d like to write essays. Finally I arrived here: at a place where I currently enjoy my writing style, but years from now I’ll probably look back at it with a more discriminating eye.

So, I needed to be persuaded that I liked prose, because for the most part I didn’t enjoy prose. Most of the novels I either read or was forced to read I wasn’t a fan of. Either it was some antiquated notion or dialect, or it was just wholly uninteresting and filled with too much description.

Oh, description. Description, to me, is like mustard. It’s brilliant and beautiful in the appropriate dose, but if you smother something in it, you don’t really want to eat it anymore. And that’s just what it did to me. I didn’t want to eat novels with too much description. Wait…ummm, I mean read…yes…I don’t eat books. Yes…

But overall the more I went through English classes the more I didn’t like novels. They were just tombs of symbolism and dense black holes that compressed my interest into a singularity which I expressed as a long sigh or daydream. Follow that? Good. If not: I don’t like most novels. Just reiterating.

Now, there is some prose I enjoy. Call me naïve or a hipster or whatever, but I do enjoy the works of J. D. Salinger. I enjoy the writings of Edwidge Danticat. I think David Sedaris is a great writer too. Plus, all the greatest TV shows and movies were mostly great because, in my opinion, the writing was excellent. But I’m just not really a reader. I can’t sit around reading a book for the most part. It just takes too long and is too time consuming. I want the author to just get to the damn point already.

And yes, yes: I am aware that I have been regurgitating a similar sentiment at quite some length for quite some time now, so I am aware of the irony of explaining that prose lacks expedience in a long-winded rant.

But this is my website and I can does what I wants!

However, this does make one feel a bit uneducated. The only thing that saves me is that I have a BA in English. Otherwise, conversations with me regarding literature would make me sound like a thick-skulled ignoramus:

SOMEONE

Hey, did you ever read Slaughterhouse-Five?

ME

That’s by Vonnegut, right?

SOMEONE

Yeah. I love that novel

ME

Never read it. I never read anything by Vonnegut. I tried to read Breakfast of Champions once, but…

SOMEONE

Really? You never read him? I think you’d LOVE him.

ME

No offense, but probably not. I don’t really like reading unless it’s a new collection poems by Ted Kooser or me re-reading some old faves by Richard Brautigan.

SOMEONE

Wait…you don’t read at all?

ME

Meh. I don’t really like reading. It takes too long and is too annoying.

Without knowing me, I don’t exactly sound like someone who has a degree in English, or anything for that matter. I come across ignorant, and I can’t really defend myself. Like I mentioned in my previous essay, years of English education just made literature leave a bad taste in my mouth. When it gets mentioned, I tend to get a bit testy and defensive towards illiteracy.

Of course, I don’t always spew these kinds of rants. I wrote a poem once about how pretty girls often get me reading things I never thought I’d read. I mean, I’m honest about my “meh” attitude towards literature, but I don’t act as belligerent as I appeared in the previous script.

And now, dear reader, we get to the point that ties this all together with the intro of this essay. Your questions of “how the hell does this relate to that stupid book by Nabo-whatever he mentioned earlier” will now be answered!

I was interested in this one girl in college. Well, there were a couple, but for this story, let’s focus on the one. Also, for the purposes of this story, let’s re-name this girl…ummm, Mary. Yeah, that’ll do.

Mary was a cool girl, and I was a shy guy too nervous to actually let Mary I know I was interested in her. She was an English major too, which meant she was in some of my classes. We’d talk about assignments and literature and, well, pretty much anything except what she was doing later and if she’d like to hang out sometime.

When we’d get on the topic of literature, I’d express my love for Ted Kooser or W. S. Merwin (at this point, I had yet to learn of Richard Brautigan’s brilliance). She suggested that I read Invitation to a Beheading by Nabokov. “Oh yeah?” I said…or asked, depending how you look at it. “Yeah,” she replied, “I think you’d like him.”

Now, I’d never read anything by Nabokov. So, naturally, like an ass, I just bought the book since Mary was cute and nice.

Ahh, what a book. I made it through about 15 pages before I lost my interest in it. Then, I made it through another 10 pages before I lost my interest in Mary. Then, and now, the book sat, and sits, in that aforementioned overhead compartment in my cubicle at my job. Sitting idly, sucking horribly and being awful.

Now, many of you out there may like Nabokov’s work, which is fine. I don’t mind. People should enjoy tons of different things, which makes the world awesome. But what people shouldn’t do is what I did: don’t go buying a book just because a pretty girl you’re in some classes with recommended it to you, and you, without competent enough social skills to have conversation on your own accord, feel you may enjoy it or at least be able to talk about it.

I should have went to a library or looked Nabokov up online. That would have been fine. But no, instead I decided to go out and buy it. Honestly, I made this impulse purchase also assuming it would once again stimulate my desire to read.

Nope. It didn’t do that.

So, like coupons that were nearing, but had not yet passed, an expiration date, old scribbles I liked but didn’t know what to do with, and post-its from friends I’ve worked with, Nabokov’s well-acclaimed book Invitation to a Beheading rests in a coffin of its own, reminding me of one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned: just fucking talk to girls instead of buying books they suggest, you idiot.

Keep the love alive, everyone

- Mike

Ah, English. Getting a degree in English is something that can be a really fun time. Of course, there’s a pre-requisite: namely, that you need to enjoy literature. This is something that I looked past when I attended Stony Brook University (for my second time, but that’s a story for a different essay). I enjoyed reading (certain) poetry and writing (terrible) poems, so I figured “why the hell not?” I always thought obtaining a degree in English would be “cool, but too hard.”

Well, I ended up learning a lot; a hell of a lot. I can’t deny that, and I won’t. But at what cost? Well, now, I really can’t stand the thought of literature. It’s thanks to all those years of training my mind to take a look at a piece of writing, analyze it to death, pull something out of its ass, and slap that into an essay of mine that revolved around some bullshit idea my professor blabbed about in class. I got my BA in English and felt my college-career could be summed up in what Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes, of course) said in a famous comic strip: “You’ve taught me nothing except how to cynically manipulate the system.”

Please, allow me to explain. Please allow me this pleasure. I’ll go through how I wrote essays in the majority of my stay at my chosen University. Hopefully it’ll be a worthwhile adventure:

First, there would be a book, or an essay (how I loathed those times) which the class would be required to read. I probably didn’t read it. I probably went to class without having read anything more than the title and perhaps a quick, VERY quick skim of the first paragraph or stanza or whatever the hell the format was.

I was always silent in class. So my silence wasn’t necessarily a clue that I had not done my homework, but rather was thought to be all part of my normal in-class personality. And this is an accurate conclusion too, since I didn’t ever talk in class. I never felt the desire to jump up and shout what I thought about a specific stanza in Wordsworth’s The Prelude. I honestly could give a fuck. Because of this personality I exhumed in class, professors usually didn’t attempt to call on me. They especially wouldn’t call on me first.

Now this meant that for the first 15ish minutes of class, I could just pay attention to the discussions going on: “ahhh, so Moby Dick is dense with SYMBOLISM, eh? I’ll make a note of that.” And then if I were to be called on, I would simply regurgitate what the last person said before me. “I agree with ______. It seemed to me that _______ really was saying _______.” Then they quickly moved along, and so did I. Only I moved along into the wonderful world of daydreaming.

I’d think to myself “what am I gonna eat for dinner tonight? I wonder if anyone will want to eat with me. Who’s around tonight? Probably no one, it’s a Tuesday. I should be doing homework tonight. UGHHHHHHH I’ve got WORK tomorrow,” etc. This would continue for quite some time.

Then at some point I would break out of daydreaming. Usually just at the right point to catch my professor saying something like “yes, that’s what I always thought too. I always thought that [insert author] was really getting at [some theory I could care less about] in [name of book I never want to, and didn't, read].” I would write this down at the top of my chosen piece of paper for the day (which by this point was probably filled with doodles, dinner ideas, random poems, etc), and then put a box around it.

Fast-forward to the time when our essay is due. Actually, rewind to the night before the essay is due. I’m sitting down at my computer, obsessively checking my email (I AM SO COOL), and talking to people online. Those people are usually saying “stop talking and start writing your essay!”

Eventually, I’d be forced to listen to them.

So I’d flip to my notebook and look at that boxed-in little quip my professor said. It was random on his or her part, so it’s not like I’m just writing about some obvious theory (”I THINK MOBY DICK HAS A WHALE IN IT BECAUSE THERE IS A WHALE ON THE COVER, AND…”). I then decided to rework this theory as my thesis. I did this because (A) I could care less about the book, and (B) the professor agrees with it. And while the course should be objective, if a professor reads a student’s essay that’s spot-on with a thought of theirs, 9 times out of 10, they’ll read it and love it, since they get to go “yeah, YEAH! EXACTLY!” while they read it. And who can blame them? I’d rather read an essay about why Elliott Smith is an amazing musician than why Hawthorne Heights rulez da sk00lz.

Now with this theory “of mine” in tact, I’d start my intro. To spare you, dear reader, from having to read about how many times I would read and re-read this intro, bang my head against the desk, curse college and my degree, and then eventually hit enter and move on to the next paragraph, it’ll suffice it to say that I would eventually write my intro and spin this boxed-in theory into my own words.

Now began my first instance of, on my own accord, opening the book or essay or poem or whatever I’m supposed to be writing about. I would do this torturous deed in order to get some random excerpt from it. Usually, I had zoned in enough times in class that I jotted down some pages or highlighted some text that related to Mr. Boxed-in-Theory, so I had some work done for me. But you can’t just write about what was said in class. You gotta take it to Another Level. You gotta AL it. How do you do this? Well, by grabbing a random excerpt like I said above. Just flip to a random page and take a random quote. Now, how does that quote relate to your thesis? If you read enough text around it (I know, I know, sometimes you gotta read the whole chapter), most of the time you can say it connects somehow. The closer it sounds to being true, the more one-ups you’ll get from the professor’s mighty red pen on the margins of your paper. The further it is from logical, the more you’ll get “interesting…I never thought of this before. But it is interesting” on the sidelines. That’s not too bad. Just means your professor’s probably onto your bullshit, so be sure to pack this random guy in-between some well-thought-out claims.

Most of the time, I would get these essays back, and they’d be in the A range. Sometimes B. This never really impressed me because I didn’t honestly care what I wrote. I felt like I was wasting my days doing this. It started to change the way I wrote when I wrote for myself. I started to incorporate some of this structured eloquence into my normal “haha, we gotta get drunkz0rz this weekend!” IM-speak (which wasn’t really that bad, but I hyperbolize for effect).

Then, something interesting happened. One of my professors, who was very nice (all of my professors were very nice, luckily. So this is not a hate-note towards any of them) for a class I took on World War I poetry asked us to write a little page after the essay about our essay. Basically we were critiquing it before we gave it to her.

Well, because this essay had put me in an irritable mood (as did any forced piece of writing with a works cited page jammed on the end), I ended up being rather sarcastic in my critique. I don’t recall most of what I said, but I do remember in the portion about “How would you change this essay if you could?” I wrote something to the effect of “I wouldn’t change anything because I wouldn’t want to rewrite this. I felt like I wasted my time writing about a bunch of poems I’d never read on my own. I would hand this in and take whatever grade I get, because giving it a second chance is akin to me telling my future self ‘hey, you’re gonna not have fun again for another 6-hour span. Get ready for that.’”

Well, rather than actually be annoyed at this (which she would have every right to be), she loved it. She actually commented on it saying “This is how you should write your essays!”

“Sarcastically and with a bad attitude?” I thought.

And then it hit me: my essays may be some kind of random train-of-eloquent-thought, but they’re missing passion. The bitter critique of my essay had passion in it. I was trained to write, and now when I wanted to write for myself, my arsenal of eloquence and grammar was better-stocked. As a former-student, and a current reader and writer herself, she probably has felt the way I felt after this essay countless times in her life. Perhaps she found it refreshing to read someone’s HONEST opinion. I mean, hell, I did the work she asked. So she couldn’t get annoyed that I handed it in instead of the essay.

Her positive attitude on my critique always stuck with me. It gave me hope that I can write more than a bunch of crap about more crap I never wanted to read while I claimed, supported, and warranted a huge pile of bullshit. It gave me hope that writing can be what I want it to be.

And now here we sit. With you having read that, with me having written it. We sit here knowing that even though I have cursed my education a multitude of times while I was going through it, it has obviously had a positive impact on my writing. We sit at the end of the first post for this essay-oriented blog I call A Small “x.” Was it worthwhile to read? I can’t answer that.

But if I ask you, just say “I really thought your ideas on writing were interesting.” It’s a good save.

More to come, gang. Keep the love alive.

- Mike