Lighting the Dark Night

I'm not sure I know what to say about the tragedy in Aurora, but I also know I don't want to stay silent on the matter. There's just so much upsetting about it that I don't know where to begin.

I teach my writing students that when they are attempting the horror genre, the best thing they can do is find a situation that should be safe and comforting and make it the source of the horror. That's why we fear what's in the closet or under the bed. That's our bedroom, our sanctuary, and you're making it the source of fear. It creeps us out. The same goes for creepy children, clowns, or a murderous mother.

Well, what's more comforting than buying a large popcorn, dowsing it with movie theater butter, and watching the third installment of your favorite super hero movie with friends and family? The thought that even a public space set up for entertainment and release from our problems could be that dangerous really freaks us out.

That's almost certainly the reason for the desire we have to blame everyone we can pick out as an easy target. It's much more palatable to point to this institution or that legislation when things like this happen than to admit that we live in a dangerous world and these things happen. At least if there's someone to point your finger at, you can be sure you aren't blaming yourself. At least you can pretend it's all somehow logical, somehow makes sense.

Some are targeting gun laws, which may have made a difference in the amount of carnage, but who is to say the suspect wouldn't have found another way--bombs, chemicals, or even illegally obtained firearms. Some are targeting violent movies, but most of us have watched our share of super hero movies and have never harmed a soul. I just watched Star Wars Episode III last night, and I have no desire to go all Anakin Skywalker on a school of younglings. Some of the articles I've read even sound strangely skeptical about the University of Colorado where the suspect was a PhD candidate.

But you can't blame the schools on this one. This wasn't some homeless castoff that the system failed. He was a straight A student who excelled in high school and at the University of California, Riverside, and was attending an intensive PhD program with 34 other students. He had friends. He had a church. He wasn't a freak in a cave.

It's almost certain that it will come out that this man was mentally ill. Like the Greyhound cannibal a few years ago, he was probably schizophrenic and had no idea what he was really doing to people and families in that theater, all around Colorado, and all around the world. The Greyhound cannibal is on medication now and going on supervised trips into the city. People are protesting and upset. They can't imagine that someone who did something so newsworthy and horrific is now just a normal guy with the help of time and medication.

The same could happen with the Aurora shooter. The truth is there are very few individuals, if any at all, that do something using logical thought that can be considered pure evil. Either they are mentally ill or they think what they are doing is the right thing to do, or both. Even Hitler believed he was saving the world, not destroying it. As misguided as people can be sometimes, they usually aren't hell-bent on evil. There's a chance that one person asking this shooter if something was wrong, or noticing that something was wrong at all prompting him or her to even ask, could have prevented a tragedy. Or maybe not. Life's not that simple.

So what do we do with this information? How do we live in a world where a top student in a PhD program guns down innocent movie-goers on a fun summer night out? How do we live in a world where innocent Greyhound passengers can be stabbed to death and cannibalized in their sleep? How do we live in a world of 9/11 terrorists, Oklahoma City Bombers, and Son of Sam killers?

I think the first part of the answer to those questions is simply to realize we live in that world. To realize we've always lived in that world. We like to think there were some good old days, and I've discussed this before on this blog, but I'd like someone to tell me when they were. In the eighties, we were pumped so full of good touch/bad touch lessons and fear of kidnappers that decapitated and raped kids that most of the people my age can actually remember their code word they were to give strangers who claimed to be picking them up for their parents. The sixties and seventies were ripe with glamorized serial killers. Brutal killing only increases as you go back through time. Think Vlad the Impaler, the murderer released to the people instead of Jesus, or Elizabeth Bathory, the Hungarian Blood Countess of the 16th century who allegedly bathed in the blood of her victims way back then.

Once we except that nobody is to blame. Once we realize that life has always been dangerous and the one thing we are guaranteed is death, we can accept the inevitable truth that our lives are the most fragile possessions we have...and the most precious. Yet living in fear and trying to protect those lives by living in crippling fear just devalues them. Like an antique vase that you pack away for no one to see, there is very little value in a life merely based on existing and not living.

So in the end, in my opinion, we just need to live our lives. Mourn the victims, of course. Look for justice for those families, of course. But looking to blame isn't going to help. Unless you find a way to cure humanity of itself, these kinds of incidents are going to happen. Be open to the idea that the murderer might just be a victim in his own right--plagued by his own mind--that needs help not death. If not, if he was simply a cold-blooded, evil-doer, then punish him to the full extent of the law.

Look out for each other. If something seems off, ask if everything's okay. If something seems way off, ask how you can help. Care. But most of all, remember that we're not promised anything in this world, not even tomorrow.

Realize that every moment with friends and family could be the last. Make the most out of life because you don't know when it's going to end. It may sound cliche, but that's because the same dangers we think modern society should be immune from, or that some think are a creation of our modern society, have been lurking for as long as man has walked this Earth. Cane killed Abel. The first born child on Earth was a cold-blooded killer. We have to come to grips with that.

While we should never get used to this kind of thing, I would hope that we could learn from it. Go see Batman if you were planning on it anyway. Don't live in fear. Instead, live each moment of your life to the fullest and love and care for your fellow man. Don't let this rip us apart--there's enough of that going on today in our politics--but do your part to help it bring us together. Don't let this one man--whether he was evil or ill--make our lives into one, long, dark night.

"Not Promised Tomorrow" by Stuck Mojo

Hollywood Calling...

It seems lately that the only true measure of literary success is getting your book adapted to the big screen. It also seems that the only good movies are the ones based on books. And we've all heard the whining complaints about how the movie ruined this or that from the book. The issue is that basically we've already directed, acted, and edited the movie version of the book in our minds as we read it, and obviously our movie version is better than theirs.

I do this assignment after reading The Crucible with my high school juniors. They cast the movie, pick some songs for the soundtrack, come up with a tag line, and then make a movie poster to advertise for their movie. This leads to some strange results. Think Bill Clinton as John Proctor with Hillary as Elizabeth and Monica Lewinsky as Abigail Williams. You have to admire the extent of their historical knowledge. But no matter how terrible their versions of the movie are, once I show them the film version, other than their relief that they're watching a movie in school that's in color, they all think their versions were better. Of course Will Smith makes a better John Proctor than that goofy old what's-his-name.

So, when YA Highway's Road Trip Wednesday asks our favorite movie that was better than the book, they're asking a nearly impossible question to answer. But alas, I can think of two. And I might get blasted for both.

The first is kind of obvious--The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Those who watch the movies and complain about them being too long and drawn out have obviously never read the books. Sure, they're classics and must reads, and I don't think I'd want to change a word, but...let's just say Tolkien is a bit long-winded. Was he being paid by the word? And that whole thing with the weird guy that lived in a tree that just slows down the whole exciting journey? I'm glad Peter Jackson cut him out.

I have a strong imagination, but somehow while reading the books I found myself picturing a childish cartoon of a war in comic book color with the hobbits played by Jim Henson puppets. I think The Dark Crystal overly influenced my reading.  Creepy. Seeing the epic battles and scenery in live action with great acting, amazing effects, and unbelievably dramatic timing brought the world of Middle Earth alive much more than my imagination could. Fo sho!

The second is The Shining. Sure Kubrick's film was far different than King's novel (in fact, I've heard some say they really aren't much of the same thing at all.), but I kind of liked that. Kubrick was creepier. He realized that with a movie you have the advantage of visuals, of imagery through the eyes, not the mind. You watch that movie, and there are so many images that are left frozen in your mind forever: the blood river in the elevator, the creepy twin girls, "Redrum" in the mirror, the corpse-like woman in the bath tub, the little boy peddling down the hall. It's amazing how well Kubrick used the medium of film to take what King did so well in print and reinvent it. Both are terrifying. Both are memorable. But they both were able to do what they did in the perfect way for the medium both were using. Quite remarkable. I know I've been scarred for life.

As a writer, though, I've heard authors talking about being sellouts for letting Hollywood corrupt their masterpieces. Not I. Sure I've yet to have a novel even published, but I can't think of a better tribute to me, my story, and my characters than to see them on the big screen. I'll be at the opening, tears in my eyes...

Criticizing every single change, of course.

Sweet, innocent...nightmares

Dickens, Poe and Dickinson Walk into a Bar...

It's that question that kids have been asking for centuries, the one every adult fears. Daddy, where do stories come from? Okay, so it's not the type of question that makes you cringe, but it's just as difficult a question to answer.

It wasn't my kid that asked me this recently but my baptism sponsor. We were hanging out at Starbucks, me with my manly, no-nonsense strawberries and creme frappabingosomethingorother, she with her girlie, way-too-hipster black coffee. We were talking about organ donation and how one person can save so many lives, when an idea occurred to me--one that I'm not even sure is original. I asked her, what if you wrote a novel and it followed this group of separate characters, and you didn't know why they were all connected, but then, near the end, they all end up needed transplants and get them from the same person, another character you'd been following?

She wondered aloud if that's how I lived my life. As a writer, was I always searching for a story? I didn't think so. It sounds too pretentious and writery to say (in an over-dramatic, pretentious voice), "Everything is a story to me. I comb every interaction in my life to find that *gasp* one...great...story!"

I was pretty sure that wasn't me.

After further review, though, maybe it is. I always attributed the stories I come up with to a creative mind--they just pop in there. But, alas, an examination of the facts proves that this just ain't true. So where do they come from? If you look at the novels I've written, well, I steal them.

My first novel started brewing in a Brit Lit seminar on how British Colonialism influenced British novels. A discussion spawned, one day, from Great Expectations about the nature of crime--about how Pip identified with the prisoners in London--and driving home that day, before I even was an MFA student or graduate, before I ever was a writer, I decided it would be cool to write a novel that examined the nature of crime, that there were things we do as humans that are perfectly legal but somehow were worse crimes than those that get us locked up.

Fast-forward a few months (maybe longer?). I'm driving in my car listening to Green Day's American Idiot, an album with such a distinct storyline that it was adapted into a Broadway show. The idea of a suburban kid running off to the city and watching his whole life crash down around him, forcing him to run home with his tail between his legs (at least that's how I interpreted the album) stuck with me. In the car that day, Truman Armstrong was born--a boy that runs away from home for an unknown reason, and once you really start to like him and feel bad for him, you learn his crime--he ran away because he got his girlfriend pregnant. Dirt bag, right? Criminal, right? He makes amends in the end and suffers for it, but I guess I have to thank Billie Joe Armstrong and Charles Dickens for that one. Two of my all-time favs.

Novel number two? Well, the credit for that one kind of goes to Edgar Allan Poe. It was the (possibly) incestuous twins of The House of Usher that spawned that naughty little novel. The House on Bittersweet Trail, for which the novel is named, even falls in the end like Usher's abode. I'm glad to credit Poe with this idea, though, as many who were at my reading at WestConn probably assumed I was some kind of psycho perve. Nope. Sorry. Poe had twins doing the nasty almost 200 years ago. I was just inspired by them. The rest of the story did come from my own life, traumatic childhood moments and such, but mostly it was Poe's fault. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!

As for the novel I'm currently working on, the idea really spawned from a combination of my conversion to Christianity and writing the blog post about it. When I wrote that post, I quoted the poem about hope by Emily Dickinson. Well, thinking about her made me think of another poem she wrote, a poem about losing those close to you that starts, "My life closed twice before its close" and ends "Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need of hell." So the novel All We Know of Heaven was born. It follows a young lady through two near-death experiences, but also the two deaths of loved ones--the true meaning of the poem. In the end, a young man she fancies helps her to find God with many of my own personal experiences finding Him woven into the end of the book. Thank you Emily Dickinson.

So, if you're keeping score, which I wasn't until just now, I got my ideas from combining the classic literature I studied and now teach with my own person issues and interests. Every time, same combination. How boring. But if I weren't paying attention, and looking for a story, I wouldn't have found them in those pages, on that CD, or in my life. So perhaps I am always looking. Dreams. Daydreams. Television. Books. Conversations.

I guess I'm more pretentious and writery than I thought.

Basket Case by Green Day

Music video inspired by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 

Prom Dresses and Menstrual Cycles

All We Know of Heaven, A Wordle by www.wordle.net

We've all been there. You're taking on your first novel on your own since graduating from an MFA program where professional writers served as mentors helping you complete two novels. So what do you do? Run for the comfort a a familiar voice or style of character. No, you get a sex change.

In writing the first draft for my latest novel "All We Know of Heaven," which I completed in a record fifteen days, I chose to write from the point-of-view of a female protagonist, a seventeen year-old girl named Tia. My former students know this isn't much of a stretch for me. I mean, as the adviser of a high school newspaper and yearbook, there's no demographic I've spent more time with in the past two years than teenage girls.

Why, you ask, did I attempt to narrate from a female's perspective? Well, simply put, that's the story that came to me. I wasn't trying to stretch my horizons or anything like that. It wasn't an experiment in narrative technique or breaking out of my past habits. I simply became obsessed with the story of a girl and her struggles, so I wrote it.

I may be wrong, but I think Tia sounds like a girl. In fact, she probably sounds more like a girl than some of my past characters sounded like boys. Actually, some of my old characters have been criticized as whiny or overly sensitive. Now, with Tia, I don't think that criticism will come. Which says more about gender stereotypes than it does my narration. Perhaps I've always been writing like a girl.

Which brings up an interesting question. What's the difference? The only time I felt uncomfortable and actually consulted a real, live teenage girl (thanks Taylor!) was navigating the equally complex world of prom dresses and menstrual cycles.

When I really think about it, there's one thing I've learned about teenage girls--they are all supremely insecure...and they all find completely different ways to try and compensate for it.

But isn't that the same about teenage boys? And when you get down to it, that's pretty much true about adults, too. What became the essence of capturing a teenage girl was really pinpointing Tia's insecurities and developing how she compensates for them. When you're really afraid of losing those close to you, how do you best prevent being crippled by that fear? If you're insecure about your own sanity, how do make sure everyone knows you're sane?

I think this is the psychological drama at the heart of every great piece of writing. What are our characters' hangups that they let screw up their entire lives, and how do they come to terms with them to live relatively normal lives in the end? With that as the basic question, there doesn't seem to be much difference between a male protagonist and a female one. We're all whack.

Besides proms and periods, there doesn't seem to be much difference.

 

Grow a pair!

Jesus Freak

Yesterday morning I received God's grace publicly and, as Pastor John put it, chose the story by which I will live. I had read a great deal about baptism and, of course, was wondering if I would "feel different" after the ceremony was complete. However, just a couple of days before, a colleague of mine--a wise English teacher with a great soul for compassion--told me baptism was a lot like marriage or divorce. All three are just the making public of something, a transition, that has already occurred. I had already made the choice, and God had already shed his grace on me. If it weren't so, I wouldn't have been there in the first place.

What led me to this great change in course, to being saved, was God's work and stemmed from several events--most deeply personal--spurned on by a couple of heaven-sent angels. I may never share the entire story publicly, though you'll probably see glimpses of it in fictions I create for as long as God grants me the creative spirit to keep creating them. But the angels will always be with me, no matter where they move to or, more accurately, where ever God sends them to do good work.

The most remarkable thing about me, a devout atheist, finding God--about a man who once read Anton LeVay and cheered on Bill Maher's rants against Christianity turning coat and taking on the armor of Christ in the battle against Satan, about a devout fan of Marilyn Manson becoming a devout follower of the Christ Jesus--was also finding out just how wrong I was about Christianity. Actually, I would never say I "found God." To find God would imply I was looking for him. The reality was He was searching for me, trying to find a way into my heart. Part of what made me such a good atheist was my ability to hide.

While you can probably imagine what my miscalculations about Christ were, since many of you--even those of you who are believers--currently hold these beliefs, I won't recount them all here. I want to focus on what I have learned Christianity is, what it truly means to be a Disciple of Christ.

I found, quite surprisingly, that I did not have to throw out any of my professed beliefs to also believe in God. I simply had to start truly believing them and realizing that they were justified by God and Jesus and, therefore, playing lip-service to them alone would no longer do. The best way I can completely describe this is through the first piece of scripture that struck me as quotable, a passage which has become my mantra.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love; And the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13 NIV)

I learned that love is the fulfillment of the law and that love thy neighbor as thyself is the greatest of The Father's Commandments. All I thought about sin and guilt and having to be perfect to be Christian was fallacy. Christians realize we're all sinners. In the end, coincidentally, the man who imagined there's no religion, also had Christianity down cold. "All you need is love. Love is all you need." Now, it's not that simple, of course, nothing is, but it's a great place to start.

In fact, the biggest surprise about studying scripture and Christianity and going to church every Sunday was that, at least in the research I was doing and at the church I was attending (a church that sanctifies gay marriage and seems more leftist than the Democratic National Convention), was the absence of Satan. The media and historians tell us that church is all about fire and brimstone, warning us to conform or be sent to Hell, yet when I began attending church, I was shocked to see the services completely devoid of Satan. On my first day of church as a Christian, I assumed I wasn't hearing the words "Satan" and "Hell" for fear of their power. By my baptism, however, I was already fully aware that those words weren't being spoken not because of their power, but because they were powerless in the house of God--evil rendered negligible by the awe-inspiring love of God.

This love of God, along with the sheer bliss and utter peace His love was able to bring to my soul, was key to my conversion. I saw no fear of Hell or the punishment of God in any of it; in fact, trying to live life God's perfect way rather than my own flawed way was a reward in itself, not something to be feared or cause guilt. The term "God-fearing" is probably the most misunderstood term by non-Christians. I chose a Christian life not because I feared the wrath of God, but because I felt a love so strong that I feared facing life without it.

Now, the media has done a great job of portraying Christians in a hateful light. Sure, there are fringe members of Jesus' church that do a great job of feeding that image, but what I've seen of Christianity, and what I've felt of Christ's love, has been nothing like the media image I had bought into. It was, also ironically, Bill Maher who said that Jesus needs less fans and more followers. Living Jesus' way means not judging anyone, loving everyone, and being held accountable to that standard. Hearing about a website called godhatesfags.com alone is enough to make me pray for their souls, not the souls of homosexuals, the souls of those who practice hatred and erroneously attempt to use God's Word, found in the old, pre-Jesus covenant, to justify their hatred. This is not love.

Bottom line: God doesn't hate. Any time the Bible is being cited to support a claim of hatred, you can dismiss the claim altogether. God's name and God's Word can only be used to support claims of love.  Judging others only serves to prove our own laziness, for it takes a concerted effort to understand them. And sloth is, after all, one of the seven deadly sins. Practicing slothful judgment is not love. The Bible is a story, after all, and it's moral is love.

So now I come to the atheist's favorite target of Christianity--faith. How can you simply believe something of which you have no proof? Without going into detail, I can honestly say I believe I have, in fact, seen proof of God moving in our secular world. The more open I become to it, the more I see it. Once you've let God into your heart and soul, it's hard to doubt Him. The second a doubt creeps in, He finds a way to show you exactly where He is and how He's working.

Ever just look at the clouds? I mean, really look at them. I'll just leave it like that. He's everywhere if you choose to look. Just try this--eliminate the concept of coincidence from your life for just a day. Imagine, if you have to, that everything that happens is scripted. And once you embrace that concept, ask yourself "why?" with each thing that happens, with each person that has entered your life.  This is a truly intellectual endeavor. You'll be analyzing your entire life as if it were a classic work of fiction, trying to discern the author's intentions in creating his characters and his plots. The author, however, is God, and when you can figure out, intellectually, what the grandest of authors' intentions are, it's a moment of insight that cannot be matched by any other intellectual pursuit. That's faith.

Furthermore, faith doesn't only mean blind belief. It also means trust. And once you put faith in God and Jesus--not just belief but trust--many of the things that plague your daily life start to dissipate like the clouds after a storm. I used to be the worst of worry-warts. It was brutal. Social gatherings, safety of friends, family, and students--all a merciless quagmire of fear. Through prayer and true faith, I've come so far. My daily life is nearly free of this paranoia, this insane desire to control the uncontrollable. Let go and let God, they say, and boy are they brilliant. Whatever happens, I know God is in my corner, and even when the worst of times come, there is so much to be thankful for, which leads to the third component--hope.

Emily Dickinson found, I think, the perfect way to show us the connection between faith and hope:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

We don't consciously ask for hope; it's just there. God-given hope through the faith we have that things will be better sustains us. We all have it if we would only admit it. Sometimes the world seems hopeless, but we keep on going, and we have God to thank for that.

We can also have hope that the world can be great, absolutely divine. Once I felt the Holy Spirit and saw It at work in my life, once I had that faith, my life became about putting myself in position to feel it again and again. I had hope. At one point in my life I would ask "How can anyone want to spend Sunday in a boring, stuffy church." Now I wonder how anyone wouldn't want to be part of something so breathtaking. Every Sunday I see humanity at its best, if for only an hour. Christianity can make this a better world, if only we could replicate that one hour on Sunday every hour of our lives. If only we all lived like Jesus every day, if only we tried to be the man or woman He wants us to be, he knows we can be, every day. God and Jesus have faith in us and hope for us. If only we returned the favor.

In the end, or the beginning I suppose I should say, I find that all that held me back, all my depression, all my fear, all my anger, all my hatred, everything that made daily life uncomfortable, unhappy, and sometimes unbearable, wasn't a result of chemicals in my brain; it was the absence of God in my heart.

Faith brings us alive, in tune with things we used to ignore. There are things in this world you just can't see, you can only feel. The greatest literary minds have agreed on this throughout time. There are more things in heaven and on Earth than we dream of in any of our philosophies--logic can't explain it all. Somehow we all think that to believe instead of beg for proof, to simply wonder instead of looking for evidence, makes us somehow less intelligent, less wise. It's hard to imagine why we fear to speak the words that most confirm our own wisdom--"I don't know."

Furthermore, hope gives us reason to live. If we truly thought life was hopeless, we would just curl up in the fetal position and starve to death waiting for our souls to be fed. We all have hope, but we could all use more. He gives us that hope. "You only live once" has become a slogan for young people to do crazy things in the name of carpe diem. However, this life is temporal. God has promised us eternal life through belief in Christ. What more hope can you ask for. A daily, on-going relationship with God through the generosity and sacrifice of Jesus has given me all the hope I need.

And most importantly, there's love, the true elixir of life. Bathe in love. Eat, drink, and breathe love. Pour love out upon everyone and you shall receive it back ten fold. God loves us all. I can feel it each time I pray. I can feel it each time I love others. I can feel it each time I am able to see his intentions while writing my story. He crafts my life like an author, a true labor of love, and the love He has given me has given me faith in him, which in turn gives me immeasurable hope. It all just fits.

I used to look at people smiling on Facebook, those with more money, bigger houses, and better cars--cars that actually run--and wonder how they did it. How did they achieve this mysterious thing they call happiness? I've found that happiness comes from redefining what makes you happy. Living life God's way, not mine, trusting in God's plan, not mine, and tapping into God's unlimited love, not relying simply on my own human limitations for the emotion, have changed everything.

How will it turn out? I don't know. At least not how it will turn out on Earth. I've just begun this wonderful journey and have only just started to learn. But that's the beauty of it. God does. So loving Him, having faith in Him, and having hope will get me there--to the promised land. This change has meant I can know at least that. In the end, there's a place for me in His kingdom, no matter what, because Jesus died on the cross for me. For all my flaws, He still made the ultimate sacrifice for me. And that has made all the difference.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16 NIV)

"Jesus Freak" performed by Newsboys