Avuncular

My sister never wanted kids. Ever. Growing up, the mere idea of children gave her cause to grab at her stomach or guts (or lower) as though she'd recently dined at the restaurant in Alien and expected birth or even conception to feel much the same. Even though John Hurt's character had a chest-burster, the imagery was roughly the same in her mind. I suppose if I gave it more thought, it'd probably be the same for me, too, though Teeth gave me as much vaginal imagery as I ever wanted to contemplate.

"No," she'd said to our parents about a child rearing future. Flatly. Emotionless. Certain. Any time the topic was brought up again, the reply came with even greater certainty. By the time I'd come out as gay, I always found it odd that Mom believed it was still more likely that I'd give her children than my sister. When Nicole married her husband, Mike, the topic arrived once more and was just as quickly dismissed. Mom and Dad grew content with the idea they'd not have grandchildren. I never had any thoughts of having my own, nor ever finding children at my sister's home.

We'd have puppies, instead.

Thus, I hope it can be understood the peculiar mind-twisting that began when Nicole spontaneously started talking about kids. It began after Mike's brother had his kid. Clair. I'm not certain I can give this how-is-she-related-to-me child's name the emphasis that her name is given verbally. Italics? Clair. Nope. Her name is uttered as though Jehovah had been planning to name his chief angel Clair, but was disappointed at making a boy angel instead. She's doted upon, and talked about constantly. Her name finds its way into every conversation, completely regardless of just how irrelevant her presence in the interaction is.

"How is the new game?"
"Great. Third weapon is , and you can fly."
"Oh. I don't think Clair would like that game."

There is silence. We all know Clair is three. There is blinking, confusion. We want to talk about the game again. But, we cannot. Clair is present, now... even though she's miles away. For a brief moment, we hate Clair. We realize it isn't her fault. We know it is the grandfather, the mother, the father. We know it is due to their peculiar need to insert Clair into everything that we find her somehow invasive--a pushy little prom queen who cannot understand that the world doesn't revolve around her, but we cannot quite find a way to prove her prim gown, golden crown, and glory-aura are not the cosmological center because everyone else seems to think we're the ones who are wrong.

When the Clair-obsessed had departed after one such conversation diversion, Nicole once turned to me, rolling her eyes in the same way that I was rolling mine. "It won't be the same way with me," she said. I nodded, agreeing, though I couldn't quite wrap my head around her meaning. How could it be the same, anyway? Then she told me of her hopeful plans to adopt. She and Mike had been talking about it for a while--almost immediately after Clair was born and Nicole suddenly felt a strange maternal feeling that she'd either never before possessed or had carefully suppressed until that moment when it suddenly fought to explode out of her chest. It was apparently as surprising as Hurt's alien, but far less devastating. "The process is long, hard. Who knows what'll actually come of it, but we're gonna try." I nodded, congratulated her, but was left unsure what to feel, myself. I knew of the idea of the maternal feeling. I'd heard of paternal feelings, too, though that's usually stuffed up in the closet so motherly moments have their spotlight. I suspected there wasn't even a word for the uncle version.

Adoption proved to be more than just long and hard, but also eventfully fruitless--at least at the time of this writing. Money, waiting time, and interviews were all rough obstacles, but the flat black-and-white Rejected permitted no questions. It was flat. Emotionless. Certain.

Appeals were possible, but looking at Nicole gave me the impression of a couple who had been trying to conceive, only to find that there are few options for removing stains after a late-stage miscarriage. I imagined she was thinking how much more money and time could they invest into something with a much larger level of uncertainty than they'd expected. I didn't ask if she was thinking that. I didn't ask if she even felt she had anything in relation to that hypothetical couple. She didn't offer the thoughts, either, and much like other elephant-in-the-room topics that go ignored long enough... it seemed to grow invisible, hide, until it'd been out of sight for so long that I'd thought it had simply moved on.

I no longer wondered what word might exist for an uncle who felt "maternal." I no longer hypothesized what kind of 'funny uncle' I would be at family gatherings with my sister, her husband, their child, and myself with my partner.

Until now, when I see a strange picture on my sister's Facebook status. "I was bored," her status claims, and thus she went to an image morphing site that would blend her face with her husband, graphically calculate the likely countenance that their six-year old girl would have. I didn't ask if she was thinking of 'trying.' She didn't offer her thoughts on it, either. But, looking at the picture suddenly sparked something different. It made me reflect on those doting crazies, placing Clair's name on imaginary altars. I'm not sure I buy into it, yet, but I'm sure it is connected to those maternal and paternal feelings. All I knew is that looking at that strange, pudgy cheeked theoretical blend of my sister and her husband seemed like more than just looking at a graphic calculation. Different.

I looked it up. Avuncular. "In the manner of being an uncle." Oddly enough, the etymology of the word "uncle," itself, originally referred to the mother's brother. The 'maternal uncle.' It's strange.

Funny Thing About that Consumerism...

I'm not the most avid television-watcher in the world, and definitely ignore most commercials when they come up. I'm not rolling in a ton of money and pretty much abhor reviews--since the opinions expressed in them never seem to reflect my own experiences, so it isn't like I'm going to be purchasing anything from a commercial, anyway. Thus, I'm ignorant to many of the shows and advertisements that are out in the world of television at the moment. I can't say that I'm fortunate that I have a number of friends who constantly send me links to Youtubes and 4Chans--definitely leaning to the unfortunate side on the latter example--but, periodically, I see something that strikes me in such a way that I realize what I'm missing.

Today, it came from a link to a series of utterly bizarre commercials from Old Spice Bodywash. I remember, clearly, what Old Spice was. It came in a really strange, opalescent or porcelain bottle with a plastic cork. Removing the cork caused insanely powerful scents to attack olfactory glands of anyone nearby. Dogs would whimper. Then quickly die. They were the fortunate ones. The first time I opened the bottle of Old Spice--I would suspect it was my father's, grandfather's, or someone in that lineage, though I cannot remember with any certainty--I dropped the bottle from shock of the potent aroma. In my mind, the liquid splashed over me. A vicious and corrupted water elemental, seeking vengeance for its long years of entrapment. Realistically, the small hole is only three or four millimeters wide, so no more than a tiny stream and a few more drops would have splashed out on my clothes. Still--it was far too much. I suspect I cried, though anything after the attack of the Old Spice elemental has long since become a blur.

What I can recall, after, is wondering why the scent was so intensive, but usually less damaging when it was simply worn on my grandfather and, later, my father. I wondered, also, why old men wore it. Why only men, and why only old ones? My father never used to wear it, but then he'd suddenly started. Clearly, there was a specific age when you started.

I did not want to reach that age. (And still do not.)

So, today, when I saw this commercial link for a bodywash based on Old Spice, I had to wonder: why in the hell would I want that? Of course, the link was not sent to me out of suggested body care--at least I hope. The commercials star highly characterized men. Strong, muscled, dominant, intelligent, capable, sexualized. These are the men all men want to be, the men that women want to be with--well, 90% of them, and 10% of the guys, anyway, if we're to trust going statistics. (I tend to be more generous with 15%, calculating for those who aren't ready to face it, or the bisexuals who find more happiness with more traditional relationships--but that's beside the point.) These god-men present their product in utterly unbelievable contexts, filled to the brim (and beyond) with exaggeration: arms with the bodywash grow in bulk, color, and musculature, while the sad arms with alternative substances wither to bone and dust; craftsmen and seducers break the boundaries of physics and gains supernatural powers--both physical and mental--and become the sheer idol of Adonis-masculinity. The commercials are speaking clearly. They say, "This product will give you superhuman abilities and make you everything you've always wanted to be. Well... not really. Obviously we're lying, but we're pretty damned funny, right? Give us a shot!"

This is the thing that I realize that I'm missing out on. Not the commercial or the bit of humor, of course, but the realization that these commercials are the flash fiction of the video medium. Or whatever the non-fiction form of flash is. Someone wrote these little flash TV-moments, these tiny, quick blurbs cast out among larger works, and they have intent. Perhaps they're educational, enlightening, eye-opening, entertaining, or simply asking for the rest of the world to pay attention to them for just a split second--or closer to thirty. I'm not suggesting they were born of the same creative impetus as writing in other mediums. I'm certain a network executive approached an advertising agency and said, "Give us a commercial for this," and people went to work--but it would be callous of me not to give credit to the fact that, paid and prompted or not, they came up with a brilliant bit of work.

The first commercial gave me a chuckle and prompted me to look at another, which gave me another chuckle and an additional prompt. The collection of nine commercials--three that were not terribly amusing or interesting, but six that got full laughs from me--were each different but still possessing the same kind of tone and humor. It gave the feel of reading a collection of a handful of flash pieces from a humor writer. It made me wonder if I should give other commercials and shows a little more credit, a little more patience. It also made me think that I'd give the bodywash a shot. I don't currently have a brand I am religiously connected to, and they did some work, made me laugh, so why not? Am I respecting the work of a writer? Am I buying into the commercialism of our world? I'm not really sure.

Of course, I could just be an old man, now.

Finding the Lost

Today has consisted of hanging about the house while Adam plays a collection of PS3 games--the most time spent on a tactical warfare game involving scouts, shocktroopers, engineers, snipers, two empires fighting over resources and a small country caught up in the battles, and lead by a biology student who became a tank operator in order to defend his little country. I grew up on Final Fantasy Tactics, where my scouts were thieves, my shocktroopers were monks, engineers were priests, (and snipers were either archers or engineers depending on how you look at them). Watching him play through the game--listening to the story, grimacing at the near-death his favorite sniper just felt, and finding myself curious about what will take place in the next story chapter--gave me the inklings to pull out the DS version of Tactics. (It isn't anything near the story and quality of the original game, mind you, but my experience teaches me that questioning inklings only brings pain.)

That thought turned into an hour of searching through my less-organized-than-I-thought desk, looking for the Nintendo DS that I haven't had any real reason to look for in a good while. Still, I can specifically remember placing it in the little cubby of my desk after removing it from my black back that now contains too many D&D books for my shoulder to happilly tote on Monday nights. I can recall the texture of the raised rectangles on the top, the faux-leather interior of the bag on the back of my hand. I still have the tiny scrape between my index and middle fingers' fist-knuckles where the poorly engineered keyboard tray bit into me as I absentmindedly put the DS into the aforementioned cubby. With such vivid detail still fresh in my mind, despite having no real recollection of exactly how long ago it was that I put the system there, how is it that I'm wrong? Why, when I returned to the cubby, avoiding the tray's little tooth, did I not find the DS? Logic should say that I moved it. No one else is to blame, both because there'd be no other person who would care to use my DS nor look in a cubby of a desk to begin with. I've had no reason to get it or go there either, though.

How many other things can I think of that have vanished in similar ways? I can think of three. First, an unbelievably silly toy that I had as a child. I cannot even say for certain what it was, only that I remember it was a strange noise-making 'thing' that was an additional part to some other toy--an action figure or something like that. I remember I liked the wide array of noises it would make. It was tombstone-shaped. It had buttons--probably eight or ten, symmetrical. I put it in the top junk drawer of my bedroom in my childhood house, a room that is now ten feet from the bedroom I now call my own, though the broken dresser is long gone. (Of the five drawers, the bottom two were destroyed long before I used the furnishing, so the top two were just for various junk, the 'middle' contained 48 VHS tapes that had all but three episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.) I remember looking for that strange little noise-making toy probably more than twenty times from the moment I realized it was gone until I finally moved out of the room. I'm sure I gave a final look that last night at nineteen, too. The second was a strange, elastic, interlocking-loop belt that was definitely my mother's (or at the very least designed for a woman). I was fascinated by the belt, though, for its unique buckle. My own belts were the exact same that you'd find in any men's department: a loop, stick the belt through, put the single weirdly-bent metal bar through, and it'll fit into the little lip of the buckle. This one, though, looked ornate--at least to a thirteen-year-old. Two curving gold-and-silver U-shaped loops that required a little trick of your wrist to get them to link together. When done properly, they turned into a strange kind of open-centered shield. It was evidence of the Arcane. Mysterious forces had to be at work behind such a strange piece of clothing. I took it from my mom's room, modeled it in front of the mirror. I didn't care about the feminine qualities it had--perhaps already subconsciously aware that I would walk a different path from Dad's version of masculinity, but more likely attracted to how perfectly it'd fit some sort of wizardly robe (which I did not own, but committed to making some day so it'd go along with my new treasure). I looped it carefully through a ring in my closet, linking the loops so they would show prominently whenever I opened the door. One day, it was just gone. I never saw it again, so I have concluded my mom didn't find and retrieve it. My imagination invented reasons why it'd gone. Accepting them, I was mixed with happy sorrow as I had lost a magic item but could certainly believe it had been magic. Why else would someone magick it away from me, but to obtain its power? The last was my little spark of faith in something far greater than myself. I say that I was five, but perhaps I was a little older--whatever the absolute youngest I could have been to be permitted to go for a walk by myself into the nearby woods in the trailor court, my first home. [Read: trailor court or the woods as my first home, as I'm not sure I can say 100% which I really mean.] I felt something in those woods. A spirit? An intelligence? A power? I was too young to know what to call it, but I was also far too young to deny what I experienced by applying logic and rational thought. There'd been what my memory calls a wolf. It'd been close, and it'd talked to me. I'd felt it, and never before and never since have I felt so secure in my knowledge of how the world... how the whole universe worked. Much of my life, since, has been a struggle to find that sort of security in my faith... knowledge... place in the world.

All I know for certain, is that I'd gladly give up ever finding where I put that freaking Nintendo DS if it meant increasing my chances of finding that five-year-old wisdom again.

Air & Water

He breathed inward sharply. His throat seemed surprised by the ability, convulsing as the air rushed inwards while his lips shuttered open and closed. A gasping shudder. His lungs ached as air expanded them, sharp pains spreading over the whole of his chest and stomach from an age without breathing. He’d no time to think how long ago the wave had knocked him from the sailboat. Almost immediately, the air was forced out again as he hacked and coughed. The force ejected water from his mouth and lungs though made it a difficult struggle to draw in a second breath. Water already streamed down his disheveled dirty-blonde hair and into his eyes. He kept them closed, a ward against the salt already stinging his face.

His lethargic legs did their best to whip forward to keep him on the surface, though the waves of the ocean made it a near impossible task. His arms already had become so numb that he could do little more than flail one about while he tried to brush water from his face and hold his nose to prevent any more splashing water from finding a home in his nostrils.

With the last cough, his lungs seemed clear, though another wave struck him. With a sudden swell, the sounds of the ocean vanished and his understanding of "up" was gone. Empty of air, his lungs began to burn knowing only the remnants of salt. His chest became tighter still, demanding his throat to open and air to flow within. His chest lurched. His stomach joined the motion. His nostrils swallowed water, hoping it was air, and his body hacked again, trying to force the water out but having no air to do so. No air meant no buoyancy. Unable to right himself meant he could not kick his dead legs and find the surface again. He winced as he forced his eyes to open, flooding burning salt back into his stinging eyes. A light! He kicked, and the light grew brighter... but there was no air. His stung eyes widened further and his chest froze. His stomach grew cold. He stopped kicking and he could only remember that she’d told him not to sail alone. “It’ll be too windy out.”

If I Were...

If I were a million dollars, I'd be afraid. Very afraid, and especially of me. Not the me who was a million dollars, no, but the me who is writing this. We can forget, sometimes, that there's someone behind these words--expressing something he hopes is deep, something strong, clear, vibrant, even just pretty... sometimes something that he doesn't even know, but is just stumbling over the smallest fragment of realization.

It'll be so small, too. An idea that rests on the tip of he tongue of a mayfly that's drifted to land on the tip of the tongue of an open-mouthed alzheimer patient who isn't sure if the pressure on his chest is cardiac arythmia or connected to the strange red-headed girl that the sexy nurse helps up onto his bed every Sunday afternoon at one. My, that's a long sentence--lovely?--but it won't by me dinner and certainly won't pay the rent. None of my words will, but that's probably why I'm glad I'm not a million dollars. I'd spend myself. Each word would have value and each letter a portion of it.

I.

Right there! That tiny little letter is a word, and it means something. Put a value to it, though. I. Is it worth ten bucks? Out of a million? I'd hope it was worth more. Doesn't "I" mean all of me? Shouldn't that one word mean everything, then? What if I wanted to write something fancy? Like... Mississippi? That's four of them, there. Four million dollars of me, and that's not even counting all the other letters. But, what does Mississippi mean to me? Is it worth four of me? If I can't express what I mean with a four-million-and-some-change dollar word, how can I hope to do it with anything else? But, that's why I'm glad I'm not a million dollars. My words and letters aren't worth much all on their own, so I can toss them around as much as I want until they earn their keep. I can litter them along the streets like too many dust bunnies under my kitchen table, or plot them out carefully like hobos who know the best places to catch an hour or two of sleep without being disturbed by the local cops. Hell, I can even try to arrange them into something clever about a million bucks and how as much as I'd love to have it, it'd make everything a good deal rougher to give any meaning.

No, I'll stay a dusty hobo dreaming about mayflies and elderly redheads who can't help but remember being set down on the bed of someone she remembers loving once a long time ago. That'll last.

An Experiment?

A number of years ago, I was leading a writing workshop for a number of undergraduates and a couple out-of-state friends who participated through online comments. Each week, we'd use a prompt to throw together a bit of flash or a larger piece for those who were going to be workshopped. Coming up with the prompts turned just as difficult as coming up with the writing, I'll say! I decided to pull out the list this week to write up some flash for our fiction workshop at the university and opted to make my life a little more difficult. Here's the experiment:

Randomly select a flash prompt, then randomly select a decently well-known friend from Facebook (or other similar online networking site). The selected person must star in the flash, and keep to the simple prompt as closely as possible. No changing because randomness makes it "tough."

Typically, I do not write under rules. I like a more free-flowing approach. That, however, threatens to make me write the same. No growth in style. No reason to try something new. Ask any good BDSM crew--some restrictions can really bring out the creativity!

But, when I pulled up "Trauma at the Bar," and Clint's name, I wondered if maybe my 'No changing' rule was being too restrictive. A number of justifications popped in my head. I don't know Clint super well yet. Who am I to write about bar-going? Do Mormons even go to bars!? But, like a good workshop-leader, I didn't take any excuses--even from myself.

The result has Clint deciding never to eat or drink anything that he has not personally unsealed himself... but it made for some lively conversation, at least.

Sorry, Clint! I love you, purely platonically. Promise.

Starting Anew

It's been suggested among a number of the MFA cohort--a new term that's been used thirty-some times in the last month, so I suppose I may as well take it up as well--that many of us get involved in some blogging. If for no other reason than to ensure we're all writing--something, anything. While I've got my other writing blogs which I felt I had been updating religiously, I realized after taking a quick look at the previous blogs that the aforementioned "religion" is clearly one that I've decided is more work than entertaining. Rather than try to revive a dust-covered, gasping blog from however many years ago, I've opted to perform a... New Mid-February Eve's resolution. (That can exist, right?)

Writing, posts, flash, thoughts, youtube clips, and interactions from the university shall abound. Let's see what kind of horrible journey this turns out to be.