Author: orrynemrys

Today… has been rough. It’s been 13 years since my father passed away. It actually almost slipped right past me. It’s typically pretty easy to remember, given proximity to Valentine’s Day… but this year’s Valentine’s festivities involve cleaning and making deliveries. Not ideal for marking the occasion.

I have to admit… I’m feeling pretty helpless lately. Without going into details, we’re dealing with a level of financial ruin that we simply didn’t anticipate. We thought we had this shit under control – we had every reason to be confident about it, despite the challenges presented by health issues and unemployment – but some things just spiral out of your control. I’m not terribly depressed – so many people are in much worse situations! – but it’s demotivating.

Jonikka and I spent the past seven days working tirelessly on deep cleaning the house. Niera helped us replace our broken steam cleaner, so the carpets are starting to look really nice, but the house is a shambles with bedrooms all switched about and furniture piled against walls in different rooms. And we had to wait for cash to buy new carpet shampoo – which we now have – but the weekend is here and we need to get some deliveries in to try to make some money, and we can’t recover our living space until we have time to finish the carpet…

And now, of course, the meteorological shift into single-digit temps has put Jonikka into a world of pain and chronic exhaustion.

It’s little things. The bank account it dry. My wife can’t function. I don’t have money for meds or household supplies. I can’t set up my computer desk and mixing console to work on podcasts. Or record music, and I have a few songs that are absolutely beating at the inside of my head trying to get out. I have games to run – and I will – but I’m having a hard time getting excited about it.

My dad’s position on hardship was always pretty practical. One thing at a time. Like me, he had a hard time sacrificing comforts for expediency, but he was quick to commit to a change if it solved a major problem. I’ve done quite a bit of that over the past several months… I know that there’s more I could sacrifice. But you have to measure living against quality of life for as long as you are able.

As Maslow’s Bitch, I’m not always able… so I hang on to what I can.

I was planning to start school next week. Online. Getting my MBA. I may have to put it off until next term. I thought we’d be in a better place by the time this term started. It’s really important that I can focus on the work.

Damn.

I was going to write about my new songs and how excited I am to get some recording done. I’ve already sent one composition to my rhythm section to work on their parts. “Nobody’s Home.” Basically, my pandemic song. Really moody, bluesy stuff. I laid down a few layers of guitar and strings, as well as some scratch vocal parts. Brendon and Drew are gonna get the bass and drum sections figured out, then I’ll see if my friend Anne can layer in some piano work. Then on to Bonnie to work on vocals. Very cool piece. Can’t wait to share it.

Still miss you, Dad.

My oldest friend passed away this weekend. He was all of 16 days younger than me, and dear in a way that boggles the mind of anyone who knew him.

I met Mike when we were in 5th grade. It was a tumultuous time in my life; my parents were teetering on the edge of divorce, we’d been dragged across state over Christmas break to a new home in a new town, and I had the misfortune of being a 10-year-old who really didn’t know how to communicate with kids my own age. For whatever reason, Mike just didn’t care about that last point.

He lived up the street and around the corner, and we had almost nothing in common. I loved reading and music; he preferred Sega and stalking neighborhood kids with toy guns. But this was also the year I got my own D&D books, so it wasn’t long before we found some common ground exploring dungeons and fighting monsters in my dad’s garage.

I admit we still didn’t have much in common by the end of my 8th-grade year, at which point my family relocated again. Little did I know that we’d run into each other nearly two years later in the halls of Dodge City High. He’d gotten a tad bit taller. Like, a foot or so. And I’d grown out my hair. But we still loved us some Dungeons & Dragons.

Mike always had a dark side. It turned out he’d moved out to Dodge to live with his grandparents, because his anger issues had boiled over and created an insurmountable rift with his stepmom. He always had a temper. When he joined the navy and disappeared for a few years, I remember hoping he had found some purpose that would give him peace, but fearing he’d find himself at the wrong end of too many fights.

Mike and I often hung out over the following years. He was part of our family – another son to my mom, another older brother to my brother. We had years of fun at the gaming table. When my ex-wife and I bought a house, he even rented the house next door. And later on, when I’d moved across state to start a new life in the wake of my divorce and he’d relocated to San Antonio, we eventually had the chance for regular gaming online.

Until, that is, he destroyed his laptop in a fit of rage when he couldn’t get the headphones to work right.

My friend Mike died of a heart attack. His second coronary in less than a year. He tried to reign it in, but his anger was always a bitter enemy, picking at his psyche like a fly that just won’d stop buzzing around your head. He was brilliant, though often brutish. He was electrically and mechanically inclined, always concocting ridiculous inventions and hyping up big plans for future innovations. But so many people knew him for his bad jokes and playfully mean streak. He was also a loyal friend, who fought his more selfish impulses to help my family out of a spot on more than one occasion.

Mike was kind of a jerk sometimes, but he was also a decent human being who truly deserved the peace and love he so often struggled to give himself. My wife and I loved him dearly, and we often concocted schemes to get him to move up and join us in Wichita. It never happened, but we loved to entertain the notion.

In the past year, we talked a lot. About life, health, family, dreams and ideals. He eventually replaced his computer and started gaming with us again, and I definitely wish we’d had more of that. He was a giant of a man with a heart that just couldn’t stay strong enough to support him; which seemed odd, given that it was so often strong enough to support me.

Mike was 44 years old, and he was my oldest friend.

At about 5:00 this morning, I picked up a young man named Edward and ubered him home. He was clearly in at least his mid-to-late twenties, but he was inordinately concerned about his parents’ opinion of him getting home so late. It was about a 15-minute drive, so we had a little time to talk.

Now I talk to all kinds of interesting people everyday. It’s my favorite part of driving for Uber and Lyft. Naturally, topics vary, and the quality of a conversation can range from the deeply philosophical to the irrefutably shallow. Sometimes I have a great deal to contribute, particularly when we touch upon a topic in which I have a great interest or personal experience; sometimes I have a passenger who wants to engage in religious or political discussions with a clear bias that would drive me nuts if I indulged. Not to mention possibly alienate an otherwise friendly enough client.

But upon occasion, a conversation ranges into more personal territory. I’ve actually had a conversation with a bartender who suggested that aspects of our job were very similar, and was quick to suggest that my psychology degree was hardly wasted on my current paradigm. Yet somehow, perhaps because of my own stressors in recent weeks, I was wholly unprepared for this morning’s conversation with Edward.

Edward needs help. It wasn’t lost on me that our destination was a very rich neighborhood and that I dropped him off at a very big house, but he was still a young man struggling to get his life in order in the face of addiction and parents he couldn’t communicate with. I got the strong impression that our conversation, such as it was, meant a great deal to him. I listened, which he doesn’t seem to get a lot. I didn’t judge, which he seemed to find a little confusing.

But most importantly, Edward talked about his addiction in very plain terms, and wanted help. My heart went out to him, and I felt woefully unprepared. I’m going to spend some time today looking for phone numbers or something I can offer people who need that kind of help. I advised him on what to look for, what kind of person to talk to, and he seemed genuinely invested in the idea… But I have no idea what will happen to Edward.

Ultimately, of course, it’s his life to live. Like many people from every walk of life, he struggles with depression, and he continuously turns back to drugs and alcohol to find solace. He’s surrounded by people who help support his habit, rather than provide any real friendship. I discussed the situation with him very frankly, and urged him to take action, but I have no choice now but to put him in my rearview mirror and hope he find some answers.

I like to think I’m a better person for it, but I dread the idea that I fail to make a difference, that I don’t try hard enough. That it’s somehow harder to reach a hand out to those in need when you bury yourself beneath your own struggles in life.

Next time, I hope I do better.

I watched the first half of The Magnificent Seven last night. The new one, with Denzel Washington and Christ Pratt. I’ve always had something of a paradoxical relationship with westerns… My dad was a big John Wayne fan, so I saw a lot of his movies as a kid, mostly in passing. Can’t say that they were ever that important to me, though one or two of them – particularly True Grit and Big Jake, for some reason – I caught enough times that I’d say I kinda enjoyed them. That being said, other than the occasional oddball like Support Your Local Gunfighter and The Outlaw Josey Wales, the genre largely failed to capture my imagination.

Until Young Guns, that is.

For me, this illustrates a generational issue that has always plagued my sensibilities. As most of my friends are aware, I’m something of a movie whore. I love movies, and I don’t apologize for it. It really isn’t popular to like films that are shallow or trendy, or huge departures from a beloved novel, or overhyped. I get it. As someone who can appreciate the deep and complex artistry of quality storytelling, the power of a compelling performance and a brilliantly framed scene, it seems a betrayal of good taste to similarly appreciate big budget special effect movies and unoriginal narrative concepts. As someone who thoroughly enjoyed films like Magnolia and American Beauty, and unapologetically dug the Michael Bay Transformers flicks despite their fast and loose treatment of a childhood passion – who enjoyed pretty much everything from M. Night Shyamalan including The Last Airbender – how can I ever convince anyone that I have any semblance of taste?

So here’s the thing. I enjoy entertainment. I enjoy an immersive experience. The artistry is never lost on me… I can forgive a lot of middling storytelling for some transcendent cinematography, beautifully crafted visuals, and an amazing score. I can forgive more than a few plot holes if the pacing is good and the acting is superb. I prefer a story that makes me think or keeps me guessing, but I’m no less capable of enjoying a movie that requires me to put logic aside and just soak it in. I don’t think this actually compromises my ability to recognize flaws in the process, but I don’t let them disrupt my enjoyment of an otherwise immersive product. And I try not to get hung up on the things that would otherwise take me out of it.

But as it turns out, I still have my standards.

I grew up in the Star Wars era. Many film aficionados recognize three very poignant milestones in modern filmmaking that utterly transformed our expectations. Lucas’s epic space opera was the first of these. Prior to Star Wars, the look and feel of science fiction tended toward a less comprehensive landscape in terms of visual effects, pacing and story – even acting. I was born in ’75, and from my earliest memories I always knew who Kirk and Spock were, but I don’t actually remember watching Star Trek as a kid. It’s the same way I knew Superman or Bugs Bunny. I remember my father getting me an Empire Strikes Back lunchbox for me my 1st-grade year – and I remember him telling me that I’d gone with he and my Aunt Jeannie to see the movie – but my first real memory of Star Wars was a year or so later when the original film came back to theaters while they were filming Jedi.

Then I saw The Wrath of Khan. As a 7-year-old, the intricacies of the tale were lost on me, though I remember my mom being excited about Ricardo Montalbán’s reprisal of his villainous heartthrob from TOS. And here’s where we get to the point. I was not yet a fan of anything in particular, except maybe dinosaurs and Darth Vader. When Star Wars hit the scene in ’77, every sci-fi filmmaker and more than a few producing material for television saw their simple tried-and-true formula handily evaporate in the wake of visual storytelling that truly transported the viewer into Lucas’s universe. Trippy effects like were prevalent in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey were no longer sufficient to impress viewers who had ridden in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon and felt the awesome power of the Death Star as it sucked them in. I think a lot of folks can agree that Gene Roddenbery and director Robert Wise might have done well to shelve Star Trek: The Motion Picture in ’79 and retool their vision to meet this new standard.

Star Wars similarly represented a shift in storytelling. Characters were interesting and excitable and moved with a sense of purpose. The genre (and I admit that I use the term fairly loosely here) had been dominated by ponderous exchanges and classic performance tropes that had endured throughout cinema since the 50s. We all laugh about Luke’s whininess now, but it was a surprisingly fresh presentation of character for the genre at the time. Also, the camera moved with a sense of cinematic purpose, framing everything from the flight from Mos Eisley to the Kenobi-Vader showdown with an intimacy and grandeur that was uncommon at the time and served to heighten the immersion of the experience.

The Star Trek movies I grew up with had, in many ways, learned their lesson and maneuvered into a more modern texture in visual effects and cinematography. Other science fiction and fantasy eventually caught up, as well, though genre movies were rarely provided the kind of budget that they needed to transcend some of those issues. Donner’s Superman movies demonstrated some creative effects that allowed a level of immersion, but still had some glaring issues. Spielberg asked us to follow him down the rabbit hole a hair with Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T., while Ridley Scott gave us a sobering experience with Alien that used the balance of what we could and couldn’t see to mix a bit of wonder with a dash or two of terror. The entire industry was undergoing a fascinating transformation that I could give two shits about… because I was, like. 6 years old.

What mattered to me was that I grew up in the post Star Wars era, so the look and feel of a thing mattered a great deal. When confronted with movies from yesteryear, I was bored and unimpressed. Original series Star Trek episodes confused me, as my Enterprise from the movies in the 80s felt so much more real and the characters felt like they were really interacting, not just posing and following a script. Roger Moore was my first James Bond, and westerns – as I may have intimated before – felt like stilted play-acting on painted sets.

Until Young Guns, that is.

In the late 80s, I discovered something that really surprised me. All the tropey little affectations that were classic cinematographics of the genre really spoke to me. The close up on a hand hovering near a gun, then the twitching mustache at the corner of his mouth. The way everyone in town held their breath as the tension mounted. When you took those things and gave them a modern look and feel that actually pulled you into the story, I was hooked. Young Guns and Young Guns II, The Quick and the Dead, Tombstone, Dances with Wolves and Wyatt Earp, Bad Girls and Unforgiven… I finally got it. The romanticism of the genre was finally accessible to me. No surprise, i guess, given how much the western genre informed Star Wars, Star Trek, and many other genre favorites. And in more recent years, remakes like 3:10 to Yuma and True Grit have reminded me so much of those early discoveries.

I’ve been sick, so I have to kinda pace myself lately, but I’m looking forward to finishing The Magnificent Seven.

Oh… and the other milestones I mentioned? There are two other easily recognizable incidents in modern filmmaking that have established a new standard – for better or for worse – and redefined our expectations. Most movies can easily be categorized by whether they came before or after… One of them was Jurassic Park.

The other was Avatar.

On a final note, I suppose I should admit that I love me some J.J. Abrams Star Trek. The new movies are beautiful and spectacular, and they captured a lot of what I have always loved about the genre and really celebrated the things that make Star Trek fun. Many fans are turned off by more than a few of Abrams’ choices, and I get that. I just don’t let it get in the way. The new movies bring a modern sensibility to the look and feel of Star Trek, something I have longed to see for a long time. For many, the focus on visual effects and the undeniable overuse of lens flares detracts from the experience, while the sublimation of classic social commentary elements and reimagining of characters puts people on edge. And I thought the alternate timeline thing was freakin’ brilliant, and while I didn’t feel that a new Khan movie was necessary, I loved every little homage to the original story and twist and turn that demonstrated how the timeline change had turned everything on its ear.

For me, reboots and reimagined ideas, new interpretations of beloved works… none of these bother me. My enjoyment of the original is not somehow poisoned by a new idea. I often find that I can love wildly different takes on an old favorite, and I expect everything to stand on its own merit. The Lord of the Rings is easily one of my earliest passions, and I was excited beyond measure when the first trailer for Fellowship hit the Internet… and when the elves showed up at Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers, I cheered Jackson’s pacing and innovation and appreciated how much more fun that movie was than the second book in the trilogy, which is famously a tough read. And though I’ve been known to complain at almost every line of dialogue in Attack of the Clones, I hold the Star Wars prequels dear for bringing a love of my treasured franchise to my oldest child, who was certainly not scarred by the antics of Mr. Binks.

And neither was I.

Since first learning that I was going to be a father, I’ve worried about many things. I’d never connected well with children and, as an intellectual, I was barely ever a child myself. Much had changed as I learned to communicate with and appreciate my daughter Niera, but she was 10 when we met. I had a powerful hand in the direction of her education and lifestyle as she bore down on her teenage years, and I am eternally proud of the young woman she has become. But I never knew her as a small child, and upon recognizing what the future held in the summer of 2008, I was nervous about the days ahead.

None of that really mattered after Gabriel was born. Life has a way of putting perspective on the things that really matter. Don’t get me wrong… I have friends who play with their children as if children themselves, and I have always envied their easy manner and the relationship that blossoms in its wake. But his education – understanding what I can do to help him learn and grow – has always remained at the forefront of my mind. My father had been far from perfect, and his involvement in my life at a young age was spotty at best… but I know that there were things he desperately wanted to impart to me as a child: a sense of loyalty and responsibility, a level of independence and self-reliance, and a toolkit for critical thinking.

About six years ago, I was listening to a gaming podcast featuring an interview with Meg Baker of Nightsky Games, an indie RPG publisher, who recounted her intention to homeschool her children after she and her own siblings had been similarly raised. Each of them had grown to be successful professionals, and she credited much of that success, and a penchant for following her dreams, to her education. She commented that just as children are reaching first grade, when their imaginations and personalities are bursting at the seams to help begin forging their true sense of self and identity, they are being piled into a public school system where they are told to conform, never question authority, sit down and shut up. I had already earned at least one degree in Psychology, and my critical instincts told me that I really needed to pay attention to this idea. After dealing with public school’s inability to adequately support my daughter’s needs in previous years, I was already disillusioned with the antiquated educational model that focused on test scores, funding requirements, internal politics, and idealized conformity.

My wife and I discussed the situation at length before Gabriel started school, and we sadly came to the conclusion that we both had to keep working full time to support our family and our household. Homeschooling was not an option, as neither of us could devote sufficient time and energy to the practice to be confident in the outcome. I found blogs and articles on alternative education fascinating, but I had no idea how to make a decision about my child’s education that would satisfy my needs as a parent, his needs as a growing boy, and the future I wanted for him. That was when I encountered the Sudbury educational philosophy, and my wife and I joined hands with two local young ladies who had a unique vision.

For us, Wichita Sudbury School started on a rainy October afternoon in a park just a stone’s throw from the store front that now operates as our school building. The premise of the school was compelling. Students are offered a unique opportunity to learn, not based on an established curriculum or a predetermined set of rules and expectations, but through the auspices of their own vital interests, free play and independence, and with minimal interference. It’s a democratic institution wherein every student and faculty member has an equal voice, placing the impetus for maintaining a mutually beneficent environment for personal growth directly in the hands of the participants. And learning is not the province of a teacher in a classroom, but instead relies on the student’s passion for experiencing new things. With a smaller number of students and the resources of our local culture, focused educational opportunities, public and private programs, and the endless providence of the world wide web, a student’s experiences can expand well beyond the scope of a row of desks and standardized lesson plans.

It was also frightening. As parents, our responsibility to make the right choice can be paralytic. Many of us seek the course of least resistance, which often leads to the public schoolroom or the expenditure of loads of extra cash to find a private school more in line with our personal philosophy. And for some students, there is no right or wrong decision. The Sudbury model – often referred to as “unschooling” in deference to a child’s struggle with autonomy after experiencing more regimented institutional learning – certainly isn’t ideal for every student, and unsurprisingly isn’t typically a cheap alternative, either. In fact, look up Sudbury schools online and you’ll find dozens of fine academic institutions that had served their communities for decades, mostly established on private estates with beautiful landscaping, all kinds of space for the children to enjoy, and tuition that’ll make your eyes bleed. So here was our next challenge… how to launch a school that affords similar opportunities without making it exclusively available to the upper crust of society or requiring parents to explore new levels of academic debt.

And most worrisome of all… how do we know that we’re making the right decision? If we don’t force our children to learn math and science and history and language arts, aren’t we doing them a disservice? Are we churning out a small cadre of ignorant children who are unable to function in the adult world? Are we depriving them of vital opportunities? Can they even hope to go to college? Will I be able to look my child in the eye as an adult and be proud of the decision I made to tear him from the facile halls of public education and put him in charge of his own education?

So, more research.

In many ways, the Sudbury educational model requires us as parents to “unschool” ourselves even more than it does for our children. We’ve been trained to accept a lot of assumptions: that a generalized burden of knowledge of varying degrees of value equates to a proper education; that learning is about absorbing information and accepting the wisdom of others as fact; that questioning authority and expressing individuality makes life difficult and is often unrewarding. And how about the idea that educating our children is not our responsibility but that of a faceless institution? We don’t always even know what they’re teaching, and how much of the information they try to shovel into our child’s head is useful, fulfilling, or even lasting.

The Road to Sudbury has been long and more than a little complicated, and in truth it started many years ago. I have some wisdom to share and a few more stories to tell – and I will – but ultimately I want to impart the same lesson that we try to instill in our students. The lesson that has allowed – no, empowered – me to focus on this alternative educational opportunity for my son. It isn’t sufficient to shove knowledge in your direction and consider that a means of educating you… the goal is to teach you how to learn. How to embrace new ideas and explore them with open eyes and an active role in their development. Because much like us parents, students who enter the adult world with the self-confidence built from an education they achieved through their own efforts,values, and choices…

… Can accomplish anything.

As always, the arbitrary turning of the calendar and the widespread recognition of celebratory renewal brings with it an opportunity to reassess the course of my life and resolve to make it better, more meaningful, or more impactful.  The last few years have presented me with new challenges and exciting opportunities for personal growth, and I have no desire to slack off at this juncture.

Interestingly enough, 2015 was largely dominated by projects which began in previous years.  My RPG podcast Metagamers Anonymous celebrated its 3rd anniversary last April.  In May and June I ran my second Kickstarter campaign for TsunamiCon 2015, which happened in October.  I picked up and continued writing on my novel, continued expanding my company’s periodical division, and ran some fun and successful gaming events for our local community.  I also had a chance to start indoctrinating my son into the world of hobby board gaming, and I accepted a promotion at work to an acting supervisor position.

All in all, not a bad year, but I have certainly come to realize that my accomplishments have become difficult to measure.   Hence, I resolve the following:

I would love to commit to doing something creative every day… but I also know that I haven’t time or energy to be certain of that, and I don’t want the failure to live up to it to destroy my will to succeed.  But I can commit to accomplishing something creative every week.  And to keep myself honest, I will blog about it on a regular basis.

I always have a lot of irons in the fire, and I recognize that certain large-scale projects (like TsunamiCon) will dominate my time at specific intervals and make it difficult to keep up.  That being said, I will do my best to stay on top of it and make up for lost time whenever possible.

Secondly, in the spirit of forward thinking, I resolve to build up my current projects and continue expanding into new territory.  One of the biggest obstacles to this particular angle is the aforementioned time and energy issue, so I would like to go on the offensive by setting and reviewing goals on a monthly basis.

I will start that process this weekend.  For today, my first goal is to pen this particular blog about my personal resolution and post updates on the state of the Prismatic Tsunami community, the podcasts, the convention, and so forth.

That should keep me busy for a couple hours.

I was reading about Galileo yesterday… Like almost any historical figure, posterity tends to paint him in a series of fairly broad strokes.  The specific issue I was reading about was his insistence that Aristotle’s geocentric model of the universe was total bunk.  Galileo built himself a telescope – though, much like Freud and his cocaine, he was not the one to get a patent for it – and located about four of Jupiter’s moons having the temerity to orbit a celestial body other than Earth.  He noticed something very similar about Venus, in fact, but on a slightly larger scale.

On second thought, it really resembled Freud’s amazing medical discovery of cocaine in pretty much no way at all.  But I like throwing that in there.  Freud was a crackpot.

Famously, of course, Galileo elected to recant his brilliant discovery when the Catholic Church threatened to atomize him where he stood.  After about 1700 Hail Mary’s and a pitcher of Jack, he locked the secret opinion that the Earth freakin’ revolved around the Sun into the recesses of his brain and let it party in solitary for a the next 30 or 40 years.  The Catholic Church finally got around to admitting that Galileo was right in 1972.  Apparently, modern science was getting hard to ignore.

I can’t figure out why the hell they have such an easy time ignoring it now.

Excuse that crack… I live in Kansas.

I think it’s worth considering that we all have to face a very similar reorganization at some point in our lives.  Er… well… the insightful we.  You know who you are.  Eventually, some time after high school and before death – if you’re lucky – it suddenly hits you like a drunken squirrel that you’re not the center of the universe.  That you actually move through the system of terrestrial life forms in a manner remarkably similar to everyone else.  Like I said… if you’re lucky.

Saw Riddick this weekend, by the way.  Not too bad, really.  The funny thing is… I think I liked the first 25 minutes of the movie the best.  You know… when he’s bangin’ around the desert communing with the local wildlife.  It was surprisingly charming.  Then, much like in everyday life, the bounty hunters showed up and fucked it all up.

Figures.

I had one of those moments this evening.  The kind that only happen now that I’m a father.  Maybe you know the moments to which I am referring… it’s when you well up over sentimental parent-child stuff.  There’s a few country songs that get me every time, and there are books and movies aplenty.  Tonight was the Hugh Jackman vehicle Real Steel, a fun little movie about an estranged father and son bonding over robot boxing.  The climax of the movie was pretty dope, but if you think that scene was about the robots in the ring dukin’ it out, well… maybe you just don’t have those kind of moments.

Having a young son when you’re pushing 40 is an enlightening experience, to say the least.  Sometimes we really don’t understand each other, but then we can kill half an hour dancing around to me playing the Transformers cartoon theme song on my guitar.  I feel old and young at the same time, I suppose.  But more importantly, I am more aware of my mortality, and somehow still perfectly confident that I can do anything.

I’m freakin’ Superman, yo.

Except, of course, that Supes doesn’t have gout and rarely has to lean on a cane to feel the least bit ambulatory.  It really isn’t about invincibility or anything, anyway.  It’s just, well… I suppose it’s just confidence.  Confidence in myself and my ability to make things happen.  Confident that I will seize the right opportunities as they present themselves.  And confident that I’ll be able to handle whatever challenges life slings my direction with malice aforethought.

“He was like a ghost that night, floating inches above the mat… but I saw him.”