Month: March 2022

the ineffable hat

Posted on by empty williams

“This hat is ineffable,” he said.

She had to agree. The way it contoured his head, at once enlarging and somehow, amplifying his cranium, struck her as near impossible. Unexplainable.

“Might I try it?” she asked.

He agreed, but only on the terms that she have a hat of her own. There was a flash as the man spun in a wild, enthusiastic gambol. Light emanated from atop his head. She held up her hands to shield her eyes and something dropped into her lap – a brand new hat. She picked the newly formed hat up in her hands and examined it closely, before placing it on her head. There was something wonderful about the hat, at once masterfully complex and wonderfully benign.

The hat was indeed ineffable, she decided, faceted as it was to astutely represent the whole of the deftly transcendent and the undeniably simple. How like life, she thought, as the man bounded away, hat both askew and not askew – a multifarious and crystalline explosion, reflected and refracted in impossible planes and colours through infinite refinement, on simplistic foundations. She adjusted the hat on her head. A passerby smiled at her.

“Nice hat.”

“Yes,” she returned the smile. “It’s ineffable.”

Target: 100 words
Written: 182 words, comic: Romance #1

myopia

Posted on by empty williams

Nothing tears us down quite like the things we don’t acknowledge in our lives.

The subjects we ignore – like weight or the effects of smoking or a toxic relationship. The need to move on from a soul crushing job. That was the impetus behind the Birds Fall haiku; the idea that what ultimately defeats us is not the thing we saw clearly, but the thing we never saw at all, or tried desperately not to think about.

We let it slide until it’s too late, until it’s too big of a problem to fix without suffering some serious collateral damage.

I know I have these blind spots. Depression. Shyness. Alcohol. Weight. The aforementioned soul crushing work. On any given day, there’s probably a half-dozen to a dozen of these types of things I’m actively trying to avoid thinking about, and probably twice that when you factor in the stuff I’m so oblivious to that I won’t see it coming until it punches me full in the face.

Life ain’t easy. Presence and awareness are wonderful watchwords, but most of us could never do it so consistently that we actually manage to have most of our shit under control. Control is an illusion. We do our best to avoid suffering and increase pleasure in the moment (more often opting for less suffering than actual pleasure), because that’s the best we can do.

We haven’t been raised to pay attention to these things. I suspect our world would be a very different place if we were. Capitalism, fascism, Trumpers, conspiracy theorists – all gone, because we’d be able to face our greed, our lust for power and control, our willingness to smother our brains in delusion and the false promises and outrage of others.

We’d look straight in the mirror and say:

This is bullshit. We are bullshit. We need to do better.

And then do better. Or not. Who could ever tell?

The world will end one day and it won’t be because we opened our eyes and called ourselves out on our poor behaviour. It will be because we squeezed them tightly shut and pretended there was no such thing as consequences.

Target: 100 words
Written: 213 words, short story: The Ineffable Hat

the totality of incompletion

Posted on by empty williams

There’s a lot to be said about anxiety. I like to believe that we’re better than this, that we, collectively, have tricked ourselves into believing that various psychological maladies are simply disabilities, unavoidable companions from whom we can never separate, only manage.

We are broken and we remain broken.

Depression has been a constant bedfellow of mine since the age of twelve, by and far the most intimate one. I manage my depression; my depression tries to destroy me.

It’s not a particularly fair fight, especially since one side is hellbent on destruction and the other simply wants a moment’s peace.

Still, I fight. I have methods. Ways. I still feel like a world where anxiety and depression are handled, like well and truly handled, are not out of reach.

We don’t need to medicate ourselves forever. We don’t need to stop working on ourselves because we have a mental health illness and that’s it, shrug. It’s a condition; not a defining trait.

Like this is the style you’re drawn to and stepping too far out of that feels like you’re trying too hard, but also, wearing the same clothes constantly makes you look homeless and manic.

It’s the naked being underneath we have to deal with.

It’s insidious. Make us think we’re broken and we cannot change, while simultaneously acknowledging we have a problem and that it’s real and needs to be managed. These are both true things.

We are not broken, only incomplete. We are broken and we need repair.

There is no completion. There are only shadows moving in the trees and a stumbling stride forward.

It is the best we can do, and the best we can do is enough.

Sometimes, it is enough and that’s fine. We are fine.

We are broken.

We are incomplete.

And that is fine. Imperfection gives us somewhere to go. Perfection is static and unattainable.

May we never be perfect. May we remain forever in need of completion.

Target: 100 words
Written: 845 words, short story: The Ineffable Hat

from nothing

Posted on by empty williams

It hasn’t been a good couple of years. Life, as with all lives, has its ups and down. I have a beautiful wife that I love, two good stepkids, two wonderful nieces and a trio of siblings with whom we hang out regularly. A granddaughter who is heart-burstingly adorable.

The rest of life, on the other hand, hasn’t been ideal. Crappy jobs, extra weight, aches, pains, depression, stress, tachycardia, name it. I’ve frequently gotten lost in fictions, in ego, in insecurity, food, alcohol, drugs, whatever.

That makes it sound like a season of Euphoria or some Nineties-era drama of the bleak, but it’s not that exciting.

It’s pretty much the same story as everyone else. Life carried them along a path and before they realized they were too far down it to control the direction, all the traps and constraints were in place to keep us from course correcting without massive upheaval and destruction.

Enter Donald Trump, pandemic, war in Ukraine, and the stripping away of compassion, to be replaced with conspiracy theories, absolute stupidity, soul-crushing delusions and entitlements, and I feel like Foreman in the final round, punched out, about to be beat down by the man Ali himself.

Only, instead of Ali, it’s not some grand wizard of boxing. It’s a fat, chubby orange man, a redneck with no common sense, a myopic boomer with no willingness to see past their own nose.

It’s an outraged millennial, or a hysterical Karen. It’s a pompous Gen Zer who thinks their way is the only way.

No one is listening. No one wants to listen. The same folks that scream gender and sexuality are not binary forget that neither is a particular viewpoint on any given subject. There are shades. Perspective is also a spectrum and we begin understanding and compassion only by acknowledging that fact. By trying to see from a viewpoint outside our own, by uncovering new facts, new ways of thinking, and letting go of the ones that no longer make sense.

It’s not about outrage. It’s not about enforcing an outdated point of view.

It’s about understanding. About being open.

I have not been very open. Depression and stress make for potent oppressors and it can be difficult to recognize that one’s mind does not have to remain trapped in a prison of its own making.

I am trying to do that now. I am writing. I am creating things – poetry, short stories, comic books, hip little things and transcendent ones. And yes, books, full size motherfuckers that range from the fatalist to the pure Tao.

And I will suck. For a bit. My views will change. I will fuck up, make mistakes, say dumb shit and have to apologize. I will not get it right, not all the time.

But I will try. And I will remain open, and hopefully, that’s enough.

Target: 100 words
Written: 83 words, haiku: Birds Fall