Be kind.
Be kind.
Be kind.
Be kind.
Be kind.
Be kind.
Be kind.
Be kind.
Be kind.
Be kind.
Be kind.
Be kind.
Be kind.
Be kind.
Be kind.
Be kind.
Be kind.
Be kind.
Be kind.
You get the point.
Target: 1600 words
Written: 1353 words, novel: Father Lightning
Read: 100 Side Hustles: Unexpected Idea For Making Extra Money Without Quitting Your Day Job, Chris Guillebeau
Comics: Tech Jacket 1-3, Invincible 1
Music: folklore, taylor swift (i gather she likes the lowercase and not, you know, LOUD NOISES)Every once in a while, when I’ve highly esteemed a thing, or dismissed it out of hand, or ranted against its mediocrity, I like to re-experience it, to see if I really got it right. Older, more mature viewing. Maybe it’s not the masterpiece I thought, or the disaster it seemed. Maybe I wasn’t mature enough or in the right headspace to understand.
I’m not talking about how my love of The A-Team or Dukes of Hazzard as a child has been thoroughly reevaluated as an adult to understand how shitty they were (outside of Catherine Bach, because wow. Masterpiece). That was obvious.
I hated Star Wars: The Phantom Menace when my roommate dragged me to the premier. I wasn’t the biggest Star Wars fan, though I like the original series, but I couldn’t help but think, fuck, people waited twenty-five years for fucking THIS?
I mean, the text scroll starts by talking about tax and trade disputes. Tell me you’re an out of touch rich guy without telling me you’re a rich guy, right? Then, comes the wooden acting, and all around poor script. I mean, you’ve got Evan McGregor and Liam Neeson, and the only halfway decent performance comes from teenage Natalie Portman. I don’t include the racist caricatures of the Gungans and Neimoidians or the original character redux performances of C3PO, Yoda, Jabba, etc., where it’s imitation and not performance. And while I hated everything to do with the kid, it’s not Jake Lloyd’s fault. Like I said, one halfway decent performance coaxed by a director, who should know better, out of some pretty heavyweight talent means the kid is not at fault. The script had so much exposition as to be almost on par an 80s TV movie. How could we excoriate a child for material Academy Award winners couldn’t make compelling?
Anyways, my point is that sometimes, I find things better than I thought they were, and sometimes worse. This time, the result was exactly the same.
What a piece of shit.
Anyway, my point is that in trying to explore kindness while I write Father Lightning, I’m finding the shadow of my prior focus on conflict and anger and myopia is like a phantom menace haunting the back halls of my mind.
I’m finding kindness quite difficult these days, and fucking Jar Jar Binks didn’t help.
Bad fucking hoodoo, man. Bad fucking art.
Target: 1600 words
Written: 2192 words, novel: Father Lightning
Read: 100 Side Hustles: Unexpected Idea For Making Extra Money Without Quitting Your Day Job, Chris Guillebeau
Comics: WildC.A.T.S. v6 12
Music: Folk Rock Essentials, Various Artists (so good)My wife says I’m angry. I say she’s angry. She says that’s just at her daughter, but it bleeds out into the rest of the world.
Mine does as well. I’m sick of other people.
I listen to A Wave Across The Bay and I want that for myself.
I want endless falling, never crashing, never landing, never ceasing to exist, but never engaging again.
Endless travel, free of care, free of responsibility.
When Sartre says hell is other people, he might be on to a thing.
Target: 1600 words
Written: 1721 words, novel: Father Lightning
Read: On Love, Charles Bukowski
Comics: WildC.A.T.S. v6 8-11
Music: Flyin' The Flannel, FIREHOSE (I don't why it's listed in all caps)I swear there’s a body-possessing gremlin following me around that takes possession of my dogs or cats or children or wife or inanimate objects to ensure every time I think I might catch up and be on top of things…
I’m not.
Target: 1600 words
Written: 1696 words, novel: Father Lightning
Read: Night Shift, Stephen King
Comics: WildC.A.T.S. v6 4-7
Music: Fly On The Wall, AC/DCLightheaded all day.
I am blocked, and it’s a nightmare.
I want to be put to sleep.
Target: 1600 words
Written: 915 words, novel: Father Lightning
Read: Night Shift, Stephen King
Comics: Wildstorm 30th Anniversary Special 1, DC's Grifter Got Run Over By A Reindeer 1, WildC.A.T.S. v6 2-3
Music: Flowers, The Rolling StonesNot my immediate family, but man, it’s funny how everyone says Happy Father’s Day to a person, then curls the corner of their mouth in a snide rebuff, at the word step.
Here’s to all the men who stepped in when the biological fathers could or would not.
You deserve to be recognized, and not given the proverbial asterisk.
Target: 1600 words
Written: 1791 words, novel: Father Lightning
Read: Night Shift, Stephen King
Comics: Grifter v3 14-16, WildC.A.T.S. v6 1
Music: Floridays, Jimmy BuffettThis is a tough world in which to focus on kindness. I try to, but my frustration with our current political climate and people’s unfortunate behaviour makes it difficult to find sympathy.
It’s very easy to retreat.
Crippling depression and overwhelming stress doesn’t help. When one is in crisis, doing the extra for others seems a step too far.
But perhaps that’s when we need it most.
(What we really need is for someone to show us the same grace in return, but let’s face it – this isn’t that kind of world, and that’s a rare act.)
As someone who has dealt extensively with depression, I can confidently say that most kindness is tempered by judgment.
Oh, I’m so sorry, honey, maybe you should just buck up.
I feel you and what you’re going through, but maybe if you weren’t depressed, you wouldn’t have this problem (no shit, Sherlock).
He’s having a hard time, but he brought it on himself.
Etc., etc.
Do not temper your kindness with judgment; just be there. Give the hug. Hold the hand. Help clean up. Make a casserole.
Listen. Don’t be a jerk.
After all, better out than in, and judgment forces the latter, intentionally or otherwise.
Target: 1600 words
Written: 1354 words, novel: Father Lightning
Read: Night Shift, Stephen King
Comics: Voodoo v2 12, 0, Grifter v3 0, 13
Music: Flood, They Might Be GiantsThere’s nothing wrong with strength, but posturing is never truly the mark of a strong man.
Indeed, kindness, compassion, sober second thought – the ability to see perspective and to act on a combination of conviction and data (never blinding oneself to what is for the sake of dogmatic ideals) – these are the hallmarks of a strong person.
Those who would sublimate themselves in order to help someone in need.
Those who show kindness to anyone who needs it.
Those who would stand up for those that need their help, regardless of the consequences to oneself, in the face of the laughing masses.
That’s fucking strength. That’s “masculine” (and really – it’s everyone. Nothing in this precludes anyone of any gender to be any of this – good and bad).
Anyway, that’s my point.
It takes more courage and strength to be soft and kind than it does to put up walls and pretend to be hard (and if you’re truly hard, well, then, why would we venerate you? As the Tao puts it – the hard and stiff are disciples of death; the supple and flexible are those of life.)
(Paraphrased, obviously.)
Corpses are rigid, and only move at the whim of others as they decay.
Life moves in an intricate dance, wills and choice mingling, and isn’t it better to dance well with your partners, than do the meathead thing and forget that a mosh pit isn’t sanctioned bullying; it’s energetic celebration.
Kindness isn’t toxic; neither is it feminine.
It’s human, and a fully obtainable ideal.
Target: 1600 words
Written: 1130 words, novel: Father Lightning
Read: Night Shift, Stephen King
Comics: Voodoo v2 10-11, Grifter v3 11-12
Music: Flogging Molly, Flogging Molly (floggingmollyfloggingmolly)You ever find something you love, that you’re really into, but the time sink is just too much with everything else you need/want/have to do?
I feel that way about baseball. I love the old game, the strategy, the drama, the fact that everything can change with one great pitch or one great swing or one great play (or one big fuck-up, to be fair).
But I can’t do it. It’s too much. It’s too much of a time sink. The stats, the game length, the fact that it’s three hours a day every day for almost half the year… would that I had nothing else in my life, but I do.
My love of ball is less than my love of reading. Or writing. Or love.
Such a shame is life.
Target: 1600 words
Written: 1938 words, novel: Father Lightning
Read: Well Of Shiuan, C.J. Cherryh
Comics: Voodoo v2 8-9, Grifter v3 9-10
Music: Float, Flogging Molly (Float, the song, is my spirit animal)I was mixing strawberry martinis for the locals when it happened.
Why there I was, in my finery, casually hulling out strawberries in the old-fashioned way, and not in this newfangled pound a straw through it method, enjoying the sweet red juice as it squeezed on to my fingers. I quartered and hulled the little red droplets, and dropped them in a stainless steel shaker with a slice of lemon and a smattering of thyme.
Then came ice, and gin.
I was on my third one when the fateful blow was struck. Muddling as I was, perhaps a bit too aggressively in my zeal for the drink, when I discovered the inappropriate nature of my grip. Indeed, thumb pointed down like a golfer, I’d mistaken speed and aggression for efficiency and muddled down, off-centre. The metal ring of the steel shaker’s bottom half, as it turns out, is a perfect crescent in the exact arc of my thumbnail, and indeed, when jamming down mightily, will slip right between the nail and its bed, and separate the two, in most painful fashion.
Don’t worry, I drank that one. The red of my blood mixed effortlessly with the strawberry mash. No one would have noticed, I’m sure of it.
Gee, Empty, this is a little saltier than normal.
Only time will tell if this is permanent, like the split in the other one, now on its fifteenth year. I don’t even remember how that one happened, but there’s a good chance it involved the drink.
Target: 1600 words
Written: 768 words, novel: Father Lightning
Read: Well Of Shiuan, C.J. Cherryh (this series transcends, like OK Computer or a Bernini sculpture - it's absolute brilliance)
Comics: Voodoo v2 6-7, Grifter v3 7-8
Music: Flip Your Wig, Husker Du