Now

 Once upon a time, 
In a far off distant land,
People lived in giant castles
And magnificent temples.
All that remains are empty, crumbling edifices
Silhouetted against the sky,
Attracting thousands, hungry to know
What the past was like. 
When they look upon these great relics,
Looking at a world long gone, 
Everything looks simple and still.

At home, nothing is simple.
The world moves, pushed by forces we can neither see
Nor understand.
Pushed by others, trapped by society,
We long for the past,
For in the past nothing can ever change.
In the past, all was simple
Everything made sense.
But try though we might,
We can't turn back the clock.

So we walk forward, going from moment to moment
In a panic, trying to make our slice of eternity
Last for as long as we can.
But time has a way of wearing us down
Until nothing is left of us.
Nothing but small remains of the role we once played.
If we're lucky, someone will remember us
As they go through our belongings.
All they see is a life that was simple
Empty but for the meaning we gave to it.
And as they look through the past,
They too will feel a longing to return to it.  

Thoughts on writing a novel

     I have to say, now that I’m about halfway through the first draft of Big Book of Enchantments, writing novels is oddly fun. I don’t think this first novel will really be good, mind you, but it’s fun to try to keep writing the same story day in and day out.

     It’s also very exhausting. I leave writing sessions feeling tired, even though I haven’t done anything physical. 

    I have high hopes though. I feel like I’m proving to myself that I can write something like a novel. I didn’t really think I could. I think we should push more people to take on big projects they’d enjoy, especially if they don’t think they’d do a good job. Even if I suspect people won’t like Big Book of Enchantments now, it still feels like a huge deal just to write this thing. 

     So go out there and do something that you want to do. Even if you don’t do a good job, you’ll feel good about yourself. 

Plans for The Big Book of Enchantments

    I know all my readers are eagerly waiting to learn what will happen next in the Big Book of Enchantments. Okay, that’s not really true. As of right now, nobody’s reading my blog. But I decided I should plan out what I want to do next with this story, since I’ve been mostly winging it up until this point, and since I don’t have any readers, why not turn it into a post.

     Chapter six will start with the group agreeing to go to Brook’s Hallow, followed by the group learning about each other’s past and what their goals are. It will end with Jessica agreeing to help Michael learn real magic so that he can go home safely. Chapter seven will start with the group arriving in Brooks hallow and learning that Julia’s aunt has been taken over by The Enchantress, and once Julia saves her, we learn that the only way to stop her is to go to the Citadel and destroy the Book of Knowledge for good. Chapter eight sees the group stopping at a town on their way to the Citadel and Zachary sees the man who was the owner of the ring he’s carrying guarding a prison. After giving the man his ring back, he promises to repent once he goes back home. Chapter Nine finally sees us at the Citadel, where we learn that The Enchantress has trapped everyone in an illusion and is using their magic to take over Altra. Jessica manages to prove that the Book of Knowledge is a fake, freeing everyone. The spells collapse causes the Citadel to Collapse, destroying it for good. The story ends with our hero’s unsure of what to do next.

     That’s roughly the plan, but that’s not how the story will end up. I plan on rewriting the whole thing once I’m done and then self-Publishing it somewhere. That’s probably going to be a while though.

The Big Book of Enchantments, Chapter 5, Jessica's story

    As I watch Johnathon enter the palace with Julia and Rachel in tow, I can’t help but wonder about what it would be like to live there. I don’t feel all that jealous, since it’s in bad repair and even I know the King and Queen don’t have much power these days, but it would be nice to live in a place where you felt like you were a part of something, not just a girl who no one wanted to be around.

    I sit down in front of the palace walls. I should be getting up and hustling but to be honest I find charm selling to be deeply demoralizing. Back at the citadel, the only thing I was ever praised for was my charm making skills. Out here, nobody seems to care. That could be because I’m mostly using what I can find in garbage cans, but I worry I’m doing something else wrong. I don’t know what to do.

    Michael sits down next to me. “Do you want to go in?” I ask.

    “No. I don’t think the King and Queen would care about a common boy.”

    “Well, when Johnathon gets done with his errand, we’ll see about finding a library. I’m sure there’s some explanation for what happened.”

    “Shouldn’t you be selling charms?” Michael asks.

    I sigh and stand back up. He’s right. I may hate doing this, but it’s better than the Citadel. Or so I keep telling myself anyway.

    I feel somebody grab my shoulder. “Are you related to Mildred Stonebridge by chance?”

   I jerk out their grasp. “Absolutely not.” I say. Then I see who grabbed me. Mr. Jones, one of my mother’s goons from the Citadel.

    “Do you really think I believe you?” he says, then he points behind me. I look and see a wanted poster materialize. I don’t quite see what’s written, but I recognize the portrait anywhere. “Lady Mildred is offering quite a large reward to anyone who brings you back to the Citadel.”

    I open the Big Book of Enchantments and start flipping madly. “Why would she want me back?” I ask, knowing Mr. Jones is dumb enough to explain why.

    “Apparently you took something very important to her. Without it, she can’t run the Citadel.”

   I find a spell that causes disorientation. I center it on him and cast it. One advantage to being unable to cast spells yourself is that you can find a center for magic very easily. Unfortunately, I see a cop starting towards me. He apparently thinks the Big Book of Enchantments is some sort of unregistered artefact. I cast the spell on the cop as well and then bolt as fast as I can, pausing only to grab Michael and drag him up.

   “What’s going on?” Michael yelps.

   I don’t bother answering until we’re several streets away. “The enchantress is after me. One of her goons just tried to kidnap me.”

    Michael gasps for breath. “Look, lets find a place to lay low for a bit. Then we’ll go find Zac. He should be able to help.”

    “Bit late for that.”

   I turn to see Zac behind me. “Oh, thank goodness,” I say, for the first time in my life grateful to see someone I know breaks the law, “I think we’d better leave the city while we can.”

   “What about Michael?” He asks.

   He’s right. The whole reason we came here was to help Mike. But I’m scared to go to the palace with The Enchantress’ goon so nearby. I flip through the Big Book of Enchantments. I don’t have an invisibility spell on me, but a good illusion spell should work.

   “Wait.” Michael says suddenly. “Let’s find Johnathon first. He was going inside to help Rachel, right? Maybe he could help me.”

    “That’s a good point, why don’t we watch the palace to see when he comes out? Then we can talk to him.”

    “And what if he can’t help?” Zac says.

    “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” I say. “For now, let’s lie low. I don’t want to get caught again.”

Life of a Writer Part 3

    A lot of people Blog hoping that they’ll become famous one day. I started feeling a lot better about blogging once I realized that Google counts you clicking on your blog posts as views, so there wasn’t really a good way to know if I was getting traffic or not, meaning that even if I become famous, I won’t be able to figure it out quickly.

   I’ve got a really large buffer at this point, mostly because I enjoy writing so much. I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was ten, and I’ve been daydreaming for basically my entire life. I don’t know how this will be my future, but I know that I want to do this. 

     I think the thing I’ve been enjoying the most is writing The Big Book of Enchantments. It’s not good, but it’s still a lot of work, most of it just getting myself to sit down and write. I feel like I’m learning a lot from writing it though. Just trying to keep everything straight is a massive challenge. I will admit, I really should have planned better.

    The other thing I’m enjoying is having a place where I can post poetry. I don’t consider myself a poet, but I like trying to figure out how to say what I need to say in as short a time as possible in a way that most people will get what I want to say. 

     The thing I most appreciate is the feeling that, for the first time in my life, I truly have some sort of voice. I know nobody cares, but as someone who thinks a lot but doesn’t know anyone willing to listen to me, it’s nice to be able to talk to someone who can’t complain. 

    I confess, one of the reasons I want Universal Basic Income is so that more people are free to pursue the art they want to make. If they don’t have to worry about making money, they’ll be better able to produce what matters to them. I wonder how many great art pieces we’d have if more people were able to make things. I hope we learn that at some point. 

The Big Book of Enchantments, Chapter 5, Johnathon's story

     I must say, after being away from home for so long, I’m struck by how shabby the Capital looks. I have to wonder if giving the public so many tax cuts was wise. Michael and Zac don’t seem to notice it, but I’m sure Julia and Rachel have. Jessica is so absorbed in writing in her diary all the time, I have to wonder if she notices anything at all. 

   We’ve been waiting at the palace gates since dawn. Zac wandered off somewhere a while ago, Michael and Jessica are looking for people willing to buy charms. I don’t know why anyone would want charms in this day and age, though I must say that Jessica is exceptional at making them. I wonder where she learned.

     Jessica walks up to me and asks, “Do you know how late the palace is going to be open?”

     “They usually close a couple of hours before dusk. Why?”

     “Michael got kicked out of his home a few weeks after someone from the Citadel paid a visit. I would like to ask if anyone knows what’s going on.”

    “Are you going to ask the king and queen?” 

    “I don’t see why I would need to. Servants tend to know a lot of secrets.”

    “What makes you think they would know this?” I ask.

    “If someone from the citadel is going around casting enchantments, I’d be willing to bet that The Enchantress is involved somehow. She hates having people ignore her, and that’s all anyone’s been doing since she took power at the Citadel. I think she’s looking for a way to take over the country and make everyone do what she says.” 

     “Who’s this enchantress?” I ask. The terms so archaic I don’t know anyone who uses it anymore.

    “It’s what I call Lady Mildred. She doesn’t deserve any respect.”

     I sit and think. I don’t know a lot about the citadel. I know that it was once The Place you went to for any magical advice, but that was over five hundred years ago. Once magic artefacts became cheap enough, the need for people who knew how to cast a spell went away completely. 

    “Does she really think she can take over the kingdom?” I ask, “We have armies of people ready to fight her if she tries.”

   Jessica frowns, “I know it’s unlikely, but when I lived in the Citadel the first thing they taught us is never underestimate another mage. Even if they can’t cast as well as you or channel any magic, a good mage always has a plan. Don’t assume you can beat them easily, even if you came prepared.”

    “So, in short, a mage is like an assassin.” I say, chuckling. 

    “Didn’t you learn any magic? I know the castle has a library with more books on magic than anywhere else in the Kingdom of Altra.” Jessica says.

    “Only spells that work well with swordplay. Magic on its own isn’t that helpful. How’s the charm making going, by the way”

     “Not well. I’m beginning to think I’ll need to try something else.” Jessica says

     “Zac seems to be making enough money.” I say.

      “Well, he’s been stealing for years. I hope I don’t have to, but I’m not sure I’ll have a choice.” Jessica says.

     I have to sit for a while and absorb this. I knew Zac didn’t live on his own, but for some reason I didn’t think he was a thief. “Zac’s a thief? And you’re still willing to travel with him?” 

    “I don’t like it either. My parents taught me the value of personal property. But he doesn’t have any other way to survive, and I don’t want to force him to go back to his parents.”

    “Why not?” I ask.

    “Because I know what it’s like when your parents don’t love you and your forced to live with them anyway. I don’t know if that’s why he left, but Michael hasn’t stopped talking to me about how much he wants to see his family and Zac never brings his parents up at all. Besides, if I left him, I’d have to be on my own again. I could probably do alright, but it’s nice to have someone who knows what he’s doing with me.” 

  At that moment the palace gates open. I say good by to Jessica, and motion to Julia and Rachel to follow me. It doesn’t take long for me to notice that something is wrong. Nobody’s stopping me, of course, but everyone keeps staring at me in an uncomfortable fashion. 

    I stop before the throne room and ask the guard for permission to approach. I fully expect to be turned away, my parents are always busy, but the guards open the doors and announce, “The prince of Altra has returned, your majesties.”

    I walk forward slowly. My father seems deeply annoyed, while my mother wrings her hands. “I hope you aren’t going to try to stake your claim to the throne.” My father says gruffly.

    “No, your Majesties.” I say, trying to keep my voice from shaking too much. “I come here to plead on behalf of Rachel. She is being unjustly pursued by an assassin.”

    “Who is Rachel?” My father asks.

      Rachel steps forward and does a small twirl. You can tell she doesn’t spend a lot of time with royalty. 

     “I don’t seem to recall meeting you or your family. It’s not my job to look after common folk.” Father says.

    “She’s not common!” Julia shouts.

    Father looks like he’s about to have her thrown out. I step up and say “With all due respect, she’s the daughter of the owner of the Magitronics Corporation. I understand that the assassin who’s after her was sent after by none other than Mildred Stonebridge herself.” 

    I feel the air leave the room. My mother doesn’t talk about her family much, but I get the sense they must have history. 

    “Get out.” My father growls. 

    “Hang on a minute. I was told you could help. Are you going to tell me that you’re just going to let an assassin kill a little girl? Don’t think you could handle the PR, buster.” Julia says, glaring at father.

    “Young lady, we would help you if we could, but we can’t. My sister put a spell on this place. If we go against her, she’ll turn everyone in court against us. We could die. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to find someone else to help your sister.” My mother says, sighing.

    “Now get out.” My father yells. “And son, don’t come back. I don’t know why you thought you could just leave, but as far as I’m concerned, you forfeit your right to the throne. If I see you again, you’ll be treated as a commoner.” 

   We leave the throne room in disgust. “What kind of spell could just turn everyone against you?” Rachel asks. 

    “I don’t think such a thing exists.” Julia says, “I’ll bet you anything they just wanted to get rid of us.”

    “Mother wasn’t lying.” I say, “She knows magic well. If she thinks it’s a threat, it’s serious.”

The future of the internet

     I can’t remember a time before the internet. What I can remember, at least a little, was the internet of the early 2000’s. Not the early 2000’s internet everyone else remembers, I mostly just went online to play games on websites hosted by my favorite tv channels. I don’t remember the games being good, I just remember them being fun.

    Fun is what I remember the internet being for most of the time I’ve used it. I wasn’t going online to talk to other people or make friends. I was going to read what other people wrote, watch other people’s videos and play games made by people who only barely knew what they were doing. It wasn’t good, whenever I try to play the games, I enjoyed in 2010-2015 I’m struck by how bad they were, but it was fun. I don’t think I need to justify it, I liked it and that’s all I care about, but I can’t help but wonder what changed that made these games such a chore to revisit.

    I can’t deny that I miss them though. Not so much the games themselves so much as being able to go to a website and see what they had to play. I stopped doing that around 2016, mostly because with free phone games the old flash games felt a little barren. I kind of wonder if flash would be around if it wasn’t for the rise of free phone apps.

     I don’t know what the internet of the future will look like. It’s lost a lot of it’s unregulated “whatever you say is fine” nature, and overall, I think that’s a good thing. Saying whatever you want isn’t okay if what you’re saying hurts people. But I do hope we can find some way to bring back the simple joy I remember feeling. The sense that even if you don’t feel like you fit in in the real world, you can still find your place here. So many people don’t have a place online anymore, and as someone who went online a lot to cope with not fitting in in the real world, I don’t think that’s acceptable.

    I hope that in the future, the internet once again becomes a place where who you are doesn’t matter. You can still find a place for you. I worry that that won’t be the case.

The sea of Chaos

 I've always admired
The way the ocean moves.
Wind rushes over water,
Pushing it every which way
Until it reaches the shore
Where it breaks, crashing
Into anything in its way.
 
Nothing can stop the movement of the water
Rushing in land.
It can only be pushed aside.
Until, at last, it's energy is spent.
Then the water returns to the ocean,
Taking with it anything that was caught in its grasp. 
 
Everything sits within a sea of chaos,
Pushing and being pushed by everything else,
Until, at last, 
We crash into the shore. 
Speeding over land
We push small things out of our way, 
While larger things slow us down. 
 
Nothing can stop the waves of chaos
As they flow across time.
Nothing can stop a tsunami of change
Brought about by an earthquake of anger and fear.
One can only try, as the sea rushes in 
And the water consumes all in its path,
To move out of the way. 

The tome of society

      I keep thinking about the future. Specifically, what do I want society to look like in twenty years. And I keep thinking that we can’t let society be some abstract concept anymore. Most of us move through society without thinking. When we interact with others, we don’t think a lot about what we say, we act according to our instincts, honed from years of interacting with friends, siblings, parents, and teachers. For most of us, most of the time, that’s Okay. The people we interact with either know us or are enough like us that their rules of social interaction are mostly the same. More and more though, that’s not the case. 

      A common figure quoted in newspaper articles recently is that roughly a quarter of adult children are estranged from their parents. The phrase “Okay, Boomer” has become a meme. More and more people are complaining the people complaining about their Racist, Sexist, Homophobic and Transphobic comments. I think that the problem is that for people who aren’t affected by systemic oppression, knowing the rules without first breaking them is hard. It’s doable, but I keep seeing people who should know better screw it up. And I keep thinking “We can’t just let people guess what the rules are. We have to decide them.” And I don’t know how to do that in a way that won’t hurt the very people I want to help.

    In a perfect world, what we would have is a Wiki with strict moderation that everyone who wants to contribute to it can. There would be people spending what time they can going over social rules and common blunders, looking for rules that could be applied to anyone. Moderators would be chosen to be as representative of society as possible. Not only that, but they would be detail oriented so they could find an answer to any issue no matter how small. Most importantly, it would be understood that these rules aren’t meant to be enforced anywhere. They aren’t laws, and shouldn’t be used as a substitution, but the rules would, if possible, take real world laws into account. But there would be an understanding that what the law says and what people actually believe society should be don’t always overlap. 

    That’s the idea. The issue is the people moderating it would have most of the power on said sight, and however carefully chosen, they would only ever be able to approximate society’s wants and needs. There’s the issue that although in theory the people in power are given power by the will of the people, in reality they are usually chosen as part of a system that the people allow to stay in place because changing it would be difficult. Then there’s what happens if society is split between those who want things to change and those who want things to stay the same. 

    Most importantly though, it would be hard to implement a system like this without it putting more pressure on those who are already disadvantaged by society. Groups like the disabled, homeless, mentally ill and those who were formerly incarcerated. The groups that often don’t have a place in society. If we want to help them, we have to change society so that they can live and move about safely. It would be better for them, and it would be better for us. 

   In truth, I don’t think making the rules of society obvious changes the fact that society in general, and American society in particular, needs to change for everyone’s sake. We keep letting those with the most power make all our decisions, and we can’t do that anymore. We need things like universal healthcare, sick pay, help for those who’ve been released from prison, lower drug penalties, universal basic income, and so much more than that. It’s honestly difficult to keep track of how many things we need to make better in this country. But when we do that, because things will only get worse until we do, we need to work on building a society that all of us want to live in. We need to find a normal where all of us can be genuinely happy, no one has to succeed, and no one needs to worry about failure. Until we do that, we won’t be able to fix the world. 

A new year

    I’m writing this the week before Christmas, but I’m scheduling this to go up on the first of January 2022. Happy New Year! Or perhaps, a slightly less than miserable new year. 

     I remember everyone being so excited for the 2020’s. We were so tired of how awful things had been that anything we could hope for, we did. To say nothing of the fact that we were all told how amazing the 1920s were, it had been thirty years since the nineties, and in school we learned that the great decades were spaced about 30 years apart from one another, give or take.

   I don’t need to explain why that didn’t happen. 

   I remember the excitement when 2020 ended. It had been awful, but things had to get better now. How could any year possibly be worse than 2020?

    Six days after the new year started, the capital was overrun, and fascist attempted to take over the United States.

   I can’t think of any particular events that made 2021 awful after that, but I think we can all agree that it failed the moment it started. The pandemic is still going strong, republicans get stupider with each passing day, and every right we thought we’d won is being taken from us, bit at a time. 

     I don’t think it’s unreasonable to feel like this year won’t be any better than last year was. 

    I hope it is. I want so badly for all this madness to end. But I keep hearing people talk about going back to normal, and I have to ask, what normal do you want to go back to? The 2010’s sucked. They were better than now, but we still elected a monster to the white house. The 2000’s were mostly okay, apart from declaring war and Iraq and Afghanistan and the recession close to the end. I know everyone talks about how great the nineties were, but I don’t remember the nineties at all. No one born during or after 1995 would be. There’s an entire generation of people for whom the only normal that’s even appealing is a normal they don’t remember at all. That normal was before gay marriage was legal, before high speed internet, before most social media. They were better, but they weren’t great. 

    We can’t try to go back to normal. Even if the pandemic ended tomorrow, that wouldn’t be possible. I will never condone the choices that got Trump into the white house, but his election should have been a wake-up call. It was a sign that we were deeply unhappy and nobody who could fix things wanted to fix them, or even seemed to be aware that there were problems. 

     I don’t have any solutions. I don’t think anyone does. We’ve only dealt with a situation like this once in human history, as far as I know, and as soon as it was over, we tried to forget about it. We can’t do that again when this is over. We need to learn as much as possible. I don’t want this to happen again.