Sorry

Over the past two days the plans had degraded from something definite and set in stone to "I'll let you know", a common line he heard which pretty much meant "go make other plans,".

He hadn't seen them in months -- the last time being a dinner in which some of the first words out of their mouth was "I can't believe that you actually came all the way out here". (And his thought was "wait, so you invited me to dinner but didn't actually want me to come? Why did you even bother asking me in the first place?!") It had come to the point where the only reliable thing about them was that they would seek him out and then flake out on him. It was almost as though he was the victim of a game of ding-dong-ditch and at this point he was beginning to wish that she would just leave him alone.

It wasn't so much the canceling of plans that bothered him, though he was getting pretty sick of it, as it was a common occurrence that he had come to expect -- it was that he knew that the most he would hear about it would be "sorry" -- or a long one-sided IM conversation several months down the road apologizing for their flaky behavior. The problem with this being that they weren't really sorry.

All in all, sorry was a word that was thrown around way too easily -- a word that had essentially lost it's power because those who said it, oft didn't mean it. Now, it didn't necessarily mean that people didn't feel bad, or that people were being intentionally disingenuous, as in most cases they did, in fact, feel bad and were not being intentionally disingenuous. The fact of the matter was that people said sorry, acknowledged the error of their ways and then went right back to being the same kind of people that made those errors. Ultimately, as he liked to put it, if people were really sorry for their actions, they'd stop doing whatever they were apologizing for -- bottom line.

The Road To Mediocrity

He felt like he was losing his edge. Little by little he began to cave to the various excuses his mind made for him. It was a common occurrence called lack of discipline. To be frank, it was a quality of his that plagued him throughout his life, especially his youth. However, where his own willpower failed, some sort of structure or system lay in place to enforce upon him their discipline.

He was at a point in his life where he didn't have such structure anymore. Most of his days he spent doing the minimum amount required of him with no one to answer to for it but the small voice in the back of his mind to berate him for his laziness.

The human conscience took up the philosophy that one should speak softly and carry a big stick. However, this metaphorical big stick was not as effective as a literal one as the target of its strikes did not often feel the effects of their inattention until much later on down the road.

And so he continued creating excuses and ignoring his conscience, all the while knowing that this was the road to mediocrity, and unless he took a turnoff he would find himself having arrived there all too soon. All the same, however, he brushed off that same little voice, knowing that the strike of it's stick would not come now.

A Moment of Reflection -- One Year Later

A year ago today you were returned to the earth from which men were fabled to have been made. Much has changed in that time -- memories have grown faint, life has moved on and all in all, the world has continued to turn. Despite that, the lessons you taught me remain ever present, so I take, if only a moment, to remember the impact you had on my life.

--

Thank you.

10 Years Later

For the longest time, I used to leave an annual 9/11 memorial on my Xanga. I stopped some time in college -- i believe it was either 07 or 08 -- mostly because it started feeling cheap. 9/11 is a topic that has, in many ways, been talked to death. It is a tragedy that has been decorated with fluffy, poetic, eloquent words for the past 10 years, but none of those words can really encapsulate what happened or what we should be feeling. Ultimately everyone feels something different on the giant emotion spectrum, as they should do and as anyone would when facing tragedy. I remember, after another tragedy that was a bit closer to home, speaking with a friend and he said something that I'll always remember: "There's nothing to say,".

There's a reason why memorial services always include a moment of silence -- because sometimes silence will say more than any number of words ever will.

The Teachings of a Cup of Coffee

I don't think I'll ever understand your addiction to coffee. This morning I had my first cup in what must have been at least a year. I took it black because I feel like that's how you usually drank it. From my first sip I was immediately reminded why I don't often drink the stuff.

I find it interesting that someone with as large a sweet tooth as yourself could like a drink so bitter, though I suppose one could argue the bitterness made all those sweets you enjoyed taste that much better.

Perhaps that's one of the secrets all you coffee fiends shared amongst yourselves. Though I may be just missing the obvious reason of the energy kick it gives. I don't know, I wasn't a follower of yours in that regard.

Choice of beverage aside however, (I never got the Diet Coke thing either, but I'll concede that preference on behalf of your diabetes) you did instill in me the foundations for becoming a respectable adult. In that respect I was a follower of yours. This was a task you had striven to accomplish in most of your students, I'm sure. I'm also fairly certain you achieved that goal time and again. I would like to think, however, that I gave you more trouble than the average brat that walked through your classroom doors, which, of course, made the outcome all the more rewarding.

Through the 9½ years I've known you, I've come to understand a little more about you. Most of this can be summed up by simply saying "you never stopped changing,". With the courage to always try something new (we all uttered a collective gasp when we first witnessed your use of the common instant messaging shorthand "LOL") you continually planted and replanted yourself in the midsts of younger generations; building and maintaining a strong relationship with the mere seedlings so you could guide them as they sprouted, budded and eventually bloomed. Creating a relationship through mutual understanding, it was an action you performed seemingly instinctively and those lives whom you've touched because of it were introduced to its importance.

I still don't get the coffee.

You're Not Coming in Clearly

Apparently, his problem lay in communication. Either there was too much of it or not enough, both of which seemingly always made him worse off. He recalled the days when he was known for being a loud mouth that never shut up, and well, to many people he was still that person, even though he didn't quite feel that way himself anymore.

Perhaps over time he managed to quell the storm that raged in his head and very often spilled out through his lips, chaotic and, unfortunately, audible to those around him. Though he suspected that it was more the fact that so many years of constant blabbering had run him dry and he simply had nothing to talk about anymore. There were convincing arguments to both cases and he really didn't want to spend the effort trying to figure it out, though it was very likely to be some odd amalgamation of the two.

Something Better?

His alarm rang at 9:30AM, and as he sat up to turn it off, he actually felt pretty awake and well rested. Despite that fact, his brain yelled to be back under his covers and his body nodded in ascent, so he reset his alarm for an hour later, brushed his teeth quickly so he wouldn't have to do it later, and then crawled back into bed.

He found himself rather unmotivated lately. He had kept at his free work; steadily adding on more and more on top of it, some paid, some not; in the hopes of keeping himself busy and disciplined. What he sought in all of this was structure. He knew that if he let himself room to be lazy he would take it and he would end up nowhere fast. This strategy, while effective at first, seemed to be losing its effect. Constantly working for seemingly nothing had stopped acting as a structure and, in some respects, started eating at his soul -- his night job didn't help much either. Everywhere he turned seemed like a dead end and he didn't know the way out, even though he constantly felt that there was one.

There was a world open to him, one much better than what he currently experienced. He wasn't sure where it was or how to get there but he could hear it calling faintly to him, a tiny voice that haunted the back of his mind. He often brushed it off, feeling as though it was just the call of a Siren, hoping to draw him to a turbulent end on their rocky shores.

Maybe, however, it was something better; a genuine guide to a better place; a reminder that something greater indeed lay beyond these walls. Either way, whether it be Siren's call or angelic guide, finding it would indeed prove to be of great importance. It was coming to be about the time when he took a step outside his comfort zone, it was, after all, beginning to feel rather uncomfortable in there.

Soft

His hand accidentally brushed her's briefly as he reached for the railing on the side of the theater. Instantly, his mind took note of how soft her hand was and he realized that something was missing.

Not her, the owner of the hand in question, but rather the mere sensation of a hand in his.

The more pathetic way of saying this would to simply put "he was lonely," but he was much too dignified to say that, and perhaps that was the problem.

For all the bitching he tended to do about his problems, he seldom did anything beyond just that; constant bitching. He knew he had to do something about it, but at the end of the day he was too lazy or cowardly to do anything of the sort.

A coward, that was what he was. He hid it pretty well behind logic and rationality, but in reality he was still a coward, unwilling to take a bold move forward in attempt to fix the problems at hand. Ultimately he wanted someone else to make the move for him, but that just wasn't the way things worked.

It was an interesting paradox he was witnessing; if he wanted to once again experience the softness of another hand in his, he would have to play a little harder to get there.

1 year Later

Tuesday was 1 year since my graduation at Yankee Stadium, a day filled with, among other things that shouldn't be discussed, the realization that I was no longer going to be a student; the end of a long chapter in my life. A year later I sit, still stuck in limbo as I split my time between my unpaid internship and my part time night job. Things have gone very far from how they were planned, and maybe, in time, I will realize that that was for the better. Maybe I'm beginning to realize it now; but I'm not yet at the point where I'm willing to admit it.

Midnight Musings

Riding on the highway I stared blankly into the darkened sky. Through the night a hint of clouds poked through the darkness, their usual pure bright white now a muddled grey. Their ever transient faces read clearly of cartoon friends made a childhood ago. Images of desires too late to ever be realized flash through my mind as these nostalgic friends from a lifetime ago gradually dissipate to nothingness. I want to preserve their nebulous forms; a reminder of a past life for all eternity, yet I am reminded that one of the greatest mistakes of man is trying to make last forever what was never meant to.

A Note on Developing Characters

It's always easy, when watching a movie or reading a book, to say "yea, so and so and their friend's relationship needed to be developed more,". Hell, I say that all the time. However, at least with myself, I would say it but not be able to pinpoint how exactly that needed to be done.

Developing relationships in between two separate characters can be tricky if you don't have a good grasp on each character's personality as well as the general relationship between the two characters, i.e. "how do they feel about each other?" That's generally a good question to start off with in discovering and building a relationship between your fictional works.

Going back to my previous post about Street Fighter, the relationship between Chung Li and her master is just that, a girl that goes to some guy to learn things, the relationship is, in that respect, too materialistic and way too one-sided for me to feel anything for him when we're lead to believe that he's dead.

Relationship development is tricky because you must know and have developed all your characters so that when they interact with each other, we see a bit of emotion from them, be it joy or sorrow or indifference (yes, indifference is an emotion, or, at least in this case it is because that character should be indifferent for a reason). Your main character should not be the only one that gets something out of a relationship, that's generally not how relationships work... unless they're just that kind of relationship, but even then there's a reason why it exists (and is usually a point of conflict.)