sekari

My body wants to sleep. The rest of me wants to reach into someone’s chest and tear out...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 03:19:11 -0400

My body wants to sleep. The rest of me wants to reach into someone’s chest and tear out something squishy. It’s probably best that I live alone.

kateordie: Respect.

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 11:56:43 -0400

kateordie:

Respect.

myjetpack: A book of my cartoons will be out in a few...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 05:08:22 -0400

myjetpack:

A book of my cartoons will be out in a few weeks!

How my literature degree affects my daily life.

books

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 20:11:00 -0400

Books read so far this year:

The Hobbit- JRR Tolkien

Mindplayers- Pat Cadigan

The Warden- Anthony Trollope

The Dead Zone- Stephen King

Hyperion- Dan Simmons

Still working on:

The Snow Queen- Joan Vinge

Titus Groan- Mervyn Peake

The Three Impostors- Arthur Machen

Every time the music start, I can feel my achin’...

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 03:33:45 -0400

Every time the music start, I can feel my achin’ shakin’ heart

Every time.

iheartchaos: LET ME DIE

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 12:32:38 -0400

iheartchaos:

LET ME DIE

today is the day I get my life in order today is the day I get my life in order today is the day...

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:53:38 -0400

today is the day I get my life in order

today is the day Ilovemycathe’ssosoftI’mhungryIthinkI’lleatcerealoutoftheboxIshouldcleanupmyapartmentandgetsomeworkdonezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzihadareallystrangedreamwheremygirlfriendfrommiddleschooltriedtopickupaheavytelevisionsettimetolistentonprandplayvideogamesandlookatmyrssfeedcompulsivelyforafewhoursthenwatchtvandgotobed

I wish I felt worthy of this I wish I knew what was happening I wish I hadn’t wasted so much...

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:38:00 -0500

I wish I felt worthy of this

I wish I knew what was happening

I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time

I wish I wasn’t so terrified

I wish they would understand

I wish there wasn’t so much pressure

I wish I was a better person

I wish this was easy

I wish she wasn’t so far away

I wish I could slow this down

I wish I was less certain

I wish…

No, wait

I should save my wishes for things that really matter

I wish I had some Peach Crush and a really good pizza

Something vaguely important came in the mail today. About damn...

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 00:17:21 -0500

Something vaguely important came in the mail today. About damn time.

(names obscured because I don’t trust any of you)

Something strange happened last night as I was driving home. I’ve always known that I have...

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 23:23:00 -0500

Something strange happened last night as I was driving home. I’ve always known that I have really good reflexes when I drive. There was one night when I was driving past the mall, on a road I’d taken thousands of times. All of a sudden my car started to slow down. I had put my foot on the brakes automatically before I had even seen it. Then the Fire truck turned on its running lights and pulled into the lane next to me. I hadn’t consciously seen it, but I had reacted.

But this time I was driving home from a small little town called Hillsdale. I shouldn’t have bothered going back there. I had passed through that town the day before on the way to Indiana. There was a bookstore there that I had wanted to check out, but they were closed on thursdays for some reason. I didn’t plan on coming back this way. Originally I was going to visit a friend in South Bend for a few days and then go to Chicago to see my grandmother. My mother was taking a train there and I was supposed to pick her up. But my friend in South Bend had to cut my visit short a day because she had a medical appointment. I thought I might spend the extra time meandering around the Midwest. But that didn’t happen either. My mother came down with the flu and she and my Grandmother decided it was best not to come until everyone was well.

So I just drove home by way of Fort Wayne to check out some more book stores. That route would take me close to Hillsdale, so I decided to end the night by knocking that one off the list. It was a bit of a disappointment though. They had the gall to mix the Horror and Mystery novels together. There’s no way to browse through that. You can’t look for horror-sounding titles because most mysteries have death in the name. And there’s so much more mystery than horror. It was a mess. I barely found anything and I did not plan to go back there.

I was listening to an audiobook of Stephen Kings The Dead Zone as to drove. There was an element of irony to this that was not lost on me. In that story the main character is in a terrible car accident that leaves him in a coma for years. I had read half of the book years ago in middle school, and I’d seen the movie with Christopher Walken, so I knew about this plot point and in a way I had chosen that book for the drive because of it. What I hadn’t remembered was the immense themes of Fate and Balance in the story. In the story Johnny, that’s his name, gets into the car accident because he couldn’t spend the night with his girlfriend that night. She got sick because they had stayed too late at the county fair where he had one a large sum of money from the Wheel Of Fortune. The story implies that her illness was directly tied to his winning, the more he won the sicker she got. His accident was seen as a kind of balance for all the luck he spent getting that money. But the accident did grant him a kind of superpower, and it’s implied in the book that this was needed to defeat some great evil that would threaten to end the world. I had been thinking about the confluence of fate and other themes in the story. The night before my friend and I had stayed up and watched all three Lost Boys movies. After she went to bed I stayed up and wrote a bit about these themes and how they interconnected and were influenced by my history and perspective.

So there I was, driving home in the dark back to Ann Arbor. I had no real reason to be on this back road at that particular time, except for the collection of coincidences that lined up to put me there. My friend and my mother both taking ill, the bookstore being closed the day before and then turning out to be a waste of time. That’s when it happened. That’s when my car suddenly slowed down almost to a stop for no reason.

I don’t know what it was. Suddenly my foot was on the brakes and I felt my body rock forward. But there was nothing there. There was no reason for me to have stopped. I quickly sped up again because I didn’t want someone to hit me from behind. But I tried to go over what I had seen to trigger my foot to hit the brakes. The only thing I can remember was the blackness that surrounded the road. This was a lot more blackness than I’m normally used to. Highways and cities have too much ambient light to get that dark. But here it was oppressive, but also cunning in it’s own way. The balance of all this unblemished darkness was the brightness of stars in the sky. I had noticed this the night before when my friend and I had gone out to pick up a pizza with her daughter. The stars were just as bright this time, but there was a kind of choking darkness that stalked in the trees and clung to the unlit barns and houses that bit into the speckled horizon like teeth in a monstrous and uneven jaw.

It was this insidious darkness that had suddenly leaped out into the road and swallowed up the car in front of me. I remember seeing it suddenly close in ahead of me, and then my car started to slow down as my hindbrain saw the danger and reacted. But before I could see this with my conscious eyes, it was gone. The twin red eyes of the car ahead of me were there looking back at me, gloating and shrinking down the road.

I drove through the spot where the darkness had been without incident. I wondered if maybe it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. I was very careful the rest of the way. But that wasn’t quite the last of it. There were a few more moments like that, though much less severe. Maybe I only noticed them because of what I’d seen before. Or maybe I just imagined them.
I want to say that the first thing that occurred to me was that it was a cat. It was just a small shape of darkness that darted across the road behind the car ahead of me. Of course it was too small and too fast to be a cat. I knew that instantly. It was more like a drop if ink falling across my vision, as if I had poured a bottle of it while tilting my head.

I didn’t stop that time. But I saw it. It’s been about 24 hours since then. I haven’t left my house sine I got home last night. Not because I’m afraid or anything. But neither have I entertained any excuses to go out.

My friend in South Bend and I decided that we’ll have to do another longer visit like we planned in a month or two, and my mother and I still need to go see my grandmother in Chicago sometime soon. It’s very likely that I will be taking another trip down that way. But this time I might think twice about taking any back roads at night.

Watched all three Lost Boys movies tonight. It’s a shame that they get exponentially worse....

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 02:27:05 -0500

Watched all three Lost Boys movies tonight. It’s a shame that they get exponentially worse. Was going to do some sort of write up on that, but I just spent an hour on an essay on The Dead Zone and I really should be getting to sleep. I have no idea what I’m doing tomorrow.

Driving across mid-Michigan listening to The Dead Zone. Not really sure what town I’m in. Nice...

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 13:12:15 -0500

Driving across mid-Michigan listening to The Dead Zone. Not really sure what town I’m in. Nice place though. GPS says the place is called Hillside. I wonder which Stephen King story I’m walking into.

Vacation plans just got turned around. I’m leaving South Bend In. on Friday morning and I have...

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 14:08:00 -0500

Vacation plans just got turned around. I’m leaving South Bend In. on Friday morning and I have to be in Chicago on Saturday afternoon. I guess I’ll just explore the Midwest and look for book stores. Any suggestions about things to do in the midwest on a Friday night?

Read 25 books this year. Might be a few others that I’m forgetting. Bold were good. Starred*...

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 13:53:00 -0500

Read 25 books this year. Might be a few others that I’m forgetting. Bold were good. Starred* were very good. Strike-through were utterly terrible. All but 5 of these were audio books. Going to try and read more real books.

Carrie by Stephen King*

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi

Four And Twenty Black Birds by Cherie Priest

Virtual Light by William Gibson

This Day All Gods Die by Stephen Donaldson *

Death Spore by Harry Knight

Transformation by Edmund Plante

Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

John Dies At The End by David Wong*

Consider Phlebus by Iain M. Banks

The Chyrsalids by John Wyndham

The Stand by Stephen King

The Eyes Of The Dragon by Stephen King

Echo by Terry Moore*

Lords And Ladies by Terry Pratchett

Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett

Drift by Rachel Maddow

Robopocalypse by Daniel Wilson

Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand*

Tailor Tinkor Soldier Spy by John Le Carre

Existentialism by Robert Solomon

The Bourne Ultimatum by Robert Ludlum

Elements Of Journalism by Bill Kovach

Books I’ve started and hope to finish soon:

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

The Snow Queen by Joan Vinge

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

The Suiciders by J.T. Mackintosh

The Dead Zone by Stephen King

my neighbor’s shower makes a terrible screaming sound. The good part is that they are...

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 19:49:49 -0500

my neighbor’s shower makes a terrible screaming sound.

The good part is that they are considerate enough to use it only in the afternoons and evenings.

The bad part is that on the evenings when I’m actually home they always start it just as I’m about to eat dinner.

Like right now.

I wish I was ten years younger. If only because ten years ago there was someone to talk to in the...

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 01:37:27 -0500

I wish I was ten years younger. If only because ten years ago there was someone to talk to in the middle of the night.

It’s a very strange day when you find yourself in a situation in which you could destroy...

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 18:12:22 -0500

It’s a very strange day when you find yourself in a situation in which you could destroy someone’s marriage simply by saying what you happen to be thinking at that moment.

I said nothing.

I don’t like to leave my apartment after dark. In order to get back in I have to talk the...

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 20:48:07 -0500

I don’t like to leave my apartment after dark. In order to get back in I have to talk the security guard at the front gate.

I’m procrastinating my way into a panic attack.

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 00:30:36 -0500

I’m procrastinating my way into a panic attack.

Photo

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 15:58:08 -0400