Watching The Stars

A long time ago in not-so-distant lands
When the only things tweeting were birds
It was far more common to have calloused hands
And everyfolk paid mind of their words

Those who would journey to find something new
Would often look to the skies
To guide them and help them to not go askew
For the stars in the heavens never tell lies

They'd see something bigger, and greater, than them
To lighten the path far ahead
If they would only trust first, and not condemn
They'd wind up some place far happier instead

Back then a bad hair day was never a thing
And a perfect pie nary a care
No pictures to post, or comments that sting
Or the day-to-day issues of "perfection" laid bare

They looked up, and around, got lost and got found
And not just in filters and hip sizes
They were part of a whole, something glorious-bound
Not alone in a race of beauty without prizes

But today we look down, at a small little screen
Always, day in, and day out
We share the places we are, though hardly have seen
And everyone knows what we're thinking about

When a hair has gone awry, we put it back in it's place
For ours is the face we see the most
We stare at the floor, our palms; not the stars out in space
And worry all day about a stranger's post

Where can you hope to go, when you stare at yourself?
When the stars do not guide you?
Posting pictures of books, just to put them back on the shelf
And nothing greater than yourself anywhere in view?

Like a man in a desert, you walk in a round
Propelled by those you like
Ignoring the "nays" with your head in the ground
Forming your own private, egotistical, reich

It's no wonder to me, we have all lost our way
Chasing an unattainable goal
Believing we've always been right, 'til they days of our grey
And over those we disagree, we inevitably roll

It's no wonder to me, we have all lost our way
When we are the greatest there is
When we're guided by pride; forget why we kneel to pray
And say "This is my world, not his."

It's no wonder to me, we have all lost our way
And we no longer look to the stars
Just like it's no wonder, when we will all have to pay
For feigning outrage online, while ignoring these brothers of ours

Proactive Procrastination

            As a survivor of habitual procrastination, I can tell you from experience that it is only through the grace of many undeserved miracles that I made it through my high school and university career mostly in one piece. I have all semester to write a paper, you say? It will be written the weekend before, and I won't get any sleep the night before, I can guarantee you that.

So sure was I that everything I was assigned would be procrastinated that I eventually scheduled all my assignments on a "shifted" timeline. Essentially take a normal school workload and shift it forward in time by two weeks, and you get an idea of what I was managing. It almost took as much work to manage my procrastinated schedule as I believe it would to manage a normal schedule. In summary, I was PROACTIVELY PROCRASTINATING. If there is not a dictionary entry for that, I would like to volunteer to write it myself.

I like to believe that I have recovered from my bad habits. But now and then the natural, initial reaction to a lot of requests, issues, problems, or notices is to want to ignore it until the "due date". No matter what it is. Seeing as though it is tax season at the time of this post, I can tell you that my taxes are already "done", but I probably won't be submitting them until the week taxes are due. Why? Two reasons: 1. Stick it to the man. 2. Old habits die hard.

Those were the thoughts I had in mind when I got to this part of Annals of an Empire. During this part of the book, Big Jim (James Ferdinand) is starting to see his life go down paths he hadn't anticipated, and he's having a hard time adjusting and accepting these unexpected changes. It is in the middle of this time of flux that he meets Rick, and after some time the following conversation (as part of a larger whole, important plot-points having been removed as well) takes place.

            Rick was silent for a good while before he finally spoke again. And his voice sounded out of place in the silence that surrounded them, almost too loud, though he spoke softly.

            “You see the moons over there?” Jim looked to where Rick was pointing and saw the two small moons that were sinking slowly over the peaks in the distance.

            “Yes.”

            “If I sit here for fifteen minutes, the blue one will have sunk below the horizon. Another ten and the white one will follow.” He paused. “And yet, here I will be, sitting. Nothing will change except I might get a bit tired, maybe thirsty.” Another pause. “I have bills at home, rent for my house, talks to give to a group here or a meeting there. Maybe I have a court summons for an overdue parking ticket. If I sit here I would never know, and it would never affect me. The moons will continue to rise and sink, the people in the city will continue about their lives, yet I would have no idea; I might get a bit peckish and head into the city for a bite, but that’s it. Stay here long enough and Rick could become a bum, kicked out of his home. He could become a wanted criminal for tax evasion. But that is that Rick, not this one.” He gestured with his thumb to his chest. “This Rick lives a happy life of peace, the world moves forward, and the birds and the insects that sing tonight do not care what company they share.”

            Jim sat for a moment, he nodded in some parts while Rick spoke. But had no response ready when silence fell again. “You make it sound easy, just disappearing like that. Wish I could sometimes.”

            “It’s as easy as you make it, Jim.” Came Rick’s quick reply. “How many notifications have you received on your device since we sat down?”

            Jim pulled the small black device out of his coat pocket and checked, “looks like a couple dozen.”

            “And what would happen if you just ignored them?”

            “Probably a number of things.” Jim gave a half-hearted laugh.

            “But what would happen to you?” Rick looked at him this time.

            Jim thought quietly as he thought. There would probably be a short time before the crew panicked. Would they send a group to find him? Probably not, they would have thought he’d been arrested or killed in some alleyway. There would probably be some argument over who takes over the ship at first, and that would spread to other branches of the gang. Eventually the whole organization would probably destroy itself from the inside, ending with everyone dead in some bloody gunfight, or everyone getting booked by the ICE.

            “Probably nothing.” He realized.

            “Well that was easy.” Rick smiled, and turned back to the fire.

            It was Jim’s turn for a question now, “Then why don’t you do it? If it’s so easy?”

            “Because it takes a unique kind of person who wants to leave the world behind; to not affect it, and not be affected by it.” He took a last drink of what Jim had finally decided was hot chocolate, and set the cup on the ground. “Is it cowardice? Maybe selfishness? Either way, good people do not remove themselves from the world voluntarily. You may avoid a phone call, or delete an email, but eventually you face the consequences of that choice, you choose not to avoid it for long. Because, Jim, deep down you believe you have an impact on the world, whether for your own gain, or something greater. You want to steer the ship in some small way in the direction you would want it to go, and you in turn want it to change you.”

            Silence followed again, and Jim’s head was filled with noise, his thoughts competing for dominance in his head, which one to give voice? The air was dry and chapped his lips, but he was drowning in confusion.

             “So what are you telling me, Rick?”

            “Ha, I’m not telling you anything, really.” Rick held up his hands, to motion towards the horizon in the distance. “I’m just explaining to you how the universe works.”

            “Wha-“
“You may not like it, or even admit it.” Rick interrupted. “But there are laws that govern our lives, that govern the universe. Just as the speed of light is a constant in a vacuum, and that a bad tree can’t bring forth good fruit, a person with a good heart will naturally reach out to connect with humanity.”

           Jim sat in silence. He knew he had some kind of rebuttal to Rick's point, but he couldn't find the words. So he continued to sit, and watched the moons set.

Logan and Superman

Hollywood has painted itself into a corner with its recent (and not-so-recent) fascination with superheroes, and Logan seems like a breath of fresh air for the floundering Hollywood creative. Let me explain.

This week my wife and I went with some good friends to see the the new Logan movie.

The last X-men movie I saw was X-3: The Last Stand; so I have 'missed' Origins: Wolverine, First Class, The Wolverine, Days of Future Past, and Apocalypse. Besides my growing fatigue of super-hero movies in general, I'm especially tired of the Marvel universe and the repetition of the same story over and over again with different characters in different locations. I tried Daredevil on Netflix and was bored, I tried Iron Fist which captured my attention for an evening before I forgot about it. I never bothered with the new Incredible Spiderman movies, Agents of Shield, or Doctor Strange. But without watching them I bet I can recite the plots for each of them right now:

-Something unfortunate happens to unassuming person
-unassuming person becomes a vigilante
-vigilante makes joke
-vigilante meets something/someone who is more powerful than they are
-vigilante makes joke
-vigilante suffers a betrayal
-vigilante makes joke
-Vigilante decides to become hero
-Hero's family/friend/city is in peril
-Hero fights bad guy in climax scene
-Hero wins and makes joke

I'll be honest, I really liked the first Ironman, the Avengers, and Guardians of the Galaxy. I would say mostly because they were original when they came out, they were different, and mostly I think it was due to the fact they were comedies first with a heavy helping of action sauce.

I wasn't excited to see Logan for the exact reasons above, I was expecting more of the same. I mean, how many times can you make a movie about a guy with knives coming out of his fists who can't die? How many variations of "I punch you and stab you at the same time" can there possibly be?

But I was surprised. Not wildly surprised, but I enjoyed the movie. It gave me the feels. And I think it succeeded for the same reasons that every Superman movie is inevitably going to fail. And the reason is Hollywood.

Anyone who is a regular reader of Superman comics would be able to tell you why the comics are good, and why they keep reading them. On paper it doesn't make any sense: a person who has x-ray vision, laser-beam eyes, flies so fast he can rewind time, is invulnerable to everything except a rock that can't be found in our solar-system, how could someone like that possibly have any conflict that could even remotely be considered fair? Besides a few instances where Superman met his match, and the writers deliberately put Superman at a disadvantage, the focus of his stories aren't about the fights, or the external conflict, it's about the internal conflict. What species of moral dilemmas are introduced when a being who can kill anyone with a glance is fundamentally opposed to killing? What happens when an evil villain will kill anyone and everything to achieve their goal, and stopping them would require people's deaths?

Those are the kinds of questions the comics explore. Yes there are epic battles and fights, but those are stops on the trail to explore the characters, not the other way around. Take the character of Superman from Red Son. Instead of crash-landing in America, Superman lands in Soviet Russia. How much more complicated do his questions become when he's a communist?





So when I walk into the local Logan theatre to see the movie Logan (yes I know), I wasn't expecting it to explore characters in the way they did. How deep can you dive into a character who has already had three of his own movies? And I certainly wasn't expecting a western.

You read that right. Logan is a western movie. Now, when people hear the term western, they think of horses, shootouts, and whiskey shots. But westerns are more than that, westerns are a style. They are typified by the old brooding male protagonist who hates the world and gets called to save someone or something, and ends up shedding his rough exterior to show a soft, caring, broken person beneath. Halfway through the movie Logan even gives us a long look of a western being played on a TV, probably in the hopes that the audience will take the hint. I mean, look at this promotional poster:

I didn't come out of Logan thinking "Wow, those fight scenes were cool." In fact they are exactly what you would expect from a movie starring Wolverine. I came away having just explored the mind and life of Logan and was rewarded with a deep and emotional experience. It's all there in the title, actually. The movie is about Logan the man, not Wolverine the invincible human wrecking-ball.

So there it is. Logan was a better movie than almost every other recent superhero movie because we could relate with the main character, feel sorry for him, and cheer for him. Superman is always going to be a disappointment because we cannot relate, we can't feel sorry for the demigod, and half the time we're cheering for the bad guy to see if he's up for the challenge. In fact, if you have seen the new Justice League trailer, someone is suspiciously missing...

So when I say Hollywood has painted itself into a corner this is what I mean: Hollywood wants to make money making superhero movies, and to do that they need to make them funny, action-filled, piles of quick-witted nonsense that appeals to the larger audience. But they also want them to be good, and faithful to the source material (in other words: actually have a story), which means they need to be slow, thoughtful, stories with actual moral conundrums (not the Tarzan mentality of  ME: GOOD YOU: BAD. I PUNCH YOU). And with Wolverine and Superman, they can't have both. With Logan, however, they took a chance and I think it really paid off. Let's hope everyone else was paying attention.