On Digging Pits and Falling Into Them

I’ve written about my elder sister more than a couple of times here. When she found out about my blog last week, she asked me to call her Serena, rather than SH, whenever I mention her. Mathew and Serena? (Shrug) Personally, I preferred SH. You know, it’s kind of like I’m shushing her when I talk about her, and that was kind of nice. But well, with progress must come change... sigh.

That done, I guess it’s about time I introduce the brat… ahem, I mean, the other sister. The kid.

For the sake of easy reading, I’m going to call her Zoola. It’s a variation of the nickname Serena came up with way back in the day, and it’s one that would drive her (Zoola) up the wall when she finally gets around to reading this (if ever).

She’s 14, and though she isn’t showing all that much interest in writing, unlike Serena and I, she does have other artistic talents that I don’t. Maybe it’s just that she hasn’t found her voice yet.

Zoola can be sweet when she wants something from you, and a mule when she doesn’t. Your basic kid sister. She’s the youngest, but our parents never let her get spoiled. Close one, that. Growing up with a younger sister isn’t easy. At least with a brother, you can do this... 

... every now and again when authority needs to be established. Not so with sisters. It is so much more complicated with sisters.

The reason for this post, though, is ( obviously) what happened a few weeks ago.

The Day The Anvil Struck the Hammer

It’s been over two years since I started the accounting course that I am in the final stage of right now. Eighteen months into it, I had to start taking classes in the Big City, which is, as you’d know if you’d seen a few of my earlier posts, a few hours away from home sweet home. As I said, I’m in my last stage here, and if all goes well, I’ll be done by the end of this year.

That’s not what this post is about, no. This one has much to do with the busses I take on my weekly commutes. And there have been plenty of those, let me tell you.

You see, whether or not it’s the same route you take every week, every ride has its differences. Sometimes it could be a good trip, and other times, it could be downright awful. But knowing me, you would probably be realizing now that the third option, i.e. ‘most’ times, are, to me, just funny.

 Every bus ride I take to the City has its special moment, and I don’t mean just the ones like these:

...which are hilarious enough in real life, especially when they happen to you (speaking from painful experience, yes). My moments of note include weirder things that have happened, like the time we were attacked by a cloud of grasshoppers, and oh yes, the never to be forgotten Day The Shoe Held Us Hostage.

Of Efforts and Betrayals

There comes the time in the life of a man where he stands before that bathroom mirror and looks at himself.

He examines the face in front of him. He studies what he sees, peers into the reflection, into the image that peers back out at him.

Then he reaches for the shaving cream, grabs the razor, and it begins.

When Friends Fall and Ideals Change

Nothing can start a literary piece of art better than sitting down (or in my case, arranging pillows, stretching legs out, adjusting laptop and cracking knuckles, not necessarily in that order) to beginning to write.

And something else that’s more or less equal to that in the same aspect is the occasion when you have something specific in mind you want to write about.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is one of those rare times, in my case at least.

Today, I talk to you about… how my first ever job interview went.

The Tale of The Cat and The Monkey - When TIWs Gather

And it happened again.

Ever since the shenanigans that Dani J Caile and I got up to on account of Neal’s goatee, I have instinctively been looking out for a time when Dani and I could do a similar bit of creative dueling once more. Apparently, he’s been looking out for the same thing, but neither of us seemed to find a convenient enough avenue to start it off.

Until the other day, when Dani decided to take matters into his own hands.

Everything worthwhile needs something good to kick it off; in this case, the kick off happened innocently enough. All I did was share a picture on my timeline. This one, to be exact.

A few hours later, I saw this. Innocent enough, you would say. Not to him, and not to me.

Of course, I did what you would expect me to have done. The gauntlet had been thrown. The time had come once more. So I drew my Sword of Creativity and plunged in. 

Of Pacts and Impacts

There I am, minding my own business.

I’m in my zone; on my bed, my laptop on my lap, the pillows behind me, cushion under my ankles, and the KEEP OUT sign hanging on my door. Yes, the sign that everyone ignores.

What am I doing? Researching bows, financial statements, arrowheads, recent exchange rate fluctuations, YouTube videos on dual sword wielding; with the exam coming up, I try to stay focused. And for legal purposes, note that I say ‘try’.

 I always use a mouse with my laptop. I’m still not used to the touchpad yet, and probably might never be. What you need to know for the purpose of this tale is that my right arm was resting on the bed next to me, and right hand was on the mouse.

I feel a tingly, tickly sensation just below my elbow. I ignore it. See, I’ve lived in this room for a few years, and I have over the months familiarized myself with its other inhabitants. It’s a dictatorship, yes; but it’s fair for all. Simple rule: stay out of my way and I won’t stomp you.

Come within reach and you will die. Crawl over my foot and you will die. Zip back and forth more than four times across the floor in plain view and you will die. The last would be especially personal since it would have made me get up from whatever I was doing and then have to settle back in again after it was done. Totally unnecessary for both parties concerned.

So there’s a tingly feeling on my arm, and I ignored it. Might be a mosquito, which I’ll kill in a while, or a fly, which I’m too lazy to chase after with the swatter. The tingling doesn’t stop, so I finally glance down.

The Tale of The Depressed Goatee – When TIWs Gather

It was a few months ago when I joined The Iron Writers, and since then, it’s been uphill for me. The confidence I was lacking, the inspiration I needed; I found it all there, being shared out liberally among all the amazing, incredible people who make up the group.

Each and every single writer there is unique in their way, and yet at the same time, they all share one beautiful quality: they know how to have fun.

In between the soul draining, four-element-related challenges that Brian constantly manages to cook up, TIWs keep things going on the group Facebook page, and it looks like one of the job specifications of being an Iron Writer is to be able to embarrass, insult, harass and victimize fellow respected Irons on a constant basis, all in the name of sharing laughs.

 Wars of words rage, and alliances form and break off quicker than those in Westeros; and when the gauntlet is thrown, things are settled in what TIWs call a Grudge Match, which, though I’m still fuzzy about it, I’m willing to try out should the occasion arise.

Suffice it to say that there’s always something interesting or downright hilarious going on there. Most of the time, I watch from the sidelines and poke a cautious needle when the opportunity presents itself, but since I’m still a newbie, I try not to get right down into it.

The unexpected happened, though, when fellow Iron Writer Neal Sayatovich changed his profile picture recently, and in it he displayed a truly magnificent growth of facial hair. It literally begged for comment, and comments did it get, courtesy of yet another talented IW, Dani J Caile.

Of Flash Cards And Talking Dummies

Remember when I said I was having a lousy stretch of luck these days? Well, it hadn’t even begun yet. You know how they say that magicians save their best for last; well, call Fate a performer, because on Saturday night, Fate did exactly that, just for ’lil old me.

It was close to 1am, and I was in the kitchen, just heading off to sleep after a glass of water. I registered stepping  into a puddle, and that’s when my mind hit the Fast-forward button. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground, and my chin was throbbing like a Harley-Davidson, if that makes any sense.

I was back in that calm, contemplatory state of higher being for a few seconds. I lay there on the ground, all serene and placid, and prodded inside my mouth with my tongue. When comprehension took me, (a few good minutes later) it was that I was feeling a gaping hole where there should not have been any hole.

My first thought, I swear to you: “Oh, there’s a hole in my mouth. Good thing I already had that glass of water,”

Then, my mind got slightly clearer, and my next thought made slightly more sense: “Why is there a hole in my mouth?”

I had fallen face first onto cold, hard tiles. My feet had literally flown backwards behind me, and I guess I would have made a perfect entry to America’s Funniest Home Videos, awesome falls category. Now I know what those poor souls felt like.

Here, There, Somewhere

All in all, I have to admit that this has been a really, really bad period for me. Not just inspiration-wise, luck-wise, or internet-wise, but also pretty much everything-else-wise, too.

I have been having really, really slow going getting inspired these days. This blog was supposed to help inspire me to start writing again, and so it has. But blog writing is very different from novel writing, as all writers would probably agree. It takes very, very little to put someone off novel writing when they are in a slump and trying to make their way to fit word to paper (or screen, as the case may be).

With me, the lack of internet, which usually in no way has any direct correlation with novel writing (no, wait, the relationship is inverse; the more internet I have, the less time I have to write) aaaaand I lost track of where I was. Where was I?

Ah, yes. The internet, which usually makes me write less, is now gone, and for that reason, I am in no mood at all to write. Makes sense? Not at all, and yet here I am, determinedly sticking to this excuse like a guy standing smugly on ice that is both visibly and audibly cracking ominously all around him.

Fate Makes A Lousy Sparring Partner

The tenth of April came and went, but our phone lines are still dead.

It isn’t just us; all our neighbors and pretty much everyone up and down the road we live on do not have their telephones yet. But the most annoying part is that none of them seem to find it annoying. Why not? Mobile phones.

Oh, sure.

But I, on the other hand, have been going for three weeks straight without Wi-Fi, and it has been clawing at me. Especially more so, since I began the Mathew persona. It’s like fate is having a good old chuckle at my expense.

I can see it now: this scene is playing out in my head where Fate is sitting at a bar with his buddies Death and Taxes, and they’re having this hearty old laugh while Fate goes:

“… and then he thinks since he has internet, he can keep it up for as long as he wants,”

“HAW HAW HAW!”

“And, and…. It’s been THREE WHOLE WEEKS!”

Death raises his glass, “To Fate!”

“Hear, hear!” Taxes calls

Loud guffaws resume.

End scene.

A Keytastrophe Like No Other

                It has happened again. It wasn’t by choice, it never is. But somehow, someway, I always end up finding myself in deep trouble that seems to have no end.

My fingers keep missing the mark. I try, but I keep failing. This is torment of the most awful sort. What sort of writer cannot write? And yet there I was, a self-proclaimed writer, who, you guessed it, could not write.

There’s more to this story. I was with drunken fingers on a dancing keyboard with roughly 4000 words to write and only a few hours to do it in. Normally, that amount of words in that amount of time would be a breeze; but now, it was a hurricane, and I don’t mean that in a good way.

How did I get there? And why were the words “Help me!” repeating in my mind?

It all started when a friend asked me to help him out.

Of Delusions and Dog Whistles

’Twas the first of March, and I woke up sick.

Right away I knew it was going to be one of those days. I hadn’t even woken up properly at 8 in the morning, and the sneezes had already begun.

The common cold was no stranger to me, nor I to it. That said, I really have to stress that I didn’t welcome it as often as one would think, our twenty year old acquaintanceship considered. But it was like one of those visitors who show up at your front door one day, with two duffel bags at their feet, and announce that they’re staying for the weekend.

And no matter the hints you pass or the blunt in-your-face orders to get out that you deliver, it still tweaks your cheek and settles deeper into the couch; which in this case happens to be your sinuses.

Or mine.

In any case, the repeated sneezes had me down all day. I feeling a little light in the head, or in any case, I was feeling it a bit lighter than usual. But even as I sat there, huddled in front of my laptop under that comforting piles of blankets, I wasn’t too worried.

After all, it was just a few sneezes (per minute) and a general tendency to shiver every once in a while. How bad could it get, I asked myself. I was all for betting it would clear up by the next day.

Little did I know what I was in for.

On Surviving a Bane of Sleep

This is torture.

The cacophony rises and abates all around me. I cannot think, I cannot forget, I can only clench my teeth as the pain drills into my head.

This anguish is more than any should ever bear. It is ceaseless, it is agony personified, and it is going to drive me insane. I don’t know how long I can hang on. My eyes are open, but I see nothing.

And after the awful day I had spent, this was the only way it could have gotten worse.

The Slap of Victory

I am at war.

The enemy is right there, glaring at me, leering at me through its tiny compound eyes. It is gloating, sadistically savoring its repeated triumphs over me, taunting me with that maddening hum.

I grit my teeth as I cradle my wounded, crippled pride and I swear upon my honor… this mosquito will never live to see the sun rise again.