*Bent but Unbroken

I could go on, but I've already reached my required word count, so why bother?
Joking! That's a little homework humor for ya.
Really though, I could go on, but I assume you get the picture.
I could detail memory after memory, and talk about our relationship and what made it special, and I can come up with one sad point after another, all the while seeming really introspective and deep. The truth is, it's easy to write sad, emotion-warranting material when you're talking about a mother-of-three who died at the age of 32. Like I mentioned when I began this assignment, writing about a dead friend is kinda cheap. I worry about that sometimes, between the tattoos and blogging and poems and so on, I wonder if I'm conducting some sort of parlor trick each time I elicit from others the emotions she still digs outta me. It's not meant to be that way. I always manage to comfort myself by remembering that Sarah knew that I was a rampant narcissist. Even when it's about her, it's about me. That never would've surprised her. And what I said at the start is true: If our roles were reversed, she'd base her assignment on me. Well, she may have taken some sort of feminist angle, but I would have been considered a forerunner, I'm sure.
Before I clue up, I'll just say why it is that I bothered. I mean, if she was never my girlfriend, but I still insist she was 'special', there must be a reason behind that, right? What was so special, you're asking?
In truth, we were actually private eyes! We went around solving crimes while exhibiting placid high school student exteriors!
Wait...that's not it.
Well, it's like I said before. We were both the funny one.
I'd spent my pre-teen years as the class clown and general fuckabout in school. Loved the role. I was a good student, but that didn't mean I wasn't disruptive.
I had to hear over and over again that I was "weird." "That's weird." "Paul, you're so weird." My wife still tells me to this day. It never bothered me, really. I wasn't "bullied" about it (whatever the hell that even means). I wasn't ostracized at all, but I was far from understood.
Sarah was the same sorta weird. Again, we weren't social pariahs or anything. In fact, we were both kinda popular in high school; middle-rung kids who were accepted by most and even invited to the occasional cool kid party. But my take was always separate from everyone else's, and I couldn't help it. She was the same way. So, when we were together, we were the same sorta different.
When you're a funny sort, you constantly try to be as funny as possible. I'm not sure if drab people realize that. If you're funny, that's great, but you're never funny enough. You can always be more. I was more with her, and vice versa. I was never as entertaining alone as I was by her side.
Larry David (my comedy idol) unintentionally summed it up for me once. For those who don't know, he is the co-creator of the hit sitcom Seinfeld, the "other guy" depicted as George Costanza in the show (portrayed by Jason Alexander). In a making of documentary that I once watched, David described why he and Jerry Seinfeld paired up to make the sitcom in the first place, and why their ideas and writing always seemed to gel so easily. He said of Jerry, "He and I, we had the same...bent." He searches to find the word, and even though I don't completely understand it, I felt a wave of understanding rush over me when he said it. That was it! That was what she and I shared; we were both skewed in the same sorta way. I have a lot of meaningful people in my life, but she was the only one who I could share that with.
It was hard after she died, to sit and realize that I didn't really know her the best, as I thought I did. Peter knew her the best; knew things I could and never will know. I feel good about that. It left me wondering, though: If I didn't know her the best, and I wasn't the closest,  what was I?
My bereavement councilor would go on to explain that it's a tough spot to be in among the aftermath (of abscence and loss). I was auxillary while being central to her life as well. Where does that leave one such as me after the fact?
I think about it a lot when I write my content for Rowan's book. I can't tell her as much about Mommy as Daddy can, so why bother, really?
In time I reached the answer: I'm the guy who can tell you what she probably woulda said in reponse, if she were here.
If she were to respond to this, she'd say I was milking it.
I'll share a couple of shared laughs that come to mind, and then we'll call it All Done:



While sitting in the "business section" (two leather chairs) of a coffee shop one time, we watched a lanky, bro-type of 19-year old enter and approach the counter. She didn't realize until I told her afterward, but we both said "He looks like an idiot" simultaneously, in the exact same tone. 

One time, we were eating at Pizza Delight and talking about parallel universes. Y'know, how there are an infinite number of universes out there with an infinite number of yous where an infinite number of possibilities are happening? We talked about how we probably did become romantically involved in some of these universes (odds would be likely). After discussing this, Sarah asked me, "In how many of those universes do you think we kill ourselves?" And I replied, "All of them."


One time, we were hanging out over beers and she made some stupid joke about how I should try to open her beer bottle with my eye socket. We kept going with it and I said that I should open all of her beers this way from now on. Then she said that I'd probably develop bruising around the eye if I opened enough of them. And then I said, "Yeah, and people will ask me: 'Why do you have a black eye?' and I'll answer with, 'Well, Sarah was on the beer last night.'"

*Twins!

The boys were number two and three on the list, and now they pee wherever.
To this day I still laugh when I think of Sarah telling me about her experience, of learning that she was actually swollen with twin.
"The doctor was going over all of this stuff that would be different from my first pregnancy, and all I could keep thinking was, 'I'm going to have to tell Peter that he has to get rid of the car.'"

A year after our Ferris wheel trip to Chicargo, Peter wanted to return to Lollapalooza. He wanted me to come along since Sarah couldn't make the trip, and he wanted to make the trip because Sarah couldn't make the trip. They'd been to the event a couple of years beforehand, before we joined them. It was a special place for them. Peter wanted to take Grant along. I asked why and felt stupid when Peter reminded me that he was named after the park where Lollapalooza was held in Chicago: (you guessed it) Grant Park.
Traveling through a music festival in 30-degree heat with a toddler in tow is not as fun as it sounds.
Oh, it doesn't sound fun at all? You're very astute, then. That's correct. Actually, it was kinda fun in a way. I mean, we were dudes in our thirties anyway. Widowed, married, old hands compared to most of the acid-ridden twenty-somethings flaunting their utter lack of clothing. What was the rush, really?
I won't re-write what's already been done. I'll link this post, which can tell you all about the trip that we three lads went on. It's huge already, so I won't add class content to it, but it's there if you want to check it out.

Oh, Ellis is the other one. He didn't go to Chicargo with us, but he's my godson and he's very nice for a three-year old (going on four!). 

*"Convey the Experience"

As I said in this post, Catherine Belling, in her paper Overwhelming the Medium: Fiction and Trauma of Pandemic Fluenza, mentions the importance of narrative when trying to understand past suffering. "Suffering must be reconstituted within a story told be a narrator who can inhabit and convey the experience of the sufferer" (page 56). In this case, for this project, I have made myself that narrator. It feels as though this is what I am trying to do; shed light on what has happened at the individual level. I'm telling the story because I'm still around to deliver it, even though I was not really a part of the original trauma.
Sarah gets that prize alone. I ache when I think of the fear. She would text me details of procedures that she went through, but I'm not sure I have the stomach to repeat them here.
The stomach was one of her more decimated organs, and nourishment was unwelcome by the end. They found lesions down there when they passed a camera beyond her throat, as though snaking a goddamn drain. But like I said, I won't get into it.
Even if I were to share the details of her last days, I'm not sure it would stand as the sort of narrative that Belling has in mind. I could only give some insights into the physical hardships and the frightening uncertainty. These are not the backbone of trauma, but are instead some of the more evident side effects. Trauma is (as one of our readings details) the absence and the loss experienced. The reading splits hairs over one versus the other, but I'm not going to do that. As time passes, the two feel about the same.
Trauma is what's no longer there. Trauma is shock.
I was shocked when I finally managed to visit her. My wife and I had been living in Pasadena, on the west coast, when I received a text from Peter. I re-read it again and again as my mind, heady with marijuana, tried to figure out just what in the hell I was seeing. "Sarah has cancer." The odd thing about it was that no matter how many times I read it, I never felt surprise. I didn't feel sad, or even scared. I just felt a sudden, legitimate sense of urgency. It was time to move.
And so I did. Andie and I rented a car the following day and made the drive across the island, to "be there."

I finally made my way to the hospital and figured out where it was I needed to be.
She was in intensive care, or some other ward that has its own signage. I wasn't allowed in. Family only.
Well,  I wasn't family, but I was certainly something. Wasn't I? She spoke to me when she felt like complaining about her family, so that's pretty good.
Of course, I didn't think any of this. I just buzzed the thing and heard myself tell them I was a brother (she didn't have any brothers), and then I was past the door. I suddenly found myself wearing this yellow smock thing that swished when I moved, and the whole place smelled like a tattoo parlor, and all of the staff looked the same, and I wasn't sure which room it was and why in the hell would she be in here? Where was she actually? This was some sort of Andy Kaufman shit. This wasn't happening to anyone. This had never happened. How could it?
I found her then. She looked the same as usual, thanks to her glasses and the moles that refused to quit. She didn't look like she was dying. She just looked tethered, like she had committed a crime, gotten wounded in the process, and was now handcuffed to this place until her lawyer could straighten things out. Myself, I felt like I was supposed to fill that roll, and suddenly I was embarrassed that I hadn't brought a briefcase or any documentation--I wasn't even wearing a suit. What was I doing here?
Herself and Peter had the same question for me. How did I get in? I think they were okay that I was there, but still a tad shocked. Where was the security in this place?
I told them what I had told the intercom and then I just kinda stood there. I was only there a few minutes and I have no idea what I said and I suddenly understood that I wasn't family. Not family enough to be so unannounced. I can't convey her suffering, but I can say that we shared a look, and it told me that she felt like washing her hair. She felt like doing anything else but this.
I left my surrogate parents and went into the nearest bathroom, assuming I'd throw up. I cried instead, and then got ready to leave, though I didn't want to.
From her diagnosis to her departure, the whole thing took eight days. Maybe seven. Maybe ten, but it didn't take long.

Weeks later, my wife and I returned to Pasadena to pack our things and never return. Andie had bought a pumpkin to carve, and by the time we got back it had collapsed into this goo that oozed and pooled over the kitchen table.
Andie's passport was on the kitchen table as well, so she had to apply for a new one.
I thought it was kinda funny.

*Little Leaf

Little Leaf

Oh! The sun shines on you

Little leaf

No sign of puffs to cloud your day

As you flit as you see fit

Little leaf

None save gentle breeze directs you

Affects you

 Little leaf

All eyes are on you 

Each bird upon their bough marvels at your tumble

Gently. Safely. With no need to beat your wings

And the rain shall not strike you

Little leaf

For the tree from which you've grown is a canopy

Yes, its branches stretch and stay there

Thick and sturdy so they are, to block the drops

They all adore you

Little leaf

These creatures and their features
Stop and stare - forget themselves 

As you fall

                                                                                                                 Little leaf

And though you leave your tree today

Proud and tall and standing

The wind shan't cease to whisper 

Keeping you aloft, carrying you 

                           where 

                          you 

                            need 

                           to 

                            go

Nowhere in particular

Little leaf

For oh! The sun shines on you 

Little leaf

As emerald as the envied gem

Who is forever unknowing

Of the soothing breath that's blowing

Your figure to and fro

And so, cascade!

Little leaf

Upon you no caterpillar shall engorge this day

For you are truly free

Little leaf

*Rowan

It can be a girl's name, too!
Rowan was born December 31, 2000-and...uh...2011. That sounds right.
She swallowed meconium on the way into the world, pre-infant waste that can cause all sorts of complications when ingested.
She was incubated and one-of-a-kind as Sarah and Peter looked on, helpless.
I was in Halifax, wishing I was home so that I could be in the way, trying to cheer everyone up. Over the phone Sarah told me that the baby may have brain damage because of this. She may have respiratory problems. She may not get to be at all, in fact. It was a waiting game.
Teary-eyed, I got off the phone and immediately went to the Halifax Shopping Center and bought an Xbox 360. I didn't know what else to do.
Rowan is healthy and very clever and she rides the bus to school and her mother would be so proud of her fashion sense and inquisitiveness.
I keep a sort of diary for Rowan now, telling her all about her mother as best I can, intent on giving her the whole collection in some sort of odd ceremony when she's around 14 and I'm God knows how old. Maybe it's my own attempt to fight back at my personal trauma. I try to provide the best representations that I can before years of mourning have convoluted and obscured the exact truth of things.
I am eager and terrified to watch her grow up. I think of the quips yet unuttered, the jabs and clever punchlines I feel she's destined to deliver. That's the danger of a reality such as this one--I'm expecting something of the child that she cannot be.
Remember that Hartman stuff I mentioned earlier? And the Lacan? In his paper, Hartman refers to Lacan, who says, "The relief so commonly expressed on awakening from a dream comes from the realization that (unlike the psychotic) one has not after all fallen into the chaos of the real" (this is on page 539).
I get this, but what does it mean for those who are still living (according to Lacan) within the realms of the real, due to their age? What about those just emerging from the real into the symbolic and imaginary? Those on the cusp? Does it work differently for them?
A day or two after Sarah died, we all sat around the kitchen table of the house on Finn Street. It was dark and we were all quiet, all thinking to ourselves.
We heard crying then, and Rowan was ushered out by one of the concerned adults, to stand before all of us. She said she'd had a nightmare that "Mommy was in a dark room and couldn't get out."
To this day, it is the most chilling memory from all of it--the funeral, all of it. And do you wanna know what popped into my head when she said that to all of us?
"Smart kid..."

 Here's something else I wrote for Rowan. 

*High School Sweethearts

High school.

It was raining of an evening. We were all in a car because where else would we be? I don't know who the 'we' was, exactly; I'd need her to answer that. You get old enough and the we's just kinda blur together. People can be switched in and out;  the players can pass hats and scarves back and forth, like dress-up or a cookout at Barbie's mansion. I know that I was in the back, squished against the door panel (we probably had more bodies than seat belts in there). I opened my door, turned to her and asked if she wanted anything from the gas station. I asked only her, specifically. I didn't ask her questions for the answers, but instead for her responses.

"Surprise me," she offered, doing her best this time to surprise me. 

"You got it," as I exited the car. I came back with lock de-icer. 

By the time we were old enough to drive our parents' cars and formulate our own saucy world views, we were inseparable. Nobody else seemed to enjoy our rampant cynicism as much as ourselves, and so we stuck to one another first, letting others in through cautious osmosis.

Everyone said that we were together and we were, but not as they meant it. They meant tangled sheets and her in my Homer Simpson t-shirt and nothing else while brushing her teeth. They meant making out, grabbing budding breasts and unsure members. They meant Paul and Sarah, up in a tree.

That was never the case. Never-ever. Try telling the high school mob not to believe what they want to believe, though. People assumed we were boyfriend-girlfriend since we were together so often, and we got tired of specifying otherwise. Instead, we'd exaggerate the assumption and make jokes about it. We did take one another to the prom, but that was mostly because we didn't want to go with anyone else. We were also not conventionally "attractive", with her being too tall and me being frail and underweight. 

For the most part, we went to different post-secondaries. I chose to go to Nova Scotia so that I could be far enough away from Newfoundland to miss it, but close enough that I could be easily flown home by my parents if I got too sooky or frightened. The day before I left, she pitched a tent in my yard, adjacent the family motorhome, which was full of all of my clothing by then. All of my books. She camped out with her sisters. She wanted to make sure she was there when we shoved off, even though she could throw a rock from her yard and hit my own. 

Well, she could have if she was coordinated. 

*Chicago (and the Cubs)

Okay, even if we all know that the story ends tragically with Sarah dying of cancer and me becoming a grad student, the journey to that point might begin to get a tad boring. I'm beginning to realize that I'm summarizing our life cycles at various stages of the timeline, and that's bound to get taxing for the reader (you) eventually. You don't need every little detail, do you? "And then, one time, Sarah and I went to the zoo!" Who needs that?
We never went to a zoo together, actually, but we were both in the same city as a zoo, once.
Chicago. Or, "Chicargo" if you're of that group of people.
Peter and Sarah, Paul and Andie; spouses and spouses-to-be, unleashed on the third-largest American city, to refuse change to the homeless of another country while also checking out Lollapalooza.
Here was my future wife's chance to finally meet the other half of my brain, the one person throughout life who saw things as I did. Andie, my wife, had heard so much about her...
Sarah turned out to be a total drag, though. She was moody and not that fun and didn't joke and didn't ask Andie getting-to-know-you questions and didn't make jokes about how stupid my face is and didn't seem herself. When I wandered with Peter into the glub of people waiting for Queens of the Stone Age, Sarah and Andie stayed behind. Sarah then drunkenly pointed out most of my faults and didn't sugarcoat them the way that she always did when we were both single.
Like, pretend it was five years prior to this, and we were eating in a restaurant somewhere. Now, if the waitress was cute, Sarah would make a point of saying, "We're not having sex with each other. We're just eating. He has a bunch of stupid tattoos that you can look at if you see him with his shirt off."
She thought she was helping. I'm not exaggerating this, by the way, this is the exact sort of thing she would say to complete strangers.
Anyway, Chicargo marked a really weird interlude that luckily only lasted a couple of days and never saw light again.
In time, I came to learn that she was so weird because she missed the kids, and lacking motherhood and all of its instincts, that thought had never even dawned on me.
We all did a poor job of taking pictures on that trip, but I have one among the annals of my hard drives, where she sits with her husband atop a giant Ferris wheel, and she has a look of boredom and longing for the ground. It's one of my least favourite pictures of her, but that doesn't mean it isn't a good one.
I think back to those days (so recent) and wish she and I could've had a minute to ourselves. Our partners weren't stopping us, mind you, we just weren't trying as we should have been. I wasn't trying as I should have been.
I would have liked to have had coffee with my Yin's Yang in that city of gangsters.
With Sarah and I, sometimes a minute was all it took.

*Swimming Through Time

Though this seems more likely to cost me marks than gain them, I will briefly mention a theory of Jacques Lacan (all of the best theorists seem to be named Jacques). It might be wise to brush up on it because Hartman refers to it a fair amount in his paper, which we may look at again. Otherwise, this will act as a meaty concept to chew on while you're driving to work today.
Lacan, in the 50s, introduced this idea of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real. Kinda sounds like The Matrix, doesn't it? The whole concept builds on Freud, who I'm not about to try and simplify, but Lacan tries to explain human cognition, I guess, and how it is formulated. He mentions the moment that a toddler first encounters a mirror, and how crucial that moment is to development. If I'm getting this right, that very moment is when a person begins to formulate the imaginary sense of self. That is, a person becomes aware of their place in the world, and immediately begin to concoct a version of themselves within it. It's not a true, or even accurate, version, mind you (hence the name). It is sort of a description of the ego; who you believe yourself to be, and how great your self truly is.
The symbolic deals with language and its usage in organizing the psyche. That is, the self can only be understood through symbolization found through the world and one's relation to it.
The real refers to all that is "out there" beyond the other two concepts. That is, what exists before the toddler stumbles in front of the mirror. It is the self before the application of language, symbolism, experience and so on. It is a realm beyond words, always beyond the tips of our tongues and outside the realms of explanation (as I'm demonstrating beautifully right now).

This somehow relates to me at age 12, shivering, wet and miserable. I'm pressing blueish fingertips to the side of my neck to feel my racing pulse. I'm measuring my heart rate. I watch the giant clock above the pool deck. The clock hands are multicolored, one of the few things in the room that I enjoy. I count the thrums of my pre-pubescent blood as it oxygenates my brain, keeping it healthy enough to realize that I don't want to be here. This was "swim team," an activity and an entity that I was inexplicably the member of for several years.
I say "inexplicably" because I was the worst one on the team. Now, some folks will say, "Oh, dude, I was the worst on that team" when they reminisce about t-ball and 4-square and other hyphenated games. Not me, though. It was really obvious to everyone around that I was the slowest, most uncoordinated swimmer out of about one hundred kids in four different age groups.
I couldn't dive, and would instead fall into the water with akimbo limbs, no doubt sickening referees while costing my swim club precious seconds in the coveted Boys 12 & Under 50m Freestyle. I couldn't swim straight because I didn't open my eyes underwater. I couldn't turn properly because I couldn't see the wall that I was meant to re-direct and push off from. I collided with lane ropes. I didn't use proper form. I couldn't swim. Oh, sure, I could prevent myself from drowning (which is why my parents sent me in the first place) but that's not the same thing.
I met Sarah here. Carbonear was the town she lived in, an eternity away when your usual mode of transportation was my ability on a bicycle. It was about half an hour by car.
In head-shrinking rubber swim caps, sporting junk food pot bellies, we got to know one another. I try to remember those times now and of course I cannot. Several years of swim team, all spent with her, and now I can no longer recall how much often we spoke, whether or not we got along, if we had the same friends. It's all lost in the ether, amongst the whiffs of chlorine.
Years later, there were drama festivals and pimples and scattered encounters as two students from two different schools tend to meet. This is all lost as well, and I wonder just how much time we spent together then.It did feel like a lot, like something we both had to wait for. Of course we knew of each other and of course we were "friends" by kids' terms, but were we who we would become? I just can't remember, and so I wonder about it all the time. I guess I'm doomed to continue wondering.
It was a phone call, when she told me she was moving to Bay Roberts--biking distance, surely. "Some place called Finn Street," she'd said.
"Wait...that's right outside my house." She must've been moving into the Drovers' old place.
Then she moved into the Drovers' old place.

*Finn Street

Finn Street

Stoned. Sneak in through the basement

Are we doing this again?

We thrive on the encasement

Joke about our kin

Make some plans - forget them

No need for what or when

Laugh at this goddamn town

Pigs roosting in a pen

You walked out on a Friday

What day is it again?

Remember when we tango'd

And used to play pretend?

We'd dress up - wig is itchy 

Let's go out, buck the trend

Laugh at this goddamn town

And everyone within

We used to gape the jaws

Can we please do that again?

Ain't fun now, all alone

Some hipster with no friend

I'd tear this whole place down

To hear "it's not the end"

Laugh at this goddamn town

Now I am one of them

*Calvin and Hobbes

Calvin and Hobbes

She's my imaginary too-dead friend

And she would blow your mind

I know that you can't see her

But she's always lookin' fine

Her hair is done just right

Her lips are painted pink

But her features aren't her strong suit 

She likes to make you think

Like, "What if sharks could walk on land?"

"How often do whales sleep?"

"Do hobos sometimes just hold hands?"

"Does Bono own a jeep?"

She can juggle cards and throw her voice

And dance upon her hands

You'd love her and you'd have no choice

She's really rather grand

I saw her ingest marbles once

Then she pulled them from her nose

On roller skates she glides and jumps

On skis she melts the snows

She picks up fire engines

And hides them in your ear

She tickles your intentions

Turns seconds into years

Her lungs they run on he-li-um

She exhales sweet perfume

She floats up to the ceiling then

And freshens up the room

She is Earth's magnetic north

She is all time zones

That way, if I leave my porch

Her compass guides me home

She's always been so dear to me

And I the same to her

She keeps away the bumble bees

And ticks found in my fur

I always keep her by my side

So I know who I am

I couldn't lose her if I tried...

I couldn't lose her if I tried

I include her in my plans

We're gonna join the circus soon

And go out on the road

She'll breathe with help from tent balloons

Before we do our show

She grows a beard that's really thick

She swallows sharpened swords

That's just the tip of all her tricks

We'll win big top awards

She makes these things look easy

Cause she does 'em all with ease

You'll gasp at our finale 

Up on the trapeze

I swing out and fall freely

As I tumble to the ground

Then I land upon her pinky

Like I didn't weigh a pound

I already hear you cheering

And she can hear you, too

If she was nowhere near me

I don't know what I'd do

She's my imaginary too-dead friend

And how we love to play

She said she'd meet me ten to ten

She must be late today

*Class is in Session

Okay, let's tackle the hard part first. I have to kinda explain what trauma theory is, and, crucially, why I'm using it.
Ahem.
Trauma theory (in my words) tends to deal with large-scale human suffering and death. It examines the accountability, I guess you'd say, of the fiction that develops in response to these atrocities. Since human beings try their best to distance themselves from trauma, they're already poor interpretors of it. On top of this, the really bad stuff in human history (the Holocaust and other genocides are often mentioned) automatically distance the reader (and often the writer) from the event because they were not there in the first place. Good so far? Sweet.
It gets even trickier though because whether they were there or not, trauamtic events are so traumatizing, that even first-hand accounts can be skewed, misrepresented, inauthentic, and the synonyms go on and on here. If you're afflicted by the negative impacts of the trauma (delerious with fever, for example) you're not a great first-hand source, even if you were there. If you weren't there, what can you really say about it? Writers can only do their best, as it is--maybe that's how it has always been.
As damaging as the death of Sarah Turpin was for a lot of us, she was no Holocaust. The challenge for me is to narrow what is meant to be a grand concept into a minute, personal occurrence. It is the death or loss of many that trauma theory tends to hinge on. Catherine Belling refers to it (in her paper Overwhelming the Medium: Fiction and Trauma of Pandemic Fluenza) as a "loss of access to personal narratives. The collective replaces the individual as protagonist, and the health of the public takes precedence over that of the individual." If you can access the paper, you'll find that near the beginning, page 56. According to Belling, then, trauma de-centers the individual, bypassing the person so as to refer to the greater atrocity's whole. We try and find statistics and total numbers for loss of life, placing large-scale loss into an understandable context. Humans tend to mathemetize things. A number is something that you can at least try to wrap your head around, victims and perpetrators be damned! By discussing grand loss on a grand scale, the individuals who experience trauma--indeed, who make up trauma, are forgotten.
Now, we're not gonna forget Sarah. But are we remembering her the way we intended to when she was still alive? Or is the personal trauma experienced by me, her friends, her family, distorting what it is that we're actually mourning?

*In Theory

I'm learning theory in Theory, theoretically.
We've been talking about how "post" everything tends to be now (post-human; post-feminist; post-modern), which is to say that entertainment is so overdone that we have to start sticking new prefixes to old ideas.
It's not so bad, really. Post-humanism, for example, is the exploration of humans beyond the realm of their own humanity, kinda. I managed to tie this to videogames (the wife's suggestion) for a paper, and that made it pretty fun. I'll share the paper, which you can check out here.
Anyway, my educator wants us to write Hypertext (capital H) for his class. From here on, I will refer to my professor as Joel because that's his name. (No surnames or street addresses, though. Do your investigatin' somewhere else, stalkers!).
As it turns out, you and I have been creating hypertext for years now, though I'm taking most of the credit. Hypertext is any work that champions choice for the reader, while also promoting intertextuallity and digital information. Like, if I want to provide you guys with a picture of a gopher at work, and I link that and give you something to click on, that's hypertext. I'm creating while you're manipulating. See? The gopher is a tad generous as an example, maybe, but you get the idea.
Now, we're not going to try and bamboozle Joel or my classmates by passing off our old discussions as though they were my new work, but you readers know how much good stuff is in here. It's all white goo, as we know. There's no Oreo cookie exteriors at Tragic Hero; just the filler. So, I think a fair compromise will be this: If I use old material, I'll say so up front, and add new content to old posts so that even previously published stuff is being updated for the sake of this assignment. Any class-specific material will be noted with a little star (*) so that my peers don't end up reading classic  posts about me trying to get laid from 2008.
In class, we eventually got into 'trauma theory', which explains how the guy who wrote Schindler's List can never work back to the Holocaust (capital H), no matter how hard he tries.
I know, I know: Schindler wrote Schindler's List. 
Don't worry, I'll elaborate on these theories as we go along.
Basically, trauma theory examines a work through the trauma it centers on, and then the de-centering of the subject due to the complications of experiencing trauma. I gravitated to this theory right away because if there's one thing I know, it's trauma.
Especially these days. I'd say that it is cheap to use the death of a friend to influence school work. I mean, people have to say something is good if it's about a dead friend. Our society dictates this sort of thing. You're not gonna write a story and say, "This is really about my friend who died and I miss her dearly," only to have the reader say, "It needs more thrills. Something with a boat, maybe?" No, they'll say things like, "Oh, isn't that sweet? Isn't that just a considerate thing? What a way to honour someone close."
So, let me begin by saying that I ain't that sweet. This needs to be done and I need to latch onto something that I understand in order to write it well. Sarah's death can't be understood, but I know it'll work for the sake of handing something in. There's nothing sweet about that rationale, really.
However, I will mention that she'd be fine with the idea. When I told her my plan, my wife said, "Sarah would be glad that you could use her to get some school work done," and she's right. Sarah's reaction would be, "Yeah, whatever. I'd do that if you were dead," and then she'd instruct me to depict her as a pirate or something equally inappropriate.

There we are. This feels right. This is going well already.
The funny thing is that I said 'pirate' before realizing I already had the picture.

So, let's get out our red pens and start giving me some marks! Let's see how the utmost (small-scale) trauma affects the writer and reader, and how they create material together.

Through this process, I keep picturing my biggest, die-hard fan, who has been waiting for an update to the blog for almost a year now. Then he sees this post and goes, "Finally! A new one!" But by the time he gets to the bottom of this he's disgusted, and says something like, "What the fuck?! School work!?"

*How Could This Bee?

How Could This Bee?

These walls are all white These walls are all white

No need for my eyes' rods or cones

Your laughter's as mute as a chuckling wight's

Now drowned by the buzzing of drones

Who pollinate doubt and spread their disease

A yammering, contagious lie

Told for belief to ears stuffed with gauze

As they bounce 'round the combs of their hives

I should've painted the rock with a message of truth

While you were still true to this world

We laughed at ourselves; creatures of habit

A boy with the handsomest girl

"Who livened this party and wore these bright socks?!

Who said you can be who you are?"

"I'm just here for the chips and I think she's the stripper"

Our candor was doomed to go far

So...what could undo us?

Some Cancerous Crab, waiting in ambush

Nestled and sly 'twixt the stars

A fate worse than death, or maybe just like it

Was written in thread through your scarves

Now you go, I stay 

And it's back to the party

I'm so bored I could bash out my brains

I wait for my end as others snap pictures

Developed, they all look the same

Hair of the Internet

I have to be juvenile.

Electric cars are like those rubber boots made by Hunter; they're not doing anything special compared to all the other options, they're just what everyone is buying right now.
You want to hug some timber? You want to "make a difference," but you'd prefer to do so without involving the bus? You want to look at hydrogen. That's where the actual car-oil-jihad-can't we all get along solution lies.
"Melt your Ducky Boots. We've decided that rain gear is fashionable now."
Overnight, the women of an entire municipality are a bunch of Christopher Robins.
Sad.

What if The Internet (capital 't', capital 'i') crapped out tomorrow? What if we all had to fall back on our merits?
It was originally designed to direct missiles, y'know. The military developed a global communications system so they could e-mail missiles right at Khrushchev.
However, the fellas figured out that if they were willing to wait seven hours for the loading time, they could send nude pictures of Bo Derek to one another.
It all kinda snowballed from there.

I won't name names or tombstones, but Andie told me about how her friend's next door neighbor kept banging on their wall while her friend had sex (with someone else; not with her). So, he's trying to set the mood, and this faceless cat next door is banging on the wall, yelling, "Stop having sex!" Two days later, the faceless neighbor hanged themselves.
Now, the question is, why did I find that hilarious? Oh, I laughed when she told me about it. I laughed and laughed.
What are we going to do with me?

Funny To Me

What do you do when your heroes are just too goddamned brilliant to bother trying to reach?
(You make blog posts about them.)

Here's Larry David and his daughter. You may want to click the image so you can read her caption.

I think this is the most beautiful thing that's been on television. That might just be me, though.

Playing the Percentages

An elderly fellow is napping at his laptop, and I just walked in on the only other patron in this coffee shop while he was using the bathroom. This feels like as good a place as any to start. He was using the bathroom in the bathroom, just so we're clear. He's one of these plucky fellows who doesn't lock the door.

***

I can't bring myself to feel as young as I am these days. It gets tougher.
Steve Irwin dedicated his life to complicated animals only to have a stingray puncture his heart with its tail spine thingy. How many of us will get to prove we loved our jobs as much?

***

Okay, so let's start it like this because we have to start it like something before this coffee shop closes and I have to slush-trudge back to my cozy apartment with its cozy wife and dog:
I took the class, yes? We mentioned that. The class is over now and I got a 90 and mom said that if I got an 'A' she'd buy me a new pair of sneakers in the spring and I want to speak to you guys about it because for the life of me I can't determine my shoe size.
It's like this...everyone liked all of my contributions and they were supposed to because I'm a visionary without an audience, apparently. I'm some sort of idiot. Remember how I said that I submitted a blog-like piece to all of them and they hated the formatting? I think they were okay to say that. I wouldn't say that I hate the formatting. Once it got going, I rarely thought of the formatting. I always preferred this style because I assumed that people didn't really want to take the time to read, even when they were reading, and that short, clipped sentences in a line-by-line style would flow as fleetingly as our attention spans tend to. I still think I'm right, frankly, but there is something to be said of the paragraph. I mean, Dickens used the paragraph to his heart's content, until an editor would say, "No, you gotta start a new one. It's been twelve pages of this. Time for a new thought." Stephen King uses paragraphs and he wrote a book about AN EVIL ST. BERNARD. Something to think about.
In truth, when I tried to edit the blog over the summer I ran into one of two snags: I'd either get too sad because Sarah's dead, or I'd be embarrassed because I was embarrassed. That brings me to our present day in our present pants because the blog has always worked just fine as a space where I can talk about me while being me. We all know that. If it just so happens that this involves ruminations on sitting outside of lingerie stores because I'm a hipster pervert, that's okay because the world needs hipster perverts and I'm willing to admit that I'm one of them to a mass audience. The thing is that when I look at old posts only one word tends to come to mind: juvenile. Everything feels a bit juvenile and it's cleavage this and it's throwing up off of a balcony that and it's supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, but sometimes it reads as tongue-through-mouth. Yes, the blog is a great place for me to be me, but here's the thing: I tend to get on my nerves sometimes. Isn't that the way with you? The problem is that it's a bastardization of how I really want to write. I have to wrestle this stream-of-conciousness, let's-go-to-the-mall(!) approach with a more literary, high-brow approach. There are ways to write funny stuff without having to put in all of these asides and my little obvious jokes.
Here, lemme show you something. This is a piece I wrote about Portugal that had been sloshing in my head from the moment we left until the moment I wrote it. Consequently, it flowed out of me like so much water, quick and easy, and it ended up sounding exactly as I wanted it to sound. I still think it reads like a blog post, but it also reads like a polished piece of writing, and that's the difference. So here, here's a snippet. I won't upload the whole thing because I may submit it to publications and then they'd get mad at me:

Porteugese Water Cog

Ah, Portugal! Land of barking dog and hanging laundry, where people yell things that you certainly can't translate.

            The pre-wife and I pranced about there for a sojourn during our pre-honeymoon, or whatever it was.

            What a land! Truly a place of bodacious derriere and casual beauty, where taxi cabbists drop you off in front of this beautiful fountain or that distinctly different beautiful fountain. The very streets themselves are puzzle-pieced together with intricate tiles you might find in a rich person's bathroom. Oftentimes I'd find myself looking just past my deteriorating shoes, wondering what sort of fellows had the patience to pave an entire city with squares one inch in diameter. Is it 'diameter'? 'Area'? Either way, they were tiny and probably needed to be cut with some sort of saw that hadn't yet been invented at the time. They fashioned fish into those tiles, these long-dead men. Fishy characters splishing about our feet, looking up at us as if to say, "Ours is a history of artisans. Yours, of concrete."

            I made sure to look up sometimes though, otherwise I'd miss all of the violet trees and perfectly defined bottoms that seemed to make up the country. Everything had roosters on it. It's all roosters in Portugal, as if a grandmother's pantry was the basis of design for their infrastructure. Is it 'infrastructure?' Wherever the shops are. All roosters.

            The buildings themselves could have used a spackling, maybe, as the façades all seemed to have walls similar to those you would find in the bathroom of a YMCA; sprawling with cracks and chips, looking like a space that people really gave a shit about 40 years ago, but not any more. However, unlike a bathroom full of old men getting changed, the Portuguese structures had character. These were bruises and scrapes earned over decades and centuries of decades. Who was I to judge, in my plaid shorts? Besides, the fissures and dents were overshadowed by beautiful tile etchings, blue-on-white and stately-looking, like the sort you see on Nan's finest tea cups. Y'know the tea cups that some old biddy uses when company comes over before some visiting appraiser appraises them to be worth a fortune? The tiles were like that. Darling, gleaming squares that seemed to be fastened to the sides of the city with caulking. Perhaps they were.

Okay, compare that with what you know of the blog so far. Now do you see what I'm getting at? See how it still sounds like me, but it also sounds like something that a writer might write? That's...it's time I start sounding like that all of the time, so that the public will have no choice but to associate me with this balance of prose and mild misogyny. It's time I start sounding like a big boy and I write some stuff that I can be proud of, rather than what's 'good enough'. My effort through life so far has been 'good enough'. It's time I start believing I can do better. I'm proud of this snippet on Portugal. Now, in the realm of the blog as a whole, I'm proud of that too, but going post by post, I'm proud of about 3% of what I've produced over eight years. I'm not a homogenized milk kinda guy. I'm a coffee cream kinda guy. Eight years from now I want to be able to say I'm proud of 18% of the content.

Ultimately, this means I have to use things like description and imagery and yes, paragraphs from time to time. You guys can handle that, just as you've handled all of my non-decisions in the past.

***

I'm happy to wear jeans almost every day. However, if I had the resources, I think I'd be just as content in slacks.

"Heretic! Burn him!"