The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Be warned, there are some spoilers here!

I may be half a world away, but no matter where a person may find themselves on this planet, certain things remain constant.  In my case, that's Tolkien fandom.  So for our first full weekend in Korea, Tara and I made sure to ride into the city to watch the latest installment of the Hobbit, known around these parts as 호빗:스마우그의 폐허.  And I'll say this for the film; you have not truly experienced The Desolation of Smaug unless you've seen it as it was intended: on the big screen, in a packed theater, with Korean subtitles.

Joking and gratuitous Hangul aside, this was more or less the film I've been expecting since last year's Hobbit spectacle, truly spectacular in the most cinematic sense.  Some things left me disappointed, while others worked better than I had hoped they might.  It was often funny and never boring, which I suppose was the main objective all along.  It's still not quite a right adaptation of the book, but perhaps it's taking shape as something truly worthwhile in its own right.

So once again, the name of the game is running across the natural majesty of New Zealand and the artificial majesty of New Zealand's finest computer software.  Gravitas and fun mix in just the right proportions, keeping the setting both credible and bearable.  We get a few more battles than the book might have lead us to expect, including some epic wizardry from Gandalf and some bucklin' swash from Legolas and Tauriel, a new character who truly enriches Peter Jackson's Middle Earth.  Indeed, this movie makes even clearer the message that the Middle Earth of the movies has grown quite distinct from that of Professor Tolkien's own labor of love.  Existing somewhere betwixt the realms of faithful adaptation and ecstatic fan fiction, it can only be fairly judged on its own terms.

There are a lot of little ironies in Peter Jackson's approach to the Hobbit series.  The man who decided that Tom Bombadil was inessential and could be left out of the script, gives us a heaping helping of Beorn the skin-changer, whose presence in the book is not exactly critical.  Maybe if Tom Bombadil could become an enormous CGI bear, he might have warranted a cameo in The Fellowship of the Ring.  Legolas was one of the most fun characters to watch in the first trilogy, but while his insertion into The Hobbit does make a certain amount of canonical sense, the role of Tauriel in the story almost renders him unnecessary.  In fact, Jackson invents an entirely new orc fight sequence (in the streets of Lake Town, though most of its inhabitants seem to have slept through it) more or less to give Legolas something to do, while Tauriel contributes much more meaningfully to the plot.

Speaking of Tauriel, there's a lot I'd like to say about her!  Much as I admire the vision of J.R.R. Tolkien, there is no denying that women are hard to find in his works.  In fact, if memory serves then the only named female characters in the original text of The Hobbit are Bilbo's dead mother and greedy cousin.  Insofar as adaptation is about addition as well as subtraction, then the addition of more female characters is a perfectly valid choice for a more socially conscious age.  Tauriel is a good example of such a character done right: she fits credibly into the world of the male characters without seeming like an exception, as though it were perfectly natural that the captain of the Elven-King's guard might be a woman.  Legolas gets all the attention, but this movie could easily have been made with Tauriel as the central elf.

Now, amidst all the additions and other goodies, it can be easy to forget about poor Bilbo and the dwarves.  That's a crime, because once again Martin Freeman's one-on-one with a CGI character is the highlight of the movie: the mighty Smaug is not to be denied the limelight.  As glorious a computer graphic as was ever put to screen, Benedict Cumberbatch's voice work gives the dragon the simple fairy tale arrogance that defined him so well on the page.  Smaug is Gollum writ large, less complicated and more bombastic, yet alike in their fierce intelligence and sinister playfulness.  Compared to these, the Necromancer seems almost like a distraction.

I could go on and on about this and that, because The Desolation of Smaug is bursting with characters worth talking about.  I'd like to write about how Thorin's evolution into a tragic hero is handled so sympathetically, or what the social and political conditions of Lake Town imply for fantasy fiction into the future.  I'd really like to, but we could be here for days.  There is an awful lot to take in, and multiple viewings may be in order.

I re-watched An Unexpected Journey recently, and while it holds up a year later, there is little question that The Desolation of Smaug is the superior movie.  It still remains to be seen whether the third installment will tame Jackson's madder impulses and bring us a truly satisfying conclusion.  When all is said and done, will the whole work be worthwhile?  I sure hope so.  But even if it ultimately fails in its artistic goals, at least The Hobbit will have given us plenty to talk about.

Now Broadcasting from the Republic of Korea

The title says it all, doesn't it?  I've actually been here a week, as my other blog will attest, but I haven't had a chance to make an update on this blog.  Not only have I radically changed position on the globe, I've also radically changed employment status from "not" to "full time."  It's kind of exhilarating.  Kind of exhausting too.  But the point is, my girlfriend Tara and I are now living and working in Cheonan, South Korea, and will be for the next year.  What a year it's going to be!

Of course, as I mentioned, we have a blog for talking about Korea.  I imagine more people are actually reading that one than this one at this point, but that's all fine with me!  That's the exciting stuff, after all.  This blog has always been more about illustrating my occasional fits of creativity or exploring my myriad obsessions.  It will still be about that.  It's just that, now I'll be illustrating and exploring from our little apartment in South Korea.  You probably won't notice much of a difference.

Speaking of things like that, I saw The Desolation of Smaug yesterday, and you can be darn sure I'll write a review of it tomorrow.  In America or in Korea, Tolkien remains a priority.

Other updates... since coming here, I'm poor as hell for the time being (I don't get paid until January Tenth) and I don't have wifi, which is kind of like being back in the 90s.  All we have going for us internet-wise is an ethernet cable, which is actually pretty great!  It means only one of us can use the internet at the time, but at least it's fast internet.  So it's not quite like the 90s after all.  We're working on getting wifi, but we need money and our Alien Registration Cards before we can make it happen.  I miss using my tablet, but all things in their due course as they say.

Anyway, I'll be here doing my thing like I do, eating Korean food and doing my job (read about it on my other blog), and sharing my occasional brain stews with you.  I hope they're delicious.

I think this is it (is it?)

When you make plans to travel abroad for an extended period of time, gentle reader, take some advice from yours truly: expect your timetable to be subject to change.  You may be one hundred per cent ready to go in October, but find that your visa application won't be finalized until the beginning of December.  Sometimes it's nobody's fault.  Other times it's somebody's fault, but you'll never know it because they can hide their face behind a filing cabinet a half a world away.

So again, even if you're ready to go, make sure you're hunkered down somewhere comfortable in the meantime.  Make the best of being left to your own devices.  You know... devise something!

As it happens, December is about to dawn and Tara and I, at long last, are within a week of finally seeing our work visas.  I just got back from Seattle, where I turned in the final application at the South Korean General Consulate yesterday.  Our visa issuance numbers were a long time coming (pending a much-delayed inspection of our work site), but they finally came through last Wednesday.  Assuming no further delays, we could have permission to work in Korea by Thursday.

So I'm happy.  I've been feeling fairly stagnant at her parents' home in Canby, Oregon, unable to summon much drive for anything besides cooking a few meals and gorging on Netflix.  Holidays have come and gone, and they've been nice, but they've also been reminders of the passage of time.  Sometimes, the job I knew was waiting for us seemed more fantastical than real.  But now I'm warming up and I feel like moving and doing again.  With such a big change in my life, I feel more acutely aware of all I could be doing in the time left to me in America.

Of course, it's not as if I've been totally inactive in this period.  I finally finished Dreaming of a New Set of Strings, and that's not nothing!  I've also been writing poetry, as well as book reviews on Goodreads (a site which is somewhat unfairly encroaching on the territory of the good old WFJ Book Club).  The Wave Function Tumblr is also humming along as it does.  But Tumblr is easy, and I want to get back to trying something hard.  Something to be proud of.

Hopefully, you readers will see that something soon.  In the meantime, here's a song that makes me want to be less of a lazy-ass writer guy.

Dreaming of a New Set of Strings

A young man began this story lying on his back, staring wistfully at a stationary ceiling fan on a cool afternoon.  His back rested on an old bed, which was really more of a mattress, and his legs rested on an old stool he rarely sat in.  Books about theories and stories sat on the shelf, recently unread.  It was getting dark, but not very.

And in his hands, the young man had a silver guitar.  It wasn't name-brand and it wasn't particularly expensive, but it was shiny, and when he strummed the strings they made happy sounds.  Well, mostly happy.  Sometimes his fingers messed up on their way to new chords, and no one in the building was happy about that.  They let him know with heavy thuds and muffled sarcasm, and he took their criticism to heart.  But of course he knew, it takes more than criticism to play a guitar.

So when it got just a little bit darker he swung up to his feet, ready to call it a night for practice.  But before setting his instrument down on the stand, he couldn't help playing one last solo; a few pretty notes on a couple of strings, sliding and vibrating to nowhere in particular.  It felt good, and it didn't sound horrible.

The young man smiled and closed his eyes as the strings bent softly under his fingertips.  He might have thought, "if I were just a little bit better, this guitar could really sing."  But you wouldn't know it, because he wasn't in the habit of saying things that corny to himself.  The hope was in the sound of the guitar, that it might reflect those thoughts.  With a little more practice, maybe.

"Seven thirty, seven thirty!" came the sound of a woman's voice, firm and flighty.   "James, I swear I told you to be ready by seven forty!"

Jim was confused: most people didn't call him James, especially people he didn't actually know.  But she stood there in his hallway, smoking a cigarette and tapping her smart phone with a vengeance.  Her eyes were fixed to the screen, but she was clearly waiting for an explanation.

"Umm..if it's only seven thirty, don't I still have time?"  His eyes lingered uncomfortably on her cigarette, questioning its presence in what was otherwise a very clean home.

"Not enough to get ready for the meeting with the label.  You expect to go in looking like that?  I swear."  His shirt was slightly-mustard stained, true.  But it was really good mustard, and besides, that didn't really seem like the big issue.

"I'm... meeting with a label today, huh?"

"Yes, some indie outfit.  Maybe they won't mind if you're all slouchy, I hope."

"I'm thinking there might be a mistake here."

"The mistake," she said, extinguishing her cigarette on the clean white wall in a showy gesture of exasperation, "was not checking up on you at seven twenty five.  Musicians, I swear."

"Well, I could hurry..."

"Don't bother, just go like...that, I guess.  Maybe they'll like your grungy, alterna-whatever style."

"I can honestly say I didn't know that was my style."

"You could have fooled me, Mustard Stain.  Now get downstairs!  I swear, if you blow this meeting..."

"I'm going!"  He didn't want to provoke her into swearing anymore, unsure of what it might lead to.  But as he quickly stepped into his worn tennis shoes and made for the stairwell, the woman grabbed a hold of his arm.  Gesturing with a new, unlit cigarette, she pointed to his room and said "aren't you forgetting something, James?"

Jim looked back, and figured she was referring to his silver guitar.  He hurriedly packed it in his traveling case and rushed down the stairs.

Normally, the stairwell led to a common area, with a front door and street access.  As strange as things were, Jim had no expectation that he would find anything different.  But as things turned out, he had profoundly underestimated the magnitude of the strangeness he was experiencing.  There was no common area this evening: only an empty reception room at a tiny office.  Posters for hipster bands ringed the walls, and a fern drooped distressingly low in the corner.  A pathetic air conditioner was breathing its last breath.

All of the developments thus far caused Jim a fair amount of consternation, and he would probably have turned around and gone right back to his room if the stairwell had not disappeared when he wasn't looking.  He took a seat by the ailing plant, fiddling with the fasteners on his guitar case and wondering if he'd missed something important.

When Jim glanced up at the clock, he saw that it read three twenty.  It was much earlier (or possibly later?) than he had believed, but from the shadows pouring through the tiny office windows it didn't look like much time had passed.  Time didn't really seem to be passing at all, despite the determined tick-tick-tock of the hand around the clock face. 

The thought occurred to Jim, at long last, that he could be dreaming.  This wouldn't have been too surprising, as Jim dreamed quite often; more often than most people, most likely because he slept considerably more.  The sudden awareness of dreaming usually caused him to wake up, but that didn't hold true on this occasion.  The more he thought about it, the more he could feel the seat of his chair pushing up against him.  The groans of the senile air conditioner seemed convincing enough.  As for the fern, it was surely dying; a close look inside its planter box revealed a mat of dead leaves over dessicated top soil.  He probed the dirt with his finger, but couldn't go very deep.

Generally speaking, he didn't believe in lucid dreaming.  There wasn't any particular reason for that; he had of course heard plenty about its pleasures and benefits from friends and articles of uncertain origin.  But he couldn't recall that it had ever happened to him before, and the idea of being fully conscious in a dream just didn't seem very plausible.  Wasn't it more likely that lucid dreamers simply remembered their dreams more clearly than usual, and rationalized the experience after the fact?  A dream was a dream: if he were actually dreaming, then he knew his body must be lying down, his eyes closed, appearing utterly unconscious to anyone who happened to see.  But he felt conscious enough.

"If this is a dream," he said slowly, "I can probably make something out of this guitar."  Opening the fasteners on his case, he considered that it probably was a dream, because he really wasn't in the habit of talking out loud to himself.  But the guitar was more or less as it usually was: silver, and shiny.  When he strummed the strings, they still made happy sounds.  In fact, they sounded very happy; without really meaning to, he'd unleashed a fresh stream of pop chords, tumbling off the neck like a springtime romance.  They weren't just happy, they were ecstatic.  "This is a good dream," he said, keeping the joyful beat with the stomp of his shoes.

The air conditioner finally gave up the ghost, and the dying fern seemed to sag in mourning.  But the clock kept ticking and Jim kept playing, until the office doors unexpectedly flew open.  A busy looking man poked his head through them, wearing big glasses and an ironic tie.

"James, I told you this wasn't an audition.  Get back in here, the contract's all drawn up!"

It was only natural to follow the man in, but Jim hesitated, momentarily disoriented by the interruption of his song.  This man seemed like some sort of authority; by dream logic, he was probably supposed to follow that authority without question.  Then Jim thought about testing the limits of this lucid dream experience.  Rising up to his feet, he pointed the neck of his guitar toward the busy-looking man in an impromptu pose of defiance.

"And if I refuse?"

The busy looking man stared blankly for three seconds, then turned around and retreated briskly into his office.  "That sense of humor's going to be great on your records.  I'm sure of it."

Slightly embarrassed, Jim put his guitar back into its case and walked through the open door, closing it self-consciously behind him.

The busy man's name (as Jim could see from the sign on his desk) was Montana Market, and he was highly distracted.  Even as he pushed the contract across for Jim to sign, he was focusing intently on a real estate flyer that advertised mansions in Boca Raton.  The rolling hills of grass and palms were certainly very attractive, but Mr. Market had not even handed Jim a pen.

Outside the office, Jim heard the air conditioner dying.  Again.  "Mr. Market?"

"What is it?"

"I think I'm going to need a pen."

The mogul never took his eyes off of Boca Raton.  "Oh really?  Did you need one this morning?"

"Not that I remember."

"Well then, I don't see why you'd need one now.  I never find I need one, myself."  Market's cigar smoke floated lazily over affluent Florida, and Jim could not recall when it had been lit.

So Jim sat there a while longer, glancing first at the contract, then Montana Market's ironic tie, then back at the enigmatic contract once again.  He couldn't really concentrate on reading it.  The smoke from the cigar smelled like fine dark chocolate, but Jim could feel that somehow, it was contributing to the air conditioning's third and most violent death yet.  He wanted to stop it, but couldn't see how.

"Maybe I can dream it signed," thought the young man, for all the world to hear.

"Maybe," said the mogul, drowsily, "they'll have gators bigger 'an boots."

"Boots?"

"I could use some gator boots."

"I could use a mansion in beautiful Boca Raton," said a voice from just behind Jim's ear.  It was his erstwhile manager; is that really who she is, he wondered?  "Now sign the contract, James, your show's in twenty minutes."  She walked slowly around the two of them, and the mogul turned away from his previous obsession, resting his feet on the desk.  She seated herself on his lap, and began tugging suggestively on his ironic tie.

Jim was sure that somehow, this was all wrong.  Wasn't this the sort of thing that got an artist screwed out of their royalties?  A manager really shouldn't be in bed with the label, he thought, taking special care to keep it to himself.

"You found us a smart one, Ms. Bette," whispered Montana Market, his hands wandering inappropriately up the length of her thigh.  "He'll figure out how to sign the contract pretty soon."

"Is...this part of my contract... Ms. Bette?  I have to figure out how to sign it without a pen?"

"Oh yes," she giggled, "always bet on the smart ones."  Jim thought the mogul might have been tickling her, but she could just as easily be laughing at some joke on her smart phone.  It lay resting on Mr. Market's bare chest, and Jim found himself wondering just where that ironic tie had disappeared to.

"Ms. Bette, are you really my manager?"

She laughed out loud, turning her head to be certain he got the point.  "What on Earth gave you that idea, Mustard Stain?"

Jim was increasingly annoyed.  It wasn't so much at the behavior of his hosts; he'd only just met them and didn't think it right to judge.  But he could feel himself losing control of what he thought was a lucid dream.  That didn't seem right.  The impasse was uncomfortable, especially as he watched the two figures who seemed to know more about the situation become increasingly interested only in each other.

How to sign a contract without a pen?  And suddenly it hit him, in a moment of true lucidity.  Reaching into his pocket, he found a sharpened pencil.  Whether it had been there all along or not, he couldn't say, but he cheerfully signed the document, eager to move along.  "I hope it's legal like this," he said, trying to catch their ears with his tone.

Ms. Bette took a moment from giggling into Mr. Market's chest to grab the paper and read his leaden signature.  "Brilliant work, James!"  She laughed again, turning back to the mogul.  "You were right, he is a clever one!"

"Cathy," mumbled the distracted label man, "if you'll buy me those shoes I told you about, I'll buy you that boob job, and the world's tiniest black bikini."  And from one moment to the next, Cathy Bette suddenly had both of those things, and could not have looked happier.  Incidentally, Jim noticed that Montana Market's feet were now clad in a shiny pair of alligator boots, roughly the size of luxury speed boats.  The workmanship was immaculate.

Jim frowned.  "I increasingly feel as if this is not my dream anymore."

"No, James, I'd say your dream is out there."  She indicated over his shoulder. He turned, and somehow the office door was open to a paradise of humidity and opulence.  "Somewhere out there, anyway.  First you'll have to get out of Boca Raton.   Now go, find your dream," she said, fiddling with an e-mail on her smart phone while Montana Market completely lost touch with reality, "or I will never forgive you, Mustard Stain."

So Jim stepped out of the office an into the wild suburbs of Florida.  Guitar case in hand, he scanned the scenery for a bus or a taxi that would carry him to his own dream, whatever that meant.  He remained fully conscious of the changing nature of the dreamscape, but that precious quality of lucidity remained outside his grasp.  There was no bus, no taxi, and no obvious means of introducing one to the dream.  Because it wasn't his? 

And then he found himself walking, and found furthermore that it seemed like the right way to go.  Down the row of tacky houses, past three cul-de-sacs, seven palm trees and one well-fought basketball game, and around a street corner he went, and suddenly it didn't look much like Florida anymore.  In fact, before him stood the familiar marquee of Bruno's Bar and Indie Theater.

It was his dream to play Bruno's, after all.  He was sure of that.  Ever since that night, three years before, when he'd ordered that rum and coke.  It had spilled out of his hand for no good reason at all, drenching the lap of a burly, ill-tempered stranger.  The resulting brawl somehow consumed upwards of twenty patrons, but left Jim mostly, miraculously unscathed.  From that day on he'd wanted to play Bruno's, if only to prove to that burly stranger that he was more than just a "weaselly little bitch."

But would the stranger have the last laugh?  Jim squinted to be sure, and concluded that first impressions were true: the marquee proudly announced the one-night engagement of the up-and-coming star, Jimmy Jim Stain.  Never having called himself by that moniker (or heard another use it to his face), he asked the bouncer if there'd been some sort of mistake in the billing.

"Not on our end," said the bouncer, who bore an uncanny resemblence to the burly, ill-tempered stranger, though he wore a more outrageous mustache.  "That's the name the promoter told us to run."

Things were not much better back stage, as the count to show time rapidly decreased and the strings of Jim's silver guitar bristled at his clumsy attempt to tune them.  "Soundcheck was great, Jimmy!" called the stage manager, "I know you're going to break their hearts!"  But Jim could not remember soundcheck.  He could not remember ever seeing the stage manager's face before, or his ridiculous patchwork suit.  And he could not remember how to play guitar.

The dream was changing faster than Jim could keep up.  He drank three cups of bitter coffee that appeared (piping hot) out of God knows where, but not one drop of caffeine could calm him down.  "Is this lucid dreaming," he asked the dark red curtain that draped inches from his face, "or just a pants-wetting nightmare?  Oh God, it's another one of those, isn't it!?"  Must the show go on, or would it end if he just woke up?

And as the curtain parted, and the audience clapped with uncommon enthusiasm, and the lights reflected off the silver body of his guitar, Jimmy Jim Stain knew that it really would all be over if he just woke up.  But in that moment, the true lucidity came back to him.  "If you let it," he found himself saying into the red hot microphone, "your guitar can really sing."  

He led the set with an original composition, a mid-tempo song he couldn't quite remember writing, but felt confident he knew every word:

"You can play the same old chords on my heart,
You can sing me songs about pearls and rings,
But sooner or later, you know I'm a-get smart,
And you'll have to buy yourself a new set of strings."

The chords flowed freely from his fingers to his frets, with a fluency that would have startled him if the sum of the experience did not leave him so happy.  It was not a caricature of rock n' roll success, a thunderous breakthrough into packed arenas and hedonistic after-parties.  That was not this dream; in this dream, Jim was in control, Jim defined his own success.  The crowd loved him, but with gentle affection and warm appreciation for his craft.  They applauded for each new song, called for an encore, and he even thought he could hear a few tender voices singing along to his version of "Smokey Mountain Rain."  And for the first time, Jim really felt he'd played it well.

"Sweet lucidity, where have you been all my life?"

The positive vibes followed Jim back stage, and enveloped him once again with every back-slap and raised bottle as he made his way to the bar.  The passage of time was still erratic, and though he seemed to recall having played thirteen songs, it didn't seem like time had passed for more than two or three.  Bruno's Bar and Indie Theater was sadly deficient in windows and oddly deficient in clocks, leaving precious few indications of time.  It was always dark in a bar like that.  But Jim felt good, and wanted the good feelings to last as long as liquor laws permitted.  "I'll have a rum and coke, please."

And for a while, that was the dream too: drinking a rum and coke in peace at Bruno's, his consciousness steeped in happy details.  The fake gaslamps that looked like real gaslamps in the shadows made his drink glow like a magic potion.  The air conditioner was alive and robust in health, keeping the room crisp and cool despite the abundant human bodies.  Music filled the theater and danced along its walls, quiet enough to permit conversation but loud enough to hold its vital edge.  Everywhere, beautiful men and women shared stories and jokes, laughing into each other's eyes.  Jim neither envied nor resented any of them.  He felt much too good.

After a while, he noticed the presence of a woman at the bar, next to him.  He did not know her face, but she wore the same patchwork suit he'd seen on the colorful stage manager before the show began.  The greens and purples of her costume practically required the attention of every thinking person, yet somehow attracted none of them.  Without quite knowing how, Jim had entered into conversation with her.

"That was a good show, man," she said, taking her drink from the bartender with an experienced smile.  She had a rum and coke as well, though it didn't gleam like Jim's did.  Nothing really could.  "You really broke their hearts out there."

"Oh, I'm sure their hearts will be fine in the morning."  He was getting cornier with each passing sip.

"Of course, it wasn't really the grungy, alterna-whatever style we were expecting, was it?"

The phrase stuck in his craw, and it seemed like the room had risen a few degrees.  He looked at her, halfway hidden by his glass.  "Umm, I don't want to sound forward, but can I ask you a personal question?"

"If you must," she replied, eyebrows intrigued.

"Is your name Cathy Bette, by any chance?"

"As chances are, it is not, " she laughed into her second drink.  It glowed no brighter than the first.  "You don't really think I look like her, do you, Jimmy Jim Stain?"

She didn't, but Jim thought it was hard to be sure, all else considered.  He didn't regret asking, at any rate.  He tried a jolly affectation.  "To be honest, you look more like Cathy's clown."

She smiled the same experienced smile.  "And you look like you ought to be the tiniest bit more careful when you eat sandwiches.  Oh, don't be sad," she said, as warm embarassment spread across his cheeks.  "You aren't a hundred per cent responsible for everything you do tonight.  I'll give you thirty percent for the shirt, anyway."

"Maybe."  Silence seemed wiser.

"Those songs, though, I'll have to give you credit.  You really came through back there."

Jim looked back at the theater stage where the lights had felt so much like love, and smiled in spite of his shame.  He realized then that he'd left his silver guitar behind the curtain, but it seemed alright for the moment.  "I'm just trying to live my dream.  Or dream it, anyway."

"Do you mind my saying," she intoned, "that your dream comes across as a little modest?"

"No, I don't mind it," Jim said, though in truth he was a little annoyed.  "But you know, I've been trying to keep this dream on track all night, and it's not exactly easy."

Her smile came more naturally now.  "I guess the success hasn't gone to your head, not too much anyway.  You're right, you know.  It's hard work to dream something right."

Jim tried to set his glass on the bar, but found that both were gone.  Instead of Bruno's Bar and Indie Theater, the setting was Grady's Restaurant.  The food was upscale and the upholstery expensive.  "Tell me about it," he sighed.

"Your name isn't really 'Stain,' is it, Jim?"

"No, thank God."

"A name's just a name," she chuckled.  "What kind of name is 'Grady's' for French cuisine, after all?"

"I guess in some small way, I've always wondered."  He tasted a bit of what he assumed to be escargot, and found it tasty.

"Compliments of the Chef," announced a stentorian waiter, as two of his comrades appeared to present Jim with the case containing his guitar.  For a moment, he could only wonder why.

"Don't worry, don't wonder," said the woman in the patchwork suit, dabbing her lips with a serviette.  "A dream's a dream and no matter what any one says, it's still a dream.  But real life's the same way, if you think about it."

He looked back at her, and considered for a moment whether she was not in fact wearing an elegant evening dress.  "I can't disagree, but I could do with a little more control."

"What we all couldn't do," she replied, thoughtfully.  "But for what it's worth from me, I think you have as much of an opportunity as anybody else.  Keep practicing, and maybe work on being a little less corny, and you'll play Bruno's again some day."

Nodding absently, Jim found that the silver guitar was in his hands once again.  He strummed a few chords.  They weren't much, but they sounded pretty good.

"And look at that," she giggled, "your shirt is clean!"

Poetry Jam #13

Indulge me once again, unlucky readers, for my thirteenth batch of fancy poetry.  These poems were not meant for such an unfortunate designation; they just happened to have been written between December 2012 (you know, when the world ended) and February of this year.  By this ill chance they were cursed to be a part of Poetry Jam #13.  Apologies all around.

Usual commentary and nonsense, post script:
_

Susan's Thoughts

If America invaded Florida to
rebase the moon,
repair the seniors' homes
and hospital gates,
and save the alligators,
the world would be happy for us,
history would be kind.
_

Blue Sparks

That satisfying plug of entry;
now I know we're cooking with fire!
Put it in, plug it in, blue
and silently, before the hum
of industry, cool electricity
coursing through our wires
like the dawn of time and after.
_

Discovery

When winds and waters sharply thunder "stop,"
reveal a polished path of ancient rock
and stand completely still, then
who will be so bold
to take the walk?

Not I, say I,
I don't intend to live so long that all
Those secrets shall be willingly unlocked.
_

My Lover's Favorite Song

My lover's favorite song is done
and I've forgot the melody;
I wrote it in the margins but
I can't remember how I did,
and anyway the paper's gone.

If she will keep the memory,
perhaps not all is lost, perhaps
the song will still play on for her
without my voice to hold it up.

Perhaps the echoes of my love
will keep the music in her heart.
_

No More Secrets

Relax my love, don't stop, hold still,
we have nothing to be scared of
from the open door beyond;
let the beams of sunlight bare
our secrets to the world, darling,
let our freedom burn the air
around us.

Night to morning break
and dawn to dusk I'll hold you near,
so don't you mind if someone sees;
we have no need of shame or fear,
and neither will we bother with
as long as they can see us clearly
through the open door.
_

The Song Incomplete

The music fades at the bridge,
and where am I left?
Among stars and vapors,
alone again in the mists,
as silent as then
when the music started:
before the beginning,
the strings in tune,
the precipice
_

Medieval Gloria

His face, she thought, was not too bad, and how
his armor shone beneath the sun!  She sighed
and thought of Europe in the Middle Ages:
home of glory, inequality,
its castles and its squalor and the plague,
and how an Irish girl might fare with luck.
Determined not to be forgotten once
she'd had the chance to wear that shining armor,
would she keep the charge in her defense?
Apart from time, between the light and dust
of the museum, she could still believe.
_

Idle Questions of the Sky, Questions Soon Forgotten

How shallow is our misery
when up above the clouds
the sun is either shining
or replaced by brilliant stars?

What shadow on the surface
can compare to all of this?
Why bother with the rain
when you can fly?
_

Trouble Sleeping

If you're having trouble sleeping,
watch the flame give up the ghost
and think; if this is only fire,
if my consciousness will burn
until it smothers and no longer,
won't these blankets put me out?

Then sleep, and know that waking
will be kindled by the sun;
the light will surely come again,
and even if it doesn't
you will sleep.
_

Paper Soprano

"Sketch of Spain and Catalonia,
shadow on the paper sea,"
the sweet soprano sings to no one,
but her genius reaches me;

Across the false Atlantic sea,
from years ago and years above,
and scribbled on this manuscript,
a living map to someone's love.

But how I come to hear the sorrow
of the charter, I remember
nothing much, except the summer
that emerged from her December;

Trumpets in the afternoon
and clarinets as evening falls,
with sweet soprano lyrics hanging
on the paper concert walls.
_

A Simple Goal

I have a simple goal for us:
to love in spite of sadness,
disappointment,
and the onward march of days and years
that tread across our hearts.

A simple goal,
for people very much
in love today
who wish to be in love forevet,
love and never stop.
_

Abandoned Homes

Somewhere in my town,
between the woods and hills and
other houses
Is an abandoned home.

I don't know if it's safe
to go there,
but I've been there once,
and between the other houses
this one looked alone.

There may be pests inside,
or chemicals,
or insulating foam;

There may be traps,
there may be treasures
in abandoned homes.
_

Broadcast Day

Both of us have gone asleep
with the radio on;
tonight the DJ is playing
the strangest things
that I have ever heard.

Bossa nova, indie pop
and a tremulous jazz,
with static falling around us
like powdered snow
unfrozen in our hair.

Mournful trumpets in the air,
an incredible pause
and then the analog murmer;
the broadcast day
has ended like a dream.

_____________

Thirteen poems, we'll never live it down!

In my mind, Susan's Thoughts is not actually a poem I wrote.  Sometimes I dream about teaching, and in one such dream I was teaching some sort of elementary school art class.  One of my imaginary students put these words on a poster board for a project.  In my dream, I gave her a high five.

I swear to god, I did not mean to write Blue Sparks as a sex poem.  Scrub your filthy mind!  It's clearly about the miracle of electricity and nothing else.

No More Secrets is pretty sexful, though.  I was home for Christmas, and I was lonely.  Loneliness also accounts for My Lover's Favorite Song, but that one isn't all that sexful.

Discovery is all about that cute little ending.  Everything else is justified by the ending.  MOVE ALONG NOW.

The lack of final punctuation in The Song Incomplete is intentional.  Look at the clever guy!

I wrote Medieval Gloria shortly after reading Malachy McCourt's History of Ireland, having been impressed with the author's apparent eagerness to tell the stories of the island's most interesting ladies.  It seemed to me that people ought to be inspired by the best examples of history, whatever their gender.  The girl in the poem looks beyond the ordinary, male-dominated presentation of history and sees an integral place for herself in the story.

Trouble Sleeping is one of my candle poems.  Sometimes, I am obsessed with candles.

I *love* Paper Soprano.  I don't even think it's perfect.  I just love the idea behind it.  Art to emulate, art to recreate, never quite recaptured.

I know there's nothing simple about love, but I don't think that's love's fault.  A Simple Goal is another poem for Tara.

I wrote Abandoned Homes after I walked past one on an epic hike with my friend Bau.  We were trying to find the richest homes in Eugene.  We found them, but first we found a sketchy, empty dwelling that I'm sure the neighbors were thrilled about.

I recall writing Broadcast Day on the whiteboard while subbing for a math class at Willamette High School.  I was bored during study hall and thought about how nice it would be to nap with the radio on.  Childhood memories did the rest.

A Test and a Decision

If you've ever had the notion that the United States of America's place in the world is fundamentally untenable, you are doubtless concerned by what is happening with regard to Syria.  Once again, we find ourselves on the brink of what we call "intervention," a term that can encompass all things from occupation to a few cruise missiles, artfully placed to make some kind of point.  The future is open ended, but none of the ends are attractive.  And in the era of the Imperial Presidency, we have become much too accustomed to being led into this sort of adventure.

Something a little different is happening this time.  President Obama, who has thus far seemed to accept the premise that a president may make war as he sees fit, has invited Congress to make the decision of whether to punish Syria for the use of chemical weapons.  That this seems new and different should be evidence enough that our system has plainly gotten away from us.  Congress is not presently in session to make that decision, but it will be very soon.  And when our honorable senators and representatives do finally meet, the ensuing events will matter hugely.  This episode will make a fine case study in the role of constitutional government in foreign policy, and will say much about how our constitution and our nation will change in the future.  But it will be even more significant for the people of Syria

Imperial Power

America teaches its children that we are powerful and that this is a good thing.  But while it is obviously preferable to have some power rather than none, occupying the hegemonic status that the U.S. does is inevitably problematic.   Hegemons hurt weaker nations almost without meaning to (to put it charitably), and they invariably rest upon institutional inequality on all scales, global and domestic.  Our power was bought with a bitter price, that will grow more unpleasant with time.

America believes its power to be a good thing, because it enables the doing of good things.  In principle, I believe in that.  How could I not, educated as I was, brought up in the midst of star-spangled flags?  But in acting as the Great Bastion of Freedom, the U.S. has changed itself and altered its constitutional system.  The words on the parchment stay the same, but the system has grown to address the concerns of power.  For example, the Congress may hold the exclusive right to declare war according to the text, but the Cold War taught us to accept that a war was sometimes only a "police action," and that a declaration of war was usually superfluous. 

So what will Congress do about Syria?  Honestly, the question nearly makes me cry.  Obama has asked Congress to give him the authorization to make an initial strike, apparently against the judgment of his cabinet.  But this Congress is objectively terrible, and the only sure thing is that its members will use this opportunity to make fools of themselves.  It is very possible that they will give the president what he asks for, simply because the subject intimidates them.

But suppose for a moment that they do not say yes.  The idea of intervention is unpopular, and the Republicans might well deny President Obama out of their usual spite.  What happens next?

Obama's secretary of State, John Kerry, said today that the President has the right to strike whatever Congress says.  He's plainly not the only one who thinks so.  But what does Obama think?  If Congress tells him no, would he change his approach?  Having overruled his administration on seemingly constitutional grounds, will he stick to that principle come what may?

It is obvious by this point that the Imperial Presidency is alive and well in the Obama administration.  It evidently takes more than hope to dismantle the rationale of power, and it is that rationale that informs Kerry's opinion, to say nothing of the NSA's adventures in domestic spying and the persecution of whistle-blowers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.  Syria's President Assad has called Obama weak already for deferring to Congress.  An empire must abhor the appearance of weakness. 

But Obama can do a great deal of good for the United States by respecting the decision of Congress in this matter.  He can show with firm evidence that the spirit of constitutional government has not been fully choked in the thin air of global hegemony.  If Congress tells him no, he should not attack Syria.  If Congress modifies the plan he sent them, he should respect those changes.  And if Congress rubber stamps him, the precedent of his having asked could still be useful.  In any event, the effort to walk America back from an imperial foreign policy will be tasking.  It would be wonderful to set a positive example of cooperation between the branches of government, especially given all the inexcusable nonsense that has made these years so hard.

I have advocated for changes in our Constitution in the past, on the grounds that such changes are desirable and necessary over time in any nation.  It is not the Constitution of 1789 that is really at the crux of this issue, but the more general principle of constitutional government.  This principle, not the text, is what sustains the republic.  Thus far, Obama's approach on this specific issue is consistent with this principle, but much depends on what comes next.

Syrian Troubles

All of this talk of principle, however important, ignores a crucial consideration.  People are dying in Syria, and the situation is only growing more monstrous.  Chemical weapons have been used and may well be used again.  Assad is unacceptable, and though we've tolerated him in the past, that is no justification for tolerating him now.  The rebels, should they succeed, may prove problematic down the line, but what could be worse than a hundred thousand dead?

The United States, for all its problems, is extraordinarily powerful.  Sitting on all this power, it is hard to look at all this suffering and bloody stalemate and accept that nothing can be done, or that nothing should be done.  Whatever consequences we create, there seems to be a moral imperative to do something to alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people.  If power really can enable good deeds,  then why should it be of no use here?

But there may be no good to be gained, even by firing a missile straight down Assad's throat.  We can't afford another war like we had in Iraq.  We can't afford to take responsibility for Syria's reconstruction.  And we can ill use another cause celebre for al qaeda should order break down after our intervention.

What the people of Syria need is a strong cease-fire agreement, with international peace keepers to hold back any breaks.  It is not obvious how any purely American intervention will accomplish that.  It's also not clear how we can move the United Nations to impose a peace, especially given the behavior of Russia.  Any responsible observer must agree that our choices our dire, but inaction is no less so.

I don't know what we can do in Syria, or what we should do.  I don't think anyone really does.  But for us, this is a test of our historical character, one of many points that will influence where we go from here.  We cannot lose sight of the big picture, and we must be prepared to deal with whatever consequences arise.

So watch what Congress and President Obama do in the next few days.  You will learn a lot about where this world is going by how they conduct themselves.

Things I will miss about living in Eugene, Oregon

I first came to this town in 2005, and through college and other experiences it's become a true second home.  But an eye to the calendar reminds me that on the 17th, I'm boarding a plane to San Diego.  From there I'm off eventually to live in South Korea for at least a year, and whether I come back to live in Eugene for an extended period again is an open question.

Over the years, Eugene has been more than just a place to live and lay about: it's offered a series of distinct blessings and pleasures to me.  I got the best part of my education here, and met the love of my life.  Different things have occupied my focus at different times, but they all made Eugene a place where I felt comfortable.

So with naught but ten short days to go, here's a list (in no particular order) of the things I will miss about living in the second largest city of our twenty seventh largest state:

• Live music and open mic night at Cozmic Pizza.
• Easy access to the products of the Oakshire, Ninkasi, and Widmer Brothers breweries.
• Hiking at the Mt. Pisgah Arboretum.
• Eating salmon and chips at Newman's Fish Market so frequently that the whole kitchen staff knows me on sight.
• Playing bass guitar in the company of my friends.
• Taking a nap on the couches in the EMU on campus even though I graduated in 2009.
• Substitute teaching at Elmira High School (among others).
• Drinking a little too much on Fridays at the Starlight Lounge with my grad school cohort.
• Walking around in light rain without a hood on and acting like it's all good.
• Strolling by rivers and creeks, looking for nutria and wishing they were beavers.
• Ordering movie-themed Eggs Benedict at the Studio One Cafe.
• Watching anime and playing video games all night with my friends.
• Camping in the prettiest woods in the world.
• Hanging around the Smith Family Book Store without necessarily buying anything.
• Sitting on the porch with a gouda cheeseburger at Jiffy Market.
• Watching hippies do strange things in public.
• Stalking the deer who stroll nonchalantly down my street.
• Listening to 91.1 KWAX, 89.7 KLCC, and 91.9 KRVM while driving around in my car.
• Taking long walks with my best friend while discussing issues of great import, or just nerdy nonsense.
• Ordering huge pizzas from Sy's and eating them with my friends until we feel like dying.
• Filling out my music collection with visits to House of Records.
• Feeling like a six-year-old on the rare occasions when it snows.