Are you sure God doesn't want it to die?

It's often said that distance makes the heart grow fonder and that if you love something then let it go. Therefore, I can only assume my absence from this blog has only made you appreciate me all the more. Well, thank you and don't think I take for granted how important I am in your lives.

Some of you know and some of you don't, Amber and I are back in Massachusetts and have settled closer to Boston. I'll be attending Emerson College graduate program in Communication Sciences and Disorders to become a Speech-Language Pathologist when I grow up, and living here made the most sense. But I feel settled and wanted to re-inject some e-life back into this lumbering sloth of a blog. I hope to continue with some regularity as the semesters pass me by, but the future is cloudy and I'm all out of fortune cookies.

Amber started with a garden when we moved in. See, we have a deck/patio and she always wanted potted plants and little vegetables. We bought peppers, cucumbers, basil, and a tomato plant. As the summer waned, I kept thinking that something must be eating our tomato plant, as the leaves had become stubs. However, I also thought the plant just didn't have the same fervor it displayed at the start of summer and was slowly dying. Cycle of life, and all. This seemed all the more plausible because I had never seen any sort of insect near the plant, and as a man of weak faith, I must see to believe. Today, however, I caught the herbivorous culprit... a Tomato Hornworm.Ugly little bastard, huh?

Anyway, when I saw this little guy gnawing away at my wife's tomato plant I nearly relived my entire childhood. I got so excited and gleeful that I ran in the house to grab my camera (hence the photos). I plucked him from the plant (gently, of course, you don't want pictures of a mangled caterpillar) and set off to get more pictures.

















Maybe I shouldn't have called him an ugly little bastard before. I mean, he does kind of grow on you. Well, whatever.

Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble

This past weekend, Amber and I were in Salem looking for an apartment and visiting with some friends. The apartment search lacked much result; we only had one scheduled viewing, thumbs down. The place was alright, great location, but the landlord made Amber uncomfortable, kind of nosy. We heading back soon to look at a few more promising leads; I'm sure listing agents love Craigslist and the bodies it brings in. That's right, we're Craiglisters.

While in Witchville, I snapped a few shots.Historic Town Hall, maybe?Above is the Friend Ship. How cute.This is the Derby Square Book Shop. I love visiting this flea market of a bookstore.

Eternal Education

Last weekend, Amber and I went to Emerson College's Graduate School Open House. I've been accepted into their Communication Disorders/Speech Language Pathology program for the fall of 2009. It should take a little over two years, starting this summer with five pre-requisite classes. Overall, the day went very well, and speaking with the program directors settled several of my shaky nerves. It'll be expensive, cost being the main cause of my concern, but I hope this opportunity with offer me some professional and personal rewards as I graduate and move into the field. While in Boston, I snapped a few shots of the fog rolling into the city, blotting out many of the taller buildings and smudging the skyline.The Old Burying Ground just outside Emerson HQ

That's me with the bronze, amphibian Thinker at Boston's Frog Pond

Here's the encroaching fog just outside the Boylston Street T-Station

Bookworm

I've recently finished two novels by Walter Moers, The City of Dreaming Books and Rumo and His Miraculous Adventures. Both are fantastic, escapist stories of sci-fi protagonists embarking on relatively traditional quests. Dreaming involves a deathbed promise, while Rumo follows his heart. The twist in both novels are the characters themselves and the settings.Dreaming takes place in both Lindworm Castle and Bookholm, two cities populated with evolved dinosaurs noted for their adoration of the written word. Lindworm, famed for its writers and their intimate knowledge of the Orm, opens the story as the main character's authorial godfather draws his final breaths, reveals a secret manuscript (the best he's ever read), and demands his nephew find the author in Bookholm. The Orm is their version of the muse. Of course he sets of in the following weeks, a relative bumpkin in the bustling city of Bookholm, and falls into the mischievous and nearly Machiavellian constructs of the city's puppet-master. He's locked in the bowels of the city, where all the most expensive and valuable novels are stored, forgotten about, and then hunted by Bookhunters. Oh yeah, there are Bookhunters who do just what the name says and do it well. They're a militant bunch, very superstitious, that play a major role as the novel winds down. I feel in love with the book as I crashed through the pages, consuming Moers' words and illustrations and quickly went out to purchase Rumo immediately after the final page of Dreaming.
Rumo is a Wolperting (that's him, laughing in the middle; note the horns), a mythological hybrid of a wolf and a deer, renowned for its ferocity and fighting ability, a true warrior. Faster than any other creature in Zamonia, most citizens offer a wide berth when Wolpertings linger and avoid their private city entirely. Full of adventure and action, we follow the main character from his first steps to his first love, grazing past the varied species of Zamonia as Rumo fights to find and win his true love. With a slower pace than Dreaming, I better appreciated Moers' ability to create landscapes and entire worlds similar to our own, yet wrought with the amazing creatures of living dreams. He loves to play with words and develop characters in an entirely new setting.

Like Terry Pratchett and Discworld, Walter Moers exceeds at his chosen task to enhance our perspective of reality by exaggerating imagination and drawing upon the classic quest scenario, full of hero worship and insecurity. Moers explores the basic requirements for heroism and humanizes the fantastic worlds we each created as children. It is pure and enjoyable; plus, the illustrations are little treasures strewn throughout the novel, adding a sense of whimsy to some very tense situations.

Not so Sci-fi

I feel like writing something fantastic, not blow your mind fantastic, but fantasy fantastic. As it's not in my general vein, I'll give it a shot.

Ampelron, sage of Weildwin, watched the sun rise quietly over the blank plains of the east without much fanfare or glory. He had seen the same sight nearly every morning for twelve hundred years as part of his meditative regimen. The rising sun signaled the start of his three-hour water breathing exercise, a chore that chose him; one he would rather avoid as the lakes of Weildwin still stung with the chill of winter.

With a quiet, resigned sigh, Ampleron left the porch of his humble cottage. Traversing the hill to Whir Lake had become second nature, as meditation dictates. He climbed the granite outcroppings and slick rocks without watching each step while deep in thought. The land in the lakes region changed much more slowly than the greater continent, which allowed Ampleron the freedom to learn each pebble and clod of earth over time.

OK, this isn't great, but it's writing, and the rules of free-writing dictate, regardless of quality, one must continue to write. I won't be breaking into the dragon-infested world of fantasy literature any time soon, as you can see. Well, I tried and Tolkien I'm not. Sorry it's so short, but I haven't much patience right now and a marathon headache. Adios.

12 Echoes

Write a poem of twelve lines about whatever you want; each line must end with one of the following words: “down,” “accept,” “on” “life,” “light,” “flowerless,” “pulses,” “us,” “sun,” “heights,” “shrivel,” “little.” You may use the words in any order. Give the poem a title.

On Delicate Wings

I cannot dream without an audience of flowerless
eyes; hollow, empty, abandoned by light.

I cannot say their countenance haunts us,
so still, so stagnant. They stare, and I shrivel.

I have surrendered aspirations to attaining those heights,
as Icarus and even Daedalus learned to accept
the bindings of fate and misfortune drag dreams down.
Yet, falling meant reaching and drowning meant life.

the sun
pulses
little,
and my wax melts on.

I would like to recognize Prof. J. Bobrick for assigning a similar challenge during my undergraduate education and providing the twelve words used above.