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The short story.

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I have a confession to make: I’m on the Tumblr. It might seem like a conflict of interest since this is a WordPress site, but that’s a post for another day. One of the people that I follow on the Tumblr is Mr. Gaiman. 

No surprise, I am sure.

One day, Mr. Gaiman linked to a video created by Michael McQuilken. The video was for a song called ‘Young & Lovely’ from the album “Composed” by Jherek (I don’t know how to pronounce his fucking name either) Bischoff. 

Mr. Gaiman commented that this was the type of art that begged for a story. 

Challenge. Accepted.

What follows is the story that I have written for this video. It’s not the greatest story in the world. In fact, it’s the first short story that I have written in over a decade. After the story is the actual video. 

Thanks for reading this,

Matt

**********

Springtime: that part of the year when the cold fingers and desolation of winter have been shaken off in favor of the warmth and hope that spring brings with it. That hope is a gift to the youth. It is with hope that people start new chapters of their lives. Hope gives power to the creators whose ideas are nearly realized. Hope is what bonds two lovers together. What the youth doesn’t realize is that this gift won’t last forever. Lives end as easily as they have begun, ideas fall apart, and love doesn’t feel lovely enough.

It was one of the first warm days of spring. The Young Man sat on the steps of the promenade in the park. With his long, dark mane of hair gently flowing in the spring breeze and his haute couture, he was the picture of youth and virility. Nearby, a Willow tree beckoned, offering comfort and shade.

Days like these were made exactly for what he was doing: enjoying nature, listening to the birds and letting his thoughts wander while absorbing the sight before him.

Something moved a few feet behind him. A smile bloomed on the Young Man’s face.

She was attempting to sneak up on him.

She was all blonde hair, blue eyes and her Sunday best clothes. He knew at first glance that this was a girl who’s been fought over more than once.

After that first glance, he unequivocally knew that there was something strange about her. Her presence was like when you’ve misplaced something very important and you have the inkling that what you are looking for is right in front of you. Whatever it was, the Young Man knew it had something to do with her eyes. He knew that there was something there, something that was swimming just below the surface of those cold blue pools.

He was a fly in those Venus flytrap eyelashes.

In those few moments that they had observed each other, a dull haze had started to seep in through the Young Man’s mind. Time seemed to hold its breath, waiting for one of these two people to make their move. Before he realized what his legs were doing, he was following her.

Laughing and talking like they were meant to love each other, and only each other since the day that they were born, they held each other in the waning sunshine. The Young Man had never done that with just anyone before. For some reason, things felt “different” with her.

“You know, my mother never told me not to get into strange cars, with strange women”, he said from behind a blindfold.

She said she wanted to show him something back at her apartment but she wouldn’t tell him what it was and that secrecy was crucial. The Young Man was no fool. If it had been any other woman, he would have sat back down on those stone steps and resumed his enjoyment of nature and all of its offerings. But with her, he all ready knew it was love.

“Well, fortunate for you I’m not that strange”, she said smiling with her mouth, only. Her eyes, her eyes were saying something else. A small kernel of worry began to germinate in the Young Man’s mind.

“Said the young lady who was trying to sneak up on me”, he volleyed back at her in hopes of getting just a little bit more out of her.

He didn’t understand until they had arrived at her apartment why secrecy was an issue at all.

As they had gotten out of the cab, the young lady had taken off the blindfold in favor of covering his eyes with her hands. Dropping them away from his eyes, she stood before him, just as lovely as when she first crept up on him, gesturing like a showroom model at the silent behemoth of a building behind her.

“You… live here?”

She nodded enthusiastically, eyes dripping with cold fire while her mouth did all the smiling.

The Young Man knew something wasn’t right.

That small kernel of fear was starting to take root. He knew that he should have been more pragmatic about the entire situation. The only thing that he could do was to look up at this building and wonder where the top ended.

Tired of his lollygagging, she led him by the hand to the front door. Once he took one look into the frigid depths of her eyes, that fear was ripped out by the root.

Like turning off a switch.

It was the biggest apartment that the Young Man had ever seen.

So much space. For some reason, he found elation in all of this.

It wasn’t long before she started undressing him.

“I know that this may comes as a surprise, but I haven’t been entirely forthcoming”, she said.

For a brief instant, there was a flicker of fear across his face.

“It’s ok, you can tell me”, he said.

“Would you believe that we’ve met before?” she said as she continued to undress him.

“Wait, what’s the rush?” he faltered, trying to put some physical distance between the two of them.

Crestfallen, she finally spoke.

“I’ve said too much. You just seemed so… ready.”

For some reason it made him love her. It. just… didn’t… matter. Clothing proceeded to be shed.

He awoke the next day feeling hollow but fulfilled at the same time. The young lady was nowhere to be found.

After exploring the cavernous and nearly soundless apartment, he stopped to take stock of himself in a mirror.

“I always knew that one day my looks would get me in trouble”, he thought.

Even with the elation of the other day and with the overwhelming sense of unease, he still liked what he saw reflected back at him: rugged features, slim build, full mane of hair, what more could be asked for?

A small noise drained the self-absorption that the Young Man was drowning in. As he followed the sound, the noise grew to a full mutter.

That sense of dread was back.

Standing in the shadows of the hallway, he took in the strangeness of the site that he had found in the warmly lit room.

Sitting on one of the longer couches, the young lady was with four people he had never seen before. She sat in the middle of them. Everyone sat comfortably with their eyes closed and their arms outstretched before them.

On one end of the couch sat a man who appeared to be entirely composed of knees and elbows and seemed entirely too thin to exist. On the far end of the couch sat a woman who seemed to be having trouble immersing herself as the others have. She was doing her best though.

On either side of the young lady sat a man and woman who were like no people he had ever seen before. The man was dressed well in bright colors and had an iridescent quality to his face. It was like the sun was being kept in the container of a human. The woman was a pale beauty, dressed in deep blues and black greens. These people who flanked his love were as opposite as night and day.

What completely unsettled the Young Man was that they were all talking in unison but it was unlike any language that he had ever heard.

A cold sweat began to filter through the Young Man’s flesh.

He walked slowly towards the center of the group, to his love, and knelt down in front of her.

As he put his hands on her knees, those impenetrable mirrors of her eyes opened and his mind went entirely flaccid.

She smiled, ensnaring him in her embrace. The others applauded.

Under the applause, he heard her whisper, “Deep inside of your soul, you know it to be true: we’ve met and loved each other before. Just as sure as the sun and moon sit beside me”.

He knew that he should be afraid but there was something inside of him that was keeping him from it.

“Is it her?” he thought.

Eventually, everyone adjourned to the balcony. Reeling in the haze of the moment the Young Man became acquainted with these strange peoples. Try as he might, the only name that would stick in his mind was that of the thin man. He referred to himself as the Conductor. When the Young Man pressed him about such a strange name, he would only say that it was a nickname that he was blessed with given his “god-like” ability to keep things moving.

Realizing that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with his tall friend, the Young Man went to the railing to asses the past couple of hours. There was something missing. He just couldn’t nail down what it was. It was like someone had brushed up against a part of his memories before the paint had had a chance to dry.

It was a cool and cloudy night. The sky looked like a window mottled with steam and streaked with condensation. When he turned around, the strangely dressed man and woman were in the possession of musical instruments and were tuning up, while the Conductor took his place amongst them.

The Young Man wanted to question all of this but his elation at the sight before him was clouding his judgment. All he could think about was how much he wanted to dance with his love.

The Young Man and woman had started to dance. There was no rationality to the chain of events that the Young Man had become a part of. The only thing that he knew for certain was that he was happy.

The others looked on and smiled.

After the air became too cool to be tolerable, the group agreed that sustenance and libations were in order. As the food was served and conversation politely filled the air, the Young Man began to realize that something still wasn’t quite right.

While reaching this conclusion, the Young Man and the young lady had started to eat what appeared to be a grapefruit from their plates. The Young Man began to open the fruit with his hands. He realized that the fruit was certainly more exotic than he had surmised.

As the juice of the fruit bled through his fingers and dripped onto the plate, he couldn’t help thinking to himself that the young lady was right: they had known each other before. Pushing the fruit’s pit up and out into the atmosphere of the dinner party, the Young Man regarded it with a feeling of regret. It sat there in his fingers; slimy and pulsating like a heart.

All of those feelings of dread, the weight of the unease of everything, he finally felt assured as the identity of the young lady had finally dawned on him.

He turned to face the young lady. Regardless of any realizations, the love was still there between the two of them. As he was about to speak her true name, a wave of disgust erupted on her face. Reaching up to his head, she fingered one silver strand, a gray hair.

Savagely plucking it from his head, she turned and stomped away like a scorned child.

Turning to read the faces of the “dinner guests” in hopes to find some clue as to the travesty that he had unknowingly brought into being, a shockwave of fear thundered through his body.

They were all gone.

The night had turned into day.

It was like it had never happened.

Was he going mad?

The click of a woman in high heels echoed through the apartment.

Chasing after it, he had found her at the end of a hallway. It was the woman who didn’t seem like she was to be a part of the group. A brief glimmer of hope pin pricked in the man as she regarded him, her entire being radiating disgust.

Turning on her heel, she walked on, deeper into the room at the other end of the hall.

Storming into the room after the misplaced woman, the Young Man had found her, the young lady, in the embrace of another woman.

“They look so… happy”, he thought.

They both stopped long enough to look at him. Their faces were polite but it was obvious that they were unhappy with this presence.

The young lady gazed at him with those dangerous pools she called eyes.

The Young Man heard her speak. Her mouth wasn’t moving. She was speaking to him, inside of him.

“Just as the moon and sun sat beside me last night, you know that I am The Dawn. I am of the oldest of the old and we have been acquainted numerous times. I bridge the gap between the days and I exist to rob you of your youth. Eventually you will be like me, Young Man. You will be no longer lovely enough for love. You made your peace with that last night when you realized my true name and yet you still had love for me. Go now, young man, you have served your purpose”.

His eyes began to tear. As he blinked them away, he found that he was back where he started, in the park.

Unaware of what happened, the Young Man still felt at ease with himself as he moved from the steps to the nearby Willow tree. Watching his son toddle around in front of him, he knew despite the feeling of unease, that things were as they should be.

On my blogging “anniversary”.

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Recently the little beasties inside the WordPress machine saw fit to alert me this week to the passing of my third blogging anniversary. They also made a point of telling me that I should be “happy” about it.

(I know, it doesn’t look like I have been at this for three years. But I have. Just see here.)

This was irregardless of the fact (that I either missed the first two anniversaries or…) that they didn’t say shit about the other ones.

But still. This one I didn’t miss.

Do I have some sort of pithy point about being at the bottom of the blogging pool?

Have I learned anything at all about life or the way the world works? 

Is there a reason for this somewhat rhetorical line of questioning? 

Not really. The negligibility for these questions is rather high (except for the last one: the answer is “to fill up space”). However, as someone who considers themselves a writer, I am duty-bound to play that game. In my three years of blogging I have learned that:

  1. We never stray far from the children that we used to be. 
  2. Fuck what everyone else says, do what you think you should do (regardless of what the “do-ing” is). Don’t worry about happiness. Happiness is a choice. It’s up to you to choose correctly. 
  3. Always read the directions. One time I didn’t and I ended up getting my dick caught in the ceiling fan.

As always, thanks for reading this. 

Matt

(ps Next week I promise I will finish the spotlight on graphic novels and resume regular literary randomness.)

Big Questions or Asomatognosia: whose hand is it anyway?

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I first saw Big Questions… at my local library. I was confused for a split second because I thought it was a goddamn text book.

Clocking in at a whopping 592 pages, Big Questions is most definitely the largest graphic novel that I have ever read.

The result of the culmination of 15 years of work, Anders Nilsen tells the us the overlapping story of a group of birds who are in a philosophical/psychological quandary, a grandmother raising her handicapped grandson on her own and a narcoleptic pilot who has trouble distinguishing between dreams and reality.

Nilsen’s artistic style is unlike any that I have yet to experience. There’s no richness of traditional mainstream comics. It’s stark and barren and it completely complements the story that he is trying to tell.

If there was one problem that I had throughout my entire reading it was the fact that everything was in black and white. While that may seem like a necessary device for telling a stark story, it’s a bit of a pain in the ass when it comes to distinguishing who’s who in the bird community.

Additionally, Big Questions… Is by far one of the saddest books I have ever read.

I can’t really go into it without spoiling it for anyone however all of that starkness combined with a storyline that seemingly doesn’t end happily isn’t for everyone.

Regardless this book is worth checking out for the art alone.

pic courtesy of: http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/19282350052_big_questions,_or,_asomatognosia

My origin story, or “what this site is about”.

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When I was growing up, I didn’t have any substantial memories of anybody reading to me. 

This was during the 1980′s. Divorce was becoming a common place occurrence. My family was no exception. The little things, like reading to your child, became less of a priority.

Given this set up, school was a bit of a bother. Especially when it came to reading. From grades 1 through 8, I have distinct memories of the class reading together as a group (or else there was silent reading) and the teacher would always ask questions after the reading was done.

In either situation, I seldom read. If I wasn’t looking out the window, I was pretending to read.

It’s not that I couldn’t read. And it wasn’t that I had a hard time reading, I just wasn’t interested in it. Video games, playing, being a little shit: that was more my thing.

That was the norm for the next 10 years.

******************

The first book that I remember reading completely, cover-to-cover, was The Death of Superman. The novelization, not the DC Comics story-arc.

I was on a summer trip with my father to Cooperstown, New York. He was a huge baseball fan and I feigned interest in it because it made him happy. There wasn’t any huge revelation in reading this book in practically one sitting. I didn’t recognize the errors of my ways when it came to reading. It was just something to do because I was bored. Regardless, I still remember really liking the story line.

Once we got back into town and school started again, it was back to the same routine.

Eventually, high school happened. Reading became a mandatory thing and I started to enjoy it because (through some of the books I was reading) it made being isolated and socially retarded an acceptable thing.

Junior year came around and I had American Literature with Mr. Barker (a native New Zealander, by the way). Thanks to this man, I had officially seen the error of my ways when he introduced me to authors like Harper Lee, Kerouac, Bukowski and countless others. I started reading everything that I could get my naughty little hands on and I haven’t stopped since.

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Consider The Rank Spoon a fan-site for books. All of them. What can you expect here? Book “reviews” (I use that term loosely because I generally hate book reviews. Most of them are concerned with things that, in my experience, the author didn’t intend but is still tickled that someone else has deduced, etc.), pictures of books (For real. I’m one of those types.), author bios, book news… Basically just about anything you can imagine on a fan-site devoted to all things literary.

Make no mistake, I don’t have any sort of lofty goals. I don’t aim to improve literacy. I don’t have an agenda against e-books. I’m just a dude who loves books.

We’re missing the bigger picture.

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(This is a cross-post from my tumblr blog. Given the nature of this post (and this fucking day) this post is relevant no matter where it pops up).

I can’t even begin to fathom what it would be like to wonder if one of my kids caught a bullet because someone had designs to walk into my children’s school one day and open fire. 

Yes, as a Nation we need to rethink our priorities when it comes to gun control. But to take fire arms away from the public entirely? That’s just foolish. We tried that with alcohol, remember? Didn’t turn out too well. Tried that with Weed as well. Now there are States in the Union where it’s legal to possess.

We’re missing the bigger picture, though.

Gun control is only part of the picture. And at that, it’s a very small, fucking part of it. Mental health care is also a small part of it.

There are those who would argue that mental health care is A LARGE part of it and on some instances I would be inclined to agree with them. But guess what? Not in this instance! I recently completed a project for a client regarding health care policy. In short: Successful health care policies make it to the next round and even get passed based on wording. What does that mean? It means that if the policy essentially shows that everybody wins (with the Government winning the most, of course) then it will make it to the next round. Unethical? You betcha!

Better parenting is what needs to be focused on. 

I’m not speaking with regards to the Lanza’s. Anyone who is, is being presumptuous, and well.. A dick. There son was obviously disturbed. That’s all that we know. That’s all that we are going to know for some time. 

So, how do we do it? How do we become (or maintain being) better parents for our children?

Get up, right now and go be with your kids. Not an option? Appreciate them a little more the next time you see them.

A quick word on Hobbits.

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Next week the film adaptation of The Hobbit will be hitting theaters.

Will I be talking about the BOOK and various things Tolkien? Probably. Will I be talking about it ad naseum? God… I don’t think that I could handle that. Could you handle that?

Fun fact: Tolkien never really liked how popular the Lord of the Rings book became. He always felt like his best works were the books that were academical in nature. For reals.

Will you be getting anything out of it (tangible or otherwise)? Maybe. It’s anybody’s guess, really. I just thought that I should give you all a “head’s up” because it seemed like the polite thing to do.

Until Monday. 

In which, I have a brief point I would like to bring up about “The 4-Hour Chef”.

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Recently a new book by Tim Ferriss entitled “The 4-Hour Chef” was released unto the world.

The world responded by shitting their pants. Not because of the content in said tome, but because of how it was marketed.

Billed as “one of the most banned books” (or something to that effect) everyone who has ever read a book and has internet access collectively said ‘OOOHHHHH! That little stinker, Tim Ferriss! How dare he include himself in with all of the other “Cool” authors that have been banned even though we can’t actively recall who has been banned, we just KNOW what he did is wrong!’

Here are a couple of things that have become easily disregarded given this fiasco:

  1. Tim has published his book through Amazon. That’s right, as in amazon.com. They now have a publishing “arm”. Amazon, sneaky fuckers that they are, are poised to take over the world. Ever hear of something called Kickstarter? Little known fact: they have a hand in that.
  2. This book is considered “banned” because Barnes and Noble turned up their noses at the thing because it’s published through Amazon. Essentially, they saw their selling of this book as accepting product from a competitor or some cockamamie thing.
  3. Take a look at Tim’s bio. Seriously, do it now. Read the whole thing.

HE KNOWS HOW TO FUCKING MARKET HIMSELF!

By somewhat negligibly (I use this word because in order to be successfully banned, if a person should be “caught” with this book a police action would ensue..) including this book into the pantheon of books that have been banned over the years and the resulting shit storm that has resulted from it, Tim Ferriss has successful imprinted himself into the mind of every person who can read. Whether or not people read and/or buy his book is another story.

The point is that him saying that his book was “banned” is the equivalent of him giving the finger to Barnes and Noble.

There’s no denying that this guy is a modern day ”DaVinci”. Have I bought his books? Yes, I own the 4-Hour Body and I am making my way through the 4-hour chef. Will I have more to say on those books, here, in the future?

Yes. I just wanted to bring something up that a lot of people seemed to have missed.

I’m a Lucky Man.

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It’s true: I am a lucky man. I come from a family that is there for me and I have a family of my own that I just think is the bee’s knees.

But more importantly, I feel that I am a lucky man because I can read. Please don’t stop reading this post. This isn’t going to be some preachy, “boo-hoo there are so many people out there who are grown adults that can’t read, boo-hoo” type of post. 

No offense, but fuck those people. They made a choice to not learn a basic skill.  (Additionally, I applaud their cockroach-like ability to survive and move forward into their adulthood without learning this basic skill).

I digress…

Suffice it to say, I am an avid reader. I haven’t always been one though. From the time that I learned how to read up until my junior year of high school, I would do anything that I could NOT to read. If I had the choice between reading and shoving my face into a homeless man’s bare ass, well, you get the idea…

To this day, I still don’t know what my former aversion to reading was. Maybe because my parents didn’t read to me regularly? Who knows? The point is, is that when I hit my junior year I met my first wholly positive influence in my life: Mr.Barker, my American Lit teacher. The first book he had us read was “On The Road”. After I read that book, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. It’s clichéd, I know. But then again, using the word “clichéd” is clichéd. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, hippy.

Lately, I have been reading all these cool graphic novels like Violent Cases, 1602, and Asterios Polyp as well as some actual novels (these are like graphic novels except they don’t have the pretty pictures) like THUD! and Horns.

The second I finished Horns, my first thought was “Fuck me, I love reading”.

What about you, kind reader? What are your thoughts on this matter? AND More importantly what good reads have been giving you brain-gasms as of late?

Canada strikes again!

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This past week, through Neil Gaiman’s Tumblr Blog (It seems to be a Neil Gaiman kind of week, ok?), I learned something rather remarkable.

In Toronto, Canada there is a book store that has a vending machine that distributes random books. 

Why is it that all of the ideas that have the most chutzpah always come to fruition in other countries? McDonald’s serving beer. Countries (I think…) were weed is legal. Beer dispensing machines (Germany if I’m not mistaken…) It seems like America is still trying to pull the stick out of it’s ass.

I digress. 

First, universal Health Care. Now Book “lottery”? What will these crazy bastards come up with next? Utopia?