616 days later...

Oh be nice!  I'm just a blogger.  It's not like I'm George R.R. Martin or anything...

Journeys of self-discovery don't lend themselves well to blogging along the way.  That grew apparent in Dallas where was made the most recent entry of this strange chronicle now fourteen-some years along.  An abrupt a hiatus was never desired: with a graphic parodying the fad of the hour, made in our hotel room, air conditioning cranked to the max as Tammy the Pup and I waited out the 115-degrees of afternoon sultriness.

Attempting to document everything about this journey, predicated from the start on following God's lead no matter where or when or how He did so, became an exercise in futility.  It wasn't...  and it still isn't... about the minutiae.  It's something else.  A deeper quality.  It is a virtue that cannot be known without taking that first step.  It is an unnamable quality of introspection and self-questioning wrought into being by Providence through the places and people and predicaments and peculiarities that come about along the way.  Dare take a respite to record it all for something like a blog and you miss a beat, lose a rhythm, let a moment rife with potential slip through your fingers.

So I stepped away.  For how long, I didn't know or even care to know.  There was always the intention to come back to The Knight Shift: lumps and all a labor of love for the past decade and a half.  I had no idea it would be for THIS long.  But it had to be this way.  Returning any sooner out of blogging's sake would have been a taking away from the experience.  Would have been that much less that I would have allowed God to work with.

My focus as a writer, as a historian, as an observer of the world around me, has always been toward trying to see the bigger picture.  But I had never turned that same focus onto myself.  My own life had been a thing episodic.  Perhaps because...  I didn't see my life as having any significance in the larger story?  It had been a piecemeal work.  Just accepting whatever I could as it came along.  Being thankful for the portions of good that had been allotted me these last several years.  Hoping.  Waiting.  Praying.  For something better.

When you have come to the end of everything that you are, there are two choices left to you.  Wait to die.  Or break free.  The way of one is of comfort.  The way of the other is uncertain.  One is safe.  The other, perilous.  One is a slow and lingering death, of the spirit if not of body.  The other holds no promise of happy life, yet embodies the essence of life itself.

One is to trust in nothing at all.  The other is to take a leap of faith... and thrill to see what happens next.

After everything that has happened in my life over the past several years, and despite what some family wanted, I made a break for it.  Escaped.  Took off and didn't care where to.  Didn't even know what the end result would look like except that I desired purpose, happiness, something of my own that could not be found where I was.

That most will never dare such a journey is an enormous tragedy.  But I don't know if I chose this or if it was chosen for me.  More than once I have learned during two decades of being a Christ-follower: when God wants you somewhere, He will do anything and everything to maneuver and manipulate you into a situation where you have no other option but to move a certain way, go a certain direction.  It may not be the easiest path in life.  But it certainly is life and life abundant that is promised us.

On the morning of June 12th, 2016, Chris Knight and his dog Tammy set out in a Toyota Camry.  It was packed with bare essentials for what was intended to be a search for a new home.  Clothes, a dog food and water dish, pocketknife, iPad Pro, Boy Scout compass, and a cast-iron skillet.  Because you never leave on a epic journey without a cast-iron skillet.

Nine and a half months later he returned briefly.  But he wasn’t the same.  And nearly a year since then he is even more changed, now some distance further still somewhere in America.

In that regard… I suppose if this is what God wanted of me, it has worked.  And maybe I don't have that full measure of happiness I've desired yet.  But at long last for the first time in my life I have freedom.  And at this current place that my dog and I have been brought to I have been trusted with a degree of creative power, of rare appreciation, and even a bit of leadership.  I have been given responsibilities that I'd never imagined could be there to fulfill.  And it feels awesome!

I should not be alive to write these words.  And had I heeded the selfishness of others I would have been hostage in the cruelest prison for all my days.

But to quote Steve McQueen's final words in the last scene of Papillon: "Hey you bastards!  I'm still here."

Take a leap of faith.  Make that first step onto the path, as Bilbo Baggins.  Let something greater than yourself guide your way.  You might just be surprised at how far you will go.  Be it out into the world or deep into your own heart.

So what has happened these past twenty-two months?

Adventure.  Misadventure.  Joy.  Sadness.  Thrill.  Heartbreak.  Moments of clarity.  Moments of confusion.  Appreciation of friendship.  Bitterness of betrayal.  Gratefulness to God.  Doubting God at all.  Hurting.  Healing.  Coming to terms with much of my past.  Allowing myself feel long-roiling hate... so that it could finally be allowed to die.  Seeing the world with new eyes, and putting an end to old illusions.  Letting go.  And learning to live again for the first time.

I suppose some synopsis of the past year and a half is called for.  Fair enough.  In no particular order:

• Looked upon the Pacific Ocean for the very first time on Thanksgiving Day 2016...

• Finally visited Dealey Plaza in Dallas.
• Made a brief ride through Branson, Missouri.
• Found out that I had been mispronouncing "Taos" for the past few decades.
• Got my kicks on Route 66 (and yes I made sure to have the theme from the television series playing on the car stereo) through a few towns.
• Watched little girls play hopscotch on the sidewalk of a small American town, something I didn’t think happened anymore.
• Was offered a job on a new television series (long story, VERY long...)
• Spent an afternoon with Matt, a friend from college, who also gave me a tour of Fort Leonard Wood.
• Discovered the hard way that pecan pie does not seem to exist west of Phoenix.
• Was offered an Android Smartphone and a lewd act in exchange for thirty dollars by a prostitute in Albuquerque (then the light turned green and my foot hit the pedal...)
• Got arrested at a United States Navy facility because my iPhone gave bad directions to a Subway sandwich shop.
• Witnessed my miniature dachshund pee and poop precisely on the Continental Divide.
• Got to discover what makes Kansas City barbecue such a worthy competitor to North Carolina barbecue.
• Fulfilled a lifelong dream of visiting the Palomar Observatory and seeing the Hale Telescope...

• Had a chance encounter with Danny Trejo, who said that Tammy was a beautiful dog.
• Crossed the Rio Grande several times.
• Did a Facebook Live video from inside a marijuana store in Colorado (no I did NOT buy anything!) then had to drive almost four hours back to the hotel with my clothes reeking of the smell of weed.  NOT fun at all!
• Visited the Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan presidential libraries and paid my respects at the final resting places of each.
• Saw the Grand Canyon for the first time and stood transfixed by the majesty of it...

• Was asked on numerous occasions in California where was I from, because it’s customary for me to always open doors for ladies and “guys just don’t do that here in California”.
• Was standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona...

• Drove down the Vegas Strip with the window rolled down and Tammy standing in my lap as Elvis sang “Viva Las Vegas” from my car stereo.
• Got to meet MANY longtime friends for the first time in real life.
• Spent a day at the Very Large Array radio telescope complex.
• Bought “real” Blue Sky crystal meth at the candy store that made it for the television series Breaking Bad.  Also found Saul Goodman’s law office (now a bar and grill), Tuco’s headquarters, and Walter White’s house (no I did NOT throw a pizza onto its roof)...

• Made an entire IHOP in Oklahoma City crack up laughing with an impromptu impersonation of Charles Kuralt.
• Stood outside the gates of Graceland with Tammy (who is a hound dog... get it?).
• Had to explain to the sales associate of a Build-A-Bear on the West Coast that you simply DO NOT send a teddy bear in a Duke basketball uniform to the home of a UNC-Chapel Hill alumnus, even if it IS a Christmas present for his eight-month old daughter.
• Fulfilled another longtime dream: drove along a desolate highway through the desert, not another vehicle in sight, with the car window down and listening to "Mrs. Robinson".
• Did something I had wanted to do since I was six years old: visit Meteor Crater near Flagstaff, Arizona.
• Drove atop Hoover Dam.
• Met a lot of fascinating people and made new friends along the way including but not limited to: Marissa (who once appeared in a Super Bowl commercial), Tom T. Hall (who as my father did, enjoys Sir Walter Raleigh smoking tobacco), Candice, the Japanese Man, Mr. Peppy, Ophelia the Maid, Steve the Geek (who also has a dachshund), and Benjamin the pastor of “Church Sid’s Canoe” which is a fine bunch of good folks.
• Somehow ended up in Sedona, which is kinda like Pigeon Forge if it was run by Shirley MacLaine.
• Spent a few hours visiting the U.S.S. Midway aircraft carrier.
• Got to eat gelato for the first time in my life.
• Made an excursion into Utah but did not see any polygamist enclaves.
• Visited the memorial on the site of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
• Saw Rogue One: A Star Wars Story three times.  And Doctor Strange twice, the second time with my dear friend Bethany (so thankful we finally got to meet in person!)...

• Was told that I was "the best writer who has come through the door in a very long time" and that unfortunately there wasn't a budget for another reporter.  I'm still counting that as a pretty good experience.
• Got to meet a fellow expatriate of Rockingham County working in a restaurant in Emporia, Kansas.
• Visited Mount Wilson Observatory, where Pluto was discovered.
• Found out firsthand that one MUST have a full tank of gas when crossing the Mojave Desert (unless you WANT to pay five bucks a gallon, at a run-down store filled with knockoff knick-knacks and Jehovah's Witness literature). 
• Briefly met Dr. David Jeremiah, pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church.  The visitors parking lot of which is bigger than many Walmart parking lots.
• Sought out and found EVERY Krispy Kreme between Memphis and Los Angeles.
• Walked around a Native American pueblo that has been continuously inhabited for a thousand years.
• Stood on the plains of Kansas on the night of the Fourth of July and watched fireworks being lit by towns from horizon to horizon all around me.
• Had a very surreal evening witnessing the returns of Election Day 2016 from a hotel room in Phoenix.
• Played chess with a blind man... and lost!
• Was recognized because of my 2006 school board campaign ad by a former Eden resident… in a Target store in Southern California.
• Realized that I was the only white person among at least a hundred Navajo in a supermarket.  That was pretty cool!
• Visited the home and tomb of Will Rogers.
• May or may not have fallen in love a few times... and yet the quest goes on.

There is more, lots more.  But that's the gist of what transpired during almost two years and 18 states and more than 20,000 miles of a boy and his dog across America.

So, what’s going on lately?  What happens now?

Currently I am in another place, somewhere in America.  Working with an amazing group of people on some projects while also pursuing my own.  Starting to blog again was on the "to-do" list so if you're reading these words you already know that's a success.  There is also an idea for a full-length film, my first in a WAY long time, that I've started writing the screenplay of.  Not a comedy or parody this time: it's an honest-to-gosh drama, or something.  And the way I plan to shoot it is going to be challenging and fun.

I'm not where I want to be.  Still not there.  But by the grace of God and the encouragement of many friends, both new and old, I am getting there.  There is movement.  And that alone is a grace to be thankful for.

Can't promise anything about the tone and style of The Knight Shift from here on out.  I came back but as Gandalf told Bilbo, "you won't be the same again."  And that's definitely me.  "I ain't changed but I know I ain't the same" as that song by The Wallflowers goes.  But I'm gonna be inclined to say that y'all will recognize some familiar milieus just as you will find some new perspectives.

So... let's see what's out there THIS time!

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Admit it: You WANT this to be a real game...

The game that really lets you battle Hell on Earth!  Guaranteed to send Dianne Feinstein into a frothing frenzy, make Chuck Schumer's gray matter have a meltdown, give Hillary Clinton a cardiac arrest and President Obama is already drafting an executive order against it.  May or may not be advisable to play this on school and university campuses.  Or play it anyway.  Even THINKING of this game is illegal in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Washington State.

(Whipped it up in ArtStudio with the Apple Pencil on my iPad Pro, if anyone's curious.)

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The video that brought cops to my house

I just figured out that I can embed videos from Facebook onto this blog!

Which may or may not be a good thing.  Considering the videos I've been making for my Facebook audience of late (yes, Yours Truly has been busy even if it didn't reflect on this site).

Okay well, here's the one that got EVERYONE talking.  I've mentioned before how the mayor and city council of my old hometown of Reidsville, without real due process, removed a hundred-year old Civil War monument and in its place put up a $30,000 monstrosity straight out of a Hellraiser movie.

I finally saw it with my own eyes about two months ago.  And, well... I kinda went mad with power and my new iPad Pro:

 

I put that on Facebook and the views came like crazy!

Then the next morning, two Reidsville Police officers arrived at my front door.  Mind ya, I was living fifteen minutes away from the city limits, but they still came.  Apparently some idiot had seen the clip and gone Homeland Security about it and notified the authorities.  The cops and I had a nice conversation for about twenty minutes or so.  They told me that they could tell it was just someone having fun, especially since they could just look out their window and see the statue was still intact, "but in this day and time we have to investigate."  They made it absolutely clear that I had done nothing wrong, and didn't give me a warning or anything like that.  They seemed pretty entertained by it.

But y'all wouldn't believe how many people around Reidsville have told me that they REALLY got a thrill out of watching that abomination getting blasted to smithereens.  Methinks the "monument" is far less popular than the town father's would like to admit.

More videos soon.

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The journey thus far...

After the previous post, Tammy and I left Reidsville.  A few hours later we were in Asheville and it was there that I hooked up with Weird Ed for a special screening of the original Ghostbusters.  Check out Ed's costume!  He made everything but the proton pack (and that's coming soon)...

 

Two days in Asheville.  We left on Tuesday morning then dipped down to Greenville, South Carolina and hooked up once again with our very dear friend Melody Hallman Daniel (she of Forcery and my first school board campaign ad fame).  Here she is with Tammy and her service dog Sasha:

 

And at the McDonald's near my hotel I met the delightful Jeff and Marie from Norway!  

 

Left Greenville on Thursday night.  Atlanta just before midnight.  We were there until Saturday morning.  

So... where is all of this going?  It's been five weeks now and I still don't know.  What I'm doing now, all I can really put it is that it's something God has laid on my heart since this past winter.  Dad's house was sold a few days before we left Reidsville.  That was really the only thing keeping me there.  I had known it was coming.  And it was like God was saying "Chris, what are you still doing here?  You're at a better place than you've ever been before with the manic depression.  You've come out of your longest and darkest period by far.  You have a full life ahead of you... so go and make the most of it!"  

And that's what I'm doing now.

  Why haven't I been posting hardly at all these last several months?  It was a little over a year ago when the absolutely WORST bout of depression I've ever had, hit.  And there was scarcely anything that worked.  Heck, two different medications I tried during those months almost drove me to suicide.  It wasn't until around Christmas and when The Force Awakens was about to come out that things began to improve.  What REALLY did the trick was a daytime program I went through during most of January at a behavioral health facility near Greensboro.  

  Almost immediately after that ended, is when the drive to set out from Reidsville began.  Where to, I didn't know.  But I saw it so clearly: my Camry packed with the bare essentials.  Me behind the wheel and my miniature dachshund Tammy in the passenger seat.   Headed out of town, going wherever God may lead us.  A classic American story: a boy and his dog, setting out to find their destiny.

  On June 12th, that's what I did.

  So let's see, where were we?  Oh yeah.  I didn't know where to go from Atlanta: I-75 north into Tennessee and beyond, or west?  For a number of reasons, west "felt right" more.  So for the rest of the day that Saturday we went through Alabama...  

 

...and some time later hit Mississippi...

 

 

In Tupelo we stopped at the birthplace of Elvis Presley before heading on to Memphis.

 

The next morning before leaving Memphis, we made a brief "religious pilgrimage" to the gates of Graceland:  

 

Then we were off again.  Across the Mississippi River, into Arkansas and north.  Several hours later we made it to Missouri.  Later that   evening we arrived in St. Louis:

 

 

The next night I finally got to meet in person a longtime friend from across the Internet: Scott, along with his very lovely bride Claire!

 

 

We were in the St. Louis area until Thursday.  Then we were off again, vaguely headed to Kansas City.  En route we came to Waynesville, along historic Route 66.  And for the first time in many years met up again with Matt, a friend from Elon:  

 

That night, headed out again.  But instead of all the way to Kansas City we made it to Springfield.  I would have loved to have stayed a few days and checked out the town, but a zillion Jehovah's Witnesses were descending on the city for some big meeting and they'd booked ALL the hotel rooms long months before.

  So Tammy and I had breakfast and were in the road again.  Before heading north I took us about 45 minutes out of the way because I just HAD to see what the big deal about Branson, Missouri was all about.  I had honestly underestimated the place.  Its reputation is WELL deserved and someday Lord willing I have a family I'd love to take them there.  Would have been awesome to see Mel Tillis in concert, but we had to get going...

  It was about 5-ish on Friday night that we got to Kansas City.  I was eager to see if that town's barbecue was really "all that".  The desk clerk suggested a joint nearby, which turned out to be a SERIOUSLY aloud honky-tonk outfit.  The ribs I brought back to the hotel room were astonishingly massive.  Like the kind that tipped over Fred Flintstone's car in the end credits of every episode.

  Kansas City until Monday.  I had planned to go to Wichita.  Again, no real end destination clearly in mind.  Along the way we had to stop for gas.

  And that is how I discovered the town of Emporia, Kansas.  Among other things, the childhood home of legendary North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith...  

 

We stayed in Emporia for more than a week.  Sweet little burg!  There were girls playing hopscotch in the park.  Real, honest to goodness hopscotch!  And families having cookouts with their neighbors.  I didn't know such places still existed in America.  Emporia is the kind of place every small town in the country should aspire to be.

  Sunday night, July 3rd, Tammy and me drove more than an hour to Wichita and found a place called Firebirds.  And once again I had barbecue ribs.  Made with an exotic sauce derived from coffee.  Maybe the most succulent ribs I've ever enjoyed:

 

 

On the drive back, I saw something I had never witnessed before and would have been impossible to behold anywhere in North Carolina: from horizon to horizon, all around us, every little town and community and village was setting off their own fireworks shows, celebrating the Fourth a night early.  You could see fireworks lighting up the sky for MILES around, across the prairie.

  We left Emporia on Tuesday morning.  Stopped for an oil change in Wichita.  And then, for no real apparent reason other than it seemed the right direction, we were headed to Oklahoma.  We made it to Tulsa and spent a few days there.

  Tulsa is home to Oral Roberts University and that's where they have a kaiju-sizes pair of praying hands at the entrance.  Almost like somebody severed King Kong at the wrists:  

 

Thursday morning is when Pokemon Go went live.  I had it on my iPhone (yes folks the impossible has occurred: Chris Knight now has an iPhone, may God have mercy on my soul...) later that afternoon and I caught my first Pokemon at what used to be City of Faith.  Many of you might remember that as the place where Oral Roberts said he saw a 900-foot tall Jesus telling him to go on television and declare that if people didn't send in millions of dollars, that God would call Roberts "home".  My first Pokemon was a Zubat.  Make of that what you will.  

We left Tulsa on Saturday morning.  But before leaving the area I finally got to meet some of the good people at Team Covenant: that terrific gaming website I've mentioned a number of times in recent years!  They have their own retail store now.  Great place!  I wound up buying the Imperial Veterans expansion pack for the Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures game.

 

 

On to Claremore, about thirty miles away, and the Will Rogers Memorial Museum.  In a garden adjacent to the museum is the final resting place of "Oklahoma's Favorite Son" along with most of his family:

 

 

Some hours later we arrived in Oklahoma City.  I had directed Siri on my iPhone to get us to downtown.  When we got there, just on a lark I asked how far were we from the location of the Murrah Building: the federal building hit by the bombing in 1995.  As it turned out, we were less than half a mile away, straight down the street we were already on.  

It also turned out that the Murrah Building was never rebuilt.  On the site there is now a memorial to those who died:  

 

We got a room.  And the following night I had dinner with a longtime reader of this blog: the lovely and exuberant Crystal!  

 

Incidentally, Tammy has been a hit EVERYWHERE we've gone.  She has ridden in my lap practically every bit of this thousand-some mile journey.  A lot of times with her head out the window.  Oh, she certainly loves the attention :-)  

'Course, with the Pokemon Go craze currently raging I haven't been able to keep from having fun with it along the way:  

 

And I was able to find one of the precious few Krispy Kreme shops west of the Mississippi:  

 

So here we are: five weeks later.  Still in Oklahoma City.  At the moment I'm contemplating stuff.  Doing a lot of prayer.  Asking God to show me... where do we go now?  I think we've arrived at a crossroads.  I could keep going west.  Or southwest toward Texas.  Or back through Kansas and points beyond.  Maybe even south toward Louisiana.  

I don't know yet.  But, it doesn't matter.  This adventure has been predicated from the start on keeping going until God makes clear that we are wherever He needs me to be.  The place where, I really believe there will be a happiness I've never been able to know.  Not until now.  It's like all this time, God was using circumstance to keep me from doing something this bold.  And now He's set me loose into the world.  To see if the American Dream is really out there, or something.  

They say it's not the destination, but the journey.  Already, I'm not the person I was when I left Reidsville.  I'm not going to come back there someday the same person who left.  That guy is gone now, forever.  Even now, the things that have happened along the way... and I've BARELY scratched the surface here... have altered me.  Transformed me.  Into someone far better than who I had been before.

  And I think I'm going to become someone even more.  Because this journey is far, far from over.

  More soon.

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Not the end ...

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Listen to church bells ringing "Space Oddity"

This may be the most amazing tribute to David Bowie that has been done in the past few days: Dom Tower, the tallest church tower in the Netherlands, built in 1382 and with bells dating back to 1505, tolling out "Space Oddity".



I've grown ever more fascinated with Bowie since it was announced that he had passed. Having listened to his final album and watched the last two videos he made ("Blackstar" and especially "Lazarus"), one most certainly gets the sense that Bowie was not only fully aware of his mortality, but that he was accepting it with a mighty grace.  I can't help but think that there is also a sublime acknowledgement toward God in some of the lyrics and images, and that Bowie was surrendering to that.

When I posted about his passing a few days ago, I wrote that perhaps the most amazing thing of David Bowie was how he was not afraid to grow and change as he grew older.  That went for him as a showman.  But even more importantly, it went for him as a man.  The David Bowie of 2016 was not the David Bowie of 1976, and he never pretended to be.

There is a good philosophy in there somewhere.

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And now, Alan Rickman is gone

We are losing an unfortunate amount of truly extraordinary talent this week...

Hans Gruber. The Sheriff of Nottingham. Rasputin. Marvin the Paranoid Android. The Metatron. So many roles that Alan Rickman had in his amazing career.

But for me, there is really only one that best exemplifies Rickman's profound ability. The role he had throughout eight films for more than a decade. A character who has come to be considered one of the most complex in all of modern fiction.

There was really only one person who could have ever brought Severus Snape alive on the big screen. And from the moment I first saw him in Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, it's been Rickman who I've seen whenever I've re-read those books.

So in his memory, here are all of the scenes of Severus Snape from the Harry Potter films, in the character's chronological order:

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"And the stars look very different today..."

Very sadly, they certainly do.




A true artist in every possible sense. I think what fascinated me most about David Bowie, other than his musical and acting talent, is that he was never afraid to grow and change as he got older. He had the strength to adapt, and become even better. Too many performers try to cling to their younger days. Bowie didn't flee from his age, he embraced it and made it his own. A lot of artists would do well to emulate Bowie. And some might still be with us had they done so to begin with.

When I think of Bowie as an actor, what will always come first to mind for me is his brief but electrifying (pun horribly intended) portrayal of Nikola Tesla in The Prestige. I can't really think of anyone else who would have possibly done the role any justice.

David Bowie
1947 ~ 2016

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THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL aired 37 years ago tonight

It was on this night in 1978 that The Star Wars Holiday Special - arguably the WORST two-hours of television in history - aired on CBS.

Y'all won't buh-LEEEVE what is going on here.

So in honor of this misauspicious occasion and thanks to some poor tortured soul on YouTube, here it is (absent some music for copyright purposes):

It's all here: Chewbacca's son Lumpy, Mark Hamill's make-up overkill, Princess Leia's singing, Boba Fett's first-ever appearance (the special's one redeeming feature), Harvey Korman, Bea Arthur (?!), lots of unused B footage from A New Hope, what can only be described as a porno machine... and about twenty-seven minutes of incomprehensible Wookiee grunting.

One viewing and you'll see why George Lucas has said he would take a sledgehammer to every copy if he could.  But what about you?  Can you endure to the end?

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"When the skies of November turn gloomy..."

Forty years ago tonight. Here's the post that I composed on this evening in 2005.  But YouTube wasn't as pervasive as it is today.

So here is Gordon Lightfoot's forever haunting ballad, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald".

The tradition will continue today.  The church bell at Mariner's Church will ring thirty times: one for each man on the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, and once more in memory of all who have perished on the Great Lakes.

As I wrote ten years ago tonight: Here's to a good ship and crew.

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The state of things

Hello.

It's been awhile.  Maybe the longest that I've gone between making posts.  I'm making this one because a lot of readers have asked if I was okay (alive, semi-comatose, joined the French Foreign Legion or what have you).  Neither have I been active on Facebook and that led to family insisting that I make some indication there that I was still among the living.

So many of you are asking how things are.  And things have come to a point where I'm more than compelled to offer up an answer.

So here it is:

Things are not okay.

Some very bad things have happened in my life.  If there is any aspect of it that can be named, chances are it has happened.  Including some physical situations which are rather considerable.  I have had to take time to address these.

So far as the book goes: it's on indefinite hiatus, for a few reasons.  Among them, I have reached a place where I cannot write past a certain block and it requires some things falling into place to break through that.  Things which, I doubt will ever happen.  I can't see past it.  I was able to surpass an earlier, similar block but this one has proven to be much worse.  So for now, the book is stalled and I would give anything to get past that.

I don't know what else to say at this juncture, apart from asking that you keep me in your thoughts.  I am past the point of being at the end of the rope.  Thing are now at the shreds of the end of the rope.  My own prayers haven't worked.  Maybe those of others will.

Wishing you all well.

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    "Almost there."

"Almost there..."    

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Two weeks in Hell

I debated whether to make this post.  No wait, scratch that: I debated whether to make any post ever again on this blog.

In the midst of the madness, a lot of thoughts raced through my mind.  One of them was to give up this blog.  Wondering what was the point of it.  Wondering what was the point of anything.  So faced with the stark meaninglessness of life in this pale shell.  All was vanity, with no redeeming grace.

It's actually been worse than that, these past two weeks.

A lot of things have happened: issues which warrant action that I am unable to take.  Crushed hopes (on more than one front).  Frustrations.

I don't care to relate on these pages the full scope of what these have meant to me.  Maybe God will yet show me that He is listening to me.  That is all that I have to say in that regard.

But since I've made it a mission to document what it is that I go through in the way of manic-depression, it becomes my duty to chronicle these past two weeks regarding that realm.

To put it mildly: I've been in Hell.  Or at least as close to it as can be had in this quarter of the realms of being.

Suicidal ideations.  To some extent, they persist.  For more than two weeks my thoughts have been overwhelmed with the desire to be dead.  Because in death there is no more hurt, no more grief.

It really began three weeks ago.  My medications had begun to lose their potency (a risk with any medication but especially with the treatment of mental illness).  My doctor moved me off of a drug I had been on for six years, and substituted that with another: an antidepressant that is very well known and has been used by millions of people since it first hit the market.

It would take a week or so for the full effects to be felt, but it didn't take that long for the benefits to be apparent.  And for a few brief days I enjoyed some serenity of being.

But then, about two and a half weeks ago, my thoughts began coming completely unhinged.  Became very dark.  Very troubled.

Very loaded with despair.

I began to experience a pain which even in all the time since before I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, has been excruciating more than any other.  It was an overwhelming desire to be dead.  To be beyond pain.  To never again have all of these hurts.

I prayed for death.  I begged God to let me die, if He was listening at all.

The only reason why I didn't go into the hospital is because the thoughts didn't deviate into full-blown actively plotting to do myself in.

But I think that I did try to commit suicide.  I'm not sure.  I just wanted to be numb to it all, without a care as to how I achieved it.  I took an overload of the medication.  It did nothing.  Nothing at all.

I was desperate to die and I couldn't even do that much.

This is what I've had to go through for the past two weeks.  A never-wavering longing to die.

I still want it.  I still want to die.  Some moments anyway.  That's just the medication, which under my doctor's supervision I stopped five days ago.  It's still in my system.  In the meantime I'm about to begin a new medication.

This had better work.  I want it to.  People aren't meant to live like this.  Living, just to want to die.

I want to hope again.  Hope that there is some life still ahead of me, despite manic-depression.

I pray that God will give me some indication that He really is watching over me.

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Rest in peace James Horner

It was as many feared when the news came that the airplane he owned had crashed: James Horner, one of the most acclaimed composers in film history, died last night.

Aliens.  Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  Braveheart.  Apollo 13.  Titanic.  Avatar.  Glory.  Field of Dreams...

And so much other work too.  His score for Krull is a classic example of the Eighties-era fantasy genre.  If I don't mention his music for The Rocketeer, somebody is going to jump flunky for it.  Animation fans will remember that he scored An American Tail.

Since the first of his works that I can remember listening to was his score for the second Star Trek movie, here now is the complete composition for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  Fittingly heroic and triumphant, in remembrance of a life just as much so.

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Here's a photo of a Dachshund family

My favorite breed...

Maybe if Tammy the Pup will stand still long enough, I can get her to pose for a picture that sweet :-)

Photo credit goes to @TheDoxieteers (Cindy, Pepsi and Misty) on Instagram.

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"We're gonna need a bigger boat."

Happy anniversary to Jaws.  The original blockbuster that set the scene for every big summer movie to come.  Released 40 years ago today.

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Reconsidering Hobbits

When he came to visit in early April, my longtime friend/collaborator/partner in crime "Weird" Ed Woody gave me a birthday present.  It was The Lord of the Rings, Extended Edition on Blu-ray.  It's been sitting unopened on my shelf ever since, 'cuz I haven't really availed myself of its beauty (I hadn't actually watched any of it by that point but having seen the DVD version I could readily imagine how splendorous the Blu-ray would be).

Yesterday I finally cracked it open from the shrink wrap.  I was working on the book and needed something for background noise.  So I popped in Disc 1 of The Fellowship of the Ring.  Every now and then I'd turn to look at the screen and be astounded at the beauty of the film, but mostly I was just listening to it for inspiration as I stared at MS Word open before me.

It wasn't long before the movie was at Bilbo's birthday party.  I've always loved this scene ("I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve").  And then Bilbo slyly puts on the Ring and vanishes and forevermore becomes a Shire legend.

Then we see him in his home, and Gandalf is asking him about "this ring of yours".  Bilbo had intended to part with it, to bequeath it to Frodo.  But he finds that he cannot abandon it.  His eyes look at it lustfully in a way they never have before.  He holds it greedily in his fingers, calling it his "precious", just as Gollum did so many decades earlier.  We see that Bilbo is attached to the Ring.  That he cannot make himself lose his grasp of it, no matter what it is costing him in terms of his spiritual health (his earlier comment about feeling like he's butter scraped over too much bread).

It was like J.R.R. Tolkien was communicating something personally to me, through Peter Jackson's adaptation of his masterpiece.

Because I, too, have had the One Ring.  I have had many such rings throughout the course of my life.  And each one, I have held onto beyond any real sense.  What can I say?  It's one of my character flaws: I have a hard time letting go of things... and especially the past.  And that is what they have collectively been: the One Ring in my possession, but really possessing me.  Keeping me stalled.  Holding me down.  Seizing my mind and my spirit and to an extent my soul.

Like Gollum and the Ring, I both love and hate these things.  I am too enamored by them.

But in the end, we see Bilbo do something that as Gandalf says in the book, is the only time in the Ring's long history that someone has done such a thing: Bilbo lets the Ring drop from the palm of his hand and onto the floor.  He lets go of the Ring.  He lets go of the thing that has held him in its grasp ever since he found it (or was found by it) in Gollum's cave.  He surrenders his control of the Ring and in doing so, he forces the Ring to surrender its control over him.

It hit me hard.  It was Tolkien telling me that I have a ring of my own, and it is destroying me.  I have my own One Ring and it is draining me.  It is a bane, not a boon.  It was Tolkien telling me that I must let go and let it fall to the ground and never think or speak of it again.  That it is not worth being controlled by it.  That like Bilbo, it was spreading me too thin, instead of enjoying life to its fullest.

I wish that it was as easy as having a physical ring to slip off of my palm and onto the floor of my living room, but it's not.  In this, I ask for prayer that my resolve holds true, and that I not be tempted to pick up the ring ever again.

Bilbo lets go of the Ring.  The next thing we see, his heart is merry and he goes off into the night, onto the road that will take him to distant Rivendell and his much-anticipated rest.  He goes off to see the world, to see the mountains and the Elves and the Dwarves.  He has lost the Ring, now the Ring has lost utterly.

I wish it were as simple as that.  Bilbo was lucky, that the Ring was such a tangible item.

I wish that I could be like Bilbo.

I wish that I was a Hobbit.

To have a life of peace, only setting off on an adventure if one felt like it (though it will be thought of as queer by the neighbors).  A life full of cheer and contentment.  A life with friendships that won't be lost.  As well as all that beer and pipeweed, but I digress...

Hobbits don't have to worry about the things that we do.  And manic-depression probably doesn't exist among them.  That alone, makes me envy them.

One can learn a lot from Hobbits.  And I think, in this case, I learned a lot.

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Why is it that too many Christians are bitter, hateful, resentful and generally mean to others… and especially other Christians?

People shouldn’t be like that anyway, to each other.  But for those of us who are in Christ, our behavior is far more dire.  We aren’t supposed to be like the world.  It’s supposed to be different, among us.  We are meant to be a radiant, shining witness for Christ in this fallen world.

Instead, I see so very often, there is ignorance and un-forgiveness and bitterness toward one another.

How is that being a follower of God, who has called us to be lamps unto His majesty?

A lot of things precipitated me thinking about this.  I guess, my mind was led to contemplate it.

I have no answers.

We’re supposed to be better than this.  This world isn’t our real home, but that doesn’t mean we have to behave in a manner reflecting how broken it is while we are here.

That’s something else I wonder about: why do some Christians harbor these kinds of feelings toward one another, when we are going to be sharing the same place one day?

I can’t understand that.

But what do I know.  I’m just a guy with a blog.

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O Lord,
how long will you forget me? Forever?
      How long will you look the other way?
 How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul,
      with sorrow in my heart every day?
      How long will my enemy have the upper hand?

Turn and answer me, O Lord my God!
      Restore the sparkle to my eyes, or I will
die.

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FALLOUT 4 gets a release date and a REAL Pip-Boy!

Game studio Bethesda unloaded the big guns last night at their first-ever E3 presentation.  Since its announcement months ago the hype had been stoked about Fallout 4.  Then two weeks ago Bethesda lifted the cover on that mega-anticipated title with this toad-strangling doozie of a trailer.  So what else could Bethesda bring before us at this point?

By the time Bethesda execs got to Fallout 4 last night the keynote was being watched by at least a million viewers over gaming broadcast site Twitch and probably just as many on Twitter.  After going over some other games (including the new Doom, due next spring) it was time to enter the Vault.  Because war... war never changes.

Okay so, Fallout 4 is getting released this coming November 10!  It's available for pre-order now.

And look!  If you wanna spend $119 for the Collector's Edition you get a real-working Pip-boy!

 From the "Don't Really Need But Are Lusting For Badly" files.  Wearable and functional.  Usable with your iPhone or just about any other smartphone on the market today.  Interactive with your game via an app.

A whole lotta cosplayers are swabbing up drool looking at that thing this morning.

I'm not ashamed to admit that Fallout 3 devoured about 120-140 hours of my life.  That wasn't a game.  That was a life-impacting experience on par with a Star Wars movie or having tickets to the Super Bowl.  With Fallout 4, I'm expecting no less.

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Pistol-packin' President: Reagan had a .38

The greatest president of the past half-century - at least - and he kept a sidearm during his time in the Oval Office.

I don't care what your political persuasion, you gotta admit: that is severely hardcore.

The New York Daily News has an eye-opening story revealing something that until now only members of the Secret Service were aware of: that Ronald Reagan not only believed in the Second Amendment, he actively practiced it.  Specifically, he had a .38 pistol nearby as a personal firearm during his time as President of the United States.  He especially hid it in a briefcase as he traveled on Air Force One.

The article by Brad Meltzer goes into detail about what other presidents have carried with them.  George H.W. Bush toted his driver's license around, and Clinton had a photo of Hillary and Chelsea (no comment).  Obama carries a Blackberry but no wallet and no money which is why he's sometimes asked to borrow some (again, no comment).

But no one among the occupants of the White House during the past thirty years or so has done it as bad-a$$ as Reagan did.

Anyhoo, it's a very neat article if you're at all interested in presidential history.  Kinda makes you wonder what else is still out there waiting to be discovered.

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Magna Carta: 800 and counting!

Worth noting that we are currently in the midst of the eighth-hundred anniversary of Magna Carta: the founding document of English law and a cornerstone of liberty for many nations down through the ages.  Including the United States.

"Sign HERE, Johnny-boy."

Ahhh yes: John, King of England.  A monarch so disastrously bad that not once since and never again has England put a king named "John" on the throne.  He spent years wrecking havoc on the country he was supposed to be leading (sort-of like the past three or four presidential administrations here), wasting money and manpower and countless lives on wars in France and such.

Finally, enough was enough.  A bunch of the barons of England decided that the time had come to lay the smack down on King John.  So they showed up in force, arrayed in their armor and finest weaponry and, ahem... "invited" John to come down to a meadow at Runnymede near Windsor.  Because they had a list of demands and if he knew what was good for him, he was going to read it and sign it.

The document which would come to be called Magna Carta ("Great Charter" in Latin, because of its large size compared to other documents of the era) curtailed the powers of the king so as to assert the rights of the barons, delineated individual rights such as jury trial and fair justice, and laid down the groundwork for what would become parliamentary law.

John looked around at all of those armored barons and their retainers and quickly arrived at the conclusion that Runnymede was not the place to get all uppity.  With all the barons witnessing, he signed the Magna Carta on June 10th, 1215.  A few days later on June 15th the barons pledged fealty, which is kind of a way of saying that the Magna Carta was officially ratified.

It was all well and good, but pretty soon neither party really upheld their terms of the agreement.  Magna Carta went for awhile annulled by the pope, but after a bit of a civil war and the coming to the throne of Henry III it became the consensus of most that the treaty was a pretty good idea after all.  From that point on, it's remained one of the basic elements of English law.  And consequently, a progenitor of the Declaration of Independence in the United States.

So, happy birthday to Magna Carta!  Looking not too shabby for something eight centuries old.

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Book update... and it's a good one

YYYYAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Well, this section of the book is now finished.  The first draft of Chapter 25 was completed a short while ago.  It follows the one that had stumped me since February, up until a week and a half or so ago.  The one that took me so long to crack and I couldn't have done it without a dear friend being here to give support and encouragement.

So the complete draft of Chapter 24 was done, but 25, well... I could see the shape of it, the general form, but the particulars were eluding me.  So I thought "maybe I should write the next chapter while waiting for 25 to really present itself".  And that's what I did.  So there was 24, followed by 26, with 25 in between still to be written.

This past hour, Chapter 25 was done.  I wound up waking up for some vague reason, and decided for the heck of it that I'd see if I could write anything.

And I did.  But man, that was tough.

Chapters 24 through 26 are somewhat a "triptych", in that they are a block of chapters complementing each other, and if this book gets published you'll see how that is.  This was THE hardest little part of the book to get through, but now it's done.  This was the end of Part 3 of the book, and apart from editing and polishing up it is more or less completed.

(Still a lot of work to do so far as editing goes, but I'm not really worried about that.)

Now comes the next section, which will be a collection of essays about bipolar disorder, and a lot of those have already been written.  Some as early as last summer.  There is at least one chapter which is darkly hilarious and had two friends cracking up laughing when they read it.  I don't mind that at all: you have to be able to laugh if you have a condition like this.

So that part is the next to be tackled.  And then the final section.  Which, I think will go much easier than the just-finished one was.

Who knows?  It's possible that this book might be finished by the end of June.  If so, it will have only taken 13 months to complete it.  Seems like a long time.  But be kind: this is my first time writing a book after all :-)

(The first.  Lord willing, not the last...)

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End of a journey

A journey that began in late 2001, finally ended a few minutes ago.

Tomorrow my DirecTV account ends (I'm relocating soon) so this week I've been watching all the stuff on my DVR that I hadn't seen yet. Among those were the last three Harry Potter movies.

Since yesterday afternoon I've been watching, as time allowed for it, Part 1 and Part 2 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I just finished it.

And watching Harry stand there, with Ron and Hermione and Ginny, it hit me hard: these were the final moments of something that began what seemed like a lifetime ago, for me personally.

I saw Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone on the day it came out, on November 16th 2001. It was a cold, dreary and raining day. My girlfriend had come to Asheville for the weekend. The next day we were going to a wedding. We saw the movie in a theater not far from my apartment, and we really enjoyed ourselves.

She had no idea that a few feet from where she was sleeping, was a diamond ring.

That was the day I saw the first Harry Potter movie.  And whenever a new Harry Potter movie came out, I saw it on its opening day.

Except for the past number of years.  I hadn't been able to bring myself to watch the films that came after Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I didn't know if I could do it. 

Order of the Phoenix was the last Harry Potter movie I saw during what was one of the happiest periods of my life.  I suppose, I just didn't have the heart to want to watch any more after that.

But here I am, this morning. Thirteen and a half years later, this cinematic journey has drawn to a close for me.

Thirteen and a half years ago, I was working at a Best Buy. Until everything in the economy took a hit along with those two towers. I had just begun writing the script for my first movie, with no idea how I was going to make it. The bipolar disorder had yet to erupt with all its fury (I still struggled with depression, but nowhere as bad as it would eventually get).

Most of all, I was in love with someone who I was going to spend the rest of my life serving.

I saw the first Harry Potter movie on the afternoon of November 16th in 2001. I watched the ending of the last Harry Potter movie on the morning of June 12th, 2015.

So much that happened in that little dash between those two dates.

And I don't know what to really think of that.

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A true renaissance man

 

Christopher Lee

1922 ~ 2015 

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Thief gets deck-ed by clever Magic: The Gathering player

Did you see what I did there?  Huh, did you?  That's all I got...

Well anyway, a recidivist robber is cooling his heels in a jail in Fairfax, Virginia after stealing 300 cards from the insanely popular game Magic: The Gathering in the possession of a self-described "nerd".  Said nerd, one Kemper Pogue, proceeded to formulate and execute an elaborate trap toward recovering his cards.  Which, incidentally, were worth $8000.

(Are these Magic fans dedicated to their hobby, or what?)

From the story at The Washington Post:

After filing a police report, Pogue decided to do what a Magic character like Garruk Relentless might do, and hunted down his enemies with dogged ferocity — sans the battle axe.

He started by posting a detailed message on Facebook to alert friends in the Magic community about the theft. Then, he began calling stores in Northern Virginia and Maryland that specialize in selling Magic trading cards.

Unless the thieves were big fans of the game as well, Pogue figured he knew something that the perpetrators didn’t: Despite its rapidly growing ranks, the Magic community is not only fanatical and obsessive, it’s also a tight-knit, nerds-only clubhouse, where information about players and cards circulates quickly via regional shops, tournaments and online forums on Reddit and elsewhere.

“There aren’t many physical things that can be taken that has this much sense of community attached to them,” Pogue said. “Cards have all these memories and conversations with them from people you’ve met all over the country. When Magic players hear that a collection has been stolen, it’s heartbreaking and they rally around each other to get it back.”

The story shares how Pogue and his friends trapped two thieves in the store after working with local law enforcement to crack the case.  It's a wild story and well worth your time to check it out.

I've never played Magic: The Gathering.  But I do know a lot of players who congregate at HyperMind and actively play, trade, all that good stuff.  It is definitely a close-knit community of players around the world and I can't help but cheer stories like this.

And it goes without saying: way to go nerds!!

(Also thanks to friend of this blog Roxanne Martin for spotting this story.)

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Chris gets astoundingly charmed by THE WEDNESDAY MORNING BREAKFAST CLUB!

The other week I was up late working on the book.  It was frustrating me to no end.  So I turned on the television, allegedly for background noise thinking maybe it would inspire me.  And it did, but not the way that I imagined.  Because for some reason I wound up on a local station that was less than a minute into something called The Wednesday Morning Breakfast Club.

It was a movie.  And from the first moments, it captivated me like few films I've seen of late have.

Directed by Justin Barber, The Wednesday Morning Breakfast Club is the tale of young waitress Megan (played by Stacey Bradshaw) and her career at a small restaurant.  Simple enough.  Except that every Wednesday morning Megan's routine runs afoul of three senior citizens who arrive for breakfast and hold court.  They practically come in and take over the place.  Which never fails to rub Megan and fellow waitress Martha (Amanda Barber, who also wrote the script) the wrong way (though restaurant owner Virgil seems to take perverse pleasure in the elders' antics).  No matter what Megan and Martha do, the three men always find something to gripe and complain about, and it's getting on the two ladies' nerves to no end.

But then one day Megan has an idea: instead of her and Martha merely tolerating the three, why not go out of their way to be nice to the three men?  Meaning such little things as having their usual breakfasts prepared for them when they arrive.  And taking some time to talk to them as being more than merely customers.

What transpires is the beginning of a beautiful friendship between Megan and the Wednesday morning breakfast club.  One that finds Megan and the three gentlemen seeing each other in a new light, and has Megan especially coming to appreciate her new pals for their experiences and the cheerful natures that have been hiding behind a fading facade of grumpiness.

The Wednesday Morning Breakfast Club is an outright delightful gem of filmmaking: one that packs a lot of humor, heartbreak and life lessons in its 50 minutes running time... and if there's any complaint about this film it's that I wish it had run longer, so captivated was I by these characters.  Justin and Amanda Barber have filled their story with some terrific casting bringing to life nothing short of perfectly nuanced and even slightly quirky characters.  Stacey Bradshaw plays a frustrated-turned-bold Megan with tremendous talent, and with this film under her belt she definitely deserve to go far.  There is some gorgeous cinematography at work in this film, with each shot given a loving amount of care and attention.  It is, by every measure, a movie well done.

But for me personally, the most fun about The Wednesday Morning Breakfast Club is the weekly trio who congregate at the restaurant.  Werner Reidel, Hans Willer and David Maysick are a hoot to behold as Heinrich, Nathan and Ricky.  The three are concentrated curmudgeon-ness and gripe.  But as Megan works her way toward them the griping falls away beautifully for each of them, and through Megan's eyes we come to see Heinrich, Nathan and Ricky anew... as well as appreciate them and those who they stand for.

Here's the trailer for The Wednesday Morning Breakfast Club:
 

I loved this movie on so many levels.  I suppose one of those is that my own father was much like one of the Wednesday morning breakfast club.  Every morning he would leave the house at 5 a.m. for breakfast at a nearby cafe, where he would eat and spent two hours with the other regulars.  That was his routine.  Dad's been gone for a little over six months now and I still miss him doing that.  So The Wednesday Morning Breakfast Club resonated with me.  It made me realize how thankful I was for the time I got to spend with Dad, especially after Mom passed away.  I think this movie is going to resonate with a lot of other people like that.

I didn't work anymore on my book that night, but I came away feeling that it was time well spent.  And you no doubt will too.

Here's the official Facebook page for The Wednesday Morning Breakfast Club.  And if you wanna check it out for yourself (you should, you really really should) here's the movie's product page on Amazon.

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More artwork from our friend Cameron Hobbs

Artist on the rise Cameron Hobbs has returned with another piece...

"I Will Not Stop"Cameron Hobbs, 2015

Keep your eyes peeled y'all.  Cameron has promised another work of art sometime real soon.  'Course, I'll be posting that one on this blog too!

If you want to see more of his work, check out his Facebook page as well as his original Superhero Art page.

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"Goonies never say die!"

The Goonies, without a doubt one of the most defining movies of the Eighties generation, was released thirty years ago today on June 7th, 1985.

Here's Chunk doing the "Truffle Shuffle" in wild celebration!

Inquisitr.com has a neat list of 15 things about this movie that you may not have known.  F'rinstance, the pirate ship was kept a secret from the cast until they were ready to film the scenes there, so as to more authentically capture their surprise.

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Check out this poster for THE PEANUTS MOVIE

Love the appearance of the CGI here. It's a spot-on merging of modern animation style with Charles Schulz's classic look.

But the highlight of course is the characters.  Looks like most of the Peanuts gang all in one shot, including Snoopy's siblings (even Olaf made the cut!).  And ya gotta appreciate the Little Red Haired Girl's face hidden behind the bag of popcorn...

The Peanuts Movie arrives on November 6th.

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