Bonds of fellowship

Tonight a young man died.  His name was Forrest.  He was 19 years old.  He was an actor at the haunted park I help manage.  He took tickets and was an awesome zombie.  And he will be missed.

An impromptu candle-light vigil was held in his honor on the park grounds tonight after news got out.  I left, telling my dad that I was just "going out."  If I told him I was going out to mourn the death of a 19 year old who was hit by a truck on his way home from the job I do in which he (my dad) worries incessantly that I will have the same thing happen to me, I would have had an easier time passing Gandalf in Moria.

Imagine him without the beard and in his underwear.

I was one of the first there.  Because I weigh all of 40 pounds, I was given three winter coats to wear so I wouldn't die while we waited for the rest.  And steadily they came.  Some alone, some in droves, the actors, maintenance, and managers all showed up.  These people who are united once a year by the common cause of scaring small children arrived in less than an hour's notice to honor our lost actor.  Then the candles were passed out and eventually lit.

And then someone said, "Holy shit."

The northern lights are a common occurrence up north and a bit and through Canada.  But living in southeastern Michigan my entire life, I have never seen them.  Ever.  23 years of look up at stars and that was the first time.    It started as a red glow that I thought was a house on fire in the distance but then it grew and stretched eastward across the sky.  The lights danced in a way that I can't describe, drifting over the trees.

Once everyone was used to the spectacle, we moved to the fire pit, and in the open, saw the lights for the majesty they truly are.  Silver and green strands of luminescent ribbons slowly curled and shifted like dragons of the sky, or snakes on a black lake.  And the red, now more like a sharp haze, pulsing around them.

And so there we were - ghouls without makeup.  Vampires without fangs.  Scarecrows void of hay.  Monsters, all of us, mourning our fallen brother beneath a natural light show.  Extraordinary doesn't come close to describing that moment.  He was new.  Some of us had only met him last night.  But we were one around the fire in his memory.

These people are why I do what I do every autumn.  It's not the screams.  It's not the chase.  And it damn well isn't waking up feeling like I was hit by a train.  It's them.  It always has been and always will be.

Rest in peace, Forrest.

Those which bump

I need a muse.

Maybe not a muse.  Maybe a fat guy with a whip.  And a scar below his left eye.  And a computer from 1995 that won't install any program but a word processor.  And a broom closet void of external influences.

Or discipline.

NaNoWriMo is going to kick my ass and yet I am still slothfully underwriting as the days of October tick by.  Excuses, I have them, but what good are they?  What good would they do me to rattle them off like a display of ornate paper walls.  Maybe some are stronger than others, but in the end, they're useless, stupid devices built to make me feel better about a presupposed failure.  I don't want excuses.  I want drive - conviction to charge through and make writing a habit rather than a faint dream I consider on my drive home from work before dwindling the hours of my evening away with nonsense.  

I can do it.  I want to do it.  I need to do it.  Ability, desire, necessity.  What's missing?  Or is there something added on top that's spoiling the mix?   Doubt?  Angst?  Fear?  Laziness?   Perhaps it's just a matter of empowering the positive to diminish the negatives rather than attempt to remove them entirely - to quiet the imp of self-loathing in my head and press on.

I wish I could drink.