Rick Wayne's Blog, page 94

In which I blame teachers for things

In light of recent news, and after a brief exchange I had when I shared this picture yesterday, I’ve been thinking a lot about science and science education. I blame teachers for this mess.

I used to teach science. I even taught Science, which is different than science, after one of my freshman biology students, a Christian and a creationist, asked to learn more about evolution. She didn’t actually want to understand the theory, I quickly discovered. What she wanted to understand was how a seemingly educated and intelligent guy like me could be so completely duped by a patently false idea.

So I agreed to show her. But not by teaching evolution. I told her I wasn’t going to do that. At all. Not even a little. As it happened, my graduate training was in Biology, but my undergraduate emphasis was on the history and philosophy of science, and I saw that what she really lacked was not FACTS. It was understanding. So I said I would merely teach her how to evaluate scientific reasoning and she could take it from there.

I went online to see what tools were available for students and teachers at the high school level. And there ain’t much. Don’t get me wrong. There are some. But it’s pretty sparse compared to almost anything else. You’ll find a great deal more teaching tools for something specific like molecular genetics, for example, than for teaching about Science itself, which is just insane. It does a student no good to learn about operons and their regulation, or the neutral theory, without a firm understanding of what science both is and ISN’T.

I had an epiphany just then. We don’t teach Science in this country. At all. We teach its content. We teach science: Avogadro’s number and coefficients of friction and chordate anatomy and the pH scale and sine functions. As if memorizing the citric acid cycle somehow teaches you to understand Science and why it’s so powerful. Facts and tables can reinforce that understanding, but only if it’s already there. If not, nothing you learn in high school or almost any college Gen. Ed. requirement will gift it to you.

Students come burdened with language. They learn passively from society that science is an occupation — like accounting, or carpentry — and also a collection of experimental outcomes organized into big tables that have to be memorized to get a job. They learn that a theory — “Well, that’s one theory, I guess” — is just a hypothesis and a hypothesis is a shot in the dark. Educators spend about five minutes at the start of the semester correcting that and then launch right into the subject material. Is it any surprise then that voting citizens who couldn’t come up with three sentences to describe the hydrological cycle will tell you with absolute certainty that human-caused climate change is a hoax?

If that distresses you, I would question how much you’re really paying attention. Consider this: asking students to draw conclusions from a list of facts they’re required to memorize but are incompetent to evaluate isn’t education. It’s indoctrination. Science class is nine months of “Trust me. I’m right.”

And so here it’s the 21st century and Science denial is all the rage. We all know about the anti-vaxxers and their ilk. But it’s not just a problem with the Right. It’s NOT. The debate about GMOs, for example, has become so politicized, it’s lost all connection to science and reason. So it is Bill Nye (the science guy) — one of the country’s foremost science educators and a more competent scientist than you or I ever will be — reversed his opposition to GMOs after careful review, and rather than taking that as evidence of the scientific process, of free an open inquiry, he was pilloried for being a “tool of Monsanto” — because part of his consideration included taking a tour of their labs to, you know, actually observe for himself what they were up to rather than just reading a second-hand account on Mother Jones.

Look, Science is potentially dangerous. It’s always been potentially dangerous. And the public has always been just a little bit worried about that. The very first work of science fiction, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, captures that fear, and even seems to warn us that some lines of inquiry were just not meant for man, following the lesson of the earlier myth of Doctor Faustus that learned dudes in long robes will set loose monsters from their ivory towers and we’ll all suffer. It’s the plot of every Cold War-era sci-fi movie, in fact — that an irradiated ant will eat Las Vegas, that the machines will become self-aware and kill us, that we’ll become self-aware and kill ourselves.

The debate shouldn’t be about prohibitions and controls. It should always be about transparency and oversight (such as peer review). I take it as an axiom that before too long the world is gonna need a stable, tested, drought- and pest-resistant source of food. I take it as an axiom that we should be looking for ways of curing childhood genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis and Tay-Sachs. I take it as an axiom that we’re going to do a lot more damage to the environment before things get better, and that breeding a strain of Deinococcus radiodurans that could clean up nuclear waste would be awesome.

All of those lines of inquiry carry risk. And a not insignificant amount. So it is we have people on both sides of the political spectrum arguing that Science should be curtailed or prohibited because they’ve decided — as laypeople, in advance — that some problems are just not soluble, and anyway it’s just not worth the risk.

Because, you know, there are monsters.

(“Just Say No” has never been an effective strategy to curb anything, by the way. All it does is drive it underground, where there’s even less visibility and control. The surest way to ensure a rogue gene makes it into the wild is for industrialized nations to place such steep roadblocks on GMO research that it’s driven to the Third World, where there’s no oversight at all.)

I blame teachers for this mess. I really do. I know that’s not popular. But it’s true. Don’t get me wrong. Science educators fight valiantly — and that’s not sarcasm; I mean it — against efforts to gut science education. They fight valiantly to continue teaching the content of evolution. But never the vessel. And then we wonder why, year after year, a majority of Americans — high school-graduates all, and even a high percentage of college grads — doubt climate change. Or evolution (roughly the same percentage as Islamic states like Turkey, by the way). We ask them to drink from a well they’re being told is poisoned, and then we wonder why they refuse. Regardless of anyone’s best efforts, that’s the actual, real, practical outcome of science education in this country.

And my student, by the way — the one who wanted to understand how it was I got duped by science — totally came around after just a couple months, and all without me ever even saying the word evolution.

I eventually settled on Ronald Giere’s “Understanding Scientific Reasoning” as the textbook for my sessions. I’m sure there are others, and I’m sure there are people out there who can steer you appropriately.
And if you’re one of those people who’s chest spasms at the thought of stem cell research or GMOs or whatever, read David Deutsch’s “The Beginning of Infinity” and repeat the following to yourself every time you get nervous: “Problems are soluble. Problems are soluble. Problems are soluble.”
Edit to include the comment from social media: All of this is because the purpose of the system is not to educate but to serve the power structure, which means the purpose of compulsory, state-sponsored indoctrination is to churn out skads of minimally compliant, technically-competent office workers to feed the post-industrial economy. It’s important that they know how to memorize and regurgitate, how to pass tests and certifications, how to follow rote instruction, such as what is required to service machines made from interchangeable parts. It resembles education sometimes, but only enough to make sure people won’t realize what it actually is.

(cover art by Beeple)

Battlecry! (a gift for anyone who can see this)

I’m guessing hundreds, if not thousands, of people now read this blog (based on the combo of subscriptions and RSS hits).

It’s really kind of amazing. While it looks like this blog has been active for a long time, in truth I ported it to WordPress from my website not terribly long ago — 18 months maybe? — which basically meant starting from zero.

To celebrate, I’m offering blog subscribers a free e-copy of my forthcoming occult mystery.

Yes, actually free. Here is the draft cover and blurb:

See below for contact information.

On top of that, I also have two Giveaways already in progress that anyone is free to jump on:

First, I’m giving away a Complete Paperback Set of THE MINUS FACTION — all seven episodes

That’s $60 worth of books!

[image error]

The winner will be drawn at random from all the new reviews left on any of the seven books from now through the end of the month — provided you also email me to let me know where you left your review. (I need the email. Otherwise I can’t contact the winner to get their shipping address. So please don’t forget.)

THERE IS NO MINIMUM LENGTH OR STAR-RATING!

Be honest. I don’t care if you hated it. Seriously. Even popular books have plenty of haters. Above a certain minimum, it’s the absolute number of reviews that matters anyway.

Second, I am also giving away a FANTASMAGORIA color-changing mug.

Same rules as above. Remember the email, and remember there is no minimum length or star rating. Be honest. Seriously.

[image error]The mug is pretty awesome. It’s black at room temperature, where only the cover is visible. When heated — such as with hot coffee — it turns white, revealing the famous line from the book, “Is this a bag of penises?”

I expect your chances of winning are excellent.

To get the free occult mystery

Click here and sign up for notifications at the bottom of the page and you’ll get an email when the book is available for pre-release. That’s it!

You can contact me through my website if you have any questions.

(cover image by the awesome “kipine” on deviantart)

The Wonderful World of Bezoars

In the final course of my occult mystery, there’s something called a jewel of many colors. I’ve been looking at white opal and various crystals trying to get a sense of what something like that might look like so I can describe it in the book. (It actually has a pretty big role to play in the grand finale.)

[image error]

It doesn’t have to be multi-hued. In fact, I think I might make it drab. The name comes from the fact that it refracts (in various colors) light from that which cannot be seen — auras and hidden passages and ley lines and things like that. It’s made from a bezoar of a basilisk that’s cooked at high temperature and pressure in a mineral-acid bath.

A bezoar is the name for anything trapped in the intestinal tract, but usually refers to stony concretions — think gall stones — that really do form in various animals, from mammals to reptiles and even fish. Those from the latter animals are sometimes called “snake pearls” or “fish pearls.” The large specimen pictured below was supposedly found inside a large golden carp by a fisherman in java, although I can tell even from my quick research that there are quite a few fakes being sold.

Bezoars were once believed to be a universal antidote to all poisons, and some folks today still think they have unusual properties. I have to wonder if that extends to all bezoars. People who chew their hair, for example, will often develop large hairballs in their stomachs, occasionally requiring surgical removal since hair is indigestible. And in that sense, technically your cat’s purged hairballs are bezoars. Are those charmed as well?

For those who’ve read the early courses of the book, you might catch that “jewel of many colors” is a reference to the various colors in the course titles and how they all together in the end.

Here is where the cover stands now. This may be it!

[image error]

2016 is not the Year of the Reaper

I know everyone is shaking their fists at 2016. And I know it’s normal colloquial language to anthropomorphize things. Biologists do it with genes all the time, for example, talking about how information coded in molecular chains “wants” things. Only the pedants among us — those who start with the assumption that everyone is less intelligent than them, when in fact the reverse is true — don’t understand what we mean.

But just to be clear, there’s nothing magical or even unexpected about 2016. For example, you all are responding to an absolute number of deaths, where what really matters is the rate. A rate can be “constant” (more on that in a minute) but the absolute number of cases can go still up or down based on changes to the base population. 0.0003% of 4.9 billion (world population in 1985) is almost double that of 0.0003% of 2.5 billion (world population in 1950).

A larger population can support larger industries, including the entertainment industry. The 80s generation had more “famous” people (in absolute terms) than the 50s generation, just as there are more “famous” people now than in the 80s — YouTubers, reality TV stars, and the Kim Kardashians of the world, who are famous simply for being famous — all of whom will start dying off in another 20-30 years. What’s more, I bet a larger proportion of the 80s folks led unhealthy lifestyles relative to their 50s counterparts. Not that no one from the 50s did drugs, but remember, cocaine didn’t show up until the 70s. Look how many of this year’s “early” deaths can be attributed, directly or indirectly, to the long-term influence of hard drugs on the body.

Also, random does not mean even. Even is orderly. Random is clumpy. While it’s meaningful to talk about there being a static rate of death at any moment in time, like any complex social measure, it will fluctuate from year-to-year. The number of unemployed persons bounces up and down from moment to moment despite that we talk about there being one static unemployment rate (which is defined by convention). It’s entirely natural that some years will see more per-capita deaths in a population, such as the group of all “famous” people, than other years. No one notices when the normal fluctuation is on the low side. It’s not like we notice when someone hasn’t died — except maybe Trump. And Keith Richards.

Meanwhile… Stan Lee just turned 94.

Really, I’m not suggesting that no one should lament this year. I’m not. Especially if you’ve experienced genuine loss. Nor do I think people are stupid for mourning celebrities, or other folks they’ve never met. I got teary when Nelson Mandela died in 2013. Same when Leonard Nimoy passed last year. On the flip side, you’re no less a Star Wars fan if you didn’t cry at Carrie Fisher’s death. Not everyone has to affect us equally.

I just wanted to point out, since I hadn’t seen it yet, that there are perfectly rational, fact-based explanations for your perceptions, and that 2016 is not the Year of the Reaper. It is, if anything, one long anti-drug ad.

Just don’t do it, people. Really. You’re killing yourselves.

This Week I Used Magic

I didn’t think I was going to make many edits to Bonewhite, the third course of my occult mystery, but as I got into it, I realized how dismally it progresses. The mystery itself is fine — rather clever actually — but how the story brings you there is woefully inadequate. So I’m performing surgery on this one as well.

Interestingly, I read through the fourth course, A Symphony in Green, for the second time in as many weeks, and other than correcting a small error, I still don’t want to make any changes. That’s a helluva story, and if I had to describe in one sentence what I was doing to the others, it would be “Trying to bring them closer to that standard.”

Which is why I keep saying this book, when it’s all done, is really going to be something special. Magic. Because there’s magic in the making. And I don’t just mean it’s a book about magic. (It IS an occult mystery after all.) I mean the magic is baked right in.

Last week, for example, I was wrestling with the character development in Bonewhite, which is a little lacking. Development is change over time. But in a novella, you don’t have lots of time, so you have to rely on reminisces or flashbacks — which, if done well, remains transparent to the reader.

I didn’t just want to have her say “I used to be a real” so-and-so, which is weak writing. Powerful stories show rather than tell, as we all know. And since the narrator is an ex-cop, it seemed clear that an episode from her time on the force would do the trick — a mistake perhaps, or some other thing that she doesn’t want to repeat.

But for the life of me I couldn’t think of anything.

So I turned to my miscellany shelf, which is right here next to my desk, and I pulled out Taschen’s “The Book of Symbols” and opened to a random page:

The Lamb

I read the commentary. Primarily a symbol of renewal and innocence. But that didn’t trigger anything, so I closed the book and opened to another random page:

Menstruation

That’s interesting, certainly, but not very helpful. So I flipped randomly to a third page:

Teeth

Again, I read the commentary, which ends with:

“At the magical level, the idea of the tooth as treasure is still carried in the fantasy of the tooth fairy, who repays, in coin, each baby tooth as it falls out and is offered as a marking of passage.”

I thought of the existing scene, near the climax of the story, where Harriet defers vengeance in order to save a teenage girl with Down’s Syndrome. (As an aside, that scene inside the club Omin — the world’s worst game of Russian roulette — originated in 2012 as part of the scrapped manuscript of a book that later turned into THE MINUS FACTION. But it never really fit.) That scene, I realized, was basically what this new scene had to “plug” into.

I had drawn three symbols — The Lamb, Menstruation, Teeth — and this is the rough cut what spontaneously emerged:

 

So.

I wanna tell you something.

Little story, I guess.

Back when I was just a patrolman—and yeah, I fuckin’ know I use the masculine, okay? Not everything has to be a god-damned political statement. You know know what the fuck I mean.

Anyway.

I stopped this guy in a blue Chevelle. Sweet car. He’d kept it up. Must had spent a lot of time on it. ’Bout the same age as me at the time. Mid-20s maybe. He was driving a little erratically and I flagged him down. Had another guy with him and a girl in the back. Make-up. Real thin. Big hair.

I approached the vehicle cautiously. I checked his license and insurance. I ran his tag. Everything checked out. He didn’t appear any more stiff than most folks when they get pulled over. He answered my questions straight up. Even called me ma’am. I let him and his friends go with a warning. I got the impression they were having fun. Goofing off a little too much, maybe. I’d done my bit for highway safety. Big fuckin’ deal.

I go to walk back to my squad car and I heard the Chevelle’s engine start and I lifted my head to the little back window because I got the sense the girl was looking at me, watching me leave, and so I was just gonna nod, but I remember thinking everyone always said I looked like such a bitch all the time. So I made it a point to smile. Like, “have a nice day.”

Car pulled away as she smiled back. It’s automatic, right? Whether you mean to or not, someone smiles at you and unless you’re just right pissed off, you smile out of habit or just to be polite or whatever.

I walked back to my car and I sat down and strapped in and reported the stop to central and started filling out the last of the paperwork and I saw her smile in my head.

Pretty girl.

Teeth a little uneven. But not everyone can afford braces, ya know.

Then I realize, they weren’t just a little uneven. She was missing a tooth. And I don’t mean it got knocked out whatever. Like it was a baby tooth.

She had a lot of make-up. And I guess maybe I didn’t look that hard. Some girls are real good at that shit. And I was busy watching the two guys in the front. You’re never sure on a stop like that when someone is gonna pull a gun or whatever. She was all the way in the back. Skinny thing. Not a threat. That’s all I remember thinking. Not a threat.

But afterward I’m sitting in my car wondering how old she was.

And I’m picturing her face. And that reflexive flash of a smile. Like a kid. And I’m thinking she can’t be older than twelve.

Now, she coulda been the guy’s sister. Or niece. Or cousin. Or the babysitter. Or whatever. I don’t know.

But I shoulda asked. I shoulda looked at his reaction. I shoulda glanced at the friend. If I wasn’t sure about their response, I shoulda politely asked a couple follow-ups while I pretended to write the ticket.

Coulda shoulda woulda.

It’s shit like that that teaches you how to be a cop. A real one.

But that day I was more worried about my own safety than the girl in the back of the Chevelle.

Not a threat.

I had run the guy’s plates. I had his address. It was right there on my paperwork. So I cruised by his house that night after my shift. I saw the Chevelle in the driveway. I sat there across the street for a while. I thought about going to knock on the door. But I didn’t see anything. I was off the clock. I had no reason to be there. He hadn’t done anything but goof around a little behind the wheel. I’d given him a warning and let him go. I had no probable cause that a crime had been committed.

After awhile, I left. Wasn’t much choice.

Years go by. I made detective. I never thought about that day again. So many worse things happened since, I had no reason.

Until I ran into him.

The driver.

At Mikey’s shelter.

One day, I walked in to meet my brother for lunch, and there he is. He was a little older. But it was him. No question. Only now he’s homeless. Turns out he’d had a hard stretch at Attica. Prison is hard on pedos. It’s probably the only time the sheer brutality of the place finds a positive outlet.

I flipped. Caused a scene. I didn’t want Mike to have anything to do with the guy. I wanted him to kick the guy out. It’s one of the few times he and I had a real serious argument. Like where I wasn’t sure we’d ever come back from it with everything in one piece. But he was adamant. Like, he had ahold of me and was pushing me out. Kept asking me to leave. And he meant it. He said it in a way that I wasn’t sure he ever wanted me to go back there. When we saw each other a few days later—

Well.

It was tough.

Mike said the guy served a year. That he claimed he never touched the girl—a different one, by the way. Not the one in the Chevelle. He claimed it was all the friend. And the D.A. couldn’t prove otherwise. Not from the physical evidence. Not from the girl’s statement. Not from her parents or anyone else involved. The friend got fifteen long. This dude got three years for felony child endangerment and was out after fourteen months.

And in those fourteen months, he was raped.

Repeatedly.

Fuck.

I don’t know if he deserved that.

I don’t know if anyone deserves that.

All I know is, I shouldn’t have been so worried that day.

I shouldn’t have been afraid.

First taste of Bright Black

Here is the first bite of an opening scene, which follows directly after the events of the last two. The only real spoiler is that the narrators from the first four courses of the book return in the last, which is narrated by the beautiful Milan, the chef’s enigmatic familiar.

Cover image by Esao Andrews

“Could he really smell emotions?”

Doctor Everett had walked up next to me. He’d shaved his mustache. I understood that since our encounter with the mushrooms he’d also become quite a believer and something of a savant on the occult. Judging by the missing ring on his finger, he was battling demons, just of his own devising.

We both stared at the closed casket.

I nodded. “He wouldn’t be able to stand it here. In this room. With all this grief. The whole place would reek of it. He would have waited outside.” I smiled. “He preferred his own company anyway.”

“Did he ever tell you what it smelled like? Grief, I mean.”

My eyes welled at the symbol inlaid in the coffin. One of Etude’s.

We were sleeping together. Benjamin Dench and I. I thought a man without a heart would be safe. I thought someone incapable of emotion, incapable of ever returning . . . anything, was a gift. An island in a sea of years. Silly, really.

Not that I was in love.

But it turns out I’m not nearly as heartless as he.

I didn’t want to mention it to anyone. It didn’t seem appropriate. At his funeral. Like it was a horrible invasion of his privacy. He wouldn’t have liked so many people fussing.

I realized the doctor had asked me a question. “I’m sorry?”

“It’s nothing. I was just curious.” He gave a sympathetic smile and turned.

“Rotting earth,” I said. “Like the stink of a swamp.”

Benjamin’s heart had been removed by a voodoo priestess. He had asked her to do it. Sought her out. Bargained it away. So that he wouldn’t have to carry the burden it held—some loss he never cared to reveal. The death of a child, I always suspected. But not his. Benjamin never married nor had children. I suspect it was the child he shot. While he was a policeman. And so he penetrated a deep swamp and circumambulated an ancient tree six and six and six times and spoke thrice a name.

But we should all be careful what we wish for. A trade is a trade, you see. And for every movement, a reaction. The priestess traded in turn to a hellion, for whom a human heart is like an infinite well of ink with which to write the suffering of men.

Benjamin had hoped Etude could get it back. In that way, he and I had made much the same bargain. A deal with the devil, some have warned. But Etude isn’t the devil. He isn’t savior or saint. He isn’t even a man. Not really. Not like you and me.

He found it. Of course. Benjamin’s heart. The old scratch kept it wrapped in straw inside a baked-closed pot, but rather than face the great heretic, who had come like lightning to honor his word, the hellion escaped into a pyre, as if leaping through a door, with the pot in his hands. It burned, and so it was forever kept it from its owner.

Benjamin took it well, considering. I remember he just stood and looked at the blaze for barely a minute before turning and walking away.

But then, he had no heart to break over the loss.

Without it, he couldn’t feel, and without feelings of his own, his bereft body turned its machinery outward. He became hypersensitive to emotion. Like the compensations of the blind. All of them vexed him. Every kind. But it was love that bothered him most. Everyone expects it to be floral scented. But he said no. He could never articulate it very well, but I got the impression it smelled of equal parts urine and honey. Whatever its odor, it made him retch at the slightest whiff.

I admit, knowing that my body might betray me to him turned me that much more cautious. I’m sure I seemed a horrible tease at times. Benjamin had no heart, but the rest of him was fully male, which was, I suspect, the worst part of his curse, and why we were so terribly needy of each other. What woman would choose a lover who carries a stone in his chest in place of a heart?

Etude put it there. After the pyre. To weigh him down. Without it, he said, Benjamin would one day float out of the world, like a leaf on the current.

He died so I could get away.

Benjamin Dench. Heartless bastard.

The night the bistro burned.

He sacrificed himself.

For me.

But not for me. I suspect in the same circumstance he would have done it for anyone. It was his nature. It just so happened that I was the only one there.

“Did you know him well?” the doctor asked.

I smiled and turned from the coffin full of books. “Not as well as I would have hoped.”

I went for a walk around the grounds with Olafur, my charge, who only mentioned at the end that he’d had to go to the bathroom the entire time. He hadn’t said anything, he explained, because he could tell I was sad. I said we were never too sad for that.

When we returned to the parlor, the others were talking in the little sitting room at the end of the hall. I stood outside the bathroom door and listened.

The doctor had a sweet voice, but he always sounded a bit unsure. “He cursed the firm. Or got someone else to, I imagine. It was brilliant, really. That whole coven was indebted to the old man. Shah. But then, when you buy loyalty, you can always be outbid. Once he could no longer make them rich, they turned on him. Carved him up. The warlock just gave them the means. After that, he had everything he needed to plot his rise.

“I didn’t have much to do with it.” He paused. “To be honest, it kinda freaked out. Etude asked for my help. After. But I sorta ran home to my wife.”

He must have been talking to Cerise, because she spoke next. “You shouldn’t feel bad. I would’ve run. If I’d had a choice.” She stopped. “Actually, now that I think about it, I did run. Right into a trap.” Her voice was soft. “It was Mr. Dench, actually, who pulled me out.” There was a moment of silence. Then it seemed like she wanted to change the subject. “How long have you been married?”

I was happy for that.

“Six years.” The doctor paused. Always unsure. “We’ve kinda . . . Well, we’ve separated.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Since everything happened, I’ve gotten . . . Well, I guess you could say I got a little obsessed. With the occult.” He let out a deep breath. Then he laughed.

“It happens.” Harriet. Always stern. Always aloof.

“Yeah, well, not when you have a family and a job, it shouldn’t.” The doctor paused again. “I kinda got let go. Fired. Let’s call it what it was,” he said to himself. “But I don’t wanna bring everyone down.” He chuckled again.

“It’s a funeral,” Cerise consoled. “It can’t get any more down.”

“What about you?” he asked. “How’d you meet him?”

“Uhhh . . . It’s kind of a long story.”

“They were dating.” A man’s voice. That was Lóng, her dragon. Now her husband. A stunning man. Every bit the image she’d presented him to be.

“Dating?” Harriet again. “No shit? What’s it like dating a warlock?”

Cerise let out a small, desperate laugh. “Believe it or not, he wasn’t the worst date I ever had.”

Harriet snorted. That was good. They needed a little humor.

The toilet flushed and the door opened and little Olafur walked out. He looked at me. He stopped. He turned around and went back to wash his hands.

I smiled.

He was always such a darling. I had no idea why Etude insisted a child be present. I asked. Repeatedly. But all the man would say is that Olafur had always to be present. Always. And it was my job to watch him. He made me swear it in a way only Etude could.

“Shall we join the others?” I asked as the boy walked out again.

He nodded. I took his hand, still wet, and we walked into the room. I looked around at them. “So nice to see you all again. Thank you for coming. I’m sure Benjamin would—”

“Look,” Harriet interrupted. “I don’t wanna be rude, but where the hell is the chef?”

“Jeez . . .” Cerise said softly with wide eyes, looking away.

Harriet turned to her. Then back to me. “Well?”

I leaned to Olafur. “There’s some books and crayons over there in the corner.” I pointed. “Do you see?”

He nodded. I think he understood this was adult time.

He walked over and sat down, and I walked to the plush chair against the wall near a floor lamp. I sat. “I don’t know.”

Harriet scowled. “What do you mean you—”

“She said she doesn’t know,” Cerise interrupted. “Are you deaf?”

“Listen, girlie.”

“Don’t call her that.” Cerise’s dragon stepped up behind her.

“What are you gonna do, skinny?”

“How much have you had to drink?” I asked Harriet.

She turned back to me. She didn’t speak.

“I don’t know where Etude is. He left as soon as he returned. He brought the boy and disappeared. He does that.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell them the truth.

“Is he coming back?” Cerise asked. She had relied on him the most. She was the most hurt.

Her husband put a hand on her shoulder.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Why now?” the doctor asked. “With everything. This is like the worst—”

“Because he failed,” Harriet growled. “And he’s a fuckin’—”

“Language, please.” I spoke loudly and turned my head toward Olafur coloring in the corner. “There is a child.”

“Yeah.” Harriet motioned to him. “And that’s another thing. What’s he for?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “He showed up. With Etude. In Pennsylvania.”

“Pennsylvania?” Cerise looked confused. “What’s in Pennsylvania?”

“Ley lines,” Olafur said without looking up. He curled his lower lip as he colored.

The doctor nodded. “That’s true. The area was big with the Native Americans.”

“And you know about that stuff, do you?” Harriet asked.

“I’ve been doing a lot of reading.”

“Yeah, well, me too. And what’s out there isn’t like it says in the books. What’s coming, you know, it’s gonna make Revelation look like Thomas Kinkade painting.”

“Seriously?” Cerise’s husband snorted.

“Who are you again?” Harriet taunted.

“Forty days of night,” Olafur said.

The doctor turned. “What?”

“I saw it,” Olafur said. “My secret showed me. It starts in the desert, in that place that’s burning.”

“The oil fires,” the doctor said. He thought. “Black smoke could obscure the sun. Maybe I’ve been thinking too literally.”

“Huh?” Cerise made a face.

I wasn’t going to say anything. They needed to work through it on their own before they could get closure and move on.

“Forget the horror movies, where the sun, an entire star, just disappears. What would forty days of darkness really look like? I don’t mean like a horror movie. I mean for real.”

“Clouds of black smoke,” Cerise whispered.

“Rolling blackouts,” Harriet added. “Like on the west coast.”

“Think about what all of that is doing to the economy,” the doctor was pacing. “Not just investment, but to people’s sense of security. Their hope for the future.”

“That’s what he wants.” Cerise was looking at nothing. Or at something we all couldn’t see. I’ll never forget the look on her face. Her eyes were dead.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“He wants people to feel like there’s nothing they can do. That these things can’t be fought locally. That they’re just too big. That there’s nothing we can do. Regular people.”

“Christ.” Harriet almost spat. “He casting a spell to kill hope.”

“Shouldn’t we go to the police or something. I mean, I know what they’ll say, but shouldn’t we at least try. Like, get it on record that this is happening.”

Cerise shook her head. “I’ve been to the police.”

Harriet scoffed. “I was the police.”

“He owns the police.” I ignored Harriet and looked politely at the doctor. “But it’s very noble. You’re welcome to try.”

“Whatever.” Harriet turned back to the window.

I think the doctor felt like he had to justify his comment. “I just can’t believe he’s gonna get away with it.” He paused. “Ya know? Like, isn’t there supposed to be someone to stop him? Isn’t that how the world’s supposed to work? Aren’t there people out there somewhere?”

Silence.

We all knew he didn’t mean it. Not really. All the saints were dead. Killed. While the rest of us sat idle.

We all knew it was just wishful thinking.

We all knew that wasn’t how things worked. We all had seen that first hand.

“Yeah . . .” Cerise breathed.

“Don’t.” Harriet pointed at her, then at the doctor.

“Don’t what?” He scowled.

“Don’t come in here with your guilt trip.”

“Guilt trip?” He made a face. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“What the hell is right. What the hell was the point of saying that?”

“I dunno.” He paused. “It just seemed like a thing to say.”

“Bullshit.” She breathed.

“Doesn’t it bother you? A little?”

“Bullshit,” she repeated. “You want us to go after him.”

The doctor raised his hands. “That’s not what I was saying.”

“Maybe we should.” Cerise looked at him. Then Harriet. “No one else is.”

“Not you, too.” Harriet turned for the window.

The doctor stepped toward her and shook a pointed fist. “You want to.”

“What?” She spun.

Standing behind his wife, Lóng watched the others, squinting.

“That’s why you went there,” the doctor explained. “As soon as I said anything. And why you’re all prickly about it. You want to, too. You’re angry ’cuz you don’t think you can and you’re taking it out on—”

“No. I’m angry because unlike the rest of you, I already fuckin’ tried.”

“Language,” I repeated sternly. I moved my eyes to Olafur and back.

Harriet ignored me. “It can’t be done. Trust me.”

“Unlike the rest of you?” Cerise scowled. “What’s that supposed to mean? Like you’re so much stronger than anyone, that if you failed, there’s no point in anyone else even trying?”

Harriet blinked hard. “That’s . . . Wait. That’s not what I—”

“Well, then what?” the doctor interrupted.

Harriet looked at him. Then Cerise. Then her dragon. Then me. “You’re telling me that y’all are serious?” she asked. “You wanna take on the warlock? THE warlock. Just like that? The man bred by the worshipers of darkness to be the vessel of eternal night. What do you think is gonna happen?”

Quiet.

“Yeah . . .” The doctor turned back for the couch and sat. “I know. Okay? I know. It just feels like someone should.”

“Feels? What the fuck does feeling have to do with it?”

I sat up. “Speak like that again and I’ll ask you to leave in a way that you won’t find pleasant.”

The doctor didn’t look at his accuser. His eyes were on the floor. He spoke softly. “Sometimes we know more than we can say.”

I looked around at my companions, each dressed in black, each lost in thought. Even if we hadn’t just come from a funeral, right then it would have seemed so.

Doctor Everett raised his hands. “It’s not like we’d know where to find him anyway.”

“What do you mean? He’s not hiding.” Harriet paced in front of the window. Like she was keeping watch. “Why would he? Who is there for him to be afraid of? They’re all downtown. All of them. Every one of his minions, gathered from all over the world. Just off Wall Street.”

“So let’s go check it out.” Cerise’s dragon was the only one among us who hadn’t met Etude. He was still feeling for his place in the group. “We’re in town for a couple days.”

“And do what?” the doctor asked. “You heard her. Sounds like there’s a ton of people there protecting him.”

“So we see,” the dragon said. He wanted to see the man who had killed his wife. “If it’s like she says—”

“And if not?” the doctor asked. “What? We just walk in the front door and . . . ? Shoot a man in cold blood in front of a dozen witnesses?”

Lóng stiffened. “If you could go back and kill Hitler, wouldn’t you do it?”

“Well—” The doctor stopped. “Anyone could say that. Of course. But it’s pointlessly academic.”

“Only if there isn’t really a Hitler.”

“You’re talking about cold-blooded murder.”

“Are you really worried about killing Hitler? Really? Or are you worried about jail?”

The doctor gave a desperate laugh. “I would actually like to see my daughter again, if that’s what you mean. So, yeah. And I don’t feel bad about saying it. You’d feel the same way if she was pregnant.” The doctor nodded to Cerise.

She touched her husband’s hand before he could respond. She was tactfully letting him know she wasn’t a fan of his plan either.

“We’re not having kids now anyway,” Lóng explained. “Not until they find a vaccine for that new baby disease.”

“Jesus. Who cares?” Harriet shook her head. “It’s all fucking moot. This whole stupid discussion. You can’t just shoot this guy.” She turned to Lóng. He was the only one as stout as she. “I already tried. He’s protected.”

“Protected?”

“His spells of protection will flow from the book,” I explained softly. I’d been chasing The Wickedary long enough to have picked up a few things. “They’ll be the most powerful. You’d have to destroy it first.”

Harriet shook her head again. “See? Can’t do that either. Book is sealed with dragon’s tears.”

“Shit.” The doctor lowered his head.

“What does that mean?” Cerise asked.

“That means it’s, like, basically invulnerable. None of us would even be able to open it. Let alone—”

“Bullshit.” Lóng hadn’t seen what the others had. I could tell he still wasn’t sure he actually believed everything she had told him.

“I saw it.” Harriet said sternly. She wasn’t going to have anyone question her. “He brought it. To their meeting. At the cafe.”

“You saw it?” the doctor almost seemed jealous.

Harriet nodded.

“The Wickedary? You saw the actual Wickedary? The blackest grimoire ever penned. You sure it wasn’t a fake?”

“The chef was. He turned pale at the sight of it.”

“And?” Cerise asked.

“And he couldn’t even touch it,” Harriet explained. “He tried.”

I lowered my head. That was bad.

Cerise stood. “Fuuuck! You all are such a bunch of downers! If we can’t destroy him without destroying the book, and not even Etude could do that, then why are we even talking about this? Jesus, stop getting my hopes up already.”

“Exactly,” Harriet said. She pointed again. “That’s exactly what I was saying.”

“The doctor is right.” I tried to reassure them. “You’re all better off going home and looking after your families.”

Cerise’s dragon looked right at me. “And when He comes for us? For her? What then?”

It was a fair question.

Cerise had escaped once. It was only a matter of time.

I saw her place a hand over her belly.

A long silence took over. I didn’t have an answer. No one did. I thought that would be the end of it. Right there. Not just our little after-funeral party, but the light of the world. With Etude gone, there was no one left to keep the candle lit.

Or so I thought.

But I was wrong. Wonderfully, wonderfully wrong.

There was still one. One lone candle in the dark.

“I can open it.”

Olafur. Beautiful little Olafur.

All the adults turned. He was coloring in the corner. His hand was rubbing a sky blue crayon back and forth over a printed page. He didn’t look up.

“What do you mean?” I was closest.

“The stag gave me a word. A new word in a old language. Older than dragons even. A word that’s never been used, so it still has all its power. If I say it, the book will open.”

We were all silent as the little boy ran his marker back and forth across the page.

After a moment, he noticed the silence, stopped, and looked up at us all looking down at him. “What?”

He had the most beautiful eyes.

“I don’t think that’s something for a child,” I explained. “It will be very scary. There will be bad people who will want to hurt you.”

“I know.” He nodded. “The stag told me to practice. Because when I had to say it, there would be lots of scary things and maybe if I got scared I wouldn’t say it and more bad things would happen. But I’m not supposed to practice out loud, because then it would lose its power. So I’ve been saying it in my head. I already saw lots of scary things. My secret showed me. So I practice in my head and think about that.” He stopped. “But . . .” He glanced at his coloring book and looked back at me.

“But?”

He thought. “Do I have to say it alone?”

My heart broke. I stood and walked to him. “Oh, no, sweetie.”

“Damn straight,” came a whisper from the center of the room. Harriet stood like a rock, fists clenched, just looking. I’m not sure what she expected. From a child. But that wasn’t it.

“Damn straight,” she repeated softly.

If Olafur would fight, then so would she.

“So that’s it,” the doctor said with a smile. He looked at Cerise.

“Jesus, we could totally do it,” she said softly, clutching her beloved’s hand. “He totally wouldn’t expect it. We could surprise him.”

The doctor stood. “They’re not hiding. So we just have to get in. Kid says the word. We burn the book. And then—” He turned to Lóng.

He and Harriet were looking at each other.

“I shoot that fucker in the face,” she said.

The dragon nodded.

Cerise’s eyes were far away.

I saw it. “What?” I asked her. I thought she was worried about her husband, but that wasn’t it.

She turned her gaze to me. “He won’t keep the book with him. Not if it makes him vulnerable. It won’t be that easy. He’s not that dumb.” She turned to her husband. “He’ll keep it hidden.”

“Shit.” The doctor lowered his head. “That’s a good point.” He walked to the sink to get a drink of water.

After a moment, something occurred to me. I hadn’t wanted to get involved. I wanted to go home and wait for Etude to stop pouting like a child and come out of hiding. Get on with life. Such as it would be in the warlock’s new world.

But they were all so excited. It felt like a crime to stay silent. When I knew.

“I know someone who might know where to look.”

“Who?” Harriet was skeptical. Always. Everything was an investigation. I don’t think anyone ever really stops being a cop.

“A sin-eater,” I explained.

Fergus.

“Sin eater?” Cerise was skeptical as well. “Is that really a thing?” She asked looking at me but immediately turned to the doctor.

He nodded.

I looked at the clock. Almost dinnertime. “And I know where we can find him.”

The Best Songs You Missed (#2)

Most evenings, I post a song on social media — what I call the soundtrack to tonight — and add it to an ongoing playlist covering all genres of music. Here are the five best songs you missed in the last couple weeks.

And here is the full ongoing playlist for those following along at home. (I recommend listening on random.)

 

A Word on the Weirdness From Japan

I was a college student at the University of Oklahoma when the Murrah Federal building was bombed in the spring of 1994. (I was in organic chemistry lab, in the second basement of a very large building, and didn’t hear it.) In the fall of that year, I took a class on the modern Middle East taught by a professor of archaeology, who had made a research trip to Lebanon over the summer. Upon arriving, a Lebanese colleague, who knew he was from Oklahoma, grasped him tightly and said with teary eyes, “my friend, I’m so glad you made it out alive.” All that man knew about Oklahoma was that that was where his American friend lived and that it was the kind of place where big bombs went off and killed lots of people.

What you see on the news — or these days, on the internet — teaches you almost nothing about real life, even in your own community. News is a catalog of exceptions. Intentionally so. No one is interested to hear that today, all across Japan, things were completely, totally normal.

In the last ten days or so, I’ve seen at least six posts (all from different people) that pointed and laughed at something “Japan” was doing — where really it was the hobby of less than a dozen of her 127 million inhabitants. Yes, subcultures here are diverse. Yes, they may actually be more diverse (per capita) than anywhere else in the world. But most of them are also very small. What’s important to know about the Japanese, more than the strangeness, is how much they dedicate themselves to their pursuits. I’ve written before on the cultural aesthetic here and how, for example, a household or shop may keep as decoration a single vase holding one carefully pruned orchid. And that’s it. Beauty in simplicity. One thing elevated to mastery.

Generally speaking, at least compared to the US, that’s how the Japanese measure their pursuits: not by enjoyment but by mastery. All you Whovians think you’re rabid fans. But by Japanese standards, you’re weak! I’ve seen where otaku won’t just dedicate themselves to one anime, but to a specific character from it, and then decorate their entire apartment with images of that character: posters, blankets, towels, cups, t-shirts, notepads, and of course the definitive collection of books and DVDs.

I say again. Your fandom is WEAK.

Naturally, then, when seven people (out of 127 million) with the same strange obsession find each other via the internet, they will invariably start some big project dedicated to that obsession. They’ll make something out of it. They’ll turn it productive. They’ll make costumes. They’ll put a video on YouTube. Whatever. And all in the limited free time they have after working so much.

And here you won’t even get up off the couch on Saturday, despite that you only work 70% of what they do.

On top of this, there’s now a cottage industry of Western Japan watchers who make money by finding these odd obsessions and bringing them to us, where they know we’ll click and laugh and bring them ad revenue.

On the other hand, many Japanese solidly believe — seriously — that if they visit the US, there is very high chance they will get shot, much higher, for example, than that they would get into a car accident, because car accidents aren’t reported on the news, and shootings are. In fact, I think American shootings — and not even multiple shootings — are covered more here than at home (which says something about what we consider exceptional and worth reporting). The Japanese think we’re insane that we just live with that kind of violence.

What we laugh at is just weird. The shit we do that they laugh at actually kills people. Which is more insane?

And it’s not like there aren’t plenty of weird American subcultures. With 320 million people, we have quite a few. Orine will routinely show me something one of her friends sent about something stupid someone did in rural Alabama, or some weirdo in LA, and say “Honto?” (Really?) As in, is that really what America is like? I, of course, will have never heard of such a thing. She showed me something yesterday — I think it was a couple years old — where some people somewhere were making X-rated sand art on a nude beach. “Hentai,” she said, which just means “perverted.”

I’m not saying no one should post the weird stuff from Japan. Please! I have. Some of it is generally odd. But some of it that seems odd actually makes a lot of sense, if you take the time to understand it in context.

There was a museum exhibit here in Tokyo awhile back on bowel movements. Poop. How it’s made in the intestines. Where it goes. Thing is, the Japanese are generally obsessed with cleanliness. And shame. The Tokyo/Yokohama metroplex is the largest in the world, the largest geographic collection of people in history, but it’s all clean. It’s shameful if your storefront, for example, has trash in the gutter. So everyone chips in and keeps the whole place neat and tidy. The whole damned city. And it’s safe, too. Ladies, you really can walk home at three in the morning by yourself and be totally fine. Orine and her friends do it all the time.

But as a result of that cultural obsession with cleanliness, there’s a general unease about moving your bowels at a public toilet, for example, and some folks here have actually developed health problems because of it (albeit that’s a small minority). Many public toilets have little jingle-makers to cover the sound of your farts. Folks here are that bothered. (Thing is, no one I’ve talked to is any more bothered by hearing it than we are, but they’re all worried someone else will be.)

The museum exhibit, then, was organized as a kind of public service. It was for kids and it was to teach them that bowel movements are natural and you shouldn’t feel ashamed — a communal potty training exercise. The need for that, which seems so strange to us, is a different expression of the same phenomenon that keeps this giant, massive, sprawling, never-ending city so relentlessly clean and safe.

So while it’s fine to laugh — I did — just recognize that your laughter is evidence that, like the Lebanese man, you probably don’t actually understand what you’re laughing at.

The Case Against Dark Matter

The Case Against Dark Matter: A proposed theory of gravity does away with dark matter, even as new astrophysical findings challenge the need for galaxies full of the invisible mystery particles.| Quanta Magazine

Once upon a time, we attributed fire to a mysterious substance called phlogiston — literally, Greek for “that which burns” — because we couldn’t explain how otherwise inert matter, like wood, could suddenly explode in heat and light. And if that seems silly to you, you really haven’t thought it through from the standpoint of someone who doesn’t already have the benefit of the last 300 years of discovery. A substance like phogiston would explain why, for example, some kinds of matter aren’t burnable at all, like water and rock: low phlogiston content.

When we developed a proper chemistry of fire, phlogiston disappeared from reality. But not the phenomenon we were trying to explain. And to a certain degree, we still believe in phlogiston, sort of… if you are generous and recognize that it was just a shorthand model for what turned out to be a certain kind of potential energy, which stuff that burns really does have more of than water or stone. Wood, for example, literally stores sun-energy in its carbon bonds.

I’ve always suspect dark matter was something like that. It’s not like we believe it exists because we’ve ever observed it. We haven’t. We simply infer its existence from observations of effects that we attribute to it. But if we only know it by what it does, then there’s really no evidence for dark matter specifically over any other phenomenon that explains the same observations. And once we no longer need it, it will disappear from reality and becomes something silly that dumb people a long time ago used to believe because they didn’t know better like us smart people living in the present.

Don’t get me wrong. It will be a LONG time before anything like the theory in this article achieves consensus, even if it is true, and it very much may not be. This is just a proposal. A tragic flaw might arise next week. Or maybe it has already and I just haven’t heard. And certainly right now, the consensus view among astrophysicists is that there’s a thing called dark matter out there doing its best to hold our universe together. Only crackpot amateurs like me, and mavericks like Verlinde, think that’s nutty.

However, whether this theory is true or something else, I still suspect dark matter is a fiction, the phlogiston of our time. And the same goes for the new kind of “dark energy” this theory proposes (which is embedded in space-time itself). It’s probably shorthand for a variety of phenomena that we’re lumping together because we don’t understand what causes it and which will be given a proper name once it’s, ahem, no longer dark.

 

(EDIT: since otherwise smart people whiz through life, and especially the internet, at 90mph looking for porn and something to argue about, reading comprehension suffers universally, as evidenced by the comments on this article. And it’s not even like Quanta is Reddit! The article isn’t summarizing the case against dark matter. It isn’t even trying. Nor is it saying there’s a strong case. It’s just letting us know that there is one, and it got three separate boosts in the last couple months. If anyone wants to argue the merits of the theory, go read the primary literature first and then come back and let me know.)

The Call to Adventure

I’ve ignored it twice in my life. At least.

Which is kind of a big deal.

For those who don’t know, the Call to Adventure is the first stage of the Hero’s Journey as outlined by Joseph Campbell in his 1949 opus The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

As with any seminal tome, there are those who take it a bit too seriously — there is something of a “self-helpy” online church to Campbell — which of course feeds a strong negative counter reaction: folks who think it’s overused, overrated, or outright hooey.

Certainly it’s true that some of the finer points haven’t stood up to time. But then, judging the whole entirely on the fine points is like rejecting a free car because you don’t like the color. The fact is, many of the criticisms — such as that the model is too vague to be meaningful, for example, or that it’s not as universal as it pretends to be, or David Brin’s contention that monomythic literature lionizes despotism — do seem to miss the point, or simply to shoot the messenger. There is a real power, I think, to highlighting that which binds rather than differentiates cultures, especially in a time of rampant Eurocentrism (when Campbell was writing).

Does the Hero’s Journey check every box? Of course not. But universal or not, a bulk of the inherited legacy of our forebears does clearly fit the mold. Some people interpret that uniformity as evidence of banality. Others see it as shades of the same wisdom — that so many disparate tribes and scholars should consciously dress the psychological development of man (yes, unfortunately, they are mostly men) in the same wild furs.

I twice ignored the call. The first time, I was 21 and recently graduated from college. I was sitting on the back stoop of the house I rented with a couple buddies. It was our last night together. My friend was going off to get married, and I had just described to him my latest story idea. I sat smoking a cigar and listened to him explain nicely that I was a fool for traipsing off to medical school, that folks didn’t have crazy ideas like I did, and that I was wasting it.

It meant something coming from him. He was not only on full ride scholarship (to an out-of-state university), he was an English major and an extraordinary writer, or so everyone seemed to think. Our first year at school, he won the English Department’s annual award for outstanding freshman — which, because of his full ride, ended up as nothing but several thousand dollars spending money.

I wanted him to be right. But I had no confidence in myself. No idea how to make a go of it. No idea how I’d live. No one to help. Medical school was practical and sensible. And there was financing.

I ended up quitting a couple years in. It was the right decision.

The second time I ignored the call was just after 9/11. I was visiting a friend in Japan — it was my first trip here — and upon my reluctant return, I immediately applied for a job teaching English, which is what he was doing. It wasn’t so much that I loved the country (or teaching), but it’s fair to say I was enchanted by the utter foreignness. And assuming I got the job, I knew I could expect a remote post, as my buddy had been given his first year, which meant plenty of time to write with few of the distractions of home.

As if that’s what was keeping me from it.

Idiot.

But I had occurred debts in medical school, debts that still harass me to this day, and once again I did the practical, sensible thing and stuck with my low-paying marketing job and my American girlfriend — the same one who cheated on me two years later, as we were talking seriously of marriage.

To be fair to my younger self, I never completely abandoned writing. Which is probably why the call bothered to return. I wrote essays and short stories and even attempted a novel, a sweeping science fiction space myth called Darksign that was full of badly executed good ideas. It spiraled off and I didn’t know what to do with it.

But then, I didn’t really try to figure that out, either.

Take another look at the diagram above. The most important thing about the Call to Adventure is that it comes before anything else. It comes before Supernatural Aid. That is, the doyens of history seem to be telling us, through the vehicle of myth, that help does come, but you have to take that first step yourself — a wisdom repeated in that often-lampooned but poorly understood epithet “God helps those who help themselves.”

If you want things to be better, at some point, you have to get off your ass. I think we all understand that on some level, whether we fess up to it or not. What I’ve learned is that that doesn’t mean you have to leap into the plot of your life right from page one of the story. In the literature of our species, our collected wit, only the most facile action hero ever does that — Captain Seymour Dicklogic, of recent internet fame, for example. Even the prophet Moses refused God’s call, and not once or twice but three times.

But there must come a point where you step off the safe path, where you risk change to realize it, that the story of the unheeded call is only ever tragedy.

 

cover image: “Lose Yourself” by Artem Demura