The Scrivener's Jest

It is easy to list the miseries, To call down the sky For every wrong committed. Repetition is amplification Even when you weep. It is okay to step away Before you break.

So here, a moment of quiet. Filled with strange texts And random memories, For Poets are more than The world's “legislators” They are also its jesters And its storytellers.

I offer no solution or salvation In my bag of tricks Only allegory and fiction, Fantasy and desire, Wonder and hope. It is all that I have, But I am happy to share.

The thing about an ending is that it is always constructed. It never happens naturally. There is no moment where everything just stops. Even in the far distant future, long after you and I and every one and every thing else has faded into the dark there is still eternity ahead even if that eternity is just dust and darkness. No, there is no natural end to anything. You have to build the ending.

Perhaps, then, it is that vastness that we seek to allay. The sublime terror of the infinity stretching beyond us and our imagining is more than we dare face. It so much easier to craft an end in an increment be it an hour, a day, a month, or even a year. We mark them off as indicators of meaning because, to us, they are.

This, then, is my ending. A year-end requiem for a year that has often had more dark than light. There are no screaming crowds here. There are no bands nor banners. Only me, such that I am, writing away in the quiet of my study. In this requiem, I offer you, my reader, only this small reminder. The struggles of this year are now a memory, constructed and built within your mind. You are the author of their construction and the arbiter of their translation. Never forget your power here.

This has been a long year. We leave older and wiser, maybe a lot more tired than we were, but nevertheless we leave this year. We write its ending in the stone tablets of our time and step forward into a daunting unknown. We are the heroes of this tale even if we feel unready and unsteady. There is so much more to do, but the year is done. The next adventures lies beyond the cover of this particular book. There is only the end to write. What stories shall we tell of this time? What tales remain? What will we be in this year?

This was the year this site was born. It is quiet here. I haven't pushed it much. I am okay with that. I wanted a place to post the silly, odd, and sometimes pretentious things that I write. I want to do more. That is my ending – the memory of beginning.

Now, tell me yours.

Who will you sacrifice for your comfortable life?

Whose pain and suffering is worth the extra square footage? Whose child should die so that you can go out to dinner? Your new car cost and arm and leg, but its not yours so who cares?

Go ahead and blame the system. You're just a cog in the infernal machine. You poor forgotten soul growing fat on the screams of the dying. How nice that you don't have to hear them when you're hidden behind a computer screen. You don't kill with bullets and blades, you're too much of a coward for that. No, you cut down millions with every curve of the graph. This is your world. A hell where profit versus loss means more than life versus death.

When you trap people in a system where they are devoured by a machine, do not be surprised when they cheer the demise of the operators.

I am a technologist by trade. I grew up in the midst of the digital revolution when the PC was still something new and magical.

I guess for me it still is. I love how this concoction of plastic and metal can create worlds, link people across vast distances, and provide opportunities for art and knowledge to grow. I missed that memo where we were told to only use these cool and creative tools in “appropriate and approved” ways. I don't think I ever did. It helps that I was just poor enough to have to build most things myself but with enough access to resources to still adequately build those things. That is a narrow band of people, indeed, served more by luck and circumstance than talent and work, I assure you. For most of my life, my tech was always a few years (sometimes more) out of date, but it was mine.

I am a writer by practice. It is stupidly hard for me to say that, and it shouldn't be. I've been writing for most of my life. If technology is my blood, writing is my soul. The two are inseparable for me, really.

And yet, I haven't really written in a long time. That is not a complete truth, I suppose. In one sense, I have been writing. I wrote a dissertation. I wrote papers, and articles, and presentations. I still do. I like writing those things. I am good at writing those things. I was good enough to finish what I started, get the big title and that sense of accomplishment. I haven't written a short story in years, though. My poems—the reason I went back to school in the first place—have became party tricks rolled out to impress colleagues and friends. I haven't submitted so much as a piece of flash fiction since 2020.

So here we go. A step back to the craft. If there was ever a time I needed to come back this is it. I noted in a previous post that I am old man, now. I am. I am old, but I have these words swirling in my head. I have stories and poems to tell, games to write. Some are kind and gentle, others harsh and cruel, some passionate, some reserved, and I want to share them with you. The more I pretend I don't want this, the more time just slips away.

I don't pretend to think this is going to be grand success. In fact, I plan to fail a lot in 2025 – which is probably true for many of us for all sorts of horrible reasons. But hey, if the world is going to burn, we might as well sing.

This is not a deliberately anonymous site. I'm not hiding here. I'm also not explicitly linking my other sites. I removed those links, in fact. This is a site for The Scrivener's Jest, alone.

This is a creative space for me. For that to work, it needs to be separate. I need a space where I can just write without my name, my work, or anything else being front and center. Before you get the wrong idea, I should assure you that I am not anyone important. I am just someone with a lot of interests that often don't gel well on the same site.

Reading an academic commentary or tech review interspersed between poems, short fiction, and creative nonfiction sounds cooler than it ends up being. Trust me on that, I've tried.

So this is my creative workspace. Consider it a messy work in progress. A lot that I do here will be experimental and not all of it (maybe any of it) will be good. I am not sure where any of this is going, but I am curious to follow it along.

I started writing for two reasons. The first was spite.

I was nine years old and in the fourth grade. My childhood was less than stable and for that year I was living with my mother and sister on a farm in Elk River. We didn't own the farm. There was some arrangement between my mother and the wealthy family employing her. She took care of the farm while they were gone for a year, and so we lived there. Moving wasn't really a shock for me at that point. By the time I was in the fourth grade,I had already been in at least 5 different schools.

I loved to read, though. Maybe because books were constant when nothing else was. When I very young, we had a collection of books from the '50s that I would “read” which mostly meant looking at the pictures or memorizing words to pretend I could read. I even had the old Dick and Jane primers, and eventually I did actually learn to read that way. I was a bit of a puzzle in kindergarten, or so I was told. The teachers felt I was academically advanced but socially delayed. This, the reoccurring theme of my life.

I digress, I was speaking of spite and the fourth grade. Mostly, I am talking about my language arts teacher whose name I honestly don't remember. I think, in my youth, I blotted her out of my memory in a fit of righteous anger. I am many things, but I am certainly no saint. My public school career is spotty in many ways, and my hatred of busy work and pointless home work was evident from my earliest days. I don't cheat, though.

Actually, I cheated once. I cheated on a science test in the second grade. I kept transposing the numbers in the temperature of a normal human body, 98.6 become 96.8 over and over. I became paranoid I was going to get it wrong, so I wrote the number on a piece of paper and put it in my desk in such a way that I could see it when I dropped a pencil. I then dropped my pencil and checked my answer. I didn't even need the paper. This was my one transgression.

Don't get me wrong. There was plenty of work I didn't do. There was plenty of times that teachers and I did not see eye-to-eye, but I didn't cheat. To be honest, I didn't really care enough to cheat. I let others cheat off me all the time. If it made their lives easier, why not? I wasn't invested in their learning. I wasn't there to get good grades. I wasn't even there to make friends. I liked school for the libraries and the computers. I liked the clean halls and silent spaces that were escapes from my daily life. I wasn't there for them. I was there for me.

I was nine years old, and I was excited. I wrote a story for school. I wrote a Choose Your Own Adventure story. I had been telling stories my entire life, but until then the stories had been for me. My imaginary worlds were internal creations. I had never thought or considered that I could write them down like others did. It was a sort of magic, and I was so proud of what I written. I wish I still had that story, but she never gave it back. That language arts teacher with the smug smile, the hair that reeked of perm solution, and makeup that was out of date before the dawn of the Korean war, looked down at me and told me that I must have copied the story. I didn't even know how to react to the accusation. I was angry, but not in a way that made sense to me then. I didn't understand what it meant to mourn. She took my creation and she killed it, but I was still too young to have a way to express that. I did eventually cry at home in my room. I sobbed until I was sick. I was crying and angry, and I still couldn't make sense of it. She called me a liar and cheat and threw it away. I learned my lesson. I never gave her anything I cared about again. I remember nothing of her class. I will never forget that moment, though.

I kept writing. I kept writing because fuck her. These were my words and my stories. I didn't need her to tell me I could write them. I didn't need her to approve or pat me on the head. She may have thrown that story away, but I would write ten thousand more. I would revel in them, and so I did. Never underestimate the righteous rage of a child with stories dancing in his head. And to my false accuser, the nemesis of my nine-year-old self, who is probably long dead and gone, I offer nothing.

I don't even remember your name.

A reflection on generative AI

It was a magnificent monstrosity. A horse made of a dark and polished wood gleaming in the sun, looming large above us. Its bridle and saddle were bedecked in accents of silver and gold, its eyes an intricate collection of gleaming jewels. It was, to the city, a glorious achievement of craftsmanship, genius, and intellect.

And the pitchman stood before the gates with his bonded smile. “You can call me Sin,” he said, “And oh do I have a deal for you!” And the old men of the city came, seated on cushioned litters borne on the bare and broken backs of the populace. They loved Sin, loved his words and his promises. He glittered like the horse's eyes and they did so love the spectacle.

Sin played his little tune, a sales pitch for the old men, the empty, and the lost. He played to their vanity but also their fear. A fear that had buried itself deep into their hearts and souls. A fear that whispered in their ears, a constant refrain, “Everyone else is just like you.”

Sin loved their fear. It made the sale so much easier. The horse was safe or so Sin said. Only Sin could make it safe. After all, it was a product of the city crafted from the shared wealth of its people. It had to be cleaned and processed by Sin. Here it was, crafted into an idol, now presented as a tool for power and control. And the sky grew dark, and the lightning struck, two bolts like serpents to the ground. People screamed and scattered. The old men gasped and hid their faces.

“There is nothing it cannot do!” Sin bellowed, a barker in the midst of his own carnival.

The people cried out. The old men hastily agreed: a king's ransom for the horse which was quickly pulled inside. There were naysayers, of course. Ol' Cap, his hands stained with dirt and ink, tried to tell them it was all a trick. It did no good. The believers were convinced. The old men were afraid. They laughed at his disbelief and cursed him for his ignorance. Sin said nothing, his smile growing wider.

Oh, the celebration that commenced when the horse was finally in its place. It was a new age, they said. Speeches were given. Supposedly wise and learned people came from every corner to take their share of the spotlight. The city was saved. The horse was everywhere. The old men celebrated their wisdom and genius. The believers danced around the horse, enamored by possibility.

But possibility does not feed the hungry nor cure the sick. A hollow horse helps nothing. Time ticked on. Sin left, his pockets full of the last remnant of a dying city's treasury. The horse remained. It took too long for the people to realize that there was nothing inside. The horse was an empty shell, and those who worshiped it grew emptier, still. The city would fall, new Troy like old Troy. Unlike, old Troy, however, there were no enemies outside the gates. Our only enemies were ourselves. Our murderer, our own transparent vanity.

Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

- Dante (The Inferno)

I am in the middle of my life, and I am watching people die. It's interesting to face mortality not as a thing that comes for you nor as the dark-robed phantom we imagine, but as a universal constant. Death is not so much an entity, but an end to a journey that many of us are not ready to finish.

We all know that time is fleeting in some abstract way. One could argue it is an aspect of the human condition. The invincibility of youth is nearly a myth and lasts mere moments. Even as adolescents and young adults, we know an end is coming. It is just easy to put it off. It is a debt, but when we are young there is still plenty of time before payment comes due. Now, I hear the resignation in their voices. The acceptance in those around me that in just a few more years, the odds are they will be gone. Paid in full. It isn't bitterness, just an understanding that time keeps moving.

So it does, I suppose, but I am in the middle of this journey, and I am lost. My wood is dark but it flickers with light, bits clicking on and off, electrical matter sparks in the distance, and somewhere there is a screen of static, intermittent blacks and whites, hovering like witch-light on the horizon. I am drawn to it. Attraction not fatal but feral, animal driven and instinctual.

Family is the worst at such moments. “It was hard, but you had a good childhood, right? It was good, wasn't it?” the question is not a question, it is a plea. A request to be told that past is the past and that the wounds that linger will not carry into death. They won't. Wounds are wasted on the dead. It is the living who must suffer. But I am lost, and I say something non-committal—a lie wrapped in truth. They are my craft and specialty—my authorial intent is never clear sometimes even to me.

I tread past them, deeper into the wood. I imagine if there is an afterlife, I will not go to heaven. If it is anything like it is described, I cannot imagine it as anything but a sort of personal hell. Imagine being trapped for an eternity with a being who has the power to save everyone from hell but who refuses to do so. Instead, he bring souls into being knowing they will suffer for an eternity because they did not worship him appropriately. His heaven is nothing more that an eternal celebration of narcissism and pettiness.

The voices in the wood where I am lost sound hollow and glitchy now. I am moving to the flickering screen. Somewhere in a corner of my mind that never shuts off, there is a catalog of scenes playing. Static as a feature of fear, loss, and death. From Gibson's Neuromancer, to The Ring, to The Outer Limits, to Poltergeist, to every schlock horror movie, the flicker of the static-filled screen, random movement that our minds struggle to turn into meaningful data seeking monsters in a scatter of light and dark, compel us and leave us feeling lost and alone.

I should turn back to the wood. I should sit with those resigned to the end. There is a peace in that. Surrender to what may come and let it be. Reader, I don't know how to do that. If I am honest, if I did know, I would do everything to forget. I have no interest in peaceful surrender to the ebb of time. I may fall to it. Indeed, I likely will, but until I do how could I not continue to wander. I am lost in the forest dark, in the middle of my life. I do not know what comes next. I do not know what the future will bring and I am not resigned, I am exultant.

I am lost. Sing it with me. We are lost. Be lost. The past died. The future, who knows. We are in the woods. There is shadow and danger everywhere. There is risk and pain and all sorts of nastiness, but there is also dark pleasure, new mysteries, magic, knowledge, and a future that isn't scripted nor known. I am heading to that screen. Something is swirling there in the dark. Maybe it is the abyss, but if it takes me, then the next journey begins.

When I was five, I lived in a magical place in the middle the woods. Where I lived there were no power lines to connect us. Those before us had made the herculean effort to get a phone line attached, but electric power remained out of reach. We lived in a world of gaslight, propane lamps, and wood fire. I could not give you a comparison. I did not have one at the time, but I loved that place. It was filled with warm light and crackling embers—the smell of baked bread and an outside world of endless possibility just beyond the treeline.

I would spend my summer days outside. This was one such day. I had chased the dogs and wandered off into the forest. I pretended I was a bear and all the creatures were my friends. We would dance and run and growl and fight, but then make up with smile and good humor as can only happen in a child's world. After I had exhausted the day, or at least myself, I trudged back to the house and swung on the wooden swing my father had made.

That swing was my triumph of the week. I had learned the motion, you see. I had learned how to make the swing move without anyone else. I didn't need to call for a push. I could just move my legs and the swing would take me. I had discovered my own source of perpetual motion, and I was enthralled with my genius. I kept the swing going, getting it as high as I dared. Then, like the daredevil I was, I leapt into the sky.

My landing was not graceful. I didn't care. I fell and rolled and laughed. I can recall laying on my back staring at the clouds as they moved across the sky. I felt the planet there. I felt connected. A trick of water vapor and wind, but I swore I felt the tilt of our world and for a moment I wondered if it would throw me off into the sky. A skinny five year old child laying on the grass before a wooden swing that was just beginning to settle.

Reader, I share this with you now, because it was the first magic I knew. It was my first secret. As I lay there, watching the sky, I saw people. I saw people on horseback. Shadows in the sun, leaping between the clouds, and I looked away when I saw them. It was as if I knew I was seeing something I shouldn't, something I couldn't. I was a child, prone to fantasy there is no doubt—I still am—but I was so sure I saw them. When I dared to look back, though, there was nothing but the clouds, the sun, and the blue sky beyond.

I did not know then what I know now. I did not know that within two years I would leave that place and never see it again. Time would move on. The wooden swing would fall down, and the shouts of my parents would rise up. There would be courtrooms and threats and that magical world where I had once been so connected would simply fade away into a memory. My own lost Arcadia.

I told no one what I saw. Not my mother or father, not a single person for many decades. I told no one even after the rosy hue of childhood became clouded and dark. I stayed silent as time played its cruel games. I held that vision clutched in my head in the darkest moments. I protected that memory because it was my own. It may have been a trick of the light, nothing but shadow and vapor, but it was mine and it was a good memory of a time I will never see again.

Hold your magic, Reader. Save it and guard it. It is the only sacred thing we have.

A Glimpse into Hell, or Fear – Elihu Vedder

When I was a child, the world was big and scary. When I grew up, I learned it was small and even scarier. There is something of a farce to human life. We have spread across this planet like a plague. We have bent, shaped, and twisted the world to match our own twisted will. We dominate other species wiping them out without barely a thought. We are powerful, and we are terrified.

Perhaps, this is just another aspect for Burke's considerations. We are not beautiful. We are sublime. We tremble at our own vastness and our capacity for horror against our own bodies. We are individuals, inextricably linked, intimately connected, and our greatest crimes are all self-inflicted. Imagine the terror of being trapped to another soul who has dark thoughts as bad as yours, desires as twisted, and hatreds just as deep. We are uncontrollable creatures bound to other creatures that we cannot control.

But we will try! Oh my, will we try. We will wrap ourselves in chains of guilt and shame. We will quake at a pretense of beings who seek to make our wrongs right. Powerful gods who created us to be monsters, set us to fail, damned us to torment, but who secretly love us (a litany of abuse institutionalized as truth). In our fear we will silence difference, demand obedience, and erase any deviation from a fictional norm based on the fantasies of the most paranoid among us. We don't fear hell. We craft it, daily. Our world is a loving creation of our own paranoia, buried in bile and blood.

I should end it here. Some days, I want to. Some days, I think that is the end of it. The horrors overwhelm and for a moment that is all I see. Then I remember,

There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now, And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge and urge and urge, Always the procreant urge of the world.

Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and increase, always sex, Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life.

—Walt Whitman (A Song of Myself)

It is too easy. It is too easy to write us off. We, the damned, named as evil before we started to breathe and cursed before we began our strange and silly existence. We are more than we seem and less. Burke never got it right. There is no difference between the beautiful and the sublime. There is only a shift in perspective.

I am bound to you, dear reader, and you to me. That could terrify us, but it should also thrill us. You have such desires. You have such dreams. Your thoughts like mine, moving at a thousand miles a minute, we can do such magic together. Unfettered by fear, unbound from the chains of guilt and shame, there is a universe for us, precious for the mere moments of its existence and infinite in its possibilities.