When it comes to symbolism (whether it’s in art, music, movies, religion… whatever) I tend to not be a fan.  Perhaps it’s because I don’t understand it completely. Perhaps it’s because I do understand it and just don’t like it.

I just watched the second half of Black Hawk Down on FX. I enjoy this movie and similar wartime stories like Band of Brothers. It’s a single scene at the end that put me onto this train of thought. If you’re not familiar with the story, the U.S. military is trying to take down a warlord in Somalia. Everything goes awry when a helicopter (a black hawk) is shot down. The movie then encompasses the attempts and eventual extraction of the survivors and bodies of the dead.

At the end of the movie, the general in charge of the operation walks into a medical tent. Without the expertise to help save the soldiers in the tent, he grabs one of those medical covers and leans over to clean up some blood on the floor. Instead of cleaning the blood, he ends up just smearing it more and more all over.

The symbolism being that despite this man’s efforts in the prior events, he only caused more deaths and injuries. The more he tried to get his men out, the more harm occurred. I get it. But it’s a stupid point to make and an even more stupid way to make the point.

It’s as if the filmmakers wanted to say that the U.S. military had no business being in Somalia in the first place. Never mind the genocidal cleansing going on that the general populace was in no position to prevent. Never mind that supplies delivered to the people were taken by this warlord and horded for himself and his men. What I’m taking from this moment of the movie is that the whole thing just shouldn’t have been.

My other problem with the scene is the way it is portrayed. The general grabs a surgical cover and tries to clean the blood. That’s not how you clean up blood. Those things aren’t supposed to absorb liquids. Grab a towel or something. An item meant to clean fluids, especially blood.

Maybe that’s really the real symbolism going on in the scene: there are better tools we can use to stop the spreading blood. If that’s the case, it’s still not satisfactory for me. The U.N. was trying all it could to peacefully resolve the problems in the country and they weren’t getting anywhere. In fact, their attempts to aid the population by airdropping supplies could be seen as directly providing power to the warlord since he would take those supplies and only give them to people who joined his little army.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

However, despite my distaste for it generally, there are some instances of symbolism that I absolutely adore. Single lines in songs or scenes in movies that make me sigh and grin while I think about how beautiful they really are to me. I don’t want to go too in depth into them, but I will list a few.

Brick, by Ben Folds Five. Interesting note, when this song came out it coincided with a running joke I had made about a brick. I like the symbolism of the song and certain poetic snippets. It’s easy to imagine the image of Ben Folds in the water with a brick tied to his leg as he struggles to reach the surface for one more breath. Also, “The smell of cold…” That’s genius. “For the moment we’re alone. She’s alone. And I’m alone.” Oh Ben.

Fistful of Sand, by The Bravery. This is a song you need to listen to if you haven’t. You can listen to it on their website here. It’s track 8. The lyrics are:

Every morning I wake up and you are home
But in your eyes I see that I’m alone
You’ve left me with your body in my arms
But I can’t feel you anymore – You are gone

I can touch your skin but you aren’t there
Frustration burns in me, it’s more than I can bear
I wanna take you in my fists and squeeze the life back into you
But there is nothing I can do – You are gone
And I can hold you in my hands
But you are gone, you are gone, you are gone

You’ve slipped away like a fistful of sand
You are gone, you are gone, you are gone

I am staring straight into your eyes
You never turn away or tell me lies
But you are with some other man while I am lying next to you
And there is nothing I can do, you are gone

It could just be the child inside of me, but I love the imagery of squeezing a fistful of sand. The tighter you squeeze, the easier the sand escapes your fingers. Just like star systems escaping the evil empire!

Stars in relation to traditional religious application. Back when my sister got married, a couple of my brothers spent the time we were in the temple walking around. They happened to notice the stars depicted all over the temple in various forms, including several upside down stars.

What’s the deal with this? It’s true that today an upside down star is a symbol used for satanism, but that has only been a relatively recent adoption of the symbol. Traditionally when used in religious terms a star represents many things, most importantly that of communication between man and God. A star pointed upwards indicates man’s desire to reach the Lord. A star pointed downwards indicates God’s reach to man. You might note in the concept drawing of the star on the right, the point downwards is elongated, meaning that God is reaching further to us than we are reaching to him.

Those are just a few examples of symbolism I like. That aren’t indicative of all types of symbolism I enjoy, they just happened to be the three that I thought of first.

I want to first acknowledge the possibility that this post and all other posts/statements/arguments/anything else I have said in the course of my life could fit the mold of what I am about to rant about. That being said, I would like to think that all such comments made by me were either sufficiently backed up with some form (a flawed form is still a form) of reasoning where another person who either agreed or disagreed could at least say something akin to “You’re wrong and an idiot yourself, Neal, but I can at least see how you got to that erroneous conclusion.”

Why am I making the point to clear this with you, you might be asking right now. Because I am about to make one of the most profound statements that we as a civilization of human beings could ever realize even though most everyone has already stated it themselves, myself included. It’s still a statement that warrants saying though, such as a warning that something is hot and best not be touched. It’s a voice of warning for all others who for a split second may have forgotten.

This profound voice of warning is this: the internet is full of morons.

There is a reason which has recently reaffirmed my stance on this. Allow me to share it with you.

The other day I was reading a post made on Wes and Sandy’s blog. It was one posted by Sandy about some recipes they had tried and enjoyed. One of the recipes was for a butter nut lasagna which sounded particularly interesting since: 1) I find lasagna to be a marvelous dish; 2) it’s a vegetarian lasagna (if you recall I have been veering away from red meat and even meat in general of late); 3) I enjoy the taste of butter nut squash; and 4) I happen to have a large butter nut squash sitting on my cold kitchen floor right now.

I looked over the recipe and thought to myself, “Yes, this looks good. I wonder what others have said about it” and foolishly clicked on the comments made. The top comment is the one that caught me off guard with its low score and explanation. In short, it related the story of this person removing the cream from the recipe to make the meal more healthy, after which they were disappointed with how dry the dish was, and then proceeded to direct readers to another lasagna recipe which they classified as being even less healthy.

Perhaps you can follow my dismay at this comment by my paraphrasing of it. If not, allow me to walk you through why I wanted to slap this individual and their faulty thought processes. This person wanted to make the recipe a little more healthy by not using the fatty cream which the ingredients call for. Fair enough. However, cream adds more than fat to recipes and one of those things it adds is moisture. He/she must have not recognized this as he/she did not choose to provide a replacement for this ingredient, or at least failed to mention it. This lack of moisture in the dish as it baked resulted in the lasagna being more dry than they would have preferred.

This is the beginning of where I was so dumbfounded. They, by their obvious and deliberate choice removed the cream from the recipe. Yet this person faulted the recipe for being dry. They did not score themselves low, they scored the recipe low. That is enough to make me wonder what they were thinking, but they immediately proceeded to tell people not to make this recipe but to instead look for another particular recipe on the website which they admitted to be far less healthy.

What?! You ruined this recipe yourself to make it more healthy than it called for and faulted it, but yet you are directing other people to another recipe which you are clearly saying is even less healthy? How does that make any sense? I wanted to reach into my monitor, grasp this person firmly on the shoulders, and shake them while saying “YOU are the one that ruined this recipe to make it more healthy! It is YOUR fault that it turned out to be dry! And now YOU are the one telling others not to use this recipe but another one that goes even more against the reason why YOU changed this recipe in the first place!” Then I would have slapped them across the face and left them alone to wallow in their own stupidity while I marveled at how I had reached through a monitor to someone else.

If you take nothing from this story but a slight smile at the idiocy of this person then I’m glad for that. If you want to take something else with you, take this piece of advice:

Watch yourselves out there. The internets are filled with the social rejects of our day which hide behind anonymous User IDs while they spout illogical rhetoric and bigoted remarks. They are not to be trusted.

If I could, I would transfer myself to their computers andhave a battle royale amid their circuitry as the Superhuman Samurai Cyber Squad would do.

This will be somewhat long so brace yourself to stop and come back later. The many sub-topics that will follow in this entry have been bugging me for a while but I felt the need to repress them and let you all go about your life without me letting you know how wrong you all are. After all, no one wants to spend a lot of time around someone that’s always countering what they say with a better point of view or correcting in such a way that makes them cower at least emotionally but also physically sometimes. I’m not going to start with the inciting incident that pushed me over the edge just moments ago though. Instead I’m going to start with something else. Something that you might not be wrong about but which everyone else is.

That subject is Batman. Specifically the talk about The Dark Knight, but Batman in general will factor as well. When The Dark Knight came out I was taking a film class at SLCC. It just so happens that I am also taking a film class now at BYU (the very same film class even. This is not because I failed the SLCC class or anything and want to cover that grade up, I got an A. I’m taking the class again because the ever helpful advisor can’t tell me if that class will transfer over as the same class). Anyway, in both classes and elsewhere I hear people talk about how moody and dark the movie is and how it’s got such a great atmosphere compared to the comic books and that it tells a great story about right and wrong and how.. wait. That’s where I need to be. The comic books are not dark, moody, atmospheric, or based around the concepts or moral rights and wrongs? I want to slap them in the face and ask what comic books they’ve been reading. More specifically, what Batman comic books have they been reading?

I have a modest collection of Batman comics. Perhaps more than you but I do not consider it to be absolute or finished from where I want it to be. Each one of them deals with a terrific concept of right versus wrong and the best way for Batman to deal with it. They involve dark, moody atmospheres as well. In fact, one of the only pivotal events I can recall off of the top of my head that doesn’t take place in the darkness is the death of Jason Todd (the second Robin). That was during the day. Anyone that says a real Batman comic cannot compare to the methods and messages of The Dark Knight doesn’t know what they’re talking about. They haven’t read the Knightfall series and seen Batman push himself literally to the edge of his abilities in defense of Gotham City only to have his back broken, appoint a quickly corrupted replacement, and struggle through the painful recuperation process to depose Gotham’s “savior.” They haven’t read the story arc that begins in Contagion and closes in No Man’s Land where Batman is forced to watch as the people he has sworn to protect are reduced to a ravenous mob under the control of his worst enemies. The slow process to retake Gotham City from those villains is truly an epic undertaking, all the while not having the support of the remaining police force. So don’t tell me that The Dark Knight was such a tremendous departure from the comics because you’re wrong.

Now some of you might be saying to yourself “But Neal, I agree with that.” Maybe you do. But you’re almost certainly wrong about this. How many of you have seen Star Wars? Raise your hands. Was it recently? I mean the original trilogy here. Keep that in mind. Now think about the last time you watched the prequel trilogy. Okay. Let’s keep these in mind and think about them. How many of you think the prequel trilogy was hogwash compared to the original trilogy? Well, you’re wrong. See. I knew we’d find something you disagreed with me about. I’m not saying that the prequel trilogy was oscar worthy. I’m just saying that you’re wrong that it was really that bad and that the original trilogy isn’t oscar worthy either.

The way I see it there are some things you’re not taking into account when you think of all those warm, fuzzy feelings you get when you think of the original trilogy (hereafter known as just the originals) compared to the prequels: 1) You’re not five anymore. The things you once thought were groundbreaking and truly awesome really aren’t so you can’t base you’re perception on those seedling memories of yours. Go watch an old episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or G.I. Joe and you’ll see. 2) The dialogue in the prequels isn’t much worse than the originals. Oh, do you not like when they characters just tell you how they’re feeling or say arbitrary comments that are completely out of place? “I want to learn the ways of the force and become a jedi like my father.” How are you really feeling Luke? What’s that? You want to waste time with your friends by going into Toschi Station to pick up some power converters? “Into the chute flyboy!” Or what about that inane “Yee-Haw!” by Han at the end? This is the kind of dialogue that does it for you as a viewer? I don’t think this is any better than “Hold me like you did back on Naboo.” Yeah, that’s pretty bad, but so is everything from the originals. 3) C-3PO is as much a pansy and annoyance in the originals as in the prequels. Don’t argue. Yes he is.

Again, I’m not saying that the prequels are really much to give a lot of praise to. I’m telling you that for nearly any reason you can come up with about why you think the prequels are so bad (except Jar Jar, who also isn’t nearly as bad as you think) can be used against the originals. Also, anyone that complains about changes made in the special editions of the originals is a certifiable idiot. Do you really want to just look at a blank white wall on Cloud City instead of seeing the actual clouds and city instead? Should the Dewbacks really be inanimate and just sit there? The prequels are not as bad as you think unless you think the originals are pretty bad too. Take of your rose-colored “I like to complain about little things glasses” and face it folks. You’re wrong.

I’ve probably hit a soft spot for some of you with that last one so let me just wrap up with another reason why you’re wrong. This is the topic that pushed me over the edge and made me want to write all this and post it for the world to see. I was looking over some news about a possible upcoming movie that I am very interested in when I started reading the comments people had to say after. This movie is the so far unnamed sequel to Superman Returns (I’ve heard Man of Steel being batted around but nothing official). Of course the talk about Superman Returns was all negative as this has become the popular way to reflect on the awesomenss that was the movie. Just to be clear, nearly all talk from such people I have heard held nothing but praise for at least the first two original Superman movies starring Christopher Reeve. My reasoning of why you’re wrong about this point will actually pull from both of the above. First of all, if you think Superman I and/or II was a/were masterpiece(s) then you, my friend, are an idiot. As stated in my argument against you regarding Star Wars, you’re not five and you need to go back and watch them again. Pretty terrible, albeit in a passable way.

There’s something you need to know about the concept of Superman and why he is such a role model for us to look towards. That is that Superman is not good for what he does, he is good for what he doesn’t do. It is the definitive “Boy Scout” attitude of Superman which makes him so great. He’s a very powerful being capable of forcing his view on nearly everyone, but he doesn’t. Superman chooses to restrain himself and even others when it would seem that he shouldn’t, so long as he has reasonable cause to do so. Case in point, the death of Jason Todd. Batman was understandably distraught over the loss of his sidekick and upon discovering both that the Joker was the cause and where he was, Batman marched on to make the Joker pay. Superman intercepted Batman because the Joker had been given diplomatic immunity. Superman didn’t support the Joker in any way, but he had to stop Batman because it was the right thing to do according to justice. Batman could not harm the Joker and Superman was going to see to it even if we looked at him as being a bad guy for it.

Now back to Superman Returns. I really have to wonder what you didn’t like about it. Surely you can’t be expecting an all out battle royale. Can you be? He’s Superman. He can pick up a large island made out of the bane of his existence and fly it into space. What kind of a fight are you expecting? Superman isn’t about the fighting like Batman. He’s about doing what he can to save others while still controlling himself and adhering to a higher power. The dilemma Superman faces in Returns is not one of strength of muscle, but strength of heart (which is a muscle, but not the physical heart). Keep in mind that he left Earth to see if there was even a slim chance Krypton might not have been destroyed and it has been five years. People have forgotten him and the world has decayed in his absence. Worst yet, his love is being awarded for an article about why they don’t need him and has seemingly had a child with someone else that she is engaged to. Watch it again. Don’t expect non-stop action when you do. It’s a love story, one where the main character appears to be losing. What would you do if faced with such a situation? Or rather, what wouldn’t you do? Remember, that’s what defines Superman. Until you do, you’re just going to be wrong.

So let’s recap shall we? Batman was gritty and dark before The Dark Knight. The prequel trilogy of Star Wars is hardly worse than the original trilogy. And Superman Returns was everything it needed to be, but you weren’t.  If you think differently to any of these just remember one thing:

You’re wrong.

Period

I’ll be honest, this post doesn’t have a whole lot to do with eBay. It’s more of something that centers around something I learned while employed at the auction site. In training they present you with eBay’s “Values” of how people are. The very first one (and the one that I will be relating to) is “People are basically good.” Their meaning behind this value is that in a given situation you can expect a person to do what is socially considered “right” even if there would be no compensation.

That’s all fine and dandy and I used to believe that. It’s that past tense qualifier in the sentence just prior to this one that led me to some reflection and subsequently this post. I used to believe people are basically good. Now I don’t. It’s not as if some major event has happened and now I am a doom-saying pessimist, which I don’t think I am anyway. I’ve steadily come to this perspective from a long line of small events which factor more into eBay’s value than large events. After all, it is those small seemingly inconsequential acts where the “basically” comes from.

Allow me to illustrate one aspect of this state of mind that’s put me where I am. Driving. I’m sure all of you have the most wonderful time driving and never experience anything that I come across despite the fact that recently I have spent much less time behind the wheel or even in a car compared to the average time I have in the past. What I have noticed is a general decline in the overall courtesy, decency, and skill of the common driver while combined with an ever present increase in reckless maneuvering, inattentiveness, and selfishness.

I doubt I need to pick out specific examples I have seen. Instead I could provide a general scenario that you more than likely could relate to. Such as you’re sitting at an intersection when the light turns green but you don’t start moving. The reason for that? You’re waiting for that line of left-turning cars to stop moving. Mind you, you’re not entirely waiting for them to exit the intersection so much as for them to stop entering it first. Obviously that little arrow idicating that moments ago it was their time to go has since turned red or else yours wouldn’t be green, but that doesn’t matter. They want to get where their going more than you do. One thing about this that really bugs me is that in Utah the lights don’t change instantly. That is, when a light turns red there is about a one second delay before the next appropriate light changes to green (some places I have been it is an instant change). This means that those people have been running a very obviously red light and they continue to do so.

One more generality I’ll bring up is lane changes to make an exit or turn. How often do you see someone cut across several lanes of busy traffic because their turn must have come up unexpectadly, either because they weren’t paying attention or someone wasn’t sure or they just saw a sign…. Whatever the reason, it happens pretty frequently around me. I’m not saying that everyone should automatically know where everything is and move into the proper lane ahead of time, but certainly we can expect a little more caution and/or forethought in the matter. I don’t know about you, but when I’m going somewhere I’ve never been before I like to look at a map before hand. Google is a very nice way to do this since I can get a satellite image as well as a streetview now if I feel like I need it. Also, if I’m cruising along and I see that I was supposed to turn back there I don’t jerk the wheel to get into the necessary lane. If I have to I’ll go through the intersection or to the next exit and flip a bi.. I mean do a U-turn or something. It’s not terribly inconvenient for me and it’s much more safe for everyone.

While these two situations are by no means all encompassing, the standard for everyone, or my sole reason for feeling the way I do, they certainly are a part and represent a general attitude increase that is becoming ever more obvious in similar and disimilar situations from what I have seen. One could argue that I am looking for it so I see it more, but that doesn’t fully account for how I started to see it to begin with or why it is clearly increasing. Do you agree/disagree with my perspective and/or observations?

As I sit here at work and drink from my thermos of yerba mate, I can’t help but think about my blog. Yes, what you are currently reading. I’m fairly lucky in that I found a job where all I do is look at a computer or read until someone comes up to ask me how to access the wireless internet at SLCC or to tell me they are having trouble printing. These situations are few and far between when they happen. Which leaves me ample time to look around on the internets. I’m surprised to say that I have had my fill of such internets. It usually takes me about thirty minutes to do my rounds of gaming news sites and the like. Once I’m done I sort of stare into nothing for a couple more minutes while I ponder what I will do next.

Which led me to my blog. I like writing here. I’m pretty sure the only people that read it are Wendee, my mom, and Sam. I don’t think anyone else knows about it. That’s okay though. I haven’t been good about writing for the past couple months. I just never got around to it even while here at work. Whenever I would think of something to do, I tended to do homework or play a game. I really started to despise the programming on the part of mahjong makers since they didn’t prevent matching tiles from ending up on top of one another. That is so lame. And there’s no way you can know what you’ve done until it’s too late. Stupid programmers.

Today though, as I was thinking of something to do and thought of my blog, I remembered my post from yesterday about the origins of the story I am writing. I then thought of another factor I wanted to explain. It concerns the inner struggles that most of the characters face; the choices they have to make each day of their lives.

Let me sidetrack again, just like the last post. I enjoy playing video games. My favorite genre of game is RPG (role-playing-game). In these games, you typically play as a character that grows and develops as you progress through the story. Along the way you meet up with fellow adventurers and often get them to join your party while you crusade against an evil force. This is not the formula that all RPGs use, but along those lines. Almost without exclusion, in an RPG your character levels up as he/she gains experience. As the player, you make these choices of what type of character he/she will become. These days you also get to choose the dialogue of your character. This is one facet of the genre that hooked me.

Another sidetrack. Nearly any RPG in existence today owes much of its origin to Dungeons and Dragons. Yes, that nerdy game where high school students pretend to be elves and fight orcs while drinking Mountain Dew and eating Doritos. As nerdy (and fun) as that sounds, there was one concept in the game that far surpassed all others in making the game an enjoyable experience. Choice. You got to choose what you did. Every detail. If you were walking through a town and saw a bar, you could go in for a drink and start a fight. Your character could do anything you wanted him/her to do.  Often times, these choices would have positive or negative consequences. And how you played would determine even how you viewed those consequences as being positive or negative because of your character’s alignment (good, neutral, or evil). Each of those had an impact on how you would play the game and how things would unfold.

Back to the first sidetrack on RPGs. One game in particular caught my imagination. Baldur’s Gate. This game was based on the Dungeons and Dragons rules. It took place on the common D&D world so fans of D&D were immediately aware of some of the characters and places. In the game, you create a character. You choose everything about the person you can and it plops you right down at the beginning of an amazing adventure. Allow me to spoil it for you.

You find out that you are the literal spawn of the god of murder, Bhaal. Within you flows the half-blood of deity. Evil blood. As you progress through the trilogy of games (there are actually only two games, but the second had a huge expansion so separated that it is seen as its own game) you have to come to terms with this blood within you. You can try to deny it, but it is still inside of you and trying to make you more than you currently are. There are scores of other Bhaal-spawn out there as well. Most in the same struggle you face. But some have embraced their nature and are trying to destroy all the other Bhaal-spawn. The last remaining spawn will have the opportunity to ascend and be a god themselves.

All throughout these games you make decisions that affect the world around you and your fellow adventurers. By the very end you have become a truly powerful individual and have faced many trials of either accepting or denying your heritage and based on these decisions you are presented with one of three endings. If you have been evil and accept the power, if you have been good and accept the power, or if you reject the power in total.

As a whole, this is easily my favorite game. I loved playing through and making the choices I did and seeing how that influenced that current situation and later ones. It’s that idea that within each of us we carry both the seeds of true nobility and true evil at the same time that carried me away. And each choice made the next seem a little easier. Playing the good path made it easier to recognize and accept a future good path. Conversely, playing evil made doing evil easier. But that wasn’t it all. At any point it was still possible to turn good into evil and evil into good. Your future wasn’t set by prior choices, just influenced. As long as you recognized it, you still had control.

I liked that. I liked that a lot. And it just so happens that through this time of playing the Baldur’s Gate games, I was creating this world in my mind. I started to pull certain concepts into my little world. I cultivated this concept of dual-natures within each person and how that would impact the main characters. Certainly if these individuals were to be driving the story, they needed to face more conflict than a fight with a monster each book. These events they will experience and the choices they make will determine how they see the world and how the reader sees them.

When you are introduced to these characters, you will have to think to yourself; is this person good or evil? Have they always been good or evil? Will they always remain good or evil? What would cause them to change? These characters are not set in stone for you (they are for me, after all, I know how it all begins and ends). There are main characters that have changed and there are characters that will change.

These individuals will be constantly struggling with their surroundings. I like to think of it as a war they are engaged in all their life. Each day is a different battle and each choice determines the outcome of that battle. They may win or lose on a certain day, but the war continues on. And just like the character in Baldur’s Gate, just because they have spent most of their life pushing the evil away does not mean it is not a prevalent and dangerous force any longer. The choice is there and always will be.

More and more of late I have been thinking about these stories that I want to get out of my head and put onto paper. I’d put it onto a computer first, and then print it out onto paper for real distribution among my family and friends. I’ve always enjoyed writing. Since I learned how to of course. Since those days as a grade-school lady-killer I have dabbled with various stories. Often they were not very good, not my own intellectual property, or nowhere near being finished.

The first writing I did which I thought had promise was actually based on a video game I played. It’s called Diablo. Someone had already written a book based on the game, but it sucked. Regardless of them being licensed by the game producer, it was boring an unimaginative. So I set out to create a story that interlocked far better with the game.

I failed. I got about three chapters into it and stopped. I established the setting and the character backgrounds, I wrote myself an outline of what would happen, but I just stopped. It wasn’t working out for me so I decided to move on. Over the next couple of years I tried writing other stories. More often than not, these were variations or adaptations of books or movies or TV shows that I enjoyed and I did not like that. Wasn’t there something I could think of that I wanted to write?

As it turns out, there was. And it had been in my head developing for quite some time. A little tangent: At this point in my life I was newly out of high school. Years before, during the summer before entering Bingham I spent most of my time with Rob. One night he and I were sitting in the middle of the road outside his house (the middle of the road is quite fun to sit on) with my bicycle between us. It was after midnight and we were just talking when Rob looks over my shoulder and down the length of the street. That act didn’t catch my attention so much as the expression on his face did, as well as how long he held the gaze. Something very intriguing was down the street. Something that Rob was uncertain about.

So I turned around to see for myself.

For those of you who remember the area, this was when Rob’s street was still craggy. The asphalt had been cracked and repaired numerous times. Along much of the street giant trees hung ominously over half of the roadway. Late at night, with little more light than the stars themselves the setting was in a word, eerie. This night, and this moment solidified in my mind just how eerie it really could be.

At the far end of the street where it ended with 1300 West, a single street light stood casting a yellow glow upon the ground. Silhouetted against that glow was a shadow of a figure. No distinctions of the shadow could be made from the distance we were at, but it two things were clear to us immediately. It was running. Directly toward us.

I turned back to Rob who unlocked his gaze and turned to me, we immediately stood. I lifted my bike as we did and we booked it to his door. Under the lights of his house we decided we were safe and sat again. We talked for nearly a half hour longer before his mother came to the door and told Rob it was too late and that he needed to come inside. We said our goodbyes and I jumped onto my bike and peddled quickly down the driveway.

Having spent so much time talking about other topics I had forgotten about the shadow. As I turned onto the road and looked up I remembered. Not so much because of the street, but because it was still there. My legs froze. My arms froze. I froze.

I had built up enough speed coming down the driveway that I was able to coast. As the spokes of my tires clicked quickly my eyes remained locked on the shadow. It was still running. Still towards me. And was closer. I couldn’t think of what to do other than stare. It was moving towards me and I was moving quickly towards it. As my mind began racing through options, I could go back to Rob’s, I could cut down the tithing hill towards Alex’s house, I could turn around and ride as fast as I could. Nothing seemed like a good choice for the situation. But then the situation changed.

As I was watching the form, it moved into the middle of the street, still running my direction. It moved back to the side. Again it moved to the middle, then back to the side. A third time it moved to the middle. But this time, as it moved to the side of the street it vanished. Disappearing into the fields possibly. Wherever it went though, it was not directly in front of me any longer.

My speed had begun to slow without peddling, so I gathered the courage to raise one feet and drop it on the peddle. With that motion I let my other foot ride the curve and slammed it down when I could. Soon I was not on the seat at all, my body arched over the handle bars, my legs circling the gear as fast as they could go. I hit the end of the street and turned wide in the direction of my house. I made it home safe and jumped into bed.

I thought about that night often after that. Telling friends and sharing stories. It turns out that Rob and I were not the first to see a shadowed form on that road. This fueled the engine in my brain. Slowly at first. It wasn’t what had actually happened even. It was the idea of it. I was fifteen and fairly comfortable with my surroundings, and this very peculiar thing had occurred. I began to wonder. What would it be like for someone in a similar level of comfort with their world who was completely unaware of the true nature of that world? What would it be like for this person as seemingly supernatural events began to take place that were not in line with his or her prior view?

Over the years I developed this concept. How the person would alter. How their understanding and perception would alter with that. And then this imaginary world began to take shape within my head. Pieces fir together, linking themselves into a story. But it wasn’t enough. Soon the world split into two. That was it. That was how this character could be so content with his world when he begins to view influences from another world. He is a part of both, but doesn’t know it. Everyone else was also part of both, and only a few knew it.

From there the worlds expanded. Background information for the setting and characters filled my head and I began to write. I’ve been working on this story since I got out of high school. That’s eight years now, and while it will probably be longer yet until it is ready for public viewing, I’m still working on it. Before I get there though, I feel like I should give you a primer. To help set the mood. That’s why I’m writing this. That’s why you can expect more similar stories or explanations soon.