Legends

He was crying, “I’m not who you think I am!” And she just looked at him and said, “I don’t care,” and snapped his neck.

Never seen a woman do that before. Hell, I’d never seen anyone do that before. Still, scared me to see so much power packed into one person. Seemed more like a stick of dynamite than a person.

Maybe that’s just the fear from what she did next.

The boys stared across at their grandfather with bated breath. They’d never heard him talk about his time in the legions before. He’d mentioned little things here and there as they got older, but once the twins turned fifteen he sat them down at the family table, poured himself a glass of brandy, and told them to listen.

“If you keep staring at me like that, I’ll let you join your friend,” she said. Strange thing to have a short person tower over you. Seems the size of some people doesn’t match their height. “I won’t be any trouble.”

He told the boys he spent the next week following the women through the desert back to their caravan. Never accept special orders if you don’t have special skills or luck. We started with fifteen and ended up two. And boys, I ain’t even in the top twenty of those fifteen.

You got luck then! They both exclaimed. Clamoring to hear more of his story. Their grandfather shook his head, “No, just received more mercy.”

“What did she look like?” The boys asked. Their imagination running wild. Their grandfather shook his head again, “Can’t be described like a normal person. Her face blurs when I try. She stood closer to a force of nature than the rest of us mortals.”

“Was she beautiful?” One of the twins asked with reddening cheeks. The other squirmed in his seat as well.

“Everything dangerous is beautiful. Closer something takes you to death— the more alive you feel. And what’s more beautiful than that?” The boys tried to nod sagely as if they understood. And maybe they did. But boys still wish to know of curves and smiles and softly whispered promises.

So as they sat and listened— they each conjured an image of this woman whose essence marked their grandfather’s soul.

Promise

Do we get to a certain point where we realize we have to release the levy if we’re to live?

Maybe it’s understanding the habit of cautious filing of genuine interaction won’t get you anywhere.

You can’t hold back from life if this life is all that’s promised.

Always acting as if you’re prepping for the “real thing” but this is the real thing. If there had ever been a time to be brave. To be forthright— it’s now. It is always now.

Can’t 90-10 this life. Lay it out on the line. Because that’s where the stakes already are and always have been.

I doubt many would call me gun shy in my decisions. But I’ve always felt myself hold back. That’s I’ve always had more to give.

The only place I haven’t had been is coaching.

One of my goals for 2024 is to write without reservations. To give honest account and reflection to memories that I’d otherwise circle around or leave half-shadowed.

Funny that it’s been staying alone in the holiday season and finally reading a Murakami novel to reawaken an actual writing goal for myself. Or rather, to remember that the point of my own writing was about personal agency.

Wain

Packed office. Laminate coverings over all the desks. Loads of paperwork bundled onto follies as people flow through the building.

A blackboard with a permanent wash of white chalk under changing calendar dates. The soft hum of the quadruple stacked printer. It’s lime network light flashing like a firefly.

The soft plume of steam from the humidifier on the table I’ve never seen anyone sit at.

NHK being turned on at noon as the bell sounds. My early dismissal from the crowded office— where the seating arrangement feels like freighters in the ocean. Clogged shipping lanes and slow passage.

The shuffled steps of workers— if by principle refusing to stride. A dip of the head and quick steps. A bounce to counteract the tiny gait— like a subservient tip toe.

Classic Halfway Switch

“But are you lonely?”

I’m on an island halfway across the world from my friends and family talking to a girl I’m not official with and probably will never be. Switching between two languages and using a mobile dictionary every couple minutes.

Asking if I’m lonely is the equivalent of opening the glass case to the Red Button and giving it a good jab.

Am I lonely? “That’s a difficult question,” I said. “I’m far away from all my loved ones on Christmas. Of course I’m lonely.”

A blunt needle plunging through the thin skin that surrounds my heart. Am I lonely?

Only if I’m being honest with you.

What a terrible, humanizing answer. To a question that makes people cringe when they hear it. I’ve seen naked tightrope walkers less direct than that question. You can slip the question with obfuscation— but that’s telling.

Or— you face it down the barrel. Because we’ve equated loneliness with violence or misery. Or maybe it’s just the cinematic reference that fit best. Almost a Dirty Harry line, “face down the barrel of loneliness, you double tapping, no rope-walking, still clad, conniver.”

I’ve broken up on Christmas. I’ve received an attempted suicide note. I’ve received texts and emails of unrequited love (or maybe just terrible timing). I’ve often fidgeted on Christmas and the days leading up to it in years past.

But this year felt like I took it off completely. I went to work. Walked in the cold, but sunny weather. Sat at a desk for two hours and read the final book in the Malazan Empire series by Steven Erickson. I talked to some coworkers. Discovered the impish delight that is kewpie spicy mayo. Ate some Christmas cake, drank some white wine, and watched the Barbie movie on HBO.

Not exactly the chaotic christmases of the past. Even the insistence push for an answer about loneliness (more a language based thing for the correct response to a question than the content) still felt relaxed. The fate of the world wasn’t on the line. No loves being lost. Just a lazy day where the majority of it I played as a simulated version of Valencia in the 2035 La Liga season and Champions League— trying to secure a continental title for Los Ches for the first time.

I wonder if loneliness changed. Or if my relation to it within myself has changed.

Because I can admit to it— I can feel the desire to want to be in the company of loved ones. But I also enjoy the moments I have here while I have them. It’s taken the better part of a year and a half but I’ve come to a peaceful exchange with solitude.

Some days are Christmas. And some days you vie for the title of European champion on a simulated soccer game. And some years— those are the same day.

The Night Before

The calmest Christmas in years.

Cake, steak, a little bit of work, and some cold ass weather.

I won’t be traveling off the island. I really won’t even going anywhere beyond the office and my apartment. Tomorrow will be spent sat reading at a desk before going to the store to buy some special Japanese style Christmas cake and a sirloin.

The weekend was half an expression of immense gratitude for the pockets of community I’ve been able to find here. And the other half paying for the excesses consumed while in the company of said community.

Officially in the territory of “oh, shit. I don’t have that much time here before I’m gone.” Even with it being six/seven months, there’s a palpable finality to it. And with it a sense of questioning to how it’ll shake out.

But I think there’s always that sense of something next on the horizon for me. I try my best to sit and take a breath from time to time to enjoy where I’m at instead of bulldozing towards my next goal. I’m admittedly not great at acknowledging my own efforts— especially when I’ve managed to achieve something. It’s always been easier to push the goalposts back again and say “well, got to keep on going.”

So, as intermittent snow flurries fall (against the promise that this island never saw snow) I’ve tried to enjoy the little things. The island slang, the small warm cans of coffee from the vending machines that keep my fingers from falling off during my trudge up the hill, the random moments of beauty that stagger the soul— like the perfect circular ring of clouds surrounding the moon the other night.

It’s the passage of time— the days where I learn an awful lot about myself when I’m not doing very much at all.

It is the calmest of christmases— and I hope I don’t come across one quite like it again.

It’s not the holiday, or homesickness, or anything as such. It’s the pause in a time with no pauses— where I recognize I’m already on a road of my own choosing— but that I fear the space between the ending and new beginning. How I’ll return to something I’ve known, but that it’s not what I left. Or that I am not as I left.

So in the slow days before the turn of the year I wonder how I can best greet the changes ahead.

Dandelion

Like the spores of a dandelion, the winds of fate blew away all we held together.

Plans

“What will you do for Christmas?”

“Where are you going this winter vacation?”

A month of the same two questions without an answer that satisfies my coworkers.

This Christmas I’ll be staying in Izuhara. I imagine I’ll be cooking a steak and eating some Christmas cake after work. Just like my college years, there’s no reprieve from work on holidays. The difference is now I’m halfway across the world.

The past week has brought the first gusts of bone-chilling winds. The temperature in the schools hovers around forty degrees and my feet have long since turned to icicles. I’ve been sleeping with my heater set at seventy-four degrees and two comforters are laid on top while I sleep. Still, it seems this winter is determined to dig its gnarled, white fingers into my skin.

I laid in bed and read the beginning blessings from the book I’d bought. Sleep levied it’s strength against my attention, but this line stood out, “The quiet loyalty of breath.” It’s in the first chapter of the John O’Donahue book about blessings.

As I drifted off to sleep— all I could think about was that line. “The quiet loyalty of breath.” All that it meant— wrapping up everything in such a small sentence.

Bubbles

Some people have this ability to use up all your worry. It’s a talent not named in the list of admirable gifts.

Closer to a curse, but we don’t talk about those things out loud.

“It’s worse that you agree.”

“No, it’s worse when you can’t disagree. That’s when you have to make nice with the wriggling truths you’d sought to squash— only to realize like post-rain worms on a sidewalk they nestled between your toes.”

“Silver tongue and pockets full of words no one needs. You should have shipped off to be a playwright.”

“Do you think if someone told you you were effervescent, you’d tell them to shut the fuck up?”

Goofy

And there I was— cackling like the Mad Hatter as I imagined holding my own head like a sparking blender— shoving all the knowledge I’ve ever heard and grinding it to a slurry.

The type movie villains slurp down like fetid sludge as they try to freak the protagonist out in some sort of half-cocked stand-off.

But there’s no stand off, it’s just my creativity slipping the chains and running for the hills.

Readymade to transform into a highland guerrilla— ready to react the glory days of the Pictish marauders that terrorized the Romans and forced Hadrian to build that wall (which wall you ask? Hadrian’s wall. That glorious serpentine shit brick line that divides England and Scotland— more or less).

And all of this energy? All of this irreverent energy— a great thumbing to the cosmic inanity of it all? Because the rule book doesn’t say otherwise.

Kit Kat's, Snacks, And a Whole Ramble on the Nature of Creativity

There’s something about Kit Kat’s that makes them the perfect candy. The combination of chocolate and wafer. The fact that they break apart and you have two mini servings. It may be that one mini Kit Kat never feels like enough, but the cravings don’t kick in until you’re presented with a bag at the supermarket.

You stand in the aisle— eye to eye with those damn black and red bags. You’re jostled by tourists searching for low-quality biscuits and top ramen. Maybe they aren’t, but you’re deliberating because before buying matcha-flavored Kit Kat’s for your friend’s girlfriend back in America, this Kit Kat thing wasn’t a problem.

Buying a small bag once or twice a month is hardly a problem. But this comes from the guy who hasn’t religiously consumed sweets since childhood. So much so, that you’d shed your moniker “Candy ____.” Your sibling coined it, and others ran with it. It described my propensity for sweets and my ineffable quality of luck. It used to drive my middle sibling wild when people would give me things for free. There is no rhyme or reason, just another cosmic instance of the youngest child hitting the jackpot once again.

I’m sure you’re thinking, Hamjackal (or maybe even HJ), wasn’t this originally some inane rambling about Kit Kat’s and their position in the pantheon of sweets? And you’d be right to ask that. Because yes, it was. But now, I’m meandering through memories of formative palette-forming experiences.

When I was around five, I received a toy model semi-truck for my birthday. The truck in and of itself didn’t align with my fancy of 1970s AMC High Boys and the 1950s Chevrolets, but it possessed a functional trailer packed full of peppermints. This gift came from a cousin that I admittedly can’t fucking stand. But credit where credit is due, she knocked it out of the park. I’m sure the peppermints were a last-minute addition— and honestly, kind of a choking hazard when considering I was still pre-elementary school. But it did form my enduring love of peppermint.

This newfound love of peppermint crossed seasons and forms. I’d scour the tree at Christmas for all the candy canes. Peppermint paddies weren’t safe within five hundred yards. Neither were Junior Mints (although I tried to carefully measure those out since my dad was protective of his supply). The worst of all is mint gum. I was once told in a wildly uncouth party game that if I had an essence, it would consist of sweat, mint gum, and soccer. Now, at the time, I wasn’t too keen on the sweat remark but had to admit that showing up to all my college classes with a light sheen of perspiration on my brow following whatever shenanigans I’d been doing before didn’t help.

For the record, I’d argue that I’d also smell like Old Spice (original or endurance) and rosemary (due to my penchant for always snagging a sprig and crushing it in my palms whenever I pass a bush). My point is that we all have scents or flavors that define how we’ve passed through life up to this point.

How many people ask themselves these questions— “What scents would define you?” Dear reader, could you answer that question?

What about how you walk? Your stride. Or the way you stand?

I know, I know, this is venturing far away from the point of Kit Kats and their place in the hall of great snacks. But I think we’re not as far as you’d think. I believe this entire scribble scrabble is centered around the acquisition of taste, personal notable tastes, and how it shapes your image.

There’s an aspect to art in all of this. We make choices as we craft meals— as we discern our palettes. We imagine these things to be mundane, but considering the history and effort behind almost all of it (indeed, history turns into a rabbit hole once you start pursuing spices and sweets), you must admit it’s anything but. There’s nothing ordinary in constructing a Kit Kat when viewed from a slightly larger perspective of time. Cocoa, industrial production, plastics manufacturing— the entire world and its history can be tied to a single snack. And even if you break it down the middle to create those wonderfully delicious left and right sides— it doesn’t matter. Because even after you’ve pondered all the history and serendipity—The vastness of it all hidden within a candy bar.

You’ll just want another god damn Kit Kat.