An Alien from a different planet

I grew up wanting to be Superman.  I wanted to have been born on Krypton.  What I didn’t realize at the time was that I came awfully close.

I have Asperger’s Syndrome, in the Autistic Spectrum.  I was diagnosed in 2006, at the age of 26, after living more than a quarter of a century wondering why I didn’t quite fit in with the rest of the world.  I felt as isolated as Superman, living on a planet not his home, and never quite understood why.  It seemed like everyone else knew what to say, what to do, to fit in together.  I always felt like I was missing some private joke, like everyone else had all attended this big meeting about how to be a community, and left me out.  I didn’t understand people’s feelings or their jokes, didn’t grasp why they talked about certain things in certain ways.

Getting diagnosed made the world make sense.  I knew why I was different.  My brain was structured in a unique way.  It made me cry, with the fear that I could never learn to properly communicate with others.  There was some good news:  I’m extremely high functioning.  That’s why no one really had a problem with me for a quarter of a century.  There were little things, quirks, but nothing that screamed PROBLEM!  The misery was mine to endure alone, must people didn’t even suspect how clueless I was about day to day life.  In part, because “extremely high functioning” translated into a straight-A student who tests as a genius.  Who would suspect such a child had a disability?

No Man an Island was supposed to be my Lord of the Rings, a long epic story of good versus evil, and it was supposed to take decades to write.  It began in the past, with Raphael and Hannah, and was meant to go forward from there.  I started it in high school.  In university, my life became chaotic:  my friends were scattered to the four corners of Canada, I was alone, and in three years some twenty people connected to me died.  So many, in fact, that I missed at least five funerals.  So much chaos is bad for anyone:  for an autistic person, it’s maddening.  I nearly lost myself. 

To make sense of my life, I turned to telling myself stories, as I had as a child.  And my real-life stories started getting incorporated with my fictional ones, enriching and inspiring my imagination.  Pretty soon, my real-life history was influencing NMAI and making it better.  The Companions became based on some of my best friends, bringing them “closer” to me, despite being scattered.  Ethan started reflecting me, unintentionally at first, but then more and more.  Perhaps in a “Mary Sue” way, although I have deliberately appropriated that trope and subverted it.  

When I was diagnosed with Asperger’s, I looked at the story.  And it reflected my own mind back at me.  Ethan had Asperger’s and the story was as much about his struggle with that isolation, as it was about faith, love or adventure.  In fact, he sought all those things because of his isolation.  In a way, as much as Asperger’s made my life make sense, it made the book make sense too.  I don’t expect readers to know a lot about autism, so I have included some information here from Wikipedia for educational purposes.

Asperger’s Disorder is defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) by six main criteria:

1. qualitative impairment in social interaction
2. restricted, repetitive and stereotyped behaviors and interests
3. significant impairment in important areas of functioning
4. no significant delay in language development
5. no significant delay in cognitive development, self-help skills or adaptive behaviors (other than social interaction)

As readers have noted, Ethan can be quite self-centred, and has no clue how to deal with the opposite sex or his friends.  His social impairments are obvious.  His repetitive interests include literature, movies, science and theology, and in fact are the framework for how he interprets the world.  He has sensory impairments, like not reacting to roller-coasters, staring at tail-lights or snow, standing too long in the shower, and not being able to handle the chaos of dance clubs.  His cognitive and language development is above average, so even he is not aware of his Asperger’s until this chapter.  He almost blended in. 

But it is the “almost” that is the tragedy of the story.

(If anyone has further questions, feel free to ask in the comments.  I am learning more and more about AS every day, especially since I live with it, and am happy to answer.)

My Secret Identity

So, as you know by now, I grew up a huge Superman fan.  In fact, I grew up wanting to BE the Man of Steel.  Unfortunately, I’m not tall enough.  Nor bulletproof, so far as I know.

 But, in a sense, I’ve accomplished my goal.  How so?  Let me explain.

 When I was a child, I had a book that collected several Superman stories featuring the affects of the different kinds of Kryptonite.  It showed his designs for lead suits to deal with the radioactive material, stories about the weird affects of the red version, attempts by Luthor to poison him with the green.  But one story stood out in my mind, and still has a hold on me.  Hear the story of the truth about Superman, and who I wanted to be when I grew up:

 A villain named the Fixer attempted to make synthetic Kryptonite.  But, instead of killing the Man of Steel, it erased his memory.  Lost, wandering, a random hobo helps the amnesiac Clark Kent and calls him “bud.”  Another calls him “mac.”  He puts two and two together to get five:  His name must be “Bud Mack.”  He travels the country, trying to figure out what has happened to his memories.

A baseball manager notices Bud Mack is stronger than average, and hires him to play for his team.  Sure enough, Bud is a great pitcher, a fast base runner, and able to hit home runs with ease.  But what no one knows, is that he holds back his great strength, and also possesses X-ray vision and super senses. 

One day, Bud hears two boys outside the stadium with his superb ears.  They’re talking about how they’re too poor to ever buy tickets.  One boy remembers a stadium policy:  if a home run ball leaves the premises, whomever retrieves the ball gets free front-row seats.  The other boy wishes they could be so lucky, but notes the odds are impossible.

Bud immediately slams the next pitch with his bat, directly through the wall of the stadium, to land in the boys’ hands.  They get the seats, and a great memory.  So did I.  What’s the moral of the story?  What does an amnesiac Bud Mack have to do with the truth of Superman?

The real Superman isn’t Clark Kent with his bumbling, nor the costumed Man of Steel and his powers.  No, Superman is an ideal.  The guy who does the right thing, for anyone, even total strangers.  Because it’s the right thing to do.  And that’s what I try to be, day to day.  Even though I can’t fly.

The Song of the Sky

Did you know the whole universe is singing?  Everything that moves vibrates, and every vibration causes sound waves.  Even stars have their own radio signals.  However, I like the way the Bible puts it, in Psalm 19:

  

The heavens are telling the glory of God;

 and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.

Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard;

yet their voice goes out through all the earth,

and their words to the end of the world.

In them he has set a tent for the sun,

which comes forth like a bridegroom leaving his chamber,

and like a strong man runs its course with joy.

 Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them;

and there is nothing hid from its heat.

 

I am not big on having “Beliefs,” with a capital “B.”  What I mean by that, is I’m not really willing to assume I know something so well that it’s an eternal truth.  I like to try and keep an open mind.  I don’t take anything at face value, I test and re-test.  A friend of mine in university, Myke, said that I was more “spiritual than religious,” meaning I looked for the heart of things, but didn’t really buy into the codified structure and traditions.  I think that’s what he meant, anyway.  But part of that, to me, means that I’m not going to set down my ideas in stone, at least not without a lot of reflection.

For instance:  I respect the Bible, as a work of literature, and I think it might contain some witness to the truth of reality and the nature of the universe.  But the respect, for thousands of years of effort that went into it, and the culture that produced it, is more important to me than taking it word for word.  Because I have a similar respect for the religious texts of other faiths as well.  I think they might have pieces of the truth too.  The Bible is more important to me, because of where I am culturally and geographically.  Had I been born somewhere else, I’d have a different perspective.

For another thing:  no matter how many spiritual experiences I’ve had (I guess that might be the subject of another post some day), I don’t assume that they are definitive for other people, or even meaningful.  And I don’t assume that it means God “Really Exists,” because our minds are capable of so much on their own.  We seem able to pyschosomatically convince ourselves of almost anything.  I can’t prove the Bible is true, I wasn’t there when those experiences occurred, nor was I present when it was written.  It’s a marvellous piece of literature, but on its own it is not “proof” of anything.  It’s a book.

So what do I believe, at the end of the day?  I believe that I’m connected to the universe, as my earlier post about the nature of light might indicate.  I hope that the heart of the universe is alive, and I call that hope “God.”

But here’s an idea I have about God, and why so few of us hear anything, despite the universe singing:

I watched the movie “The Horse Whisperer” in high school, with friends.  I liked the story in it about the girl reconnecting with her horse.  The love story between Robert Redford and her mom felt tacked on, and made the movie long and boring.  I only saw it because I was with a group of friends, and they really liked horses.  I would have picked something else, were I alone.

 But it showed me something, that I think is important.  Redford’s job was to help calm a horse that had been wounded, kind of a horse therapist.  But instead of training it, or talking to it, there’s a scene where he takes it to a field and lets it run by itself.  He sits at the edge of the field.  For hours.  The horse stays as far away as possible.  For awhile.  Eventually, because he’s so quiet, because he’s so still, the horse begins to believe he is safe.  He approaches the man, and the healing begins.

Our culture is so rushed, so fast-paced, I think we overlook the magic of silence and calm.  We try to “get things done,” but hard work and effort would have chased that horse away.  It would have spooked him. 

I think God is like the Horse Whisperer, and we are like the horse.  We run around, afraid of our lives and our problems, rushing to get things done.  I think God is sitting “at the edge of the field,” quietly waiting for us to wonder why, to stop still and look back, and listen.  I think that when we pray, or meditate, or find silence in our lives, we stop rushing and learn to hear the silent song of the heart of the universe.

 Sit still and listen.  Can you hear it?

 

The Suspension of Disbelief, or Why I Won’t Watch “Superman Returns”

Any good story makes you care about it.  Regardless of how impossible it seems, you find yourself imagining it is real, and responding to characters in a way that you would friends or family.  You involve yourself in the story-world.  This is commonly called “the suspension of disbelief.”  Without it, you don’t hold a reader’s attention for very long.

 Anyone that knows me well, knows I adore Superman.  At the age of two I ran around my house wearing a kitchen cloth as a cape.  My aunt Karen bought me a real red cape, thinking it looked stupid to let me wear dish towels.  I eventually had tshirts, sweaters, and even underwear.  I think every picture of my childhood features at least one of those items:  the days I looked “normal” I would almost guarantee featured the underwear, as a “secret identity.”

I no longer wear the cape, and the clothes, but I still think about my favourite hero often, in the back of my mind.  I like “Smallville,” a lot, and loved Christopher Reeves’ movies.  I enjoyed “Lois and Clark,” with Teri Hatcher, even though I didn’t think Dean Cain was a great Superman.  Tom Welling might be the best casting ever, and I would make movies with him.  But then there’s the newest film, “Superman Returns.”

I won’t watch it.  I looked forward to it at first, just because I like Superman and wanted to see what new special effects could do with the character.  But then they cast Brandon somebody instead of Tom Welling, and he looks like a model.  Superman is a big guy, not a twelve year old prepubescent.  He looks vaguely like Christopher Reeves, but guess what:  Reeves could act like Superman and Clark Kent, but he needed to gain about fifty pounds to really look like him.  He pulled it off with presence, which The New Guy doesn’t have.  If you don’t even look like the character, how am I supposed to believe you’re him?

That was the first problem.  Batman Begins came out, and Christian Bale made the new Superman look like a pansy.  If they ever met, the new Batman would bitch-slap the new Superman and make him cry like a sissy.  Considering the real Superman is invulnerable, that should give you an idea of how much I think the casting sucked on this one.  If I’m more impressed with Batman, how can I believe you’re the Man of Steel?

Then, I learned more.  The director, Brian Singer of “The Usual Suspects” (awesome film!) decided he liked Richard Donner’s original “Superman” so much, that he would do an homage and make his film a sequel to “Superman 2.”  Well, Superman 2 is a stupid movie.  It features Superman selfishly giving up his powers to have sex with Lois Lane, and then murdering three Kryptonian criminals once he gets his powers back.  He then beats up a trucker who assaulted him when he was a powerless Clark Kent.  Superman would a) never abandon his responsibilities to humanity by giving up his powers, b) abuse those powers by harming someone weaker, or c) commit murder. 

So, the new movie, “Superman Returns,” is based on this piece of garbage.  Superman, after proving his devotion to Lois in Superman 1 by going against the Kryptonian time travel rules, decides to leave her and go find Krypton, because he hears that it might not have been destroyed after all.  Duh, his father told him it was, and the kryptonite he’s allergic to proves it.  So he abandons the woman he loves (after ignoring Krypton law in her favour) to find it?  And comes back years later to find that the one time he had sex with her resulted in a child.  Huh?  Totally unbelievable. 

It gets worse:  Lois is now played by a girl in her early twenties (Kate Bosworth) who looks nothing like Margot Kidder, and yet is supposed to be older and a mother, and the same character.  Because this is a sequel, remember?  And no one seems bothered by the fact that Superman and Clark Kent both went missing for years, and have now returned.  At the same time.  Right.  And being a Kryptonian, Superman couldn’t mate with a human until he lost his powers.  So why does it seem like his son might have super-powers of his own?  Aside from the fact he would have kicked through his mother’s uterus (See “Mallrats”!) he had a human father.  Plus, he never should have existed:  the real Superman would have married Lois.

I can’t suspend disbelief and watch it.  I’ve read a lot about it, and the plot summaries I’ve encountered tell me one thing:  DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE.  I find it hard to believe anyone ever thought it was a good idea to make this monster.

They should have done what “Batman Begins” did so well:  revamp the character for a new generation.  No one asked for a sequel from a movie made 25 years ago.  No child today has probably even watched it.  Reinventing the character, or using the well-established Tom Welling, would have been so much better it boggles my mind that they went in this direction.

 

That’s my two cents on Superman.  Not that anyone asked me, but it’s something I needed to get off my chest.  The character deserves better.  Especially considering I’m looking forward to the new Batman film, “The Dark Knight,” and I don’t care if they ever make another Superman movie right now.

The Structure of Reality, and the Subtext of Writing

Reality seems like one thing and is really another, under the surface.  Right now, you’re a person sitting at a computer, reading my writing.  You have a body, a chair, a computer, a place to live, and so on.  Well, on a totally separate level, you’re really light operating at different wavelengths, so that the protons/electrons/neutrons of the light called “chair” don’t pass through the light called “body.”  They aren’t really solid, they’re different waves of light bouncing off each other like stones rippling over the surface of a pond.

 In other words, you may look solid, but you’re really light.  All these tiny little pieces (atoms) floating together close enough that it looks real.  Reality is kind of a big hologram.  In fact, that’s why you can digitize pictures of it (like for television or the internet) and have it travel from place to place to be seen somewhere else on a screen. 

You can’t see without light:  you don’t see a person, you see the light bouncing off their wavelength, that travels from them to you, into your eye, which converts the beam of light into information your brain can interpret.  And your brain is running on light, too, electrical signals travelling through neuron chains.  In relativity theory, Einstein explains how you as the observer are in fact the centre of your universe, and the whole universe’s physics can be understood from your perspective, as the place where the light gathers to be seen.

 

 What I mean by that is, if you’re standing on a boat, throwing a ball up and down, it goes straight up and straight down for your perspective.  The light you see shows you “straight up, straight down, catch the ball.”  Well, if I stand on shore as the boat moves along, I will see that same ball travel in an arc, as it moves with the boat.  From your perspective you were standing still, but from mine you were moving.  According to Einstein, the physics for both are correct when studied from their individual perspectives.  From where I’m standing, you’d look about two inches tall on your boat, because you’re at a distance.  In my reality, according to Einstein, you ARE two inches tall.

 Stuff like that can make your brain hurt.  My point is, perspective is everything.  Each person is the centre of their own information universe, all the light travels inwards towards them to be interpreted.  At the same time, the light that comes in to be interpreted is also bouncing off you and going outwards, radiating so people can see you in their universe.

 

So the source of light is a focal point, radiating outwards, and the receiver of light is a like a focal point, absorbing inwards.  Flowers collect sunlight, minds collect information, and the universe radiates information/light.  With me so far?

Well, my brain has been absorbing a lot of information.  I’ve studied education, theology, literature, philosophy, history, science, mathematics, and languages.  And I have a natural tendency to see the interconnections of these things, rather than as discrete independent categories.  I naturally want the whole picture, instead of pieces, as I make sense of my universe.  After absorbing it, this is what I want to put out there:

 

It is possible for all these different things to be the same thing.  The way your body and chair are in fact light.  The universe is one thing:  light operating at different wavelengths, so that from our perspective it looks separate, but is in fact a whole.  Put white light through a prism and you’ll see multiple colours:  diversity inside unity.  That’s the way the universe works, being two things at once, connected and separate at the same time.  It just takes shifting perspectives to see the whole and the part.

Now, we know light radiates, and it radiates in all directions at once.  We know the universe is made of light, radiating outwards.  Some scientists believe that there are multiple universes, an infinite number.  There’s a universe where you turned right instead of left, so it’s fairly familiar.  And there are universes so different from our own as to be unrecognizable.  That’s the theory, anyway.  There’s even a theory that it’s not your body that moves, but your consciousness, based on your choices.  You choose to go right, so you go into a universe of “right,” while the person you’re talking to chose left, goes to the “left” universe, and you continue the conversation with his dimensional counterpart, who chose to go “right” while talking to your counterpart, who went “left.”  The conversation seems the same, because from your perspective, there was no noticeable transition.

Sounds messed up, right?  But that’s what physics might be indicating, even at the quantum level of the light energy making up your atomic body. 

How does this apply to writing?  Because that’s in the title of this post, and this blog is about me, the writer, ranting about things that are usually relevant to you, my readers, who generally got here from No Man an Island.  Well, all of this is subtext for the novel.  These are things that I thought about while writing. 

Why did I think about it?  Why is it relevant?  Well, this is my idea:  if there is a God, God is the focal point of the multiple universes, radiating the light outwards into Creation.  God is the name we give the source of light, and God can see all the different directions light takes all at once.  So God has access to all the information:  hence, omniscience.  Light exists outside of time and mass, and is infinite.  So God sees the past/present/future all at the same time.  Prophecy is possible, because it’s just telling someone in the past/present about the future that God can already see.  From God’s perspective, it’s already happened.  You and I just aren’t there yet.

And it makes predestination and freewill possible at the same time, from a scientific perspective.  God made/can see all the infinite possibilities from the focal point.  All the diverse realities and universes.  Well, here you are, sitting in your chair in one of those universes.  Your next choice will pop you into one reality, but the opposite choice still exists out there in the multiverse.  You just don’t experience it.  But God does.  At any time, you can change the direction of your life by making a different choice.  Good or evil, a different path.  God sees all of them, and knows exactly where your consciousness is standing amidst the infinite.

So you choose.  You have free will.  Left or right, good or evil, which way to go.  All the possibilities exist, and God keeps track of all of them.  But they existed before you chose, and still exist even when you don’t choose them.  Put it another way:  You want to go from your house to the library.  On the map, there are multiple streets to choose, lots of houses and trees to see on the way.  You have the free will to choose your route.  But the map, the library, the streets, the trees were already there.  You choose your way:  the destination was predetermined.  Free will and predestination at once:  you’re choosing from an infinite variety that God built before you even showed up.

So, in my mind, God lies at the heart of science, the physical building blocks of the universe, light.  I’m obviously not a traditional thinker.  Well, this affects Ethan’s character, he’s thinking about these things too.  Here’s the chapter it comes up:  The Middle:  Different Car, Same Day .  The rest of what I’ve written here is not in the novel, it’s subtext.  But not many of you have probably studied quantum mechanics, the Big Bang theory, or theology.  So I’m including it here so you can learn more about it, and maybe be inspired to learn more on your own.  When I get time, I’ll search down some pages and links for as much as I can find on the internet.

So what am I trying to say?  Anything is possible, and thinking makes it happen.  It’s all light, and words like “you, me, universe, God, atoms,” are just ways of saying the same thing.  We participate in creating what’s around us.  Furthermore, and this is fun:  the ENTIRE universe is inside your body, at the same time you are inside the universe.  What? – you ask.  What am I talking about?  Well, okay, bear with me:  look in a mirror.  The light of the universe (or your bathroom ceiling) reflects off your body to the mirror, showing it what you look like.  And then the mirror reflects the light back to your eye, allowing your brain to interpret the image and see yourself.  Well, it doesn’t matter how far away that mirror is:  a mile, a lightyear, on the other side of the universe — all light travels onwards infinitely, carrying the image of the object it touches, and picking up the images of other objects along the way.  Light keeps travelling, and carrying information.  Light has no density, you can put as much as you want into any volume.  Like focusing sunlight through a magnifying glass, you can’t fill that little spot, you just add more energy.

So, since light carries the image of everything it touched, and carries your image onwards into eternity, you are both here and out in the universe (as light information, someone could pick up a mirror in the next solar system, magnify the image, and watch what you did decades ago).  And, since the light of your body is made of the light of the universe in the original Big Bang, theoretically that light carries all the information of the universe, the way one cell of your body holds all the genetic information of your entire body’s DNA.  Coincidence, I think not.  And I can back that up with some science (I still need to see how much I can find on the internet) because one tiny part of a hologram in fact holds the entire image.  A penlight will reveal your reflection just as much as the sun:  light travels and carries information, no matter how small the source of light.

 Infinite regression and infinite expansion.  I love science.

Movie Dreams, continued

So yeah, here’s a preliminary list for some more characters.  I would have the most expensive movie cast of all time.  I better become the world’s best-selling author pretty darn quick to be able to pull this off, huh?

Hope Kelley

  I think Kate Bosworth, who I first saw in “The Horse Whisperer,” would be a good Hope.  I really like “Blue Crush,” which I saw with my wife, and she even played Lois Lane.  Those of you who know me, know I am a big Superman fan.  Those of you who know me, also know that I will never actually watch “Superman Returns,” in which she played Lois.  That is actually material for a future rant:  the concept for the movie really pisses me off.  Worse than the new episodes of Star Wars.  (note to self:  Star Wars rant in near future)

The Angels

 I think Ewan MacGregor, of “Star Wars” and “Trainspotting,” would make an excellent angel.  As would Jude Law, Orlando Bloom of “Lord of the Rings” and “Pirates of the Caribbean,” and Sean Bean (also from LOTR) and maybe Daniel Craig, the new James Bond.  Fair-haired, smooth, refined, these British actors could pull off the classy but cold angels of No Man an Island’s Heaven.

I’m torn between Ewan, Jude and Orlando for Raphael, actually.  Ewan seems nicer and more down to earth, but Orlando is younger and has a more action-oriented background.  Jude just looks cool, but I don’t think he’s done any action movies.

Dare to Dream

I was a day dreamer growing up.  I dreamt of true love, starting a family, being in theatre, running cross country, being an artist, a writer, a teacher.  I wanted to run for student government and help people.  And, I wanted to finish writing a book.

 At this stage in my life, I’ve accomplished all my dreams.  I’m only 28!   So I need some new ones.  The book I’ve finished, No Man an Island, has been to an agent, who gave the very good advice that I should write a more focused narrative first, to get my foot in the door, because publishers are probably unlikely to want such an experimental piece from a first-time author.  After I’m established and it’s been cleaned up, then it might be worthwhile to publish NMAI.  So, I need the new goal of a second book, and then getting it published.

Now, my far-fetched, cross my fingers, hope but don’t worry about it dream, is to make NMAI a movie.  Here’s my dream cast, which you will never, ever see.  Not alone because it’s a longshot that it will ever be a movie, but also because you’d never get this many big stars, and sadly, one of them is dead.  I can dream, but I have to wait for Heaven if I want the cast I pictured.

 Alexander Rothrock

 I picture Ashton Kutcher to play our Lancelot, because Alex is based on a friend of mine who looks a lot like Ashton.  He’s funny, and charming, and he’s also proven to be a good dramatic actor.

Jason Shelagh

 Cody Kasch as a young Jay, and Doogie Howser himself, Neil Patrick Harris, as the older version.  I think they’d be perfect.

Astarte

 I’m not really sure, but I think I might like to see Monet Mazur from “40 Days and 40 Nights” and “Torque,” to play the fallen angel Astarte.  She’s got this smouldering, “I’m bad but cool” thing going on.

Genevieve Pitney

 I have a lot of difficulty casting Genevieve.  I can’t think of many blue-eyed brunette actresses.  I settle on Emily Browning as a young Evie, from “Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events.”  I pick her because she’s good, and I think she looks a little like Angelina Jolie.  She can do action, drama and comedy, and I need to pick actors that look similar for the different time periods of the story.  You know, for my hypothetical movie.

Zoe Rothrock and Gwendolyn Pitney

 I really like Anne Hathaway because a) she’s named after Shakespeare’s wife, b) she’s actually a really talented and beautiful actress.  Zoe is a smaller role in the novel, but Anne is so cool it makes me wonder if I need to make the role bigger.  Summer Glau from “Serenity” and “Firefly” might make a better Zoe, she matches Heath’s colouration well for the Rothrock clan, and then we can give Anne blue eyes and make her Gwen.

Neal Rothrock

 One of the reasons this movie will never get made the way I want it to, is the sad reality that Heath Ledger has passed away.  I think he was a marvellous actor, and “Knight’s Tale” is one of my favourite action movies.  I first saw him in “Roar” on television, and knew he’d be bigger.  I look forward to this summer’s new Batman movie, “The Dark Knight,” because I think he’s going to be a fantastic Joker.  He would have made a very nuanced and interesting Neal, but it’s only a dream now.  Rest in peace, Heath.

Ethan Pitney

 Ethan was really hard to cast.  I mean, after all, he’s got a big part and it covers more than forty years.  I’ve always liked Joshua Jackson, ever since “The Mighty Ducks,” and I think Eric Dane from “Grey’s Anatomy” looks like a rugged, older version. 

Mara

 I think it’s really difficult to cast an angel, especially when the character is so important to the story and yet shows up so rarely.  Keira Knightley from “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Bend it like Beckham” seems to possess the willowy grace and ethereal beauty of the character, don’t you think?  Natalie Portman might be in competition though — I’ve had a fan crush on her since “The Professional.”

Obviously, this isn’t everyone.  I don’t have Raphael, Dan, Owen or Evan.  Primarily because Raphael would be really hard to cast, and the others I don’t have a really clear idea of what they look like yet.  For that matter, I need to find my sketches of Jay and Zoe, and maybe then I can try drawing the others.  Evan is hard because you’d need someone who’s a musician as well as an actor.  Dan is tricky because he has to be a really big guy.  Owen, well, how many redhead actors do you know in their twenties?  I’m not casting Ron Weaselly.

So, what do you think?  Any favourites of your own?  Who would you picture?  I don’t want readers to take this list as definitive — it’s very much a work in progress, and not quite how I picture my creations in my head.  These are just the people that come closest right now.  Send me your thoughts!  Who knows, maybe someday I’ll actually accomplish this dream, and your picks might be available for casting!  I wish .

Joy that walks around

My children are walking happiness.  They make me laugh every day.  Even when they misbehave, I love them to pieces.  Often, my wife and I have to take turns disciplining them, so that one of us can go to a different room and laugh, because they’re too cute.

 I have a three year old daughter, and a one year old son.  Just looking at them, you know they are siblings.  Sandy hair, blue eyes, and matching grins. 

My daughter can tell rollicking stories featuring dragons, superheroes, princesses and monsters, and they have a beginning, middle and end, a conflict and a resolution.  Other than “mom” and “dad,” her first word was “backpack.”  Her brother’s was “tickle.”  He knows how to find his eyes, ears, mouth and nose, and in the past two weeks began developing actual vocabulary:  he seems capable of copying anything you say, and sometimes he seems to know when to use it independently.  My favourite is when he tries to sing with his mom, mimicking the vowels and moving his hands to dance.

 Our daughter likes to chant “Revolution!” when she’s on time-out, and looks forward to school in September, reminding us that she’s “so excited” every day.  Until I had children, I didn’t know how much a person could love.

Want to know the limit of love?  There isn’t one. 

The ties that bind

Yep, this post is about family. My wife and kids, to be precise. They’re the most important part of my life.

Now, most people would say that about their family. But I highly doubt you’ll find devotion like mine in many of them. If what I’ve seen in schools and stores first-hand is any indication, a lot of parents spend more time worrying about their own needs than those of their children. The newspaper and televison certainly support that hypothesis: we live in an age of personal entitlement, and with a lack of social responsibility. Children in those circumstances become accessories instead of the main focus of our lives. And that’s despicable.

But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about my family. I met my wife almost nine years ago now, at a camp for people with special needs. She’s still in that field, working with autism, ADHD, brain injuries and Down Syndrome, among other things. She has the biggest heart of anyone I know, and balls the size of Texas. She’ll tell anyone and everyone exactly what she thinks at any given moment, good or bad. I love her guts and her honesty.

But I didn’t know all that when I fell in love with her. The heart is an involuntary muscle, it does not beat for me. It doesn’t do what we want it to. It has a rhyme and reason all its own. And mine fell for her in a simple moment the first week of camp years ago. She was on the payphone, talking to her mom, and crying. I saw her from across the hill, and knew. Somehow I knew she had to leave camp, and in my heart it felt like a terrible loss. Like I was missing out on the opportunity of a lifetime. It was achingly painful, and mysterious: I barely knew her, yet I was utterly certain. It hurt me worse than anything I’ve ever felt, to see this girl cry.

My intuition was right: she had to leave camp with a case of pink-eye. Luckily, it cleared up quickly and she was able to return within the week. By the end of the month, we were dating. From there to here is a long story, but it began with my heart telling me that not having her in my life would be excruciating. I’ve never worried more about another person, never missed anyone the way I miss her when she’s gone.

Having two children with my wife is the greatest blessing I can imagine, because in them we are mingled and inseparable. No matter what happens to us as individuals, parts of us are always together. I’ll probably brag about my amazing kids in the next post. But in this one, I’m honouring my wife and how much I love her. I’ve fought friends and family when they’ve insulted her, injured my body at work to provide for her, and would do anything to make her happy.

And my heart knew that the first moment I saw her cry. It’s easy to love someone when they’re happy and things are easy. I know my wife is my true love because I fell in love with her during adversity, and have survived some of the worst years of my life with her by my side. Her just being there made them the best years of my life, despite deaths in our families, financial difficulties, and health problems. We’ve survived so many things that most people can’t handle.

I wake up every day wondering what I did to deserve someone so wonderful. I grew up with insomnia, and the surest sign that my soul finds its comfort in her is that I sleep well every night, secure in our love for each other.

Hello world!

So, do you know those people who, when you ask them to sign your yearbook, stare at it for like fifteen minutes and then write something crappy, like “Hey!  I’m signing your yearbook!”

Yeah, that was me.

 I also was never able to try keeping a journal for more than half an entry.  It took me a decade to finish writing a novel.  So, I’m not going to journal this, or address it to readers, or worry about it.  I’m just going to rant about life, topics that interest me, topics that annoy me, and generally use this as a sounding board.  I think about too much, and it might be nice to put it down and out of my head.  Especially when some of the topics I want to write about are pretty cool, but don’t suit my fiction site ( http://nomananisland.wordpress.com ).

So, if anyone’s reading this, hey, you’re reading my blog.  No, I won’t sign your yearbook.

Gavin