Imagine building with Legos for years, learning how to build by just building. Adding onto older creations and creating new ones inspired by past ideas that never saw a fully complete stage. One would find that they get better at the craft of building with the material, able to create better things over time by using knowledge of previous successes and mistakes. All from self-taught raw emotion of what is right and what just doesn’t fit together. It becomes a science, a kind that does not borrow from logic but instead from pure intentions and gut reactions. 

      Now, imagine that you are required to shove all of your Legos to the side and replace it only with Lincoln Logs. In addition, these new materials come with a learned individual who tells you all the tricks, the paths to choose from, and instructs you on how to build better things. There is little room for you to grow the craft for yourself, you are required to copy what the individual knows. By watching him carefully and thoughtfully you immediately find your way around problems and road blocks that would normally have taken you months to tackle, months of self discovery.

     And what about the Legos? The material that requires more rules and regulations of how pieces fit together. Forgotten in the dark corners of the creation area. You are told Lincoln Logs are better, they have very little rules on how they fit together. It’s more about the concept compared to the structure. Beauty over logic. And you agree, perhaps it is better than Legos.

     But it was never about logic in the first place, you say. It was all about emotion. It always has been. A way to share what you feel by exploring other worlds and unique individuals who have always existed within you. Just waiting to bleed out onto the page. Waiting to be discovered.

     In an attempt to dig up these worlds and characters, something that Lincoln Logs could never offer, you search for all the pieces of Legos that once use to be your tools. The damage is done, however. Many pieces are missing. Even the pieces that you created yourself, in order to truly create something wonderful. It’s all missing, lost in the depths and overshadowed by the memory of Lincoln Logs. The worlds you created with the old material are half-destroyed, the remains of an original idea. You try to recreate it, but all that comes to mind are the teachings from the individual that will only work with the Lincoln Logs. The ‘better’ material. The material that, once taught by the individual, began to corrupt and destroy those many years of self discovery.

     But you do not give up. You look hard at the leftover worlds, only half there, and begin to consider that maybe they are not half-destroyed but instead half-complete. Working off of the jagged remains you create a bridge that does not repair the world, but makes it better. The key is to ignore what has been taught and only rely on self discovery. Rely on your emotion, the raw essence that only you could ever possess. For an individual cannot be reproduced, but teaching can.

     The result is a world that starts and breathes, built without logic and purely on emotion with the tools that actually rely on logic. Shattering the notion that logic is safe from it’s opposition. But the world slowly changes over the course of time, turning into something that transcends pure emotion and is built upon raw feeling of the creator, taking ques from all forms of building. Creating something that challenges the normalcy of construction. Creating something that is purely the reflection, the echo, of the creator.

     The missing pieces will never be found, and that is a gift. The new knowledge will remain, and that is the challenge. But when combined there shines hope for a better craft.   

 

 Here is just something I cooked up real quick after looking at a tree while waiting for the bus. I didn’t have a chance to edit it, so I’m just going to post it as is. I apologize for it being so raw. Enjoy.

The Lines of a Tree

     The old man asked me a particular question one day, in his normal position under the giant oak trees surrounding the property, on the side behind the large unused farmhouse. He pointed to the trees and asked me how all those lines formed, the lines between the bark that fashion the unbreakable brittle look. This question, like all the rest he gave, was so sudden but foreseen that I took no notice of his abnormal cough that accompanied his spoken word at that time.

     ”Must be the way they grow, it just is. Right?” I said. I was only a young boy at the time and knew little of the structures of things as complex as nature. He nodded at me, like he always did. Never did he call out my ignorance. Sometimes he smiled, most likely from his remembrance of what it was like to be so naive and content with the lack of ascertaining a different side to the coin of the answer. The other side of the coin, to me at that age, was always shrouded in darkness. Perhaps it still is.

     ”Well then, why does the grass grow?” he asked. He was not smiling this time, however. His gaze was set on the tree as he laid against another.

     ”Easy. Grass grows for the cows, so they can live.”

     ”And what about the worms? What purpose do those serve?”

     ”Birds gotta eat something, I reckon.”

     The old man nodded again. “And the birds grow for the cats to eat, I suppose?”

     I thought about this for a moment before agreeing with a shrug. “Nobody said life is fair. Even for those birds.”

     A large chuckle came from the old man, with an addition of a glance towards me. “No, son. Nobody ever did. Which is, in a way, an answer that the opposition should be expected.” His smile faded as he looked back at the tree. “So tell me, if all those things have purpose, then why don’t the lines in the tree have a purpose too?”

     I had no answer.

     ”If they have no purpose, then why does it have so many?” He reached up with his hand and touched the tree beside him, following the grooves of the lines. “So many. Up and down, throughout, every single one a reminder of a better time. Memories adorned with the passing of age, slashed against the unwilling tree, and yet others do not notice them. They are just, like you say, there because that’s the way they grow.”

     ”Maybe that makes it stronger?”

     ”What?” He turned his attention towards me with interest in my meaning.

     ”Well, look at it.” I pointed and he followed with his eyes. “It looks weak, with all those lines, like it has been through a rough time. The more lines it has, the less time it has to make more. But, when you touch the bark it feels strong and sturdy. Safe. Like…I don’t know, as if these lines make it more reliable as a living thing.”

     The old man touched the tree once more before looking back at me. He was smiling now, telling me that I was a smart kid. This was the moment when I first noticed how old his face looked, his eyes and mouth forming so many lines. Too many to count.

-Nicholas Holley

     I’m sitting here alone. Again. All of my roommates are gone, which is not unusual for a weekend. It’s the same every weekend, me being here alone in a large apartment, which usually leads to thinking. And thinking, as most might remember, is not good for me. Here I am, sitting at my desk and thinking about so many different possible endings to every single event coming up in my life. Thinking of all these parallels, most of which would likely never happen. When I finish with a batch of possibilities pertaining to a day, I keep moving farther and farther into the future, the only possible direction to go.

     I suppose I do this from my past experiences with people. For most of these events involve people, how they will react, what movements they will do in this symphony of ups and downs that all jumble together and lead to a rest in the aperture where it dost not belong. The music plays, the people move, and the world slowly comes to an end. But such is life, a means to an end. Everything we touch with our eyes has a time-limit that is constrained within the confines of brutality. Violent winds gushing against us, chipping our stony curvatures, the things we call our bodies, until we crumble. Yes, that time we crumble, when the music takes a rest but never returns until we realize it is too late. The music has ended and so has our souls. Left behind to the cries of a thousand crows that pick it apart and produce an image, with text as tool, of those no longer with us. But the text is a lie. It always is, but it cannot be blamed. For blame gives birth to another crow, adding to the flock of the inky red-eyed beasts.

     But why curse the fate that has its own fate. Time is better spent ascending and descending with the music, in harmony. In accord. In unity. Coming together and taking all the good, and all the bad, for accounts that have not yet happened and forming it into a better statue of etiquette. Though the statue will crumble, like all the rest of the curvatures do, it is a propinquity that we have with ourselves to reach for a better finale, the moment right before the final rest of the symphony, the moment when we can enjoy our lives without the parallels.     

     I wish I could say the reason I have been absent from blogging is from how busy I have been. but that would not be valid. Yes, I have been busy, there is no lie in that, but there have been plenty of times for me to write down my thoughts, whether just raw or in prose. But I did not, instead I’ve found myself staring at the wall again, thinking. Thinking, you see, is my greatest disease. I can’t help but think. About what I’ll eat next, how much work I need to get done, where I’ll be in a month’s time and the precautions, and of course about people. Mostly it’s about people. It’s always about people. 

     Even now I can’t hide from my roaring thoughts of people from past, present, and future. They haunt me, all these possibilities in an endless loop of my own imagination. Circling into a pool of bullets that patiently wait to fire into the middle, into my head. To end it all by causing a mistake or misstep in the flow of conversation or bad decisions. This is a constant for me. The only divergence is when I am with the person I am thinking about, only then I can feel safe with my predictions. Not by much, though.

     Sometimes I feel that the entirety of life is about shattered promises. Yes, not broken, shattered. These promises are not made verbally, but emotionally. Friends, family, loved ones, everyone is included. I do not know why everything is founded upon these fractures, I do not have that answer. All I do know is that promises are usually the first thing to become lost. Is it still valid to call it ‘lost’ when there is no possibility of retrieving it? No, I think not.

     I feel, however, that I am one of the few that can really feel these emotional promises being made. Perhaps even to a point where it doesn’t exist. But it exists to me, and combined with all those swirling bullets only deepens the pulsating stress. It deepens until it reaches the spark for which ignites one of the bullets to fire within me.

     Two days ago my right eye began to bleed. I assume it happened due to a broken blood vessel, something to do with high blood pressure and other jargon. But I know the truth, the bullet hit the spark and popped.

-Nicholas Holley 

[Below is a short essay in non-fiction based upon future events that have yet to happen. Do not be alarmed, this is still non-fiction centered around the real.]

Almost

     I was sitting at the long table, the one wedged between two other tables of different make that were placed perpendicular from mine. The table had been with me for a long time now, since the beginning of the big risk of creating a company with my brother and a friend. I remember thinking how the table must have been a blessing since we stumbled upon it sitting next to a dumpster near my favorite coffee shop, a place I forced my business partner’s convergence to map out the future. The future had come so fast, but when has it not?

     Tapping the top of the dark wood of the table with my fingernails came naturally. As natural as the chipped mug found my mouth. The place was cold, it was always cold, which is most likely why the rent was cheap. It was a constant battle with the temperature, my weapon of choice was the consumption of too much coffee, most of the time with a little whisky added in to keep me creative. It wasn’t working at the moment, but did it ever really work? Did I really want to know?

     The screen that belonged to my laptop was staring back at me, desperate for me to feed it with something. Anything. Words, news, procrastination, everything. Something that I did not have, though I blamed my own empty stomach for that.

     It was past midnight and I was alone. Though it was hard to tell ever since the solitary window had been blocked out by a large quilt by the other two, their only reasoning that the light hurt their vision. My rebuttal that it aided my vision was lost among the unfair census, which was not abnormal. My mind would just have to deal with being blind. I always wondered how much would be left undone if we had a fourth member, one against two is easy to solve but two against two is always a chore. Only a moment ago we had a vote on which place to fetch food from, the two choices being Taco Bell and Wendy’s. I suppose I’ll have to pretend my taco is a frosty, which might not be as hard with all that coffee-masked alcohol.

     I remember standing up when my brother opened the glass door to the small rented space, the blinds that were the length of the door smashed against the wall like they usually do when he entered. “I got your taco thingies,” he said. I did not know what ‘taco thingies’ were, but I could only assume they were what I always ordered.

     “And Pepsi?” I said. I was desperate for something sweet and wet after the bitterness within the mug. He told me that Jack had them, our friend from long ago who followed us on this outlandish dream of making something out of computers. “Where?” I said and sat back down. I do not think he heard me, but I know of nobody who could when eating a taco in one bite which must have taken every bit of concentration.

     Jack walked in while I was watching my brother slide the taco down his throat. The Pepsi found its way to my old table, thanks to Jack, though I was too busy trying to unravel my own taco to express any gratitude. Nobody ever said ‘thank you’ here.

     Before Jack could sit down I began spilling my mind and hashing out some problems I had recently run into when writing the script for our product. We made video games and I was one of those large minded people who always said he’d make a difference with words instead of movement. I was still too blind to see both worked so well hand in hand, almost in harmony. Almost. Just like the taco I was consuming that had too many tomatoes and not enough cheese, or the Pepsi sweating on the table that was filled with ice pushing the soda to every corner, nothing had perfect harmony. It was always just almost. Most of the times we mistake the ‘almost’ as one sure thing, leaning too far to one side over the other. It is when we find both sides pushing each other in that almost harmonic melody, gravitating the piece towards a whole when we can reach something close to being real.

     The business talk did not last long before diverging into conversation of other people’s games. We talked about other games more than working on our own, or that is how it always felt. One comment could throw the day into a pointless night. Though I’m not sure the nights ever really ended. The night we were eating the tacos and drinking our beverages turned into a morning of great productivity. I remember wondering to myself what made that specific night so much better than the rest. Was it the tacos, or the Pepsi, or the fact that before my brother and Jack went to search out the food they had to go fuel up on gas which prolonged our dinner. It did not matter, what mattered was the three of us were in perfect harmony doing what we loved. Almost.       

     Read my thoughts on the possible announcement of the PS4 and my theory on Sony’s plan of action!

enterversum:

     The big news now is the recent unveil of a vague video from Sony Playstation, along with the tag “See the future.” The only thing it has to offer us is the date Feb. 20th. Many are immediately connecting it to an announcement of the Playstation 4, the next in the line of console gaming for Sony. Although there isn’t a sure way to find out, besides waiting, I have a good feeling this is the next console. And I’ll tell you why.

Read More

Head over to the Entertainment Universum to find a small post on my insight of the film, Argo. And keep checking for new posts regularly! 

enterversum:

     An exciting story of good versus evil, set in space with heroes and villains. The next best thing since Star Wars, perhaps even becoming the best of the genre. Packed full of excitement and, most of all, adventure! This is all of what Argo aspires to be. The only problem? The Canadian team behind the project has to film in Tehran, Iran in the stressful year of 1979, during the Iran Hostage Crisis. Unfortunately, the film never made it to the big screen. It never fulfilled its true purpose. Or did it?

Read More

     Funny things happen at just the oddest times. For example, I planned to write this post right after I made a cup of coffee. I just had the urge. So, I begin making the coffee in the kitchen when there is a knock on the door. I answer the call to find two young women explaining to me that they are hosting a party downstairs and if they need to be quiet to just let them know. It’s certainly funny how they chose to knock at my door exactly when I start making coffee. I might not have heard them at the door had I not been in the kitchen….That party sure is loud.

     Because of this unexpected visit, my blog post has started in a very different light. Instead of jumping into my opinions, I jumped into my observations. Ah, but yes, now I am stringing my opinions of my observations directly after. And there we go, I’m back on track. Just like that.

     Strange things happen when I put the pen to the paper, and then later the fingers to the plastic keys. I formulated a fantastic story, one that I was excited about, in my journal with my Waterman pen. I fleshed it out, unable to stop really. I came up with the setting, plot, the key mechanisms that would make it worth it, and of course the characters. However, when I pulled up my writing program and began to type away, a new character suddenly appeared within the pages. I suppose it just made sense. At first I did not know where this character came from, or exactly why he appeared alongside the main character. But now, after thinking about it since composing, it makes perfect sense. 

     I find that no matter how much I plan and prod my brain, things are not entirely clear until I actually sit down and write them out. [b]What I write is what I see, within a different world that does not belong to me.[/b] It’s the only way I know how to write anything worth reading, really. It’s so refreshing to find others who subscribe to the same, or similar, ideas. One of my greatest friends also writes in the same method, which is just awesome!

     I accidentally found a quote by Stephen King once and I was ecstatic about what it conveyed. Take a look: 

“I have never felt like I was creating anything. For me, writing is like walking through a desert and all at once, poking up through the hardpan, I see the top of a chimney. I know there’s a house under there, and I’m pretty sure that I can dig it up if I want. That’s how I feel. It’s like the stories are already there. What they pay me for is the leap of faith that says: ‘If I sit down and do this, everything will come out OK.’”

-Stephen King

     Now, if only I can gather up some energy and dig some more. My excavation is far from done on any of my projects. I just need to dig deeper. Ha. Today I was actually beginning to think lowly of my writing due to stress from a certain English class. How foolish of me. In fact, it was the writer Anne Rice who posted a video on her Facebook today that suggested writers to never give up nor change the way they write for others. This video helped remind me that it doesn’t matter what anybody thinks, except for myself. I’m glad she decided to post that video up today, even though she made it in September. Funny things do happen at the oddest times, don’t they.

     I’m off to go dig now, farewell. 

     The one thing I promised myself that I would do this semester was write more in my blogs, one on entertainment and the other more personal, as to help my chances of getting a job in the future. Not only that, but it would be something I could be proud of. Much to my dismay, I have not written but one article for my entertainment blog and have been ignoring it entirely since its birth. I really wonder what has gotten into me. Never-mind, I know the answer and it’s school.

     Yes, I know, it’s such cliche to blame my faults on school. Everybody does it, I am only a sheep following the herd and all that metaphorical soup people like to splish-splash around at others who adopt similar excuses. But really, I feel as if my school is getting in the way of my education.

     I like to write. I like to write stories. I like to write stories that are in no way going to impress those who sit upon the thrones of the esteemed Literary Kingdom. In fact, those academic individuals would more than likely use my writings to prop up a wobbly table at most; and that would be their idea of a great kindness. Do I write for these people? Nay, forsooth this man doth not. I write for the people, or at least that is my intention.

     If my writing only receives one fan, no matter how hard I try to make more, then I will do everything in my power to make that one fan happy. I do not care about being the next best thing, nor do I care about being talked about by someone the world deems “greater” than I. What I care about most is making people happy. Making them talk and discuss my creation. Perhaps even write some fan-fiction. I’m not trying to be the best writer as far as language, grammar and literary elements go. I’m trying to be a personal hero. No, wait. That sounds too self-conceited. Inspirational writer? Yeah, that sounds more modest. I want to make people go, “Hey, I can do that! I can be the next Nicholas Holley!” Hm, once again that sounds too arrogant.

     For example, when I read something from Drew Karpyshyn or Stephen King I go, “Hey! I can write like this!” and then go write something. I’m not too sure how these authors act in real life (Though I’ve seen Karpyshyn before, he seems pretty fun), but I’d like to not only be the inspiration for someone but also someone worth meeting in real life as well. If a fan came up to me who was inspired to write because of something I did, then I would make sure he/she would continue that ambition by telling him/her to never give up. I’ve seen, and unfortunately met, many ‘famous’ people who believe they have a gift that can only be received through extensive “boot-camp” literary course rubbish. Yes, those courses are helpful, but no they do not make an author.

     I’ve drifted too far from the point. What was it… Ah, yes, not writing in my blog. That was my point. I’ve found it again, no worries. And, if what I have said in this post hasn’t made you think ill of me, perhaps my point is no longer valid.

_

Until next time. Hopefully sooner than later, yes?