Ticking Talk

I’m old.
No really. Look at this pic:


It’s Grumpy Oldman! He ain’t hip! Has he broken his hip? How old is he? Well this guy remembers when Billy Idol and Gen X was the next Justin Bieber.

“You should be dead!”
Tell me about it!
Mr. Idol thinks so too. It’s cool. It’ll happen as soon as the baby boomers stop holding up the line for the rest of us. I promise I’ll take my turn. For now, the children of the revolution are revolting against moving on. They’re kicking and screaming against barricades of burt offerings and coffin lids.


“Hell no, we won’t go!”

Sounds reasonable to me, but what about my generation, Gen X?  What are we supposed to do in the meantime? Follow our dream? What dream is that? We were born the children of the children of the revolution—which is almost as intimidating as it sounds. Our parents had already won the war and were adorning us with its spoils. By the time it came for us to dream our revolution, we’d already been given everything we wanted.

And the revolution knows no grandchildren.

“Slackers!” That’s what the bitter and barren among the elder babies boomed at we the children of the X. The ones they didn’t understand. Sure, we marched with a Rebel Yell, but where were we going? Their institutional learning facilities never left us any road maps to the boom-world. All we could do was march circles; one foot stapled to the floor, confused by the enemy within ourselves.

Most boom Moms and Dads focused laser-like on teaching their spawn to lead, forgetting that a world full of leaders leaves no one left to follow. Gone were the days of second place silver and “I do what my dad did, because his dad did it before him and I’m proud.” 

“Think for yourselves!” They admonished. “You are a leader!” That’s great, but even a dream must be followed.

We were empty vessels in need of filling. So we tapped into the kegs Hollywood laid before us. Some became McFlys and Ghostbusters, while others took to a deeper  draught.

“Greed is good.”  Three cheers for Gordon Gekko

Oops. Wrong one.

Gordon Gekko, our cellulose nitrate spirit animal lit by the boom elder’s tribal fires to give us hope. A call to arms! Gen X marks the spot where we will infect Ys to come. Our future, our legacy, forever and ever, Amen.

Luckily, that wasn’t the sum of our parts. Others of us marked time as those before us did: trial and error.
And error.
And error.
The cuckoo warble, each error on the hour.

But that’s how each generation learns: the failures of others, the failures in ourselves. We nurse them like wounds and nurture them like mothers until we’re older, stronger, wiser and ready to grow up, and by that time it’s already time to turn over the keys. This is how we count the beat of time, unable to see the horology for the clocks. Our greatest hope is to make each movement relevant and leave the world more synchronous than the one we found. All the while, fighting the clock.

Happy Memorial Day!

Dear readers, there will be no blog today. Please take the time to honor those we've lost in service to our country. As one not given the opportunity to defend my country, I have nothing but respect those who have and gave their lives. 

Thank You

Stasis

Last weekend my Pirate Queen and I binged on rerun DVDs. After the half hour of "seen-it, seen-it, why-did-we-buy-it" divination we agreed on Stargate Universe. It has been at least four years since we've watched it, and that's longer than the show was on the air. 

As the final credits came up, I was struck by how much I missed the show. It wasn't perfect, but it was thoughtful and different, and perhaps that's why it could not be allowed to live. 

It's been just over five years since the last episode aired. I thought as a tribute, I'd repost the article I wrote for Riverside Community College's Viewpoints newspaper's online edition. Like the series, my article was canceled from the air-waves long ago.  So here is an echo from light years away.

 Some saw their fate and resigned in acceptance. Others held hope for a new future; a future shaped by their ingenuity. They all fled automaton aliens bent on destroying any technology not their own. This was how Stargate Universe began their final episode, “Gauntlet”: television metaphor seen through science fiction.

“We’re screwed,” said Eli Wallace, SGU’s everyman character, portrayed by David Blue, plotting points where relentless enemies poised to eliminate Destiny and her crew from their Monday night time-slot.

This is the third time slot given to Stargate Universe during a two-year Syfy run. Some fans blame the time changes for Stargate’s death. According to Craig Engler, Syfy’s senior vice president and general manager of Syfy Digital, the network made the changes to attract new audiences. Engler said Syfy had done all they could to save the dying series.

Like the network, Lou Diamond Phillips, as Colonel David Telford, had bad news for the Stargate Universe ship, the Destiny: “Whatever the solution is, you’re gonna have to make it happen on your own.”

They were on their own because new audiences never found the Destiny and her crew. Alone in space, Stargate Universe aired its last episode Monday, May 9, marking not only the end of a two-year series, but also the death of a 14-year Stargate franchise.

Stargate SG-1 was the wunderkind. An outer space action drama, light on the science, heavy on the campy fiction, based around the adventures of Colonel Jack O'Neil, played by Richard Dean Anderson, and his team of space travelers. Each episode followed the team through a giant stone soap bubble hoop (called a Stargate) that dialed distant planets like the ring on a combination lock. The Stargate turned up new worlds, new aliens and new adventures and fan’s followed the team through that gate’s wormhole for ten years.

In 2004 a new Stargate team uncovered the lost city of Atlantis, unearthing a whole new Stargate adventure. Stargate Atlantis was less about interstellar travel, and more about saving the universe from replicant yes-men and nasty pasty-white human-eaters while uncovering the mysteries of Atlantis.

The Stargate fan base warmly welcomed Stargate Atlantis into the Stargate family. The relationship lasted five years, until Stargate Universe replaced Atlantis.

Stargate Universe was a different Stargate. SGU was the serious brooding child that asked viewers to consider what real people would do if they were trapped on a giant spaceship built by an alien race for an unknown purpose. Lacking the ability to control the ship (appropriately called the Destiny) the crew rode through two seasons of political struggle, unrequited love, treachery, and external influence.

One external influence weighed more heavily on the Destiny than others: donned the Battlestar Gallactica or Star Trek Voyager of the Stargate world, SGU didn’t win favor with many Stargate franchise fans.  Diehard fans liked their Stargate world with more family fun tongue-and-cheek and less of the adult sex drama and intrigue that the Stargate Universe offered.

KV0921, a fan posting on gateworld.com, a Stargate fan site, posted, “For me Stargate died with Stargate Atlantis.” 

Many fans agreed.

According to Engler, Stargate Universe opened with little more than half the opening viewership of Stargate Atlantis. 

SGU was not the typical Stargate franchise fan’s program, and unfortunately for Stargate Universe, the edgy adult audience they hoped to court would not be drawn to a new Stargate program because of Stargate’s history of being campy and light. Leaving this series, like it’s characters, adrift without support.

Monday, the final SGU episode floated through ether, a portrait of life’s unrealized potential.

“What’s the point of having potential if you’re not going to step up when you’re really needed,” Said Blue’s character Wallace, as if in agreement. 

Destiny’s crew had grown during the two-year experience and experience was a brutal teacher. Outmaneuvered by an unbeatable enemy, they found their answer. Low on power, the crew climbed into cryogenic chambers to sleep, hoping to wake in a new galaxy; a galaxy of the future, inhabited by people who could accept them for who they were, and not as an ill-fitted Stargate offshoot. All the while, knowing that they may never wake again.

2016 Epilogue:
 
One of the most poignant aspects of that last episode was how the fate of the crew (their Destiny, if you will) was mirrored in the fate show. I watch now knowing, as one reliving memories, what the future of Destiny held. When seen as a metaphor of art and not a red-headed Stargate stepchild that becomes a act of beauty. 

Not all of our destinies are as grandiose as we would plan. Some are two year blips and some are great galaxies of stars. As a writer, I cannot control which one I am. All I can do is reflect my best light so that others might see. The crew of the Destiny had hoped to only go dark for three years; it's been five. And yet people like me still go back and relive their adventures. Me, I find hope in that.
  

Analogy of Automatonomy

In walking our tunnels today I paused at the cavern fork of Design and Implementation. Affixed to the wall betwixt the paths was one poster:

Now I fathom not who this Evelyn Kriete is or why it is she posters our rhyolite halls with fanciful concepts such as “kittens” (let alone what purpose a man of steam might have need of a punk?), but otherwise, her observation is sound, belonging to a similar sentiment to the one which sets my own heart rambling down a corridor joined in beauty—and not a not spilt decision between sooty path “A” and sooty path “B.”

What if one of Mr. Fowler’s clacking contraptions fell in the woods? Would anyone notice the blessed silence or would it remain unrecognized, as said device neither sported goggles nor stovepipe with gear adornment in hatband? These corridors that used to ring with joyous hammers of opportunity now clang with clamor of discontent. The unifying spirit of creation that Steamtopians used to share has divided into slag of derision. Why must Steamtopians take themselves so seriously? Are we nothing more than mobs of fragmented separatists?

Repudiators of industrialists who praise function over form allied against the demagoguery of entrepreneurials, concerned naught for purpose, so long as an artifice exhibits an idiom they call  “Steamtopian.” Imagine these parties, if you will,  one a bespectacled ass stylizing a skewed derby and watch fob, the other an elephantine automaton transport wielding death-ray tusks.

Neither cares the preposterousness of their own nickers on display, only that they may enumerate, on two hands, the flaws of the other. Draft be damned! But herein, as the great Bard would tell us, lies the rub. Are not both a menagerie, founded on elements which both made our community wondrous? Are there really aesthetics without a purpose? And is not purpose without beauty naught but the extension of Industrialism?

Although I share not Ms. Kriete’s love of kittens, why would I feed such beasts to dragons of magma? Am I  not a man of charity?  The act of making myself superior by remaining uneaten makes me less creator than creature. Look to the bellows of your inner forge-fire and you will see that I am correct.

Within each contraption lining our neighboring caverns, whether they be repudiators or demogoggers, is a beauty which can only be found in Steamtopia. Within each one of us lies a dream. A dream to create a free home where our family flourishes and grows, where ideals illuminate our caverns for ages to come.

We must stop this search for the flaws of our neighbors lest we fall into the same said trap as the ELOI. Not one of us is pure evil—with the exception of robber barons who skulk the Overground. Let us not live like them, behind gates of iron and towers of ivory, hoarding kittens for dragon consumption. Let us seek out our neighbor and embrace their humanity and their difference and make Steamtopia great.

-Zachary Ashe: 1865 Opinion column Steamtopian Sentinel

Waiting Time

I’m back home. It’s May and life is beating a march I call normal. I’m no longer subjected to hospital food and life’s mysteries lie beyond the scope of Gameboy sized monitor-boxes linked to Dad's bedside.

My Mysteries all now waltz around a second topic. One I like to call “Let’s get thee published!” Far as that dance goes, STEAMTOPIA RISING is in the arms of an editor. According to my calendar, my baby's been there for quite a while. I’m turning into an unpublished helicopter parent. Is she having fun? Is she getting along? Do they like her? The imagination that created 90,000 words of Rob-lit, is now inhabited by “what-if” tales of abuse.
“You’re too fat!”
“You’re too weird!”
Oh, my baby…Nobody likes editor bullies—and yet, all I can do is wait outside.
And trust.

Editors are good people, after all, and these ones are looking after my baby. They’ll treat her as the princess she is. This isn’t like summer camp. It is finishing school.
So how do I keep from worrying while I wait?
I weep.
But beyond that, I have a list—like any other author-parent—things that keep me from wearing worry lines into the carpet. It goes a little something like this:

1. Catch up on new video games:

  



It's been a while, but I think I can still maneuver my way around a joystick.

2. Invent things:

A new card game or trumping plot lines? Not sure it matters....

Keep creative juices flowing! Whether it’s exciting worlds or board games, I exercise my mind. Fill my idea notebook stores, before  the next idea drought strikes.

 

 

 

3. Discover a world outside my office:

The world in my head isn’t the only world that exist. Twists of subplot turn right outside that door….

   

 

 4. Reintroduce self to family:

You must sacrifice to rejoin our pack.

My cats and wife barely remember who I am. I try reaching out to one member at a time; too many strangers at once could result in brain bends.

 

 5. Plot the next book:

 

Eventually it's time to move on. When waiting for the world outside my head to turn my way I need to move the world inside forward.



That’s how I deal. While we wait for words from my editors, why not tell me how you do it?

The Talk

One of childhood’s least favorite chores is enduring uncomfortable conversations with parents. Fewer conversations are more awkward than that talk about sex—for both sides. I remember my talk. My dad brought out the birds and bees by fingering flowerbed diagrams while we weeded. His deadpan narration tied biology with a slideshow of horror.

Surprise! It’s not just nail-grit that’s going to make you uncomfortable today!

The horrible thing  I didn’t realize then was that this conversation comes back around full circle. It’s right there on page 46 of Dad’s heart surgery recovery book.

“So, Dad, when you and Mom—“ Nope, can’t do it.

Luckily that’s not a conversation I have to have today; Dad barely has the energy to raise his chair. That’s okay, there are plenty of uncomfortable conversations I’ll need to have with both of my parents. Like this gem today:

“Mom, what if the next emergency is worse, or—God forbid—what if you both are hurt. How do we handle your finances, so you don’t have to worry?”

No, I don’t want this talk any more than I wanted Dad to draw dirt vaginas, but here I am. And thank God I get this chance. Serious as a heart attack: what if the surgery had gone wrong, or we hadn’t had the blessing of surgery at all? Would Mom be able to wallow through the day to day of bills and payments? Isn’t that what family is for? To help? But how can I help if I don’t know what to do with what I have?

So I sat with Mom and Dad and asked the hard questions about where things went and what happened next. In my case, I was pleasantly surprised. My parents had all the answers; systems were in place so I could step in, should I need to. That isn’t always the case. I have one friend whose parents left him in the weeds. None of us want to grieve, but questions and surprises only make things harder than the talk we should have had when there’s time.

Thank you, God, for giving us the opportunity to have the talk. Now, next week I’ll fly home to my Queen. My dad is doing better than I could hope. I can trust that he will be fine in Mom’s capable hands. And maybe I can skip that sex talk all together.

Nothing but the Dead of Night back in my Little Town

The last time I was a five-year-old boy, I was five. Since then, I’ve considered myself a forty-plus-year-old man with decades of experience backing a rugged persona. I’m a rock, a man, an island. At least until today.

It started forty-plus years ago on a sunny Arizona afternoon, with a man, a yard and a plot of weeds. I have always hated weeding, but what I remember most about being a kid was kneeling in the soil with my dad. He’d show me how to pull the root while teaching me about life. Don’t tell him, but I was only pretending to listen—to keep from yanking up too many dandelions. Still, somehow those down in the dirt discussions, they stuck.

Like this morning, when I arrive at his hospital bed and he was getting run down a checklist by a horde of anesthesiologists and nurses. “Hi, Dad.” I grinned and reached out with a firm handshake—just like he taught me.

Mom and my sister are there too. I make sure he knows I’m looking out for them. I’ve already talked things over with my Pirate Queen back home: I’m here as long as he needs. “Relax, Dad. I’ve got this.” Because this is all about him, not me. Everyone who walks down the hall is all smiles with something positive to say; He is the man of the hour; it’s not everyday you get a triple bypass and even his prodigal son has returned to see that. It’s what Dad would have done.

“Let me look, did they already shave you?” No, that’s not me, it’s the head nurse.
It doesn’t stop me from quipping “Let’s get a pic for Facebook,” though. Dad would have said  that too, if he weren’t the one in the bed. Well, he wouldn’t have used the word “Facebook.” He’d have said something archaic like, “for posterity.” That’s my dad. He’s like Zeus. He’s immortal and he was here when really old words were invented.

“I think we should call this a rock.” Yeah, he’d think that was funny.

The surgeon ushers us out and we laugh our goodbyes. A nurse tells us this is going to be a six hour operation, so we go have breakfast. Who wants to sit around the waiting room with a bunch of worrying people? That’s depressing. My mom doesn’t need that. She hides it well, but she’s worried sick. So’s my sister. The only reason I recognize this is because I know them well, almost as well as I know my dad.

Over plates of eggs and pancakes we laugh over how Dad is missing out on his favorite foods. “I’ll bet he’d much rather be here!” We laugh. We recant tales of silly Dad pranks, and how he worries over the stupidest things. For my part, I keep the conversation light as I order more coffee and check my watch. I’ll check it again in another five minutes. Why is it moving so slow?

“You sure you want more coffee?”
“Fill ‘er up! Hahaha.”

While mom goes to the bathroom my sister says, “His heart stopped for six-seconds yesterday, Don’t tell mom I told you.”

Well that’s not light and funny. “Thanks for letting me know.” I smile. This is what we do. My job is to hold everything together. Hers is to be empathetic.
After breakfast we return to the hospital and several slow laps of the minute hand sweeping the clock on the wall later, a nurse arrives. “Everything went well, would you like to see him?”
“Yes!” we’re all on our feet.
“It actually turned into a quadruple bypass, so he’s going to be a little groggy, try to let him wake up slowly.”

“Oh good. At least we caught it now.” That’s me, always the optimist.

Mom’s in the room first; my sister’s right behind her. I usher up the rear. The room  is huge! At it’s center is a pale old man, partially covered by a sheet. On his exposed chest, from breast to belly, runs a strap of surgical tape. It barely adheres, like, it too, is appalled by the gash it hides. There are hoses and wires and needles and tape. A myriad of inputs and outputs tethered to an orchestra of surrounding monitor instruments, ready to sound at the slightest discord.

At first I’m confused. Where’s my dad? Then I get it. The frail man, in the bed, that’s him. This is not the immortal Zeus! At that realization, I’m five again. Outside the view of my mom and sister I almost lose it, but choke it down. Those days, knee deep in garden loam, my dad never taught me about this. All I can think is, “You broke my daddy!”

Return to Sender

My bus weaves through the Arizona dark unknown. Muzak "Sounds of Silence," is my soundtrack. Where I go, where I've been, both invisible, but both I know; I've done this trip before, ages ago--going the other way. Back when I was hurtling from, not sloughing toward.

What's changed? Well, I'm older and somewhat educated in the facts and acts of life and mortality. And I got the call from my mom.

 "It's your father...."

Thirty years ago, almost to the day, my dad sat across a diner table from me. "I think you have something you need to ask me."
"I do?" I'm concentrating on making my coffee the color of California sand. I don't need to ask him about that. I still hadn't acquired a taste for bitter black--the way I take it now. In this memory I'm almost 18, young on experience. That's why, even though I know, I don't ask Dad the question he needs to hear. "I dunno what you mean?" Slurp.
Dad gives me a glare that says, liar while also accusing me of being smarter. We've grown up perfecting our wordless language. It's no small part of why I've outgrown this town. I'm moving.
I tap another sugar packet in my coffee.
"How are you getting to the airport?"
There it is. "I'm going to have a friend give me a ride."
"Which one?"
Whichever ride they want to give me. I know better than to say that. "I dunno yet." But I don't need you second guessing my every decision. I'm an adult. I can do this myself.
You're not capable. "I'll drive you." End of story.
"Ok." But when I'm gone, I'll make my own decisions. "Thank you, very much."
You're welcome.

And on that day of liberation, my dad drove me to the airport. My grandmother rode with us. Not for me, but because of a lesson taught to her by experience. Something the language between my father and I couldn't express. My dad lacked the words and I was still too young understand: after 18 years, mine wasn't the only life changing that day. All that interpreted gruff disappointment? That was my dad saying he would miss me and he was proud. I'd gotten our shorthand all wrong. He needed to drive me. He didn't want to say goodbye, but knew it was time.

Thirty years later I've learned this lesson for myself and I'm riding a bus back home, praying it isn't the same message I need share with him right now.

 "It's your father."

Yesterday my mom called. Dad's in the hospital because a routine blood test showed something requiring another doctor to stab a scope from Dad's groin to Dad's heart. That doctor saw something that has the vital protector of my youth fast-track strapped in a rolling bed and scheduled for triple bypass.

After a three-hour Google-fest of surgery research, it takes less than three minutes to hop on Google Flights and grab tickets. Now I'm on a bus home from Sky Harbor Airport. I understand the statistics; ninety-five percent of open heart surgeries are successful, but these "experts" are cracking out the sternum of the man who made me. They want to stop the heart that taught me it's okay to love, so they can sew in veins from my dad's legs. All while a machine shaped like a dorm refrigerator pumps his life's blood.

 Then there's the other five percent....

I told Mom I'm on my way. I said when dad pulls through, I'll help her with his rehabilitation. What I don't tell her is that, like Dad, I have a need to not feel left out, but most of all--God, please no--I need to stop him from leaving without me saying goodbye.