Category Archives: Badlands of the Heart

The New Year:


Posted by Art

The beginning of the New Year is often a time of resolutions.  No more chocolate cake, or, I will exercise at least three times a week, or, I will eat vegetables with every meal.  However framed, it always comes off as some unpleasant thing that I must whip my wild nature to do, accept, practice, or merely withstand.  And I succeed.  For a month or two.  And then my resolve erodes and I slip, I binge, and I fall.

In 2012, I’d like to try something different, at least for me.  Instead of resolutions, or vows, or promises, I want to make wishes.

I want to make New Year’s wishes for myself, for the world, and for the passing stranger who might read these words.  These wishes may float away on the breeze, or they may land on fertile soil and bloom, impossibly effortless, into great heartfelt joy.

I wish that work is fulfilling and less stressful.

I wish love tickles us into the waking dream that is our life.

I wish that words and thoughts flow.

I wish that we meet and are glad in the meeting.

I wish that there is enough food and resources for the world.

I wish that we will each catch one perfect moment, and know, in that moment, what it means to be truly alive.

And, of course, the flowing tide of happiness reaches a high water mark in all of our lives.

 

I wish all of these things for you, for me, and for everyone else, and I wish that wishes I could not have even imagined come true for all of us.

All the best,

Arthur J. Lorenz


Birthday


Posted by Art

It’s my birthday season again.   November 10th, actually.   It is also Neil Gaiman’s birthday.

In case there is some strange astrometric force that shapes our lives based on our birthdate, here is a brief list of my past year experiences, which can serve as a preview of what Neil can expect for this, his 51st year:

1.  Your resources will increase.

2.  The river of ideas continues to flow.

3.  You hear music you hated when you were a kid, and, surprise, surprise, it still sucks.

4.  Wonderful things happen to your family.

5.  Generosity is met with even more generosity.

6.  The person you wake up next to still fills you with a miraculous sense of being alive.

7.  The plumbing still works like a charm.

8.  Although there are certain, ahem, subtle changes in hue, your hairs stay on top of your head where they belong.

9.  You have even more love in your life.

10. And don’t worry, don’t make that emergency call to the doctor, that’s just what happens when you eat beets.

 

On the other hand, if Neil Gaiman’s past experiences are a preview of mine, does that mean I get to <gasp> write a Dr. Who episode?

 


Time Travel Prom


Posted by Art

I didn’t want to go to my prom.  At the time, it seemed a celebration of football players, cheerleaders, and people who were popular because of their straight teeth.

But on the eve of the prom itself, I felt a strange overwhelming urge to go.  I didn’t, of course, not having a ticket, or a tux, or a date, or a limo.  So, I stayed home and dreamed prom dreams.

The prom dream was always the same.  Lights faded, music slowed, and my prom date, a woman with dark hair and flashing eyes, danced close to me.  I’d hold her tight and we’d murmur our secret wishes to each other.

I forgot about the prom dream for a long time.  Life went on.  Decades passed.  The world changed and so did I.  Sometimes, the dream would come back, and I’d laugh at my own nostalgia for something that had never happened.

And then, a week ago, I found an envelope pushed under my front door.  It contained an invitation for the year my prom should have been and the words “period semi-formal dress required.”  I thought it was some kind of joke, but stuck it to the refrigerator anyway.

My mind drifted back to that invitation over the next few days.  I teased myself with the thought of going.  No.  I couldn’t.  That’s ridiculous.  Besides, I don’t even have a tux.

On my lunch hour, I found a large formal shop in the Mission that had, of all things, blue polyester tuxedos.  I tried one on and looked appropriately ridiculous, so I rented it.

The night of the event arrived.  I put on my blue tux and drove downtown to the hotel where the event was to take place.  It was an old landmark and had seemed cobwebby and dank.  I had never had a reason to enter it before.

People, like me, milled about inside a large ballroom.  Men and women, some young, some old, all wistful, circulated shyly beneath paper streamer decorations.

I drank a glass of punch, the band played a long lost song, and the room turned in an indigo haze.

Someone grabbed my hand.  It was my date.

We moved across the dance floor.  I held her close and looked down at her dark hair and flashing eyes.  She tipped her head back and asked, “Is this the prom you’ve always wanted?”

“Yes,” I said.  “It’s even more than I could have ever imagined.”

“Do you want to get a hotel room?”

“That’s okay, Sweetie,” I said to my wife of ten years.  “Going home with you is enough.  Thank you for doing this.”

She grinned up at me and we swayed together for the rest of the evening.


It Begins…


Posted by Art

Well.  Here I am.  I finally created some kind of web presence.

You might remember me.  I was the kid in that eighties movie who dissolved into a puddle of green slime.  I’m not a kid anymore.  I’m not a puddle, either.  I am a writer, among other things, and I expect this blog to be a record of my life’s journey through the jungle of words that stretches across the badlands of the heart all the way to the horizon.

Cheers.