Author: wdfyfe

Before WD called himself a writer, he worked at a number of different jobs from stacking lumber to interior design. He studied English at UBC and creative writing at ASU where one of his teachers, Rita Dove, taught him the importance of the tale. He has written for radio, magazines and newspapers, but never television. He’s published both fiction and nonfiction in Great Britain and the US. He reads French passably and speaks enough Spanish to get from A to B and find the toilet. He has interviewed John Cleese, Peter Ustinov, Margaret Drabble, Kenneth Branagh and enough other famous people to make him a hopeless name dropper. His not-so-secret passions are history and trivia, and he has never lost a game of Trivial Pursuit — although he did come 4th one drunken Quiz Night at the Uxbridge in Notting Hill. He lives on the Pacific Ocean, although, not close enough to see, so he spends his days looking at a computer screen. It’s a wonderful life and he has only one regret: he can’t type faster.

Throne Of Endless Games

game-of-thronesI don’t mind that George R.R. Martin is a dick to Starks.  But he better finish Game of Thrones before I die, or Hell won’t hold half my fury.  I will reach out from the grave and pluck your heart out, you egomaniac!  Plus, in the end, if you try pullin’ any of that Sopranos fade-to-black crap, I swear on the souls of my grandchildren, I will hunt you down and make you pay.  Here’s the deal, George: you gave all of us the disease — you did it — now it’s time to come up with a cure.  Give it some thought!

The thing is it’s been five television years and Game of Thrones is still going sideways — in all directions.  I’m not the only person on this planet who’s looking around for a hint of the storyline.  There are lots of us, and our concern is that Martin has become so bloated with nerd worship he’s going to carry on writing into nowhere indefinitely.  Look, Sword and Sorcery centre stage has got to be a total buzz — I get it.  And being compared to Tolkien at every turn must be the ultimate ego stroke.  However, Martin needs to remember that not every fan is hanging on his every word.  Sure, the Fire and Ice people who’ve been around since the 90s spend tons of time looking for clues and constructing theories and making videos and writing fan fiction etc. etc. etc. on into the wee hours.  They love that stuff.  They’re added Cersei Lannister to Luke Skywalker in the Comic Con Pantheon, and they’re happy as puppies.  However, the rest of us — Game of Thrones folks — came to Westeros by way of HBO.  We don’t care about the detailed genealogy of the Targaryen dynasty.  We see a great tale that captured us with an imaginative premise and an uber-cool beginning.  We were willing to let it wander a bit in the middle, but now that it’s started to waddle, we’re concerned that it might not ever actually have an end.

Honestly, no audience will allow itself to be cliff hanger bait forever.  For God’s sake, George! Let’s start tying up a few loose ends and get on with it!

Dog Shit Without Tears

dogOn occasion, everybody steps in dog shit, literally or metaphorically.  It’s inevitable — like puberty or menopause.  It’s how we handle it that’s important.  Recently, I witnessed  a dog shit crisis and — Wow! — did I ever get a look at life in the 21st century.

I was standing outside an office building, having a coffee and sneaking an early evening cigarette, when a well-dressed woman (not a child, nor even a girl) came stumble-running around the corner.  She was clearly in distress.  She looked at me in shock, lurched forward, grabbed at the construction fence as her only means of support, and hung there, weeping as if she’d just seen an axe murder.  I hit the adrenaline button, dropped everything and stride, stride, stride, went to help.

“Are you alright?  What happened?  Are you okay?”
She turned to me, and in a voice fierce with frustration, said, “I stepped in dog poo.”
I tilted my head like an inquiring Beagle, but before I could register a WTF reaction, her support group came wheeling around the corner.  A mixed gender bunch of 30 Somethings, they brushed me out of the way as if I were being masculine to their friend and surrounded her in a two-deep comfort zone.  I stepped back to my spilled coffee to give them room, and for the next 10, 15 (I gave up at some point) or even 20 minutes, I watched as they conducted an impromptu crisis intervention.

Okay, so what have we learned?

At unguarded moments, contemporary adults use expressions like “poo,” just as if they were grownup words.

Remember, our girl came around the corner first, so at some point, overcome by the trauma (drama?) she must have panicked and fled headlong into the night.  Think about that!

There were plenty of kind words, a lot of hugs, and tissues for the eyes, but nobody actually dealt with the offending shoe.  To be fair, one Sir Walter Raleigh did take his jacket off, but I never saw what he did with it.  (Only his drycleaner could tell us that.)

The group, all dressed up with obviously some place to go, actually stopped the evening’s activities cold to deal with this emotional emergency — at some length.

And finally, no one in the group gave any indication that this was the least bit odd.  There wasn’t one dissident voice.  For example, nobody said, “For God sake, Madison!  Scrape it off, and let’s go!”

The thing that blows me away about this little ad hoc soiree is these were ordinary people.  I didn’t accidently run into a drama queen convention.  Nor was it their first emotional rodeo.  They’d been there before — lots — and, despite their lack of dog shit removal skills, they knew exactly what they were doing.

My point is, emotionally fragile has become a way of life in the 21st century.  We are easily angered, eagerly offended and regularly resort to “the meltdown” to prove our emotional stake in the game.  It’s our way of demonstrating our humanity, sensitivity and depth of character.  The problem is it works.  People take this stuff seriously.  Me, I’m from a different time and, call me old fashioned, but I prefer dog shit without tears.

English: A Love Affair

englishI love language, and because English is the lover I grew up with, I love her best.  She’s subtle and sensible in slingback Louboutins and knee-torn Levis.  She can dance all night, gliding like a princess or grinding the stage burlesque or rustling between the trees like a black wind witch, flowing on the moonless breeze.  But she is a witch — with conjures that — in magic — change her words to whatever she wants them to mean.  Yet she prefers straight talk — prepositions and modifiers that let you know exactly what and where and when, even if it isn’t now.

And my lover is a thief who steals without remorse.  A freebooting pirate who takes the words she needs — and more — just because she can, gloried by the theft.

She’s a glutton who dines at her sister’s banquets, selecting the most delicate morsels to claim as her own and never tiring of the feast.

But my lover works hard.  She is a mechanical engineer who fits strange words together with invisible nanoweld precision, producing new tools that exactly fit their employment.

And she is an inventor.  Seduced by necessity, she is lewd and wanton, abandoning herself to satisfy his needs.

She is beautiful as the slip mists of fog, sleeping, gauze angel white in the forest dawn; angry as cracked open thunder; sad as a lost puppy’s tears and quiet as a bead of night.

Painful, bold and strong, she hunts with the predators, howling with the chase, quivering with the kill.

And she is a flirt, tempting me, flaming my desire to touch and hold and caress the words she speaks to me.

But mostly, my lover loves me.  She laughs and sings and listens.  She speaks only truth (and the occasional lie.)  She stays with me even when foul with blank page fury, I have no words for her.  And there, at the edge of the wilderness, lost and alone, it is she who comes and finds me, takes my hand and whispers, “Let’s go home.”