ANOTHER DAY ANOTHER FORT

a wintery mix, a small box of everything, and at least one (1) big dumb fun thing

Dear reader,

I’m back! Did you even know I was gone? Perhaps that growing anticipation of an email not yet sent nor received but percolating? Well, rest easy friend. One of your top ten favorite bi-monthly bulletins is back at it and right on time.

Abby (my partner), Bean (my dog), and I (my self) drove up to Michigan on Friday night for a very-belated-Christmas with the Sonheim-side. We drove through nasty weather heading North — weather conditions that made you google “dog friendly hotels” while inching along and optimistically muttering “starting to clear up” as you white-knuckle past a US postal truck mournfully blinking from the median. As the driver, I uttered a steady stream of un-encouraging encouragements, all variations of “snow isn’t scary” and “I was a cub scout in Arkansas”.

But we made it! That thumbnail for this very post? Three generations of Sonheim boys pretending to climb Mount Everest. I mean, come ON. It doesn’t get much better than that.

And now, to quote my guy Bilbo, we made it there and back again and I’m safe at home googling “add mint chocolate chip ice cream to coffee if milk expired?”¹.

I hope you are also reading this post from a safe and cozy nook (unless you’re checking your email from the chairlift on the way to shred some fresh powder, in which case cow-a-freaking-bunga dude, you do you).

AN INVENTORY

(CW: Death & Grief)

My grandpa died last year over Thanksgiving and this year during our belated-Christmas my parents passed along some stuff.

A warm hat (faux fur), handfuls of photos, laminated newspaper clippings from my nerdy 8th Grade accomplishments (QUIZ BOWL! DESTINATION IMAGINATION!) and my middle-of-the-pack swim meet finishes (SONHEIM TAKES 2ND IN THE 100 BREAST! 5TH IN THE 50 FREE!), a plaque for a racing pigeon named “Olympic Champ” from a 1970 long distance race, thank-you cards now returned-to-sender a decade after being sent the first time, and a mixed box of my grandma’s used art supplies — unsharpened Ticonderoga #2 pencils.

Grief swings between an archeological dig and getting the air knocked out of you. A dull ache, a jump scare, a rug pulled, (me, adding to all the million imperfect grasping metaphors, language like a blind collie trying to herd sheep that aren’t there.)

What else is there to say that hasn’t been said? Or is the point not always to say something first or new or fresh, not a TAKE at all but just another stone to the cairn that people have been building since we first realized we could lose each other?

And what about all this? This…waxing poetic? A waning grief gibbous? It feels, somehow or sometimes, wrong to get sucked into the language, the words, finding pleasure in a turn of phrase or an image [[a sudden flash: I’m a kid, single-digits, curious in the midst of tears about what my face looks like in the mirror when I’m feeling something this BIG. Keep crying but moving with a purpose to the bathroom mirror. Surely, I will look…real/different/striking/pure?]]

[[Disappointing answer: I am ugly and wet]].

As I get older, I’m determined to be a bit more patient and nonjudgemental with my own bullshit. This kind of thinking about thinking. What else can you do? How else could I be? Is trying to describe a stomach ache navel gazing? Sharing a scattered or shattered state without putting the pieces back together for someone else is…what it is.

This is broken.

This is not a how-to.

This is not even a reflection, it is a mess.

Once again, it has been zero days since our last incident.

It is filthy but I’ll put the kettle on. Come over. There are dishes in the sink and I haven’t dusted in years and I’m embarrassed but/and I miss you, so text me when you’re down below and I’ll come get you? My dog will bark at you but we’ll call it “screaming” instead of “barking” and that will help.

On Thursday, I had a single pint of Guinness over three hours with a friend. I asked her what she thought of all of the hyperlinks in my previous posts. She didn’t click on them but she said they felt the way thinking can feel. The jumps. The associative tangents. I think my links are a way to try to match what the inside of my brain feels like, either alone in my head or when I’m lucky enough to have a social jam sesh with a friend, skipping stones and jokes and memories off in every direction. The point isn’t to get anywhere in particular. It’s one big riff with forward momentum around the spine of, say, catching up.

Or, also, it’s opening the box of stuff from my grandparents while my nephew tugs at my leg asking to “play Star Wars” in the basement. It’s more and more of both/and. Now if it doesn’t feel the way I expected it to, I’m more likely to trust it.

This, along with everything, is probably nothing new.

This year I’m taking more cold showers.² Someone told me that cold showers reset your nervous system. I haven’t read anything else about this. Tacked above my desk is a picture of someone wading into a cold lake in Scotland from a piece in the New Yorker about wild swimming.

I took one cold shower on purpose in 2022 and it was the day after my grandma died.

It was the day after and my thoughts feel like the Great Pacific Garbage Gyre, swirling around just below the surface, nothing but bottle caps and six-pack rings and micro-plastics all the way down. A storm system of shame coming in from the Northwest, but it’s not about me. It’s not about me and to remember that and forget everything else I try taking a cold shower.

My dad, her son, takes ice baths after long bike rides, or long days or just because. When I last visited, the freezer was full of plastic greek yogurt containers full of frozen ice, mini bergs to ease the aches and pains.

The last time I talked to my grandma, on an upswing before the next dip, a dip I pretended wasn’t coming, I told her how much I loved her and how good it was to hear her voice. On the other side of the phone, she mumbled warmly, unintelligible but full of love and recognition, and then asked someone in the room for coffee.

It was a miracle. Even at the end. My certainty of death, being surprised by more LIFE, a little more time, going off script, and then death came back in — oh excuse me, sorry, just stepping out for a second, where were we, sorry, so sorry for the miscommunication —

Now I’m taking cold showers a couple of times a week and the moment is a stack of transparencies on an overhead projector, layering and layering and layering.

I’m thinking about what might go in my box. I’m thinking about the things my grandpa saved to represent me and himself and the world. I’m thinking about the new things you learn after losing someone and the things that were and continue to be a mystery.

If you’re reading this, I’m thinking about you too. Maybe send a letter or laminate a newspaper or fall in love with something you’ll never fully understand. Let me know how it goes, and I’d always love to hear from you.

NOW TAKE A BREAK AND/OR CHASE IT WITH A BIG DUMB THING

This is not the big dumb thing, BUT will safely segue us there — my friend Ellen recommended some sweet ass science fiction after my last Pillow Fort and I’ve already devoured her recommendation of A MEMORY CALLED EMPIRE by Arkady Martine. Hot DAMN do I love an epic space opera, especially when it means I can have an intergalactic/interstate book club with a childhood pal. I’ll sometimes play a game with Abby where I’ll improvise a YA Dystopian Novel and, from that dumb bit was born an even bigger and dumber bit that I performed once (1x) last year. So now, I would now like to dramatically blow the dust off old leather cover of that bit and share it with you here.

All the bold segments are selections are from a fake-book I’ve written called THE SHADOW OF BREAKING GIANTS and all of the italics are asides to you/the audience.

[[p.s. if you’d prefer to see your comedy LIVE and IN THE FLESH I’ll be improvising with my friend Caleb Fullen this Wednesday at 9:30 as part of the Real Angels Logan Square Improv show. ]]

~ ~ ~

[I wrote a book that’s being published and I find doing a kind of practice reading among some people I know is…well, it helps! Would it be ok if I read you some from the manuscript before it comes out? Kind of a sneak peek? Ok, cool! Thank you. Without further ado…]

THE SHADOW OF BREAKING GIANTS

[It’s, uh, YA. Young Adult - if that context helps?]

A PROLOGUE

The cliff face, shaped by eons of pounding wind and surf, towered above the broiling sea below. 

[um, also, kind of sci-fi fantasy world…which - ok, I’ll stop adding caveats and stuff and just read. Let the material speak for itself Will!!!!]

A shadow, seemingly molded to the sheer face, fluttered, detached itself from the unforgiving stone and began to climb. A bone white hand with a missing ring finger emerged, gripping the lip of the cliff. The shadow pulled itself over the edge. A breath.

It was time. In a way…everything had always led to this.

With a snap like a frozen lake cracking beneath ill fated footsteps, the world went silent and still. Frozen. The waves hung motionless, drops of sea floating, reflecting back the horror of unnatural stillness. The smell of rot and decay filled the motionless air. 

A Shadow Lance Blade, forged in the bowels of Lax EnDentra, sliced a hole in time, bending and fraying the edges of reality, and opened the third Wound Between the Worlds. 

[Sorry, I’m realizing…so this is the third book in my Under-Walls of Darkness Trilogy - Has anyone read the Underwall Trilogy? Ok. Cool cool cool. Yeah, I don’t feel like you have to have read the other ones, um, but I’ll try to..I’ll just give you the information you need to…to really enjoy it… it’s really about the STORY and the characters so - uhhhhh, let’s see…]

….and opened the third Wound Between the Worlds.

[Shoot, actually you might need to know a little bit more for this to make sense…first wound was childbirth of this like prophet guy who dies, the second wound is the cataclysmic landslide outside the citadel, doesn’t matter, and this is the third, so this is like, a, like a really BOLD way to start the final novel, you know?]

Opened the third Wound Between the Worlds. Emerging from the slit in space and time, mossy armor dripping with sludge, was the familiar form of a Hagarenthalisk.

[Hagarenthanlisks are these, uh, pig people with tri-tusks -who are — in book three you think they’re good and then in book two you realize they’ve actually made a deal with the overlord of Shadows….NOT so good.] 

The shadow spoke in a gravelly voice. “Boxo. You always did love to make a scene.”

[This is, uh, a pretty funny callback to book two, The Underling’s Gambit but, uh, ok - ]

Boxo, the armored Hagarenthanlisk

[pigman, good, then bad, now…we’ll see!]

Grunted in response. “I’m surprised you decided to show Graven.”

[Shit. Um, Graven is the…he’s the protagonist. He lost his finger to this spider goddess that was trying to seduce the heirs of man for the opals of truth, um - Graven is great! He’s the hero.]

Grunted in response. “I’m surprised you decided to show Graven.” It’s a long way from Magarak

[The forest fortress of the the Elven Seers, destroyed in a fire at the end of book two, there’s a map in all the books that I spent a really long time on if you want to buy it and check it out.]

To Grunikdil.

[Mountain, lava, dark magic type stuff]

Graven slid is hood back revealing a smooth scalp marred by a jagged scar -

[the second wound between the worlds???!] 

“I wouldn’t miss it for all the world.”

Graven parts his cloak to reveal the talisman of Anakardareth.

[Uh…this….goes on for a while…So the Talisman can be used to fold back time as a way to get revenge on Malkor who, uh, he’s the witch warrior that’s been stealing the seven facets of light as a way to leech the past and bleed it across the nine-fold kingdoms to bring about an eternal winter… but…let’s see…maybe I’ll just….the prologue is not a great place to start because it’s going back over all of this old stuff….maybe I’ll skip to a battle?]

[flips pages for one full minute]

[ok! Here we go….]

The Mordrigan Battalion launched a volley of flaming gormgals, screaming across the Trisgaresian plane directly for the Carillian Siege Engines, breaking through the Vathlair’s armored Frimborains, leaving burning Druixels in it’s wake. 

[Shoot, that’s a spoiler if you end up reading the first two in the trilogy….um…maybe…I think I’m close to time, so maybe I’ll just read you this poem, it’s an original poem, a war song about love and loss that I think, actually really applies to everything that’s going on in our world today, honestly. 

Oh, it’s in….does anyone here speak Paradashan? If you understand Tolkien’s Elvish this is…like Spanish to Italian I guess? Like they’re both Romance languages so….]

Galaharadyianith — !!!

BLACKOUT / Lights / Scene / el FIN

~ ~ ~

And that’s that! Ooo — and to wrap things up with a gentle plug on theme, this week I read and loved my friend

Allie McRaith

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grief babe

— check it out I tell em’ WILL sent you.

bye for now & please keep it cozy,

Will

1. You can not. Embarrassed by your googles? LIFE HACK is to just add a little extra context (“my friend is wondering if”) or lower the stakes (“no worries if not”) for anyone that might uncover your trove of humiliating searches. Combining these hacks leaves you with “My DAD is wondering if you can add mint chocolate chip ice cream to your coffee NO WORRIES IF NOT” — I do this for the same reason I’ll never eat calamari again. If/when the octopus/robots (or [god forbid] Octopus-Robots) take charge I want to be able to offer up proof that I was, at the very least, polite and not actively eating them. Enjoy your fried appetizer, I choose LIFE.

2. My friend Jenelle warned me that this combination of “cold showers” and “wrote an essay about an Apple watch” puts me in dangerous Joe-Rogan-interviewing-Andrew-Huberman-about-a-running-up-a-mountain-with-boulders-workout territory, but I have a good community of people who love me and I promise I know my limits and am not currently in danger of stoic-tech-bro-brainwashing.