Jump from the Sky

                

I went looking for a dreamer, so I climbed a ladder into the sky, because people had always told me, “Dreamers have their heads in the clouds”. But when I reached the sky I found no true dreamers. I found only those who were willing to pursue lofty things as long as it came easily, quickly, with little heartache or resistance or disappointment. There were no true dreamers there. So I left the sky.

But as I descended the ladder, I heard a violent scream. I looked up and saw a man falling from the sky above me. He plummeted toward me, growing larger and larger, so fast, so fast, and then whizzed past me, past every rung of the ladder, growing smaller and smaller, until he disappeared.

As quickly as I could, I scaled down and eventually found the fallen dreamer in a swamp, flat on his back. I ran to help him him, but before I could, he was already on his hands and knees, crawling through the bog, the mud. Leeches were attached to his face. Pellets of sweat rolled in a fleet down his neck. His fingernails--bulging with black sludge--began to pop from his skin. Yes, he was sloppy and worn, his breath ragged, but he was oh so very much alive.

I asked him if he was okay.

“Yes,” he said.

Then I asked him how it was that he fell from the sky.

"I didn't fall," he said. "I jumped."

Then I asked him why in the world he would do such a crazy thing.

“I want to be a dreamer,” he said. And he kept crawling.

Walking beside him, I stared at this strange sight, at his soiled profile, and asked him why he would come here to become a dreamer.

“Because,” he said, still moving on all fours, his breath rattling out from behind his teeth, “In the sky, my dreams lasted only until the odds grew dim. Once that happened, I wasn't willing to keep going. And my dream died. I let it die. I died. And then I realized that dreams aren't made in the sky. Dreams are made in the swamp. Dreamers don’t live with their head in the clouds, but rather with their hands in the mud. Dreamers crawl. Dreamers sweat. Dreamers pound through the sludge in order to bring to life the visions tumbling within their minds, their hearts.”

Then I dropped to my knees, and began crawling, dreaming beside him.  

Heroes and Monsters Trailer

I've been waiting to see this for a while now. And now it's here...this is the Heroes and Monsters trailer! Yeah, the book--which I really can't wait for you to read and see and enjoy--comes out March 1st, but the trailer is live now! Oh man I had such a blast shooting it with Kyle and Justin, the talented filmmakers behind it all. We tried some things. Some of them worked. And ha, some of them didn't at all. That's okay. It's supposed to be that way I think. Otherwise, what's the point of collaborating? Anyway, I cherished my time with these guys. There really is something special about bringing minds and imaginations and hearts and bodies together to dream something up, and then to actually seek to pull it off. There's a shared struggle, a shared anxiety, a shared frustration, and then hopefully, a shared joy, a shared sense of relief, a shared smile, a shared thankfulness. I feel all of that now. I really do. Thanks Kyle and Justin, for giving us this intense, yet beautiful piece. Enjoy-

Fifty-Dollar Owl

At one of those overstuffed, hyper-lit furniture stores out in the suburbs where everything—oriental floor rugs and elephant sculpture and birdcage lamps—costs laughable amounts of money, I paid fifty dollars for a wooden owl. 

Now he’s (he?) in my home, beside the television, the big oversized television that cost me ten times as much as the wooden owl, the television that the young geek at the electronic store said was a deal—“hot”, he called it—the television that is the centerpiece of my entire home—entire life? So each time that I watch television now—do you want to know the Tuesday night programming? I can tell you Wednesday night too. Oh, you’re interested in Saturday afternoon? Not a problem. And Sunday—the owl watches me. In that way, I guess I’m his (his?) in-home entertainment system. Yeah, he’s flipping the channels on me, probably  wondering if there’s anything (anyone) better that he could be watching, something (someone) more interesting, more believable. He's wondering why it feels as if he’s already seen this one, this rerun, wondering how someone with my obvious lack of promise could possibly be cast in a starring role, wondering why there is so much boring crap occupying valuable air space these days, wondering why he isn’t out doing anything better on a Friday night; a Friday night when other beings—real beings—are out at parties, big parties with pretty girls and famous athletes and respected sea captains and war heroes and Hollywood stars, parties with live backyard music performances by soon to be legendary indie bands and miles of lush food and barrels of beverages and more pretty girls--sets of twins even--and then even more famous people, yes! So many famous people packing the jovial party place that the walls are bending outward—

His (his?) eyes are round, perfectly round, and deadly calm, brown straight through, the exact same brown color as his body and feathers and wings and talons. They—his eyes—don’t move or twitch, and wow it’s unnerving, creepy to the moon. I sit here, on the couch. And he sits there. And he just stares. He drills into me, penetrating my brain and feelings and haunts and past and ambitions and fears and insecurities about—

The fact that he doesn’t move reminds me that I don’t move much either. It reminds me that I’m static like him, that neither of us is going anywhere, doing anything— But back to this staring of his: it’s all he does. What a one trick pony. I can’t look at him for more than a few seconds before I look away. After that, it gets uncomfortable, awkward. So yes, I always look away first. Always. Try and beat him in a staring contest. Just try. I dare you. Maybe you’ll fare better than me. I’m winless against him. Oh he is so smug. I get the feeling that he’s proud of his undefeated streak, that he takes an enormous sense of joy out of rubbing his unblemished staring contest record in my fleshy face; my fleshy face that paid fifty dollars for a wooden owl that was supposed to liven up my living room, a wooden owl that was supposed to meet my deep-seeded needed to express myself, a wooden owl that has instead become just one more thing driving me completely cabin fever climbing the walls nuts—

Wow I need to get out.

A Still Unnamed Tree Joins the Christmas Fun

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Kristen and I, along with her parents and two of her brothers and a friend of ours from California, got our Christmas tree. It's standing in the corner of our house now, staring at me all green and pokey and sap smelling. But he (he?) is a good tree. I like our tree. And I'm confident that we're all going to get along just fine for the next month or so, and that this tree--this tree/family member that I'm still trying to come up with a name for--will add loads of joy and laughter and yule to every single holiday event our family tackles over the course of the next month.

Of course, one of these important events will be the Christmas Movie Extravaganza-ganza-ganza: our month-long movie marathon of all the winter favorites. We're all set to begin the "ganza" this week. As we watch, there will be tree (What kind of name sums up our tree perfectly? Hmmm. I still need time to mull) trimming, cookie making, Mariah Carey-"All I Want for Christmas is You" listening/singing, and egg nog drinking (Kristen and Ditka refrain from this portion), to name a few. Yes, I'm excited. Yes, I'm ready. So here, right here, is the initial list of films the Riebock family will be screening. Naturally, the list is subject to change/revision/or the addition of any 80s movie, winter-themed or otherwise. 

1. Christmas Vacation 
2. It's a Wonderful Life (Love)
3. A Christmas Story 
4. Home Alone (And Home Alone 2? Come on, Marv and Harry demonstrate maturity in becoming the sticky bandits, versus their earlier incarnation as the wet bandits) 
5. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Both the cartoon and Jim Carrey versions)
6. Christmas Vacation (Yes, I probably will watch it twice)
7. The Nightmare before Christmas
8. The Polar Express (I know, I know, the kids look really creepy, but still, I dig the movie. Plus, that Josh Groban song on the soundtrack is awesome)
9. Scrooged
10. Ghostbusters (I must have Bill Murray on the brain)
11. Caddyshack (Again, thinking about Bill Murray--What About Bob? Groundhog Day. ZombieLand. Etc.)
12. A Christmas Carol (Both the Mickey Mouse version and the Jim Carrey versions)
13. Elf 
14. The new Sherlock Holmes movie (Really looking forward to this one)
15. The Bears vs Packers game 
16. Jingle All the Way (Hahaha, Arnold and Sinbad. Greatest on-screen duo ever?)
17. Four Christmases
18. Awkward home videos of my sisters and I in turtle necks, singing Christmas songs, lots of cats in the background, meowing
19. A Charlie Brown Christmas
20. Goonies 
21. Maybe I'll name our tree Mr. Needles. Yes. Mr. Needles.

All These Bats (as in rodents, not baseball) Are in Our House

Bats are hanging over us from the ceiling beams. This isn’t a nightmare. This is real. I know because I can hear them squeaking. There are maybe a dozen of them, their jagged vampire teeth bearing down, their black-haired wings fluttering on again, off again, agitated little blood suckers. They must have entered through the chimney. That’s probably it. Someone forgot to close the stupid flue and now we have a full on infestation on our hands, the impending spread of rabies. What a crummy way to go—

Oh here comes Dad with the fishnet and tennis racket. The impromptu exterminator. He looks tough, but I know he’s scared. He hates spiders, birds even. He passes out at the sight of a blood, tips right over. He may be fooling the bats, but he’s not fooling me.

He inches below the first bat, measuring the net, licking his lips, breathing slow, gripping the tennis racket in the other shaky hand, nothing like Agassi or Sampras. And now I’m stuck in a moral dilemma.

Sure, these bats are disgusting, have rabies, aren't considering our well-being at all, may shape-shift at any moment and kill us, but does that warrant a death sentence? So they took an accidental wrong turn down our chimney, so what. Doesn’t everyone, every living thing—even the nocturnal ones—deserve a second chan—

The tennis racket thumps against the fishnet. The bat falls limp, sagging into the mesh wiring, and off my dad goes, scooting past me. For a moment I think I see the bat staring out at me, asking why this happened, begging for help, begging me to do something, to save his family, his friends, to have a little heart because my gosh they're only trying to survive, that's all, just survive— Dad opens the front door. He walks outside. I watch him through the window as he flings the net. The heavy carcass blurs black in the clean air, an ink smudge across the sky, and then lands in the uncut grass. An improper burial.

Dad walks an assassin’s walk back in through the front door, head down, without speaking, and returns to the ceiling beams. I close my eyes. I can’t watch this. I feel like I’m in the coliseum, a barbarian reveling in death, seeing it as sport, or a spectator to an electric chair execution, watching from that room with the one-way mirror—

The tennis racket thumps again against the wood beam. The fish net stretches tight with another dead load, and Dad moves nervous past me, wiping his forehead, avoiding eye contact, the net sort of rustling. I might throw up. This isn’t right. But then again, it’s either them or us, right? Sure, this may be wrong, but I don’t want rabies. I want our house back. I want to survive this hostile takeover. And surely, survival is more important than compassion or doing the right thing. Surely survival is the right thing.

                                                             So maybe the bats aren't the only animals in our house. Maybe even if we flush out the bats, the animals will still remain. Maybe there's a    rabid         animal   in all of us.