I have a binge and purge cycle in Facebook and I am currently binging. To that end I am inviting my hidden, secret, quiet, background blog readers to add me as a ‘Friend’. I am always looking to broaden the social network. Just visit www.facebook.com/cantelon and add me.

they are life’s luminaries
the bones of my body
holding up this temple

the three in one
the daughter
the son
the son

a trinity of me
to see when I can’t see
they are heart’s lights
through the dark nights
soft souls that sing
of new hope rising

my breath
my sight
my great amen

my beloveds
my treasure
my blessed children

It has been said that to survive in this day when it seems as though virtually everything that can be written, sung or said has been written, sung and said that one must bring something new to the creative table. George R.R. Martin has brought something new to the fantasy table for certain and it is very, very good.

Martin’s book A Game of Thrones is fantasy come of age. Ever since fantasy was conceived the reality of these new worlds has been lost or shrouded in whispers and hints. We all knew what the Orcs and Goblins did in the dark of their caves but it was never spoken. Stephen R. Donaldson sent us Thomas Covenant to hint at a more real fantasy world with a protagonist/antagonist who started his journey with the rape of an innocent in his The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant trilogy but conventions at the time held him back as well.

Not until Martin do we have a fantasy world that seems plausible and real. The characters are not black and white but frustratingly gray, not unlike the world we live in. There is honor but it is rarely achieved while evil is blunt and in your face.

A Game of Thrones is a fantasy novel for the modern world which has long been used to seeing life up close and personal through 24-hour news channels and an unfiltered internet. While the novel may be blunt it is not without purpose or subtlety. These days the most successful novels have been blending genres and A Game of Thrones is no different. While clearly rooted in a fantasy world Martin brings to play all the intrigue and strategy of a good John LeCarre political thriller. The twists and turns will keep you hooked and reading late into the evening.

Definitely an interesting novel way ahead of its time and only now coming of age. It will change the genre of fantasy forever and most likely for the better. I cannot wait to see what lies ahead.

A note of warning – the very plausibility and realness of the book means the reader will be confronted by some pretty explicit language and sexuality.

iron and grey
are bitter friends
bound to slay
lost passions
to twisted ends

while

smooth and gold
tempt with chance
the tripping old
slow sad dim-eyed
worn by the dance

The world is populated with empty canyons
littered with trash and dammed up at one end
great concrete barriers to hold back the dark
to bear the burden of sad shames
lost secrets of pasts not soon forgotten
each one no different from any other
yet alone alone alone in the fear (lie) that they
they are the deepest, the darkest, the foulest valleys
one more deception poured as watery mortar
over painted faces and painted smiles
cheerful bright bandages masking pain

let the dam be the smooth unreadable face to the world
to hide the lake of pustulant poison
despite corroded cracks that weep sickness

or

tear it down that the black might pour forth
a torrent of night to wash away the broken
till forever gone is the dead dead sea
leaving only thin Styx for oaths and forgetfulness
with blessed knowledge that walls isolate
while streams bring forth thirsty life to drink

Watched Sid & Nancy last night for the first time in a long while. It’s a great biographical drama about Sid Vicious, bass player for The Sex Pistols and his girlfriend and their spiral into oblivion due primarily to drug abuse.

There is a lot I like about the movie. A very young Gary Oldman plays the stand out role of Sid. He really does make the movie and is virtually unrecognizable from his characters today like Commissioner Gordon in the Batman franchise.

I was surprised to learn that Courtney Love has a role in the movie…she plays the small part of Gretchen. I was surprised because the movie was made in 1986 when Love was an unknown, three years before she formed the band Hole and years longer till she would meet Kurt Cobain and live a very similar life.

Sid and his friend Johnny Rotten have a significant problem they are trying to work through in the early part of the film – boredom. Everything is boring to them. Johnny throws himself into the music and anarchy to alleviate his boredom while Sid throws himself into drugs and Nancy.

While The Sex Pistols were about Rotten’s musical message of anarchy Vicious became about drugs…as long as the two were on different tangents it was inevitable that they would breakup…each pursuing their own solution to boredom.

Boredom. Interesting concept. I can relate to this. You can have a myriad of different things going on in your life but somehow still find yourself bored. It is a deep sense of dissatisfaction and emptiness.  It can work itself out in very destructive ways or it can simply sit within and corrode you.

People become bored not because they have nothing to do but because they are not content. They have been given no real sense of purpose.

The movie gets all this across and more. It is worth watching.

what if we are dreams
phantoms of god
lost in his sleep
small beloved misfirings
pictures of projections
of beloved ghosts
tumbling through unconscious

what of it?

created is created
let us linger
as nocturnal puppets
threading through
the holy mind’s eye
forever

sometimes
i write
i write with an empty inkwell
there are no words
the page remains
blank
stark and formless
like the world before the world

simply possibility

there is an art
in the act
the act before the act
i see beauty in the phantom
the ghost before the life
the promise of tomorrow
on a cold blank space
it is hope and shapeless yearning
like the onset of impending love
still miles away – but coming

to compose without words
is to weave magic in the air
and make the emperor’s new clothes
but people will still stop and stare
in awe
of
nothing

Insidious has to be one of the worst movies ever made. First of all there is absolutely nothing insidious about it, except perhaps how they managed to get $1.5 million for their budget and make $53 million.

There is absolutely nothing scary about this movie at all…nothing. It has horrible effects, atrocious acting and no real plot whatsoever. The worst use of cliche violin horror sounds ever. Every time the camera panned to anything the violins would start out and you would wonder what you were supposed to scared about in the first place.

If you want to watch a horror movie that is not in the least bit frightening and sadly has you laughing when it intends make you jump then this movie is for you…otherwise skip it…terrible.