When I Like Something

Dear girls who hated me when I first started college,

This was about 2005-2006, I guess. You may remember! I was always hanging out on the couches, along with some of my friends. I think there were two or three of you. I only remember one of your names, and that one of you was blonde. Apparently one time you complained about me to the guy who works in the cafeteria, who knew me. “Do you know Robert Mason?” you asked. And when he said he did, you just said how much you hated me.

I have no idea what I had done to earn your ire. I suppose it was probably just a case of being completely different people who happened to share proximity all the time. Apparently your hate for me was pretty intense. I’m sorry if I caused you to lose sleep or something. I mean, I’m sure you aren’t terrible people. Maybe you are very nice, and I just rubbed you the wrong way? So, I’m sorry. I hope that you don’t think back of how much you hated me from time to time, unless it’s just to laugh about the follies of youth. We should all laugh about the follies of youth.

Yours,

Rob Mason

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There was a trailer for some movie involving hell demons featuring Nick Cage at Sherlock Holmes. I have no interest in seeing it! But I would be interested in seeing this:

DIABLO: THE MOVIE

Teaser trailer.

A dark set–a dark sky, a faint horizon, wilderness. Moody music. A fire is lit, casting red lighting over:

Two figures, a MAN and a WOMAN, seated around a small campfire; around them the signs of battle, or at least skirmish, are barely visible.

MAN: I don’t understand it. It’s like they were–

WOMAN: Possessed?

Shot of mountainous country with a desolate and slightly ominous feel. The music swells in intensity. WOMAN speaks over this.

WOMAN: This is an evil neither of us can hope to comprehend. We need to find someone who knows. We need to find Cain.

Cut to many scenes of the MAN and WOMAN battling demons, zombies, et cetera. Music is appropriately fighty. The montage concludes with an image of a massive, terrifying demon. The MAN and WOMAN pause, glance at each other, and simultaneously raise their weapons to charge. Cut to black, silence. The lights slowly raise on DECKARD CAIN.

CAIN: Stay a while, and listen…

The title DIABLO flashes on the screen. Fin.

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This one is nice.

after a shower and a shave
and generally cleaning up
for no one but myself
and maybe a dream
but mainly myself

i’m out of several things (bread
cheese
aftershave) but it’s been a long night
and i’ll still be hungry in the morning

what’s really bothering me is
(apart from everything else)
does anybody else notice
when it’s been a long night?

I think I wrote it because I wanted to write one without capital letters. Success! It is about how sometimes, when I haven’t slept well or I skipped a shower or I haven’t shaved I wonder if anyone notices. Sometimes the idea of someone saying “man, you look rough” has this weird appeal to it. I don’t know.

When I showed this one to Janie, she said that “this one would be cool to find somewhere on a dirty scrap of paper.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

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Unlike the European explorers,
I cannot land my fleet at new worlds,
my holds laden with gifts,
and marvel at someone so different.
There are no new names
to give new wonders–
but there are no new wonders.
Everything is named and charted,
and not even by a man
desiring to find and name new things.
Even so,
I long for unfamiliar territory,
for a land to explore,
some new world to claim as home.

Sometimes I write poems about things that are historical. This one is about how much it bothers me that the new world was found by people who were mostly interested in new trade routes, and now I’m looking back at it and thinking that they were probably still just as excited to find this completely new world. Even so: the world is pretty much charted now, and sometimes that’s sad.

I’m not so keen on subjugating the natives and killing them with my diseases, but that’s not the point.

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You guys, I am going to make a podcast and it’s going to be awesome. I’m going to probably record this weekend and then find a place to upload it, which will probably be pretty easy, given my expected bandwidth use (very little!). It will be called Rob Mason Tells You What To Think, I will post them here when they happen, and it will be the greatest thing ever. I will basically talk about whatever in a rambling and digressive fashion, because oral storytelling is fun, and sometimes you just need to hear my voice when you’re walking to work or whatever, talking about something useless. It’ll be great, probably!

Or maybe it won’t be, but even if it’s not, it will be awesome, because terrible things are just as awesome as awesome things, in the end.

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“Mistakes aren’t always regrets.” “I’d rather die terrified than live forever.” “Let’s do it and never look back.”

I talk about adventures a lot–like road trips with no map and no itinerary, just you and a car and three thousand miles of freeway to explore. Or just driving around randomly on country roads, and stopping to explore creepy abandoned houses. I want to go exploring. I want to make mistakes. I want to be terrified. And I want to come home after and tell stories about it. I wish I’d been arrested when the police stopped us in Minnesota. I wish I’d spent a cold night in a cell, furious that our trip had been ruined, upset that I was locked up so far from home. All it would have taken was a bit of cheek.

But I’m a pragmatist. When my friends start talking about things which will end badly I’m the first to say this is a bad idea. I think I’m afraid that mistakes will become a virtue, that we’ll start making decisions simply because it will end badly and there will be a story later. The mistakes I love are the stories of failures, the stories of taking risks and then suffering for it. They don’t have to end in disaster. But they might. I can’t wait to find out.

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