Reckless Orange

Mom sent me some throwbacks @stephayes4

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 00:49:07 -0600

Mom sent me some throwbacks @stephayes4

@georgiamaelewis prof-picable for sure

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 04:12:44 -0600

@georgiamaelewis prof-picable for sure

at Home home

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 15:20:29 -0600

at Home home

at SCS warehouse

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 13:21:24 -0600

at SCS warehouse

at Griffith Observatory

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:39:11 -0600

at Griffith Observatory

"For whatever it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case too early, to be whoever you..."

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 02:17:26 -0600

““For whatever it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case too early, to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things that you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.””

- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

So right. Jason Geick, Chentell Darling, rebecca griffin, Alyssa...

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 17:02:01 -0500

So right. Jason Geick, Chentell Darling, rebecca griffin, Alyssa Catlin, Sam Hayes (Taken with Instagram at The Grand Griff)

My Satirical Editorial on Hollywood from the Outside in the Los Feliz Ledger

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 15:31:08 -0500

My Satirical Editorial on Hollywood from the Outside in the Los Feliz Ledger

The Limn

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 21:13:31 -0500

The Limn:

Check out my other blog—The Limn.

The Limn is a student art blog I have started. It is based on Wheaton College’s campus, but content is accepted from anywhere.

The Limn is looking for good writing, photography, film, and anything else from people who need a platform to display their work.

We are small, but growing. So submit!

Sam

Excerpt

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 02:57:11 -0500

From a book I’m working on called A Pursuit of Happiness

Call me a creep but I had gotten in the habit of eavesdropping whenever I could. I can’t say I knew I would tell Adam’s story, but I had a feeling, like a little bug pushing on something fastened inside me, that the things I heard would lay heavy, that my eavesdroppings—yes, eavesdroppings, would not be any sort of waste, but something crucial. I had a feeling that if I let that little bug push hard enough something stuck in my soul might move.

Adam and Stella sat in the jacuzzi, in the front of the plane. I had just taken one but had never asked anyone’s permission and was in the changing room. They didn’t know. I started listening a bit, and then I had stayed too long, forcing myself to stay the whole time. At this point walking out was not an option. I hid and felt awkward, but these are the things I do so I’ve learned to eat the awkward and in a strange way enjoy it, smiling, but not awkwardly—a little.

They talked and I sat naked in the changing room behind the vented wooden door because I had taken off my swimsuit just before they came in and putting my pants on would have been way too noisy. There was some splashing and I almost tried but it was too risky.

“Yeah, it’s been fun.” Adam’s voice came through clear as the splashing died down and they settled in.

“Are you two dating?”

“Yes. But no, not like that.”

“Huh?”

“Uh, I don’t know.”

“Are you?”

“Yeah I guess.”

“You guess.”

“Yeah. We are.”

“So?”

“Well she makes me happy. It’s good. It’s a good thing.”

“So why are you freezing up about it?”

“Freezing up?”

“Yeah, your just…you’re just freezing up.”

“I don’t know.”

“Isn’t this what you’ve been waiting for?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out…” he looked at the door.

June was sleeping in one of the beds further back in the plane but we could all feel her right at the door. Everyone knows intuitively that when you talk about someone they are twice as likely to show up. Either it’s fate or everyone’s got bad luck but neither make sense to me. June made him happy but I could tell he wasn’t happy with happy. They were silent for a bit and I started to feel like I was breathing too loud because I was nervous—not for myself, for Adam. His voice had changed and I could tell he was thinking and I was afraid he would say the wrong thing and his limitless guts would come surging into the room and we’d all drown.

“Oh, what about the bubbles?” Adam broke in. Phew.

“Bubbles?”

“The jets.”

“What about them?”

They laughed and I could tell the tension had dissolved and left behind their old careless chemistry.

“Well don’t you think we should turn them on?”

“I don’t care. I don’t even like bubbles.”

“Seriously? Why?”

“They always pop.”

She giggled but then there was silence and I could feel something fogging it up. I peeped through the crack just in time to see Adam break eye contact and quickly hop out of the tub to turn on the jets. He turned and smiled before cranking them on full blast. She laughed and they fell back in sync with each other. He yelled something about this damn plane being freezing and tumbled back into the tub. The jets were loud so I couldn’t hear anything for twenty minutes. But I’m a space cadet and somehow I didn’t think to put on my pants and I regret that. I just sat there naked imagining what they were saying—the rapid descents and ascents between great depths and cloud nine or ten. They had that way about them. Transitions moved fast. A tear or a sigh could never hinder a laugh or a grin. They peppered most deep conversations with jokes.

When the jets went off after twenty minutes I could hear nothing and for a moment wondered if they had left, but they had only descended again. They had probably fallen fresh off some goony joke to crawl around in search of something. They now felt their way through unknown caves in the pitch black.

“Do you know what I mean?” she said.

“I think…”

“I feel like there is a part of me I can’t get to.”

“Yeah.”

“Like—I feel like my body isn’t me.”

“But, part of you?”

“No, like, different. I feel like I’m something else…but like I can’t get to it.”

“Yeah.” Adam was understanding but I could tell he didn’t quite understand. Yeah was well intentioned if not sincere.

“Maybe that’s why I’ve gone streaking so many times.”

“Or maybe it’s because you just want everyone to see you naked weirdo.”

They laughed again and she splashed him. “No, but seriously—because if I’m not by body, then I don’t care.”

“No no I got you don’t worry.”

He leaned in and thought in that way that you shouldn’t interrupt with words. “I’ve felt the same I think, like there are two things going on at once. Like there are two things and we know it but we act like its one thing.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, like—ok. Ok so right now, this time in my life is an example.”

“Yeah.” It seemed like he wanted her to pull the depths out of him, but she wasn’t going to and he knew it.

“Ok…so right now is the most exciting time of my life but also the loneliest.”

She didn’t say yeah because she understood a little bit I think.

“It’s two things…” he said, “but I act like its just the one, the first one. But it’s two things at the same time and I can’t always access the second one, but I know it’s there and it haunts me and it affects me I think—I cant get to it. Once in a while, but I can’t get to it. But, sometimes it gets to me I guess.”

I don’t think she had heard him like this and I don’t think he was comfortable. But there are two levels to everything and we all know it but we don’t. All the shit Adam had gained meant nothing to him at this point and he knew it but he didn’t. He was empty and full, tired and tireless. He knew the whole time that the ships and planes and parties and girls wouldn’t make him happy—then again he was convinced they would. His job was to be happy, and this was everything anyone could offer him. But there are two things that exist at once in contrast, and we know it but we don’t.

“So you’re more excited or lonely?” she asked.

“It’s not like that. I’m both, I think. And even it were like that how should I know? I can’t get to it, see.”

“Why are you lonely?”

“I mean, I’m not…not like that.”

“But you are.”

She could tell. She could tell and she was fishing now, not because she needed to know anything—she already knew. She was fishing because she needed balance, because she needed to make what existed disappear again, she needed to make what was said out loud retreat in silence. We all know it’s real out loud and not in silence—two things. She fished because she knew he would stop biting if the hook was too sharp. She fished because she knew what his loneliness meant.

They were two things between them I think. That very moment, like most, was two things. It was everything and nothing. It was anything and one thing in specific. It was climbing and diving. Running and stopping. Falling and fleeing, She was taken and so was he but they weren’t. There was nothing to be had between them but everything was already there. Nothing was there, but there was everything to be had.

She had shut him up all right. She dropped the line and he swam away. But the hook had sunk deep in his mouth anyway and surely the line would run out and snag him at some point.

I don’t know why he took that hook but I don’t think he had a choice and then again I don’t think he took it at all. He could have told you he did or told you he didn’t and both would have been true. But through the vent I could see it there shining in his mouth and the blood gushing out and him wondering how long his red supply would last—until the glint caught her eye. She smiled and splashed him and again and suddenly said, “I’m naked.” Quickly, she stood up out of the hot tub and she wasn’t naked and they laughed and I could tell it was sunny again somewhere. You should’ve seen the look on his face as she stood up, and then the look on hers. There was little she loved more than creating that look in people. “I’m burning up,” she said. “I’d rather be freezing.”

But you know this story because I’m still standing there naked. They hurry out of the hot tub and she goes to the other changing room—thank God. Then my relief is suspended by an equally weighty conflicting reality. Adam comes bounding to my vented door where my shadow spills through the cracks but he doesn’t notice because he is suddenly convinced that he is only excited and not two things after all. He flings open the door like the floodgates of his emotions and I am as naked as Stella at her nakedest. He screams in shock, then in terror. Twice, separated by a breath. He laughs like a scream only just as loud. He yells In horror and hilarity. “NICK WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IN HERE?” Silence but my mouth wide open. “AND WHY THE HELL ARE YOU NAKED?

I run, aimless but surely on a mission. I am still naked. I escape the changing room and run out the next door where I see others who don’t have time to see me before I turn around and leap headlong into the steamy hot tub. Stacy comes out half naked to see the commotion and I think I am in the clear but the bubbles aren’t on. She sees me naked and I have no explanation because eavesdropping would not be good enough. No explanation. Questions. Questions unanswered. Furrowed eyebrows. Raised eyebrows on a stone wall. Two different types of laughter and she leaves. Adam turns on the bubbles on his way out and makes a dirty comment and we’re both laughing but he is still freaked out and frankly, so am I.

I explained later about the timing and how I was naked and wanted to leave but how it had gotten too late and I didn’t exactly include 100% of the story or even 99%.

“I just get this weird eavesdroppy feeling about it I guess.” Adam said.

“Yeah it’s just—nah…”

“Hm…”

“Yup.”

“Yup you were?”

“What?”

“You were?”

“Were what?”

“Eavesdropping?

“Oh. Ahh… Nope.”

“But it seems like maybe…like maybe you were?”

“Yeah.”

“So you were?”

“Oh—seemed like it.”

“Seemed like it to you or me?”

“Yesss.”

“Okay…”

“Ok.”

That was that.

I was eavesdropping but I wasn’t and that’s all either of us knew.

Mustaches happen. Sometimes mustaches happen in Mexico.

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 19:56:06 -0500

Dock Stash

Emotional Stash

Deep Stash

Painfully Real Stash

Spacey Stash

Sea Stair Stash

Mustaches happen. Sometimes mustaches happen in Mexico.

Excerpt

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 02:50:46 -0600

From my a book I’m working on—A PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

“What is it then?” I said.
“It’s the lightest and the heaviest thing in the world…I think” Adam uncrossed his leg and looked past me at something he had begun to understand but could never grasp.
“Like what?”
“Like…well like nothing?”
“Don’t look at me Sherlocke.”
“No, it is like nothing. It’s like nothing else.”
“How can you be sure?” I was prodding now, seeing how many bricks I could pull before the whole tower came tumbling to the ground.
“I’m sure. You’re not, I’m only sure it’s the only thing like it I’ve experienced.”
“So you’ve only been in love once?”
“It’s only happened once.”
“Happened?”
“Happened.”
“So what happens if it unhappens?”
“Unhappens?”
“Well if it only happened in the first place then surely it could unhappen—just another happening.”
“No, it doesn’t work like that.”
“So how—”
“For it to unhappen I’d have to make it unhappen. But Nick I could never make it unhappen anyway.”
“So what’s to say it doesn’t unhappen on its own? Whose making things happen here?”
“Who?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s no—it’s just—no one, no one Nick, no one…” Adam looked out again, but this time he didn’t understand. “It is what it is, you won’t understand it till you experience it.”
At this point I felt I had a better handle on it than him and that experience would only loosen my grip. So I let up and the tower stood in place, a few bricks lighter.

1 Welcome to Kibera, the world’s third largest slum, in...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:48:14 -0600

*1*

*2*

*3*

*4*

*5*

*6*

*7*

*8*

*9*

*10*

*1* Welcome to Kibera, the world’s third largest slum, in Nairobi, Kenya.

*2* There are no bathrooms here. This is a bathroom. Yet it is also a play area…and a sidewalk…and a porch, and a backyard, and a front yard.

*3* The camera that took this photo is worth more than all three houses in this alley. Does that make the photo wrong in some way?

*4* It felt like a giant nursery. It seemed like more than 50% of the people I saw were under the age of 5.

*5* Little toddlers roam the streets alone.

*6* They have no idea what they are missing—fish who have not once thought of water.

*7* I should never complain.

*8* In Africa they think money grows on trees in America. It does. The laziest American slob makes more money with one year of welfare than these people will make working hard their whole lives.

*9* Apparently there is a place in this slum called the valley which is worse than this. I just don’t understand.

*10* There are pictures that I didn’t take—images that I cannot show you but are frozen in my mind. These pictures couldn’t be captured with a camera. Avatar is a completely different movie in 3D than in 2D—the disparity between these photos and the reality they scratch at is even greater.

I remember one man whose photo I couldn’t get myself to take, one scene I don’t foresee forgetting. I couldn’t take the photo because I was stunned, and because it didn’t feel right to freeze that moment in time, cage misery and show it around like a trophy of what I got to see. The man reminded me of “The Valley of Ashes” that Fitzgerald describes in The Great Gatsby, only worse, and real.

He was laying under the hot sun, surrounded by brittle charcoal. Black and gray suit covered him, piles of ash built up around him, and hot dust filled the air he breathed. He looked out at me blankly, like a fire had gone out. I stopped walking and stared back, camera dangling around my neck. Quickly I looked away, imagining what Fitzgerald would think if he knew that his writing was more than a metaphor. This man was literally gray. He lived in soot, selling homemade charcoal as his livelihood.

In Kibera, many people make charcoal. They dig holes in the ground and burn chunks of wood until they become brittle sticks of charcoal. They sell it for people to use for cooking. They spend entire days under the hot sun, building small fires around them, digging through ash and sorting soot.

Kibera is a different world from ours. I guess that’s all I can say.

Excerpt from a novel in progess..."A Pursuit of Happiness"

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:55:04 -0600

“You’re breathtaking.” That’s what he said the first time I ever met him.

He wasn’t talking to me. He was saying it to the girl I was with. She wasn’t my girlfriend, so it was alright I guess. But how could he have known that? He had never met her either.

Although, looking back, I imagine he did know. He had a way with these types of things—knowing things. He didn’t know things the way you or I know things. We mostly know things because we know them. We’ve heard or seen them before. Adam tended to know things even when he didn’t know them. That’s what made him such a sky rocket—he operated mostly on intuition and fueled it with hope. His intuition was damn good and he never seemed to run out of fuel.

I’ll say this much about his intuition. That day, he knew that girl would like him. I imagine it didn’t even matter to him whether she was my girlfriend or not. That wasn’t his affair. His affair, as was always his only affair, was to be himself, whatever the hell that was. However anyone else reacted to him was their affair. And he generally knew how they would react. Then again, Adam knew things that he didn’t know.

Most people chalked it up to confidence, but I think it was more than that. It was more like an eagle soaring high above us, but looking down with such powerful eyesight that he saw everyone up close.

“The sky is beautiful today.” That’s what he said to us next. It was nearly sunset and the tinted windows shaded all the sky’s colors with fuller hue.

“You should know, you’re the weatherman.” That’s what I said in reply, after a few seconds of hesitation. I was nervous, alright. When you see a guy on TV everyday, seeing him in real life is more like seeing a ghost. The next time you see a ghost you tell me if you’re nervous. Or don’t, the fact is, we would all be nervous, most of us at least, not Adam.

That’s just how people acted around him. Talking to him was like talking to a moving statue. He had for so long been a fixed image of perfection in my mind, and now he was moving. He was a portrait leaning out of his frame and into my world. He had always been so solid. Now he was real. It wasn’t the moving that was so wierd for me, it was the solidness about it. He was still a statue, yet moving. How anything so solid could move and laugh and smile without crumbling I do not know. Anyway, to me he was frozen, and the de-thawing would prove somewhat of a process.

“What’s your name anyhow?” he interjected.

“It’s Nick.”

“Nick, pleasure. I’m Adam.”

He knew that he didn’t need to introduce himself, but he did anyway. That was comforting. That was the first drop of meltwater and I didn’t let it miss my tongue.

“And who are you?”

“I’m Karma.”

“I hear karma’s a bitch.”

We all laughed. I laughed a little too hard because even if I had previously imagined a talking statue, I had never before heard it use profanity. Statues are too perfect or something, too timeless to reach into pop-culture’s most plentiful bag of jokes.

“It’s actually Karmen—they just call me karma.”

“Who?”

“Oh everyone. Friends, acquaintances, even my parents. I kinda like it I guess.”

“Do you?”

“Um, yeah. I mean I guess I’m just so used to it now. But yeah I like it. Everyone else seems to like it.”

The three of us stood in silence for a while. I continually possessed the urge to say something and never had anything to say. Karma just kept looking up at him and then looking down, beginning to bite her lip and then reigning her pearly whites back in like angsty horses. But her brown eyes couldn’t hold anything back if they knew it. Adam didn’t say anything either, but it didn’t seem like he felt the need. His eyes were diversely shaded green and unwavering, like a bronze statue left out in the rain. It fit because his tan skin had a that golden hue, like he had seized just the right amount of the sun and was content—golden, like a marshmallow cooked just right. And that’s how he did everything. He walked tight-wires between the clouds. He was the in between, in the best of ways. He walked that perfect balance on everything. We had all fallen off of one side or the other and crashed to the ground. Looking up, no matter which side you had fallen off, you always though he was on your side. That’s what Adam was—on your side.

That’s why he was a tight rope man. He walked thin lines effortlessly. We could only see him from below, where it always looked like he was leaning toward whichever side had pulled us down. He wasn’t a two-face. Certainly not. He just had good balance, and he liked his air a little thinner than the rest of us, and statues don’t blow over in the wind.

When we reached the next stop he spoke, not to me but to karma, with a sincerity that told me for a few moments, I didn’t exist.

“Karmen. I’d like to take you out sometime.”

“Uh. Sure. Yeahs—yes. Anytime.”

The train was stopped and he was just watching her, her eyes. She was lost, and quickly he was finding her. His door was open and an ugly voice blasted the station name from the speakers. Neither of them heard it. He let go of the pole we were holding onto in the middle of us, and I think his finger brushed her knuckle on the way down to his side.

“Call me tonight at seven.”

He pulled a calligraphy pen from his pocket and wrote his number on the back of her hand, the one still clutching the pole.

He turned and walked out, not quickly or slowly, not rushed or hesitant. The doors closed just after he left, as if they were waiting on his cue. I swear those doors nearly caught his coat-tails, but they wouldn’t dare.

Karma had melted into a pile of wide eyed softness and was useless for the rest of the day. We got off the train at Reber street and tried to go to lunch. Tried. I ate half of her food, just because I feel guilty about wasting. Her eyes had turned to glass. She was talking, but it was clear to me that she was also watching reruns on screens layering the inside of her eyeballs. What her recent memories projected onto those screens was as clear to me as it was to her, though not as vivid and captivating. Women have an unshared ability to multitask and assume that men don’t know whether they are getting the better half of their attention. But I know. I had her home well before seven. No need to cause a fuss.

Matterhorn.

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:50:23 -0600

Matterhorn.

Paperweight

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 21:25:04 -0600

By: Sam Hayes

On those hot summer days in upstate New York his dreams sat the heaviest. On long walks through shadeless fields from porch to creek, they took cover under his sweaty cap, endlessly bouncing between skull walls, clouding his mind with the densest of fogs.

Jay would not deviate from dreams except to wonder how he had not already become famous. He didn’t expect to be a superstar, but thought that his skills should have gained him some fame. He was, after all, the best in the world. Yet, as time forged on, Jay sat still—unrecognized, unmoving. Without a job or a plan, he spent his time at home, fending off the gaze of disgruntled parents. While classmates got ready for college, Jay strolled through the shelved alleys of his cool basement, admiring thousands of brilliant paper airplanes. They rested in tight rows, not rousing to the dim light that seeped through a lonely window well. Jay held the planes close as if to whisper them awake, then tossed them to flight as swift as wind. He wandered through the paper maze of his imagination, shaking hands and posing for photos, standing tall on podiums with his paper planes. They were his babies, his creation. He had given them life, and in return they were his lifeblood.

Jay had little else to his name. He spent class time designing and folding. In the hallways he would float the planes at cute girls, landing on their shoulders from afar, gently falling into their hands, delivering flirty notes and invitations. It was charming at first, but got old fast. He had no other flirting tactics. No talk, no smiles, certainly no eye contact, just planes. Planes and wrinkly white T-shirts that looked like old paper. Planes and faded jeans fit to ball up and toss in the trash.

When it came time to think about college, Jay would simply fold applications into aerial masterpieces and send them away in boxes. Most admissions counselors probably thought it was a joke and had a good laugh. None replied. Jay never considered orienting his design talents toward something else, not even real planes. That wasn’t what he wanted. Jay stuck to what he knew. He did what he was good at. He hadn’t tried much else. For better or worse, Jay dumped all the weight of life into the one aspect that felt completely comfortable. He had an unmatched ability to live in fantasy, perfectly certain worlds governed by unfulfilled desires.

After winning the New York Young Flyers contest at the age of twelve Jay expected to get interviewed by the New York Times. What he got was a shiny, plastic trophy. Then came the New York State Fair Paper Airplane Contest, in which he most assuredly became the youngest winner in history, though they don’t keep records. He won some money and had his Dad make him a T-shirt. It read NYSFPAC. Occasionally people would ask him what it meant. He liked that.

Sometimes events were cancelled because they didn’t have enough competitors, but Jay won every contest available. Each time he crushed his competition with an innovative design, soaring barely believable distances with pinpoint accuracy. His parents were always there, and usually a handful of other parents. He found state fairs and contests to compete in all over New England. He always won, and he always had a sharpie wedged behind his ear, where people would notice it. But that’s exactly where it stayed. His mother told him people weren’t too big on autographs anymore.

It wasn’t until after he won the NYSFPAC for the seventh year in a row, throwing backwards from between the legs, that someone finally called him up for a much deserved interview. Maybe this would knock some sense into people. Maybe now people would care. A part-time journalist was going to write an article for the local paper. Jay didn’t know it was his dad’s friend, or at least had chosen to forget. On the morning of its release he biked down to the newspaper box in town. He popped off his cap and swept his sweaty hair to the side to peer through the little window and read the cover: Local Graveyards Running out of Space.

“What?” He whipped out his cell phone and dialed up his dad.

“David Bloom speaking.”

“Dad, you said my article would be today!”

“Well, it is today.”

“No. It’s not. Lookin’ at the paper right now!”

“Hmm…lemme check…July…17th. Yup, today. Today is the day.”

“Well, no. I mean, it’s not. It’s not in here.”

“Jay, I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe they forgot. You check every section?”

“Forgot?”

Jay hung up in righteous rage. He shoved a couple of quarters into the rusty slot and began thumbing through the newspaper, mainly so that he could get the newspaper’s phone number and call them. The other reason he strove not to admit to himself—maybe they hadn’t forgot. He didn’t notice his article until he was looking for the phone number on the back page. In the sunlight he could see the silhouette of an edgy airplane bleeding through the thin paper from the inside. He furrowed his eyebrows and furiously turned the page.

It was only a paragraph long and they took just one quote from his entire interview. It was on the inside of the back page. The picture wasn’t even one of his original paper airplane designs, just some generic clip art. It was terrible. He called up his dad again, who didn’t seem to be all that upset about it. In the face of Jay’s great injustice, he was “not planning on calling to complain,” and managed to be proud that “plenty of people” would be reading about his son.

It was just a day afterwards that a young boy pointed his direction in the grocery store. Jay smiled and raised his eyebrows and cleared his throat. The boy’s mother walked straight toward him, the giddy child sitting wide-eyed in her cart.

“Excuse me,” she smiled and said politely.

“Yes?” he beamed, slowly reaching toward his ear.

“Little Billy just can’t help himself,” she chuckled. “You think you could reach up to that shelf and grab that box of Lucky Charms? He just loves em.”

“Oh—oh, um…right. Yeah, for sure, no prob.”

He reached past his ear for cereal instead. He almost signed the box before he handed it to her. That was about the closest Jay had ever come to fame.

It’s difficult, having dreams far grander than tools or skills, desires outside of Fate’s periphery. Jay constantly carried with him the sense that his train had already left for bigger and better things. He just needed to run fast enough to catch up with it. It was on one of those hot summer walks to the creek, reflecting and wishing, hoping the most hopeless of hopes, that he heard the buzz of a prop plane above him. He looked up. Sweat dropped from his hair to his eyes and ran moping down his face. When he could see the airplane clearly, he was struck by an idea to die for.

Jay never made it to that refreshing creek. There would be no cooling down, no de-clouding of his heavy head. He was prone let his dense dreams swirl and build pressure until they found a way out of his mind. He turned around instantly and ran back to the house. Ripping open his desk drawer, Jay gathered up all the money he had won over the years and drove to the arts and crafts store, where he bought out their entire construction paper and super glue supply.

The design alone took almost a month, each tedious moment pushing eager hope into the next. His parents had stopped asking him questions at this point. It was useless. There were no answers. His lips, though dying to burst, were sealed. Letting his dream out prematurely would surely mean letting it die.

He told them only that it was something big, that it was that something they had been waiting for all these years, that they would be proud.

“Is it another paper airplane?” his dad asked.

“No. Well, yeah, sort of. But, it’s different! Just trust me.”

“I trust you Jay…I just don’t trust paper as much as you do.”

After years of slicing comments, his parents’ bladed words had grown dull. And though they didn’t really trust him, they were happy to see him working so hard at something, because they loved him. He was too stubborn to fight with anyway, and they were too tired to try. So they held out a drop of slippery hope that maybe, just maybe, Jay’s talent would be recognized.

Jay had no problem building something very large, or even building something that he could control in the air. The trick was to build a paper plane with these qualities that could be folded into a suitcase. By the time he was ready to build, he had gone through so much of his construction paper on scratch designs and mini test-models that he had to steal money from his parents to buy more.

He cleared out his entire room to make space for the project, setting his other possessions all over the house, sleeping in the living room. He worked from sunrise to sunset every day. He never went down to the creek anymore; he hardly even went outside, except to eat dinner on the porch after sunset. Every night he would sit and watch airplane lights move into the distance until it seemed they had turned into stars.

The work was difficult, but inwardly thrilling, pulling him towards itself more every day. He looked like Da Vinci, or Michelangelo—his focus unflappable, his steady hands unshakable. When he finally finished the gigantic paper airplane, he spent a couple of days just sitting in the room with it alone. He stared at it, studied it, as if was finally responding to all the love he poured in, talking out its life story, sharing its reciprocated hopes and dreams. When he could live inside that elaborate head of his no longer, he carefully folded the airplane into an extra large, sturdy suitcase on wheels.

The day of his reckoning came on a late summer Friday. As the sun came up, he hopped in an old pick-up truck and sailed through peaceful greens toward the Big Apple. It took a few hours to get there, but time passes quickly when every second is devoted to the anticipation of one particular moment. In such a case the whole time, no matter how long, feels like one moment anyway.

He had to park a few blocks away, but didn’t mind. Jay strode down sidewalks in a black suit with a black tie, suitcase riding in his wake, not shifting an inch for anyone in his path. He wore a dead stare toward something far away but quickly approaching, something massive and invisible, something only he could see. Nearing the Empire State Building, Jay looked up and grinned, then glanced back at his suitcase for a second opinion, for reassurance of reality.

Some cash and an elevator took him all the way to the observation deck, but that wasn’t quite high enough. A security guard on the far side of the room near an ugly metal door carried a wide ring of keys. He was an immovable mass in all black, including a hood, standing there like the grim reaper. There was really no other option to reach the tip top but the door behind that guard. Jay thought about bribing, but figured it wouldn’t work, not for this, not to this man. It was too risky. Instead he waited until not too many people were around, then sauntered toward the guard while staring blindly out the windows. Reaching the space just in front of the man, Jay suddenly turned and pointed to the door. Heaving with all his might, he yanked up his hefty suitcase and wacked the distracted giant on the back of the head with its hard corner. As the man thumped to the floor a gasp and a hush spread across the room. Jay bent down and ripped the keys from his belt. Before rising up, he shoved his remaining life savings of eighty-six dollars into the man’s shirt pocket in a frugle attempt to pay off bad karma. Besides, he wouldn’t need petty cash anymore, not after today. Standing straight up, Jay quickly scanned the eyes watching him and bolted to the door. He unlocked it and slipped through. The heavy mass locked behind him. Huffing and puffing, Jay ascended a few flights of narrow stairs to arrive at a black metal ladder. It climbed up a narrow shaft to a hatch littered with warnings and locks. Jay took longer than expected to find all the right keys, but before any sign of pursuers, he was crawling out into the big blue sky. By noon he was standing on top of the empire state building, firmly on the flat metal hatch, peering down great lengths to the street with a death grip on a metal pole for support.

On such a beautiful Friday afternoon, New York City was hustling and bustling. People packed the streets. The air, even a thousand feet up, was thick with anxious appetite as tangible as the skyscrapers and the trucks and the concrete. He drew short, shallow gasps, unmoving as a statue, and gazed out over the city soon to be his. He gazed until he gained some sort of numb peace, until he had either thought enough, or could not think anymore. Whether resolved or dazed, he began unpacking and unfolding his paper airplane. Bracing against gusts of wind, he secured it to the angled roof below him with clamps and pulled out two air horns. Pointing them straight down, he blew them until they ran out of noise. Reaching the street, his noise turned into a large crowd of gasping authorities and news people and business men and mothers and pointing children. In the air, loud helicopters hovered near. Men leaned out the sides with megaphones, shouting things Jay could not and would not hear.

This, this was that moment. It was actually, finally happening. He hopped into his giant paper airplane, released the clamps, and grabbed hold of two stiff, thirty-five layer, super glue bonded wing controls. He could hear the horrified roar of a giant crowd ricocheting from the skyscrapers as he slid down the angled rooftop toward open air. When he flew off the edge everything turned to pure adrenaline. In a moment he forgot everything he had ever known, yet in the next it all came rushing back. In the direst instant of his life, the great body of desire that defined him pushed through panic and took control. Jay began shifting flaps and wings to lift, then turn, then suddenly dip, feeling out the free air with a vehicle he knew so well. He swooped past gaping mouths in high office windows, gliding ever so swiftly on a rich silence wafting up from below, one as hushing as the wind in his face. He rode the intense gaze of countless eyes lifting his perfectly crafted wings. He had never felt so alive and would never again, but this moment for him was as long as the lifetime he had spent anticipating it. With each foot of descent his confidence and control became more precise, making tight turns and steep dives, then lifting up on his momentum and swooping just a few feet from colossal buildings. As he drew nearer to the ground the crowd’s shock and awe turned to cheering. He could hear them clapping and screaming, chanting, erupting in excitement. It was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard. At the flight’s end he swooped low over the masses, waving and smiling and fist pumping as they reached up to grab a share of his glory. He sailed gently toward an open intersection behind the crowd for a graceful landing and his first steps into the new world he had always imagined.

But when Jay was just a few feet from the ground, without warning, a boundlessly heavy garbage truck came barreling through the intersection. Apparently the world hadn’t completely stopped. Neither could the truck. Starting from the corner of his eye, Jay’s whole being jolted. He jumped from the paper plane to avoid the unstoppable mass, but could not spring far off a plane so lightweight. The chariot he rode into magnificence had no magnitude to support him. He wound up only pushing his prized plane forward much faster, leaving himself stranded in midair. The garbage truck hit. Jay folded and tore like paper beneath powerful fingers. The airplane itself, just twenty feet past his remains, lay at the end of a smooth landing, unharmed and content, fit for all the most interesting museums in the world.

And if only for an instant, the world did stop. The crowd fell silent but for the scuffling of shoes, the hollow scraping of camera shutters, the dramatic rise and sudden quiet of squealing flashbulbs. With passing moments came hushed murmurs. With dragging seconds came yellow tape and pressing crowds. Buzzing minutes brought breaking news reports. Within hours, footage of the entire incident was showing worldwide. By the end of day President Obama had released a statement on the matter. By the end of the week authorities estimated worldwide video views over three-hundred million. At the end of the month Jay was a global legend. And at the end of the year, people were still talking about him.

It’s really a shame he couldn’t be there to see it—all his hopes and dreams fulfilled. Jay got exactly what he always wanted, only the reality of it was too heavy for his paper plane to bear.

Breath

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 23:40:05 -0600

“The Lord knows the thoughts of man, that they are a mere breath.”

~ Psalm 94:11

If my thoughts are a breath, then they are breathing very hard. Gasping. Panting. The wind that they create is strong. It swirls up a storm in my soul, or some other secret place inside that I cannot prove, only feel faintly in brief moments of clarity.

If my thoughts are a breath then they huff and puff. They won’t back down from a fight. They’ll duke it out all night. They don’t realize they’re all on the same team—or maybe they do, just can’t seem to agree on how anything ought to be done.

If 4 AM and wide eyes are a breath, then these breaths can’t even begin to know the thoughts of God. Better off letting Him take my breaths away—not to play on a cultural cliche.

Hello sir, you follow my larryluck blog. I'm Julia! Just wanted to let you know I find several of your pieces amazing. So thanks for following me so I could follow you. Have excellent day :)

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 15:24:54 -0600

Thanks Julia! I’m Sam. I look forward to reading more Larryluck stuff.

An Excerpt from something I'm working on...

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:53:57 -0600

Adam was damn near perfect. In snide grins at the reception of compliments people thought he was even humble too. But I got the feeling it was only resentment. He hated his perfection. It left no room for improvement, and Adam loved to improve.

Most of us go through life running from the things we fear, but Adam chased. And in a way we were running from him. His great body of desire made our petty fears pathetic. His radiance was too bright to look at directly, yet we were invariably drawn to his warmth. Only, I began to look into him, glances here and there until my eyes hurt. And when I did, in a small way I think he noticed and looked back, as if without admitting it he was glad someone was finally looking—he was finally catching up to one of the runners. He was looking for a test. He wanted to see if my eyes really would burn, and he hoped that they wouldn’t, so that he could desire again. His perfection had made it futile. You see, Adam’s dreams belonged to him, but he desperately wished to belong to his dreams again.

(The Pursuit of Happiness, somewhere near the beginning of the novel)

A mockumentary I made with Eric Albaugh and Jono Senef for when...

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 02:18:00 -0500

A mockumentary I made with Eric Albaugh and Jono Senef for when Eric and I emceed the Wheaton College Talent Show a few days ago.

“Sports—anybody can do it.”

Reckless Orange

Mom sent me some throwbacks @stephayes4

@georgiamaelewis prof-picable for sure

at Home home

at SCS warehouse

at Griffith Observatory

"For whatever it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case too early, to be whoever you..."

So right. Jason Geick, Chentell Darling, rebecca griffin, Alyssa...

My Satirical Editorial on Hollywood from the Outside in the Los Feliz Ledger

The Limn

Excerpt

Mustaches happen. Sometimes mustaches happen in Mexico.

Excerpt

*1* Welcome to Kibera, the world’s third largest slum, in...

Excerpt from a novel in progess..."A Pursuit of Happiness"

Matterhorn.

Paperweight

Breath

Hello sir, you follow my larryluck blog. I'm Julia! Just wanted to let you know I find several of your pieces amazing. So thanks for following me so I could follow you. Have excellent day :)

An Excerpt from something I'm working on...

A mockumentary I made with Eric Albaugh and Jono Senef for when...

1 Welcome to Kibera, the world’s third largest slum, in...