I know I haven’t written in a while. I have another huge writing project that’s been taking up all my time. However, I feel like if there’s any day to write, it’s today.

Tomorrow, my childhood officially ends. Okay, I know that sounds ridiculously dramatic. I wouldn’t risk saying something like that if it didn’t feel so very true. Now I’m sure that, unless you completely avoid your television and computer, you know that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 premiers tomorrow. I will be there, in line, in a plaid skirt and tie and my dad’s old graduation robes. Twenty one years ago, I was born and J.K. Rowling was a waitress living in her car, writing notes on napkins. Just as we were all turning eleven, the first book came out.

I didn’t read it. I actively chose to avoid it. Harry Potter? That sounds stupid, I told myself. A bunch of wizards in a school? I don’t really know why I rejected it so strongly. For my entire reading life, I had devoured every fantasy book I could find like it was crack. Assuming it was a type of swallowable crack. After wearing away the pages on my copies of Narnia and The Dark is Rising, I should have thought, “Oh, hey. British children with magic are whimsical and awesome. Harry Potter contains magical British children. Maybe I should read it and become obsessed with it.” Instead, I ignored all my pleading friends and refused all contact. Until finally, my friend Tracey shoved the first three books at me and commanded me to borrow them. I read them in a week.

Then there was the wait you all remember, between books three and four. I swear it could have been eternity. I was a heroin addict (yep, we’re switching drugs) and suddenly, heroin was extinct. So I got into fanfiction. Roleplay forums. Anything for a quick Potter fix. The fourth came out, another eternity to the fifth, sixth, seventh. Then suddenly, it was over. I cried on the last page of the seventh book (we’re pretending that the Epilogue doesn’t exist, by the way). But still, there was light. There were movies. Tomorrow at midnight, that all ends. The people (not characters, that’s not what they feel like) I grow up with are going their separate ways. No more stories. No more adventures. Harry and the gang are adults now, with lives and kids of their own. They don’t have time to be sharing their adventures with outsiders. They just want the quiet.

For all us misfit kids who never really made it to the upper social circles, Harry, Hermione, Ron (and Draco, if you were a girl and went through that bad boy phase, not that I’m admitting anything) were more real to you than half the people who never bothered to notice you existed. Wow, that sounded melodramatic. Really though, Harry Potter was more than a series of books. It was a world we all lived in. A place we went when the real world was too much. A group of friends we knew better than ourselves. Harry will always be there to go back to, but like the Beatles and Tolkien, he’s slipping out of the now. Already, there are teenagers who have never read a single book. Harry Potter is our generation’s savior. We won’t forget him, even once those final credits roll tomorrow night.

But that isn’t the only thing ending tomorrow. For all you Chicagoans, there’s another thing ending. For twenty years, Q101 has been Chicago’s ultimate alternative rock station. They started with “Friday I’m in Love” by the Cure–incidentally, one of my top ten favorite songs of all time. They were there counseling troubled kids when Kurt Cobain’s suicide shocked everyone. They fostered Disturbed, Local H, Fall Out Boy, and dozens of other local, now international sensations on Local 101. They’ve always been there for a song, a concert announcement, an interview, a dirty joke. Tomorrow, Q101’s DJs come off the air forever. After that . . . well, no one actually knows.

For twenty years, Q101’s djs have brought together rock fans all over the city. They’re more friends that are departing now, for a new life. Long ago there was Mancow, who used to shock the airwaves in the mornings. There are Sherman and Tingle, who kept me laughing all morning as I drove back to college for the first time by myself, fighting back tears over my anxiety over graduation. There are the Manno brothers, who greeted me every day after school. Twitch, god of the web page, offering up concert updates and silly videos. Tim Virgin and Pogo riffing about bands. Electra, ruling the airwaves with the Last Letter Game. Top 9 at 9. What’s the Point. Just to rub it in, Sarah and I missed the very last Q101 Jamboree. Lolla is great, but there’s nothing like a good, muddy Q101 show. Or there used to be. Rumor has it, all this will be replaced by an all news station. I think I could cry. The days of radio are over. Commercialism wins. Pick another platitude.

So tomorrow, I say goodbye to two icons. Millions will be crying with me over Harry Potter, but I hope there are a good few who sit around to listen while the Q101 djs share the best of the last 20 years. IPods and Grooveshark just can’t replace a whole community, listening to music together. I heard almost all my favorite songs first on Q101. I don’t know what I’ll tune to the next time I turn on the radio. I guess it’s time to do some searching.

So you will forgive them their assured skepticism now, when I tell you that version 7–if I can curb my enthusiasm for reworking, the last version until it crosses the eyes of an editor–is complete. Oh, the random edit here and there may find its way onto the page, but I here vow not to open Darkmoon v8.

Unless it really, really needs it.

In the spirit of a happy conclusion, I give you an excerpt from what everyone I know (I’m sure) can only hope will be the final revision. Enjoy. Next stop: actually finishing those short stories…and finding a good literary magazine that accepts pieces with 8000+ words. Eep.

P.S. I also vow never to write a blog entry at 3:50 am again. Though =/= Thought. Excepts =/= Accepts. 3:50 am =/= the proper time for blog writing. Oh dear.

With exaggerated niceness, Lena drawled, “Oh yes, great Trent, please forgive my—what is that!” Her eyes popped. Behind Trent, standing stiffly next to her desk, was the man. The same stark coloring, the same electric eyes. With a cry, Lena clutched her hands to her head. A pang shot through it like someone had cracked a hammer between her eyes.

“What? Lena, what’s wrong?”

“There, behind you, idiot!”

Trent seemed to look directly at the man, but when he turned back around he was chewing his lip. “Lena,” he said lowly, “there’s nothing there. Is this what happened at school?”

“You kidding? There’s a—” She nearly choked. In the space of one blink, the man had vanished. The intense pounding in her head had dulled to a low throb. She breathed raggedly.

“Lena, once is an accident. Twice is something serious. Maybe we should call the doctor.”

“Says the boy who almost got himself killed ‘cause he didn’t tell anyone he was hurt ‘til his appendix almost blew up.”

“Are you taking something?”

“No!”

“Lena, you’re—”

“Just tired,” she insisted. The last thing she needed was her parents thinking she was crazy.

“Lena—”

Eyebrows knit, voice low, she growled, “You so much as hint to mom and dad and you’re dead.”

Trent stretched out across her bed and threw his head back with a loud scoff. “God, I’m not going to tell them. But you need to take it easy.” The scowl broke and he laughed quietly. “Yeah, little sis, you could definitely beat me up. Look at those muscles.” He poked a finger into one of her arms.

She scowled. “You’re such a loser. I don’t need muscles to punch you in the nose.”

“Yeah, yeah, just try.”

That dissolved into a very one-sided fight starting with Lena throwing a halfhearted punch at Trent’s shoulder and ending with Trent putting her into a headlock until she sighingly proclaimed that he was the coolest and most accomplished of the Angeleses. Still, when he left her room, Trent told her pointedly that if she started seeing invisible things again he was bringing her to the doctor, in a straightjacket if necessary. Lena grimaced, knowing that even though Trent would keep their talk to himself, he would not forget it. When she went to sleep that night her head still pulsed like a whole baseball team had used it for batting practice and for the first time in years, she pulled out her old night light and plugged it in, just in case she awoke in the night to a pair of soulless violet eyes.

So there are my excuses, if any can be made.  But I care too much to abandon this, so I’ll start up again, in perhaps less ambitious fashion.  No need for a daily rambling, when my Rome blog is still awaiting its conclusion and three weeks will have me slumped over a desk performing statistical analyses.  So what has changed in nearly a year?  By my little list of facts, not much.  I’m still crossing my fingers for a Sox playoff run.  I still haven’t finished The Idiot, though I’ve chowed through at least a dozen books, not counting those for class, since I started it. I’m still listening to roughly the same music, I’m still tired and cranky, and ironically enough, or is that coincidentally, I’m still enjoying the sound of the rain.

So there is my re-introduction. Good to meet you again too. Now that we know each other, let us never speak of this absence again.

Cheers.

Come sweetly, soft, and do tread lightly, dear.

Cruel thorns will tear your brow, your feet, your hair,

Sly rocks your ankles twist; no longer near

The sun, but frozen brambles, trees stripped bare,

Mud-choked the stream where even serpents fear

To sift.  Not e’en the frown of winter wear

The mountains’ mouths, but fleshless faces’ leer

O’er changeless plains, shaved of the seasons’ hair. 

These Nature’s bones, too long less hands to rear

Too-tender seeds, the phantom portraits bear

From careless youth, when dyads danced to hear

Spring’s feet approach out Hades’ new-shut lair. 

Lay down with me where late the stern frontier

By our hand smiled, ‘til absence wrought despair

To wilt our Eden, change our bed to bier. 

Our home we scorned to tend, your fate we share!

Our glass eyes other keepers bid beware,

That untilled soil can naught but tombs prepare. 

But let them know that we were happy here.

If you would seek Avalon, turn back

Seek shelter in the raging storm

Your eyes may burn, your skeleton crack

But though your body grind to ash

Untried your soul won’t come to harm.

The lasting wound is not the gash

Of sword or brand, recalls offense

Once earned, concealed, where mental lashes

Find no balm, but that they burn

At every touch, destroying sense.

Gold Eden promises to turn

Mind’s ache to joy, and heal both brain

And body—if you merely spurn

Your life and limb, choose loneliness,

Embrace despair, for later gain. 

Destroy yourself, for heaven’s bliss

If sure your loss will earn your fate

For Earth’s content in vain you’ll miss

To find Forever made of glass

Where piety trades cruel real for naught,

Unconscious tomb for ivory gate.

In sleepy town on quiet streets
Are swings the wind pumps to and fro
And dirty mitts and baseball bats
Left rainwashed sunbleached in a row.
But where the ghosts to haunt these stones?
To graves indoors they steal the sounds
Of ghastly hum and dying moan.

In plastic soil they dig their trench
To practice their peculiar sin:
That in their world so taught to flinch
From stranger, ally, kith, and kin.
By tutors, taught to self-rely
And distance keep from friends who pry
They fashion perfect graves within.

Though friends they claim, or feign as such,
And lovers doting to their whim
They earn these through not smile or touch
Or playground games and jumprope rhymes
But courtship they conduct in walls
Their voice and face in well-stocked cells
To face the world on their own time.

But “face” falls short to name the life
They own; too delicate and dear
Their parents say, for earthly strife.
Much better close to keep them here
Where words on screens their bones can’t break
And failure grind their wishes weak
For safety’s price they must learn fear.

For men strike down these tender souls
With murder, rape, and notions sick
And new. Some children raze in brawls
The pure, or teach them hellions’ tricks.
With structured play, they cannot learn
The habits that will bid them burn
Or cut their spirit to the quick.

In clean white houses on white lanes
These clean white children own the world
With blinking boxes, high-def screens
They flirt and fight and safe unfold
The games and places obsolete
For what reality can compete
When packed perfection’s cheaply sold?

Who suffers if a boy of five
Can fly on screen but loathes to run?
Or girls share secrets, songs, and smiles
In type, but face-to-face speak none?
No limit on who they can be
They’ll craft themselves a self or three
Why stop pretending if it’s fun?

For friends you touch can see your worst.
Identity demands such strain.
When ten at once you can converse
Why talk in person, one friend gain?
Just try the lot. For each a new
Persona; if these friends wear through
Just shut them off and choose again.

And outside play? Forget the thought.
It’s dirty, tiresome, tooth and nail.
Experiences can be bought
On-screen your wishes cannot fail
In half an hour traverse the globe
Don’t leave your polished room to probe
The blackened streets beyond your pale.

For caveat, think on but one,
That if these youths the world address
With Earth to hold they’ll know it none.
With thirty selves, all are repressed.
Small wonder that they lonely brood
Or raise their guns and spill their blood
When faced each day with facelessness.

Phew. So, that’s why the writing has been lacking. It’s hard to feel inspired when you’re on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But, now that I’m in Rome, happy about it, and feeling much calmer, I thought I’d share a few of my favorite ways to get inspired and beat the evil beastie known as Writer’s Block.

1. Listen to Music: By know, you’re probably thinking, “Oh, duh, I could have told you that.” But we’re not just talking any music here. The chicken dance is probably not going to inspire the next great novel. When you’re blocked, you need music that awakens strong emotions, because you can draw on these to write. So pick songs that make you feel electrically sad or happy or even scared. Pick songs that tell stories and think how they would translate into prose. Pick songs from your favorite movie soundtracks that have you thinking of plot. Then, listen to them and brainstorm. Just write down everything you think or feel. Something will catch.

2. Take a Walk: Proven fact: exercise is good for your brain. All those endorphins will have you feeling happy and cut through any frustration clouding your brain. Plus, the scenery and sights you stumble upon along the way can spark great stories. Even something small may inspire you. So, pick a route that is scenic and interesting and just go wander for a while. Look carefully at what you pass. Look at people and what they’re doing and ask yourself, who are there? Where are they going? What are their life stories? Bring a pen with you in case you get a great idea!
3. Look at a Plot: Pick one of your favorite books. Now, grab Wikipedia and your brain and go through the plot, looking at key events and turning points. Pick a major turning point and think to yourself, what would happen if this turning point happened in another way? What if Frodo and Sam never met Gollum? What if the poison Romeo bought was fake? Or look at characters. What if Harry Potter was more like Draco Malfoy, but with the same prophecy? What if Macbeth was a stupid brute? Looking at someo of these “What ifs” can inspire new story ideas.
4. Write ahead: Already working on a story or novel? Let me guess. You hit a scene that’s just sort of filler or that you haven’t planned out and you have no interest in writing it, or you have no inspiration how. You want to work on the scene where the guy finally kisses the girl, or where the team of random adventurers encounters the nefarious villain, not your sultry heroine having a tough and plot-relevant day at the office or the adventurers getting stuck, yet again, in a bit of trouble. So, do it! Write the fun scenes! Sometimes, what you need to do to spike your interest in the rest of your plot is to get back into the story. Work on a scene that does inspire you, and then your creative powers will be activate and you can channel them into that tricky scene.
5. Just write!: Nothing works? Still blocked? Then stop trying to pen perfect prose and just write. Something. Anything. Find a random writing prompt and write it out. Go to the last bit of your story and continue it. It doesn’t matter if it’s perfect. It will probably be clunky, repetitive, and rough. That’s okay. You can edit later. But if you just muscle through it now, it will get your brain thinking about writing and, eventually, you’ll hit your stride and the words will come easily.

Well, writers, there’s your plan. Now go and write! (Says the hypocrite, I know, I know. But don’t you follow my bad habits. (: )

With a downtown probably comparable to Chicago’s and only a few hundred thousand people instead of a million, I felt like I was walking in a ghost town. I would cross maybe one or two people on the street every other block, except in the occasional restaurant outdoor seating. The economy downturn hit hard here. Fancy new storefronts are interspersed liberally with boarded up windows and “For Rent” signs. It is a mix of contemporary street art, modern architecture, country class, and urban grunge. A quiet, friendly kind of city, with the riverfront barges and factories still giving it that turn-of-the-century charm.

But St. Louis is not really your typical scape of concrete and gunmetal and grime. Go a little further, to the Forest Park, and the typical city scape is suddenly a vast stretch of green dotted with stone museums, fountain-fed lakes, and brick pavillions leftover from the World’s Fair. Larger than Central Park by 500 acres, and without a doubt more beautiful, the Park houses several museums and a zoo, and skirts an upperclass neighborhood and the Cathedral Basicilia, a gorgeous structure with the largest collection of mosaics in the world (worth a visit–every surface, ceilings, columns, cupolas, is encrusted with tiny pieces of glass and gilt that swirl into massive religious designs). In the Park, the city feels somehow more alive, and you can feel its borders slipping into the country.

And the Cardinals–well, the people of St. Louis definitely show their spirit here. With the Arch looming over Busch stadium’s off-center scoreboard, thousands of red-shirted fans file into thousands of red seats and cheer with a vibrant energy not seen on the daytime ghost streets. Here are their heroes, Albert Pujols (who, I had the good fortune to see, hit a home run) and Yadier Molina. A simple American pasttime in a simple city at America’s crossroads. A fitting vacation, I think, from the quick-walking citydwellers who won’t meet your eye, but with the same Chicago sort of ruggedness and midwestern values. St. Louis, I’ll see you again soon.

Now, I’m as much of a textual purist as any rabid fan, so I understand all the complaints against the movies. I’ve been guilty of wrinkling my nose in the theater and whispering agitated criticisms to my friends on premier day about this plot deviation or that inconsistency. But nitpicking aside, the movies always held for themselves a certain degree of magic. They captured the spirit of the books and gave us faces and rooms and gizmos to fit the text in the windows of our minds. And no true Potter fan can snipe against the truly remarkable detail, authenticity, and craftsmanship that turned text to pictures to reality.

The Exhibition is a phenomenal tribute to the people behind the actors. In the Museum lobby, the cheery blue Ford Anglia greets visitors on their way up the escalators to the waiting area, where a few charming Brits keep the crowd entertained with Harry Potter trivia (I admit, I whispered all the answers and my friend laughed and rolled her eyes). Then you’re ushered in to see the Sorting Hat, which announces houses for a few brave volunteers (I was already clearly a Ravenclaw in my nifty t-shirt, thank you). Then, a brief montage of memorable Potter scenes ushers you past the Scarlett steam engine into the portrait hall, where the Fat Lady welcomes you to Hogwarts.

From there, you can walk at your leisure through a maze of scenes furnished with genuine costumes, props, set pieces, and replicas, labelled and described for the amateur and connoisseur alike. The path takes you through Harry’s dorm, a collection of classrooms, a Quidditch gallery with an interactive Quaffle challenge, Hagrid’s hut, the Forbidden forest, the Great Hall, and a variety of others–so realistically fit together that you can mentally place yourself right into each scene. I sadly surveyed Snape’s signature black robes and shuddered next to Umbridge’s hot-pink torture chamber, gushed over racing broomsticks, gaped at Robbie Coltrane’s vast Hagrid costume, and reached the gift shop with a fervent desire to reread every book and rewatch every movie.

For the well-versed fan, it is a walk through the annals of a personal and shared history, preserved and presented like ancient relics for devotion. For the casual fan, it is an amusing and worthwhile behind-the-scenes peek at the pieces that build the on-screen world. Even a Potter amateur can appreciate the intricacy and care of the design and the craftsmanship.

If you find yourself in Chicago between now and September 27th, visit this remarkable exhibit at MSI. A satisfying walk-through takes just over an hour, and for the truly Potter-starved, [i]Half Blood Prince[/i] is playing on the MSI Omnimax screen. After that, the Potter legacy will make its next stop at Boston’s impressive Museum of Science. For more information, check out the official site.

Cheers!

In no particular order:

1. Hostage – Police negotiator Jeff Talley (Bruce Willis) thinks he’s talking three juvenile delinquents out of holding two suburban kids for ransom. The delinquents think they have an easy payday from the kids’ wealthy father. But when the source of daddy’s illegal funds gets involved, Talley finds himself dealing with two hostage situations: the wealthy swindler’s family, and his own. Fast-paced, with a strong script and sympathetic characters, it will keep you guessing.

2. The Butterfly Effect – Ashton Kutcher never struck me as the dramatic type, but his role in this sci-fi thriller is poignant, believable, and compelling. It opens on Evan, a troubled mental patient who has spent his life repressing his most painful memories. When he finds a way to access and relive these lost scenes, he thinks he has the key to saving himself and the girl he can’t forget–but with every change he makes, the future alters in ways he could never forsee. Dark, eerie, and cleverly put together, with an ending even Hollywood can’t sugarcoat.

3. Garden State – Romantic comedy meets indie meets drama. After ten years of absence, Andrew Largeman (Zack Braff) returns home to New Jersey for his mother’s funeral. Desperate for meaning, he takes a break from the numbing pills forced on him by his father and finds real life experiences in his oddball old friends and a quirky, equally troubled girl named Sam (Natalie Portman). The plot builds slowly, but the characters are unique and lifelike players in a story balanced by touching drama and understated humor.

4. Labyrinth – What do glam rock, Jim Hensen, and leather pants have in common? This bizarre fantasy musical featuring Jennifer Connelly, David Bowie, and a supporting cast of cute and creepy muppets. When Sarah accidentally sends her crying baby brother to the clutches of the Goblin King, she has 13 hours to find him in the center of an impossible maze before the King turns him into a goblin. But don’t be fooled; this is no children’s movie. Sarah’s search is fraught with sinister enemies and suspicious allies in a place where even the walls are determined to trap her forever.

5. Anastasia – In an age of helpless Disney princesses with superficial love affairs, Don Bluth offered a compelling and fantastical answer to the mysterious disappearance of a real-life royal. Dimitri (John Cusack) is a con-artist with a get-rich-quick scheme–return the lost Grand Duchess to her surviving family for a pretty reward. Anastasia (Meg Ryan) is a spunky, self-reliant tomboy with a striking resemblance to the missing girl. When Dimitri meets her and convinces her that she must be the real Anastasia, neither of them know that she really is the lost Duchess, or that the dastardly fiend who killed her family is back to eliminate her. An updated fairytale with a competent heroine, a realistic romance, and songs that will be stuck in your head for months.

Happy viewing! And soon, Part 2.