a monday kind of love.

Maybe it's like George Sand & Chopin, or Henry Miller & Anais Nin. There's these bright shining passages of transcendent passion, but even if things don't work out, it's the achieving of those highs for a time if you're lucky enough to receive them that will live on in glory in your heart and within the hearts of others, in the story that hopefully gets told of your life.



In my desire for peak experiences maybe that's what I manifest for myself, instead of a long-lasting mediocrity, or hanging onto a faded shadow of what was once a past joy, but unsustainable, as most do.



Still, I miss my marriage, or I miss the ideal of marriage, the construct of permanence, an inviolate safety & sanctuary I'd thought I'd had and have lost through no fault of my own. I bet my emotional bank on my wife, a person who'd oathed by the Gods to keep troth with me, and it didn't work out. It was fucking crushing at a level I'd never experienced before. If after that a divorcé never lost hesitancy, or remained boundaried, or stayed emotionally guarded for the rest of their life, no one could blame them from learning those safeties from their deeply hurtful experience.



What is enough? What is needed? Are those wants just larger fears and shortcomings of self that actually have nothing to do with the other person, or are those needs real? And is my happiness with who I am a strength, or does my self-satisfaction rob me of the ability to change? It's not that I don't change, but my whole life I've changed so glacially, with consideration & care at such a slowly studied degree that my self-love will allow. If that change doesn't come at a rate or time that another person wants me to change, then what does that cost me or protect me from? But if I change for someone else, do I then become someone better or worse, or just someone different, someone less recognizable, a face in the mirror that has kept another's love but in a sacrificial ratio lost self-love, and possibly one's own center?



My writer's logic allows me to understand, to frame it in a way that gives it context, but my unquenchable romanticism, the feelings themselves, break my heart.



Again.



And again.



And I write about it, again, like an eternal return, a fire that never dies, a burning ship, a battle that is instead a brutally wanted kiss.

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[for K and the 68 Mondays.]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him.

i'm hit but i can make it.

I. so. feel. this.



Thank you artist Matt Straub for your pop romancification of the Hollywood Western, though those motifs have nothing to do with why I relate to this particular cowgirl. And for those motifs, Jackson Crawford & Amy Novelli, I hope you know this guy's work, as you'd probably like it.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him.

announcing NorsePlay's blog!

As promised, NorsePlay has a new home here:

So if you've followed my Norse Mythology-related content on G+, NorsePlay is where it'll be re-housed post-G+ and enthusiastically continued. If you've liked the NorsePlay-headed entries here, do follow that focus on NorsePlay. Just hit the blue Follow button on the left hand side of the NorsePlay page.



Given my Heathen Worldview and that I'll still be writing both blogs, Dark Entries will probably still have some minor overlap of this material, but in the main NorsePlay's where you want to be for your Norse-centric post needs. Thanks for following here still and now on NorsePlay!

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or in the comments below.

importing content to Dark Entries, the new NorsePlay, & the closure of GooglePlus.

While I could vent for a whole entry about Google's short-sighted betrayal of millions of loyalist users in closing GooglePlus this April, I've contacted the owners with solid advice to keep their underappreciated but quite good online network up, and signed a petition, which is the best follow-through I can do.



Lacking an established VR-based Internet 3.0 site to setup a cyberhome on, I've decided to instead take a break from social media until new acceptable networks have improved structures for interactivity, custom fine-scalable filtering tools, and most importantly permanent nodes for users & their content. Until that evolves, I'm instead using my already established & dependable blog for my online presence.



Words aren't going anywhere no matter how sophisticated digital expression gets.



Thanks to the Google Plus Exporter (so much gratitude to coder Alois Bělaška), I'm shifting one of my G+ collections' content from my profile to here, and a second collection into a new subject specific blog. This means a few years of my most worthwhile & thoughtful social media back content will be integrated into these blogrolls. If you've followed me on both Dark Entries & G+ you'll be witness to the redundancy, but I know the re-runs hold up. If you only follow me here, there will be many new to you but backdated entries to enjoy, share, & comment on.


Dark Inscriptions, my microblog sounding-off reactionary smallform version that compliments this one, will add ~100 entries here, and adorn this Dark Entries blog which you already know & love. While I'd reserved this blog for mostly longform pieces as per my journalism degree background, this merging will change that format in future to both short & full posts here. Hit the follow button in my Blogger-specific subscribe box and stay tuned.


When launching my new NorsePlay blog, there will eventually be 400+ curated shortform posts, re-posts of the few longer NorsePlay entries from here, plus a longform writer's statement about the importance of NorsePlay to start it off with. If you've followed my Norse Mythology-related content on G+, NorsePlay is where it'll be re-housed and enthusiastically continued. If you've liked the NorsePlay-headed entries here, do follow that focus on the forthcoming new blog. I'll announce when the new site publishes in a new post here soon.



This dual archive of content will appear gradually, as each backlogged post will need a slight manual format adjustment to fit Blogger's pages, so rest assured you won't get a megaflood of notifications once you subscribe to either or both of my blogs.

[Well, now the G+ closure narrows that choice down, really.]

While this change is born of disappointment in GooglePlus' lack of vision & self-imposed defeat, the relocation to here will give my content more standalone stability. And the pro-active & specific audience it deserves -- that's you. Thank you all for your new & continued readership & personal enthusiasm.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or in the comments below.

Dark Entries faces The Horror of The Red Room!

Dark Entries finds itself honoured by guesting on the Ruminations from the Red Room podcast for the fourth time! This installment surprised us with the completely unannounced subject of The Horror! Luckily our Gothic background finds us excessively overprepared.



Listen to us here.

Host Mitch, co-guest Mike, and I discuss the whyfors of the genre, the psychological versus the outré, the lowbrow slasher against the classic aesthetic, why book to film translations have to jump a high hurdle to even get close to print, what was that first moment where The Horror crept into your childhood, personal paranormal incursions, and more blood dipped beastliness.



While I had suggested the title Rötschreck in the Red Room, Rötschreck being the "Red Fear" of fire or sunlight from Vampire: the Masquerade, I find that this word doesn't actually seem to exist outside the tabletop gaming world, so Mitch prudently went with Recoil instead. So much for my faux-German vocabulary.


Hear about my encounter with a chupacabra, a poetic waxing on the Vincent Price/Roger Corman/Edgar Allan Poe films, extrapolate as to the amorphous nature of what a ghost might be, ooooh Kate Beckinsale moments, the monster as protagonist, and other Dark Entries-styled fare. And yes, my blog is calling from inside your house, and your children are already dead. Spooked? You should be.

[Vincent Price smolders under the shadow of the bat.]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

And then I found myself saying: "I've been to the Isle of Dogs; I saw no dogs."

And then I found myself saying:

"I've been to the Isle of Dogs;

I saw no dogs."

your baby is an obsolete resource sucking idea.

After watching Ron Howard's cinematic adaptation of Dan Brown's Inferno just before seeing Marvel Entertainment's Avengers: Infinity War, we noticed that goals of both antagonists was immediate elimination of half the population of the planet/universe to save it. We also have memories of The Alex Jones Channel's documentary Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement which mentioned an odd monument, The Georgia Guidestones, which states as its first guideline:

"1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature."

David Icke posits that Hollywood has a way of preparing humanity via entertainment, himself citing the use of advanced aliens in cinema for a reveal of the ancient cabal of reptilians who he believes secretly runs the world.



I'm not saying these two prominent conspiracy theorists along with these two popcorn films have any connections with each other, or an agenda to introduce the idea of population control, but it makes you reflect on this problem. The population needs controlling, or we should terraform Mars sooner than later, especially when we're going reverse engineer cancer cells to extend our lifespans, or achieve transhuman singularity to become immortal.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him.

and this is why Buddy's hip-hop name is Lil' Teef.

In the musical production of domestic tracks, I re-rhyme songs to integrate his name in my completely unacceptable vocals for our mutual amusement, and at night I listen to the low sub-bass loop of his steady deep breaths that lulls me to sleep like someone singing. It's a fair trade. Still, at some point he's going to chime in and rhyme back using full words. I can see it in his eyes.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or in the comments below.

they traveled from afar to see me.

Hails to Dani Thomas, Vincent Enlund, Jeremy Hehn, Patrícia Rohwedder, & Analise for coming all the way down to Tucson to check on me and offer their face-to-face Heathenry. Maybe that's my personal Luck at work, maybe that's their sense of Honor & Right Action to counsel going above & beyond geographical & emotional distance, but I'm grateful to have such sterling people in my corner. Thanks for making the awesome mead available, the gift of the wooden combi-goat, and your combined Wisdom. My Hospitality's always open to you all. Much love.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him.

my Dad's in a jar.

My Mom brought him home, and I went to look.



"My Dad's in a jar," I said aloud.

The horror of that.

My Dad's in a jar!, I thought.

The fascination of that.



It was both at the same time.

It has resolved into the latter in being able to hold the totality of him in my arms, talking to the man he both once was and now is, the trade of human frailty for the strength of bronze & brass, a consolation of permanence, and presence, once again.

[Dad's view. He gets the length & breadth of the valley. He would often look at cars on the freeway and muse as to who they were and where they'd been and where they were going, the fingers of his mind reaching across the miles for their stories. I suspect he now enjoys knowing them all.]

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For my Father.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.