If you split a month into thirds, it’s remarkable how different each can be from the others.

One third hot, the other rainy and cold. One third dark, the other light, one happy, two sad, two joyful, one of ache. You never know. We wake, we wait, we see. That’s all we can do.

We find art where we can. We make it where we cannot.

Here is the the second third of a wonderful month we called September.

Click to view on the website, which lets you view these bigger and scroll through the gallery.

Cooler nights means Sarah’s favorite clothes come to the front of the closet from the rear. Denim jackets, rad camo pants, Blundstones, hooded sweatshirts. I love her in the baggy, Autumnal clothes more than all others, I Love how much they suit the feeling of her. Her soul is an Autumn soul, and mine is too.

The walks change as we tip later and later into this, my favorite season. They happen earlier, they carry a chill, they smell of first woodstoves crackling back to life. They carry rain scent miles from across the valley. To me, to here, to this little hermit hideaway on the side of a mountain.

So too do the skies change, lower angle on the light, deeper hues to the clouds that blanket us. We are covered like soup that simmers, the whole sky the lid to our bubbling pot. We look up, we find light where we can, we chase it, we capture it. I share it with you. Whatever that is.

More sunsets than we knew what to do with, then, like clockwork, September shifted again and brought a heat wave out of nowhere once more. Picked up my pants that our dear friend Katelyn from the Sewing Bee patched up for me, and she went as far as to add a little pink detail that she knew I’d love the most. A perfect heart with an S in it, rather than just fixing the hole. She knows me, she really really knows me.

During this strange burst of heat, Sarah and I also decided to do what all newly empty-nested (birdhouse!) people do, and we completely renovated and changed an entire room of the house. We expanded Sarah’s Riff Raff bakery and in the process had to remove all the old flooring, and then put New flooring on top. We opted for waterproof vinyl planks that were a combo of affordable, and hard-wearing, so they should be good. Also, fair warning: If you’re over 40, buy knee pads. We didn’t have them and I swear mine are still broken from this oversight and clambering around for 4 days on my knees on concrete floors. Oof.

Stopped briefly at Sarah’s Dad’s landscaping nursery, Gardenwerks, company appreciation softball game. Sarah even got an at-bat, but popped it straight up and out. Still though, she’s got a swing on her.

Wrapped up the last third of this beautiful month watching the light change even more, watching the chill roll back in and the fleeces come back on and the eerie Halloween glow start to find its way to all the windows in our neighborhood. I am immediately thrown back to being a kid, waiting so impatiently for all the goodness that October would always bring. The trick or treating, the smell of rotting pumpkins on porches that somehow smell amazing. The smoke, the shine.

More to come, one more third of this first BER month, and I hope you still love these.

If you do, Please, Please, click the button below, help me keep this place alive.

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I love you all.

Be good.

Tis the Haunted Season, my friends, the best of all holidays, the spookiest evenings. I love Halloween, I love this season, I love the way it feels, the light trickery, I love the leaves that crunch and the smoke that rises from chimneys once dormant. I love the fear that lingers and ripples across the surface of all things, the little edge that creeps from periphery and sets your flesh a’goose. (I know that’s not a phrase, but I’m making it one now and I LOVE IT)

Today, I want to dive into that, but in a different direction. We’re talkin fear friends, but in a fun way.

Let’s do this…

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So nearly there, so nearly to the day of thinnest veil. So nearly the time of costume and mask, of guising and letting in all that’s been pressing on the membrane between this world and the next.

So nearly to the haunted hours, the bone-tired collapse into midnight sheets after the fading of the light. So nearly to the shadow seconds.

I’ll not waste your time, not these few days before my favorite holiday, I’ll not say a truth and pretend it’s revelatory, for it is one we already know. I will not speak to you and declare as though I’m discovering this fact we already know is one:

We all have a darker side.

We know this, covered it’s been time and again, and then probably again after that. We are beings of shadow and light, two opposites that spin as one thing, moons that catch both reflected shine and harvest some indefinable dark. We have always been this. This Halloween is not for acknowledging this, not for once again highlighting it.

This season of thin veils and weariness that causes hands to tremble is for something else. This time, it’s for calling out another truth, another reality we forget to speak aloud. Today, it’s the spotlight on the exhaustion, the invisible toil that is managing some second self as a full-time job. This is the labor of caging what we call monster, that bit of us who is jealous, who is petty, who is furious, ashamed, longing, or less.

This is for the Jekyll we swear doesn’t exist, though we hear the scratches on the back of that secret door.

Autism, for me, means that door really doesn’t exist, and I almost never have that secret to keep, and so bizarrely, it almost creates something unique — a vantage point.

I say this not in any way decorated with ego or pretentiousness, but instead from a place of rarity. I’ve read a dozen dozen articles about our “shadowed selves” from inside the cage, as it were. I’ve read listicles and how-to pieces on how to embrace those parts we think are uglier or not quite as socially acceptable, but more, I’ve read how we should tame them, banish them, or worse, destroy them altogether.

Nonsense.

It’s the shadow bits of people I love the most. It’s every single thing they call broken or gross. It’s the moments of pure honest emotion, the times they are so deliciously human and betray that imperfection. It’s when they have a little burst of jealousy that proves how much they care, when they get hilariously petty in response to the undeniable ridiculousness of someone else’s behavior — please see Oreo-Gate for a beautiful example of this — and I find nothing more attractive than seeing the real when all everyone wants to present is perfect.

Everything these days has a polish. A shine. Everything is rehearsed and re-recorded and any thing inside any of us that anyone anywhere could ever call cringey is swiftly ironed flat. All the wrinkles of our individuality steamed to the point of silky and taut.

We hide it when we’re upset with someone else, pretending all is well when all is very much not fucking well. We say fine when we do not feel anything remotely resembling it.

I’m quiet in public situations a lot, not what you’d expect if you know me privately. I’m goofy almost always, but when I get into situations that cause the ‘Tism part of my being to screech back in irritation with all the lights, all the noise, I tend to watch.

I know what lives in the dark, I’ve seen it.

Hell, I’ve fallen in love with it.

Almost all of the reason for this entire wholesale rebrand on this site that was once Signal Fire, was this. This shadow, this darkness, this quirkiness, this oddity. I got so tired trying to fit this place into the box that Signal Fire and everything around it created, but more, I got tired of thinking everyone else might feel pressure to do exactly that when they come here.

This place, this beautiful place, is for exactly who it says it is for on the mandatory “one sentence description” that Substack makes you give:

Turns out, that’s all of us. Every single imperfect one of us.

I rebranded because I’m really, unavoidably, and to quote Bella Swan, irrevocably, weird. I’ve always been this, I’m a rabbit hole disguised as a person, I’m Autistic special interests that pour out like I’ve been stabbed. I’m passion, I’m a little bit of light and a lottle bit of shadow.

You are too, and I love this about you.

It’s nearly Halloween and so where I’d usually be telling you all to wear your best costumes, throw on your coolest disgusting silicone masks, this time I’m gonna ask you to do something different:

This year, go as yourself. YOUR WHOLE self. The shadow and the sunshine, the dark, the light, the good, the bad, the ugly, the parts you usually hide and pretend don’t even live in your house, let alone that you’ve got them chained up in the basement with the dryer tumbling as loud as it will go.

It’s in you, it’s always been in you, and I watch it from across the room at parties or when wandering some random gathering downtown. I see it in the spaces between what you do say in the comments, I feel it like a second voice from somewhere more honest in you. Right now, it’s a whisper.

Let me hear it’s scream.

I love you all.

Be good.

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Song of the Week

Ah September. First of the BER Months, AKA the best months of all the months. Autumn, the mistress I shall always worship, chase, and adore.

This a new one, the first of Lady G and I being not empty-nesters but birdhouse dwellers in a quieter way. This the first round of BER months without cross-country meets or banquets, random orchestra performances, or senior nights or waking up every morning and making sure everyone gets to school on time. Strange, though we’re adjusting, strange, though we’re still doing our very best.

Onto the month that was, told through photographs I took, simple little snapshots of our simple little lives.

Click to view on the website, which lets you view these bigger and scroll through the gallery.

Walks then, it will come as no surprise, we are still walking and walking and finding our feet beneath us. We are carried over familiar paths every night, but still find such different skies. Some explode with color, others some perfect ombre fade from pitch to the last orange stains of sunset. All awe us.

We then headed to Seattle to photograph a wedding, one of two we were scheduled to shoot with Hawaii the second destination that was supposed to immediately follow it. Turns out Mother Nature and her mischievous little hurricane children had something to say about that. The wedding was beautiful, held at one of the rad McMenimans Hotels that are in crazy old buildings, and the couple was fantastic and intentional and lovely. We ended up in a mall to avoid rush hour traffic upon landing, found some INSANELY comfy pants for Sarah, a rainbow, and a mirror in which I could take another in a long line of selfies. This one, I put the emphasis right where it belonged.

With our few hours in Seattle we had not working, we decided to check out the Seattle Zoo because 1) I love animals more than people, b) we were wayyyy up North of the city for the wedding and 3) It was a beautiful day to wander outside. We saw wolves, bears, hyenas, zebras, giraffes, tapirs, and a ton of birds, and then wandered out and checked out the Fremont area for thrift stores and just random people watching. It was hot as banana pudding (not a phrase) so we didn’t stay long. For some reason we were both so tired this trip, and I blame the emotional rollercoaster of the two weeks before it dropping Addie off at school.

Back home we walked more and welcomed the little signs of Autumn springing up everywhere. The leaves that change, the pumpkins that find their way onto front porches, the light fading out earlier and earlier each night.

My favorite season. Always.

Ended the first bit of September by celebrating our dearest friend Beavs on the occasion of his birthday. Sarah, as she always does, did the kindest things and made him this insane, gorgeous, peanut-butter and chocolate sourdough cake from scratch, his favorite each year, and we got to have dinner and a billion laughs with him. How lucky we are to have him in our lives, how lucky to love him like we do.

Celebrate the people you’re so blessed to love, my friends, tell them, show them, remind them their value to you.

Do it out of the blue, too, not just on the birthdays or obvious situations. Right now, send 5 texts or messages to 5 people you love, and just tell them you do. Tell them why.

Watch how it changes them.

I love you all.

Be good.

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Yesterday, Lady G and I did something we’ve done 5 times before, we did it again to make it 6. 6 times we’ve handfasted to one another, 6 times we’ve made the vows, then made them again, chosen each other a year and a day from the last time we did so. 6. What a thing.

Today, I want to ask you, encourage you, to take a leap like this with me. Don’t worry, you won’t have to handfast with me, you won’t be tied to me for eternity, or hell, even a year and a day.

Let’s do this…

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I have lost count how many times I’ve printed it, how many times I’ve signed my name at the bottom in a weird archival pen that won’t fade in sunlight. I’ve never tried to keep tally on how many envelopes it’s gone into, how many different addresses around the world. I just know something simple:

When someone loses someone they love, it’s words they come looking for, it’s poetry they need.

When a funeral or memorial is looming like some storm cloud just over the mountains on the horizon of their life, when all things seem to crash and crumble, when tomorrow is stained not with promise but with absence, more than all things it is understanding we seek. It is the comfort that comes with knowing you’re not alone in what you’re enduring.

That somewhere, someone, has come through it too.

More than all poems I have written, it’s the one below that is requested, the one below that I send them. It is Typewriter Series #690, as all my poems carry numbers instead of titles. It is words for those that remain, it’s the ache named for those left trembling.

They are only words, just simple letters that sit with other simple letters and form simple words that become uncomplicated sentences.

They come from this imperative in me that teachers since the very beginning called useless, called unnecessary, called frivolity and a dead-end road that would never make me a living.

Oh this beautiful uselessness.

I just spent all of September writing about Dead Poet’s Society, and today I’m reminded of the message that stuck with me far above any other. It was not Carpe Diem that resonated upon first finding it, it was not O Captain My Captain, it was the entire speech in the video below. It was this monologue, and I will paste it here in its entirety in case you wish to read it rather than hear it delivered.

It is not solely grief that sends strangers knocking on my door. It is not just loneliness or longing, sorrow or the sweet serenade that surrender sings when we find ourselves haunted by sadness.

It is love, too. It is love, always.

Maybe more than all others combined, it is love that brings people whose hands I do not know to me, whose laughter is still a language I’ve not yet learned. Love found, love awaited, love being fought for. Love the pool their toes just begin to dip into, or love in a form so deep and true that it makes two wish to join themselves into one thing, to bind their hands or put rings on fingers or speak promises into the only space left unfilled between them. The terrifying closing of that final gap.

I’ve been asked to help others find words for proposals, for second dates, for the telling of a story they know not how to define as the poetry it’s always been.

It is not law, not medicine, not the engineering of a bridge or a home that I do, not these useful pursuits that would serve the world in a way that would also pad my pocket and make it so much easier to feed my family. It is poetry, it is photography, it is writing and hoping a community is built up around the thoughts that stir from somewhere dark and deep inside me.

It’s this beautiful uselessness, it’s this gorgeous frivolousness that is why I am here, what I “stay alive for.”

There is no shame in me for this. There is no wish or regret or some secret great ruing that stirs in me. Some have guitars in closets that call to them like siren songs from sea-soaked rocks, for some it is sketchbooks, poetry of their own no one has ever been allowed to read. It’s all these useless things we are told are hobbies and nothing more, that they are silly, they are for the quiet hours after the real work has been done, the private things that live in the space that’s left after a living is earned or the smarter choices.

A living earned, and it is here I so greatly struggle.

To be alive is to earn it, to endure the rollercoaster that is this human existence. To wake, to struggle, to breathe, to keep a heart beating on a planet that spins and orbits and storms and surges. To navigate the minefields of interaction, to survive the sorrows and the sadnesses, but more, to notice, to celebrate, to treasure the millions of little astonishments that disguise themselves as such ordinary things.

To revel in the beautiful uselessness, to pursue it as the truth more important than all others.

To see, to seek, to share.

I am here but a blip, a half-blink of a single eye in a cosmos filled with uncountable others. I will make my time here matter in every way I know how, I will sit and chase down these slippery little sentences so I can give them back to you.

I will aim my camera at the sunsets, the hidden smiles, the moments on a street far from those you call your own. I will create music from my suffering, I will help you find words to explain the love you have found. I will make art, as Glen Hansard begged me to do when he won his first and only Oscar, I will make art, I will make art.

I will, because it is what we stay alive for. It is, perhaps, the most noble of all pursuits, though it be not well-paid. It is this we reach for when we are hurting or lonely, when we are broken and we swear we cannot be repaired. It is this we seek when we find something so beautiful it races our heartbeat or silences our voice or steals our breath or sends us gasping into the disbelief that it, all of it, can possibly be so beautiful.

It is this, it has always been this, this perfect, shining, staggeringly lovely uselessness.

I promise. I will.

I Love you all.

Be good.

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Song of the Week

“Nice Tatas” you’ll one day say to me. “You’re too kind,” I’ll gently reply back. Probably.

Tyler’s Autistic Thoughts About Stuff. T.A.T.A.S. New feature here, and I’m gonna randomly sprinkle it into these Friday Brain Rain posts from here on out.

Once again for reasons I’ll never quite understand, I get asked a lot about things I’m reading, watching, listening to, and digesting mentally. More than the what, it’s what did you think about it, and that’s where this was born.

Not just a simple media diet, but HONEST, totally Autistically without a filter, personal reviews on the things I am consuming, whatever they happen to be.

I hope YOU respond to these too, I hope you tell me Your thoughts on My thoughts, your own TAS since you don’t have the first T or A to contribute, because that’s me, and my Autism, obviously haha.

This week, I wanted to talk about one thing, and it will be controversial I have no doubt.

The latest season of Ted Lasso.

Also, before I dive in, I’ve a brief plea: Please, if you’re a free reader and you’re able, consider joining the paid family. I pour my little heart out into every single thing I send out, and doing so takes a lot of time, energy, and love. I’ve lost quite a few paid followers over the last year and every single one makes it tougher to keep this place going. If you can, we’d so love to have you as part of the fam, especially now that we’ve been having so much fun with our LIVE community hangout nights each month called The Menagerie. We have one TONIGHT! If you can, help keep this little unicorn alive!

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Ted Lasso, Season 4

People are gonna hate me when I say this, but I can only be what I know to be. I wish they would have stopped after season 1, or maaaybe season 2 if I am totally honest, as I did love more bits of the 2nd season than I didn’t.

Season 1, when it first came out was something different. Maybe it was the timing, the COVID-Scary-Perma-Dread that we all felt constantly, maybe it was because we were all still shell-shocked with the culture of cruelty that was beginning to creep in from Trump’s first term, but even Jason Sudeikis himself said he had to re-write Lasso’s character in response to the cultural shifts he’d been seeing to be more kind, a better listener, good.

The ho-hum metaphors were unique and fresh, the feeling was overall one of “Dammit, I want to be better, too.” And I did. We all did.

Somehow, and please know I am the least cynical person there is, I don’t feel any of that anymore when I watch. This season, it felt like every single line was a “Lasso-ism” and every single scene was filled with some kind of forced slapstick silliness that took me out of whatever the scene was even about. Rebecca spilling BBQ sauce on her shirt once is great, but doing so every time she comes on screen, why? Same with Higgins knocking things over, same with Beard adding to his midlife crisis costume every time he’s in a shot.

Overall, I found myself searching for less, not more. I found myself craving more honest and adorable moments that have always made the show what it is.

Moment’s like Roy acting out the game for Keely using her makeup, moments that highlighted the very real, very unfair struggles of female athletes in a world that only praises men. Opportunities for more of this seemed to be bypassed for the slapstick, the silly, the over-the-top to the point of ridiculousness anytime Tracey Ullman’s Zelda character is involved, and it made me sad each time. Opportunities like Ted finally talking to his own son about what happened with his own father. Moments like this defined the first 2 seasons, now they are just glossed over and shown with no dialogue. Why?

Overall, I found myself still loving bits and moments of this season, but they were few, and they made the other feeling stronger. The one of “WHY?” that kept creeping up almost the entire rest of the show. Somehow, I found another show that shares a very similar origin story, Chad Powers, that feels more like how the first 2 seasons of Lasso felt, without nearly as much inanity.

I’m fully expecting some to fire back at this with the “Why does everything have to be _____” argument, and that blank can be filled in a myriad of ways. Whatever word chosen to fill in the blank, know this: I totally agree. Not everything Does have to be so serious, high-brow, perfect, sappy, literary, or whatever, but I feel like a show like this should at the very least make me feel, and believe it. Hell, that’s his whole thing and he has now made Two signs about it. This season, for me, didn’t. Neither did the one before it.

I hear another is in the works, and I’m hopeful it rallies, I’m hopeful more time is devoted to Alice, who I find to be the best of the new characters, more nuance given to the real struggles it can sometimes portray, and less time devoted to Beard and his crisis, the forced slapstick stuff, and maybe paring down, rather than continuing to Add storylines. Tighten, not expand, and thereby let everything breathe?

I know some of you are die hard fans and will be for life, and that’s totally acceptable. Maybe even you can offer up what you loved, what you didn’t, and what you hope changes in the season to come?

What are your thoughts?

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Also let me know if you’re digging this idea, this format, the TATAS that can, and will be, about everything from movies, tv, music, to hell, food or places. Whatever. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Lastly, DO NOT FORGET:

TONIGHT IS THE MENAGERIE LIVE GATHERING!!!

Tonight, 6PM Mountain Time, we’ll be back and we’ll all join and talk and hang out and tell stories and read things and whatever else you wanna do. It’s a free-for-all and we all get to see each other’s faces, and I love it. To unlock the link and to join us, just join the little paid fam!

I love you all.

Be good.

Happy Hump Day goofturds. Another Wednesday, another Fuster Cluck LIVE. Believe it. Says the HD version isn’t available for some stupid reason, so you’re gonna watch us like it’s 2003. Cool, who doesn’t love SD?

It’s a very, very random one today, everything from fart sounds to howler monkeys to our passionate plea to everyone to sell their gas stove/range. Not really passionate, but you still should. Cue every wannabe chef shouting rage at us.

Here, as per usual, is THE BIG QUESTION!

All this from a super long, very sappy love-letter to my beautiful wife on our 7th anniversary this Sunday. Oof, I suppose I kinda like her, huh? If you missed it, it’s here:

Also, for all you generous members of our paid community, DO NOT FORGET, our LIVE hangout, aka THE MENAGERIE is again this Friday, October 16th, at 6pm Mountain Time!

Here’s the details how to join:

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I love you all.

Be good.

Yesterday marked two occasions in the world, one you might not be aware of (and this is a tragedy) and the other you almost certainly won’t be aware of (which makes total sense). First, most importantly, it was Indigenous People’s Day, the true holiday because Columbus was a murderous piece of garbage that never even stepped foot on this land we call the United States, and second, it was Lady G and I’s SIXTH wedding anniversary! Wild, time flies, all that stuff. Strange to be more in love now than when we began things. I think we’re doing it right?

At any rate, today we’re going to mark the First event, not the second, and we’re going to honor the Indigenous People who truly made this America great, long before things got so triumphantly screwed up.

Let’s do this…

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24 hours from right now, I will have been married for 7 years.

Today, however, is an anniversary of something else. Call it the first lesson on real love given from the woman a single sleep away from becoming my wife, and I her husband:

Less than 24 hours before Sarah and I got married, 7 years ago to this very day, we completely changed the plan for the wedding we’d had for almost a year.

After enticing 24 of our friends and family members to adventure with us East across an ocean, North across a country, and then West across an island, we then called a wedding audible. Now, instead of a drive up a winding single-track Scottish road into a Fairy Glen, we’d all be trudging through a valley carved between the Black Cuillin mountain range. We’d be all crossing a river and a bog, knee deep in heather and moss, fern and grass gone russet in preparation for the Winter that felt only moments away.

Another lesson on love, taught from the one who has taught me more than anyone else, and I call it the very first wedding gift she gave me.

Always trust your heart, I suppose she’d call it if I forced her to, or perhaps let the universe guide it. Maybe even Be brave enough to change your mind.

However she’d summarize it, the lesson would be this, and it would be simple.

Being with someone almost 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 7 straight years probably sounds to some like a prison sentence. To others, it might sound like some unholy test from a reality show probably invented by the creators of Love Island. To us, it’s just normal life. It’s just what it’s always been.

To me, I’d have it absolutely no other way.

I can say with a certainty that only comes after this much time with a single soul, that almost everything I know of love, of life, of real and lasting joy, I have learned from my time with Sarah, from walking beside her, behind her, and witnessing the way she lives. The way she loves.

Lessons on love are not a thing to be turned into some listicle, not something to be bullet-pointed, numbered, or transformed for virality. Lessons on love are sacred things, made so by the unbelievable tenderness of those who do the teaching. So too with these, so too with her.

Patience, I guess above most things. I watch in awe as she demands nothing from those she loves, as she allows for the timelines of others with something that borders on a Buddha-like grace and quiet resolve. There is no rushing through an interaction with my wife, there is no forceful push to end what you are speaking of, to how long you need her. Patience too, maybe mostly, in her willingness to ask for, as she’ll never demand this either, what it is she needs. Patience in the waiting of years to live the life she knew she wished to live so the living of it would not possibly harm another. What a thing to witness, what a lesson to absorb.

Loyalty that borders on ferocious insanity too, and imagine she would agree. If she loves you, she loves you all the way, and there are not halfways with her loyalty to you. To say she’d be a shovel-in-hand type of person should you ever need a body buried is to undersell the depth of her conviction in love, for I don’t believe she’d need a shovel at all. The body would be gone before you knew it needed burying, she’d risk everything to make you not have to do the digging.

Passion too, though it decorates itself in many colors. In the way she tells a story, in the “biffff” sound effect that finds its way into every dramatic turn as she describes it with her whole body as though actually absorbing the impact of the moment. Passion in the way she kisses, in the strength in her fingers as she holds your hand. Passion in the gasp as she discovers a view of some indescribable beauty, a sip of a coffee of perfect roast, a bite of a croissant expertly layered with perfect Irish butter between each fold and press. Passion I shall not speak of here too, as it is ours and ours alone. As there are no halfways in her loyalty, there is no part-ways with her passion, and watching her learn to express it has been a singular joy in my life.

What of curiosity, and what of it when she is married to probably the most insatiably curious person on the planet? What can she teach to me of what I imagine I already know so much of? Everything, it turns out, as to truly love another, you must never stop being curious about them. How she leans into the things I wish to understand, how she lends an ear to the words I never stop speaking, eyes to the dark holes the rabbits of my brain have never stopped falling down. I think of the exhaustion that must internally creep for her, but never seems to make its way to the external surface when my autism slows me on every walk to investigate every single living creature, when my mind opens itself for pouring every single night at 10pm or later as we shower and I speak of 10,000 things that sat inside me all day. Curious, she stays, and aims it at the curiosity I have in such excess.

I watch her navigate a life, I watch her circle back to those who have harmed her, those who were slow to accept the love she found with me, those who voiced opposition to her taking a new path, and I again am in awe. Forgiveness, then, or perhaps name it Grace. I do not understand the reservoirs of these inside her, though I’ve been swimming in them for almost two decades. Each time I think my feet are somewhere near the soft floor of her seas of grace, I sink further, I feel nothing but water between my toes. She allows, and while an argument could be made that sometimes that allowance is too generous, she never once sees it as such. So swiftly she forgives, so soon she’s ready to show up again, and again, for those who might not deserve it in truth. This is her grace, the ocean of tenderness she gives out though so seldom receives it in turn.

There is kindness in this, though not the type that disguises itself in it as some elaborate ruse. Many are nice without being kind, always seeming so wonderfully open and helpful, these mayors of nonsense and false connection. Always a promise, though you learn it later to be hollow. Sarah is the promise and the delivery that follows, the idea that love is showing up when you say you’re going to show up, it’s helping when you know help is needed, whether it is asked for or not. Every single thing I know of kindness, has been displayed so effortlessly in her, and I do not understand how she never runs out.

I think back to those 24 hours before we said our vows into the mist and heather, before we kissed under a rainbow over a bridge built across a river that Myth says gives you eternal wisdom, though the egos of modernity have shifted that gift to one of beauty. I think of the final night we slept not being officially one thing, not being husband and wife, and I remember my sleep being a peaceful one.

I remember the wind outside the windows of the Sligachan Hotel, I remember the rattle of those old panes, the rainfall that pelted the glass and then fell away for a perfect sunrise only hours before she’d walk across that peatland to me.

I remember the quiet grace she carried across that bridge when I turned to see her for the first time, the explosion of green in the dress she surprised me with.

I remember every moment from that first waking on our wedding day to waking this day beside her, running my fingertips across her naked back, and waiting for her to stir.

I remember every lesson, every gift, and still cannot understand the balance of this universe that decided I’d earned them.

7 years ago tomorrow a life together officially began, or at least the measuring of it. In truth, I think it’s been forever, in a thousand different bodies, a thousand different times.

All I know of love, of life, of real joy, I have learned from her.

Happy Anniversary my only love. Thank you, for everything you’ve taught me.

I love you all.

Be good.

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Song of the Week

I am the least competitive person I know, but saying this comes with a little asterisk, a little qualifier:

I don’t care if I lose every single time IF everyone is playing fair, if I feel like everyone clearly understands the rules, or if the outcome actually makes sense.

Saying this, I do love brain games, and I always have. I love a crossword puzzle, I Love riddles, and now with the internets doing what the internets do, there is a whole slew of new games that make me think, make me happy, and sometimes really irritate me with their answers or the logic behind them. Still though, I love a distraction worthy brain game.

Over the years, myself and those in my family have gotten hooked on everything from Wordle to games where you have to remember colors, sounds, flags, or geography. Now, there’s a new batch, and I wanted to share some with you because it’s the random precipitation from my brain that you come here for, right?

Right?

So, for your little Friday treat, I wanted to introduce you to some fun games I and those around me enjoy playing each day. Maybe you’ll like them too, maybe you’ll hate them and rue the day you listened to me. Either way, it’s Brain Rain bishes, and that’s what this is.

The Games:

1. Krillion - This one is the first stop each morning after I drink my tea. Rules are simple, the animations are fun, the sound effects are amazing. You’re given 7 questions to answer in 25 seconds. The “rarer” your answer, the deeper you dive. Rareness is ranked by their algorithm that compiles info from basically everywhere, so you’re encouraged to be as “deep cut” as you can. Example: Name a symptom of the cold or flu? The rarest answer for that particular question: Chapped lips. Play it once, you’ll be hooked.

2. Chainle - This one is for word nerds, but I have to admit, sometimes it really irritates me because I want to know who they polled for the answers, as sometimes they really, really don’t make sense. Basically, you’re going to fill in a single word between two (or 3 on one level) words to try to chain them together. The word has to relate to both, and your score is weighted on how well it does so. Yesterday had one that infuriated me, so I won’t use it as an example, but here’s one instead: Ceremony, and Campus. Top answer was Graduation. Hard, but if you like words, you’ll like this.

3. Poople - Yep, just like it sounds. Imagine if you took Wordle, and then mixed it with juvenile humor? That’s this. You’re given a word, and changing ONE letter only at a time, you have to end up with the word POOP. Every word you enter must be a real word, so sometimes you have to take your time getting there. Just like constipation.

4. Originle - Each day a video with a real person from a real place giving you a series of increasingly obvious clues as to their country of origin. The faster you guess it right, the higher your score, but miss 3 and you’re out. I’ll warn you, it’s NEVER as easy as you might think each time, each person. It’s addicting, and a fun way to learn more about other cultures.

5. Magnitudle - Simple simple game. Two objects, you get to resize one to the scale you think most closely matches its relationship in real life. A matchstick to a floppy disk? A basketball to a cheetah? Try them. I was SHOCKED by the size of a blue whale’s tongue.

6. Seldom - Scores are based on how many people out of 100 would have said your answer. Score a 0 and that’s a SELDOM and that’s the whole goal. Like Krillion, think rare, think VERY rare. Fun, addicting, tough.

There you have it! A few little brain games to help pass the time if you’re bored waiting in line somewhere and don’t feel like reading my beautiful words.

Also, a favor:

There’s been a pretty hefty exodus from this place ever since I posted my essay on Sunday about men’s role in fixing the forever unfixable problem of abuse and assault on women. Every lost subscriber hurts, a lot, as it affects my ability to keep this place alive, but in cases like this it’s just f’ing worth it.

If you enjoy this place, if you want to help keep it alive, Please, click the button below the galloping unicorn, and upgrade your subscription to officially join the family. Every little bit helps. I’d love ya forever.

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I love you all.

Be good.

Heavy one today kids, bit more serious than most of you will probably used to in light of this weekend’s Sunday Edition post.

If you missed it, do read it before diving in to this week’s Fuster Cluck, it’s here:

Anyhow, we dive DEEP into toxic masculinity today, into what actual changes we need to make, and who needs to be the ones stepping up and making them. Hint, it is as it has always been, Men.

Here again for this week is THE BIG QUESTION:

Like I said, heavy stuff, but after that, I dive into some more fun stuff, including the earth-shattering news that somehow, by some stretch of miracle:

Robert The Bruce is my 21st Great-Grandfather.

Bam.

That also means I’m related to Mary, Queen of Scots. HOLY HELL.

Oh also weird, my 11th great-grandfather was John Thomas Clarke who just so happened to be the ship pilot and master mate, AKA the Navigator, of a pretty famous ship….yep, THE F’ing MAYFLOWER.

Weird. Awesome. Yes.

Anyway, watch the video, dive into the conversation about it all, and let’s make some meaningful strides into fixing what I refuse to believe is beyond fixing.

As usual, here’s the auto-generated accolade thing it makes after every video! Tune in and maybe you’ll be lucky to be called out next week:

Thank you , , , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

I love you all.

Be good.

Say what you will, I believe October is the official beginning of Autumn. It’s the official start of the crisp season, the best season, the one I wait ALL year for. Even the word October rises emotion in me. October, the muse of the whole calendar year.

I understand it’s different for everyone, dependent most likely on the geography, the topography, the latitude and longitude of where you find yourself, and so I wanted to lean into that today.

Let’s do this thing…

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A content note for any who have endured and survived any kind of abuse, I’m angry today and this touches on the horrific Cornell University case. Just a heads up for those who need a little advanced warning. I love you all.

Women do math that men never have to do.

The advanced geometry of a city street at night, the angle of shadows and the diameter of the streetlight glow they’ll feel a fraction of a percentage safer in, the physics involved the moment a hand finds its way to their shoulder or the small of their back. Science, too, as they must become chemists each time a drink poured becomes a drink handed to them in a bar or club and they worry of something dropped into it, or the rejection response that men invent and call primal when their advances are denied.

So too are they experts on silence. Their own when some small man demands it of them as they believe their voice carries more value, but another type as well. Another kind worse than the rest:

The silence of those who should be speaking up for them, with them, who should be a voice of opposition to the bullshit reductions and terrible atrocities they face. The silence of those who refuse to punish those who commit them, the silence of those who still do not teach the next generation to change.

I can still see the glow of the cell phone screen that had the messages on that Cornell University fraternity group chat that sparked a lawsuit and an absolute fever pitch of anger across the world. I can see the words, the absolute degradation of another treated like a joke, like a human being made commodity, made property. I see those who responded, those who the lawsuit says partook, but I see someone else, someone somehow louder.

I see the men who stayed silent. I see that deafening silence, the apparent refusal of every single other man to speak up and stop it. I see the resistance to rock their disgusting boats, I see the complete apathy towards doing the right thing.

I see her, too. The woman tossed into a sea of tumult and chaos against every shred of her will. I see her cast aside, abandoned by all those who did nothing.

I also see that NOTHING, where god dammit, I should see something ferocious.

We’re doing this, all of us, this whole society of men, and we always have been. I don’t know why it’s never gone away, I don’t understand the machinations that haven’t let this horrific and outdated and abhorrent ideal of masculinity die, but here we are, and here we shouldn’t be.

This is a furious letter to the men I know.

This is a demand, because pleas don’t work, because asking politely has never elicited a single meaningful change, clearly. This is me, SHOUTING at you, that we have to do better, we have to be better, we have to set better examples, we have to be loud about this. Now, and always.

We have to raise boys that become men who are actually strong, not just this pantomime of it that somehow we all have been hoodwinked into believing. We have to raise boys who respect women, and more, who refuse to be complicit when others do not. We need men who understand something simple but profound:

Women do not need saviors, they need men who are willing to break the silence amongst men.

Only men can do this.

We have to raise boys who not only refuse to laugh when the jokes begin at that awkward time between 8 to 12, but speak up and offer resistance to those making them. Who risk it the outcasting, who say NO when everyone else is saying Yes to the behaviors that have become obscenely normalized.

We have to raise boys that become men who understand true strength is speaking out when no one else will, it’s making a fucking change when everyone else throws their hands up in some pathetic surrender to the “way it’s always been.”

It is the way it’s been because WE, the men who CAN, and SHOULD, and for some reason still will NOT, have been turning a blind eye away from what’s happening until it actually happens to someone we know, someone we love, someone we call friend or family or lover.

What a disaster we’ve created, all of us “we” over centuries and centuries of passing down, either with intention or with apathy, such disfigured definitions of what it is to be a MAN. What it is to be masculine. These lessons of power, of persuasion, of acquisition, of aggression. Somehow, we’ve taught that to be a man is to take what you believe to be rightfully yours, to own, to control, to dominate.

This letter, this essay, is not one of pointing fingers at any specific reason we have done this. It’s not to blame any one group, not Hollywood not “that damn rap music” that shouldered the blame for so many things in the early ‘90s, because in truth, it’s not possible to blame any one thing. It’s all of it, it’s none of it, it’s just pointing a finger at the reality that somehow we’re still perpetuating by not speaking up against it.

By not educating those that follow us how to stop it.

This is step one of a thousand that must be taken. This is the first push towards some great change that must come. Men who do speak up, must teach others to do the same. Men who do refuse to stay quiet, men who do refuse to allow others to hurt, to threaten, to dominate, to control, need to be louder, need to be even stronger.

No longer can “not all men” be the bullshit line spouted by those who use their voices, because it’s not enough. It’s just not e-fucking-nough, and never has been.

We’re raising boys that turn into men that are capable of this, and what’s even more quietly nefarious is that we’re also raising boys who are capable of the silence when others do. It’s not enough to raise boys who turn into men who will not harm a woman, it’s not enough to lay your head on a pillow each night confident that your son would not do what those monsters at Cornell University did.

If you don’t KNOW, definitively, that your son, your boy, your young man, would have stood up and stopped it, you’re not doing enough. Period. Full stop. Forever.

Do more. Be better. Educate. Teach. And most of all, fucking Demonstrate the behavior you demand of them.

Somewhere in this country tonight, a woman is going to be holding her keys between her knuckles, taking a deep breath, and walking down the street to get into her car or unlock her front door. Somewhere, another is opening her own drink to guarantee to herself she won’t be drugged. Somewhere, another is trying her very best to let down ever-so gently a man who won’t stop “complimenting” her at the bar lest his ego make him angry.

Somewhere else in this ridiculous country tonight, someone’s phone is going to light up a dark dorm room or frat house or night club or bar. One small little glow in a house full of young men, and there will be a thumb hovering just an inch above it.

It’s one of our son’s.

What that thumb does next, however it responds, someone taught it.

I love you all.

Be good better.

Also: 1-800-656-HOPE or https://rainn.org

Help is available. You’re not alone.

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Song of the Week

You’re here because one day a long time ago I posted a poem on the internet.

That’s weird, but probably mostly true. 3000+ poems, 4,000+ haiku, however many thousand photographs, essays, videos, and stories later, some of you are still here. Wild, this.

It’s the poetry then, I wanted to revisit today, to share more of. Thought I could share one that I don’t know if many people have read, unless they purchased my latest book, The Never Was. Which, if you haven’t and want to, click the link below and it shall be so.

Snag a copy of The Never Was

Maybe, thought I, people like hearing the behind-the-scenes stories about how poems came to be what they came to be. The stories behind them, the inspiration. Maybe, they’d want to dive a little deeper.

Maybe this is what might entice some people to truly join this family and help keep this place alive. Maybe this is a perk that I could offer to the paid community. Not necessarily more content, but more connection. The live gatherings are doing this, this community is doing this, so why not try?

Here is the poem, and below it, the stories behind it, and the spoken word recording of me reading it, so you can hear how my brain heard it the moment it fell out of my mind.

I often wonder about my silly mind. About being on the Autism spectrum, about my place in it. Saw they just replaced the official symbol for Autism too, saw they went from puzzle piece to an infinity sign made of rainbow.

Color, I think they aimed at, the idea of the wide spectrum of color that all eyes see differently. What then, if you see yourself as something else? What does it say if the middle of you feels different?

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I love you all.

Be good.

Happy Wednesday ya little unicorns. Welcome back to another Fuster Cluck LIVE!

Here, as per yoozh (like usual? anyone know how to spell this?), here’s THE QUESTION of the week:

Also, holy smokes: WE HAVE PICKED THE DATE FOR THE NEXT MENAGERIE!

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Have a rad Wednesday, do something beautiful.

I love you all.

Be good.

Too much pressure on perfect these days, too much focus on the flawless. This is nonsense, rubbish. I think what’s broken is More beautiful, breathtaking for all the fractures and cracks. I’m not alone in this, kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold and silver lacquer sought to show just how stunning things can become once shattered then repaired.

Today I want to dive into that, and I want you to join me, if you like.

Let’s do this…

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Truth begins in terror.

In the absolute certainty in your own disbelief that anyone truly cares.

Here’s a truth: I was alone for years because I carried a secret truth in my soul that I knew with every morsel of my being, was worth risking it all for. A life that shined like some beacon in the distance, a life worth waiting for, worth fighting for. I knew this, and felt the terror, but believed anyway that that life was the one I was meant to be living. A life lived fully. An unwritten life.

Todd Anderson knew this in Dead Poet’s Society, and I remember him shaking, his quivering breath as he looked down at his own desk. Vulnerability, in the end, and a crippling fear of it, was the thread that linked him to his friend Neil. Neil didn’t make it to the end of the film, Todd did, and I always was so struck by that contrast.

There is a cost to living your life fully, and I know this now. Took years at this discovery, took going through more things than I thought my little vulnerable heart could handle, but I got here, I’m here, now.

What took even longer to understand, however, is there’s a cost to not living it fully too. Both have a price, but I believe we are only able to afford one. The other, it turns out, is far too steep, it’s more than we can ever pay. This is what Neil knew in Dead Poet’s Society, this is what took him from this place, hollow and haunting as it may sometime seem.

Keating knew the opposite, and so too did Todd Anderson, only too late to save the pair of them, Keating from his dismissal, Neil from his irreversible act of self-harm.

A refusal to live a life less ordinary, to transform yourself and the machinations of your own soul to fit into the machinery of someone else’s invention. To quiet the thumping heart within your chest, costs everything, it turns out.

To live fully can sometimes cost our jobs, our friendships, our stability, our vulnerability, our ego, our own sense of who we were before we refused to concede a moment longer. Todd saw this after Neil’s death, after he could not live a life fully as himself, and chose his own path that he knew would end so tragically early. Todd saw, and stood on his desk anyway.

He stood, first.

I didn’t know where I wanted this entire four-part saga through Dead Poet’s Society to go when I thought it up. I knew the film meant more to me than I knew how to say, so I thought I owed it to it, to myself, to try to say it anyway. To speak of these costs, to speak of the terror that comes with truth, as it so often births it. I’m ending it here because it’s where it must end, not in sermon but in sharing of the simple truths I’ve learned after 45 years of living, those that came from refusing to live anything other than fully.

There were years of heartache, of a loneliness that can only come from watching others live the life you believed you were supposed to be living. There were years of sickness, of frustration, of stillness forced upon me like handcuffs no key was ever created for. At the end of them, as there is always an end to them, it was there but faint, there but still shining.

The great big beauty of a life fully lived, the consequence of the courage to choose it.

I created this place, this home to the rattlings of this curious mind, because I wanted there to exist a place that granted everyone who came the permission to feel EVERYTHING. The permission never needed, but somehow fed to us like a pill we did not wish to swallow.

I created this place to offer reminders, to offer little winks across the expanse of this universe that could shake you as though sleeping, to gently place my hand on your slumbering shoulder, to whisper you awake.

This is the cost of living with your heart wide open, I wish to say to you, Sometimes it takes everything, sometimes it’s almost more than we can pay, but, but…

There is no other way.

This time of year messes me up, to put it as ineloquently as possible. It shakes me every time, with its Autumnal scents and the sounds of leaves underfoot, the first lighting of wood fires and the smoke that rises like sage stick to smudge the evil spirits from this valley, this home. School returns, but not for me, not again, but I am transported back in time to a version of me that felt some shaking silence inside, that, like Todd Anderson, felt the tingle of vulnerability, the sensation of it clawing at the inside walls of you, wanting out, wanting freedom.

I just wanted to pay tribute to that film, to this season, to the yearly reminder that I cannot live a life anything short of fully. There are no halfways, no part-ways, no almost-theres. It’s all, or it’s nothing. It’s in, or it’s out. It’s everything, it’s everything, it’s everything.

I will not sermonize you on how to live, I will not push you to do the same as I do, I will not give you an optimized list of how, of why, of the pros or cons or whatever the hell else performs well on Substack and Notes and Social Medias that rot our souls, I will not, I cannot.

I will just be in this place, this strange unicorn of a place I made to give a home to all those who refuse to live a life written by someone else, who refuse to cower to the terror in truth, bow to the bombastically boring insult that is normal.

I will be here, and I will be waiting.

For you.

I love you all.

Be good.

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Song of the Week

No one tells you what it’ll feel like when the nest you’ve been building, re-building, cleaning, filling with life, food, laughter, and pain, is all of a sudden a hell of a lot more empty.

Turns out, it’s lots of things. It’s insanely sad, to be certain. It chokes you up at random times when the rooms are quieter, when the noises less frequent, when the schedule somehow opens up in ways that are at first subtle, but then somehow shocking. It’s sorrowful, and it carries an ache, and this is not to be denied. But sometimes, it’s something else too.

Sometimes, it’s exciting. Sometimes it brings its own bizarre joyfulness, it’s weird feeling of freedom that you almost feel guilty for internally celebrating. Both you and your partner will probably be hesitant to voice it, lest you reduce the possibility of their current sadness (if that’s the moment they are indeed in) to inconsequential.

Bottom line, it’s a lot of things. These photos kind of represent the end of dropping off Addie at school, and the beginning of a life of two empty nesters, trying to figure it all out. Click through to enjoy them, to get a sneak behind the curtain of what it meant to us. Oh, and join the family, so we’re not so lonely. Also so we can afford college at all, hahahaha.

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Click to view on the website, which lets you view these bigger and scroll through the gallery.

We didn’t linger after making sure Addie’s room was how she wanted it. We cried, we hugged, then we got the hell out of dodge. I think this helped, in a way. The tears came, they always will, but when we got back into Helena we immediately took Gilly on his nightly walk and were treated to one of what proved to be DOZENS of staggeringly beautiful sunsets.

As if to soothe our little suffering, the sky got so beautiful, the storms rolled in, and we were treated to some very Irish feeling weather. Somehow, rain always acts as balm to the ache in a soul. Washes it all clean.

Sarah also went with the full Justin Timberlake January 8, 2001 AMA outfit of denim on denim on denim, and somehow, made it look freaking beautiful.

That walk began a month of walks. Every single night, with no schedule we had to uphold, we walked, and still do. In the forest and mountains behind our home, in the simple loop sprawled out in front of our house when we walk with my parents and their dog, Gilly’s sister Murtle. Every night, a walk, a reset, a breath, a stare into the wide skies and sunsets and storms and deep sighs that somehow refill lungs and souls at the same time.

There’s so much beauty my friends, even when it hurts, maybe even especially then.

Go for a walk. Find it.

As I said, August FLABBERGASTED US with sunsets. Look at the light in these, look at the glow, the contrast between the stormy dark clouds and the eruption of some backlit fire-like glow. Look at my wild-haired Irish girl, who I love in the wind more than all other places. Look at the way the lake water holds the glow from the sky above it, look at the fuckin SPLENDOR that we’re gifted. Just look.

Also look at this amazing portrait of Gilly as I walked up the stairs from the bakery in the basement. What a peach he is.

The month continued to unfurl like ribbon before us, and we just kept walking. Quiet dinners together, we hold hands more than I think we ever have, which is something I didn’t think possible until now.

For some reason we scoot even closer on the couch each end-of-night when we finally watch some silly show before showering together. We see each other, as we always have, but I swear our eyes look deeper into each other than before the nest got quieter and others call it empty. I think it all added up to a realization, if I’m honest, and it’s a peculiar one of such simplicity:

It was never a nest we were building at all, it was a birdhouse, and as long as we’re in it, it can never be empty. It’s home, and it’s just waiting for the days it’s all stuffed up again.

I love you all.

Be good.

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Bit of a weird one today friends, but of a true Fuster Cluck as we’ve been SO damn busy, we had to go live whilst driving home from running one of 30535 errands. That’s why the poem reading, and my apology for the video stopping at the most hilarious place ever is just above hahaha.

Still though, we get down to brass tacks, whatever the F that means, and we dive into the WEEKLY QUESTION! Wahooooo.

If you missed it in the video, here is the break down and the question I’m dying to hear your answers to:

ALSO, TOMORROW IS THE NIGHT! The Menagerie LIVE hangout! Our 2nd official gathering with all you beautiful folks!

I PROMISE, next week will NOT be as big a shitshow. I promise.

I Love you all.

Be good.