A little heads up before we dip into the new year (Holy crap, already?): I decided The Matchbook is going to go to everyone again, now that Lady G and I are making these videos and loving them so much, and there’s a very important reason why, and I hope you take 2 seconds to read this:

I don’t ever want this place to feel like I am on a treadmill of constantly trying to “sweeten the pot” or bribe you or keep offering more and more things to try to convince people to hop on over and pledge their support by becoming paid subscribers. I only want you to do so if you’re able to do so, and I only want you to do so because you want to help keep this place alive, to help financially support something that takes up far more than a full time job for me. Obviously I’m going to keep the perks for the supporters there, and I’m going to share more and more exclusive poetry with all of those who do help each month, but I just cannot keep up with constantly trying to add more things or convince more people. I love this place, I think you do too, and if you ever have the means, or the desire, you can always join us in our wonderful conversations, gatherings, comments, writing prompts, and community. We’re here, and we love you, and dammit, everyone deserves to see Lady G’s gorgeous mug each week. That’s all.

Signal Fire is 100% user supported. If you love this place and wanna help keep it going, consider joining us as a paid subscriber!

Now, onward, as we’re MIDWAY through a month, holy b-nanas. 10 days til Christmas, that’s an even bigger *gasp* isn’t it? If you’ve not got your holiday shopping done, a gift subscription to this place makes a LOVELY gift. There’s a lot of people just waiting to join us on this free list, why not give the gift that keeps on giving? Anyhow, Lady G and I are back with some new hot links!

Here’s the scoop, kids:

Lord G’s Finds:

* 20 Best Movies of 2023 - For the first time, maybe Ever, I have not seen a single movie on the Rolling Stone 20 Best Movies of 2023 list. Not a single one. I’ve either been too busy watching Great British Baking Show, OR, the victim of Lady G hating the TV being on so we really only watch 1 short episode of something a day. Or both. Probably both. The ones I really wanna see on this list: Past Lives, Bottoms, Beau is Afraid, All Of Us Strangers, and Killers of the Flower Moon. You?

* Civil War trailer - A24 doesn’t often put a foot wrong as a movie studio, they just keep making amazing films, and this looks to be terrifyingly on brand. Written by Alex Garland, who made The Beach, Ex Machina, and 28 Days Later, this film looks more like Nostradamus made it, and I’m worried it’s a sign of things that could come, rather than just a spooky romp through the divided state of things in this country. Either way, I’m in, and to see Kristen Dunst in a serious role where she gets to show her chops, is exciting. I’m in on this one, I’m in.

* Podcasts That Explain The 90’s - There simply isn’t a more truthful fact than this: The 80’s/90’s were the best decades ever in the history of ever. Growing up in them, being in High School in the 90s, is a gift I never deserved, but will always be thankful for. I miss those simple days of radness with an acute ache, and these podcasts are amazing for not only celebrating them, but explaining them for those that maybe didn’t get to enjoy them, either being too young, or too old, at the time.

* Kitchen IQ Knife Sharpener - Look, I don’t often talk about weird products that have made my life better, easier, and more enjoyable, but I’d be damned if I didn’t mention this one. We have a lot of knives, some very nice, some cheaper, and for Years I’ve just been using the little rod that came with them to keep them sharp, or what I thought was sharp. I found this little $10 gadget on a lot of lists of best knife sharpeners and thought I had nothing to lose to try it. Folks, Holy S**T. My knives are razor sharp, I can slice through baby tomatoes without even moving the tomato, and it’s completely brainless to use. Seriously, sharp knives change everything. Just buy it. You’ll thank me later.

* Slip Away (Spotify Singles) by Perfume Genius - Perfume Genius are perfectly named, as they are indeed geniuses, and they perfume my life with their music. See how cheesy that was? This song is amazing, and this version of this song just feels GOOD. I don’t know what else to say, but thank You to them. Just thank you.

Lady G’s Finds (in her own words!):

* Handmade Christmas Ornaments - These are something I really enjoyed making, I’m going to try to make one every year going forward, highlighting one of my favorite memories of the year. They are super easy, especially if you buy an Instant Printer, I Love the Fuji ones the most, as you can print any photo from your phone or computer, not just the ones you take with the little Instamatic Cameras. Game changer.

* Egg Nog Snickerdooles Recipe - I love baking, a fact you well know by now, and I’m going to be including these in my little annual Christmas Cookie box I drop off at family and friend’s houses (shhh, don’t tell!) this year. This will ALSO be the recipe we’ll be LIVE BAKING this weekend on Instagram! (@LadyGregson and @TylerKnott on Instagram), so get your ingredients ready!

* North Pole Ninjas! - In case you didn’t know, Tyler and I wrote a children’s book a couple of years back, and we’re still prouder of it than almost anything else we’ve ever done. It’s about bringing kindness back to the holiday season, and infusing it into the entire thing, rather than having it linger on the periphery. It includes missions to give out to your kids, family members, office mates, or teammates, that help make that task even easier. What could be better?

* A Work Of Love - Orion Article - This beautiful article is about a young scientific illustrator who illustrated a book in the early 90s about homosexuality across animal species, and natural diversity, and its importance in showing the world that homosexuality IS natural, and not a human “choice” that so many morons try to convince the world of. Stunning read, worth your time, and the art is spectacular.

* The Friendship Problem by Rosie Spinks - Such a beautiful article by fellow Substacker Rosie Spinks that talks about this really sad, really prevalent problem that seems to be plaguing society now — the lack of real, true, deep friendships and the eroding ability to just drop by on the people we love — that never used to be a problem, and still isn’t in many cultures. What a read, what a beautiful piece, and it brings up so many questions on how we can, and should, try to do better.

* On Being Podcast Episode w/Vivek Murthy - Absolutely beautiful episode entitled “To Be A Healer” about some many things, loneliness chiefly among them, and ways that we can help each other, but mostly ourselves, feel less lonely in our lives. I cried listening to this one, just couldn’t help it, and I imagine you will too. My favorite quote:

Look, I think that for every generation there’s a moment where they face a moment of existential change, where there are forces that are visited upon society that threaten our way of life and our way of being. And it’s up to that generation to figure out how to respond. To me, this is that moment and we are those people who have to take it upon ourselves to stitch together the social fabric of our country once again because it is the foundation on which we build everything else.

* Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas by Gang of Youths - I LOVE this band, I love this song, and thank you so much Ash Raymond James for the tip-off to this. What a beautiful voice, and what a beautiful version of this song. Oof.

* Calendars are 30% Off! - We Do NOT want a repeat of ending up with tons of stock of these beauties like last year, taking them to the recycling center, so we’re slashing prices. These are now 30% off and we lowered shipping costs too. BAM. Go snatch em up.

We love you all. Be good.

We are those that tremble, we shiver, we shake in the face of all that comes when we go. The storytellers of the stars, we, those that find pictures in the sky when we draw lines between the glow, inventors of myth for the towering figures on the canvas black, tell ourselves we’re protected, held in the great hand of a god bigger than it all. One day those fingers will curl, we know this from our first breath, feel it in the back of our minds like an itch unscratchable and run from it on instinct, and we will be dust again in the palm of something bigger. We stand here quiet, crane these necks until bruised, and guess at what will be when we will not. We guess, we’re all just guessing.

It’s hopeful though, this casting out of the nets inside us, it’s always been a hopeful thing. We throw our fear wide and imagine it hooking tight all the beautiful wishes we’ve cast, all the prayers to all the different gods we trust in to bring us salvation, serenity when all is spent, when we are slowed to a stop. Snagging them and returning them to us, wrapping us in them, warm and swaddled like the first moments we saw light. We believe so deeply that peace will come, some great heaven where all we lost will be found once more, and we fight for what we believe. What then, when we fight others who do not see what we see when we point our eyes at the starlight? What then when we are stubborn as stones and defend our best guess against theirs?

What then if we are wrong? Or more, what then if we are all right? All this wasted time, these hours of discontent, these murderous years stretching back before crucifixion began a movement, before Buddha sat beneath tree and found enlightenment, before Odin, before Shiva, before Atum or the great turtle that carried the world upon its back, what of all the blood soaked soil from those whose prayers did not sound the same?

We’re all just guessing, hopeful guessing aimed at the beyond that comes for us all, slow steps until it taps our shoulders and asks us to turn, to close our eyes, to go where we must go when we must go. We do not know, and we shake in this ignorance, we tell ourselves it will all be ok, in seven thousand languages plus one hundred more, we whisper to the scared in us, that we’ve nothing to fear, though we hear the countdown clock faintly in the corners of our ears. What then if we are wrong, what then if we are all right, all along?

All these hateful wars, all this raging on the single ship we all share, I think often of what we’ve lost. So much spent, so much invested on the After This, that we plant divide on the Here Now, and I ask myself why. I do not understand the hate we hold, we humans, we storytellers all needing solace in the long night.

I will use my time, what is left of what’s to come, wisely, and so I tell you this. I will waste not hours on the guesses, on the hope we aim at the beyond, but on the understanding that we all say the same things, we all tell the same stories, they just don’t look the same. If we all spoke truth of the hypotheses we create, the imaginations we call doctrine, wouldn’t we see? We don’t know, and this it what it is to be alive, to be this species, on this planet, at this moment on a cosmic timeline stretching infinitely in all directions. We don’t know, and so we guess, and as long as the beliefs we hold don’t hurt anyone else, why do we bother with the assimilation of these ideas? There is room for hope in every color, every flavor, and it matters not the words we decorate it with.

The fights we should fight belong not to the gods we speak to in the lonely minutes before slumber comes, in the final breaths before we breathe no more, the blood should not spill for what we call the great hand that holds us, what we name the beyond, should there be one, no. The battles worthy of joining are those of hatred, of judgement, of prejudice that reduces the value of another, that strips rights, strips love, and plants more seeds of more fear in the garden of their hearts. This is why we should fight, not for what we believe when all we believe is good, but for us all to have the freedom to do the believing, to love the way they love, to become they who they were meant to become.

All we do is guess, fill a lifetime with postulation and feel our fingers strain and grow arthritic with years of crossing. We are those of hope, of cave’s emergence, of fire starting, of stone wall painting, we are those of dot to dot in the inky pool of the night, we are those that tremble before all we cannot understand in the infinitesimalness of our minds.

Keep your hope, but bury your hatred, for there is no room where we’re all going. This is all we can do, all we have ever been able to do.

Let your shaking calm.

We’re all just guessing,

aiming hope at the beyond,

to calm our shaking.

Haiku on Life by Tyler Knott Gregson

Song of the Week

Seems like the silly video we did last week, Lady G and I, went over pretty well, so folks, we’re back for round two! I’ll be damned, as much as she says she hates being in front of the camera, she’s got a knack for it, and it’s wild to see how excited everyone gets to see her. I should be mature and not say it, but to you my dear Lady G: I TOLD YOU …

I stood and watched, four straight minutes I watched, fully aware that this scene had already played out in a 90s movie. You remember it too, I’m sure, the plastic bag scene in American Beauty, that 1999 film that took more turns than a Mario Kart track with Kevin Spacey before we knew him to be the insane creepy sexual predator that he is, where the guy video taped a plastic bag dancing in a little wind gust for quite awhile, the slow-mo, the music, and this quote that followed it:

It was one of those days when it’s a minute away from snowing, and there’s this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was just, dancing with me, like a little kid beggin’ me to play with it – for fifteen minutes. And that’s the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video’s a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember – I need to remember. Sometimes, there’s so much beauty in the world – I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart is just going to cave in.

This happened to me as I walked down to check the mail, I stood as a little whirlwind, a dust-devil without the dust so perhaps a leaf devil, twisted and danced its way down the road across the street from where I stood. It chose four little leaves, the shade of brown that comes after the fire orange and yellow that fades, the lightness after the freeze and frost curls the ends tight upon itself as though its holding tight to endure all the cold still to come. They were picked up, spun, swirled, and waltzed back and forth on the street that slopes West, sometimes the leaves touched, held one another by stiff stem, sometimes they separated and lifted in some perfect synchronization, sometimes they settled as though to rest a spell before lifting again, the ebb and flow that comes operatic and choreographed. But by what, and why?

I have long believed with a certainty reserved for knowledge that comes only through experience, that there’s a force bigger than us all at work behind the scenes of things, there’s an energy, and if we are quiet enough, if we open our eyes wide, sometimes we can see it. I know not if this force is a benevolent one, as sometimes I know it does things that are so categorically not so, but I don’t believe it malevolent either. I think above all things, it strives to be, and for me this has always been enough.

So lost in nonsense we have become, faces glued to devices, ears tuned to the incessant din of news that’s so perpetually awful because rotten headlines sell better than good ones, we miss the magic from this force, the magic it’s constantly trying to show us. These moments are anchoring ones, and they are so perfectly subtle that if we don’t look, we don’t see, and I think this has always been on purpose. There’s a line in my favorite movie, Joe vs. the Volcano, where Patricia says to Joe,

“My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement.”

The Universe hides itself in subtlety so not everyone will know. It relies on the distraction of the stumbling masses to forget to wake up, to neglect to pay attention, and the why of this is something I’ve always wondered about. I too oscillate here, and wonder what would become of us if we all realized the truth, if we all woke at the same time and felt the same beating heart of this invisible force that connects all things. I leap to peace, and imagine only the most beautiful outcomes should we all rise in consciousness together, but then I stop, then I wonder and trust that if all this is still being camouflaged in mundanity, there must be a reason, there must be.

The Dark Forest theory of alien intelligence speaks to this, the idea that perhaps the reason that after all these years sending signals out into the perceived emptiness of space and not hearing back, is because every advanced intelligence, every brilliant civilization out there amongst the stars knows that contact will inevitably mean destruction due to the ignorance and fear by those it reaches. Perhaps this force here, this beautiful energy that tries so hard to be kind, feels this same, perhaps its evolved so far beyond what we can comprehend it knows, that if more than we lucky, we select few, were to know of its existence, we’d end up trying to strip it like a resource, harness it to our advantage, and eventually cause its extinction. It’s what we do, isn’t it? It’s what we have always done.

I have seen it play, I have seen the universe dance wildly, I have seen it shock me with its simple beauty, its stunning grace. I don’t have a lot of close friends, and I am alone a lot, and this is a truth I don’t share with many because when I think of this, I realize I have never once felt lonely. It’s not hyperbole to say I feel this force, this strange singing energy, every moment of my life, and at those times that I might trick myself into thinking I do not, I realize it’s only me, distracted and forgetful me, that’s to blame. It’s here, it’s all around us, and it’s whispering in ten thousand languages, hoping that we, we few that are worthy of holding that knowledge, of keeping its secret, will remember, will see, will believe. It sings to us in birdsong, in the sound of wind through the tops of Ponderosa pines, the hum of the sea washing up on some sandy shore, or pulling back stones rounded from eons of tide. It dances for us, in murmuration, in leaves that float, in the swaying of a palm to a rhythm altogether silent.

I wonder of a world awake, but fall back into the grasp of some gentle calm when I understand that this force, this universe that plays and jokes and whispers and sings, knows enough to keep itself safe, to keep the beauty for those who seek to find it. I imagine it wonders, and probably often, how so many of its displays go unnoticed by people that should be seeing, how many times it dances to an empty room, though its filled with so many of us blind to its waltzing.

I stood and watched it play, the leaves, the swirl, the chill that faded out in the haze of mesmerization, and felt tears well up so big they wouldn’t fit anymore. I let them fall, and in their tumbling, called them applause for the dancing I was gifted.

You, you here, you too are chosen, though you may have forgotten. You are they of finger-tapped shoulders, of soft words shushed into ears, of appreciation from this gorgeous grace that is all around us. Remember, please, and open your eyes. It’s here, it’s always been here, find it again.

The universe plays,

dances wildly and wonders

if we’ll even see.

Haiku on Life by Tyler Knott Gregson

Song of the Week

Hi kids. I’ll be damned, it’s December already. I don’t really understand how, as I still feel like it’s 1997 somehow, which I know doesn’t make sense in any way, but that’s ok. As a new treat, I’m gonna try something new this week, I’m gonna include a video breakdown of this here Matchbook, a little hello from us to you talking about what we (LADY G…

These the hours after the celebrations, the days that come like lull between storms, the eye of the hurricane of holiday. These the weeks of slowing, before sprinting through the marathon of gathering, of purchases, of the obscuring through wrapping that hides the contents of our best guess at desire. This, a day of contemplation after a week of meals shared and guests hosted, of socialization maybe appreciated, often endured. These hours, these stained with the realization of injustice that still haunts the tables we fill with poultry browned to crisp perfection, the potatoes mashed, the berries cran, bring about possibility, not only for reflection on all that still goes without reparation, but on a subject altogether ignored in a climate that praises cynicism over hopefulness, want for more, over appreciation for what is. Dare we, in these fragile days between marquee holidays, dare we feel grateful? Dare we buck the trend and speak out loud our gratitude for whole width and breadth of this existence, the peaks, sure, but the troughs as well? Dare we embarrass ourselves by bowing slightly at the altar of this life?

We dare. Or at the least, we should dare, indeed.

To feel this for the joy in our days, a simple task. To stand back and bask in the glory of fulfilled wishes, dinner tables stuffed to the tipping point of excess, health prime and free from worrying results, these are easy asks. We excel in the revelry that comes when all feels as all should feel, where happiness rises like steam from the kettle within us and sings out through our mouths in beautiful words, in songs with lovely melody. What comes not so naturally, what strains the bounding ropes wrapped tightly around the cages around our hearts, is to feel that same gratitude for the days we went hungry, the hours of nauseating worry spent waiting for results to tests we didn’t want taken, for the health that seemed to fall down the elevator shaft in a free-fall towards rock bottom. For the sorrow.

Maybe now we dare, dare to step back and for perhaps the first time, truly invest the energy once so effortlessly reserved for unadulterated appreciation for all the beauty in our lives, for more. Maybe true joy lives in this, hiding in the wide folds that separate the ache from the amusement. Should we dare to iron them flat, to pull on the ends until all is smooth, what floats into the sunbeams that trickle in, like dust motes suspended, like stillness made tangible?

So much time wasted on wishes, on the misplaced hope that all things can improve, that we should avoid sadness like a leprous thing, dodge its grasp as though contagious. We cannot know elation without depression, cannot see for miles unless we strain and struggle up the slopes. I propose a thanksgiving for these hours, these months of hurting and wallow, a flashlight into the darkness of it all, a shine cast on the shadowed bits. It is work, certainly so, but that of noble pursuit, and shouldn’t we try for a touch more nobility?

This day, this soft-edged day that comes after the binges, in meal, in company, this day of all days, can be one of beginning. We are nearer now to the end of this year, a month and change before it tips and begins again, turning 3 to 4 at the tail end of our calendars, and we are gifted choice unwrapped but gleaming. It’s up to us to do the opening, isn’t it, to peel back the kraft paper, untie the twine, and discover the contents within. I think I know, though perhaps still I only guess, but I offer the benefit of my surmising for your disposal, as I know what comes when you aim appreciation at more than just the effervescent animation of your life.

To love your life for all it encompasses, the joy to the delicious sorrow, is to be alive truly. It’s the whole of it that constitutes a life well-lived, and all we learn of peace comes from all we endure from war. There are a million wars we fight to stay afloat.

We must be grateful, this is the truth I know, and how strange that it’s these truths that are the most tested. Take these tests, stand against the cynical tide and let the waters wash over you, it is ok to be still against the crashing, it is ok to shiver in the cold. Be grateful for your life, but not only the pieces that feel like relief. Stare back at the tribulations and thank them, too, for what they teach you of survival.

For the whole of it, I ask you with pleading lips still sleepy from conversations over tables shared, the great wide entirety, feel grateful.

Finally, you will feel full.

For the whole of it,

joy to delicious sorrow,

we must be grateful.

Haiku on Life by Tyler Knott Gregson

Song of the Week

A question eternal, one that passes back and forth from minds to lips to minds to lips, from philosophers to bridge builders, psychiatrists to scientists to presidents to protestors, a question simple:

Just because we can, does that mean we should?

The can, the should, could be six dozen things, six dozen more. The color it holds, the shape it takes, all change, but the two words that anchor us to indecision, to thought experiment, are the same. Can, and should.

This rattled around inside lately, this idea of the ability to do the thing being separate and completely autonomous from the justification of the actual doing. There are many things we can do, have learned or taught ourselves to be capable of, but many of them are, and will always remain, things we should not do. We can steal, it’s entirely possible to do this at a million turns in our lifetimes, but we should not. We can kill to prove killing is wrong, but should we? No.

An article that prompted probably the biggest question in my silly mind popped up the other day, and it shook me to the point of all that rattling. Some scientists, apparently believe, that with advances in technology, medicine, and the structures to help keep us healthier, there is a possibility that human beings will be able to live to 150 years old in the very near future. Some even believe the first human to reach 150 has already been born, is here, now, suggesting that these advances are going to come at a faster rate than previously anticipated. What’s more, according to some research, if this is to come true, it won’t look at all like it looks now, where from 75 to 100 we’re increasingly immobile, struggling with health issues, slower cognitive ability, and the like. Instead, they believe 80 will be similar to what 35 or 40 is now, and that the onset of what we currently accept as age-related slowdowns and maladies, will not come until the very end. Essentially, imagine being 35 years old now, feeling the way you do, except for actually being 85, or 90. THIS, my friends, is where the questions started pelting me like some late February blizzard.

It’s here, in this idea that our bodies can be 90 years old but still feel, act, and look as though we’re the current 35, that the can/should questions took over. I realized, that as a culture, we’re still plagued by a very important distraction of attention and importance, and to be honest, I don’t see that changing if we were to live even longer, stay young even later. We are body obsessed in this world, absolutely bonkers for the physicality of our species. We diet, we take strange pills, we inject toxins, we implant silicone, we dye, pluck, shape, tone, target, paint, and tweak every aspect of our humanity to look younger, skinnier, fitter, or less ravaged by the effects of time. We scan our insides, test our blood, listen to our lungs, and constantly monitor all that thumps and moves beneath our skin. Meanwhile, what focus is left for the mind, for our psyche, for our emotional state? Mental health is an aspect that gets overlooked and ignored more than any other. During, and even now that many declare the Covid Pandemic essentially over, thousands of studies were done on the cumulative physical affect Covid had on humans, but so few, so terribly few, were done on the toll it took on mental health.

Here is where my brain wandered, taking into account these unfortunate facts, when I read the article about living to be 150-years-old:

If our bodies stayed around so much longer, what terrible weight would be on our minds?

I say terrible for a few reasons, and by a few I mean literally hundreds that have come to light after the last half dozen years. I look backwards, since probably 2016, and I look at the unbelievable weight of stress we’ve all been carrying. I don’t know if everyone will agree, and that is ok, but I honestly cannot remember a more stressful decade in the entirety of my life. From Trump taking office and the immense political divide, to the rising threat of climate change and the weather/planetary related turmoil, to the protests and unrest from injustices long suffered, to the insurrections, to the pandemics, to the economic fallout, to the fears about everything from AI to TikTok to spy balloons to Russian war, to China’s involvement, to ten million other things, it’s fair to say it’s been really f’ing stressful. The weight of this has clearly taken physical tolls, and I think we’re just at the beginning of seeing the impact of those, but where I think the damage has been much worse, and much more hidden, is the mental and emotional component.

Speaking nothing of the overpopulation problem, as that’s an entirely different story, my question still remains…just because we maybe can live to be 150 or beyond, should we? What happens to a mind if it’s lived through 80 years of joy, pain, stress, elation, ache, sorrow, and fear? What happens if the inevitable decline and the merciful amnesia of old age doesn’t come at 80, or 90, but not for another 50 or 60 or 70 years? Can our minds hold the weight of 100 years of living, when our bodies will be tricked into thinking they are just over halfway through?

I don’t know these answers, but the idea frightens me. There are, as I mentioned, so many other implications of advancing the life expectancy to such lofty heights, and many others are pondering them, but for me it just comes back to the untested capacity of our own minds to carry such weights for such times. I Just don’t know, and I don’t know if I want to know, to be honest. Lifespan and “health span” are vastly different things, and I don’t believe there’s a point to the first without the correlating latter, but nowhere in there, it seems to me, is anyone studying the mental health aspect of this. I do not just mean the robustness of our synapses, or the ability for the mind to not get cognitive diseases, but the actual capacity of them, of our emotional response systems, for holding a century and a half worth of ache, stress, sadness, and yes, even joy.

Just because we can, does that mean we should? I don’t know, but it’s thought experiments like these that are moving rapidly out of the experimental or hypothetical and quickly into the “holy s**t we are about to be able to do this, um, should we?” realm.

Help me here, why don’t you ring in, why don’t you offer me your insight?

Just because we can, do you think we should?

What weight on our minds

if our bodies stayed longer,

what terrible weight?

Haiku on Life by Tyler Knott Gregson

Song of the Week

This is a story you do not know, but often ask of. This is the story of us, or at least the origins of us. Buckle in.

Fourteen years. I say the words but I don’t understand the weight of them, heavier than I expected, but heavy like the gravity that keeps me from floating off into the great nothing my mind is sometimes pulled towards, not heavy like anchor that pulls me down into the night of the sea. Heavy like vital, like fundamental to the fabric of myself, crucial to what I am, what I will be. Heavy like solid, like sturdy, like the steel roll cage in the race car my brain feels like at all times, the insurance against the corner taken too swiftly, the inevitability of flipping over and over again into the wall. Fourteen years, the five point harness that keeps me safe.

Fourteen years ago, to the very day, hell it’ll be to the minute in a few short hours, I took the photograph above, the photograph of Sarah Linden Gregson, my wife. Fourteen years ago we met for the very first time, and everything, everything, changed. How many people have photographs of the very first meeting between them and the person they’ll spend the rest of their life with, the exact instant when they first became someones in each others lives?

Lady G hired me, and that’s how it all began. She needed photos of her with her kids for holiday gifts, and try as she might as a talented photographer, getting two kids under 4 to cooperate for photographs she was trying to set up, take, and be in, was just not working. We’d known of each other for years, growing up in the same town will do that, and though we went to rival high schools (there are only two in town, the Bengals and the Bruins, and they don’t much like each other), we shared many, many friends. Somehow, and I imagine if you had a secret movie recorded of us both from our entire high school lives you’d see us constantly missing one another, we revolved around each other without ever actually meeting in person. I remember seeing her name in the local newspaper after every soccer game, scoring goals, remaining undefeated through all 4 years of her career, and thinking how cool she must be. I remember thinking she was beautiful.

When college came and I went off to do my best to enjoy it, I started at Gonzaga University, only to quickly realize I hated it and refused to pay so much money (SO MUCH DAMN MONEY) to hate being somewhere. Sarah was two grades below me, so she still had high school to finish before embarking on her own post-high school journey. I transferred from there back to Montana, to finish my degree at the University of Montana. I always hated school, so I figured if I was going to continue hating it, I may as well pay the least amount of money possible to do so. It was during my junior year that she began college, and coincidentally went to Gonzaga. Of course, I walk out, she walks in, like always. It was then we began talking, back in the days of AOL Instant Messenger, back in the days of the infamous Away Message when we had to step away. Our conversations would start at 3pm and somehow continue on until 3am, typing to one another about everything, about nothing, about the great big something we both felt was out there in the world for us but couldn’t really put our finger on. These conversations went on for months, until suddenly, they didn't. She vanished into the ether.

Years later, and friends, we’re talking YEARS, she suddenly re-emerged. On Facebook, of all places. Before you judge, back then, Facebook wasn’t just old people selling appliances, it was cooler, I promise. She messaged me out of the clear blue and without much lead-in, simply asked if I wanted to be a soccer coach for a local kids team. I said no, that kids had no business learning from me, but it opened the door, and our friendship started up again. I learned that she’d vanished, all those years ago, because she began dating someone, and ended up marrying him immediately after college. Soon after that, she had a baby, then another, and had been living in Washington ever since. Now, however, she was back in Helena and running the local youth soccer association. Despite saying no to her inquiry, we started catching up, sharing stories of where we’d been all that time. She found out I had been slowly building my own photography company, shooting a few weddings alone, I found out she had shot one too, but more hobby than anything else. A few days later, right after her birthday, she asked me if I’d be willing to take some photos of her and the kids to use as holiday gifts. Obviously I said yes.

I still have all of those photos, those of Henry and Addie as such tiny people, those of Sarah and the first time she ever looked into my lens. I didn’t know it then, but I think I really did believe, that those photos would be the first of thousands and thousands and thousands I would take of her over the years to come. That smile, smiling back at me with light in those eyes, all over this world.

Point is, sometimes in this wild life, you meet someone and you know. You just know without logic or explanation, without understanding or need for questioning, they cannot leave your life. Sarah said yes when I asked her to photograph a wedding with me 2 months after that first photoshoot, and it was the first of over 170 weddings we’ve shot together. We worked for 12 hours and got paid peanuts but had the time of our lives. That night, exhausted but elated, we made a company, and promised to stay in each others lives this time around. Years, we stayed friends. If I am honest, as I always am with you here, I knew immediately that we were destined for more, so much more, and I think you can see it even in this photograph above, the first I took of her, the first of millions. You can see it, it’s a glimmer, it’s a glow, and it’s there.

I saw Sarah, she saw me, and we knew, we were tied together in some way. It might take minutes, it might take years, but when this happens it’s as inevitable as the gravity I spoke of at the opening to this essay, you will become what you are meant to become. The work begins after that, it always does, but the inevitability remains the same, constant as north stars in cold November skies.

Sometimes we know, but we’re so busy questioning that knowing, we let it flutter away. Sometimes, we should just grow quiet when in the presence of this understanding, smile back at it, and if we’re lucky, take a picture.

You meet them and know,

that they cannot leave your life,

you are tied to them.

Haiku on Life by Tyler Knott Gregson

Song of the Week

I will never claim to be an expert on anything, and high up on the list of that anything will be that of relationships. Being in a committed, long-term relationship is hard, plain and simple, and making it work in a world that seems to be ever leaning towards MASSIVELY F’ING CHALLENGING IN ALL WAYS, has become a task so monumentally difficult, it’s a wonder anyone is able to do it at all. Saying that, I do have things that I’ve learned in my own life that seem to help, that seem to smooth out the wrinkles that weasel their way into the fabric of our connections, that seem to keep love feeling new more often than it feels like it’s the newness that’s lacking. I Should note, I am at an unfair advantage because insofar as I’ve known Lady G, our love, our relationship has always felt new, fresh, exciting, and weirdly butterfly-soaked, but perhaps this is not just some fluke, and instead because of the advice I’m about to give below. In short, maybe it’s always felt like that because we’ve always been a certain way with one another. We’ll see. Point is, I think relationships need a lot more mischief, and I say this because it’s one thing ours has never lacked, and never lost. (Please see the scare above for one of many, many, examples) The beauty of this advice, is that I believe it works for any type of relationship, be it romantic, platonic, or even familial. Anyway, Onward to the madness hiding behind the method.

Historically speaking, last night, the 4th of November, was something called Mischief Night over in my favorite neck of the woods, Scotland and Ireland, and that’s what spawned the idea for this Signal Fire. This night of debauchery centered around pranks, jokes, scares, parties, and sometimes even vandalism. I’m not suggesting we need to vandalize our loved ones, but I am suggesting that maybe, just maybe, if we did incorporate a little more mischievous behavior into the connections we’ve made, maybe, just maybe, things would get a lot less serious, a lot more fun, and the trickle down would be not only noticeable, but immensely so.

As long as I can remember, I’ve been scaring the ever-loving s**t out of the people I love. (See 2nd video, above, of Sarah and I scaring my Dad in an elaborate goof) I hide, often for hours if it requires, and wait for the perfect opportunity to jump scare my wife, her kids, my parents, my friends, and anyone else that happens to be in close enough proximity. I love it, I giggle like a school kid, and after the initial terror subsides and the heart rate of the afflicted falls back to something closer to normal, the scare-ee, loves it too. There’s a catharsis that comes with a scare, isn’t there? Isn’t this why we watch horror films in dark basements when we’re all alone? To be scared is to feel alive, and there’s a mischief in making this happen. Again, I am not implying with this Signal Fire that the secret to a loving relationship is systematically petrifying the people we adore, no, it’s just the idea that maybe, again just maybe, if we all took ourselves, our loved ones, our love, a little less seriously, a lightness would descend like some beautiful rain cloud after a drought.

It’s playfulness, I believe, that sets apart successful relationships from failed ones. Granted this is most likely a drastic under-simplification of a much more complex issue, but then again, perhaps not. My friend Tim called me a few months ago and sounded positively elated, and revitalized for his view on love. He told me that as he was driving across town, he pulled over to witness a wholesome, adorable scene: A 90 something man with his 90 something wife, holding hands walking down the sidewalk together. After about a half block, the old man let go of her hand, and disappeared behind a little wall that belonged to an art piece near the alley way they were crossing over. She walked on another 10 or 12 steps before noticing he was gone, and when she did, and then turned to find him, he popped out from behind the wall and threw a snowball at her. Tim told me that she immediately burst into laughter, and reached for her own fistful of snow to retaliate. They threw a few back and forth before calling a ceasefire, hugged, held hands once more, and walked on. Somewhere in their 90s, they’d never lost that playfulness, that little spark of mischief that I have no doubt kept them feeling younger than their years, more in tune with one another than maybe anything else. What a lesson in this, what a beautiful lesson.

We’re guilty of so much over-complication in our lives, triply so after the last three years we’ve endured. We have this tendency to make all things emergencies, all decisions massive and potentially life-changing. What if we stepped back, just a bit, and reintroduced a little mischievous fun? Last night was the historical night for this, after all, so why not take a cue from our ancestors of old, and pull some pranks, hide for some scares, throw a few snowballs, splash a little water? It’s there, in the play, that we find our simple joy again, it’s there, in the refusal to take all things so damn seriously, that we can feel new once more.

It’s worth it, with whomever you cherish in your own life, it’s worth it to show them they are worth playing with again.

Take this advice, or leave it where it stands, I will understand either way. I just think we have a shot at such great happiness, sometimes we just have to get out of our own way on the journey there.

Sometimes, we just have to scare the absolute s**t out of someone.

Add in the mischief,

the playfulness and humor,

and love will feel new.

Haiku on Life by Tyler Knott Gregson

Song of the Week

We can see it, if we try hard enough. There is a veil between this world and the other, and it thickens the further away from these fragile days. Nearer we draw to All Hallows Eve, the more gossamer it becomes, so translucent it shines, so thin we can walk through it, as they looking back towards us can. Just beyond this curtain, opaque in the Springtime warmth, all those we have lost, these many souls taken from the bodies we knew, we held, we memorized in the dark hours.

We are haunted by the love we could not give to them, and sometimes we run from the ghosts we think we see. Out of the corners of these eyes we catch movement, call them tricks of light, call them imagination run rampant, though somewhere in us we know, they are those we cannot hold, not now, not here with human hands and the feebleness of our failings. Terrified we find ourselves at the noises in the night, call for exorcism to clear the space of spirit, of sound. Forgetful lot, we dwellers in flesh, that not all ghosts are here to scare, that some hauntings are kind.

So quick we are to call villain all that frightens us, to demonize what hurts, what stirs ache in the still healing centers of us. Loss is a vicious thing, no matter the circumstances that precede it, it comes at us with claws sharp and teeth bared, hunts us into small rooms with few exits, blocks them with its shadow. Over time it shifts, doesn’t it, transforms from piercing to dull, throbs in the background of all we do, see, and feel, but stays. Then comes days like these, nearer to the evening of the thinnest shroud, and the voices once a whisper begin to roar. We can hear them, if we listen close enough, we can make out words instead of noise. These conversations with these departed, even if audible only to us, offer an opportunity rare, they are a chance to reconcile the loss, to understand the nature of that aching throb in the middle of ourselves.

Perhaps it’s here, we should begin. Perhaps there is an art form to exorcism, and perhaps we can practice. Maybe if we say the right words, offer up the right incantations, we can exorcise away the negative aspects of the ghosts that haunt us, whilst maintaining their presence. Maybe it’s only us that brings the fear to the table, misunderstanding the signs they offer, the sighs they speak out, maybe we attempt translation only to fail, misinterpreting their sounds in the darkness as those of frightful intent. Maybe, they offer comfort, and maybe their presence is there because we need it there, maybe they don’t go because we’re not ready for them to go. Maybe it is not them that lingers, but us, and our aching the thread that anchors them there, just beyond that shivering cloak.

We are never ready, though we lose this each swim through the sea of grief that comes, and so must learn it again. We tie knots tight to those that go, long strings to the papier-mâchè squares that make up the kites of their spirits, we run headfirst away from the wind, hoping they’ll fly, but stay close enough to reel in should we feel their absence. Somewhere in this steering, this desperate winding and unwinding as the winds shift and lightning threatens, we forget to just let them go, to watch them lift higher, then higher, until they are a freckle on the face of the sky, then so far they become everything all at once. We hold them, and so we’re haunted by this, finger taps on shoulder blades though the house is empty.

Let it be these nights, these few that build to the night of emaciated veil, those few that follow it, that teach us to exorcise away the pieces we no longer need, but hold on to the memories instead. Let us be haunted by the way we loved, not by the love we cannot still share, for we can still give without receiving in return, we can always give this love, freely to those we think we feel in the emptiness after midnights. Maintain their presence, not in spectre or shadow, but in the soft silhouettes of dreams, of our fond remembering, our treasured time together. Exorcise the demons they never were, but our inability to let loose our kite strings created, cut them, and let them find the clouds again.

There is veil here, and we can see it, soon it will be thin enough to fall through, to peer beyond and see the comfort those gone still offer. Now it is ours to give, this gift of submission to the ache that is ours to carry, we who stay behind. Not all ghosts are here to scare, some are here to remind us, to comfort us, to call out in voices we barely hear with doubtful ears, asking for us to listen, to let them go, to heal and in doing so, grant them peace.

Hands to the mist between us, palms up, in softness, “If not now,” they whisper, “when?”

Don’t exorcise them,

not all ghosts are here to scare.

Some hauntings are kind.

Haiku on Life by Tyler Knott Gregson

Song of the Week