Well… hmm… It’s obviously been a while since anything new has graced the wall of this thing. Admittedly, when I found myself looking at this blog for the first time in a while, I was a bit downtrodden and frustrated at my strikingly evident inability to keep up with it. The past handful of months brought forth a tumultuous tidal wave of inner struggle, questioning, and discovery that found me consumed with just trying to reach the surface. I was in a private workshop of the heart, if you will, addressing and pressing through things that only I, and the one above me, could confront. 

But I’m ready, and excited at the prospect of getting back. I find myself falling more in love with writing, with art, with people, with nature, with God, and all sorts of different things that make up this world and existence lately. Not to say that it’s all a soft breeze, summer’s day stroll, but I’ve embraced and embarked on something new. A story. An adventure. And I can’t wait to find out what lies ahead!

So, I just finished the Hunger Games book and… well… I figured I’d give my two cents on it:

Other than the lack of resolution that resonates at the book’s end, I thought The Hunger Games was a good story, well, a great story actually. Not incredibly incredible, but I definitely found myself genuinely connecting with Katniss Everdeen, the story’s protagonist, and was glued to the book for the better part of the past several days. I love the way Suzanne Collins lets the reader into Katniss’s head, analyzing every angle of a situation, continuously bouncing a myriad of questions throughout her mind. What will happen to Prim and her mother back home while she is trapped in The Games? What is her true motivation for being so romantic with Peeta? It really allows the reader to understand her and to relate to her, even with the parts Katniss doesn’t understand herself.

The plot and twists and turns of the story are pretty excellent as well, and the suspenseful action sequences drop like bombs right at points where the book begins to settle. There were a couple of those cliché nail-biting, heart drum-rolling, “dying to know what happens next” moments for me. So personally, it was definitely time well spent picking up and reading this gladiator-like futuristic novel.

But there’s just one thing, well maybe a couple, that I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed with as I shut the back cover of the book down. One of them being the topic that’s staring the main characters and the reader straight in the face as The Hunger Games ends, the relationship tension between Katniss and Peeta. Towards the book’s end on one of its final pages Katniss finally begins to question the authenticity and true motives behind her portraying her supposed love for Peeta, a question that now the games are over she must confront. Was it all just an act to keep both herself and Peeta alive, to further the audience of Panem’s captivation with their unremitting love for one another? Or were there some true feelings behind what evolved between the two? And what of Gale back home in District 12? It seems that somewhere over the course of the games, the games that inevitably drew her into arms of Peeta, Katniss begins to probe deeper into her relationship with her longtime best friend back home. Is there something more to her friendship with Gale? It seems that she’s on some sort of edge of a revelation as the book ends, and the reader is left standing in midair, groping only at possibilities. Great marketing for Book 2 I suppose.

The other issue that’s left unaddressed come The Hunger Games’ end is one that resonated with me really throughout the entire book and one that, I strongly assume, must be the central conflict of the entire trilogy. The injustice of Panem’s society created by the Capitol is a constant note ringing throughout the entire book. I mean, why are they allowed to even host such a barbaric event as the Hunger Games in the first place? And an even better question: why has nobody stepped up to this overbearing tyrannical rule exhibited by the government? Katniss faces this issue a couple times during the story – most notably when Rue dies – but never completely dives into the issue to the point where she begins to wonder how to change things. As an American and one born and raised on concrete beliefs in liberty and autonomy, I have a hard time accepting this and deeply desire Katniss, or anybody for that matter, to challenge, if only internally, the despotic rule that shrouds all of the districts. (Even more so when Katniss witnesses the gross disproportionate living standards of the Capitol over the subservient other divided proportions of the country.) The book as a whole seems like a great, powerful song who’s main motifs are left unressolved. And your left sitting there, waiting for the next movement to immediately follow. But, then again, great incentives for picking up the subsequent books.

All in all, it’s a solid book with a few ends left untied. So, onward to the next book! I’m excited to see what it brings.

Walked some direction I don’t know today

looking for some old weathered sign.

Couldn’t tell what I was looking at

so what’s the hope to find.

Bought the barrel by the wishing well

to pour out all myself.

All I am’s the hard cold change

minus any of the wealth.

The truth seems just a story

caged forever on the sheets.

If there’s a bridge that’d lead me there

there forever I would be.

Oh take me home’s my cry

if home’s a place I’ve never been.

I just need a sign of some old bridge

on which my heart can finally stand.

Wow... never really realized how great of a writer Buckley was.

Looking out the door I see the rain fall upon the funeral mourners
Parading in a wake of sad relations as their shoes fill up with water
And maybe I'm too young to keep good love from going wrong
But tonight you're on my mind so you never know

Broken down and hungry for your love with no way to feed it
Where are you tonight, child, you know how much I need it
Too young to hold on
And too old to just break free and run

Sometimes a man gets carried away
When he feels like should be having his fun
And much too blind to see the damage he's done
Sometimes a man must away to find that really, he has no-one

So I'll wait for you and I'll burn
Will I ever see your sweet return
Oh, will I ever learn
Oh lover, you should've come over
'Cause it's not too late

Lonely is the room, the bed is made, the open window lets the rain in
Burning in the corner is the only one in dreams he had you with him
My body turns and yearns for a sleep that won't ever come

It's never over, my kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder
It's never over, all my riches for her smiles when I slept so soft against her
It's never over, all my blood for the sweetness of her laughter
It's never over, she's the tear that hangs inside my soul forever

Well, maybe I'm just too young
To keep good love from going wrong
Oh lover, you should've come over

Yes, I feel too young to hold on
And I'm much too old to break free and run
Too deaf, dumb, and blind to see the damage I've done
Sweet lover, you should've come over
Oh, love well I wait for you
Lover, you should've come over
'Cause its not too late

My mind is a mess. Like a 13-year-old’s-bedroom-after-a-massive-slumber-party mess. A myriad of random thoughts, ideas, opinions, questions, hopes, fears, dreams, and the like are strewn all throughout my head. An image of John Candy’s apartment in Uncle Buck comes to mind as an accurate representation, if you get the picture. And like having so much junk flung throughout your bedroom to the point you’re not sure whether you have a floor or not, I often find myself unable to locate the foundation beneath all of this mental clutter. I’ve caught myself all too many times on a specific train of thought, having absolutely no idea how I got there in the first place. It’s an unmediated airfield of erratic flights, my mind is… I hate that.

So, I’ve come to the recent realization that I need to write… something, anything, if only for myself. Life has proven to be too convoluted of a path, easily lost within to not have any sense of mental direction. I can’t stand the idea of myself not being at least somewhat cognizant of where I’ve been, where I am, and where I’m headed. I’m a self-admitted subscriber to the “Pick yourself up by your own bootstraps”,”Don’t let life happen to you - go out there and happen to life” mentality (although several experiences I’ve had seem to serve to the contrary - but that’s besides the point). Thus, the inspiration for me behind this is not to join the blogging world bandwagon - although I do admit to being somewhat enticed by its hipness, however I’m about as late to the party as the Cubs are to the World Series - but rather to attempt to understand this life and this world I find myself in, and maybe on that search to uncover the truth. 

On that note, what will I write about? Well, I’m not completely sure. As I try to clean up and organize this mental room of mine, I think more light will begin to shed on the answer to that question. I have my hunches though (as I take a pensive puff of my Sherlock Holmes pipe). Faith, family, music, art, culture, politics, books, Jesus, society, friends, relationships, and the essence of community are just a few of the visitors knocking on my mental door each day.  But who knows what all is buried within all these mounds of musings? The only topic that I can really make out in my mind right now, as I step back and view this internal muddle from a broader perspective, is simply… life. In all its different elements and perspectives; pathways, views, and destinations; hardships, heartaches, joys, and rich blessings, life, and the meaning behind it all, has been heavy on my mind and heart the past several years. What used to be dominated by who would win the Stanley Cup this year, has now been overtaken by a deep thirst to truly experience and understand (as much as I can) this finite gift of time I’ve been given on this earth. 

I don’t pretend to be under the delusion that many, or any, will read or find this remotely interesting or worthwhile. All I wish to do is add my voice to the chorus of a generation all reveling in the beauty of this life and seeking for the meaning behind it all.

So on that note, let the spring cleaning begin.

On the search,

Nick