The Star Wars Bed-time Story

Since middle school,

whenever I've had trouble sleeping,

I've watched Star Wars.

Not that it's boring -

quite the contrary.

I've attentively viewed it

countless times - 

memorizing every line,

investigating every character,

researching every ship.

It's to the point now

where Star Wars is less of a movie

and more of a familiar bedtime story

that Uncle George tells me

whenever I have trouble sleeping.

I get so absorbed in the story so quickly,

forgetting my sickness or worries,

that I'm down for the count

before Darth Vader's been able 

to lift, strangle, and toss

Captain Antilles to the floor

of the Tantive IV, Leia's Corellian Corvette.

The volume doesn't need to be up

and I don't need to watch the screen;

I can see and hear it all in my mind,

keeping pace based on certain cues:

blasts, roars, John Williams' score.

And even after using this trick

for over 15 years

the efficacy hasn't faded, 

though if I have several rough nights in a row,

I'll go from A New Hope, to Empire, to Jedi.

I can't express how much this means

to have, when life gets too low and mean,

a ready and reliable dream

so universal and personal and
real

it convinces me I must be
asleep.

Negative Narrative Space

I don't mean 'negative'

As in pessimistic

Or bad

Or gloomy.

I'm talking about the voids

between the elements that usually command our attention

as the center of illustrative or musical or written creation.

This negative space

is what gives us the two ways 

or more

of viewing this optical illusion:

source here

It is what makes the chalice in The Davinci Code movie 

(as well as the book,
presumably,

I imagine in the void of my

own literary ignorance):

Source here.

It is the silence
of a Buddhist meditation.

It is what makes Miles Davis cooler
than what Billy Madison thinks 

because he knows where to

pause

(unlike my own
empty reasoning).

This in-between state is
perhaps one of the only things
that could travel
faster than light

and also hold
the intriguing capacity
of conveying
infinitely more
and infinitely more diverse
messages
than can be confined
in one finite communicative transmission
of any substance.

It's the untold portions of the stories,
the windows positioned within the created architecture,
where we find both
egress from our own minds
and entrance into another world
of multifarious variety.

For example,
I imagine
what Obi-Wan Kenobi ate
all those long years on Tatooine
and how he knew
he would turn a ghostly blue
upon Darth Vader's final hew. 

And I try to feel
the wind through the dry grass,
the accumulating perspective of identity
and its accompanying sense of forboding
that isn't included
in Luke 5:16.


And perhaps if I pause long enough

#nerdilemma

I'm in a

nerd dilemma:

I've read the studious articles 

and seen the impassioned chats

about the proper order for
nerd parents
to show their nerdlings
the Star Wars hexology,

but I realized yesterday

that a nerd father is faced with

oh so many more perplexities

than these 6 movies 

and the 720*

possible sequences
in which they could be watched.

For instance,

what's the best way 

to inculcate in one's
burgeoningly geeky offspring
a love for Weird Al?

Start with the earliest songs

to build context, 

or with the latest

to be most relevant?

And what about the 

cult classics of
Monty Python and the Holy Grail,
Dr. Strangelove, The Goonies,
Young Frankenstein, Princess Bride, & etc...?
How should these be presented such that
the geeklets might get
the inside jokes
and know the
token quotes -
those passwords and signs
which are requisite to enter geekdom?

And what of the larger question here about the
dangers of accidentally rendering such nerdifacts uncool
through the double-edged sword of
parental endorsement?

I need some sort of
theoretical framework,
proof,
researched argument, or
longitudinal study
to know the quick and easy path
for raising my son right!

I try in vain
to reason my way through this remote
yet immediate enigma
and see the solution.

Then, in a blue haze, Ben Kenobi speaks to me,
padawanizing me for my attempt to
think my way through this jedi's puzzle:
"Let go your conscious self
and act on instict."

"Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi,"
Indeed. This is my only
and new hope.

*Thanks are due to my brother-in-law David Jensen, a math teacher, for confirming this number. What a travesty it would've been to include an inaccurate calculation in such a nerdy poem.