{"id":141,"date":"2015-09-26T03:39:27","date_gmt":"2015-09-26T03:39:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/?p=141"},"modified":"2026-05-28T23:01:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T23:01:49","slug":"daniel-mark-patterson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/daniel-mark-patterson\/","title":{"rendered":"Daniel Mark Patterson"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Snowglobe: Apocalypse<\/h2>\n<p>I sometimes feel like a Penguin in a snow globe<br \/>\nafter the snow has fallen&#8230;As if all the<br \/>\nbeautiful parts of my life have already<br \/>\nhappened&#8230;the memories as awkward<br \/>\nand elusive as the snowflakes which<br \/>\nslipped through my flippers.<\/p>\n<p>I long to dash headlong into brick<br \/>\nwalls, jump suicidally off of skyscrapers<br \/>\nfor the collision, the rush of air, the<br \/>\nchill of charged adrenaline<br \/>\nagainst skin, the metallic<br \/>\ntaste of wounded life<br \/>\non my tongue.<\/p>\n<p>We are taught about Life and Death,<br \/>\nbut nobody talks about limbo,<br \/>\nthat too long purgatory of days<br \/>\nwhere the only thing that gets us by<br \/>\nis the monosyllabic crooning of the<br \/>\nvoices in our head \u201cthis too shall pass.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cThis too shall pass.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I miss my idealism when I believed<br \/>\nmost people thought for themselves.<br \/>\nThere was no such thing as<br \/>\n\u201chive mind\u201d or \u201cgroup think.\u201d<br \/>\nWhen every girl that smiled<br \/>\nat me was my next crush,<br \/>\nand every girl I kissed<br \/>\nwas the \u201cone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I can barely remember my last kiss,<br \/>\nlet alone the last kiss that really<br \/>\nmattered. Even the afterglow<br \/>\nis a barely accessible haze.<\/p>\n<p>We are all capable of magic as children.<br \/>\nThe difference between a Muggle<br \/>\nand a Wizard is that a Wizard<br \/>\nnever fully grows up,<br \/>\nnever loses the ability to<br \/>\nimpose their imagination<br \/>\non the world around them.<\/p>\n<p>Inside the world of<br \/>\nlanguage there lies a portal of<br \/>\nwonder and childhood delight.<\/p>\n<p>Each of my pen strokes a half remembered<br \/>\nspell, of invocation, years fall off at the<br \/>\nedge of the vortex. I jump inside.<\/p>\n<p>I am 10 years old. Peter Pan taunting<br \/>\nCaptain Hook. Dorothy following<br \/>\nthe yellow brick road. The world<br \/>\nis Supercalifragelisticexbealadocius.<\/p>\n<p>There are reminders it wasn&#8217;t all wonderful.<br \/>\nThe bullies surround me in the playground,<br \/>\nI once again remember the fear and<br \/>\nisolation of being a childhood outcast.<br \/>\nThis time though I have an advantage.<\/p>\n<p>One by one they attempt to speak&#8230;my<br \/>\npen steals words from their tongue,<br \/>\nflings the insults back at them. They<br \/>\nreach for me, but hands no longer<br \/>\nbelong to them, pants end up around<br \/>\nankles, wedgies self-induced.<\/p>\n<p>This is what it is to play Child God.<br \/>\nWorld of wonder created without fear.<\/p>\n<p>Writing is the way I shake my snow globe.<br \/>\nCreate new memories to bask in before<br \/>\nall that is glorious is once again reduced<br \/>\nto nostalgia, and I am alone waddling<br \/>\nthrough the aftermath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><b>Snowglobe: Apocalypse<\/b><br \/>\n I sometimes feel like a Penguin in a snow globe after the snow has fallen\u2026As if all the beautiful parts of my life have already happened\u2026the memories as awkward and elusive as the snowflakes which slipped through my flippers. I long to dash headlong into brick walls, jump suicidally off of skyscrapers for the collision, the rush of\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":770,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spokenword","post_format-post-format-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":864,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/864"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}