Soon I Will Be Invincible

For those of you who don't know anything about me, let me say one thing that has been a big part of my self-definition since I was old enough to recognize letters: I love to read. I read a lot and I read voraciously. It has been this way most of my life; in class, on the bus, in bed, to the exclusion of the world around me, I read and read and read.

Since I have a touch of ADD (who doesn't these days?) I'm usually in the middle of 2-5 books at a time. Right now, I'm in the middle of The Help, Treasure island, New Moon (yes, the Twilight book, I don't watch the movies and the books are like playing minesweeper as opposed to chess, very little focus involved but it's still amusing) and Soon I Will Be Invincible.

Admittedly, my brand-new Kindle helps with the whole jumping from book to book thing, but I will never lose my love for real paper books. Maybe it's the smell of the pages, maybe it's seeing the spine of an old favorite crack from constant re-reading, maybe it's the tiny rush of superiority you feel when you're reading next to someone playing solitaire on their iPod, whatever.

And perhaps that is why I am currently most interested in Soon I Will Be Invincible, a comic-geek wet dream of a book in which Superheroes and Supervillains are a part of normal everyday society, as told from the point of view of the world's most diabolical arch-nemesis, Doctor Impossible, and the newest half human-half machine addition to the ultimate superhero team, Fatale.

This book, while being thoroughly entertaining and imaginative, explores the deeper character elements of these supreme beings. It humanizes them, which, in addition to making a better book, draws a main common trait between the two extremes of good and evil: Some amazing ability, be it inherent or from an accident, physical or mental, something sets these people apart from society.

The question is: Why does one grow up wanting to fight injustice and stand for peace, while the other is hell-bent on world domination and destruction? What makes one evil or good? The trend in the book seems to be that while smart, the heroes have nothing on the villains. Somehow, the burden of having a needle sharp intellect is what drives them to be misunderstood, isolated, and therefore revengeful. I don't know if that is true in real life (there seem to be a lot of really evil stupid people out there, not naming names) but I do know that the smart evil people are definitely the most dangerous. **coughANNCOULTERcough**

As artists, we have talents beyond the capabilities of most. It's what enables us to define and understand what many can't, lets us tap into the human condition. Mostly, we want to do good with these talents; we want to enlighten, to share, to enhance.

But what if we didn't?

Perhaps we are lucky that most artists want to tell the truth, and that truth, while hard, is beautiful. But just like the superheroes, we must use our powers, for it our responsibility, and use them wisely. We must use them to fight the modern day supervillains that want to perpetuate the idea that people are evil, that it is better to be selfish, that art is superfluous, that some people are not equal to others because of what they were born as, and that physical appeal or possessions are all that matter.

I guess that Heart guy in the Captain Planet team wasn't so useless after all.

Soon I Will Be Invincible is Austin Grossman's first novel, available wherever.

A Dream is Mental Charity

I have a question for anyone out there: What, or whom, do you dream about most?

That is, if you remember your dreams at all.

No one really knows for sure what dreams are, or what they mean. If you're a realist, chances are you'll say that dreams are just the mind's dumpster, the leftovers of our thoughts and memories jumbled into nonsensical stories or images. If you're a psychology-minded person, you might say that dreams offer clues to who we are, our inner selves trying to gain recognition. If you're a 'spiritual' person, you might say that dreams are projections of what is to come, our mind trying to tell us of the future it sees for itself.

Or maybe, just maybe, your dreams are the thoughts you won't let yourself think during the day. You know what I'm talking about. Those thoughts that you need to snuff out to get through the day. The thoughts that never lead to anything good, and result in unfulfilled longing for a past or future that is never really going to happen, no matter what The Secret says.

There is one subject that my dreams can never quite shake. No matter what I suppress or ignore, no matter where else I focus my main attention, it keeps coming back. It used to pop up way more frequently, but nowadays, just when I think it's gone for good, BAM. Back, bitches.

And for some reason, I never realize that it's a dream while I'm in it. I mean, you would think that however improbable these dreams are, especially when connected with the same improbable subject, I would learn something. If I realized it was a dream, I could take it as far as I wanted. No consequences. I guess if you're an optimist, that is a dream's greatest potential.

So I'm going to be an optimist and say that maybe dreams are our minds way of giving us what we can't have. It's an odd sensation, waking up, realizing what you were dreaming, and trying to figure out if it actually happened. Of course, it didn't. But for that one second, it's possible that maybe... just maybe.... it did. And even though it wasn't real, a part of you is thankful that you got to feel what it was like. Thankful that you got one more moment, one more chance, one more kiss, one more soft word, one more triumph.

Because, let's face it: It's better than nothing.