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To begin: there is a 2604. Following the new Monday tradition I wrote it by hand, but failed to upload it. Now in bed late Tuesday eve, I’m not getting up to do it. Too cold. Yes, the desert is cold at night. At least in the winter. Summer continues to swelter 24 hrs a day. Often I think they add an hour just to push out more heat. No, I don’t know who they are. It feels like a question best directed a religions scholar.

Maybe ‘they’ are Aliens.

Regardless, I’ve become more interested in dealing with the world right in front of me and trying to make the best of that. I think we all go through periods of thinking we have it all under control and periods of realizing we have none of it under control. It is a cycle and I am in the none-zone at the moment. Still, the moment has proven to be rather enjoyable. I’m happy with the family and my life to a certain extent. I am finding peace and applying reason and reasonable expectation to all that I see and do.

This is a change from the 20 yr old kid who wanted to run the world from behind a desktop PC. Now I’m more interested in finding a space for my voice and creating a lasting contribution outside of my three very interesting boys.

Maybe I am a sap after all. I honestly believe that Sing is the perfect kid movie of that sort. I thought that about Cars as well, but Sing represents a musical feast that, while specifically addressing a very limited range of genres, was delightful and uplifting. It managed to keep my youngest awake and kept nearly every other kid in the theater enraptured from beginning to end.

It wasn’t just the music–though it was largely the music–but also the slick stories told around the principal singers. Each had a cross to bear (and resolve) prior to the end and it all wrapped nicely with surprising musical twists.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I watched a lot more of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and I gotta say they left a ton of holes to plug–starting with Snoke and explaining the First Order in a legitimate way. Oh and there’s the Rey thing and the Kylo Ren thing–the Ren thing in general. To be honest, I have doubts about JJ’s ability to do this well. He hasn’t yet.
2. RIP George Micheal. He was one of the best.

So here I am in the wee hours of the morning on christmas eve putting together the great christmas hunt. I went with a different approach, making the kids run around outside, solve puzzles, and even do a tough exploration in minecraft. All of these things I do for the wonder of it all.

You know, even when I was at my closest to quitting writing I never wanted to stop creating wonder. I lost faith for a minute in my ability and dedication, but it turns out the desire to be a writer doesn’t really go away. Either you are that person or you are not, and I am that person.

I ought to make a resolution this year–or even before the new year. Here it is: I am rededicating myself to the craft, because I am passionate about conjuring wonder. Why else would I stay up all night crafting this magical hunt while other folks are in bed and more likely than me to be awake and happy when morning storms in upon them?

I’m a writer through and through and this xmas is a fond reminder of that. It is time to get back to telling stories about wonder and getting writing students to evoke that sense of wonder we all carry around in our back pocket and often forget is there.

We could all use a little more of that these days.

So, last night’s post never got uploaded. That bit about falling asleep on the keyboard was not even close to a joke. It has been that way for a few nights now. I return to the keyboard each night in hopes of finding something waiting in my mind, but discover all that is there is fatigue and disappointment. It isn’t writer’s block but a life imbalance that has my mind moving in one direction while my body moves to prevent the kids from killing each other. By the time I have a mind and a minute to get this thing (writing) started, I’m drained and seeking caffeine. Often I fail to finish the thought I began. For example, the last post was titled, Baud and I wanted to reference to source of that, the old school modem and the hacker site it spawned. I have my own in-progress site that I need to attend to. 2626East.com is based around the school I work at and the students I work to promote and improve every day. I hope to make that site become of value.

Beyond the 26’s my real focus ought to be writing, but I admit to being a bit lost there. I don’t know what I want to write. My confidence in the company I’ve been writing for is low right now for a number of reasons including creative ones. I feel like I need to do something else for a while and come back to that after. I feel like I need to grow but I don’t know it what direction I am meant to grow. All of these factors are compounded by a ridiculous deal of uncertainty in my personal life.

So, there I am. In a nutshell.

“Late nights mixed with early days, and it’ll probably be that way until the pearly gates” ~Big Sean

If I could do one really awesome thing for my kids it would be to build them a legit beyblade stadium. We’ve been playing again since the arrival of the new Beyblade Burst season. I’m a fan of the show and of the idea of beyblading in general. I’m even more of a fan of being able to create something that is meaningful for the kids as opposed to some type of simple gift I can pick up at the store.

The conversation with my eldest today about xmas led me down this dank path. What he told me was that he wasn’t excited about xmas, because there wasn’t any sort of gift he was really looking forward to. Now this in of itself is an issue. Xmas ought to be about family and love and spending sweet sweet time together, but it isn’t–not for kids. Without anything ‘special’ to look forward to as a present xmas felt empty to him. He was, however, happy about being on break.

So it fell to me to figure out what to get him–them–that makes it seem special. I suppose there is another way to go about it–to teach them the true meaning of xmas–but I’m not entirely there yet myself. I must admit that right now xmas is starting to feel like the pause button on my work life and a chance to sleep and recharge. Of course, that isn’t happening either or else I wouldn’t be blogging at two in the morning trying to keep from passing out on the keyboard… again.

It hardly feels like christmas.

On the one hand I know it is vacation because my kids are always home and I’m done with my classes for the semester. On the other hand, it doesn’t snow here so a few scattered showers are all we have to point to the holiday. The kids are not even in full santa mode. They know the holiday is nigh, but the christmas power has fallen back a bit. Part of that is a failure on my part to establish solid holiday rituals. We don’t do the christmas eve church bit. We don’t carol or play the christmas music in our home.

All of this is compounded by my own stress and fatigue and inability to string together a whole bunch of words. Perhaps tomorrow I will articulate this better… and earlier.

Love is hard and stupid.

There is no eloquent way to phrase it. Love exposes your deepest wants and needs–and yes, we do need. We need human touch. We need to be loved. We are a collective species. But when we love we risk hurting others and being hurt ourselves. It makes no logical sense. It is, as the Vulcans say, illogical.

But it is also inevitable. And beautiful. It is a waterfall at sunrise, the rush of water and mist and rays of a new day sun warming the skin, wrapping you in a cloak of sensation that only comes from this moment. It is belonging. It is feeling safe and needed. It is purpose itself.

And it is foolish and deadly. More people die from a broken heart than perhaps any other affliction ever created by God or man. Perhaps ‘Broken heart’ never finds its way to the medical report or tombstone, but the cause is the same. In the absence of love we are shells and automatons performing the mechanisms of daily life.

I have been in love my entire life, each drum beat of love stronger than the last; a heart being born and made stronger by affection. I am in love now and it carries me forward on a wave that crests and falls and rises again like that heartbeat that first brought me into the world and will in time carry me away from it. I love, I grow, I hurt, I love again. I share this cycle with a single woman and she with me. Together we feel these things. We love each other.  We grow together. We hurt each other without meaning to.

In the end our love carries us forward. It is beautiful and dangerous and illogical and stupid and everything wonderful about life.

Monday nights I blog from my BBQ and Bourbon spot outside my second favorite bookstore (Half Price Books still holds all the cool points because of an untouchable selection of vintage books). I use the time to be alone and take in a world that I am not a part of. I’ve come to know the waitstaff and appreciate their familial camaraderie with each other. I am recognized as a regular and appreciated in that sense, but the gems are the food and unfamiliar faces that move through the restaurant as though it were a way station between moments in their daily lives.

As a writer I am first an observer of the human condition (and fully aware of how pretentious that sounds). I see, for example, the crowd of eight men all fitted with beards in various stages of known cool. Two of the men are joined by girlfriends and as a result living on the fringes of the conversation but positioned at the center of the table. I see three ladies barely past their teens and painted in fashions that mark their upbringing and allegiance to the particular styles and cultures that divide them but in the same make them a collective. Each bears a gift that they will exchange at meals end. For now they chat and visit cellphone notices with equal importance. Perhaps they imagine each others lives as their own, and this is a kind of escape from the lives they have.

It is only a glimpse and all I can share in 10 minutes.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. This was written last night and posted today. I get pretty lazy post BBQ.

I’m watching the Dallas game and it has me thinking about football. To begin, the Giants won tonight and secured an NFC playoff spot. Hopefully the 10-4 moves to 12-4 and the crew rolls in on some hot momentum. The team needs Dallas to lose two games in order for the G-men to catch them and it looks like tonight will not be one of those losses. On the other hand, Tamp Bay has been officially exposed as a pretender–at least through the first half of this 17-6 tilt. These games are still meaningful, which is why most fantasy seasons end this week. That includes my remaining active season where a grip of cash is on the line in the championship game. We are up by 50 right now with our opponent still having two players (RB, WR) yet to play. We still have Jason Witten in play and he is tearing it up. This is a ppr league, so his 6 catches translate directly into points.

I have not had the best fantasy season. I lacked my normal diligence in the endeavor. The lesson I take from this is study more in all things to be more successful in all things.

As I was settling in to watch Rogue One it occurred to me that Harry Potter had successfully launched a second series in the Potter Universe before the Star Wars franchise could. I don’t count any of the proposed 9 as a second series. That is in fact the same story spun through as the original books constitute a single arc. Then it dawned on me. Rogue One is but a footnote in that arc, framed effectively by Star Wars 3 and 4.

Actually, I’m wrong there. Rogue One is a continuation of Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels. Since Disney took the reigns, they’ve turned the two rather well written ‘toons into canon for the film. Characters from the Rogue One movie make their first appearances in the cartoons and continue their often vibrant lives on the big screen.

This in no way indicates that Rogue One is good… or bad. Rogue One hit me in much the same way that the Magnificent Seven remake hit me. I knew what was going to happen. I knew who I was supposed to like and dislike and in spite of that I chose to enjoy the people I felt were cool or particularly well told. This includes the expected empathy for the ‘villain’ and a whole lot of oooh for Darth Vader.

Rogue One deserves a better review than this and that is coming. There are a host of characters to discuss and major Star Wars plot lines that were reintroduced and, in some cases, tied up. The film does its job, which is ostensibly to tell the human story of the people who constitute the rebellion without being that same old story we know. It had to do all of this without playing like a round of Battlefield Star Wars.

For the most part, it pulled it off.