Month: November 2013

Someone had the bright idea of booking an academic convention and several boxing entourages at the same hotel on the weekend of the biggest fight of the season to date. There’s a joke somewhere in there about Jocks and Nerds inheriting the same space. In the end it was a great thing to be in the shared space. I was able to observe a part of life that I don’t usually see. I was able to watch prizefighters and their entourages prepare for a fight card.

The boxing card was a series of smaller matches leading up to the title fight between Garcia and Martinez. In the days leading up to the match and match day itself it was interesting to see the various entourages and fighters coming and going. The atmosphere was cordial but competitive with the older trainers explaining to each other why their fighter would certainly win. The outfits are what set everyone apart. The entourage wore mob-esque jump suits with their team name emblazoned on the front and back while the women wore hardly anything at all—Short skirts, high heels, ring girl attire, etc.

Boxing, like any sport, has more significance when you assume a personal connection to the people involved. The Darchiniyan v. Donaire card thus became relevant because we’d seen the fighters, listened in on some of the conversations, and had a chance to identify with members of the entourages on both sides.

There is a lot of ego built into the sports I’ve played. Baseball has some and football has a lot more, but witnessing how important every single match is to boxing—in fact every single round—really blew me away. Say what you will about the intelligence of boxers, but their earnest passion and their courage and heart are unmatched in any sport I’ve been around. This, of course, doesn’t mean certain prejudices and presumptions do not exist on both sides.

What I found most interesting about the whole situation were the conversations. At one point we met a man at the bar who was obviously a trainer and very clear about his supposed love for teachers and the teaching profession. Sadly, after he bought my group a round of drinks and praised us, the bartender told us that he was saying a lot of negative things about us—claiming we thought we were better than him.

I think people put a lot of their own ideas and prejudices on to a role, no matter what or who the person holding the role is. Role Identity is a real thing from an internal and external perspective.

In the midst of a uproarious conference on Learning Communities a session leader turned to a small group of us and requested we write (however briefly) about a memorable time we gave or received an act of compassion. I giggled at first, remembering that I’d recently evaluated a faculty member at my own college who offered this same assignment to her Developmental English students with mixed results. Then are started considering the idea of compassion itself. Then I decided that 10 minutes would be just enough time to explain why compassion can be both incredibly helpful and equally destructive.

The first act of compassion I can remember dates back in the early 80’s. Growing up as a New Yorker we are taught to have very specific feelings about the homeless. In Harlem you were meant to feel little pity for them, other than to assume that they were crazy and that in of itself deserved the most basic level of pity, but not so much that you actually gave them money, because to do so would have the same affect as would feeding a stray cat.

Lets just say I’m a cat person.

There was a homeless man who squatted between a church and an abandoned brownstone several blocks from my home. I never had much cash, and the cash I did have usually went to Lemonheads and Gobstoppers. However, one birthday I found myself especially flush and decided to put some of that blood-earned capital to good use. I gave the man ten dollars. This is, to nine-year-old boy in the 80’s, an absolute fortune. I felt like it was the right thing to do and I felt the better human for doing it. This feeling faded a day later when I saw that same man with a bottle of whiskey drinking himself into further oblivion. My mother didn’t have to say I told you so. I knew I contributed to his delinquency. I knew the guy bought that booze with my money and the result of that was me being broke and him being drunk.

It took a long time for me to be compassionate to anyone on that level. I measured their situation and considered whether my help was help at all or further enablement of negative behaviors. In fact it took me a long time to recognize that compassion is not about what people do with what you give, but the act of giving itself. Compassion is personal and healthy. It is the opportunity to give of yourself and reflect on how you feel about you after the giving.

Today I stepped onto a plane bound for Corpus Christi, Texas. It isn’t my bi-annual book pilgrimage but another substantial journey of the mind and in some ways the spirit. I talk about being a teacher from time to time. It is never something I actively wanted to do. I never turned to anyone and said, “I want to teach.” Yet here I am. I teach because it is who I am, the same way I write because I don’t know how to not to. That being said, an understanding of personal purpose in no way ensures ones ability. I am an average teacher. I am above average in desire, but the execution is incomplete. I haven’t reached that place psychologically or organizationally where I can put it all together in a one clean stroke, so that every student will get the level of learning they need from the course. So, I go on these journeys to better myself and to cement my understanding of my purpose. Some days I think I go on these journeys in order to lock myself into a particular role or function within teaching, because it is in my nature to want to do everything and give all I have to that impossible pursuit, in which winding up doing very little for everything and not enough for any specific thing.

That core point above is what I’ve worked the hardest to change over the last few years and been most successful changing. It shows in the way I choose my classes and my conferences. This conference, for example, is about Learning Communities. I’ve dedicated myself to being the consummate learning community instructor. That means understanding how what you do in class and what you teach connects to the wider world as well as connects to the content and purpose of the other courses with which you are integrated.

Chances are you’ll see at least one post about such business this weekend. With any luck I’ll also find the time to make my football picks.

Every writer tells stories about their own experiences. Every story is an autobiography of sorts, taking some aspect of the writers life and expanding it into a conflict or even a theme. The story I’m working on now is has a lot to do with my mother and this need to please her/make her extremely proud though I recognize how impossible that is. It is also impossible to avoid my personal relationships filtering into prose like water into the earth and raising stories and situations that, while not resembling the reality in the least, carry the charged emotions of reality.

Honest writing comes from real feelings and conflicts, no matter the genre. Therefore, the best way to be a writer is to accept the good and bad in life as material as opposed to trying to bury it so deep that it never sees the light of day. I couldn’t write an actual autobiography. My life hasn’t risen to the level of universally notable yet. On the other hand, I’d been through so many identifiable experiences by the age of 12 that I can write on those alone for the next decade.

We each have our demons that plague us and define us. Those demons can also be the fuel that powers the situations in our stories. From Huxley, to Phillip K Dick, to Baudelaire and Burroughs, each dealt with demons, coaxing them out of their psyche through words and drugs. I would go so far as to suggest that the most prolific writers are the ones harboring the most demons and that the pen is what kept them from going insane. Sometimes, like in the cases of Woolf, Thompson, and Plath, the words are not enough to excise the demons and they crawl deep inside of you, eating away at the light until all that is left is the desire to die.

I’m not yet the writer any of those greats are, nor do I claim to be gripped by the number and seismic force of the demons that possessed them. I am as most of us are, seeking clarity and understanding. After all, as Virginia Woolf once said, “Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.”

Today I lost my laptop. For the better part of the day I thought it was gone. I worried about my lost data, my unfinished novel that I felt was in the hands of some un-captured criminal. After hours of fretting, my mid-kid found the laptop. He isn’t clear on how it got to where it got, but he was able to locate it with relatively little trouble.

All that fretting for naught.

Afterwards I got to thinking about how valuable the things I carry really are. My laptop is a lifeline to the digital world, but it is also the sole repository of so many of my ideas. I’ve moved almost completely to the digital medium for storing my thoughts, and to lose the ‘top felt like a piece of me was shorn. I walked around like a zombie for most of the day, anxious about whether or not it could be found and nervous that it never would be.  In the end fortune smiled and granted me this small piece of tech.

Things are meaningful, but ideas are also extremely meaningful. Losing what I put to paper reminded me of the value of what I do and helped me to recognize the role it plays in my life. I need to write more and give more of myself to the words. The things that matter the most to you should be the things you do the most to preserve.

I’ve fallen into a bit of a routine. Come home from work, play with the kids, help the kids with homework, play a spot of Batman Origins, write for a bit (while hiding from aforementioned children), dinner,  clean up, play or watch tv with kids, prep kids for bed, watch tv by self, watch several hours of Breaking Bad with wife, write, sleep, repeat. Writing happens twice in that sandwich of events, but it doesn’t happen well. I’ve taken measures to maximize the time I have–namely making sure I can compact the work stuff into the work day–but I still have one last stage to go. I need to establish a solid writing hour during the time the kids and I are both home. This will ensure a healthy respect for the writing process as well as my personal space and time. It will also give me a time of day to write where I can assure myself the work product will be valuable.

Most authors will tell you to come to the page at the same time every day. I am that author, but I am also the guy with three boys, one wife, and no maid. Clearly there are parental and household responsibilities I am expected to keep pace with. The current routine doesn’t necessarily offer a lot of opportunity to do that, but I am ready to take that next leap and sacrifice some of the activities I really enjoy for the activity I truly love. Writing is a priority in my head but hasn’t always been a priority in my life. NanoWrimo is the perfect opportunity to make it so.

Some Thoughts:

I stumbled across a page about regrets on cracked.com. It heralded 20 things worth regretting, which led me to think about the things you should never regret. I disagree with a lot of what they have to say. I don’t think regret is a sensation (if you can call it that) I take much stock in. I believe in living life with utter and complete passion. I believe in making the best choices as well, so you don’t rush into anything without giving consequences and benefits the full thought they deserve. Perhaps that’s the real reason why people regret–because they half-assed the choice.

Live with passion and let it guide you to the best possible outcome. Regret is for suckers.

Some Thoughts:

1. My cat got trapped in the toy closet for what must’ve been hours. Here’s the weird part: We closed the door before we left at 3, came home by 5:30, but she didn’t mewl about it till 8:30. What were you doing in there? Sleeping?
2. Fantasy FB season is back on track with a win against the worst team in the league. I needed that win to end a 2 game skid that found me going from first place to 3rd. Now I gotta figure out a few things about the RB situation, because my main guy is terrible this season. Even so, my team is looking like a playoff squad but barely. The top teams are ringing in the points and I’m trying to hold on. We’ll see what kind of deals I can make to turn that around. After all, if you ain’t trading you ain’t trying.
3. I’ve come to realize that when you let people vote for things they don’t much care about, you get votes that are more reflective of feelings than real stuff. We had a vote for the rookie of the year trophy for the 4-5 team and the vote went to the girl who touched the ball about twice in a 7 game season and spent her on-field minutes playing tag with another girl as opposed to any actual soccer (both touches being completely accidental). The new players who worked hard at the game were snubbed in the voting and it had nothing to do with their talent. Annoying. My oldest kid called it on week one, and I didn’t believe him. Kid intuition is almost as god as women’s intuition it seems.

Some of the funniest moments of my childhood involve watching (and later mocking) those commercial where the parent sees his kid using drugs or doing some other foolishness and then the kid screams, “I learned it from watching you!”

Halloween in our era has very little to do with the original Samhain harvest festival. I celebrate Halloween less as a holiday than as a social event. Each year we gather the kids, stuff them into colorful costumes, and go door to door expecting candy. This year we took to the streets with friends, and the experience was different than what we’ve done in the past. It was a lot better. Not only were the house displays nicer, but the company and conversation meant that we adults could enjoy it on two levels. We were happy to enjoy our kids and happy to be in conversation.

The best part of the evening was a house in the middle of a block that took Halloween to the next level. They turned one portion of their front yard into a cemetery, while the other side of the front yard was a treasure trove guarded by all manner of fantasy monster. Much to the surprise, and often abject terror, of the kids, the monsters moved. They were wired to respond to vibrations, so when a kid got too close to the treasure, something leaped out at them. The cemetery was even more high tech. In the window behind rows of gravestones A ghost flew about. The ghost was a holographic film projection against the window that looked so real that my own kids were unwilling to get too close.

It turns out that house is pretty famous in Maricopa for their displays. The day after Thanksgiving they do a huge Xmas presentation that involves the Fire Department and a local cheer squad. I’m hoping to publish an article about that event in the Maricopan after it happens. In the meanwhile, that house helped us have a spooky Halloween.

Some Thoughts:

1. The next 30 or so days are NanoWrimo–the National Novel Writing Month. I’ll be participating this week as well as requiring my writing students to participate. This is a really great opportunity for them to be part of a larger writing community and get the benefits of that. Should be fun. The 10 Minute Rule will likely bear some of the brunt of this labor, and I expect to produce or reflect here as much as possible.
2. Wine is preferable to beer for most occasions. Beer, I find, is an enjoyable distraction  only when extremely cold.
3. Watching Blackfish with my cat was a really odd experience. My cat responded to every whale call. She doesn’t like whales all that much. Perhaps it feels like a meal that cannot ever be enjoyed.