10 minutes of writing each and every day.
I’m exhausted. A long day filled with long football games and sleep-inducing heat and sunlight. I am a mess, and this is all I could conjue up while slipping in and out of sleep.
Backstrom is a remake. A port, really. The original show was Australian and aired there with some success. The show is hardly the first to be based on an earlier, successful show. It seems like nothing new is ever created unless previously vetted and proven successful by other nations. Ahh, the American way.
I’ve come to expect a lot from the Wachowski’s. By a lot I mean I’ve come to expect a big budget visual masterpiece that gets away from itself too quickly and lands firmly it the realm of stuff that could’ve been a masterwork but wound up trying to be too much and being very little of substance in the process. In terms of Jupiter Ascending, I was not disappointed. The film promises a world of a billion planets and delivers a shallow bit of storytelling that hints at royal intrigue and a tremendous multi-world history. Unfortunately, it only delivers on tremendous fast-moving actions scenes and a trademark Wachowski score—Just as expected.
Jupiter Ascending is a huge concept piece. In this 2 hour ride the Wachowskis attempt much of what they did in the original Matrix, which is to form a unified theory that explains everything from religion, to myth, to the dinosaur extinction, to little grey men as the result of a singular source: The fact that the Earth is a nascent civilization profoundly at the will of other more advanced civilizations. What I love is that the Earth itself is important in more of a financial sense than the Douglas Adams way, but lends itself to the same possible fate.
I can’t talk about the title character without revealing the central (and spiritually bereft yet scientifically compelling) conceit of the film. I can say that the other two main characters bring rote acting to the screen here, playing typical roles and acting to the maximum potential of those roles. The fault is not their own but that of the Wachowskis who, used to dealing with the likes of Keanu Reaves, create very limiting character roles for the actors they select.
To be honest, I enjoyed the film despite the fact that it is a mess. I was looking for an escape and the film brought me that in spades. For two hours I was immersed in the cool, visually stunning, and completely silly realm that Andy and Lana carved out of their imaginations.
Many people have asked why I chose to go public with this. There are two reasons. One is about my soul. I’m a writer. I write about the experiences in my life and what I see around me in order to share those experiences with anyone who will listen, so they know that these things happen, we aren’t alone in our struggles, and that people react to things in different ways. Science tells us that stories are how people see the world. Even though this is a deeply personal story and one with moving parts, I felt that it was important to be open and honest about it for my own self reflection.
The second reason I put it out there is to maintain an honest narrative about what really went on. One day when the kids read this I hope they can understand that all of this came out of love. It was not, as suggested, ‘Daddy ran out of love for mommy’. I don’t believe divorce is about fault. If it is about fault then I take full responsibility. I enabled behaviors and conditions that ultimately lead to my own dissatisfaction. I’ve spent a great deal of time accepting the role of the bad guy–the Decepticon, the Sith, the one who pulled the trigger. Still, it is important to note that I aimed with my heart and truly sought to create conditions that were best for everyone.
It is nearly impossible to remember that you are doing something out of love when your seven year old is clutching you and bawling, ‘Now I won’t get a hug and kiss every night.’ There is that moment then when you consider sacrificing everything to keep them safe and maintain the conditions of life they’ve grown accustomed to. Afterwards is the realization that the conditions they’ve grown accustomed to aren’t necessarily healthy.
I have been deeply and, to the boys, obviously unhappy for some time. A great deal of that has to do with the conditions of my life. So, I needed to ask myself if I wanted to maintain those conditions for the sake of the kids’ stability, or if I wanted to change my conditions and show my three boys what it looks like for a man to lead a happy and fruitful life.
This wasn’t totally for them. I felt I could be happier and in a better mental space if I wasn’t in the space I created. Of course, the obvious question is: why not stay and grow and change together. Well, people don’t really change. All I can do and all she can do is become the best possible versions of ourselves. We still wind up being ourselves, and there is a basic incompatibility there that I spent ten years fully believing I could change/fix and three years recognizing I could not.
I’m sure I’ll blog about this again when my headspace allows for it. I’m sure I’ll blog about the road out of divorce and what it is like to be a single dad and a plethora of other related topics. For now I hope these words provide some clarity and some small measure of understanding.
There are no words profound enough to profess the night’s sadness. I hope I am in a better headspace tomorrow to share. Tonight I ripped apart my family. That’s what they don’t really warn you about when they warn you about divorce. They say it is painful, but the words don’t match the profundity.
Not even close.
Last night I found myself in bed thinking, quite feverishly, about death. Here’s a simple truth: I have no proof of what happens after we die. I have my beliefs, which have everything to do with energy and reincarnation but nothing about memory. I fully believe that when I pass, my memories will cease and the energy (spirit) that is me will inhabit another physical form. It could be a cockroach. It could be a human baby. The wheel of reincarnation spins on and on. Now, that wasn’t as terrible of a waking fantasy as I make it seem. While it is true I have a dark feeling that death lingers close, I am not at all scared or fearful of it. Instead I’m introspective about such things. I’m not wishing for it. I’m not waiting for it. Instead I’m considering all that I can do with my life while I have it.
This could be the opening volley of a midlife crisis, or it could be the chemicals and tissue that compose my body telling me that I’m not taking care of myself and need to fix this problem before something does indeed go horribly wrong. I’m leaning towards that explanation, because along with fever dreams have come some clear and honest revelations.
I’m aware that I gained 20 lbs over the past year. Stress goes right to my belly. However, it isn’t just about the stress. It is about the habits I’ve formed over the last 4 years or more. I’ve reached the point where I eat perhaps a meal a day. This is a sure formula to being fat. One of the revelations was my body telling me that the metabolism is slowing down to compensate for lack of eating. As a result I find myself eating one really big meal and storing it away to be released as energy over the course of the next day. Too bad I don’t do enough activity to release that energy that is being stored up as fat. So, as a result I just get fat. The revelation showed me the way to get back to a healthy weight. Another showed me about healthy lifestyle.
Writing is the core of my being. I’m a storyteller who has cut himself off from free flowing creativity. Dumb, I know, but worse is how I did it. I stopped allowing myself to write badly. I became enamored with the pursuit of flawless first drafts. I wanted everything that wasn’t under the guise of blog to be genius. I got too caught up in being liked to actually be good and grow. This, like the fat situation, is a fixable condition.
The key for me is to decide what I want out of this life I have left. I have to make the effort to follow my dreams and stop waiting for things to happen on their own. They don’t. Nothing in my life has merely happened, no matter how much I want to believe it has. I put myself in the path of asteroids. Now I need to remember how to mine them for diamond.
So, the whole scheduling plan for this semester didn’t work out. Apparently Helmuth Von Moltke knew his stuff. No plan does survive contact with the enemy. In this case the enemy is reality. I came into the semester with a specific set of expectations and a strategy carefully devised to meet those expectations head on. Now I might as well Floop the Pig. It seems the best way to exist and be successful with the universe casually flicks in my general direction. No, that’s being egotistical. It is more accurate that I place myself in the path of asteroids.
This is not often a conscious decision–not in the direct manner. I have a tendency to make big choices and, as with anything in life, the bigger the choice the larger the ripples in every given direction. So, when I decide to take on any new opportunity or challenge, it creates a gravitational field that, well, ripples.
Now I gotta reimagine the schedule and game plan to account for what the universe offered me for the semester. This is a good thing and a difficult but really important and ultimately good time in my life where opportunity is face slapping me again and again and I must find the time and space to respond appropriately. Life is good if you let it be. It sucks if you dwell on the darkness and let those asteroids get the better of you.
When I coach, I spend time talking to the kids about the things they can control in a game. Attitude and Effort are sublimely self-reliant. Unfortunately, that self reliance is based on a curious concept called Headspace. I first found the term through meditation, but have seen it used in all walks of life from sports, to yoga, to pornography. Everyone required to maintain a level of mental control and toughness refers to the ability to get in their ‘proper headspace’ in order to be successful.
Here’s a fact: Though headspace is the embodiment of attitude and effort, finding that elusive space (zone) is extremely difficult and affected by numerous factors including (but not limited to) outside environment, people, time, and the condition of your own body.
I bring this up as I have discovered that it is near impossible to get into the proper headspace inside my own home. That’s the thing with headspace, the number of factors fighting against you make it hard to find what you need. At home I have little working in my favor. The mood here is always extremely high energy (frantic) or straight up negative, which means I am fighting through that to reach the proper headspace. There is also the matter of responsibilities. When in my writing headspace I need to know that the words are all that matters. At home I can sustain that for 10 minutes, but much more requires an escape.
Selma
The ring hanging from her neck spoke of love lost. She was young enough that Jack wondered if she’d seen her 20th birthday. She’d seen tragedy too. The lines on her wrist spoke to that. He wondered how she came to be here in this cafeteria, scarred hands touching at the small gold ring on her neck.
Bette
After a moment she came to realize the runs in Bette’s stockings were meant to be there. The stretches and tears formed a lattice that crawled up her legs ending at the hem of her blue skirt. Not high fashion, but something different. Bette was like that. She tried to pull away from the mundane and into that place that Melanie hated–that place where every move she made was scrutinized and immediately judged.
Some Thoughts: