Month: September 2016

I didn’t really know how to name this post. It is sparked by an article on CNN.com discussing American’s lost tribe–namely the white working class. I have been more race aware over the past few years in light of an increase in shootings of black men (I was pulled over the other day and man was I terrified) by cops, and the political rhetoric generated by the Trump camp. What bothered me the most about all of it is the similarities inherent in the plight of working class people of all races. We have the same problems–American problems.

One middle class individual in the article lamented for a time when small towns were thriving and rural areas were gaining residents as opposed to losing them. If you’re wondering why people leave rural areas, it has a lot to do with the shifting state of the American dream. The dream is far more urban and technologically driven than ever before, lending itself to urban landscapes and the ever-populous suburb teeming with Target big box stores and a Starbucks on every corner. Nobody cares about main street anymore. As a result, those areas lose people and lose wealth. When the wealth goes away from those areas it becomes a matter of economics that people will start to become angry about poverty and look for someone to blame.

Trump is able to feed off of that with the slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ which really translates as ‘bring the money back to my hood’. In other words, what we are seeing is a lot of people being tricked into believing that the problem is one thing when the problem is something else entirely.

I think politics can solve the issue of people leaving rural areas. I think, politically, we can instill a sense of economic value to those parts of America and, as a result, entice new types of business to populate the spaces that outmoded businesses have fled. These towns; these people are relics of an industrial age in the midsts of a post-industrial American landscape.

In the last minutes of Sabrina I find myself thinking of another sort of love story. I have been listening to Girl on the Train on my rides to and from work, marveling at the peculiar characters. I feel the need to discuss the book, to talk about what was created and where I feel it went wrong.

The characters in the book are limited to two distinct categories: Predator and Prey. All of the women in the text are predatory and all of the men are prey animals. This is a simplistic break down of the book, but it is there writ plain on every page. The problem with all of this is that I am a male reader and this book is written for females. I truly believe it has the same sort of appeal as E.L. James’ sexual fantasy version of Twilight. I feel this version is far more reserved and much better written. However, it does have the same feel.

This book is a fantasy about a lost woman who seeks comfort after being pushed aside by those in her life who matter. She’ll stop at nothing to get it.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. It would be dope to have a brain hotspot. Perhaps it will wind itself into my next grand tale

Remember that jerky rich kid from school? You know the one. S/he used to say and do a bunch of ridiculous and mean crap simply because s/he could. S/he’d never get in trouble because nobody would ever say anything to them. I was never sure why. Maybe it was because they said the stuff we secretly wanted to say or said it to people we hated or was so rich that we didn’t want to get in trouble for tattling on them or be cast out for not liking/supporting/respecting them. I remember thinking for a minute, ‘that kid is hot. I want to be with them.’ It was like basking in the glow of a sunlamp, because all the attention was on them and that made me special or part of the in crowd in a way.

That person is running for president.

No, not Hillary. In many ways she fits the bill (pun intended). She’s always been the rich girl who got everything she wanted and played by her own rules. She isn’t nice and never will be. On the other hand, she is not evil and her megalomania includes quite a bit of concern for the people who aren’t as well to do as her. In other words, she’s a rich know-it-all who wants to make herself feel better by bringing you up.

The other guy is a rich know-it-all who wants to make his name and fortune bigger by anointing himself ruler of the free world. It is that last bit that scares me, because he doesn’t exactly want the world to be free. He wants to world to listen to him and adore him and cower when he talks his trash. Unfortunately, the threats and action of litigation don’t extend outside of our borders. He is going to have to find a new stick. Unfortunately the one we have is tipped with soldiers–with American lives–and he already plans to stick it into places we don’t belong.

Obama gets a horrible rap for trying to pull us out of international conflicts, replacing human shields with drones. The other guy–Trump is his name–doesn’t really care about the loss of American lives. He doesn’t think in terms of individuals but in terms of slights and gains to his own name. What, Iran came too close to our boats on his watch? They need to be taught a very big lesson. Trust me, they’ll learn.

But I don’t trust him. I worry about what we become underneath his boot. I’ve already seen what can happen when we put Cartman in charge of stuff. Don’t let that happen outside of South Park.

I’m drained after a long day of football that saw one win and two losses. The last loss, a late night showdown in a far away land (seriously, we drove 90 minutes) was the hardest to swallow. I watched my youngest boy play some of the best football I’ve ever seen. What made his performance so amazing was that he fought through so much adversity that game. In fact he sprained his ankle on his first run and still ran for 400 total yards. He also played all but two plays and was a tackling machine. All of this while being held, tackled, etc. while he was playing D. It was a crazy scene.

A friend recorded the game and the other three this season, which I will put together for a short youtube reel he can have forever. I never had a demo reel, and I always wanted one. I’m grateful to be able to do some of these things for my kids.

I am also grateful for the opportunity to take some time to myself tomorrow to really get back to a good professional headspace and a creative headspace and get to work on some of the other things I love in life, both literary and actual.

I need all of that.

Turns out I am a highly negative person. Not all the time, of course. I have quite a bit of clown and balloon time. Still, I get in my head about what I perceive as injustice or stuff that simply ought not to be. I’ve been told (recently, in fact) that is is problematic. Bad energy is the Zika of energy and I’m guilty of passing it around. So, I came up with an idea. Negative Space. Yeah, I gotta give a title to everything. Negative space is an idea I have to create a journal of all the negativity I encounter and collect over the course of a day, week, year, hell–moment. In other words, I will start a journal (offline or at least locked down for now) where I express all of the negative drek that floats through my head on a moment to moment basis.

There is a lot.

There are people I just don’t like. There are circumstances I recognize exist to exclude my participation. Heck, I’ve watched people build rules to exclude people they don’t want to include in things and realized only later that I was one of those people. See, negative.

I don’t feel bad about being negative. I feel very bad about infecting and affecting others, which is why the land of clowns and balloons ought to grow and it can only do so if I find a space and a voice for the negativity that builds up. The lack of an outlet for negative energy is what led to terms like ‘going postal’.

If I can work out a way to harness the negative (or at least collect and collate it) I think there is some useful stuff in there. Not all good writing–not all good ideas even–come from happy spaces. The dark stuff helps too.

Last night was a trainwreck.

I have to be honest. I don’t do well with red wine. Give me a bottle or three of white and I’m dancing the night away. A shared bottle of Malbec and I’m all ‘Girl on the Train’ which is what went down last night. I believe the internet kept me honest for that one. It revealed what I can be like at my worst. It is rather bad I’m afraid, but I am also pleased to know that in discovering the bottom you become aware of what it looks like to surface and climb, ever so slowly, towards a good place.

 

Even the dreams went badly. There was the one with the wedding in Harlem, the one with the Dragon, even something about a crime scene inspired by all of the less-than-great TV I’ve been watching lately. When I woke the first time (sometime around 1 AM) I pledged to not put myself in that position again. This too is a good sign. I will blog under better conditions, avoiding the red haze of alcohol and sleep deprivation.

 

On the other hand, I’m really a writer now.

I’ve heard tell that most of the great writers found their way to the bottom of a bottle at some point. Stephen King had to go sober. Raymond Carver, Hemingway, Tennesee Williams, hell even Fitzgerald lived at the bottom of a drink. It was manly. It was power-inducing and acceptable behavior. The man with a drink was an iconic sign. The man with a drink and a pen was legendary.

 

This is no longer the case and no longer a real excuse, especially considering that I was not considering any of those dudes as I poured another glass. I was thinking, ‘This tastes fantastic.’ Well, it didn’t make me write fantastic, dear reader.

 

You deserve better than that.

Getting started can be the hardest part about the blog. It is especially hard when it is time to pass out and you’re really about there and suddenly realize a lack of attentiveness to the gameplan and realize you need to take care of that–not only of the glaring weakness variety but of the undersized and under motivated to–I’m slipping in and out of consciousness here and finding hosts hold a retard stampede to ketk ugood.

That last bit came through a mini blackout and was;t likely legible or made a bit of sense but will shortly. I spent too much time today, forcing me to dive into my bag of tricks. I know this is largely uniteligble but this is a lesson: all the posts at nighr seeemto .

 

This is the aewsome power of fatugue. It can turn a blog with potential into a straight up mess of words and jumbles without mooring.

I should just call tonight’s post Beast Mode.

Time and time again I find myself drawn to Marshawn Lynch. I liked him as a player though only in passing. My youngest feels like he is the one true Running Back in the NFL. The kid loves him, and being the kind of father I am I find all sorts of videos and shows on the guy. The more I get to know about Lynch, the more I recognize that Beast Mode is a genuinely honest and open human being. Tonight’s lesson came from Bear Grylls, who took Marshawn through rough terrain as part of Grylls survival show. I laughed at the honesty and vulnerability Marshawn displayed. It was fantastic to see a man built on a foundation of toughness show that he can be afraid and he can still rise to the occasion in spite of that fear.

Lynch is exactly what I think of when we hear about athletes needing to be role models. He runs a social outreach network powered by his salary and the support of the city around it. Lynch gives scholarships and does youth outreach, but most importantly, he is unabashedly real. He’s street and doesn’t pretend he is not. Listen to how he talks and you know right away. Wait for a brief outburst of ‘that real’ and you will be rewarded. Grylls was. He brought skittles on their excursion, knowing the connection Lynch had to the candy his mother used to give him before games. Lynch responded by jacking the bag in the middle of the night, waking Grylls in the process.

Lynch is good people and as I watch my youngest emulate him, I am proud to see that happen. He chose a guy that is more than what you see on the surface.

Some Thoughts:

1. The role of parents in the desires and successes of their children cannot be understated. Yes, at some point you must let them go and define their own path, but their energy or lethargy or desires can be traced directly back to the conditions under which they were raised. I watch this every day in my life and recognize that I am not always making the best kids.
2. I ain’t making the worst kids either.

I am so proud to be a teacher. There are days where this is not the case at all–the days where the class chemistry is so bad that it is more like working as a janitor than as an educator. This semester I have 7 classes and six are totally awesome. One is trash, but that kind of stuff is gonna happen. Heck, I might even turn that one around. Thus is the power of teacher-student interactions. I think I’ve gotten things off to a good start this year–even if tonight left me drained…

 

Some Thoughts:

1. RGIII is S-A-W-F-T.
2. Meanwhile, Victor Cruz has heart for years and you can’t teach that.
3. Josh Norman failed to impress. Revis actually pooped the bed.

I am starting the blog before football. I ought to be meeting with my writing group this morning, but instead I am in my office preparing to produce something they can actually see. I wouldn’t say I am stalled as a writer so much as I am hesitant. Steinback famously quipped, “When I face the desolate impossiblity of writing 500 pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day’s work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.”

I’m pretty sure he spelled impossibility correctly when he wrote it. I’m also certain that the idea of the impossible, while terrifying to him, was something he overcame quickly. He stood on the edge of the cliff and jumped. I stand on the edge of the cliff and pontificate. This is indicative of our relative success.

So here I stand and prepare to find an excuse not to write. Perhaps I will deal with school work, or sort files, or do laundry. Or maybe, just maybe, I will write.

Some Thoughts:

1. The greatest indication of M. Shymalan’s skill as a director is the utter dissapointment people had when first seeing the creature in Signs. Think about it. What could he have put on screen to meet your expectations? What rough beast, its time come round at last, could’ve shambled unto the screen and been greater than the expectations birthed inside of your own head? Where did those expectations come from? I’ll tell you where: He built up a level of suspense and expectation so complete that when we first see the thing so many of us laughed at how far short it fell of the horror we expected in our minds.
2. I looked up a few reviews of my work last night. Not too many. It felt the way I imagine it does to hear a noise somewhere in the basement and go to the top of the stairs, call out into the darkness, and perhaps flip on the lights. You look, but not terribly hard because you are afraid of what you might find. As expected, I saw nothing to terrify me. Still, I remained at the top of the stairs.