Day: November 5, 2016

Slowly, I am moving back towards positive and introspective theory–emerging out of a chrysalis born from frustration, impotency, stagnation, and, well, Arizona. I am still in the same physical space, but my mind and heart are far away. I used to spend at least a week a year in NYC just as a way to reconnect with reality and life on the grind. I’d sit near a park and watch people go by, peaking in on their lives and conversations. It was a form a voyeurism, yes, but it was also a way to connect to the feed. There is more pure difference and life and reality (as I call and see it) in an hour on the streets of New York than in a a week of suburban AZ. In NYC everything is out there in the open. AZ happens behind closed doors and often behind the walls of passive aggressive minds and on the internet.

So, hard reset. I’m going back to the city–back to the grind. Back to square one where the Talislegger was born and where I found my love for life, writing, love, sex, and even football.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Desensitization and violence is a well studied phenomenon. It stands to reason that the same principles apply to pornography. I posit that people who expose themselves to porn not only have increasingly unrealistic expectations of female (and to a lesser extent male) bodies. Likewise they become desensitized to the body–more judgmental and have different expectations. If I was in the field I would try to find a corollary to Routine Activity Theory, from Criminology.
2. Since I am not an academic researcher what will probably happen is a short story that explores the connection between science, porn, and sex. Yeah, that is gonna happen.

Here’s the thing: I lost something (ugh, that word again. Didn’t we break up?)

I lost a great deal of the passion I had for the written word. I buried beneath cleats and turf and jerseys for various sports. I spent a chain of three uninterrupted years living atop a pile of sports. We played so many sports in succession that I defined the season by what sport I happen to be coaching. Then I decided to stop. In the clarity of a series of solitary moments strung together I recognized that the passion is still down there.

This moment of clarity was aided by Gregg Hurwitz, a NYT best-selling author who is most recently known for the Evan Smoak/Nowhere Man novels. Hurwitz was born in 73, not long before me and since the 2000’s he’s been a top-notch writer publishing comics, screenplays, and 15 novels. Did I mention he was a student-athlete and a top scholar? He’s basically a better version of my own story. He managed all of the things I intended for my career. Instead of thinking about how to be ‘that guy’ he went out and did it. I went out and learned the inner workings of youth soccer and a dozen other games, sports, etc.

I do not regret my decision to be a father or to entrench myself in the life the way I did these past years. They remain a beautiful moment in time. However, I can’t be that guy 24/7 anymore. I’ll coach on occasion–I enjoy the connection and time it affords me with my kids. I won’t let it be the driving influence in my life any longer. November-March sans rec sports is just the beginning. There is a time to play and a time to be a writer.

Guess what time it is?