Inside Guillermo Del Toro’s ‘Bleak House’ is a wonderworks of horror and fantasy inspiration. Toro has created in this space a world where any writer can be inspired to connect to universes outside of our own. He has one room in particular where it is always raining. Through the magic of (lord knows what) he’s crafted windows that constantly show and sound like it is pouring outside. I’m guessing he uses TV screens, because that is what I use in my space as of late. The effect of the rain on my concentration is amazing. It focuses me and helps me to feel like I am in not only the right headspace but the right environment to be an author. As I fall back into trying to write it is becoming increasingly clear that the key is to put your mind and spirit in a place where accessing the storyverse is as easy as possible. For me that means rain and cold and blankets and it means more stuff too, but I am trying to figure out what.

My walls are a mix of calendars and fantasy maps and framed images of good writing. All of it works to create an environment of encouragement. It is not entirely perfect. My desk is always too messy and nothing I want access to is ever at my fingertips. Still, it is always a slippery question, what I want. I suppose I want a little red pill that slides me into the best creative mindset, a place inside of myself where all the stories are lined up side by side and I can pull one out of line and walk it to the front room in my brain and sit it down next to me and have a conversation.

Yeah. I want a space that makes me feel like that.

Some Thoughts:

1. My final coaching season looks to be in jeopardy. We lost another kid from the roster and haven’t even had our first official practice yet. We are down to 14-16 kids depending on who actually pays the fee. League minimum is 15, but to be safe you need at least 20–especially given how undersized our team is right now. The HC and I plan to make the final determination on August 14th. What this means to my eldest is that he will not have that prep year to help him move into high school and be ready to try out for the high school freshman team. Ultimately, that means he is unlikely to play HS Football, killing his college football dreams dead–unless he runs track and builds up his speed and body and walks on somewhere. These things have been known to happen…
2. In a post that was supposed to be about creativity and writing conditions I find myself immediately straying to football. This is likely about being an offensive coordinator and learning to express that kind of creativity. It is also on my mind as I run my first solo optional team practice in a few days.
3. Being in love is crazy. So crazy that it occupies your thoughts at the strangest times. I can be thinking about anything else and my thoughts wander back to her.

I recently wound up in a conversation with a friend’s dad about teaching. It started with a quick diagnosis of my profession and led to a larger conversation about that choice and what that means you ascribe to in terms of personal goals. This was a really important conversation to have at this particular crossroad in my professional life. I was reminded of my original intention in teaching: I wanted to find someone who wanted to be a teacher and reach and cultivate that individual to reach others. On the surface it sounds like a prosyletic meme or, more specifically, a self replicating virus. In some ways the teaching faith can be that. However, I achieved that goal years ago. So now what?

The conversation led me through the various reasons I taught and teach. The replacement doctrine has long passed. Now I primarily teach in order to share cool shit, which is not exactly why I started doing it in the first place. Somewhere in the middle of my career (thus far) I was teaching to learn about the students and the local culture and how to be better as a teacher. Ultimately I should be trying to marry those two doctrines together and become more of a holistic teacher who wants to both learn cool shit and share cool shit. Essentially that is what I do in my summer Sci-fi Learning Community and in my Creative Writing courses. Not coincidentally, that is where I have the most fun.

Some Thoughts:

1. If there is one lesson my kids need to learn from me it is the importance of silence. Few kids I know, and especially not my own, appreciate moments of silence. I feel like kids should meditate every day in order to center themselves and reflect. I’ll try to make that part of our routine, but I have to be honest about where I am with routines involving kids. My followthrough is not strong, because it is pretty tough to keep them doing X, Y, or Z.
2. One more routine ought to involve reading for at least 30 minutes a day, because that is basically gone from their lives short of reading the text scrolling by on the latest anime episode.
3. Despacito is one of the most brilliant songs out right now. This is not because of what it says but of who is on it. Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee played on the popularity of Justin Bieber to introduce a latin club banger to the mainstream, and then quickly and thoroughly outperformed Beiber on the track. Well played.

Recently I sat with a student and discussed the basics of the Fermi Paradox. The idea behind that goes like this: Since we haven’t seen evidence of alien life, given the enormity of the galaxy and number of Earth-like planets, then they don’t exist. Now I haven’t tackled that subject beyond the few suggestions spat at me in my high school physics class, because I immediately assumed it was wrong. Moving one step further to a basic search I realized that not only is it probably wrong but it also is miscredited to Fermi, perhaps for political reasons. According to those who were part of the conversation that birthed the debate Fermi statement was more about transportation, “… the reason that we hadn’t been visited might be that interstellar flight is impossible, or, if it is possible, always judged to be not worth the effort, or technological civilization doesn’t last long enough for it to happen.”

This in no way means there cannot be aliens. In fact it speaks specifically to the voracity of space travel itself. Fermi was talking about the inability to reach even 1/10th the speed of light (29 979 245.8 m/s) which is necessary for interstellar travel to nearby galaxies in a human lifespan.

To add to the confusion, Pablo Picasso said ‘Anything we can imagine is real’ and as a writer I want to believe that–perhaps literally. What if these worlds we are creating do exist in the multitude of dimensions and the infinity of space. What if our understanding of magic and intrigue and worlds beyond our own comes from some deeper yet still untapped connection to string theory and quantum entanglement. What if in the infinite space of reality we are all linked and all visit each other–not by starship but by story?

Some Thoughts:

1. Murphy’s Law of the Universe: The moment you suggest needing more of something you are immediately rewarded with a situation where you are in line to get much much less.

It took me 42 years to really settle into the notion that I work best in the mornings. This blog is evidence of a mind preparing itself for the day as opposed to the unhinged ramblings of a man desperate for sleep. When I consider the accomplishments of my schoolmates I realize that this lack of self-awareness has really been the deciding factor in my failure to accomplish much of what I am capable of thus far in my life. There are two new truths that sprout from this one as branches from my olive tree. I am no longer capable of the magic I once was, and I still have a way to go before I am the writer I am capable of being and thus the human I am capable of being.

We all face diminished capacity at some point in our lives. I think about models who, with age, find solace in exercise and eventually plastic surgery to prolong their beauty. There is not an external fix for being a writer, though our capacity diminishes at a far slower pace. What becomes ultimately important is creating an ease of access to ideas and a regularity–a habit–with which you approach the craft. Stephen King wrote some of his best work after 60. I do not intend to wait that long. I cannot promise a schedule short of saying that I utterly expect to have a clean and set office space by week’s end. This lack of clutter ought to serve as an external extension of my internal workings.

In other words, I need to get my head straight and buckle down. The stories are there, if I can find the will to reach them.

Some Thoughts:

1. Had the first major football meeting last night and a practice is happening tonight. That means football is happening at the youth level. This is going to be my first year coordinating the offense and it is happening at the 12u level where kids are going into school-level football. This is going to be quite the experience for us and I intend to learn a lot and enjoy the hell out of my final season as a coach.
2. Always nice to get a check in the mail. I just got one for some past writing. It felt pretty special.
3. I still miss my love. This has grown into a bit of a state of mind, really. There is a point in a relationship where you just want to be with that person constantly. I keep running up against that point.

At times I am inclined to send my kids to Laos or Africa. They have family in the former, which makes it easier for them to slip into that world and recognize the situations present there. I think it is the best idea I can come up with in order to help the kids recognize that the drama they experience on a daily basis amounts to, well, nonsense.

This morning the boys got into an argument about Minecraft. More specifically, they were arguing about who was going to design some obscure section of a world they’d invented on creative mode. For the record, creative mode is the equivalent of a paintbrush. They click a button and have the ability to create whatever–unlike normal mode where they have to gain resources and (in some limited sense) earn their creations. Regardless of mode, the argument was about Minecraft. It joins a litany of arguments about Beyblade, computers, who is sitting where on the couch, etc. These are arguments about things that are extraneous parts of their reality. They are not core to the survival of my children.

The situation in Laos is different. There are chores that last the entire day. Play happens outdoors and not cross-legged in front of a big screen. Hard work is a way of life. I recognize that I can recreate these conditions to a certain extent here, and the trip to Laos would only mean I didn’t have to deal with them while they dealt with their new reality. In other words, it would be easier for me.

Perhaps the key is a middle ground. I need to crack down on these behaviors and the growing sense of entitlement and boredom that plagues the summer months. School will provide a structure that will help me do my part. Unfortunately with me working as well, they might not get all the structure and change and growth I desire.

There’s always Laos.

Some Thoughts:

1. I miss my love
2. I miss the beach

At times I wish I was a better anthropologist; that I could slip into different societies with the calm and practiced routine of a native. I’m not. I’m the guy on the beach in the bright blue dryfit, a stark contrast to the muted colors of the locals. Not an outcast but an outsider, unfamiliar with how to look and how to behave in the environment. There is good in that. On the one hand I maintain my sense of self, because I am always some muted form of me on these occasions. There is also the opportunity to learn, should I allow myself the time and space to sink in and do so.

This post comes from Pacific Beach. I’m sitting steps away from the ocean writing and observing. I’m drinking in the social order. I am relearning what is acceptable, what is expected, what is beautiful, and ugly, and wanted, and abhorred. I am only here for a few hours, which is not nearly enough time to become a native. It is enough time to sink into the idea of the people and to watch and to enjoy and to recognize the nexus of tourists and locals and daytrippers such as myself and start to tell the difference.

All of that is important to me as a writer and as a person in general. As a writer it is how I learn to sculpt worlds. As a person it helps me to recognize more about who I am, how I am seen, and how I see other people.

Some Thoughts:

1. Overheard quote of the day, “I would want a pool so we wouldn’t have to do anything.” I get it. I want a pool for that exact reason. I want a non-digital activity for my kids that doesn’t require me to drive or do anything that takes away my own time. It used to feel selfish, but kids are selfish by nature and if you don’t carve out the opportunities for yourself you are going to get swept up in their universe.
2. I am grateful to be here with the woman I love.

On the eve of an epic daytrip I don’t really have a lot of cohesive thoughts to string together. I can say that I’m super excited about planning a fun few days with my boys. I can say a handful of other things that are best collected as…

Some Thoughts:

1. This is the first time in the new iteration of the blog that I have not had a bunch to say at once. By bunch I mean a single ten-minute worthy thought.
2. I am in the earliest stages of designing a new fantasy realm from the ground up and writing it’s stories. I plan to go the Hugh Howey route on this and publish through Amazon. However, that is a long way off as all I have now is a small section of the world formed in my head. I have the idea of a city that divides two rival kingdoms. Or at least that is what I see right now.
3. Love is complicated and draining. Passion is less complicated but feels more temporary lately. One is the long burning ember and the other the blue flame. Maybe it is all in my head. That’s a dangerous place these days.
4. I am overexcited for football. Even on the youth level I’m looking forward to the intricacies of the sport.
5. I am far less excited to start the fall semester. It isn’t about the students.
6. At the core of what I think and do is a singular personality and one that remains in flux as of late. Me being me is something I don’t always know how to do because I don’t always know what it is.
7. People take a long time to heal…

“That’s why Monday flares up like an oil-slick,
when it sees me up close, with the face of a jailbird,
or squeaks like a broken-down wheel as it goes,
stepping hot-blooded into the night.”

Pablo Neruda was not a fan of Mondays. While this isn’t my favorite translation of the violent passage from his poem, Walking Around, it does capture the anger and lust of the day. It encompasses that feeling that Monday is a different kind of beast–an awakening of sorts or perhaps a descent into madness. Though I lacked the potent command of words with which to express my disdain. Monday was long a pressure filled arrival that brought disappointment and the realization of my own shortcomings. I tried to alter that trajectory recently by erasing Monday as a workday. This fall I’m rebranding Mondays as no-class Monday and turning the day into a time where I can fall slowly into the work week and patiently develop the fortitude with which to deal with the horrors of midweek.

Midweek is the new boogey monster then. It is that space between awkward beginnings and long-awaited ends where everything seems its furthest point from completion. Of course, I suppose I will rebrand that at some point too, learning to look forward to every day as a new possibility as opposed to some dark beast slouching towards me waiting to be born.

Some Thoughts:

1. For better than 4 decades I’ve been less than an organized human. I suppose it can happen if I really work at it, but I don’t know exactly what is going to work for me or be comfortable. It is largely a habit of mind, and what I have been doing has not worked or made me a better version of myself in any way. If anything it has continuously held me back. I gotta get better at this.

I am in the midsts of a golden opportunity here and I might be blowing it.

Getting children to appreciate physics is a science all of its own. Yet here I sit surrounded by boys who are really really into Beyblade. The game is about designing small plastic and metal tops that you spin using a gear-based machine called a ‘ripper’ which accelerates the top and launches it into a circular arena. Here centripetal force takes control–or doesn’t–and the beys spin around the arena smashing into each other until one of them flys out, falls down, or explodes. The surviving bey is the winner.

Despite my half-sciency description, the game is all kids of fun. Still it does have a strong science backing. You select parts based on size and weight and shape and even spin direction. Each choice you make helps to form a beyblade that is capable of different things in the arena. Some are called ‘defense types’ meaning they can take a lot of hits. Balance types are designed to spin longer and hold angular momentum to maintain torque. Attack types are designed around the concept of torque and linear momentum. Their main task is to fire out in a straight line or zig zag pattern, striking the opposing bey with enough force to knock it off its path and angle, possibly even creating a situation where the loosely connected components explode apart. This is called the burst condition.

Basically, I have a chance to teach them physics on at least a basic level to the point where they understand how the STEM knowledge makes them better in their play. This then translates from play to the classroom and eventually to the workforce, shaping the way they think and interact with our universe.

I could do all of that. Yet I haven’t.

Yet.

Some Thoughts:

1. I recently heard the term Narrowcasting (vs. Broadcasting) on a TedTalk and I am smitten.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: A person calls 911 and when cops arrive on scene an overzealous officer mistakes the caller for a perpetrator and kills the caller. The website copblock has dozens of these stories, with victims ranging from 7 to 70. This particular story doesn’t come from copblock.org. It comes from CNN and, apparently exclusively from CNN in terms of the major 3 American news outlets. However, this story is different than most and those differences might be why the story cannot gain traction.

The specifics of this Minnesota horror story remain a little murky, but here is what we know: Justine Ruszczyk, a 40 year old Australian-American woman, called 911 and reported a possible assault/rape in an alley. Cops arrived on scene quickly and quietly. They drove up to alley with the car lights, headlights, and sirens off. Officers heard a loud sound near the car window. Ruszczyk approached the window and officer Mohammed Noor, a Somali-American, shot her. She was in her pajamas. She was not armed. From what I can gather the officer was startled by her appearance at the window and reacted. He has refused to comment on the shooting.

If you want to break this down in racial terms, because ultimately people have begun to look at police shootings in this fashion, a black cop shot a white woman. Or in ‘Dateline and 20/20 terms’ a black cop from a predominantly muslim nation shot a pretty white woman engaged to be married. The adjectives (or circumstances) matter in many ways. I believe they are responsible for why the story isn’t gaining traction. I completely admit that I thought these conditions would be exactly why the story got a lot of attention. However, I understand completely why I was wrong. If you break this down in racial terms, it destroys the predominant ideological viewpoint of the story and makes the story about the one thing we aren’t actually willing to address.

The media is largely ignoring this story. A search of msnbc reveals no mention of the story, even using keywords. Fox doesn’t have any mention of the story either, and in fact their biggest Minnesota story is “Fish attack at Minnesota lake leaves girl, 11, with deep lacerations to her foot, leg” which makes all the sense in the world because their FoxTech page leads with the headline “BIRTH OF ‘DEMON GOAT’ TERRIFIES TOWN; POLICE ARE CALLED” Yeah, I’m adding the pic.

1. Why are sex terms so violent? Smash? Really?
2. Why am I constantly thinking about sex? You betray me, Lizard brain!
3. Why is thinking about sex a bad thing?