Month: June 2020

The most difficult process in my life is my relationship. I do not talk much about the relationship on the blog. I often feel like speaking to that private, sacred connection in the pubic space is a betrayal. However, the more I talk about the blog with her the more it feels like not talking about her is a betrayal; as though I am relegating her to secret status. It is confusing, because I go into the choice thinking I am doing what is right and I emerge feeling both ‘less than’ and profoundly uncertain how to behave.

Here’s the thing: It is hard to be in a relationship. It means putting the other person’s needs before your own at times and making decisions together most of the time. I suspect that my partner would call my assessment of relationships incomplete, and it is. There are aspects of a relationship I cannot translate into words that paint beautiful images in a reader’s mind. It is about knowing each other and anticipating each other. It is about all the things in the world I have come to recognize I am inherently terrible at. Realizing this makes me feel like a terrible person. There are times I feel I don’t even know who my partner is. I consider my words and actions and predict reaction and I am constantly wrong. I am wrong on a scale that leads to two conclusions:

1. I am probably an insensitive self-centered asshole
2. The way I am and the thoughts and ideas I hold onto creates a lifestyle for my partner that is slowly killing her.

There is a scene in the movie Falling Down that springs to mind more and more these days:

I have to ask myself that question constantly. If I am the bad guy (or a bad guy) How did it happen? What did I do to get myself so far away from the sort of partner I wanted to be? I think it started with failed expectations and always trying to play catch up and always then winding up three steps beyond the every day reality. There’s more to it, but I only have these ten to share.

Up at 5 AM, it is a reminder of the life I used to live and the life that used to be. I got up this early in order to shuffle my kid off to In other odd news, since I made that post about all the possible teams in the AYF/NYS collab in AZ, the post where I got that listing has been removed. I wonder what it going on?

I am Moving. I keep on saying it, because the feeling of it is really settling in. I’ve been in this small town in AZ for nearly all of my time in AZ and I’ve watched it grow into a really warm and inviting place to live. Now I gratefully say goodbye and thank you to all that exists out here. It isn’t the kind of town you really come to visit–not unless you’re headed out to San Diego. So, this move is a farewell to a lifestyle of sorts. It is one which has run its course.

Back to writing Novellas. Should be signing paperwork for two in the coming weeks. I am excited about developing these characters. The best part about writing for me are the moments where I connect to the character and I can see them in their element and doing what defines who they are as a person. I love the ability to watch that unfold as a close quarters passenger. I am ready to make that happen again.

Back to wondering about my one true story. I am starting to wonder if I have more than one of those in me. I question if a writer’s one true story is actually a subconscious reflection of the culmination of their life experience. My life has been many things, and as I crest into this “second half” I feel like the first story is less relevant and the second story is starting to take shape.

These are not just some thoughts. In fact there is a connective tissue through all of it that I am starting to recognize in myself. I am a creature who does and thinks a number of different things at once. My thoughts are like a net cast far and reeled back in to capture what I can of the reality around me. All the parts are linked together to form the thing, but much slips through the netting.

I have quietly been working on a fantasy world. I haven’t looked at the greater world–not in the way the George RR Martin dreamed up the world beyond Westeros. I do know the central city state and region of the story and have been hard at work dreaming up the physics of the thing. What I find more interesting than those physics (needed in order to make the world make sense) are the history and politics. I am informed by our own oft deleted history. For example, I was never taught about the Red Summer of 1919 when White Supremacists murdered nearly 1000 black people across the country in what was as close as possible to an uprising responding to the growing pressure for black rights. I learned about that last month. I did hear often about Nat Turner and often as a tale of what not to do–to not rebel and kill the white folks. This is the history I was taught.

In places all over the south a different history is taught to this day. In these alternative histories the slaves were just employees or plantations were great places to work where everyone was treated well. It is all very Gone with the Wind, but those of us who have common sense know Gone is fiction. The history books thrust in front of children are not considered fiction and kids in some places are growing up not understanding what slavery was and thus not understanding why Black Lives Matter exists.

This story is going to tackle some of those issues with a relative distance that allows me to examine them and dissect them and tell stories about how we choose to remember and what we choose to accept, and of course, who has the power to determine these things. It is not all about money either.

Some Thoughts:

1. Here’s a simple way to respond to all lives matter: All lives cannot matter until black lives matter.
2. I say this because a writer friend posted a photo of the back of someone’s car where they had scribbled , “All lives matter xcept (sic) black ones.” Yeah, folks be like that.

I don’t think I am really saying anything new here. I am saying what I always say this time of year (and in the process buying ten minutes because I do not have anything I am ready to say right now). I’m saying there is a chance.

There is a chance the Giants will field a good football team this year. There is a chance Daniel Jones is good (though he may just be new Darnold… I’m just saying). There is a chance this could wind up being the beginning of a really good stretch of sports life in New York City.

There is a chance.

As we know chance is mitigated by a host of factors. One factor is the arrest of our starting corner for robbery and assault. There is a chance that those charges will be dropped and he is going to be just fine. Aldrick Rosas, our all star kicker on the make or break year of his deal is very much not okay. He got picked up on a hit and run. Who knows if he gets suspended or what?

Or what? is the theme here. The new roster is full of hopefuls and maybes who replaced a slew of has been and could’ve beens. We have a squad to cheer for that is rippling with possibilities, but that same squad has to come together in a really difficult time for a city that needs a banner to unite under. It may be too much for a bunch of, well, boys, who might not want that responsibility. These are not Strahan’s Giants. We have Barkley, who already showed his media mettle coming out strong to support BLM, but who else?

All of these factors play a role in the games that get played on Sunday, Monday, and Thursday all in the hopes of getting a Saturday date to apply for a Sunday showdown. The people are watching and how the players hold up to the pressure is a part of how they play and ultimately whether or not they succeed. Beckham couldn’t–not in the harsh NYC spotlight–not for long. Can the rest?

I heard a quote today: If I die then I know that I lived. I learned it in the context of a show called Humans. I was watching it as a way to check out and avoid thinking about my feelings. Instead it made me reflect on how I was feeling about everything, as I am sure the show is intended to do. It is not high art, but it is relevant. It is constructed as an analogy to how we treat each other, but I am in a strange state of mind where I am thinking about purpose and how we treat ourselves and the conditions that make us who we are thus who I am.

So, what have my conditions made of me? Perhaps the answer is what powers my words.

I just want to talk sports. I haven’t had a good Waiver Wire in weeks and that just wears on a dude. Part of it is that there are no sports–not any that I love. I mean the marble stuff is fun and I very much want the marble merch, but nah. I miss sports. I miss football. I miss talking trash about certain teams. I miss talking trash about the Jets and all the bad choices they’ve made on the way to just being mediocre. So, here we are… and here I go.

Let’s start with the Jets. They suck. It brings me joy. The best predictions for them have them as an 8-8 team including a season sweep of the Patriots, which I find nonsensical. The Patriots are still the Patriots and people are about to remember how many games they won over the years without Brady and how many of his backups wound up as bonafide starters in the league. So, let’s say 7-9 should they split the difference. So, yeah, suck. Darnold is part of the problem, but the failure to get a solid receiving corps doesn’t help.

Now lets slide into the unheralded world of youth sports. We are talking about a ridiculously massive league this year. My boy and the team I assistant coach are slotted in the 11u (and perhaps 11 weighted?) category. Below is the list of teams signed up that I pulled from Facebook:

1. Argonauts
2. Jr Huskies
3. AZ Longhorns
4. Raiders AZ
5. Arizona Buffs
6. Force Football Academy
7. Red Mountain Devils
8. AZ Suns
9. Casa Grande Scorpions
10. Maricopa Militia
11. AZ Bandits
12. Arcadia Titans
13. Jaguar Youth Football
14. LYFA Kingz
15. AZ Predators
16. Mesa Toros
17. Devilbacks
18. Lightning
19. East Valley Bulldogs
20. Mesa Rebels
21. AZ Krush
22. Outcast
23. SW Stampede
24. CWS Soldiers
25. CWS Jr Eagles
26. Maricopa Juggernauts
27. Maricopa Jr Rams
28. Maricopa Mambas
29. AZ Ravens
30. Gilbert Coyotes
31. Phoenix Storm
32. AZ Rattlers
33. WV Kingz
34. Scottsdale Firebirds
35. WV Titans
36. Chandler Wolves
37. Chandler Lobos
38. Chandler Bears
39. Cave Creek Falcons
40. AZ Fire Dawgs
41. Central Jr Bobcats
42. Top Flight
43. AZ Jaguars
44. East Valley Trojans
45. PHX Grizzlies
46. Scottsdale Outlaws
47. Reapers Elite
48. Warhawks
49. WV Cardinals
50. East Valley YF
51. CGYF
52. SEV
53. Phoenix Dragons
54. O’Connor Jr Eagles
55. Gilbert Dawgs
56. Union Youth Football
57. Laveen Champions
58. AZ Sun Devils
59. OTB U
60. AZ Saints
61. AZ Blackhawks
62. AZ Badgers
63. AZ Tide
64. TOA
65. Canyon View Jr Jaguars
66. WV Spartans
67. Demon District
68. Mustangs Football Academy
69. Crimson Tide
70. South Phoenix Fire
71. Outlaws Elite
72. A.J. Prospectors
73. AZ Hurricanes
74. ALA Eagles
75. Ruff Ryders
76. Sequoia Stallions
77. Dem Boyz
78. Chandler Stingers
79. Jr Lions
80. Action Football Academy
81. Laveen Lobos
82. X-Factor Eagles
83. Phantoms
84. Ridge Army
85. Peoria Jr Panthers
86. Mavericks
87. Tucson Scorpions
88. Coolidge Bears
89. WV Vipers

89 teams and counting with at least 30 sporting 11u teams. This is going to be crazy massive. I don’t have a clue how this is going to be organized/coordinated. In truth it sounds like a wild but fun ride with most teams not ever crossing paths until the playoffs. We have a Division I & II structure to ensure that teams are playing teams of similar skill. We are likely to be a DI team after sweeping DII and beating one of the top 2 DI teams head to head in a shutout they remain pissed off about. So, we have a lot going on with the new season and it is kind of exciting.

That is all for now. It felt good to talk sports. I will likely talk NY Giants on Wednesday.

All lives matter. That is just facts to me. I don’t choose to feel as though one color of skin has inherently more value over another. However, when people say ‘all lives matter’ they run the risk of falling into the same trap as saying, ‘I’m not racist, because I have black friends’. The term All Lives Matter argues against putting the focus on black lives and what is happening in the black community and the systemic racism that keeps my people down. Instead it argues that we should avoid looking too closely at any one group and institute change that impacts all groups. On the surface it may still sound like a good idea. However, change for everyone still ignores the specific issues that impact those of us who are the most vulnerable.

One of the most impactful conversations I’ve had about race in America was with a writer named Tim Wise. He used the analogy of his college roommates to describe the problem. To paraphrase, he talked about this pot full of some kind of stew a roommate had made. Now everyone ate the stew but the person who made it never cleaned it up. The stew sat there for better than a week collecting bugs and stinking up the place, but nobody felt the responsibility to clean it up. Instead they worked around it and the problems kept mounting.

In a sense this describes how we have been struggling with Race in America. Black Lives Matter as a movement seeks to speak to the pot that was never cleaned up. We never dealt with our history of slavery. We allowed slavery to morph into Jim Crow to morph into systemic racism in the laws we make (for example, why is the penalty for crack much higher than that for cocaine when they are chemically the exact same drug?). We have built a society that looks at black and brown people as criminals and something to be feared. This is why when the Black Panthers showed up on the steps of the capitol building with assault rifles there was movement for a ban, but when the Michigan militia did the same, nobody batted an eyelash. It is even more obvious in our humor. This scene from Whose Line is it Anyway, shows two white men and a black man in the middle and the Joke goes, “Can you pick out the man who robbed you?” The crowd (and all of us) instantly get the joke. That right there is the problem. It is a joke. Because it is a joke we tend to laugh and move on. But is it really all that funny when that joke is a reflection of how nearly every black man is treated? I personally have had a cop pull a gun on me while I was in my car with my kids. I have no record and have never been accused of a crime. So why did it happen? Who did the cop assume I was. More importantly, what led to that assumption?

Black Lives Matter exists as a slogan to draw attention to the specific plight of being black in America. All Lives Matter takes the focus off of that plight and encourages us to ignore the problems inherent in our racial and social class structure. All lives DO matter, but the problem is that we instinctively recognize that some lives matter and we instinctively don’t recognize that other lives do. Every friday for the last 28 years Dateline NBC has run a story about pretty white women being murdered. This is an inherent reminder of the value of that category of people. How often do we hear stories about pretty black women being murdered? How often do we hear stories about black people being murdered at all when it is not by the police? Black Lives Matter strives to bring attention to our struggle at a time when that attention is needed the most.

This is a tough one.

When I was a kid I used to have moments where I could actually feel the world move. I would lay there in the grass of Central Park and stare up at the gray-blue sky. There is a moment when you can feel yourself grow still and you can see the clouds drift past. That is when you widen your awareness and you start to feel that everything is moving. We are on this giant living planet and it is moving. If I stand still for too long and think about it, the way the world is moving around me terrifies me. Not so much in the physical sense. The world has always spun and will spin beyond the last of my great great great great grandchildren’s days. But what will that world be? What am I doing to preserve a space for my children where they can feel safe to bring up children of their own.

I’ve shielded my kids from the bad side of what it means to be black in America. Clearly the shield is cracked and the light of the real world is leaking in. I have been having honest and open dialogue with them about what is happening now, but I do not know what to say about what is to come. Certainly there will be blowback for all of this. Anytime a minority class has tried to buck the systemic chains of oppression, the blowback has been severe. Couple this with the fact that the GoP does not and will not ever see the democratic party as a valid form of leadership and we have a difficult road ahead. What world will I be responsible for leaving to my kids? I claim responsibility, because as an educator I am in a position to make some small measure of change. I have not.

I do not know what that change will or should look like.

Perhaps the change should start with narratives. Black Narratives Matter. As do any narrative that reminds us that stories come from many places and look many different ways. I do a good job of that in Mythology, I think. However, the work in ENG and Sci-fi has not been as strong. I have to do better.

Some Thoughts:

1. Been nearly a full week of Tabata workouts. I can do the 4 minute for one more week before I clearly need to add time and grow. I’ve lost no weight, but that will come in time…
2. I hope.

Thomas wondered if a person could taste sick. Not in the sense of if you put their finger in your mouth you could taste that they were sick but in the taste at the back of your mouth kind of way that people understood something was not quite right. Ever since Uncle Raheem had gotten sick Thomas had thought he was sick too. Of course he did. He’d been with Uncle all the time. They sat out on the stoop on 139th watching the people go by until there were less and less people going by; fewer and fewer cars dropping folks off at the houses. He’d been right there the first time Uncle coughed. They were already wearing masks by then. Summer was creeping into the city and Thomas could see that thin sheen of sweat atop Uncle’s near bald head. He never sweat until at least July when the humidity rose like a basketball shoved to the bottom of the city pool.

Now he sat in a blue hard backed chair listening to the other people in the Harlem Hospital waiting room talking about their family; who’d gotten sick and who hadn’t and he thought about the way it tasted right there at the back of his throat. That sick taste. Was he dying too?

Dad said they were just gonna let the black people die. Momma yelled at him and told him not to say that kind of stuff, but Dad just pointed to the television, leaned back and said, “mmm hmm.”

On the screen a black man who looked like he was Dad’s age was choking and moaning about not being able to breathe and three police officers sat on him. One had his knee on the man’s neck. After the stopped talking and looked like he stopped breathing, the police officer kept his knee on the man’s neck and Dad said, “That’s how they do us out there.”

Momma said, “Who are they? I am a police officer and I don’t do nobody like that.”

Dad shrugged and said, “mmm hmm.”

On Thomas’ birthday last year (he’d turned ten so it was a big one) Dad to him out to the playground where all the grown ups played basketball and he showed Thomas around and even introduced him to some of the players. Then a policeman’s car pulled up and Dad got real quiet when he said, “You growing up now, son, so you need to know this. Those people in them police cars aren’t there to help us. They there to hurt us.”

“But momma drives the police car.”

“Momma’s different, but there ain’t too many like her. Remember that.”

He did remember. As he watched his dad watch the TV he said under his breath, “mmm hmm.” He hoped his momma didn’t hear him.

I encountered a rival coach tonight and he was quick to remind me that his son was state champ. Mine too as we have two divisions. He tried to recruit my boy and I turned him down on the spot. I like where we are and what we are building there. I’ve been thinking more about that lately and about the development of my own son as an athlete and what role I play in that. To that end I have been developing a plan.

I was watching footage of his games last season and he really needs to work on stance and start. He needs to develop more explosiveness–especially out of his lateral movements. This is where he lacked last season–the ability to start quickly after stops. He was slow on the restarts, allowing defenders to close after he would break down for cuts. We have already been working on some of that but the stance and start is key. So is finishing blocks.

This is about the end of his youth football cycle. He has one more season after this and then it is over. So, I really want these next two to be fun and to be impactful to his growth. He wants to go far in the sports. He is willing to work hard. Let’s see how far he can go when he stays with the same group and develops.

Some Thoughts:

1. Delaying Covid Story#2 until tomorrow. Just not feeling it tonight.
2. Snowpiercer: The Series is legit.