Month: October 2020

Ten minutes (and counting) to write something that has a little oomph to it. Let’s see what word leads our story…

Truculant

At night she never spoke. She tended to her evening chores, a short list that consisted of stoking the fire, sweeping nearby so that dust and debris would not set their small house aflame, and walking to each of the three windows and the one door to ensure each was locked and shut tight against weather and anything else present in the dark beyond their home. She did this work without question, as she’d done on her wedding night and ever since, as she’d done in her father’s home once her mother was gone, as her sisters did now in her absence. Alma rubbed her belly, considering the lineage she’d past down to the baby growing inside her.

It was a girl. This she knew in the way that good riders can sense a horse can go no further. It was a natural thing for her, more natural to not tell him. He wanted a boy; expected it. Perhaps the next child would be a boy. If not then the one after. She would try again and again until the birthed him an heir. She would give him what her own mother could not give her father, and thus avoid her grim fate.

Never did she speak of the incident. Even now when her thoughts filled the near empty space of her marriage home she did not give voice to the words. Instead she stared into the flames and imagined the thought burning and rising out of her like ash on the wind.

No, he would not bear to hear that she was having a daughter. He would not bear many things, especially on cold nights such as these where the work of the day had numbed his fingers and made them blue. Once she’d not prepared the meal in time for his arrival. He’d kissed her gently on the forehead, told her it was alright and then, without warning, shoved her to the ground and kicked her again and again until she screamed.

He knelt beside her and sighed. He said, “This is how I will help you when things are wrong. I will show you the pain of failure, so that you have the courage and the motive to avoid it.”

Then he kissed her.

Soon, hopefully, I can start version 5. I need to turn the page on 4. Somewhere around the early hundreds it deteriorated into what basically amounts to a poopfest of writing failures. This happened in a time of success that was marred by a terrible losing battle with depression. Of course, the battle isn’t over, but the battlefield is littered with wasted blogs, fractured relationships, and despair.

I can tell I am not in the best state of mind, because it is 4 am, I am awake, and all I can think about is the idea of some terrifying man walking up to my well lit front door and staring at me through the glass panes. Perhaps I am finally shifting over to being a horror writer. More likely this is a manifestation of my growing anxiety in life.

I’m anxious because nothing appears to be going well. It feels like the word deterioration. I have lost a great deal of my creative spark, in fact all of it when it comes to life beyond the page. I cannot remember the last time I had a good idea about my romantic life, home design; anything really. This is coupled with the growing realization that I have acute memory loss. More often than not the people closest to me discuss moments and conversations that I was a part of that I have no recollection of being involved with.

And still there is the idea of that man at my window at 4 am. That is vivid enough. He has tousled brown hair that hangs over his forehead. It is more stringy than styled. His eyes are bloodshot; his skin veiny. He has bumps on his face. He peers through the side glass and the arc of glass at the top of the window. He touches the glass with his dirty hands and his fingernails are flecked with red paint. He sees me. He is looking directly at me. I don’t know what he wants.

So there is that. Is this what it feels like to slowly descend into madness? Is it the fatigue? The inability to sleep? The rough collection of life events piling up on me like waves breaking against the sand again and again until the sand itself slips quietly into the darkness of the ocean.

I’m tired. So very tired.

I’m 57-31 now. I wish I had a better record. I wish I understood a bit more about each of these teams to be more predictive in who would win and who would not. Would that these predictive abilities extend to the wonder of fantasy I would be a millionaire. Or at least a few K richer. Money is an issue these days and I haven’t figured out a way to make more though I need to figure that out fast. Winter is coming and I cannot afford Christmas.

But enough about my woes… This is supposed to be about football. I’ll start back in the youth arena where two teams have moved up to D1 and two teams have moved down to d2. This changes little for us. We are fully aware that the d1 battle is going to put us in line to face either the AZ Suns or the Badgers on the way to the ‘ship. Probably both. Probably equally strong teams along the way. Not sure we have what it takes to win at that level. Not sure about the lower level either. We can compete, but a win seems only like a possibility vs. an assured situation.

On to the big boys… Giants have a legit chance for the ‘ship… NOT. Though winning the NFC East is a legit possibility providing they pull off a few more divisional wins. As for this week?

Bucs over Giants
No question here. Brady is historically troubled by the Giants, but not in this uniform and not with this team.

CAR over ATL
I don’t think the Falcons are very good.

BAL over PIT
Jackson.

LA over MIA

KC over NYJ
For me the real question is how is Bienemy going to use Bell in this one?

GB over MIN
GB won’t lose three regular season games. They’ve already lost one…

IND over DET
Best D in football vs. Detroit. I’m going with D

LV over CLE
Still going with D

TEN over CIN
Going with the ground game here. Burrow should get 400 yards but it won’t be enough.

NE over BUF
Divisional games are won by the Patriots. Period.

DEN over LAC
Not sure who the Chargers are yet. Hebert is solid, but he needs more time to develop winning ways.

SEA over SF
Tough loss last week. They will bounce back.

NO over CHI
I believe NO is a Superbowl team

PHI over DAL
The poop division will make PHI the team to catch at 3 wins…

The weather is changing for the better here in AZ. It is colder during the days and longer nights abound. I like the new weather. It compels me to go outside and to move around in the natural world in a way that I haven’t done regularly since Covid-19 changed our reality.

But changed it in which way? For the better, I believe. In my life, at least, the world slowed down and left me more time to write and to breathe and to be a person. In other ways it had drawbacks. It found me deeply enthralled in workplace politics, which inevitably led to my dismissal. As I’ve said in the past, I am happy about leaving that cesspool of small and fairly morally corrupt people for an opportunity to evolve as a writer and as a person. That evolution is a long time coming but also complicated by financial burdens and, well, laziness.

So now I am moving into the best time of the year and a great time to grow as a person. Let’s see what I can become.

Some Thoughts:

1. I’m deeply confused about the youth season. There is a disconnect between when the season itself will end and when the playoffs for the season will begin. The disconnect surrounds the December 5th start date for the national tournament. Even if our team isn’t going, the coaches are going with a different team, which means we won’t have the full staff…

The difference between life and fiction is that in life when you’ve written yourself into a corner the one thing you can’t do is get written out of it. In life the choices you make don’t undergo revision or deus ex machina. Instead things simply fall apart. You can try to keep going. You can patch it together with all the duct tape in the world until what was once a beautiful idea made real is just a duct taped production that doesn’t really work anymore.

I don’t love the idea of falling into a world where there is nothing left but duct tape on the things that matter the most.

Some Thoughts:

1. Turned my daughter on to ‘Last Man on Earth’ and it remains a lousy show. At least it is something to watch during the pandemic.
2. Life is rougher and rougher every day here. Some of it is pandemic but most of it is the weight of the bad choices I’ve made and the fact that everyone around me is forced to live with those choices. It is enough that I don’t want to be in charge of anything anymore and really just want to let go and let the leadership be in the hands of people who are most impacted by me vs. me myself. It is a cop out, but it is one that seems to make the most sense to me.
3. Back to Last Man. It has a strange similarity to Curb Your Enthusiasm which is another show about an asshole. I think that I see both shows very differently in the wake of the rise of Trump and in so far as spending so much time with these shows. I’m largely done with assholes. Perhaps having dealt with them so long and having to work so closely with them so recently that I cannot stomach them as protagonists.
4. Now I’m just trying to shift the conversation in other directions to kill time. Thank goodness the time is up…

I truly believe I have the capability of being a better father and partner than I am. I feel as though I am a shell of my former self and that shell is breaking–not in any happy chrysalis way but in the expose yourself to the void sort of way and it shows. It shows most in my inability to deliver on the work I am trying to accomplish. It shows in my trip to the ocean. It shows even in the little things like enjoying games and being able to offer any sort of competition. I am short tempered and depressed and rarely make the effort to take care of myself. I am forgetful. I drink too much. I think too little. I have forgotten the face of my father.

I’ve always felt like when writers create these characters and belief systems they are pulling down the words from another place. The words are like raw cloth that is colored by our individual situations. My love of Stephen King is the love of what arose from his pain and suffering. What is going to arise from mine? Who? When?

More and more I wonder how much time I have left to create a thing worth remembering; how much time I have left to carve a life that satisfies my partner and myself. I wonder if all the great horror writers live on the edge of this questioning, staring into chaos as a way to avoid the void and finding terrifying patterns in that chaos which they wave in front of our faces like warning flags.

Some Thoughts:

1. Everywhere I turn to escape feels like less and less of a joy. I cannot play Minecraft or Madden for very long. I’m trying a terrible face of the franchise and truly feel like I am wasting my time in the long run, but curiosity compels me. Nowadays players satisfy that curiosity by checking it out on youtube, but I guess I’m old school ’bout putting in the time.
2. I called this a resolution, but what did I resolve or resolve to do? Remember who I intend to be, I suppose. I know that person is not drenched in sorrow and anger.

In the office but it feels more like a getaway. I don’t know really what I want to say.

Or what I want to play or how I will choose to live my life today.

Or tomorrow.

I know that I feel drenched in sorrow.

I feel full of a rage and a pity for myself that I can’t swallow

That I can’t stomach, but I eat these feelings and try to let them out

That’s why blocks away they can hear and feel me shout.

I’m out.

But I am in because suicide is still a sin and I, sinner that I am

Still pretend that this is all for fam

But I’m just pretending and I am just a pretender

a fraud; send a message to my soul it comes back return to sender

There is nothing there.

Except maybe fear.

Except maybe tears.

Except maybe excuses for the weight I cannot bear.

So we find ourselves back here.

The definition of a man is the legacy he leaves behind.

Mine?

Shame, sadness, people on the decline.

I’m taking and shaping once great minds

Into the kind of debris and filth you never want to find, and that is what

I leave behind

When I am gone.

So instead I say. I wish sometimes I had a God to whom I could pray, because May-

Be

He might find it in his philosophy to bless me with the power to be more than just me and more than just eventually or why can’t he or why won’t he ever be or ever see that she is enough for he and

then

Perhaps one time I could win over sin

And then want to live yet again.

Amen.

Guttersnipe

Jamari walked to school in the mornings. In the afternoons he’d try to sneak into the subway, because it was less crowded, which meant less policemen to stop him. When he walked, especially on days like this, he thought about things. He thought about what was going on at home or in school or what he saw on the playgrounds as he moved past his neighborhood towards the heart of the city where the people were different and the rules were different too. Often he meditated on that word: different. When he played ball all the bigger kids liked to jaw about being different. They claimed to be ‘built different’ or ‘made different’ and for them he supposed that was a good thing. With the way that where he came from was so far removed from where he lived, different had another meaning. It had another way of being talked about.

He wasn’t much for nicknames. In Jamari’s experience nicknames were reserved for the extremes; either people who were very good at something or people who were very obviously something not good. Fat Kamani, for example was in fact very fat. She hated the name and although she’d once tried to embrace it, never was able to shake the moniker. Even after she bought her entire class lunch that one day the nickname still stuck. Heck, it might have glued that nickname to her for life. Of course Fat Kamani had enough to buy food for everyone. If nobody else were there, she’d eat all that food herself.

Jamari avoided that situation. In fact he’d avoided her for almost a month after that. He thought nicknames might be contagious; a socially transmitted disease that stuck you hardest if you were predisposed to certain conditions. He didn’t like to think about it, but he was predisposed to a certain condition. He was reminded of it each time his friends talked about hanging out after school; about going over to each others houses to play and the weekend sleepovers. He’d avoided too many questions by talking about sports. He’d say he had practice or a game that weekend, even if he didn’t. It hadn’t always been that easy to get out of questions, especially when he was the one doing the asking. There had only been one time he asked his friends to come to his house. Memories of their laughter still twitched his skin like ghost pains.

The Giants suck. Let’s start with that. Let us dive headlong into that sewage canal of a performance. I expect more from the team. This is a fail on their part best realized by the 80 yd run that should’ve been a TD but was instead Jones tripping and falling…

He sold hard. Later he fumbled to lose the game. This after completing 20 passes for under 200 yards. This is unacceptable. He’s that player who should be great but isn’t. This season is that play.

Meanwhile I’m anxious to watch the replay of the debate. The early reports suggest it was an actual debate. Well, at least that is something.

On the personal front, I am working on redefining my life plan and trying to realize my purpose and path. I am a writer. But why? What else? How is my life designed to support my partners goals and purpose as well as my own? These are the questions I seek to unravel.

Stepping back from the emotional minefield that is my life and subsequently my writing in order to talk a little football. I achieved cognitive distance from the Giants season until Jon Oliver took a moment to slam my squad on Last Week Tonight. It was out of nowhere, brief, thorough, and entirely on point. So, I’m thinking about them again and thinking about that lone win. Maybe it morphs into two this week. Probably not. And now this…

NYG OVER PHI
I’m developing trust in this defense. In defense we trust…

PIT over TEN
As amazing as Derrick Henry is in RL and Madden, the PIT run defense is flat out better.

WAS over DAL
Dallas is falling apart.

BUF over NYJ
Speaking of falling apart, the Jets are the broke down palace of football.

NO over CAR
These two QBs go back a ways and that gives Bridgewater the advantage over the D, but Thomas is back, so….

GB over HOU
Green Bay? This is a three loss team… ON THE SEASON.

CLE over CIN
Lots of points in this one. I need Burrow to wreck, but I don’t expect him to win.

ATL over DET
Life is different when playing for your job.

SEA over AZ
Don’t let that Dallas win fool you. This is a different situation. Jamal Adams is gonna eat.

LAC over Jax
No reason. Just guessing here…

NE over SF
Kittle will probably score twice, but it won’t be enough.

KC over DEN
Adding Bell creates more opportunities for play action. This is the end of losing for the Chiefs.

LV over TB
TB12 in TB is going to do his thang but I still like what LV presents.

LA over CHI
I don’t believe in Foles. Or that fake looking 5-1