Month: May 2021

So, I have a number of odd theories kicking around in my brainpan. One of them is that we do in fact live in a multiverse. I believe there are many versions of ourselves operating along the probability matrix. I’ve been thinking on this for decades and the more I consider it the more I feel this is how things are. It ties into the larger questions of quantum entanglement and the multiple iterations of existence itself. Is this the 8th time our universe has been created only to eventually be destroyed? Why are we here at all? While I am fine with the possibility that we are a side effect of a randomized planetary collision, I am not fine with us using that as a blank check to do whatever we want to existence. We need to learn. We need to make things better. We need to figure out what ‘better’ actually means.

It dos not mean doing the nonsense we are doing now as a fragmented global society. We need to be better than we are now. This much is certain.

Some Thoughts:

1. AZ skyline makes the heat entirely worthwhile.

Basketball got interesting. What they did to ramp up interest was to create a play in tourney that stretches the number of playoff teams from 16 to 20. Those games started yesterday and the East kicked it off with some good games. The Hornets showed that they were not ready, getting blown out by the Pacers. The Wizards caught an L but they get to play on against the Pacers for a chance to face the #1 seed. Fun, right?!

It is kind of cool–especially since tonight gives us Lakers v. Warriors and the Curry show. That game is a big one, because whomever wins gets to face the 2 seed. The loser has to play again to see if they can make the playoffs proper. I like it. My ‘what do I have some small input in within my world’ brain suggests that this is how we start to develop youth playoffs. This helps to create sensible seeding that allows teams to be in the grouping where they will have the best and most competitive games. This won’t happen of course, because youth sports is governed by influence and the ones who have influence are the ones who aren’t trying to get the best games for everyone but are trying to plot their own path to a so-called national championship.

I’ve given up on competitive youth football. I am focused on seeing my kid through this last year by expanding his skills and skillset in a way that prepares him for high school. He’s done the thing where he travels for a ‘ship and wins. He’ll probably be invited to do that in Florida this winter, though I presently have zero interest in supporting that. Now he just needs to get better and get faster and smarter at the game.

Talislegger has always been a bit of an experimental and experiencial medium for me. I meant the blog to be a way to keep me active as a writer. 10 minutes a day minimum was the rule. If I did nothing else then I would still do this blog. The expectation is I do this until I expire (read: dead man passing into the void). I don’t expect that for a long time. In fact, I expect this will serve as a dream log or diary of sorts where I can track where I was in life at any given time by going to that date and time in the blog.

Once, my partner printed me a year’s worth of blogs. It is among the nicest things ever to be done for me (she holds the top 10 list, btw. all of it). Reading through those after the fact taught me quite a bit about where I was in life and how to move forward. It also showed me the disparity in days where I really had something to say and when I did not. you all know those days. There are the ones where the blog goes on for pages as my fingers fly across the keyboard and there are the others where putting together a paragraph seems more than I can manage.

Over this time I discovered patterns and devised days on which to do certain styles of writing: Waiver Wednesday, Freewrite Friday… So, I think it is time to introduce a new piece to the blog: Turnback Tuesday. That is when I will turn back the clock and look through an older blog at random, reflect on whee I was then vs. now and perhaps how the world was then vs. now. It is a specific way of reflecting that I believe will be helpful to not just me. Also, alliteration.

So, we have three days locked in and four more to shape or not shape as the winds demand. Onward then. Let’s write.

I’ve been tossing the word around in my head for a number of days. It means a representation of a plan or theory in the form of an outline or model or a syllogistic figure according to the Oxford Languages dictionary. I use it to represent this lifeplan that I have not fully come to understand or even form–be it with my partner or independently. I think this is at the route of so many problems in my life. Like everything else, it goes back to the wire…

It is indeed the other way, but while everyone around me feels I have control of that way, I don’t feel that way. I feel like I don’t know what to do and that my life is a series of rooms in which I find myself and while I am in those rooms things exist in one state and when I leave the room things exist in another state and the people in the rooms often don’t connect independent of me.

Could I be Schrödinger’s Cat?

While I am out of the space I believe the poisonous gas is slowly killing everyone in my life or at least infecting them in some fashion where they are being changed by the situation.

I need a schema. I need a good schema. Can I haz schema pleeze?

Some Thoughts:

1. On Wednesday we can talk about the legitimacy of a Knicks playoff run. We can also talk about whether or not D. Jones is for real and the upcoming fantasy season… I still haven’t paid off the last one and that matters… It’s all about responsibility to the schema.

A couple of things happened today…

My kids picked up on a wild rumor that Aaron Rodgers retired. he didn’t. I picked up on a rumor that Brie Larson is being tapped to play a new arc Jedi more powerful than Darth Vader… might be true. Lord I hope not. This isn’t even about the role of female characters in that or any universe. This is about creating retcons that remove the value and purpose of the existing story. Thor was meant to be ‘that guy’ and they built an arc around him that leveled him up beyond all that could and would be–short of Thanos. Then they basically wrote in two characters who could beat Thanos one on one.

Really?

Vader was the child of light and dark–a Jesus-esque character born entirely out of a need to balance the equation. Neo was the same way. Now we are going to say that another Brie Larson vehicle is here to erase the worth of that history? What’s next, is the Matrix 4 going to introduce a female character who is actually ‘the one’?

Pardon the sarcasm, but this needs to stop. We can have strong female characters without tearing down the men who came before them. In fact, having to tear down the men is largely what makes them weak and turns off audiences. I don’t deny the male-centricity in most science fiction and fantasy. I speak and teach of it. I talk about the Ripley character being a scion in a way that Jenette Vasquez didn’t entirely pull off. Ripley wasn’t there as some version of a male fantasy. She was a deeply flawed badass with a survival instinct. What is Captain Marvel? Well, she’s a bot. She makes Vision feel human. She’s no Wonder Woman. So, why don’t we find a way to split the difference and make more bad ass chicks that don’t need to trample a dude to get noticed. Let’s have more Ms. Marvel and less of the Captain.

I would love to go to a football game again. I would love to be a part of a giant crowd roaring their approval. I want to see a concert–any concert so long as it is one whose crowd is large and demands the sound cranked up high and for the day after my ears still reverberate with the passion of the evening. I’d like to see a show. I’d like to know again what it is like for the lights to dim and the actors to take their spots upon the stage and, in that moment, become an observer transported into someones dream–or perhaps someone’s nightmare in the theater pressed close to a hundred people as amazing unfolds on the screen.

I want to visit a theme park. I want to see Monster Truck’s race. I want to be on a beach filled with people loving the sand and surf. I want to know that we have come through this and we are alive and we are changed and all can be what we hope in some small fashion, because resilience is what makes us great and what makes this world great.

This is what I want. This is not what I expect.

There will be football games and concerts and shows. The theaters are open and will fill again. Monster Trucks will race to screaming crowds without me. The beaches are open and will be drenched with sunbathers. All of this is coming to pass and I’ve yet to define my role in it. I have a life to live with my partner and some thinking to do about what that means for us.

Blithesome: with lightheartedness or unconcern : gay, merry

Slowly, a formula resolved in Enoch’s mind that suggested that he did not belong in this world. It was not as though he did not belong in any world. Perhaps there were, as one writer eloquently suggested, other worlds than these. Enoch had never seen these other worlds–these parallel incantations of his own expandingly bleak reality. His current relationship to the present suggested that if there were such places than that is in fact where he was meant to be, because here wasn’t it.

So, it was with that mentality that he began to move forward in his daily life. He was able to approach things with the curious aplomb of a man who did not care what happened to him or to those around him. It felt like life then were more of a show than his personal reality. It felt then as if this were a way station on route to his truer purpose.

So, when he saw the man struck by the car he watched the event unfold with true fascination. It played out in his head in slow motion. He felt, as he often did now, that he was meant to learn from these things and understand as an observer might. He did not know his true purpose therefore he did not realize the purpose of his understanding; only that he must.

It did not matter that the person in the car was his sibling. It did not matter in the least.

So, here is what my family life looks like:

I have a mother who was borderline abusive and I learned to dislike as I grew older. Far from a total demon, she did things that were beneficial to me. However, she did them in pursuit of her own ego and agenda. She made decisions for me, and is likely responsible for a great deal of my anger issues. Fast forward to my divorce and she found an ally in my ex wife. Better to say that she found someone who didn’t care that they were being manipulated so long as it ended with a payment.

More and more my mother has tried to intervene in my children’s lives and make decisions about those lives (whether or not they take driver’s ed, for example) entirely independent of me. She is making a serious effort to bring them across the country to see her completely independent of me, and has not spoken to me in nearly a year. In short, my mom is trying to ursurp my role as a parent. I will not stand for that.

It is the role of a grandparent to be supportive of the parent, not to try and create a power dynamic where she feels like she is the one in charge. She has never understood or cared to understand that and the more she reaches for power, the more likely I will make an effort for my kids to never see her again.

Some Thoughts:

1. Never blog angry… yeah I broke that rule.
2. I am angry about a lot of things from family all the way to politics. It is at times like these I want to tell everyone screw off and let them burn it all down and just leave.
3. But then what? I’m just another freak in a cabin in the woods with kids who grow to hate him? Full circle I suppose.

I’ve been checking out The Cost of Winning on HBO Max. The documentary tells the story of a catholic school in Baltimore that was kicked out of their league because, well, they got too good. They started recruiting players (like everyone else but better at it) and they built a serious team on the coaches dime. He went out and got some real ones and taught them how to be men and how to get out of their conditions. He gave them a shot and was chided for doing so because he was the wrong skin color. He was a white guy, so he was buying slave players. The racism inherent in that criticism came from all sides. It underscores a lot of the problems in sports.

I was part of starting a solid football program. I brought kids up from the age of 6–many of whom are top ranked players now. That happened because they played together and grew together and struggled and had something to fight for. That isn’t the case with a lot of these clubs out here. That honestly was the case when we went to the Argos and stopped being the case soon thereafter. I don’t know why. I suspect it is because we brought in people who had been together and wanted to act like they were taking over what we were building vs. building together.

That’s what I am about. I’m about coaching kids on technique and coaching kids on heart and belief. You gotta know how to play and you gotta feel how to act. Football–sports in general is about respect. When you forget how to give it you lose the opportunity to get it. You need to get punched in the mouth. You need to fall down in order to learn how to take a punch and in order to learn how to get back up. Most teams go down after getting down in a game and that is about preparedness. That is the role of a coach–in every sport.

In the distance the kids are arguing about the similarities between Jojo’s and Baki the Brawler as they boot up another episode of Clannad. I’ve retreated to the relative silence of the room where the only noises to rise above the whisper are the AC and the penetrating grind of the humidifier. I need a new humidifier. It wakes me up at night, piercing the calm veil of sleep and warning me that I may never return. I need sleep. With sleep I can do two chapters a day (maybe), a trick I plan to try this week.

It’s been a relatively fast week. I find myself approaching the middle of the month with classes ending and a novel that is further from finished than intended. I look forward to the summer. I look forward to what adventures may come. I’m trying to get back in shape. I’m looking towards spending more time in the pool and at the beach. Life is solid right now.

Some Thoughts:

1. See, I really do need to figure out what to do with the Tuesday blog. A writer’s column maybe? reflecting on stories or books?