Day: July 24, 2021

When the powers that be in NYC rebuilt the east end of the city collectively known as the Pit, they relied on a widely known philosophy of ‘do only what we need to do’. In this case that meant only redeveloping as much as was obviously unstable or otherwise corrupted be it through damage, magical intervention, time, etc. This way the areas they didn’t fully rebuild could be marked as classic or historical. That is how Brooklyn wound up being a hipster mecca over half a century ago. There was enough of the repurposed old to wipe that suburban shine off the new and to make it accessible to those new faces coming in. Oh, and they did a bunch of old school redlining to get rid of who they deemed undesirable.

This matters to me because of the fountain on 29th and 2nd. The fountain is a landmark and has been for as long as I’ve been alive, though not for the reasons that most people approach it. The fountain was dedicated to the memory of the 27 metahumans murdered in that part of the city during New York’s version of the Night of Rage. Little known secret: The published 27 number was a lowball account. The police records I came across indicated more than double that number of injuries incurred that turned out to be fatal. Anyway, the fountain was erected to show our connections to metahumanity in a meaningful way. The statue at the center shows a long-limbed troll walking with a human boy holding one of his hands and a human girl holding the other. There is a quote, by Ghandi of all people, etched around the base of the statue that reads, “

“If you want to take revenge and feed your hate, you will never be satisfied. Only love can eradicate hate, not hate by itself”

Weird, right? I thought so. I also did a lot more digging and discovered that the spot where the statue was built just happened to be near a secret entrance to the Manhattan underground that was supposedly concreted over when the the fountain was erected. I say supposedly, because it wasn’t. In fact, the quote was a direct message to the increasingly hostile meta population that, “hey, we got this, so chill okay?”

It did not go well.

Fast forward to the present and the underground still exists and so does that entrance, because it was easier for the city to refurbish that set of blocks into a new hipster haven than it was to tear it all down. So that’s where I went.

Some Thoughts:

1. After drifting for a while, I decided it was important to get back to the key terms and situations of this story. Writing is like that more than it isn’t–you swim around a story, figuring things out in your head or on paper as you move, ever slow dang slowly, towards what is centrally the plot or the theme. I posted mine right at the beginning. I’m starting to make a little progress…

I spent the last 16 days in Seattle and I’m sitting at the airport waiting to board a plane to head home. I miss my kids, but I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to swim back towards a life that is designed around people who are for the most part entitled and think first of themselves and what they have going on. We’ve been enjoying a life that is about us and I’ve been enjoying that too. I’ve been working towards creating a balance where it is not about them all the time and I have a life that is about my partner and myself, but the fact remains that I easily fall into habits and show triggers that make my personal life fall apart all too easily. If feels like that tendency denotated the last few moments of this journey and, in a sense, ruined all the progress brough about by it. That is my fault.

My sense of balance is clearly skewed.

I don’t know what to do about tomorrow or how to start focusing on a life that is not about them and more about us. I need to be a better partner and keep focus on what I am focused on and what is important in the forefront.

Some Thoughts:

1. Doesn’t seem like I am long for AZ. I need to get out soon or I’m going to ruin what I have. I give it a year or two at the most. I need to get right with that fast.

People tend to speak of cities in a mythical way and over the years the city of note shifts. Seattle, Denver, Chicago, and Boston have been the big ones since that quake knocked NY for a loop long ago. Heck, those cities were already poised to be the ‘next big thing’ in one way or another and their rise to fresh prominence felt like an extension of what we already knew. Chicago has always been a drek hole so when it became Bug City it wasn’t too far of a leap. Likewise Seattle being where it is and how it is made it fertile ground for a number of expansions. What always surprised me was how quickly the Underground became the standard for what people thought about a city with an Underground network.

how quickly they forgot about New York.

I spent a fair amount of time in the underground in the early days of becoming a cop, because I had the kind of training that put you right in the middle of trouble and said, ‘figure out a way to deescalate.’ I was never the best suited for police work. Detective work maybe but the uniform didn’t fit my personality. At least that’s what they thought after putting me in those kinds of situations and realizing how quickly I went native.

so, when I was stuck I. The city needing to be both dry and hidden away, I did what I do best. I went native.

some thoughts:

1. Did this one on the phone as I chilled out for ten minutes at the end of a long and wonderful day. Came to me fairly slowly and thinly because I can no longer write at night.
   

I’ll be back to the bloganovella tomorrow. I’m back to the revving up phase, as I described it yesterday, and getting back into gear in terms of being a productive writer again. I hit these bumps in the road every so often. Some have to do with the lazy and some have to do with the schedule and still others have to do with a sense of being overwhelmed by my functional reality. However, if one thing is abundantly clear through all of this it is that I do in fact have a writing goal. Several, actually.

I want to write a hit series of books for audible.

I’ve grown so accustomed to listening to audiobooks from authors who are primarily audible/amazon stars that I feel like this is a really great path. I want to add my voice to that eclectic canon and I do believe I have the sort of writing voice that works for it. What will the aforementioned series be? Not sure at this point. I know that I want to be able to write a fantasy series and maybe this is the venue for it.

I have my major market contribution to sci fi.

It is possible that once I complete it this December I will find that I have a lot more to say, but this first go at a major market pure sci fi is a good one. I’m greatly enjoying the writing of it though it is very difficult at times and marries two parts of my life that have forever been separate—law and science.

I want to write a comic book series.

Perhaps the more appropriate term is guest write. I’d love to give it a go. I don’t have a specific comic in mind. I have perhaps a dozen I am intimate with and would live to build upon. Honestly, I would kill an Iron Man-esque Wakanda story that talks about a kid growing up in that environment with the tech skills to challenge Ironheart but ends up in a situation where they are on the wrong side of the law and the policies of Wakanda puts them in a terrible position. In this idea Stark and the Panther are forced to track this teen down and try to put him down… or turn him back towards the light.

After several days of just not being on my grind and not being my best and most productive writer self, I am trying to get back into gear. I know that I have to do just that, because I set deadlines and above all that I have a full time job (just one now) calling me back to the fold shortly.

Here is what I learned about me from Covid-19’s hibernation of sorts: I have an enormous capacity to do things and get stuff done, but that capacity shrinks very quickly when not utilized. If left to my own devices I will sit in a corner and waste most of the day wrapped up in some pointless and inane endeavor designed to give me a quick and easy victory. I’m a win addict. I play games like Apex and Clash Royale (and most recently Catan on the phone) for the quick W, but that quick and repetitive high becomes all-consuming and in a matter of hours I’ve eaten most of my will to work hard and get that greater success.  It is so much harder to sit down and work at constructing a novel that may or may not get published and, in the interim, is extremely mentally taxing than it is to peck away at my phone. In truth, I spent the first 30 minutes of today’s writing session playing Catan. I lost, btw, and then I sat down to write this blog about it.

Facts being what they are, I’m a lazy person. When in motion I can be a tremendously productive and good person. When not, I kind of suck as a human. What middle ground exists between the two is largely speculative.

So, it really comes down to who we allow ourselves to be in any given moment and how we train ourselves to stay the course—especially when it is hard and especially when there are really compelling distractions. I am fortunate to have a partner who helps when I am able to get past my own stubbornness enough to let her. That leaves me in the best life position to get things done, once I really get in motion.

As you’ve seen so many times on this space, dear reader, I’ve fallen off the productivity horse and I am trying to get back up and get back on. When I do, big things…