10 Minute Rule

A question popped up in my last CRW workshop: How do you effectively write characters who are nothing like you? This one is near and dear to my heart as I tend to write characters who are racially and sexually different from me. I write a ton of Asian, Native Tribal, and white characters, though I am not any of those things in any significant way. I write women and I am a man. Still, I like to think the writing is both believable and meaningful in spite of not being connected to those cultures in a native way. How do I do it? I try to find common ground and go from there.

My partner is from the south and over the course of our relationship we’ve discovered that black culture and rural southern poor white culture is basically the same culture. The foods are the same but the slang is often different. The struggles are the same, but the focus of blame is sometimes different. The conditions are the same as often is the relationship with the law and the deep rooted familial instinct that governs both cultures. There are threads of sameness throughout the two cultures, because in many ways they come from the same place. They were just raised different.

I feel the same can be said of any gender or culture. At the root of all of it are the same wants and needs. The way we are taught to respond to such things differs, but those things can be sussed out through example. A rich kid wants the same basic things a poor kid wants–power and respect. The differences lie in the expectation of such, the level of such, the means through which it is gotten, and most importantly, the rules and language of engagement these power interactions have. Most of that requires some basic research but if you go back to the core emotional need (respect and power) you will see similar motivations. Start there. 

Any cultural interaction is to me like playing a game. There are rules specific to every game as there are rules to the interactions, and everyone wants to win. As a writer it is your job to determine what winning looks like, how much it is worth to the character, as well as their ability to adhere to the rules of the game.

Sara said, “I don’t get it. You’ve been on the edge of salty all day.”
She was sitting in Henry’s room flipping through a People magazine she found on the kitchen counter before she came up. Outside it was raining hard enough to hear. To Henry the sound was white noise. He just wished it could shut her up too.
“So, you going to tell me what is going on with you or what?”
“Nothing.” Henry said. It was the kind of lie people told casually; the same sort of thing like when girls said they were fine.
“Nothing.” She repeated. She rolled her eyes and tapped her foot against his. Henry was sitting on the edge of the bed caught between laying down and standing up. He’d have chosen the former had Sara not shown up. Now he was leaning the other way.
“Nothing.” He said. “I thought you had soccer today.”
She raised her eyebrows and slowly shifted her vision towards the window before returning her gaze to him.
“What, it’s just a little rain. My team always practiced when it rained.”
“That’s because football coaches are stupid and sadistic. Besides, the field flooded this morning and the rain hasn’t let up since. Coach Winters said they may cancel the games this week. Arizona really doesn’t know how to handle rain.”
Henry shrugged, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to talk to her—he wasn’t ready to tell her. Still, that didn’t stop her from talking to him. “How about you take me out instead? My mom said I could stay out till 10. We could see that new movie that you were talking about. You know, share popcorn.”
“I have to do homework and my mom will kill me if I don’t get these chores handled tonight.”
Sara’s bright face dimmed a little, the corners of her mouth turning into brackets. She said, “Really? You see what I mean about being salty? You’re going to ditch me for homework and chores?”
He shrugged again. Outside thunder rattled the window and lightening left streaks in the air like the ghosts of a camera flash.
“What’s wrong with you?” Sara said. She crossed her arms over her chest in that way that usually made him cringe.
“Nothing, I told you.”
“Yeah. Nothing. Well, it is definitely something. I saw your mom when I came in and she was like the happiest I’ve ever seen her. Yet you’ve been a dumpy dog since first period. Nothing, right?”
He sighed and asked her to leave it alone, which might have been the worst thing he could’ve said, because she stood up then, arms still crossed, and told him that she would.
Henry thought about going after her. He thought about finding some way to explain his distance and his anger all day but it wasn’t anything he could explain—not in a way that made since to anyone else let alone his girlfriend. Today was supposed to be the best day of his life. Yet at the same time he hated everything about it.
He closed the door after she left. He turned off the lights and sat in the darkness listening to the rain steadily assault his window.

I have rarely been excused for a holiday guy. It took the better part of today (and a helpful reminder from NPR) to realize that I had yet to wish my adoptive sister a happy Hanukkah. Moreover, despite growing up in Manhattan, I still don’t know how to spell that word—or if it should actually begin with a C. I love the holidays, but I’m not very good at them. This I why it helps to have a partner who cares.

Today I made merry. I carefully hung lights—abandoning my tradiotonally rushed and haphazzard placement for patient deliberation and meaningful detail. I helped make the House festive. Though the bulk of the work was her doing, I felt a part of it and through that a part of what makes the holiday joyous. 

The preparation for Xmas ought not to be treated as a chore but a celebration. You get to show off your lights and decorate a tree. You get the privilege of making merry. This only happens once a year. The decorations we use for Halloween have a far more nefarious purpose in design and execution. Christmas is about joy, wonder, and possibility. At one point we all hoped we were nice and not naughty. We wished for a merry Xmas, a happy Hanukkah, a bountiful Nee year. The ritual of preparation is our own hoop dance towards those causes. 

This year I mean to prepare my house with passion. Perhaps it will earn me good tidings for the holidays nd new year, but truthfully what I ask is minimal. I ask only that I can enjoy the moments making the house ready—making the house merry. 

This is about Kareem Hunt. For those who don’t know, Hunt is the starting running back for the KC Chiefs. Well, he was until a video emerged of him in an altercation with a young woman. He knocked down another dude who inadvertently knocked her to the ground. The altercation continued and Hunt kicked her while she was down. Hunt was fired the day the video emerged and now is waiting to see if another team wants to take a chance on him. I’m going to say something that is not politically correct: Hunt was put in a dangerous position and reacted the wrong way. This should not mean he no longer has a career in the NFL.

Here is the video. It has been deemed a brutal assault and drawn comparisons to the Ray Rice assault. However, a careful analysis of both shows but two key commonalities. Both women delivered the first hit and both videos were released by TMZ in an effort to draw in more clicks. In the hunt video the kick was delivered with little to no force in an effort to humiliate and demean vs. do damage. 

That doesn’t make it right, but it does raise questions about whether or not a man can recover from this kind of media coverage. 

Being a dad is the roughest job I’ve ever had. Well, it is not actually a job. It is a way of life that affects every aspect of how I function daily. It is an ongoing struggle to teach my kids good habits, maintain a safe and healthy environment, get everyone everywhere they need to be, and find time to enjoy them as small humans–even as they grow, change, and piss you right off. 

I think I hit a limit to all of that this evening. The trigger was small but relevant. They just were not being good to each other. I thought, if they had some uniting event that could make them a tighter bunch. I thought, if they didn’t have me that would make them a tighter bunch. For a moment I wanted to go. Part of that emotion still lingers–the measured and thoughtful part that still believe there ought to be a moment that brings them together. 

Part of me knows that it is not about a single moment but about a sustained effort to remind them of the lasting importance of brotherhood. They need each other. They will need each other long after both their parents are gone.

Some Thoughts:

1. The future Mrs. Talislegger is worried about my happiness. Her concerns are valid. I can’t seem to do much more than catch my breath anymore. As I argued yesterday, there is no quiet. I suspect the condition will continue to be as such indefinitely.
2. The key is finding time to fall into myself and my thoughts–time that isn’t merely recovery.
3. Yes, future mrs. is presumptuous. I dare to dream.

I found myself drenched in silence. The classroom, recently emptied, held the familiar hum of air processors and distant rumble of students. In that fresh silence I found a moment to think and now, to blog.

I think I have been a bit frazzled lately. I am under the normal pressures of life, so I am left with no excuse for feeling frazzled. I feel like I’ve lowered my standards of living tremendously as a way to merely get by. I live in the moments between the normal pressures of life, and I let a lot of the short term responsibility fall into the cracks. What I do, most of all, is glide between sheets of noise landing only on the quiet. 

What is the quiet. It can be as it seems–pure silence in which my mind can relax. It can be listening to a book or a meditation and playing minecraft. It can be watching TV that occupies the lizard portion of my brain and imagination but little else–leaving the rest to, well, rest. Most often it is being wrapped up in the arms of my partner and recognizing that this is the moment I feel loved, safe, and part of something. 

I used to find that quiet in the writing, but I don’t anymore. There is too much stress attached to writing as opposed to the relief and joy it always brought. That is the focus of my introspection lately. I need to know why I have no connection to the writing zeitgeist. 

For that I need quiet.

Mark the Giants down for a high draft pick. It is a mistake on their part to aim for such, but expect it to be how things go. All things considered, I bet they take a lineman and then shill for a QB in the second round. They are in this position because they dramatically departed from their first half offensive scheme and as a result had nearly 0 offensive production in their make or break second half of the game against the Philly Eagles. Needless to say the Eagles rallied and won and the Giants fell completely out of contention.

Most people act like they were always out of contention. I felt a few moments of hope before my eyes razored shut in despair. Now I know for sure that the Giants are the new Knicks. New York big three athletics is dead for the foreseeable future. What are the big three? Football, Basketball, and Baseball. Lost, Losing, and Lost a long time ago. Yet hope springs for a handful of other teams, including Chicago–a team predicated on defense and poised to whip the dog out of the Giants this week. Houston too no longer has a problem. Instead the old guard teams of the Patriots and Cowboys continue to stumble towards the playoffs and likely towards an early exit from the playoffs.

At least those fan bases still have hope. The best we can hope for in NY is a few good runs by Barkley on the way to a loss. 

Do you ever feel like you are running out of time? Feel like the window of opportunity is sliding closed and the weight of the thing is too much to lift again? That you’ve made too many mistakes and moved too far away from the path in order to have any lasting success? I like to call that Tuesday. 

And six other names. 

My fear of mortality is likely at the root of this desperation. That and a lingering sense of interpersonal certainty that leads to a lasting uncertainty. I continue to wonder when (at least not if) I get my vision of happiness or at least something something roughly adjacent.

In terms of writing it is more than a cold water metaphor. It is this concern that I continue to make wrong choices in terms of where to spend my writing energy and wind up spending what little energy I have (after wasting most of it through indecision) writing the stuff that doesn’t make me happy. 

Time is not exactly on my side here. Maybe I ought to be figuring out a way to get to work and get things right. Well, it isn’t like I’m not already doing that… Maybe I ought to be finding a way to do it right or at least better.

When I was a kid I was terrified of climbing into the pool. I wasn’t at all afraid of the water. The thought of drowning never crossed my imagination. No, it was the cold that held me at bay. That moment when your skin breaks the surface tension and that thin line of surface razors through your sensibilities and reminds you that this was a really bad idea but if you keep going you might get over it…eventually. 

That is the moment I have every single time I need to start writing a new piece. The surface tension of a story terrifies me. Yet, like the water it is a hollow fear. It is the idea of the thing–the brief yet lingering feeling of desperation vs. the cold vs. the thoughts of commitment and possibility of failure–that conjures doubt and resistance. I have not written new work in well over a month. I have not written work that I was already contracted to write in nearly a year. I stand at the edge of the pool terrified to dip in my toe. 

I don’t even know if fear or doubt are the right words for this situation. I do think the universe is not necessarily pushing me in one direction or another. I am faced with the choice to dive in or not and once in I ought to stay, because every time I get out this happens.

It is entirely possible that I am halfway or even 2/3rds of the way done with my time being alive. This is a tragedy but also a revelation. I may have burned through most of my life already. I may be in a kind of twilight and as such I need to accomplish as much as I can in the time I have left.

This urgency is born of simulation. I’ve been playing these games where entire lives are simulated. I noticed that in the games I tend to take the life paths I feel I should have, as if to resolve in my mind that I made a mistake as opposed to finding the bright in what is happening now. 

In truth all life is chance and opportunity. My life has been grand so far and I’ve done so much. Still I have much left to do.

Some Thoughts:

1. Watching the film of the flag game I am remiss to admit that I have lost more form than speed. In other words, my strides are awfully tight. I still have good fast twitch, but I’m not able to extend and stride. This is a problem my kids–especially the first born–have a tendency to fall into, which leads me to believe they are getting it from me.
2. I also realize that the kids enjoy and thus need to see me doing more of the things I love. More writing. More spending time with my partner. More physical stuff. In addition, actually playing games with them on their terms. By that I mean playing a little more CoD and Fortnite vs. hiding out in the magical land of Minecraft listening to audiobooks and digging holes. 
3. Crazily, the semester is almost over. This is a good thing, because I need a real reset.