10 Minute Rule

Downstairs the Franchise Boys are entertaining friends, raising the number of boys making noise to six. Upstairs Luke Cage is on the TV and there are a dozen chores to be done before I get to the grading. I don’t stop anymore, because when I do I freeze up, Han Solo locked in carbonite waiting to be set free. So I don’t stop. I keep moving forward. I keep doing, listening, learning, and willing myself forward.

Buddhism teaches me how to pause, to see the world around me, and to reflect on the moment. This moment I live in doesn’t keep me in a positive headspace. So instead I keep moving forward, ignoring the moment and hoping to arrive at a better moment; hoping to find and do things in life that invigorate me and make me want to stay in a moment that is about to happen as opposed to falling back into broken memories of a moment that has already passed.

Some Thoughts:

1. I have a blog coming up about the Luke Cage series, but I’m not done yet.
2. I’m still here.

It is time to admit that students don’t spend all their time thinking about my class. More to the point, they have so much going on in their lives that my class needs to be a series of encapsulated moments in their lives that relate to their lives, impact their thinking about their lives, but doesn’t put them in a position where they have to devote a significant portion of their mental energy trying to sort out what they are supposed to do.

In short, due dates and assignments need to make more sense.

The other night a student emailed me asking why there wasn’t a place to submit her presentation online. I reminded her that the presentation was an in-class experience that could not be submitted online. Unfortunately, the due date of 11:59 PM sent a very different message. It is an easy fix, but a philosophical shift as well. See, I discussed this issue with that student in class two days prior. She nodded, accepting my instruction, and then proceeded to do exactly what I said not to do. She didn’t retain anything from that conversation. She isn’t the first.

Students have multiple classes all asking different things at different times, meshing into a canvas of work they’re responsible for turning into a sensible schedule. On the other hand the teachers I know try hard to limit the number of preps they are responsible for in order to avoid that same sort of chaos.

What if I tried to bring these two worlds together in order to create a sensible and responsible set of scaffolded assignments that let a student know from day one the type of rhythm required? Every Monday you do X, every Wednesday you do Y. At the end of the month, Z. The schedule allows for it, but I’ve never thought to build things out in that fashion–fitting my essay and assignment schedule around a standard sequence vs. building around activities, events, etc.

It may make life easier for everyone invovled.

Some Thoughts:

1. For the first time, I genuinely don’t think I will make it to post 3650. My passion for writing and all things is as blood seeping from a wound that I cannot stitch.

Last check, over 15,000 Americans voted for Harambe for president. In other words, more people than live in the average small american town felt that a dead ape was the way to go. That tells me a great deal about where we are as a culture. I learned more about that in a conversation I overhead at the campus coffee shop.

boy one: Concert was cool. It was real, you know?

Boy 2: Yeah, but the area was sketch.

Boy one: Its central phoenix. Of course it is.

A week ago that conversation would’ve rolled off my back, but the idea of an entitled kid going down to the hood to connect with a musical sound born out of that hood and then turning around and insulting the hood that created the sound seems all too American right now. In other words, I am ready to open my eyes to the vast diversity and depth of my own relative minority status in this country. I am not talking about me as a black man, but me as a free thinker who looks at and speaks towards the long game and the implicit understanding that we are all trying to rise and become something that reflects what we believe to be the ideals of the founding fathers.

What I am seeing instead of what I am is a country that is largely dominated by individuals who want to push their agenda under the guise of Americanism but is largely based in capitalism and imperialism–everything other countries have accused us of being for decades. Yeah, we were that but we often hid behind the guise of being something better. With Trump it is out there, naked and revealed and, well, dangerous.

Why do I see danger in Trump? Because he is a man who has and will continue to be a bully. Now the bully has more power and a congress that supports his play. Moreover, he has no understanding of the role of ‘his underlings’ in determining law. He believes that he and his cabinet determine law, start and end wars, and command the free world. When he meets resistance he will publicly insult and cajole. When people don’t fall in line he will bully and alienate. This is not speculative this is what he has already done leading up to the election.

So yeah, I’m worried. I just don’t know what I am supposed to do.

Barring a pre-xmas miracle Donald Trump will be President-Elect as of the morning. I am so totally baffled and ashamed of my country right now that I don’t even know what to think. Trump, best recognized as every version of that rich kid bully who never gets his in the movies, came out as a big plans guy–an outsider who held is ideas close to the vest, promising to surprise us when he is ready. He appealed to a significant portion of the USA and that portion came out to brexit vote.

I don’t know what happens next. Even the smart people I know are rather uncertain of what is going to go down with him as president and both the house and senate controlled by his party. The opposition balked at the ease at which Obama was able to get his measures passed. Now I wonder what is going to get passed under this watch.

I am drained and emotional and done.

Feels like anti-christmas in town. On the one hand the people in my orbit are acting like nothing is different. On the other, the media is howling like wolves at the moon. All of this bleating and worry and false excitement is built up around the media’s version of the Super Bowl: Election Day. Finally there will be a legit 24 hours worth of news to deliver, as opposed to running the same story every ten minutes and sandwiching a lot of fluff between.

Fake Super Bowl/anti xmas/bad easter always provides a host of close political races to wet our appetite for the big finale late in the night. This year’s Clinton-Trump race has been categorized as historic and exciting and a real nail biter without any sense of whether it is going to be real or not. I suppose the hype makes it real the way the hype makes the Kardashians real.

As I type away my last pre-election blog I am left wondering: How big of a deal is this, really? I mean the right congress could mitigate either side. Maybe that is just the campaign fatigue talking.

‘It’ll be good’ is one of those statements that should be viewed with the same wariness awarded to ‘trust me’ and ‘everything is fine’. You know, the kind of wariness reserved for encounters with poisonous snakes and Wells Fargo bankers; the sort of thing where you back away slowly, careful not to make any sudden moves. You don’t want to turn around either, less you catch a fang in the ass. That’s why when I curled up on the couch at 2 PM this Sunday morning I should have muted the voice in my head that said, ‘just get dressed and go to the store. It’ll be good.’

I wanted a new cleaning remedy for the dog-worn living room carpet. I read that Vodka’s bacteria-slaying properties made it an excellent, if unconventional, choice for a cleaning experiment. I was out, so the choice was stay home and endure the lingering hint of Yorkie accidents or get off my lazy butt and do something about it. I’ve been on a new page lately. Everything is in high gear for me in terms of mindfulness, self-reflection, and action. When the voice said what it said I decided to listen.

It didn’t even take a block to regret my decision. A sound started in my tire as I rounded the corner. A wet ‘thwock’ followed by a repetitive thump that matched the cadence of my RPMs. This couldn’t be a good thing. I slowed, turned, and parked before inspecting the tires for damage. The bolt stuck in my tire was what the Big O salesman referred to as ‘a huge one’. It burrowed into the groove of my tire with only a fat round washer to prevent it from punching all the way through. I got to the tire store relying on a 17 MPH coast and hazard lights that made more people angry than they raised concerns.

Now I am at Fry’s thinking about how the universe works. Turns out both front tires—only a year old—where about to give. The tread was completely worn out and it looked dangerous to even a novice like me. Still, I would not have looked and would’ve wound up in a worse situation. See, the universe tells you things so long as you’re willing to listen. These messages are largely indirect, coming in signs and portents. My pocket is lighter from the experience, but I am learning to listen.

Now the goal is to listen to the signs and portents in the rest of my life. There are messages out there that I have chosen to ignore. I can’t let that stand. I’ll listen, see. It’ll be good.

Slowly, I am moving back towards positive and introspective theory–emerging out of a chrysalis born from frustration, impotency, stagnation, and, well, Arizona. I am still in the same physical space, but my mind and heart are far away. I used to spend at least a week a year in NYC just as a way to reconnect with reality and life on the grind. I’d sit near a park and watch people go by, peaking in on their lives and conversations. It was a form a voyeurism, yes, but it was also a way to connect to the feed. There is more pure difference and life and reality (as I call and see it) in an hour on the streets of New York than in a a week of suburban AZ. In NYC everything is out there in the open. AZ happens behind closed doors and often behind the walls of passive aggressive minds and on the internet.

So, hard reset. I’m going back to the city–back to the grind. Back to square one where the Talislegger was born and where I found my love for life, writing, love, sex, and even football.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Desensitization and violence is a well studied phenomenon. It stands to reason that the same principles apply to pornography. I posit that people who expose themselves to porn not only have increasingly unrealistic expectations of female (and to a lesser extent male) bodies. Likewise they become desensitized to the body–more judgmental and have different expectations. If I was in the field I would try to find a corollary to Routine Activity Theory, from Criminology.
2. Since I am not an academic researcher what will probably happen is a short story that explores the connection between science, porn, and sex. Yeah, that is gonna happen.

Here’s the thing: I lost something (ugh, that word again. Didn’t we break up?)

I lost a great deal of the passion I had for the written word. I buried beneath cleats and turf and jerseys for various sports. I spent a chain of three uninterrupted years living atop a pile of sports. We played so many sports in succession that I defined the season by what sport I happen to be coaching. Then I decided to stop. In the clarity of a series of solitary moments strung together I recognized that the passion is still down there.

This moment of clarity was aided by Gregg Hurwitz, a NYT best-selling author who is most recently known for the Evan Smoak/Nowhere Man novels. Hurwitz was born in 73, not long before me and since the 2000’s he’s been a top-notch writer publishing comics, screenplays, and 15 novels. Did I mention he was a student-athlete and a top scholar? He’s basically a better version of my own story. He managed all of the things I intended for my career. Instead of thinking about how to be ‘that guy’ he went out and did it. I went out and learned the inner workings of youth soccer and a dozen other games, sports, etc.

I do not regret my decision to be a father or to entrench myself in the life the way I did these past years. They remain a beautiful moment in time. However, I can’t be that guy 24/7 anymore. I’ll coach on occasion–I enjoy the connection and time it affords me with my kids. I won’t let it be the driving influence in my life any longer. November-March sans rec sports is just the beginning. There is a time to play and a time to be a writer.

Guess what time it is?

40+ years in and here’s what I know: Everything boils down to love. We do what we do in search of it, because of it, or to run away from the pain it can bring. I spent my first 12 years in a situation where love came easy. I had a mom, a dad, and a handful of friends that brought me joy. Things changed after that, the spaces between the moments of love stretching and morphing into something darker. For a while after I clung to things and people that showed me love. In time I grew less dependent on the idea and more driven by purpose, perhaps finding love in the things I did as opposed to the people in my life.

You can say you love a thing. You can say you love what you do, but the reality is that you are enamored by the feeling you get–perhaps from the act itself, perhaps from the adulation or admiration that comes as a result of the work or thing. People who love their cars don’t actual love the chrome and the rubber. People who love people don’t actually love the bone and the blood. We love the idea of people–the thoughts, beliefs, and actions wrapped in flesh and warmth. We love what they mean to us and, in terms of the living, what we mean to them.

This is where it gets tricky, because for me any real love is more than a self reflection. Love is not a negotiation. Love is saying to someone, ‘you are beautiful and valuable to me with all of your flaws. As I see you is how I love you.’ Love is acceptance and commitment and willingness to take everything in about a person and still love them and be with them. Outside of my boys I have only ever loved like that once in my life. And once is all I ever will.

Everything boils down to love. When it fills you, life is well lived. When it leaves you, the world can feel cold and empty. However, it doesn’t ever need to leave you. See, the most important thing is to be good to yourself by loving yourself.  Perhaps that explains why it is the hardest thing in the world to do.

The man in the dirty sweatshirt was broad shouldered with a potbelly and spindly legs. He wore a hat to mask a splotch of uncombed hair and his smirk promised that he’d yet to brush his teeth this morning. Yet when he saw the girl in the crop top it was he who looked on in disgust. She was not thin, at least as thin as he thought she ought to be, so when she passed by he stared down into her cleavage and said, “yuck.”

I froze, shocked by what I saw unfold. I suppose I should have expected it. In a world where we dismiss stories of proposed sexual assault as locker room talk and our porn is as vile, violent, and removed from reality as possible, why would I be surprised that a man would be emboldened to publicly shame a woman he doesn’t know?

She looked around, unfastening the headphones from her ears and slowing a step. He kept walking. He looked back once, shook his head, and motored on. After a moment I was the only one standing still–the only one in a crowd of shifting students who paid any mind to what just happened.

I don’t know that other people heard. I want to think I witnessed the exchange alone–that the woman didn’t hear the sounds he made, not that she was so desensitized to the commentary and abuse that it no longer registered to her senses.

All of me wishes it wasn’t that way. The truth is Marlo Stanfield had it right all along. I want it to be one way, but it is the other way. I want to live in a world where women are respected as opposed to codified and bullied. But it is the other way. I want to feel like gender and racial equality is a thing that we all want to strive towards. But it is the other way. I want to think that these problems aren’t a central tenet of how our country was both formed and continues to function/remain a global power. But it is the other way.