Captain’s Log – Page 6

Back to School

This morning I had my third official graduate level class. I am taking two this semester, and both have their challenges and joys, as one might expect. I’m also working at the same university, so that is at times convenient and busy making. But there is a nice intersection between my work and my studies that hopefully will be fun and productive.

I am working as the Writing Consultant. What does that mean? I assist students with papers and assignments. Punch up language, brainstorm, outline, higher-order thinking about logic and flow – everything is fair game. I haven’t met with any students yet (did I mention the semester just started?) so I have been filling my time by hanging flyers and speaking in various undergraduate classes about my services.

I am studying Oral Traditions and Literature alongside Abrahamic Shared Stories. Both are fascinating. In Oral Traditions I am examining four traditionally oral parts of literature that occur within a culture: proverbs (or idioms or sayings), riddles, poetry, and stories. It has been fun to think about proverbs, what proverbs are common in a language or cultural group, and what exactly makes a proverb (more on that later when I study it, I suppose!). Shared Stories will look at a few religious texts that are common between the Abrahamic faiths of the world, that is, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. This class is way more technical and foreign to me.

I say foreign in that Shared Stories involves Ancient Near East, or even current Near East, thought patterns which to me (as a modern Westerner through-and-through) are not familiar. I know the Bible stories that we will be examining, but again, only through my fundamentalist Christian upbringing. I will look forward to examining these stories through different lenses to encounter their differences, similarities, peculiarities, and what it all means. My professor for Shared Stories is Jewish, so the class will come front loaded with his worldview. I must confess, his way of thinking was very off-putting during his first class, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to continue in his class. However, I had a meeting with his co-teacher and she allayed many of my fears and encouraged me to step outside my comfort zone. Step I shall!

Oral Traditions will be more up my alley, though it, too, will look at many different cultures and locales around the world. That’s fine. Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve wanted to explore the world as best I can. Seeing as I haven’t budget to hop a plane and actually travel, I’ll take travel through literature. The university I am at, Dallas International University, began life as a linguistics-only school. It has since, and is still, growing beyond those beginnings. Getting back into education is something I have wanted to do for a long time, and I figured dipping my toes in where I live and work wouldn’t be a bad idea. Being that still most of the classes here are linguistic or anthropologic in nature, it was hard to find some that fit my literary bent. I think, in the end, I am taking the only two real literature courses that are offered.

Which brings me back to being the Writing Consultant. I will interact with my own classmates in Oral Traditions on at least one assignment, so I get to be paid for doing my own homework I guess. Ha! Works for me. At any rate, I am excited to be back in school. It is challenging, fun, has already been exasperating, and a little bit like riding the old metaphorical bicycle. I’m a little wobbly, but I think I’ll straighten out the wheels here in no time. I get to do reading, research, a little bit of creative writing, and help others at the same time. These are all things I love to do!

All that’s lacking to really feel scholastic again is leaves falling because it is cold (not hot as is the case here in Texas) and the changing of the season from summer to autumn (which, again, won’t happen here for some time in Texas, at least, not from a temperature standpoint). Still, being in school feels like the times-they-are-a-changing. Ahhh! But it’s good.

Finished

The last time I wrote on this blog, I started reading Stephen King’s On Writing. I don’t remember because my memory is unreliable these days. I know because I use an app to track my reading, and it says it took me thirteen days to read On Writing.

In the Before Times Long Ago, I would have read King’s book in an afternoon, or even quicker, but since graduating university, my ability to read books has lessened over time. I’d not be able to concentrate, and the will to read would not materialize for weeks (or even longer).

Then came the bout with Covid that nearly killed me. I think I read during that week, but in a haphazard way. I didn’t start or finish a book, but read selections from the Star Wars trilogy novelizations. That exercise was to stave off the boredom of potential death more than a real effort to read anything straight through.

Since Covid, all I have really read, aside from a few books here and there (I think Carrie Fisher’s and Anthony Daniels’s memoirs were among the longest), were picture books: The Art of Star Wars in several volumes. I am certain I’ve written about my frustration with being unable to read before on this blog.

Finishing On Writing feels like a breakthrough. King endorses reading as much as possible if one wishes to be a writer. That advice you will find in any treatise on writing. I also believe it. Something about the way King espouses that sentiment struck through my mental fog straight to my reader’s core. I want to read again, and frequently. I cannot say the desire existed much before.

I wanted to read in the way that people want to exercise or eat healthily: they know they should. But they don’t want to, really. Doing such things becomes a chore, a necessity, an aggravation, and usually, a non-starter. With me and reading it was similar: I just didn’t do it. Even reading King’s book took thirteen days because there were several in those almost two weeks that I just didn’t want to pick up the book. Persevere I did and finish I did.

Reading On Writing turned into a journey I needed to take. I had no idea what the book was going to say, nor did I expect the emotional impact it has had on my psyche. King talks about his life of writing, which includes his eventual sobriety and concludes with a life-threatening accident. I knew of neither. Look, the rest of King’s compendium really isn’t my thing and I knew almost nothing about him personally, but I picked up On Writing on a whim because I knew he was a good, established author. I figured something he had to say could be useful.

King’s advice was more than helpful: it was life-changing. Not least will be if I can read again because it was permissive. I know pretty much what King said already: eliminate adverbs, read plenty, write regularly, and so on, but the simple way in which he presented his advice, and life story, said to me that I can do those things, too. He doesn’t pretend to be some great writer, as opposed to a best-selling author, and he doesn’t stand on pretense. He is, and he invited me to be as well. Read what I like to read; write what I like to write (minus a few adverbs). And no worries about the rest.

Sometimes we all need the permission to do what we already know to do. Permission can take us from inaction to action. As kids we all wanted to do things, but it wasn’t until a parent or other authority gave us permission that we actually went out to do the thing (usually). I think Stephen King gave me permission to read, as weird as that sounds. I didn’t pick up his book asking for that, but late-90’s King communicated permission anyway.

I have a large backlog of books to read, including the Lord of the Rings. (Anyone reading right now knows that Lord of the Rings is among my favorite reads, which is to say, I’ve read it.) I set out to read Tolkien’s masterpiece once a year. That dream died when reading died. Now I just might try again. Autumn is the time of year I usually crack open Tolkien, in honor of Bilbo’s September birthday, and I think this year I will do the same. I have textbooks to read, and other reading on my horizon, but Lord of the Rings will be read!

I have a new purpose in reading. Enjoyment, of course, but to learn as well. Learn how other writers write. Learn how to craft wonder, intrigue, suspense, or put forth knowledge. I never read with that in mind before, but King told me to read with my eyes open, to note what other writers do and why and to emulate. I will do my best. After all, hand in hand with reading is writing. Ever since I first started reading thirty some years ago, I have wanted to recreate the experience I had in pages for someone else. If I am going to be a good writer, I must as well be a good reader.

I feel reborn, relieved, and reinvigorated. Light and full of light. Hyperbolic as well. I’ll take it all. I’ve not felt this way in a long time. A good book will do that for me, but I’ve forgotten the feeling. All that I had included dim memory and stale knowledge. Now I’ve got first hand experience once more! It feels good. Plus, life is short and if reading and writing get me through the pain of it all, so much the better. It did when I was a teenager, starting a mental health decline, but like so many things, I’d forgotten what billions know: reading is a pathway: to betterment, to amusement, to knowledge, and to joy. Yes, to escape as well. Who doesn’t need escape from time to time?

I’ve finished On Writing. But I’ve not finished writing, in fact where I’ve been precocious before, I plan to be prolific now. I’ve not finished reading, either. Where I may have been voracious before, I now plan to be insatiable. As author George McFly once said, “Like I’ve always told you, you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything!” I still contend with mental illness, life, and a host of adversity, but anything can be accomplished, and I’ve put my mind to overcoming!

Grey Pilgrim

I am in the midst of a downturn in my mental health. I have been labeled as having a high likelihood of having a bipolar disorder, and this feels more true now than it has in a long time. For a while I was doing very well. I was creating, I felt good, and I spent time in the metaphorical sun. Today, and for a while now, I haven’t created, I’ve felt out of sorts, and I’ve been lurking in a metaphorical Mirkwood.

I often think of Gandalf, one of my favorite characters from JRR Tolkien’s imagination. He is called the Grey Pilgrim, because his wizard color is grey. Pilgrim is an interesting moniker. It means “a person who journeys to a sacred place” and the thesaurus adds the connotations of “traveler” or “wayfarer”. In Tolkien’s mythology there are a few sacred places in Middle-Earth, and out of it is the most sacred place of all: The Undying Lands, or Valinor, sort of a heaven realm.

Gandalf was certainly a wayfarer and traveler as he journeyed all over Middle-Earth during his long years, but he was also tasked with opposing the Dark Lord Sauron. Once that mission was complete, he was allowed to return to Valinor, and thus embarked on a final journey to the most sacred place of all.

I feel like a different kind of grey pilgrim. I am certainly no wizard, but since my early teenage years I’ve often felt a grey or murky blackness hang over me. Also, since even earlier than being a teen, I’ve been inculcated in religious things, and read John Bunyan’s famous story Pilgrim’s Progress. An allegory for spiritual things, the pilgrim Christian treks ever towards the Celestial City, certainly a “journey to a sacred place”. I was always taught to strive towards Heaven, an eventual home beyond earth and death. My depression, bipolar disorder, or whatever this is that I’ve had since 10 or 11, has made the doctrine of heaven problematic for me.

For one thing, I was suicidal for a long time, not that many knew or paid attention to the signs. As a young kid taught that a paradise awaited me on the other side, it was difficult to resist the temptation to shuffle off this depressing mortal coil and thus enter blissful realms. I know the Catholic Church used to preach that suicide victims couldn’t enter Heaven, probably for this macabre reason of keeping the downtrodden from seeking a better existence. But my fundamentalist church had no such teaching. Anyway, I obviously survived suicide and haven’t arrived on “God’s golden shores” but I often wished that I could have go through with various plans. The lure of a bright peaceful afterlife was a tantalizing vision.

For another thing, the idea that A Better Place (C) awaits would perhaps imply that suffering on Earth will yield rewards later on in that better place, either in the place itself, or through some sort of riches being doled out. In a city paved with supposed golden streets and boasting pearl gates, riches seemed sort of a cheap reward to me, but anyway I never liked the idea that I was being made to suffer so that I could reap later. That idea rings cruel, especially because there are many worse off than depressed, bipolar(?) me. That’s a lot of copping out on easing real, immediate pain in order to make belated reparations later. Why go through the charade if God could wave his spiritual hand and ease all suffering immediately?

What then is my pilgrimage about, if I am a different sort of grey pilgrim than a wandering, world-weary wizard or a 17th century wayfarer? When I discover that, I will let you know. For today, as Gandalf did for a time, I am stepping through the oppressive, murky, and dismal Mirkwood. I don’t have a hobbit, or thirteen surly dwarves, in tow, neither do I have a stronghold of darkness in Dol Guldor to exorcise, but wander I still. I often wish my purpose was as clear cut as kicking dragon-butt or tossing jewelry in a volcano. Incredibly difficult, dangerous, and downright depressing as those journeys turned out to be at times, there at least was a drive behind them, and a world or mountain to be gained in the here and now.

Eventually, as did Gandalf, Frodo and Bilbo were admitted into the Undying Lands as a respite for all the pain they endured in Middle-Earth, but they also had many years of rest in their homes as well (maybe not Gandalf, but Bilbo hung out in Rivendell for many years after defeating the dragon and that was pretty good by all accounts). Where is my Last Homely House? Where is my Bag End? Maybe I haven’t found it yet, but I wish I could.

Ultimately, I don’t know if heaven awaits me after death, or if it is a forever sleep I will definitely have earned whenever I do die, but I do know that I have life in me yet to live. It is sad and depressing right now, but I’ve also ridden these waves enough to know that as down as I am now, I will (should) surge upwards once more. It’s just the constant surfing is making me sick and tired. As I haven’t a choice but to be a pilgrim, I will keep moving. Maybe there is at least a cozy inn on the horizon that will serve a good meal and provide a bed better than a forest root.

I don’t know how to shake my depression. I don’t feel I’ve done a terribly good job of doing anything but enduring the troughs, and nothing really seems to work to bring me out except time. Gandalf himself had many long years of waiting before the Ring was found and he could formulate a plan to defeat Sauron, and in the end, such defeat (and Ring) was out of his hands anyway. So I guess I will wait for this greyness to lift. At least then I will feel more myself again, for a time. Damn, but this is frustrating.

But, to take a page from Tolkien’s book, Gandalf looked for and found happiness and pleasure where he could. Whether in lighting fireworks for young hobbits at Bilbo’s birthday, or in fighting for those less fortunate many a time, he always found a way to rise above his circumstances. That’s what I see I must do. Not necessarily go out and light off a firecracker, but enjoy what I can when I can. Gandalf, my old friend, I will do my best!

(A friend of mine would recommend pipe-weed to me, but as Old Toby doesn’t exist, I’ll have to do without smoke rings. And I’m not one for smoking anyway.)

Free Time

What is free time? Some people might say that it is time without anything assigned to it, that one is “free” to use it as they wish. I suppose that definition works well enough. In between work, chores, sleep, bodily care, and scheduled events lies this elusive “free time”. How do you use yours?

I don’t quite know what to do with my free time. I have many options, but I don’t always feel “free” to choose most of them. And I don’t quite know why this is. I have written before on this blog about being paralyzed by choice, a sort of executive dysfunction I endure from time to time, but I don’t always think that is to blame.

Take reading for example. I used to love to read, and would do so voraciously. Now it takes extraordinary effort for me to read. I have bookshelves full of books I would love to read, but any time that is free to me, I don’t find myself choosing to read. Instead, I end up playing Scrabble on my iPad or watching baseball, or, which is psychologically worse for me, just…sitting there. I rather hate the choosing to do nothing, actually. I feel terrible for having wasted the time, and not having accomplished anything, reading or otherwise.

I should mention that it isn’t always a conscious choice. I sit down in the evening, usually when my free time occurs, and think “I’ll just play one game of Scrabble, and then move on” but I also have this thing where I hate losing, so if I lose, I play until I win.

Wait…

Having just written that, and thought about it, that sounds like gambling. I don’t wager anything on these games and nothing is risked, but the high I get from winning may be no different. This just took a left turn. Hmm.

…

Still thinking here. Bear with me a moment…

If playing Scrabble is like gambling, where I am chasing a high, and it is interfering with what I may ordinarily do, then maybe I need to quit playing Scrabble altogether. Maybe you figured that out already and have been laughing at me, but I’ve just now worked this out.

I have been puzzling over how to chose to do other things, and now it is a little silly to me that the solution may have been that obvious all along, but let me continue with my original thought and see if that leads down the same path. Scrabble. Playing until I win sometimes takes the next game, sometimes ten (I am fairly evenly matched with the Advanced computer I play against, so winning isn’t ever guaranteed). By the time I finish with Scrabble, I am out of sorts, sometimes frustrated, and more mentally drained than I was when I began.

The negative momentum is strong at that point, and I don’t often get off my butt and start something else. That is where I end up sitting and doing nothing or turning on a baseball game. And then I feel I have wasted the evening. So yeah, maybe Scrabble does need to go. Look, I’ve been playing Scrabble because I am afraid of losing my mind. No, really, that has been my rationale! I read that doing crosswords could stave off dementia and other age-related mental decline, and I figured maybe Scrabble against a sufficiently advanced computer would do the same thing (don’t know about that, actually) so I played Scrabble. But it has become, apparently, a sort of addiction.

Back to free time, then. I have thought before about actually scheduling my free time so that I do what I want to do. I think I even wrote about that a while back on this blog: Tuesdays for podcasts and Wednesdays for reading, that sort of thing. I never actually did it, because doesn’t that defeat the purpose of free time? I also get weary thinking about being forced to do a thing, as if maybe that would rob the joy I receive from doing something.

I feel like I am rambling at this point, but also maybe getting somewhere. I read something the other day about being intentional and allotting time for things during free time, which kinda brought all this up in my mind. I think perhaps I do need to, perhaps loosely, schedule what I want to do. Or give myself permission to do whatever I want to do, whether reading or watching baseball or something else.

The other angle to this is the cult of achieving. I have been inculcated with the idea that a product must result from an activity, else it is wasted or frivolous. Sure, reading results in knowledge or pleasure, but I’ve felt it must be something more tangible. Example: I mess around with my action figures, but it only “counts” if I take a picture and post it to social media. Reading hasn’t felt like it counted because it was only for me. Which, again, now that I type that sounds like an absurd thing to say.

Absurd or not, the feeling is valid. I haven’t felt that I can do things just for me because the end achievement was rarely visible to others. And there we have it! I have been living life in the shadow of how it appeared to others. I know in my mind that a life spent listening to bird song and tending to flowers is not a life wasted. It is only this damnable capitalistic society that says only products are valuable, but that is bullshit. And I do know that. But it is so hard for me to resist that ingrained ideology.

I want to break free! I want to use my free time for me, after all, isn’t that why it exists? I will try this thought on for size: time for me isn’t wasted, in fact, it is the most valuable thing there is. Time for me rejuvenates me, enriches me, and adds immeasurable value to my life for me. And that powerful thought is hacking its way through my intellectual thicket.

Where have I come to, then?

1) no more Scrabble!

2) loosely scheduling free time is ok!

3) things done just for myself are valid!

I feel liberated! I have the ability to choose what to do in my free time! It amazes me how well writing works as a tool to work through a problem I have been having for a long time. I feel ashamed that it has taken this long to find my answer, but so glad that I may have one at last. We will see how well this works to break through the fog and indecision paralysis, but for now I am excited!

I began by asking what you do in your free time. I suppose I’ll end by asking: what will I do in my free time?

What Is Grief?

Trigger warning: divorce.

In the Marvel television show Wandavision, the facsimile of the android Vision confronts Wanda about her burgeoning rage, and the grief that underlies her rage. He asks: “what is grief, but love persevering?”. Wanda is facing the loss of her parents, as a child, the loss of her brother in the recent war against Ultron, and the loss of her imaginary children in the context of the show. With so much loss, it is no wonder she was turning to rage as a means to insulate herself from the pain of the losses. I know the feeling.

Four days ago I celebrated my fourth wedding anniversary for the second time. That is, a second fourth wedding anniversary. My first fourth anniversary was hardly a celebration as it was mere months away from seeing my divorce finalized. That was a hard blow to absorb. I was not divorced by my choice; I would have rather worked on the marriage and rebuilt it as necessary, but that didn’t happen. Ten years on from that marriage ending, I am still dealing with that loss.

I thought I was over it, past it, done with feeling the pain of that loss. But then I saw, quite by accident, a photo of my ex on a friend’s social media account. There she smiled, alive and well, and quite divorced from me and my life. And it hit me like a sucker punch to the back of the head. All the pain, the loss, and yes, the rage, of the divorce came racing back. It was physical, visceral, and quite overwhelming for a few minutes. Thankfully, I now have tools and equipment to deal with such emotionality where before I did not. I was able to center myself, breathe, and refocus. But it still hurt.

In my grief renewed, I remembered the love that perseveres. The love I once held for my former wife, the love we shared for all too brief a time, and the love of the togetherness. All of that is gone now, practically speaking, but some must persevere. For why else would I feel such grief ten years later? I realize as well that grief is never-ending. Sure, we can bury it, ignore it, compartmentalize it, and think we have moved past it, but when it charges back into our hearts? It is then we know the pain of loss never fully left.

I don’t think severe mental or emotional pain ever really leaves. And I think, too, that we as humans would lack something without it. Humans are social creatures, this we know, and part of that society is forming connections, relationships, and partnerships. Beyond marriages, we have families, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances. All of these liaisons inform and build who we are throughout our life, and when one of those connections ends, brief or long-lasting, significant or ethereal, there is a loss. And we grieve that loss. For something like an acquaintance, it may barely register. But for a life-partner or a family member, it usually lingers. That love perseveres the rest of our lives.

I have a life-partner once again, and it is with her I celebrated the second-fourth anniversary. I share love with her, and I am thankful for her presence. She enriches me so much in so many ways, and I trust I do the same for her. Her love cannot, and does not, diminish what I had for my ex, nor does the enduring love for my ex shade my current love. Love, quite simply, doesn’t work that way. It is not a zero-sum game. Love grows as we grow, and encompasses much. This is why a new wife’s love cannot replace what was before, and neither can an old flame extinguish a new. Love is to be shared and that never ends.

This is also why it hurts in perpetuity when a love is no longer shared, either through death or legal separation. Because one party holds an echo of that love but it can never again be reflected. Love stretches into what is now a void, unheard. Love perseveres, hence: grief. So what do I do? I practice my coping techniques, and I continue to move forward with my life. I don’t, and didn’t, wallow in my grief renewed, nor did I begrudge it its place. I felt it, observed it, and continued. I do the same whether it is a reminder of my ex, or of my beloved grandparents who are no longer with me, or even of friends who have passed beyond my daily reach.

Whoever wrote that line for Paul Bettany to voice as Vision evidences wisdom. I am not sure I would have expressed it that way, and that is the simple brilliance: it is a quiet phrase, but one that holds so much breadth. That’s why I love good storytelling, incidentally. A good story speaks so much truth into my existence, and guides me to reframe what I feel in new ways and gives novel paths to experience those feelings. Everything builds on what came before to construct what is and provide scaffolding for what will be.

Why enumerate all this? This, too, is a way I process grief: through words and sharing of experience. The Bible has a saying: “rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn” and I think that is true, valuable, and proper. As social creatures, our emotions are to be shared as much as our resources and company. By presenting my grief, and insights, I can build a community with you who reads, because we are both human, and therefore share a commonality of experience. I help you, and you help me: that is humanity. We mourn together, this love lost, and we also rejoice in my new found love of four years now. Where one withered and died, the other is growing and thriving. So thank you for sharing my cries and my smiles. We are in this together, and that is a wonderful thought.

The Right Tool

I’ve been working on several projects lately. I recently wrote about the book I am writing in conjunction with my wife, but I have others in process. I love to make things in the physical world, not just the literary one, and my dad loves model trains. Together he and I are working to build a grand train display in his hobby room. My dad is coming up with the layout and some ideas, and I will be doing most of the building when it comes to scenery, greenery, and other such things.

The first step is to build trestles. My dad has an HO (a larger scale, for the uninitiated) train that he wants to be on a square oval in the middle of his train table. In, around, and underneath that train track he wants to weave his N gauge (a smaller scale) train tracks. To do that, the HO needs to be elevated. Plastic risers such as they sell in the mass market for elevating train tracks are not tall enough, so it fell to me to build new ones.

I went to my local hobby store, and perused the shelves for what I could use to construct sturdy, yet lightweight, trestles. I found some balsa wood rods that were a quarter inch square and thirty-six inches long. Perfect! I found some reference pictures online that could be close to what I wanted to build, and then it was figure-it-out time! I played around with some sizing and how to build a lattice, but then came the cutting.

I don’t have many blades at my disposal other than a few pocket knives, but I do have an Exacto blade. I figured the balsa wood was soft enough that I could cut through it with that. So that’s what I did. Man, was that a bad idea! It took forever, didn’t always give me good cuts, and in the end, gave me sore fingers and a massive blister on my thumb where I pressed down on the Exacto handle. Not fun.

Eventually, I finished the trestles (with some Vallejo sepia wash they even looked like railroad ties and not balsa wood) and delivered them to my dad’s hobby room. Unfortunately, what we thought we needed was not enough. The track required a bit more support than we initially figured, meaning we had to move the trestles closer together than originally planned. That meant I was back in fabrication mode. My blister had finally healed, and I didn’t want a repeat performance from my thumb. Enter the Home Depot.

Home Depot sits across from the hobby store in the next town over, and after purchasing enough balsa wood rods to finish the project, I thought to myself that I would at least see if Home Depot had something I could use to cut them to make the job easier. I took a look at the hand saws, chisels, box cutters, and other blades and eventually found something I thought might serve my purpose: a small 8″ hacksaw with a small, many-toothed blade. So I bought it.

Coming home I tried it out on a scrap of balsa wood that I had left over from my first foray into trestle making, and it worked perfectly! The blade was small enough to cut the quarter inch rod, and sharp enough to give me almost the perfect cut! Wow, I wished I had thought to buy that at the beginning! The right tool for the job really does make the job that much easier. And now I have a small saw for other building projects I undertake in the future.

I quickly cut up the balsa wood I had purchased to make the rest of the trestles, and of course it took me an hour instead of half the day to chop it up into the lengths I needed. Now all that is left is assembly and paint, and then I should be done making trestles. After that comes securing them in place, placing the HO track on top, and, well, the project continues from there. N gauge track underneath, planning the scenery, and taking it further. This won’t be a quick project, but it has already been fun. I have had the opportunity to grow my fabrication skills and later I will be able to flex my creative muscles as well. I can’t wait!

And making things is a great diversion from writing, which I had been doing fairly non-stop until my dad and I embarked on the Great Train Project. Now I get to take a break from stringing words together and can cut, glue, and paint (usually in that order). And once I’ve come to a finishing point in the fabrication, I can get back to writing. It allows me the chance to work different processes, and not get burned out in doing only one thing all the time.

Other projects are also in the works for me, such as photography, organizing, action figure customization, and the list goes on. I might need to start scheduling my time to get to it all! We will see. For now, it’s “All aboard!” in finishing the train trestles, which I think I may do after lunch.

A Book

“Hello” he typed, in what he hoped were friendly letters.

I am working on a writing project! A few years ago my wife started a book, and I agreed to help her punch up the language and refine the message. I started doing just that, and somewhere along the way put it aside for other things and never quite picked it up again. Now, in light of my recent lay-off from a job, I decided to revisit the manuscript and finally get it into good shape.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been doing just that. Starting from chapter zero, the introduction, I have been trying to work on a chapter a day. Life still intervenes and I cannot sit and write for an entire day, but today I finished up work on chapter four (of eight-ish)!

It feels really, really good to sit down, light a scented candle (a Middle-Earth inspired scent created by my friend Alisha), put on some music, and write. In this case, most of the words are there already, but they need shaping, like a child using the sand of the beach to form a castle. I add a little water, cast the damp sand in a shaped bucket, and overturn it upon the dry sand beneath. Or something.

Really I poke at it, delete a little here, add some there, rearrange this or that, and read read read. I read each chapter again and again so that I retain the flow and higher order ideas of the chapter, rather than get bogged down in a particular sentence or paragraph. It is ok to really hammer out the grammar of a particular phrase, but not at the expense of the whole. My tendency is to want to be elegant and precise and highfalutin’ but sometimes I just need the damn thing to say what it needs to say, beautiful phrasing be damned. (See, I just used “damn” twice in one sentence, a thing I usually avoid, but hell, it just needed to be like that. So, too, the book sometimes just needs to be what it is.)

I am cognizant as well that my wife wrote most of what I am editing and shaping. If I change too much of that text, it won’t be what she wrote any longer (insert Ship of Theseus metaphor here). I don’t want to lose her voice, or too many of her words in adding my own. She says things in different ways than I would, and as I am becoming co-author there will be plenty of me in there as well, but I don’t want her to disappear either. It becomes a balancing act.

I think that is what I am loving most about this work: the act of balance. It requires much of my extant skill to pull off this balance of retaining my wife’s phrasing, adding my own, while fixing errors, adding missing bits, and removing extraneous information. I truly hope the end result will be worth reading, and accomplish the goal we now share in writing. It has been exciting and invigorating to sit down each day and shape the castle one sandy block at a time.

I will announce more what the book is about when it is much closer to completion. For now, it is a project that is allowing me to stretch my muscles and really get into some word-smithing.

“Anyway” he wrote, changing topics slightly, “this book project is consuming a lot of my writing energy.” He paused. Continuing he typed: “that means that my blogging may not continue as frequently, however, I will try to maintain my ‘two blog posts a month’ schedule that I have for a long time now.” He typed a period and closed his quotation marks, and felt good about that particular sentence. He decided that he had said what he needed to, and that he could hit publish and be okay.

The Ecstasy of Guns

Trigger warning: guns and gun violence is discussed.

America has a gun problem. That much is obvious. Death by guns is the leading cause of death for our children; the NRA has bought and paid for politicians who continually block sensible gun control legislation; and one can barely turn on a television without seeing something gun related on the screen.

It is this last part I want to discuss today: the rampant image of the gun on screen. I am old enough to have been a teenager when the Columbine school shooting occurred and I remember then that many people blamed the violence on video games. I believe that myth has since been debunked, that violent video games do not directly cause gun violence, but I think it is still a related topic.

Guns are glorified in America. They are made to appear “cool” and “desirable” and as positive means of solving problems. Their aesthetic design is one such to make them as slick and natural an extension of the hand and arm as possible. The sound design of films and television shows is done in such a way as to enhance that glorification. Have you ever noticed someone in a movie using hearing protection when firing guns? I can count on half a hand. Guns are loud. I can tell you this from experience, but guns are never really that loud in film, unless it is germane to a funny plot point. Everything about the way guns are presented is to minimize their faults and maximize their luster.

That simply cannot be an ancillary fact, ignorable to the overall desirability of gun shaped weapons. And when a gun is seen as “cool”, and shown over and over again to be the solution to, dare I say, any problem on screen, then it cannot be coincidence that guns are turned to as the solution to many real-world problems as well.

I watched a mid-grade science fiction film the other night, the new 65 starring Adam Driver and Arianna Greenblatt. Driver is a pilot of a spacecraft that crashes on a world of dinosaurs, and quite unbelievably to the plot, he has a convenient locker filled with survival gear including, you guessed it, a futuristic assault rifle. The rifle is the solution to the dinosaur problem, it makes a nifty sound when fired, and looks amazing when the rounds explode from the barrel. Without it, the marooned pilot and friend would surely have perished. Not only is the rifle a lazy solution to a light plot, but it is also just one more example of guns superseding ingenuity in a difficult situation, cinematically.

A popular film franchise starring Keanu Reeves, John Wick, I believe exists solely because American, and to be fair, world wide audiences as well, love gun play and gun violence. In fact, John Wick is lighter on plot than 65 is, and almost the entirety of all four Wick movies to date are almost entirely comprised of various gun battles. The camera lingers on the guns themselves and shows them in the best of lighting and situations so as to amp up their already prodigious role in the films. This is nothing new. Guns and gun violence have been apart of cinema since the beginnings, with western films and others. The 70’s and 80’s were heydays of “action” movies, with “action” being a codeword for “gun violence” in many cases.

Before 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, there existed three ratings for movies: G, PG, and R. G for General Audiences, PG for Parental Guidance suggested, and R for Restricted, meaning 18 and older only. Steven Spielberg wanted another rating between PG and R to keep his younger children from asking to see Temple of Doom, and he petitioned for, and received, the first ever PG-13 rating. Suddenly a new genre of film was born that could include much of the violence (read: guns) of other films, some non-graphic nudity, and swearing (without more than one fuck) and be acceptable for children 13 and older.

There is much to say about the ratings system, but for now my point is that gun violence, which primarily had been restricted to adult audiences, was now widely available to teenagers for the first time. Temple of Doom didn’t have a whole lot of gun violence that wasn’t cartoon-y, but it had some. But many, many other movies have had a lot more. John Wick is still an R-rated flick, but others with only slightly less gun violence are not. What have we unleashed with this bright, technicolor tableau of silver screen gun violence? I don’t believe it directly causes real world gun violence, but I believe it is contributory to an overall culture that glorifies the gun.

Such horrific weapons as guns should not be glorified at all, should not be presented as solutions to problems in fictional stories, and should not be desirable objects to possess. They are far too destructive. As our stories take us as humans, there our hearts and minds go. Make something “normal” or “acceptable” on screen, and we will start to normalize it in real life as well. Usually, I would champion this for acceptance, for representation, and for many other things, but when used to negative effect, I must condemn it.

To take another example for a moment: show characters making racist jokes in a positive light in a popular movie and wait and see how long it is before you hear those same jokes in your world. Our former president unleashed a slightly hidden part of our culture by making sexual harassment, racism, and all sorts of evil acceptable from our highest political office and the effects are still tearing America apart. Presidents, and movies, can do that very well.

I don’t have an immediate solution to Hollywood’s obsession with guns, but I can do one, small thing and that is this: I will no longer glorify guns. I find myself doing it in a small way: one is when talking about photography. For some reason that I have not researched, gun metaphors are used for photography. Shooting film, getting the shot, taking a shot etc are all code for taking a picture. As much as possible, I don’t use these phrases. I don’t use a film camera, but I can get a picture or take a pic instead of a “shot”.

Another example is in my toy photography. I love Star Wars as a franchise (despite it, too, glorifying shooting weapons to a degree) and take a lot of pictures of Star Wars action figures. Almost every single figure comes with, or has a place for, a gun shaped object. To display or photograph them naturally is to have a place for their tiny plastic gun. Going forward, I want to only take photos of the figures in positive aspects, and to minimize or remove entirely their weapons. This will be difficult in a conflict heavy galaxy far, far away, but I believe it can be done.

The journey towards de-glorifying guns starts with personal choice and action, much like the decisions to reject sexism, racism, homo/trans/etc-phobia and many other evils. It some ways, it starts with me. I want to see positive change, therefore it is incumbent on me to evidence that positive change. I stopped going to gun ranges for fun a while back, I am choosing less violent (gun-centric or otherwise) movies to enjoy, and changing my photographic vocabulary and the object of my photographic endeavors is a part of that. Ultimately I believe positive change is possible, but it takes many small steps along different paths than have been previously traveled.

Accepted

I have bonafide acceptance into my first ever grad school! While I see this as a stepping stone in my graduate level education, I am nonetheless excited. As I’ve written before, I am also nervous. I am uncertain that I will be up to the challenge of school after so long out of the game, and worry that I may fail in this endeavor. Challenges are to be faced, though, and are ultimately what define us as people, so I am going to face this one as bravely as I can.

Meanwhile, I have been thinking about the step beyond this one: the Master of Fine Arts in Writing. I really, really want to jump into that, but must test myself first. My advisor at my first ever grad school has given me a lead into a community, Art House Dallas, that centers around creative arts of all kinds. After perusing their website, it looks as if they have plenty of written art events.

I have not been a part of a writing community since my undergraduate days when I was part of a quite exciting group of writers that were my peers and fellow students. I miss that sense of belonging intensely, and the fun of writing together with other enthusiasts. It particularly sharpened my skills and made me a better writer. I write on my blogs, but am not eliciting feedback on how to improve my writing. More online journals, these blogs give me a chance to throw words at the screen and not lose the ability to craft a sentence, but they are not trying to be high art.

I worry that in a community of writers I may not be accepted. I know that this is imposter syndrome rearing it’s inauthentic head, but I cannot shake the feeling that I wouldn’t belong, or that I would be an outsider. As with most people in a group, I would want to belong in the group, be a full, contributing member. I don’t want to hang on the fringe, or just exist in the space. I want to commit and become an integral facet. I would like to offer as much as I would be given, in terms of feedback, critique, and a fresh perspective. Maybe Art House Dallas could be the opportunity I am looking for.

I have a friend in Pennsylvania who is a young adult author and she has invited me to be part of her group of writers. To date, I have not taken that plunge either, but I feel that it is time to do so. If I am going to commit to a life of writing, and make it a viable part of my life, I really need to be part of communities that write.

I also need to get more serious about writing every day. My wife has a few book projects she would like assistance writing, and that I have agreed to help her on. I need to get started with those in a real way. My blogs are doing fine, I last wrote here ten days ago and on PhilMartin.blog four days ago, so I am regularly enough publishing posts, but I need to inculcate myself into the habit of writing. I cannot improve without doing, and doing so regularly.

I have an action list: join Art House Dallas events, join my friend’s group, start on my wife’s books, and continue blogging regularly. Taken together, that is more than enough to keep me busy. Grad school classes start this August, and once they do, I will really be in the thick of it. All the better! Without having a full time job, I need to be employed doing something. Even more so if that something is writing. (I hope to have a job again though, and relatively soon, but that remains To Be Seen at the moment.)

I look back and re-read that paragraph: my action list, and I am excited. There is potential for so much good there. It is a risk, of course, as most things new are, but without the threat of risk there is no hope of reward. I don’t achieve by sitting around doing nothing, and that gets boring after awhile anyhow. I must have something to do, and I have chosen, for better or for worse, writing.

I was thirteen the first time I consciously sat down and wrote a poem. I still have it, but it isn’t any good. It is evocative, but amateurish, has imagery, but lacks sophistication. I was thirteen, after all, and just starting. But it really reminds me of the poet I would become, and the sort of thing I write now, just, better. Before then, and since then, I have written a lot of different things, but that I consider the true beginning of my intentional writing career.

That is another long term project I would like to commence at some point, by the way: revising my book of poetry. Did you know that I self-published some poems? Well, I did, and you can buy the collection on Amazon. As good as I consider them (I am offering them for sale, after all) I would like to see what some intense revision could do. I want to put them through the wringer of my own critique, and others’, and see what emerges. I think I have enough to work on for now, but that remains a longer-term goal. Look for a second edition of Whiskey Poetry in the future! (But for now, buy the one that is out there. Amazon has it on sale for a little over $5. Can’t beat that!)

I am now thirty-six. That is twenty-three years in the profession. I have been paid, to date, if memory serves, $130 for my writing. That is for one job I held writing educational materials, a blog post for a website I used to contribute to, and two copies of my book to my mom and a friend. But professional writers don’t often become multi-millionaire New York Times bestsellers. Sometimes they aren’t even published. But they are still writers. What matters is how you do it, and I want to do it like they do: consistently and at a high level. Small beginnings are not to be diminished.

Consider my acceptance into grad school another small beginning. I am making my way forward, and that is what matters.

Graduate School

My application is complete for my first graduate school! I am so excited about the future of my education. Ever since I was in high school, I’ve thought about attending higher education, first as an undergrad, and then as a grad student. Now I am close to being another step further along the journey. Acceptance is being considered by the admissions committee, but I foresee no complications in being admitted.

I am going to take a few general courses to begin, because honestly going back to school scares me. I have been out of the scholastic game since graduating in 2010, and then I had completed tours at two colleges in five years culminating in a Bachelor of Arts degree. At the moment of graduation, my mental health was declining and I was exhausted. Now, thirteen years later, I feel ready to again tackle some classes.

I am pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in writing, the terminal degree for creative writing. I would like to focus on poetry and memoir writing, or literary non-fiction. Lofty dreams, as these are traditionally the hardest programs to get into. I need a portfolio of my best writing, and to find a good program that won’t break the bank, or that is not far away. Most MFA programs depend on being able to be on-site somewhere for at least a few weeks out of each semester to workshop and learn from a professional. The rest of the time, from what I understand, is spent reading and writing and re-writing and re-writing.

But that is later. Right now I need to make sure I can perform at a graduate level. Like I said, I am experiencing some intense imposter syndrome and real fear. What if I am not good enough? What if I can’t get back into the groove? What if I no longer have the magic touch when it comes to wordsmithing? What if I, quite simply, no longer belong in school? I am having to take some deep breaths and move forward.

For a long time, I have had a strategy when it comes to jobs and other endeavors: go forward until someone or something stops me. It has the advantage of being simple, and easy to remember, and as such, easy to implement. It is amazing to me how often that has worked, too. My most recent job, as a member of a Human Resources team, was like that. I had never done HR, had little idea what that meant, and was feeling very unsure of myself when I applied. But I applied, I interviewed, and was hired. After I found my footing, I realized that I had a knack for HR and was good at my job. Eventually, I was laid off through no fault of my own, and my former boss just told me she wished I was still working with her. I do, too, but had it not been for the layoff, I would never have considered quitting for grad school. Now I have been given this opportunity.

I will go forward, indeed, I have already: I’ve applied, submitted my transcripts, paid the fee, acquired references, written a letter of intent, and at this point, there is nothing more to do but wait. The admissions committee will meet and make their decision, and that will dictate what I do next. I will either register for classes, or seek out another grad school to apply to. I feel strongly that before I begin my MFA I need at least a few classes under my belt to get going. I am aware of the fact that applying to schools is somewhat of a lottery, so it won’t be until I have been consistently rejected that I will assume that this is something I should not pursue. I am not there yet, so forward it is!

Another big hurdle that has me concerned is the financial aspect of it all. I am unemployed, and grad school isn’t cheap. I am not ready to take out loans (still paying off undergrad loans) but I have some savings to at least get me started. I will be researching scholarships, applying for financial aid, and doing what I can. Right now I am also uncertain about the prospect of being able to work and study, so I am not seeking out a full time job. Might try to get something part time, at least through this first experimental semester, but traditionally it has been difficult for me to find the kind of job I look for.

Sigh.

I overwhelm easily at the myriad aspects to chasing a higher degree. But, I have good support from my wife, my family, and those friends that know about my desires. That support is bolstering me through these early days. In the back of my mind, I begin to think that I can do this, that the questions and doubts are nothing but smoke screens and shadows. I’ll take all the help I can get throughout this entire process (if you would like to contribute towards my school fund, I am open to discussing options), but I also know that if I am to succeed in my dreams, and graduate with that MFA, I will need self-confidence and the ambition to work hard.

Maybe that is what scares me the most: that I am the only one who can pull this off. I’ve never been very self-confident, or self-reliant. When pursuing my undergraduate degree, I didn’t stop long enough to think about what I was doing. I raced from class to class, reading and writing long into the night and early morning (sometimes). But I didn’t do much self-reflection. Thirteen years gives you time for self-reflection, and now, with experience and maturity, I am much more aware of what I am about to do. And it scares me.

Scared or not, I’ve started, and I’m not about to back out, not yet, not by a long shot. One step, as the cliche goes, at a time. Forward. I can do this.