January 2013

Fiction

That wasn’t fiction. I was actually sitting in the waiting room while my car was getting some required maintenance and thinking about what to write about and feeling a bit blocked and at the same time just being amazed at the characters in the room so I thought I’d just write out the scene as I saw it right in front of me. I don’t know if anyone thought it was interesting or not, but I wrote it so whatever.

I actually can’t write fiction, or rather I don’t understand how to do it. I’ve done it a few times with a collaborator where they throw out an idea and I riff on it with them and that kind of works but just thinking of a story from scratch has never been something I’ve been able to wrap my head around. One of the greatest writing books I’ve ever read is Steven King’s “On Writing” and in it he talks about how he has no idea where a story is going when he begins to write. He just has an initial idea – A story about a girl who doesn’t get along with people at school, a story about an evil clown, etc and just starts writing. When I read that I just stared at the page in complete shock for hours I’m sure. I don’t know if the idea of outlines and structure was just too beaten into me as a kid, but I have a terrible time trying to write something if I don’t know where it’s headed. In fact, I’ll often think about a piece I need to write for a while until I figure out what the direction (at least) or conclusion (more ideal) and will only then start actually writing it. I need a roadmap. I need to limit my options I guess. If anything can happen at any time then I just sit there paralyzed not being able to decide which is the best direction or if I’ll take three steps and then realize I made the wrong one two steps ago. I just don’t have the confidence there I suppose.

Not that I wan’t it, I mean, it wouldn’t be bad to have it, but I’m not trying to be a fiction writer so not being confident in my fiction isn’t really a big problem. I find the real world to be just as fucked up and worthy of observation as anything else. I think that’s why the fiction that I’m drawn to is the stuff that is most plausible. The things you could actually see happening. Once something gets too far fetched I’m out. If I think “this could never happen” then the likelihood that I’ll go back and read more of that story are slim.

So I guess the lesson is if you want me to read your super far fetched fiction make it a very, very short story.

Waiting Room

Keychains. Scented candles. Bumper stickers. Floor mats. Assorted cheap tools in vacuformed plastic hanging cards.

The coffee pot has been left on all day for years at a time. The burnt layer of bake on coffee crust is an inch thick, but no one seems to care as they refill their styrofoam cups from the pot one after another. Sugar. Powdered creamer. Plastic straw.

There are no shortage of snack for weary patrons, available for purchase of course. Most hilarious of which is the rack of ENERGY CLUB QUALITY SNACKS! THE SMART ALTERNATIVE! All graphics suggest this is the healthy stuff. The rest of the shop is filled with junk food but if you want a smart alternative while you wait, this is it. The gummy bears are flavored with “real fruit” – the glo-worms have 0g fat – the trail mix is “natural” though my definition of natural doesn’t include brightly colored candy coated m&m’s. This is why we can’t have nice things.

Every chair is full. Every eye is glassed over. It’s the usual suspects.

There’s the lady 3 sizes too large for the armchair she’s sitting in, wearing sweat pants that have been printed to look like denim and a black and white leopard print scarf that’s the size of a table cloth draped around her neck blending almost seemlessly with krinly product filled mountain of hair. She hasn’t looked up from her blackberry once. Continually clicking its surface with her lee press on purple sparkle nails.

Next to her is the older asian guy, white hair and spotted skin, who is using a vons grocery store plastic bag as a tote, filled with paperwork and folders, maybe some keys and an old style brick of a garage door opener. This isn’t the first day he’s used this bag for this purpose judging by the wear and holes in the corners. His hiking boots are less than apropriate for sitting in a tiled waiting room for hours on end and he knows it. Keeps looking at his watch. Has some place else to be. He’s sitting directly across from the TV but in the hour I’ve been been here he hasn’t looked at it once. Something distant off in space has his attention.

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Singularity

One of the huge benefits of “stuff reduction” is that it removes a layer of clutter from your mind allowing you to spend more time on the decisions you want to make and less time on the decisions you have to make. There are schools of thought that suggest we have a limited number of X available to us each day (or in a lifetime for that matter) and once we hit that number we have no more available to us. In this equation X can be anything – it could be steps, breaths or decisions. Running gets you to the finish line sooner, so slow down and enjoy the journey instead. Focusing on your breathing keeps you calm, so if you make an effort to breath slower because you think there is a countdown clock running then you end up with a more relaxed life. The same could be said for decisions – if you only have so many available, once you run out you simply can’t make any more.

I’m not saying this is factual, but it’s an interesting thought experiment. Let’s say you are in the kitchen getting ready to prepare dinner and you find that you need a knife. If you open the drawer and are presented with 10 knifes of different shapes and sizes then you have to decide which one is best for the job. Then you have to consider the others just to make sure you’ve made the right decision first. Now you have to make sure this knife is sharp enough for your needs; when was the last time you sharpened it? You sharpened a knife last week, but was it this one? Wait, is this the knife with the shipped blade? Etc..

If instead you have just one knife, then you don’t think about any of that, you just grab it and get to work. You already know it’s the right one, because – having decided to just have one knife – you took the time to select the best one for whatever job might come up. You don’t have to wonder when it was last sharpened, you already know because you only have one knife that you concern yourself with. So in this case, rather than spending decisions points (so to speak) on which knife, you get to spend them on what to do with the knife.

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Inspiration

Yesterday my (almost) 3 year old broke his leg and had a full leg cast put on. This is a kid who has been potty trained for barely 2 months, and now has to rely on us to help him even roll over in bed. We didn’t know how he would handle it.

You know how he spent the day today? Taking one lick of the lollipop he got from the Doctors office every few hours because “he didn’t want it to go away too fast.” Figuring out how to pull himself on his chest and get around the house. Figuring out how to stand up on his one good leg so he can pull himself up onto the couch. Hugging the dog that knocked him over yesterday. Telling his parents that he loved them. Saying that his cast looked cool. Playing with his trains on the floor. Being excited that he gets to use the big toilet since he can’t bend his leg to use the small one anymore. Going on with his life as if nothing was any different.

You how how he didn’t spend the day today? Complaining. Moping. Feeling sorry for himself. Being angry. Lashing out. Using this as an excuse why he cant do something. Asking “what if?” or even thinking about why.

I watched this with incredible fascination. This huge wrench just got thrown into his life and he couldn’t care less. He hasn’t let it impact him in the slightest bit. He knows what he has on his plate right now and is using that to his advantage, not wasting his time worrying about what could be there or why he doesn’t have something else. He’s just going full steam ahead, just like he was yesterday.

There’s a lesson here. I hope I learn it.

Broken

xray

Since the second Ripley was born I’ve been terrified of the day we have to rush him to the emergency room. And I know full well it’s a “when” not an “if” – kinda goes hand in hand with having kids, right? You spend 18 years trying to not to let them kill themselves by doing something stupid. So I guess I should be relieved that it ended up happening this way.

This afternoon after we’d just spent an hour walking along the LA River, Ripley and Tara were playing outside with the soccer ball and Sidney (the dog) ran over and somehow bumped into Rips or something – Not really sure what happened but Ripley fell down and we all heard a large “crack” – I was inside in the kitchen and I even heard it. Rips screamed like he’s never screamed before. Which in itself is odd because the kid usually bounces off walls without a hitch. He didn’t shake it off right away and said he couldn’t move it. We knew something was up. Tara carried him into the house and propped him up on the couch and assessed the situation. He couldn’t stand on it. It hurt to touch. He could wiggle his toes, but a bump was starting to show on his shin. I was pretty sure it was broken.

I called the insurance to ask if we needed to do anything special. We have “got hit by a bus” insurance which will basically prevent us from going bankrupt in a catastrophe but doesn’t cover dick in the mean time, so I was already anticipating massive bills. They lived up the cliché and basically told us that since we didn’t have a professional to tell us it was an emergency we were going to get fucked if we went to the emergency room. They suggested that we A) make an appointment with an in-network doctor to get a professional opinion or B) Stop by a local pharmacy to see if the pharmacist on duty could recommend something. I pointed out again that my two year old likely had a broken leg, and asked if any of the things they just suggested made any sense at all. They just reiterated that they didn’t encourage emergency room visits without a doctor recommendation. God bless America!

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Punk Rock: A History of Political (In)action and Social Response

Earlier this evening a friend tweeted:

“Punk Rock: A History of Political (In)action and Social Response.” This is a class I would attend. Any teachers out there?

And my head instantly exploded. Because obviously this should already exist, yet for some reason dosen’t. Which means I have no other course of action then to try and rectify that.

One of the main draws to punk rock for me when I was going up was that here was a group of people who by all accounts had been rejected by the society around them – they were the freaks and the weirdos – yet this small group refused to sit still and was going to actively play a roll in shaping the world around them. This was incredibly appealing to me on so many levels, and shaped much of my world view going forward. I’ve never questioned that a small group of dedicated individuals could have a huge impact on whatever they set their sights on, and I’ve always scoffed at the people who assume individuals can’t make a difference.

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