Writing Notes

Tell me a story about perspective…

Lost Boy

He had set out on his own for a year, as a self imposed right of passage.

He’s sitting at a cafe with a stranger girl talking about his take on the world.

He’s feeling relatively lost and uninspired.

She’s smiling at him telling him he’s lucky to know that feeling. But, that he’s probably headed in the wrong direction. We get the sense that the girl has been there before.

“That’s sweet, you’re a lost boy,” she said.

“Huh?”

“You’re not the first I’ve talked to. The first guy looking to find inspiration by driving west.”

Law School Buzz

The buzz has started and I’m getting excited about starting law school. Meeting new people and settling into an unfamiliar location always provide unique moments. I’m also a bit apprehensive about picking up textbooks (casebooks?) and writing essays (briefs?) again after two years of “mental relaxation.” It’s easy for a curious mind to enjoy learning new facts and methods, but it’s very different to enjoy the routine practice of them. I will remain of the mindset that studying will be a rewarding pursuit until I am proven otherwise.

The timing is ideal because as I near the end of my two year hiatus, I feel less invested in what I’m doing than ever. It is a frustrating place to be – a transitional place that leaves too much time for unstructured thinking. There is a constant sense that I should be doing or producing more. I am looking forward to some fresh challenges and new adventures to enrich my thoughts and creativity.

As I wrap up my life in Virginia, I will not forget all that I have experienced and learned while here. My mind has been opened to the possibility of imagination and an entrepreneurial seed has been planted. I hope one day to bring my interests in technology, writing, and people together. I need to learn more and find more humor in daily life before I can lead a project, but when the time comes I will not be afraid of trying to succeed.

Writing Notes

I’ve had writer’s block for two days now, and I hate it. I even wrote a neat little simile about writer’s block last night that involved tea-kwon-do and using your attacker’s strength to your advantage. But, as you can imagine it was a horrible attempt at paralleling martial arts with my approach to writing.

I’ve been bothered a lot by the fact that I’ve never really written fiction. In most of my stories the physical details are fictional, but the emotional core is something very real. I’m between thinking this is how you write good fiction and this is how you write bad non-fiction. I want the writing to be authentic and I want to be able to relate to it, and I have nothing wrong with bringing in my own experiences. There’s no better way to write a compelling story with believable details. But, I’m having difficulty distancing myself from my characters and often, they come off as idealistic figures of loneliness or loss or whatever my emotion of the day is. They aren’t flawed and they have no humor. They are one dimensional and because of this, I get stuck at one page of writing.

My goal for the coming week is to write two 1500 word stories that involve three central characters in crowded settings. This is partially in response to Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” which is one of the best short stories I’ve ever read. It is simply told, but leaves you with much to think about.

Drag Racing

The high school parking lot is dark and empty. The faded lines that define the spaces during weekdays create lanes the length of the lot that we are racing down as fast as we can in a Jimmy and a Jeep. The fear of getting caught is too far behind to enter our mind.Alice is in the back seat of my Jimmy holding on tight and talking – always talking on her cell phone. Her bright blond hair shines against a black t-shirt that reads “Metallica” in bold silver letters across her breasts. I look away from the pavement ahead and into the rearview mirror. Alice sneers when I catch her eye then blows me a kiss. The air in the car sits low like a heavy fog and smells like cotton blossom body wash and cigarette smoke. I inhale deeply through my nose and exhale through my mouth as the adrenalin pulses down my spine. The engine whines as the car nears eighty-five miles per hour.

At full speed Bob’s jeep looks like an autonomous red blur rolling on black spheres. Even during the day he is invisible behind dark tinted windows, and now he is just a lurking shadow ahead and to the right.

There isn’t much to this race, beyond the girl in my back seat. She was the fixation of his adolescent dreams and is now the source of our silent animosity. She is also my girlfriend because I was too arrogant to know the rules. To care.

Bob doesn’t talk to me anymore, and it is irony, perhaps, that we are racing each other tonight. As if racing cars in the darkness of nowhere will settle something. Damn it, it’s just a girlfriend. Is that really going to wreck our friendship? It was more than that. I knew that. But staring ahead into the open lot and knowing there was a lost friend racing next to me exaggerated the void.

It was over before it started.

Caffeine

Lately I’ve been trying to decrease my caffeine intake. Most days I drink 20oz of coffee, and I usually drink 30 to 35oz one or two days a week. I’ve only been counting my liquid caffeine, so anything I get from chocolate, etc. is unrecorded. Also, the 20oz limit is a bit misleading because 8oz of coffee has about 135mg of caffeine while 12oz of soda only has about 40mg.

I definitely notice the difference between Starbucks coffee (about 440mg per 12oz), or an excessive amount (over 20oz) of caffeinated beverage now that I’ve cut back. Although I don’t feel like I’m sleeping significantly better, it is easier to fall asleep earlier or more quickly. I haven’t noticed many other benefits.

Summer Swim

7am – the alarm goes off. Buzzing. Not music. Music never worked for me. Not since I started waking up on my own. The covers are off and I pull on my swimsuit in seconds. It’s a summer morning and I’m going swimming. No shower. Showers don’t work in the summer because the bathroom gets hot. The water fluctuates and then I’m tense before 8am. Not good.I bike to the lake, only a quarter mile away. My towel is around my neck keeping my bare chest warm. I take the easy route, down the hill to the left of my driveway and bank hard around the right hand turn. The wind feels fresh on my face. Most of the neighbors aren’t out yet. They’re still sleeping or drinking coffee in their kitchen alcoves. I don’t know. Their sprinklers are on.

The sand is cold. The water is still until I step into the waters edge and watch ripples radiate out towards the rising sun. There’s an orange glow that softens to yellow as it rises into the scattered clouds. There is a silhouette of a sailboat to my left. It is still. Gray. Taller and perpendicular to the horizon. It’s the left margin of my morning. To the right is a dock. Part old and part new. This is easy to tell. The new wood is yellow. The old, gray.

I’m only testing the water. I don’t walk in. I jump. I walk out the dock stepping around seagull droppings and holes large enough to catch my large toes. The dock sways a little – like I’m on a boat. I find the spot where I hid shampoo on a shelf under the dock and drop my towel.

The morning sounds have been limited. An alarm. Air racing by on my bike ride. A car driving by above the beach. The crunch of rocks under my feet. The creaking of the dock.

A splash.

A gasp.

Hogwarts Violates Equal Protection?

I’ve been reading Harry Potter lately. I’m not going to bother explaining it because if you haven’t heard of it you clearly don’t care. Harry attends a school called Hogwarts, which is exclusively for wizards.

To jump subjects for a bit, we are studying the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment in Constitutional Law. Today, we got to Brown v. Board of Education, a 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case that held the “separate-but-equal doctrine” established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) to be unconstitutional.

When the Court approaches laws challenged with regard to race, they look first to see if there is a sufficient state interest, and if it is closely related to the purpose of the law. Very rarely to laws using race as a classification survive this strict scrutiny.

Jumping back now, I posit that Hogwarts may be violating the Equal Protection clause. This is a bit of a stretch considering that Hogwarts is in England and out of the jurisdiction of a U.S. court and the school is fictional. But… but… but…

The book sets up wizards to be a separate race from muggles, the later of which are non-wizards. And the school is exclusively for wizards. Muggles aren’t even supposed to know about wizards.

There are a myriad of issues here… just kinda interesting to think about.