The Creep

Time is all about perspective.

This isn't deep, it's not new, and I'm not saying it for you. I am saying it to you, but not for you. I'm saying it for me.

Time is all about perspective.

It seems, to me, like years are starting to slip by. In the golden days of my teens I was lucky (or so it'd seem at times) if an hour slipped by, and when months began to creep out the door two at a time during my college days I was quite shocked.

For several months now I've been trying to plan the next few years of my life; you know this because I've mentioned it before. Plans change, break, twist, and shift... but they're good to have, if for no other reason than to measure how different the future can be from the ideas that rattle around inside our heads. That's not what's at issue here.

The point is that, despite that planning, I hadn't yet had The Thought that has prompted me to run around in metaphorical circles for six poorly-planned paragraphs; I caught myself thinking of how damn quickly the four years of my students are passing. I actually thought to myself, "Next year my first class will have become Juniors, and then it's only one more year. Why did I think highschool was so long?"

That's a scary thing to think, giving all sorts of perspective on my future, my age, future attempts at education, and the people that have had those thoughts as they aged before me.

I close a chapter of my life in the next two months, but it's a chapter that's run on to cheap pulp novella long ago and is already over in everything but name. Is it 'Chapter Three: After the Diploma,' or 'Chapter Four: Now For the Happily Ever After'? I don't know.

But I do know things are always changing. You can see it in the papers, on the streets, and on the little bits of knowledge streaking around at the speed of light. People who complain that "nothing ever changes"aren't paying attention to the right things; they watch the horizon and get hit by the guy in the truck.

Change is the only way we have to measure time. And time is all about perspective.

In The Swing of Things

Today finds me busy and relaxed at the same time.

There's so much I have to do: moving to a new apartment, helping my parents move to their temporary place, entering grades, finishing up the school year...

Yet I feel so calm and together. I will get this done.

So today I show the students a film about winning, about working, about clashing swords in a middle-ages imagined for the modern day. Maybe that's a cheap trick to keep them in their seats, but I've also got them quizing about certain nuggets of real history hidden in that particular rough.

I'm on top of my game, at least for a day, and that feels good.

The Rock and the Ring

I'm getting married in just a shade over two months.

This happens to many people, of course, and doesn't put me in a particularly unique position. I understand that, but it's still something I have to pause and remind myself of. My gal and I have been driving the long-distance road for a long time now, with at least one long period where we were around eachother quite a bit, and I'm so ready for this next step that I can feel in in the soles of my shoes.

She's wonderfully understanding, driven but not obsessive, sexy when she wants to be, energetic, smart, fun to talk to, and has a sense of humor that lets her tolerate mine. I used to say she was one in a million, but I've become slowly convinced that she really is entirely unique.

Maybe I'm supposed to feel nervous, come to the realization that I'm limiting myself to one person for the rest of my days... but I actually tried to explore those sorts of feelings way back when, and they fell like the chaff before the force of my love for this girl. This woman. Limiting myself? Not choosing her, not taking her in my arms with a promise to never let her go, on the chance I'd meet someone else or would want to fool around would be like cutting out an eye and an arm on the off chance I could get them replaced with shined-steel cybernetic parts out of the old pulps...

Not only is it a silly idea, I'd probably prefer having the flesh-n-blood products in the end anyway.

So I look towards that date where I'll look in her eyes, take her hand, and keep her as my partner (a role we fill quite well for eachother) for as long as we both shall live. I look with anticipation, and not an ounce of fear or hesitation... as strange as I'm told that is. I can live with that.

Indiana Jones Does Not Jaywalk

I don't have much time to talk this morning. The class periods are shortened, which means that my time for myself has been cut down right along with it.

Oh, and I will be talking to an invisible audience. It's just how I get things done. In case you were wondering? You're the only one reading this, far as I know. Yes, you. Whoever you are.

Anyway, shortened class periods.

You take with one hand, and get the other one chopped off by a seven hundred year-old trap. I suppose.

So I'm sitting here thinking about the past, about the future, and about the moral baggage of law. It's a combination that makes me wish I'd had a little more breakfast to settle this hungry stomach of mine, but let me do my best to explain.

First there the matter of the past. I have always wanted to be a writer, ever since I first found out that the words people put on paper can not only carry information but can actually cause pictures and thoughts in the minds of others. In case you're curious, this was a revelation I had at about the age of four.

It's been a while.

Like most people with a dream like that, though, I fell into the lie of "I'll do it tomorrow" and have lived in that lie for almost twenty years. I've dabbled. I've scribbled. I've impressed with short stories that were much too short, or first chapters that were also final chapters. Coming as no surprise to others in my situation, or who have actually managed to get things done, this is not a satisfactory or productive stage in the writer life-cycle.

So the last year saw some progress, some change.

Which brings me to the future. Over the next several months I will be completing a written work. It isn't a novel, although that'll come next if I can beat down this door first, but a book for a self-created roleplaying game. Some of you may not know what that phrase ("roleplaying game") refers to; no worries, it'll be explained when I have more time.

I also, being the bold decision-maker that I am this past few months, will be opening up a bookstore within the next three years. I know the risks, I'm learning the lay of that particular land, I have sought advice from several quarters (and am taking advice, with a polite smile, from people who aren't in a position to give it with any sort of authority), and I will be doing it.

So if you keep reading, and I keep plugging at this ugly lettered board, for that long we'll both see some changes.

I'm also musing on some silly conversation about law, drug testing, and civil disobedience. Maybe I'll touch on that later. Maybe not.

Introductions

All of the walls are a blinding shade of sun-bleached white, and the hallway floors are covered in layers of thick blue paint. There are layers of paint on that cement, somewhere down there, that are as old as some of the people that walk the paths.

This is South Florida. This is where I work.

Fake wood paneling surrounds me at the moment; the desks (which are really tables), the walls, the doors, the bookshelves. It's like stepping into a very special sort of 1970s design aesthetic, and you can almost hear them now.

"It'll be great for a library, really. It's professional, fresh, but homey and comfortable at the same time," comes a voice from three decades past. The back end of the room, even I must admit, is put together in an interesting way; four feet from the back wall the ceiling jumps up another three feet, making the rear wall (as well as parts of the two walls butting against it) seperate from everything else, and windows run the length of the open space created there.

But here I sit, about to lean over some papers and scribble for half an hour, hoping that the knowledge I throw at kids for five hours out of the day sticks enough that they can explain some of it back to me. All while my gal is getting teeth pulled in a half-drugged state, almost a thousand miles away.

I think about the Pope, and how he's on display for all the tourists of the dead that need some sort of moment in light of his passing. I think about the passionate Mexican artist, reading her words of sadness at his passing, the joy at having seen him pass by in a car as a child, and wonder how many of those gathering in Rome share her feelings. I wonder how many just want to be part of a moment that is bigger than they can ever hope to be, to touch it for just a moment.

Maybe the two groups overlap, but I think I know which one is larger; nobody wants to feel adrift in life, not completely, and everybody likes collecting memories.

Me? I remember the building the Pope could walk through any time he wished, think of the love and hate he saw reflected back at him in the mirror of the world, and I find it hard to feel sad. He, as much you can, got out of this whole mess in one piece... may we all be so fortunate.

I have to go back to herding cats in just a little bit, but I think it'll be alright. Having a breather like this, in the morning, makes it much easier to handle.

Really, it's not so bad, but I can't be anything but thankful it's a Thursday.