So I decided to pony up and try to write a book (after one naive attempt in high school and another brazen one in college). This time around, I aimed to write 2,000 words a day. After ten days, I had 20,000 words of what I thought a book should be, rather than what I wanted my book to be. So I scrapped it all and started over.

Now I'm enjoying what I'm writing. It's pretty out there, perhaps, but I like that. I like to think I've taken a lot from Douglas Adams, he who penned the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but I realize it could just be that I've tried to take a lot from him and botched it all.

I had a title for the book. Then I changed it to Godwright tries really hard not to fuck up too much. Then Jewels said that was awful, which I kinda knew deep down, so now I just have it saved as Godwright.

I'll be honest, I named the guy Godwright for no deeply meaningful reason. I always thought I'd give two things really meaningful names: the main character of my first book and my first child.

Of course I also thought I would have a few published short stories by the time I started writing my first book, but you know, sometimes writing turns out to be a bit harder than your naive mind had it pegged for so you gotta despair a bit and question your ability. That's fine, though–probably even better that way or whatever.

Here's a bit of the plot that I have so far. Godwright is a new teacher at an inner-city school. He is struggling, naturally. Students scream at him and one threatens to punch him. Then he hooks up with another teacher, who gets pregnant, and as she tells Godwright that she's pregnant, the student that threatens to punch him (along with four cronies) hears her tell Godwright she's pregnant. So then that turns into a bit of a problem because the principal is very much against relationships between teachers.

Anyway, that's what I have so far. It's been a giggle to write, and oftentimes I'll find myself laughing at what I'm writing, which either means I genuinely think it's funny or I'm trying to force myself to believe it's funny, and I'm never sure which it is.

In On Writing by Stephen King, he writes that authors must compose their first drafts with the figurative door to the world closed. He's rather adamant about that. However, I want to share just a little bit of what I've written. Let's say the door is still closed, but that I'm slipping a few paragraphs under the door to you, dearest blog reader.

My first couple lines are these:
   
“You sit down, mothafucka,” said Eli as the rest of the class froze in eager anticipation. They were probably thinking that a show was coming, maybe even one that involved a student rattling a teacher’s cage, swinging a couple of lazy fists into his jaw, perhaps dislodging some teeth.

I am that teacher. I gauged Eli’s anger as being pretty damn high, noticed the path to the door was blocked by ravenous students that could smell blood, and checked the window to see if it was open and if I could jump out if Eli started loping toward me.

The window was open. Thank God.

I've noticed as I've been writing that I really like long sentences that are funny because they are long. Or maybe it's that they're distracting because they're long. Whatever, I really like long sentences. Here's one. (Godwright can't remember the student's name, but he's pretty sure it's either Respect or Ronald. It turns out it's Thomas, but that's superfluous.)

Respect or Ronald wasn’t exactly a big kid–he’d been the water boy on the football team and broken his leg when he’d tripped on a sprinkler head as he was running water out to the huddle, which reminded me a great deal of my own high school days when I’d been a water boy for the water polo team and nearly broken my leg after I’d slipped on the wet deck, despite all the signs that said ‘No RUNNING’, during my school’s state championship loss to the Wilmington Whalers, whose title was later stripped because their water boy had been giving his team weed-laced protein bars, unbeknownst to anyone except the water boy and his dealer, who happened to be the Wilmington Whalers water polo coach, but that’s another story.

Is that funny or just annoying? Oh, don't answer that! My door is figuratively closed; I'm just slipping you things under it, you can't slip stuff back. Just kidding. Anyway.

One last passage. It's the one sex scene I've written. I hope you like it.

I met her at her small apartment. We never ate the pie, although we got so far as to set it on the counter with two plates and two forks to boot. But just before we cut into it, Fellena pushed the plates and utensils out of the way, hopped on the counter, pulled me in so she was straddling me, and.

Yadda yadda yadda. Pretty steamy, huh? I love that and period. I rarely see that, the and period. Maybe I've never seen it. But that's how the sex scene ends. Tantalizing, right?

Also, is this font really small or does it just appear that way next to those big letters? Weebly is the bee's shins when it comes to adjusting font. It's so unpredictable! There's just a plus and minus sign that you can click, but I never seem to know how much bigger or smaller hitting one of those buttons is going to make the letters.

Anyway, I can't help but wonder what is possible for the book. I'd like to say I'm just doing this just for the love, but I think any writer that doesn't want other people to read his or her writing isn't doing it right.

One last thing to divulge. Before I start writing I often find myself turning on this song with Pavarotti and Jeff Beck. I think it's great, really gets me going when I'd rather mope about everything.

Dear Jewels,

Before we moved in together, a small part of me was worried that it would be difficult to live with someone I love. I thought that perhaps we wouldn’t have enough space, that I wouldn’t have enough privacy to write, or that you wouldn’t have privacy to do whatever it is you do when I’m not with you. But living with you presents an entirely different set of challenges than simply not having enough time alone.

To be in love with you is to practice altruism. Being in love with you means cleaning clumps of our hair out of the bottom of the shower with my bare hands. It’s wanting to talk to you when you’re in the other room but remaining silent, waiting for that time when we’re both free. It’s going to bed a little earlier on occasion because I want to hear your softening of movements as you fall asleep: nervy twitching giving way to gentle adjustments and finally, those of subtle sleep.

I'm convinced that sleeping together every night has us in identical patterns. In the early morning hours, we’re either both awake or both asleep. I can sense it, when I foggily adjust and hear you do the same. I’m also sure that, try as we might, neither of us has succeeded in sneaking off to the bathroom and finding the other asleep upon return.

Of course, there have been some hurdles. You are so busy with school that some days it feels like I’m living alone. And sometimes I get frustrated when I can’t spend as much time with you as perhaps we’d both like.

But I do know that after a long day of you working hard at school and me working hard at staying busy, and I hear footsteps in the hallway outside our apartment, they’re always yours in my mind. And I get so excited–did you know I still get excited when you come home?–when the feet outside that door are, in fact, yours, and I hear the key turn and the door swing open, the only thing in the world that I want is to see your face, to read it and gauge whether you had a good day.

I’ve been writing a lot lately, writing something that may rhyme with a nook, and it scares the hell out of me–so much that on this blog I can’t even spell out what it is I’m writing, I have to pathetically use the word ‘nook’ to get to it. And a few days ago, I read some of it to you, and that just scared more hells out of me and made me realize I can’t do it, I can’t read it to you in its current unfinished form. I’m too obsessive, and I saw too many things that I wanted to change, so if I did read it to you each day, I’d spend so much time editing that I’d never finish.

And the look on your face told me everything I need to know about how much you love me. You hated it, hated that I told you I couldn’t read it to you and hated my explanation. You wanted me to let you in to that most personal of spaces so much that you couldn’t keep the hurt from your face. And as much as I want to share it with you, and as much as I can’t wait to do so once the first draft is done, seeing that hurt in your face made me love you all the more, because it showed just how much you care. Telling me that you love me is one thing, but I get the truest sense of it from your face more than your words.

And I hope you see it in mine as often as I do in yours. Because I love you to the moon and back. Words cannot define love (see last blog), but I love trying to define ours. I love the little notes you leave me, like the one on my first day of work. I loved writing the one that I put under your toothbrush, but I love even more that it’s still there, after all these days. I love thinking about the way you smile at me because when it’s real and genuine and when I put it there, there’s nothing else in the world I’d rather see.

And still, I feel this love is young. We are like two pumas gazing out at our unexplored world. We still have so much to figure out, and I love that we’re going to do these things together (like surviving a weeks-long hike along a backcountry trail, being with each other at Christmas, and telling your parents we’re living together.)

Although solitude is my oldest companion, with you I’m closer to solitude than with any other person. It’s only been about a year, and I feel you know me. Like my favorite line from that poem, “I think I understand the patterns of my nature,” I think you understand the patterns of my nature, and rather than this understanding of yours leading you to ditch me, it’s seemed to have deepened your love for me, which I'm rather grateful for.

And it's a beautiful feeling. The best and most beautiful.

Beauty is ... ? Beauty is ...

Beauty is.

According to David Mitchell, who wrote my favorite book, Cloud Atlas, beauty in the world cannot be defined. He should know because when I read his writing, I feel beauty. I can't describe it, the ways in which his words move me. I just know it, because I can feel it. Take this sentence for example, "The builder sort of vacuumed up his coffee so it didn't burn his lips." You feel that, right?

When you're in love, it's the same thing. You know it because you can feel it. But try telling someone what your love feels like.

Um, it feels good. A new, bare Christmas tree in your home for the first time. Sunset on a hill, looking down. A hummingbird hovering. Coasting on your bike after climbing a steep hill. Jumping into a lake all sweaty.

Right, those all are just other things that feel like love, like beauty. But they all flop miserably if trying to relay what it feels like to actually be in love.

That's because love can't be articulated, not truly. Yet when I turn on TV, open a book, listen to music, read a poem, or do another of a vast number of activities that involve humans trying to recreate and define our world, I see people trying to define love. It's silly, right? We can't do it. We can't define it.

The same goes with beauty, an extension of love, or perhaps its source. We can't put into words what it feels like to see or feel or smell or touch or be touched by something beautiful.

Mitchell wrote in this book called Black Swan Green, "Art ... fabricated of the inarticulate is beauty." Confusing, I know. Too confusing for me to butcher with an explanation, so I'll let Mitchell continue (through a character speaking imperfect English, but I'm not about to belittle the coming quote with that most deleterious of words, sic):

So why do we keep trying to define it? The beauty and the love?

Because it's worth trying. I think every time you try to explain to yourself why you love someone, you see them a little clearer, perhaps a little less subjectively. This can lead to two outcomes: you love them a little more or you love that you know them a little more.

I try to express the love I feel all the time, and I've never been wholly satisfied with my words. They always come up short. And though it might have something to do with, as Mitchell says, beauty being undefinable, I still do it. And even though my words are insufficient, the attempt is a beautiful thing in itself.

Because, really, that's what writing and talking and living is. It's attempting, every day, to put your finger on something that you'll never be able to put your finger on. What is it to be in love? I can't answer, but in no way does that mean I stop thinking about it altogether. I consider it over and over. I read books to hear other people's truths about love to better understand my own. I interact and connect with people because they are a mirror that I can hold up to see myself and the way I love more truly.

So, with that being said, next blog I'm going to write a letter to the person I love, and I'm going to do my best to articulate that love I have for her. Not because I can't define love, but because I can try and should never stop trying.

As Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes as he nears his death:

What a fun social game!

This ice bucket challenge has me all atwitter, and I don't say that just because the videos are all over Facebook. I say it because every time I see one I think, Oh goodie, more Internet litter.

Since the challenge started, I bet we've got more people able to explain what a bronzy bikinied girl with a bucket full of ice is than ISIS.

I heard some complaints that people participating in the challenge don't even know what ALS is. Do you know how one bathing-suit clad participant solved that? She said, "ALS is a neurodegenerative disease," with a huge smile on her face. Raising awareness, one Wikipedia search at a time.

And I understand the challenge has raised tons of money. I've seen the figure rise from $2 million, $3 million, and today up to $9.3 million in the past month. That's a lot of money, but something about the whole thing just seems so impersonal and misguided. That's my opinion, and no I can't argue with all that money raised, but I can say that I haven't yet seen a video that made me think, "That person is doing something good for other people."

Unfortunately, I have seen a lot of videos. Most of them scream, "Look at me!" None of them scream, "Look at this disease that I'm here to raise awareness and money for." If I had ALS, seeing these videos where most participants squeeze in their line about the acronym without the slightest idea of what it represents would piss me off, I think.

However, well done, America, with the money raising. It would have really been something though if all this could have happened without the ice and the buckets and the videos. If people would have simply donated because they could and because they realized that the money could potentially help another human being. But that would have made the cause the subject rather than the donor. And that would have required a lot more altruism than this fundraiser is requiring.

New bucket challenge: Do something for someone not because you want something in return, not because you want likes or comments or to pour water on your swimsuited body, but because you can.

"One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education."

Those idealistic words are Teach for America's slogan, and though I'm no longer a member of the organization, I wanted to lead this blog with them. When I was a member of the organization, I remember taking surveys that aimed to track my progress toward and understanding of their slogan. I remember rather clearly some of the more frustrating questions on those surveys. A good example was one that I'll paraphrase here, "Do you have a working theory about what needs to be done to ensure every child in this nation receives an excellent education."

While the goal is noble, perhaps the noblest, I was entirely baffled that the organization had the chutzpah to ask me such a question. In essence, they were asking me if I had a working theory (as in it was okay if I didn't have the theory, but I did need to be on track for such) on creating a utopian society. I mean, if every child in the nation had an excellent education, we'd be pretty damn close to solving many if not all of society's problems. We'd be living in a sort of utopia. (Though I do wonder what would happen to menial jobs if every child was well-educated, but I'm sure a society full of intellects would yield an answer to that hiccup.) So I was not a little insulted by the shameless audacity of Teach for America to ask me such an impossible question.

Because there I was, fresh out of the ivory tower, just trying to get through each day at my school, just trying to plan a lesson that wouldn't flop, and Teach for America's asking me if I know how to solve the problems plaguing thousands of schools across the nation–really the biggest problem in our society. (No slight to other problems, but we're talking about millions of children not just not getting an excellent education but not graduating high school, not getting even a foundational education.)

What I'm getting at is this: I'm not sure if every child can one day have an excellent education. I don't know if such a utopian society is possible.

But then I read an article like this one. High school graduation rate could hit 90 percent. The first line of the article states, "The high school graduation rate has topped 80 percent for the first time in U.S. history..." Eighty percent isn't bad, right?

As I read on, the author writes that if the "rapid pace of improvement" continues, 90 percent of students in the U.S. will graduate by 2020. But assuming a rapid growth can continue is a monumental if, like saying after a blistering first quarter of a basketball game in which one team drops 40, "Well if this pace continues, they'll score 160 points." I suppose it is possible though, right?

But then, after nearly one thousand words of praise and analysis of statistics by state, the author drops a bombshell on all the optimism. And in my mind, all the projections and improved graduation rates should be thrown out the window because of these few short, almost parenthetical paragraphs.

Is it possible that these soaring graduation rates are in some way a product of the slackening standards?

Um, duh.

But this confession, this massive dark cloud over an otherwise sunny parade, comes only at the very end of a beaming article. Yet to me at least, it should have been the article itself. Schools aren't suddenly teaching better (at least not on the widespread scale that the article claims). They aren't educating students better. They aren't supporting once struggling students to such an extent that now those very students are surpassing difficult benchmarks to graduate.

They're just changing the standards. They're just sending them through to appease overseers and to earn funding that they desperately need. How can this possibly be seen as a great accomplishment when the very states that are reporting such growth are manufacturing it themselves by altering the standards? By changing passing scores and throwing out courses needed to graduate and offering students mock classes to quickly catch up, states and districts are manipulating graduation rates until they are at an acceptably high clip.

What's craziest about this whole thing is that I think the states are justified in doing this. A year ago I might have said different. But now? I get it. These schools aren't cutthroat competitors trying to look better than the school down the block. They're doing it for their students. I liken this altering of standards to the Atlanta cheating scandal. Whole groups of teachers in Atlanta stole copies of their students' completed federal tests, erased wrong answers, and then filled in correct ones for them. Not because they were evil teachers or because they wanted to earn bonuses, but because they wanted to stop the district from firing entire staffs that had dedicated their lives to their students, and, perhaps more importantly, they wanted their students to know what success feels like.

“I’m not going to let the state slap them in the face and say they’re failures,” said Damany Lewis, a math teacher amid the scandal, in an article in The New Yorker. “I’m going to do everything I can to prevent the why-try spirit.”

The problem with standardized tests that are identical in all schools, whether in urban areas or suburban ones or rural ones, is that the bodies of students are simply on different playing fields. An important aspect of education is to teach students grit, that struggling is good and persevering through it will lead to results. But failing a test over and over doesn't instill grit, it screams at a student to give up. And that's what many students are doing, but in no way is it their fault. No student sits in a classroom and thinks, "I sure do want to be stupid. I think I'll do everything I can from now on to fail." I don't think such a student exists, but if a test tells students over and over that they are stupid, they'll start to believe it.

Anyway, back to the utopia. If you disagree with me and think one day, perhaps soon, all students in the country will have access to an excellent education, please share why you think so and the sources that led you to that optimism. Honestly, I'd love to read them because while I don't think such a future is near, I sure hope I'm wrong.