Lover of trading, tacos, 3D/AR/VR, cryptos, and most things Japanese

Here’s the latest excerpt from the chronicles of Max…

How was Anna involved in this mystery? He racked his brain for what seemed like the thousandth time. Churches, Italy, Japan, dome, samurai, sister, buddies, sacrifice, betrayal, Kokopelli, @Brunellesci, @AveMaria, plane ticket, time to go to work… What did it all mean? He was the single point that connected them all so far, but someone else knew everything as well. What did they want from him? Why were all these references to his past coming up now? There was only one way to find out, he had to use the ticket. He had to go to Florence and trust the explanation would become clear there. That @Brunellesci would meet him on the dome. It’s the only way he could find out more about this mystery, he made up his mind and headed home to start packing.

As he was driving down Interstate 10, past downtown Los Angeles, his mind kept drifting through the possibilities. He was abruptly disturbed from his reverie by something ramming into the back of his Evo. “Holy crap”, he thought. He looked in his rear view mirror to see a black Mercury sedan pulling back with two men in dark suits and sunglasses in the front seat. The car paused briefly, then began to accelerate towards his rear bumper again. He quickly downshifted and punched the gas and his Evo leapt forward, pulling away from the sedan. Traffic was unusually light and he wove his way through the cars, trying to get away from the Mercury, but it kept pace with him. As he swerved to the right to go around a slow Honda, the sedan put on a burst of speed and pulled out to the left, into the service lane, passing slower cars in the fast lane. The Merc was gaining ground on him and finally pulled back into the lane alongside his Evo. He glanced to the left in time to see the Merc’s window roll down and the tip of a gun pointed at him. Just as the gun erupted, belching bullets in his direction, he slammed on his brakes causing the sedan to pass him and the bullets miss.

Max quickly reached into his glove box to retrieve the Glock. He then slipped his Evo into the blind spot of the Merc, reached out the window with the gun, and opened fire on the men in the sedan. The Glock barked as bullets spewed from it’s mouth, peppering the Mercury sedan’s windows and doors with holes. He thought he must have gotten lucky with one of the shots since the sedan immediately pulled away and slowed down dramatically. He tossed the Glock on the passenger seat and sped off down the freeway, heart and mind racing, keeping an eye on his rear-view mirror to make sure no more mysterious sedans snuck up on him.

I just finished watching one of my favorite movies, Finding Forrester. It’s an emotional story about two unlikely friends – an aging, successful author and a 16 year old basketball player, both from the Bronx – how they meet and end up enriching each other’s lives. Their initial connection is through writing and that is one of the core storylines throughout the film.

Watching it inspires me to write. When I saw it in the theaters back in 2000, I hadn’t written much in a long time. I stopped on the way home to buy a journal and spent the next month writing in it every day. At some point I got away from writing practice, I stopped making it a priority in my life, and it feels good to be doing it on a regular basis again.

I have not been working on my story much lately. I think I’m waiting to talk with Barry, the author who’s going to work with me to write and publish it, which is supposed to happen later this week. It’s like I’m waiting for permission to write it maybe? Or perhaps some assurance that I won’t just be writing it to write it, that it may actually get published. That’s part of the reason I write here so much, writing is meant to be read. I just haven’t felt like writing it lately, and that’s a lame reason. I need to prioritize working on it now, if for no other reason than to have material to discuss with Barry when we have our call.

It’s a big story and I need to stop thinking about it as such. Focus on the day to day, flushing out details, showing perspectives and context rather than just a recounting of events as I tend to do. It’s a big task and the size of it is a little daunting when I think about it. And that’s the problem right there – I’ve been thinking about it too much rather than just sitting down and writing it instead. It’s funny how paralyzing thoughts can be when it comes to writing. As Sean Connery’s character says, “The first draft comes from the heart. Thinking about it comes later, when you edit.” I can see that in my own writing here, my posts often start off stilted and stop-and-go from the writing end, but usually once I get a paragraph done the creative juices start flowing and my fingers warm up and soon I’m just typing words as they come to me.

Christine and I started writing a fictional story together a while back. We take turns writing a couple paragraphs, then send it to the other for the next installment. That has stalled lately too, as neither of us has had the time or inclination to further it, but it’s my turn to respond and I need to pick up the ball on that too. It’s a really fun exercise in play, writing something that way, taking turns. We wrestle with plot and character development, where we each want the story to go, and finding a balance that doesn’t alienate the other and yet still goes where we each want it to go. We started out writing only a few lines before sending it off, taking quick turns as we found our voices. Soon enough, those few lines turned into a few paragraphs. It really is a lot of fun to do. I’d done it once before with another friend, but that didn’t last long and I’d been searching for someone else to do it with ever since. Dana and I talk about doing something along those lines from time to time, but I don’t think he has the available time right now. He would be a blast to write stuff with. Rich and I have discussed working on a screenplay together in the past, but never found the right material or reasons to do so.

Speaking of screenplays, I think I have three that are all half-written sitting in storage. Or in my old computer files. Crap, now that I think about it, I think they were all done in Final Draft, screenwriting software, and I don’t have copies of them any more. I think I have a hard copy of my script about being unemployed still. Then there were two others that I can’t for the life of me remember what they were about. Oh, and all my journals were scanned and converted to PDFs, though I never go back and read them. I write in the moment. It would be an interesting exercise to go back and read my journals and old blog entries – I will have to do that one of these days. And I need to start writing social media posts for my company’s site, OtakuVentures.com. So wow, I’m realizing I have a lot of writing to do. 🙂

Anyway, if you don’t write currently, I highly recommend picking up a notebook and just seeing what comes out when you do. I think those spiral bound notebooks we used to use in high school are like 89 cents. Get a good pen, one that writes fast, and has a line quality you like. Then just sit down and write whatever comes out of your head. It’s a great way to process events in your life, reflect on things, or just get shit out of your head. There was a great quote I saw today from Lord Byron that I couldn’t agree with more: “If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad.” Enjoy! 🙂

I spent a couple hours working on a tattoo design today. I’ve been wanting to get one to commemorate my community placement, saying farewell to Pueblo, and my sunny disposition about life in general. I’ve been toying with some ideas, and always thought the Aztec sun god would make a great piece for my right shoulder.

After browsing pages and pages of images, I didn’t see any that fit what I was looking for, so I grabbed a couple to use as inspiration and created this design. It’s not 100% complete, but it’s close. I think I’m going to add a little more detail to the inner rings, and add some depth to the black flames that outline the image rather than have them so flat.

I really like the white-tipped, Japanese Ukiyo-e style wave paintings and have considered trying to work some around the design to get a bit of fire and water going, but tats are pretty expensive and I haven’t worked out how the total design will mesh yet, so I’m going to get the sun done first. Hopefully my checks will come in next week and I’ll be able to get it done then, but it’s probably going to have to wait until next month.

I need to find a good, detail-oriented tat artist. Right now I’ve just seen some of the work at the local shop, but I know many of you have tats and could probably recommend someone – so please do! They’ll need to be good at fine details and shading, as there are plenty of both in this design. Let me know who you know or where to go! 🙂

Edit: This one’s looking a lot better –