Charles Krauthammer reminds me of a snapping turtle.

The nose. The folded brow. The vile lips.

Please feel free to recommend other Fox News commentators and the unsightly animals they resemble. I’m happy to mash them up.

Two men about my age are taking up two side-by-side tables in the center of the cafe, clearly together in some conspiracy to judge anyone who walks through the door. There’s a real aggression in the way they occupy too much space, and how they touch one shoulder to the other, doing their own thinking, coming back together to mumble about something, and going back to their stares. Neither man faces his own table, opting instead to open his legs to the one walking lane between the two rows of tables and the counter.

Recently I find myself wanting to interrupt strangers who engage themselves in some public rudeness: a loud conversation on the phone on the train; talking through a live performance; keeping reserved seats on the bus while elderly dodder toward the back; leaving shopping carts in the middle of everything. And I’m not talking about some little comment uttered under the breath or a request to please do a little thing differently in the moment. No. I’m inclined to a perverse self-righteous anger and, worse?, the impulse to lecture. How could you sit there polluting my airspace, and these other people you see here, with your obnoxious conversation about how you can’t believe your friend doesn’t know the definition of the word “remediate”? Or the conversation with some amateur advisor whose advice you won’t heed?

I’m of two minds. The one that says interruption and instruction, well, as much as I want to scratch that itch, I still don’t know what it will take to plunge into my own public outburst. Where do I get the right? I try to pinpoint that one move that will push me over the edge into confrontation. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ve felt so so close. Close enough to have my voice box cleared up. Close enough to lean forward. Close enough to feel the adrenaline pump through my veins like I’ve just been in a fight. I could list a thousand things that stop me from stepping over, but I know there’s a trigger out there.

But the point is, this ship I saw, its massive red hull above water while it awaited whatever heavy load would be spit into its holding tanks or bins or whatever you call them, had a name that struck me: Thalassini Kyra, a cargo ship sailing under the Maltese flag.

Nearly every day a ship floats idly in that same spot, either recieving or depositing cargo that I assume is food-related: grains, mostly. I have no proof of this other than a large, seemingly rickety conveyor belt, and the six-pack-of-silos look of the building on shore, which as far as I know is a vestage of times past. So the appearance of the Thalassini Kyra didn’t strike me per se, but rather the ship’s name.

Kyra was the initial name I gave to the love interest in the book I’m writing, a girl who’s now called Thalia. And cargo ships play a large role in the underlying anxiety of the book — along with freight trains, diesel fuel, open mines, logging. Staples of the Pacific Northwest and of America’s most muscular years of growth. Intimations of both World Wars, Manifest Destiny, on and on. And Anson, the main character, is obsessed with the Italian city of Trieste, a city whose history is critical in the advent of global shipping lines, international trade, the efficient distribution of post, and is itself a torn place that lies across the international border between Italy, its current flag, and Austria, its home during the heady days of Osterreichischer Lloyd — the Austrian Lloyd — and the birth of steam navigation.

And yet, the movie makes sense. There’s a logic of violence and parable established in the opening scene. There are people in this film that are nearly impossible to kill, they stroll through rooms casually dismembering men with machine guns. AK 47s are no match against someone who knows how to use a knife. Once you’ve accepted this (and the excessive gore that accompanies it) the film never deviates. Which, if you think about it, is the opposite of Inception, where new rules were continually being introduced to make the story tenable. First you have to believe they can enter your dreams. Then, you can die in your dreams. Eventually, when it’s convenient, you have to believe that time moves slower the deeper your dream state. You also have to believe that only Leonardo Di Caprio has demons. Two thirds of Inception was spent explaining Inception. Machete never explains itself. This is the world you are in.

To be honest, I’m writing this post before I even finish reading Stephen’s email because his delivery method seems so brilliant and simple at the same time. Most of us have so many demands on our time (what percentage of my friends, most of them readers, has been able to finish more than one book this summer?) and so many social feeds competing for our fleeting attention that we don’t give content its due.

But email. If I care enough to subscribe to you, I’ll spend the time to open the email, read the first paragraph to see if I’m drawn in, and, shit, I might even write a response. You aren’t needy. You aren’t asking me to go searching for you. And if I don’t feel like reading you today, no big deal. You’ll give me another try tomorrow.

Of course, there are readers and RSS aggregators and other ways to gather massive amounts of content to you. But even those get clogged and require tending, like some garden where it’s easy to plant everything under the sun, but much harder to do the reaping.

So, kudos to Stephen Elliott for doing two things well: creating excellent work every day, and making it very easy to get your hands on that content.

Now I’ve got to finish reading my first delivery.

I loved this line the moment I saw it in a recent Lapham’s Quarterly, the one about “Sports & Games.” Since first reading it two months ago, I’ve thought of it often, in conversations ranging from light issues like taste in food to more serious talk about fidelity, love, the things that define what quality of person you are in relationships.

What excites me most about those two sentences is the way they swiftly get at something we don’t talk about enough: what it means to be an adult. It’s a problematic word, adult, because I don’t think it means simply adding years or responsibilities; there are plenty of people in their middle years with important jobs and families that I wouldn’t consider adults, but why? What’s missing?

One of my dearest friends in the world, a woman named Att who helped raise me during difficult times for my parents (much longer story there, but suffice it to say Att is the most curious person I’ve ever known, and one of my best friends even with an age differential of some fifty years), gave me her thoughts on the subject when I was last in St. Louis half a year ago. She said that people don’t live long enough to become adults, it’s just an accident that we grow old and die so quickly, without figuring anything out. Those aren’t her exact words, but what I took from her statement was that we should be willing to forgive people, no matter their age or station, because we’re all still learning and failing and fumbling on as children.

That simple idea — you never become an adult — is striking even if you disagree. Which I do. So back to the Ford quote and why the seemingly funny line (a joke!) is serious.

I tend to use a kind of general filter to answer the first part of Ford’s construction, namely, to answer what makes me happy and what makes me mad. But I’m starting to wish I didn’t have to wait for that filter to spring into action before deciding what would make me happiest in a given situation. I feel reactive in that way, reactive to my own happiness. The most common negative result is that I spend a good deal of time on something that makes me mad, while not realizing earlier how to act on it and move on.

Which brings us to the active part: “…and what to do about each.” That part that drives me crazy. How often do I face a situation that makes me mad, and I have no idea what to do about it, or, even worse, that I have an idea of what to do but no resolve or means to act.

I guess that’s where I’ll end this rant for now. Let’s call this part of an ongoing probe in how to better pursue those things that make me truly happy and avoid the trap of what I should do, but which makes me, well, mad.

I love my neighborhood on days like this, when I can just walk downstairs and grab a breakfast sandwich from Moxie and a perfect americano from the Fresh Pot.

Week two was terrible. I didn’t respect the schedule nearly enough, allowed other things to get in the way, and didn’t do half as much work as I’d promised myself.

With Monday already under my belt this week, things are already looking off track. Spent this morning sleeping late because of an over-active weekend (two soccer games plus one reporting in the press box, a four-mile walk home from U of Portland on Sat night, lots of family time).

Assessment: I need more work and more diligence in terms of refusing plans. Remember what is most important.

The draw toward an increased level of order and progress in my own life was punctuated today by an article I just read about the life of Ingmar Bergman, Swedish filmmaker, whose late-life peculiarities of sex and family and daily operations constituted the main interest points of a photo essay in a recent (not recent as it turns out…only seemed that way since we no longer subscribe and that one’s stayed around for a while) issue of W magazine (supplied, I should say, by Sage. I’m not too current with my W if she’s not around). A simple idea stuck out: for a man with a chaotic inner existence, imposed structure is essential. In fact, I could see the rigors of structured living going beyond essential into the realm of addiction (not lost in the article is a sense of Bergman being increasingly difficult to reach, personally and professionally, due to his adherence to a self-centered timeline and a set of deep convictions about what is and is not good use of hours).

Also, I do not mean to flatter myself by saying my inner life is comparable to that of Mr Bergman. Whereas his notes and revisions are the stuff of museum halls, mine are an embarrassment I wouldn’t want displayed to anyone, least of all a public audience. I hope some day to create works whose construction would prove interesting to someone other than myself, that future is far from guaranteed.

But I do recognize that a lack of structure coupled with a swell of good intentions is the perfect equation for letting one’s self off the hook. It’s easy for me to say I’m working, or that I’m thinking, or that the real time to sit down and get to work on the book is just around the corner. But without a schedule, I don’t have a sense of time and opportunities being gobbled up by my past — a sense that I think is important to maintain. The truth is, every morning I’m not writing is a morning lost, a morning set back, a morning from the future that I’m borrowing against despite the fact that the future isn’t promised to me. First thing first: write one book. Then another. I certainly can’t write my third novel while I’m still waiting to get downstairs and finish the first.

So, for posterity, here’s my three-days-a-week plan, plus a little something (less structured) for the weekend. I’ll report back on the success of this project in two weeks.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday

7:01am Wake up
7:01am – 7:15am Coffee
7:15am – 9:15am Writing
9:15am – 9:20am Breakfast
9:20am – 9:35am Commute (bike)
9:35am – 10:00am Workout and shower
10:00am – 6:30pm Work
6:30pm – 7:00pm Commute home, unwind
7:00pm – 8:00pm Read, relax
8:00pm – 9:00pm Dinner
9:00pm – 11:00pm Read, movie, etc.
11:00pm Sleep

Weekend

Six hours total of writing time, divided as events dictate