Monthly Archives: January 2011

January 31, 2011 · 10:20 pm

Boxing on the Brain

I think I might need to take one (or two) steps away from boxing.

I’m still going to run and get into shape and work toward my goal, but I’ve been burying myself so much in the sport that it’s starting to affect the way I view everything.

Whether it’s my attempts to start impromptu boxing matches at work (“Impromptu left hook!”), chattering nonstop at Emily about boxing facts, watching more and more matches online (Hagler v. Hearns, Jesus Christ that was brutal), or last night’s series of boxing dreams in which each dream was a separate fight. I do not recall doing well.

The point is, I’m worried about boring not just myself, but everyone around me as well.

So from here on out, I’m gonna put my head and just focusing on the task at hand: more running, more training, more getting into shape for the first boxing class. Less daydreaming, more doing in other words.

Dylan Charles

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January 29, 2011 · 11:03 pm

News Update: Again

Once again, low creativity leads to post filled with bullet points and random new happenings.

1. I am still proceeding slowly toward my boxing goal. Running is actually starting to seem….enjoyable? No, that’s not the word I want. “Not as ungodly awful as I remember” is closer. Somewhere in between. Today I sprinted for a short space of time and wasn’t even a bit winded. A miracle on its own, even if just a small one.

2.  My writing is proceeding in fits and lurches. I’ve launched one story into the aether and I’ve got another two hanging back, just waiting to be preened. Feelin’ pretty good about things on that front.

3. In fact, this might be one of the few years where I’ve remembered my new year resolutions past the moment I finished making them. And actually made some headway toward keeping them. If things actually keep going in this vein, I might actually keep a resolution. Signs and wonders.

Dylan Charles

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January 28, 2011 · 5:06 pm

Where did all the bookstores go?

 

photo by Emily Wachtel

 

 

Bookstores, the ones built of brick and mortar anyway, are in serious trouble. The two big heavyweights, Barnes and Noble and Borders, are suffering and they’re struggling to survive.

Given that Amazon.com now sells close to 50% of all book sales in North America, it looks like the only place someone might see Barnes and Noble or Borders in ten years will be online, if at all.

Big name bookstores are looking less and less viable, at least, in their current incarnation.

This really isn’t news for anyone who’s been paying attention. Online bookstores, which cut overhead costs and cut book prices, and the popularity of ereaders are doing their damage. What’s shocking to me is how little emotion I feel about it.

It is sad that these stores are in trouble. I don’t want to see them go out of business, if only for the sake the employees who work there, but that’s about the extent of my emotional involvement. I believe it’s inevitable that the brick-and-mortar megabookstore will cease to exist at some point. Over the next ten years or so, they’ll exist in a very limited capacity, dotting the landscape like aging woolly mammoths.

The bookstores that will survive, I think, are those locally owned, used bookstores. They peddle in wares you can’t so easily get and they offer people the ability to browse in a more visceral way. That might be enough to keep them going.

My apathy comes not from a hatred of books. I love books. I want people to read lots of books, all the time. Society needs books and ideas and the written word to stay healthy. But, to that end, anything that gets people books is a good thing. Anything that makes the process easier and quicker is a good thing. Online bookstores mean you can find what you want quickly and get it (eventually). Ereaders cut that time even shorter.

There are changes, big changes coming to the book selling industry, but those changes are the result of more efficient systems taking their place. It’s not the death of books or the death of bookstores. It’s just the next step in their evolution.

Dylan Charles

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· 8:28 am

Gettin’ Punchy

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been reading a lot of books about boxers. I’ve learned about Sugar Ray Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Jack Johnson and a host of others. In all of their lives, you can see similar pattern: Womanizing, inability to hold onto money, a whole heap of eccentricity.

And then there’s what happens after they’re done fighting and after they’ve lost all that money and they stop winning fights. Sugar Ray Robinson was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in the 1980′s. Paul Pender, one of the men who took the middleweight title from him, was also diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Joe Louis went, well, crazy. Floyd Patterson lost more and more of his memory as he got older.

And so on.

It turns out, and who woulda thunk it, but getting hit in the head repeatedly by large men wearing big gloves does terrible things to your brain. Which is something I worry about.

I assume that no matter how much I box, it won’t increase my chances for irreparable brain damage TOO much. After all, all of those men weren’t just boxers, they were champions. They did just fight ten or fifteen times, but dozens of times against some of the best fighters and some of the hardest hitters of their day and age.

And it seems a bit premature to worry about something like that when I haven’t even taken the first class, but it’s always lurking around in the back of my mind.

Probably shouldn’t try and make it into a profession.

Dylan Charles

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January 26, 2011 · 8:58 pm

Not Running Out of Options

I’m getting constant little reminds that I don’t really know what I’m doing with this training thing. Everything I learn is on the fly as I go along. For example, I always though that when one trains for boxing, they just run a lot until they can run up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and then you can take on Apollo Creed and go the distance.

It turns out that that’s not exactly true. Apparently I can’t just run and run until I’m superman. I’ve gotta switch things up. Keep it different. Since boxing mainly relies on anaerobic bursts of activity, one should train accordingly.

So now I’ve got to throw in a couple days where I max out my speed for two to three minutes, pushing to the limits, in order to better simulate what goes on inside the ring.

In spite of the fact that the deeper I go down this rabbit hole, the more complicated things become, I’m beginning to enjoy it more and more. It helps that I’m actually starting to notice a difference between when I started and now. I can run longer. I have more energy in general. Which, if you’re within spitting distance of me, isn’t necessarily a good thing.

And I’m within grasping distance of boxing. I don’t think I’m quite ready yet, but we’ll see. I think I’m getting close to taking my first class.

Dylan Charles

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January 24, 2011 · 8:02 pm

Don’t Know the Words

Today I rang someone up at the register. He bought a book about grief. He told me that he had lost his son. And I didn’t know what to say.

And I still don’t know what to say.

That’s always been my problem. It doesn’t matter how well I can write. It doesn’t matter if I can find the words when I’m sitting in front of a keyboard. When I talk, the words fail me time and time again. I feel awkward and clunky and out of place. It’s like trying to swim while wearing steel-toed boots.

I never the right thing or the proper thing or the decent thing to say, so I flounder for anything that might work and usually end up missing the mark. So I stick to scripts constructed from trial and error conversations. Any deviation is bound to lead to nothing, but trouble.

But I don’t have scripts for certain situations. I’m forced to rely on my quick-thinking, improvisational wordsmithing. Unfortunately, I don’t have this skill. All I can manage is a mumbled mouthful of gibberish.

All I wish is that, occasionally, I can summon up the ability to say something that fits the moment. I wish I could say something that comforts and informs and lets the other person know that they haven’t been dismissed or disregarded. Unfortunately, that’s not something that I’ve learned yet.

Dylan Charles

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January 21, 2011 · 9:48 pm

Photography

When I first met Emily, she posted a few pictures on her blog. They were snapshots of things that caught her eye: a few wine bottles, someone reading on campus, a grumpy cockatiel.

When we remet again, she was still taking photographs. I saw deserts and wildlife and dizzyingly tall heights a whole country away through her camera lens.

A few, brisk months later, she’s taking pictures that I would envy if I still used a camera.  I admire the art she makes. It makes me happy to see her finding her style and creating her own way through the camera. And I love that she shares it with me.

So, I figured I’d do the same for ya’ll, if only so that maybe seeing it will make you as happy as it makes me. So here are a couple of my favorites.

Also, now would be a good time to point out that she took the photo that I used for my header. So thank you Emily for the pictures.

Dylan Charles

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· 7:46 am

Major Diskovery

I haven’t been to a used bookstore since I left Durham. I used to go to Nice Price Books when I lived down there, but lately I’ve been deprived. I missed the smell of old books and browsing through stacks, not knowing what I’m going to find. That’s the major appeal of a used bookstore: you don’t know what you’re going to find there. Books over a hundred years old, pulps from the ’50′s, that one VHS tape that you have to have even if you don’t have a VCR anymore; it could all be there, so long as you take the time to look.

So I went looking for one in the stupidest way possible: I opened the door to my apartment, picked a direction and started walking. An hour later I was in Oak Square and standing in front of Diskovery, which promised CASSETTES, RECORDS and USED BOOKS. Glory be praised, I had found a used bookstore and it’s the best bookstore EVER.

When I walked in, I quailed at the sight of so many books. There were shelves crammed with books. Books were piled knee high on the floor. There were boxes of books stacked on other boxes of books with piles of books on top of the boxes of books. The shelves were packed full two books deep. There were pulps and new hardcovers and old hardcovers and Starlogs and so much vinyl that I developed a vinyl allergy on the spot.

I picked my way past the books, trying not to knock over the piles and I saw a glass case filled with cassette tapes. I noted this, stepped forward, paused and turned back. There was a cat sleeping with the cassettes. Nonplussed, I continued deeper into the store, only to find my way blocked by another cat. I scratched its head and it let me pass.

There was so much to see that I know I missed three quarters of what’s actually there. It’s a store filled to the brim with books and it’s even organized, though not labeled. I would bump into a section and realize I was in true crime or religious studies or music.

I need to go back. I MUST go back. It’s right on the 57 line in Oak Square. Go check it out if you’re in the area.

Dylan Charles

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January 20, 2011 · 12:28 am

Loss of Control

So…a few years ago I wrote a story called “The Song and Dance Man.” I submitted it to Ichor Falls, this nifty horror story website, they posted it and then I promptly forgot about it.

Today, on a whim, I googled “The Song and Dance Man” and my name together to see what would bounce back. I was a little startled. I saw it popping up, here and there, in places I had never put it. Then I googled the story without my name and I saw it pop up a few MORE places. I saw references to it, as though the story was some dark legend that should never be talked about and, if you had to mention it, whisper it.

The internet had stolen my godamn story.

It was on gaming forums and “creepy pasta” sites. I didn’t even know what a creepy pasta was until tonight, which made me feel old. And I was a little shellshocked. “My story!,” I cried, loudly and repeatedly until Emily had to check on me.

To hell with the fact that people found it good enough to repost. To hell with the fact that there was plenty of good feedback about it. Actually…that’s all pretty cool. I do like the fact that it’s bouncing around. I do like the fact that it’s making the rounds. I wish I got credit for it. I wish people would say, “That Dylan Charles, I wish I could give him five hundred dollars for permission to publish his story.”

If you want it on your blog, go crazy. Post it a dozen times. You haven’t affected my profit margins one iota, because my profits have been 0 up to this point.

But, throw me a bone, put my name on there somewhere. “That Dylan Charles sure is a hack. Look at what he wrote”. Or, conversely, “That Dylan Charles is a goddamn genius. Here is his well recognized work:”

Either way is good.

Dylan Charles

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January 19, 2011 · 2:38 pm

Jazzed

I generally consider myself fairly open minded about music. I listen to stuff that hasn’t been popular in almost fifty years. I occasionally listen to an indie rocker or two. Hell, bring on a rapper and I’ll give ‘im a try.

But the one type of music I’ve never been able to get into is jazz. It’s not for lack of trying. Or maybe it is for lack of trying. I’ve never tried too hard. I look at the sheer depth and breadth of jazz and become overwhelmed. I back away and I run away, heading for the comfort of a Bob Seger song.

There’s so many shifting contours of winding music that it seems remarkably easy to get lost. Where do I start? How do I even pick the first damn thing to listen to? Trying to grab ahold of smoke seems like an easier endeavor. John Coltrane? Miles Davis? Billie Holiday? Charlie Parker? Which person do I choose? And then which songs? Or which albums for that matter. It seems like certain albums need to be listened to in their entirety. No picking or choosing with “Kind of Blue”. Whole thing, man.

I need a Virgil is what I need. I need a guide to help step my way through this strange new landscape. This is my way of asking for recommendations.

Dylan Charles

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