The Julia-Mandelbrot Love Child

First and foremost I am a man of ideas. I have always been a man of ideas and I presume I shall always be a man of ideas. As such, I am of this nature easily inclined to fall in love with an idea, to infatuate myself in concepts and theories, to indulge in the orgasmic philosophies of imagination and the perpetuation of thought itself.

As such, I am also of the nature of put into things more thought than one might deem reasonable for the affair. I consider at length where I’ll spend my money, how I will spend it, and what will remain after it’s spent. I can spend days on end merely considering which movies, which books, which ideas I liked more than the last.

Take history. But two short years ago I was beginning college. I loved the idea of history, that ability to raise one’s eyebrows and make a well-informed comment upon how this has all happened before. Just look back in that year, at that place, at that one moment which parallels this, and you’ll see, very clearly, how we’ve just repeated our mistakes–for better or for worse I’d leave to the audience, but it’s only one such possible encounter with a historian.

Of course, but two short years ago, I was also beginning my first course in history. And I can assure you all, there was no delight in the act for the delight that mirrored the concept. I was bored. I sought answers and insight that did not exist in the text, that did not exist in the mindset of history. Though I still do love the idea of history, and of being historically knowledgeable, the study itself remains elusive, a passion I cannot hope to touch.

As a mathematician, I’m also exceedingly fond of tangents.

A Year Ago Today

I had some pretty nifty plans for the New Year…then I got sick. Horribly sick. And I got around to none of it. On the bright side, I am feeling better today, so that’s a start. Perhaps I can salvage some of my plans after all?

Anyways, can you believe this blog is a year old today?

I know I can’t. It feels (to use a grand ol’ cliche!) like only yesterday when I was sitting on the ottoman with my computer in my lap signing up for WordPress. I’d written a recap of the last decade to post on a forum I frequent (although not to frequently anymore, I am shamed to say), and I decided it’d be even more fun to finally start that blog I’d been dreaming about and go for it. So I did.

It’s Fractal Almost

Plinky says:

“Ten years from now, what do you hope your life will be like?”

I asked myself a similar question this last summer when I was Israel. We were in the Beit Knesset (that is to say, in the vulgar, the chapel) and I was looking up at the stained glass window, thinking of where life might take me.

It started with a seed–who I was and where I was.

Then it started to grow: A stem (where I’ve been) and branches (where I’d be going). As it grew onwards and upwards, the branches kept breaking and breaking apart more and more, each traveling about the same distance before it bifurcated itself into two more possible futures, almost as if the fractal tree that branches perpetually.

I still see that tree, but now it has many more branches.

Among them:

The Mathematician: Herein my education is straightforward. I graduate GTCC, get my Bachelor’s in Mathematics with teaching licensure, and then I get a job either at a high school or a middle school and teach children how to understand math. It’s a passion of mine, both mathematics and teaching, and in this branch I’m happy and enjoying life, perhaps not making six figures as someone once complimented me by saying he could foresee me doing such, but it’s still a good life. At some point I might return to school and get my Master’s or Doctorate and teach at the collegiate level (GTCC’s head of the math department has implied she’d love to see me take her place someday), but no matter which way the branch continues to grow, I’m always doing what I love.

The Rabbi: This branch puts me in one of two places, either here in America or back in Israel. In either scenario, I complete my Bachelor’s as before and then migrate back up north, where I attend the Jewish Theological Seminary in NYC where I’m later ordained as a rabbi of the Conservative movement. Then again this branch diverges once more, wherein some leaves take me back to teaching and others to a congregation and still more to the Committee of Jewish Law and Standards. It’s an odd bunch of branches, I’ll admit, but they’re a nice place to bathe in the sunshine of spirited possibilities.

The Politician: This branch is still a new bud, spawn of my time in Raleigh at the SLI and also the political rally I aforementioned attended. In either case, much like the others, I continue till I’ve achieved my Bachelor’s, and then while I teach for a bit (or perhaps after I’ve taught for a bit), I return to school to get my Associate’s in Political Science (since you don’t need any political training to be a politician, I could just jump off the bridge here, but I’m of the philosophy that if you’re going to do something, do it right, so I’d take the time to make myself properly acquainted with politics before making myself a so-called politician). From here, I’d run for office. Perhaps on a school board at first, perhaps straight to state congress, later on to Congress itself, then perhaps as far as the Presidency. That part’s debatable. In any case, I’d bring common sense and sensibility back to America, looking at the facts first, not the favors we’d be offered, and do what’s best for the nation, not what’s best for me. I’d lobby for intelligent functioning and equality for all. It’d be a good day in my country.

And the Writer: This one’s like a willow branch, long and slender and wispy like the wind. It flutters in and out, through the other branches, wherever life may take me, as I continue to write here–upon my blog–and elsewhere, stories and novels and many more things. Sometimes I get published upon this branch and make millions, sometimes only thousands, sometimes only a dedicated fanbase. But no matter where this thread of life goes, it’s always a part of where I am, always a part of who I am.

The sad part is that each of these branches lacks a little thing like a flower: They’re covered in leaves, but all trees have leaves, and mine is lacking some color. In all of these scenarios, I’m career-oriented and goal-driven (the picture of America right there), but I’m loveless and, if yet still happy, lonely. They forget to factor in the indiscernible future, the love interests and relationships, the man I’ll marry, the family we’ll have. And whereas I can’t see any of that, this tree is but a seed still and little more than that.

Completing the Square

I started this blog ten years ago. True, the calendar reads only six months today, but I began with a New Year’s special in which I looked back at the last ten years of my life. The ups, the downs. All of it. In all honesty, I had intended to post it on a forum I frequent (rather infrequently now, I’m afraid), but with a longstanding desire to start a blog of my own, it seemed the perfect time–and the perfect topic–to do so with.

So I did.

This is my forty-second post. It’s not nearly as high as the 200,000,000 entries posted collectively amongst all WordPress blogs, but it’s still a nice start. It’s also exactly six posts higher than thirty-six, and if it’s not obvious already, that’s six squared–and for a mathematician like me, that’s a good sign! There’s also exactly six categories (one default, and five I actually use), three pages, and seventy-nine tags–the first three of which were gay, Jew, and writer.

Those three words sum me up rather well–and thereby most of my blog, too. In fact, when I was designing my header, I’d considered incorporating a Star of David and a male/male sign into it, but when I did so, it looked too busy and I decided it was best left as it was. That’s not to say either’s hard to find here–just look at the tags! Eleven relate directly to my being Jewish, and an additional three directly to my being gay (there’d be more to that list, too, but tags like “love” and “marriage” are just too vague).

I’ve also got three ongoing series that relate to each of them. Just this past week I started a series on equal rights and visibility with my post “A is Action”; six weeks ago I began looking at weekly verses from the Pirkei Avot and writing my thoughts about them with the post “Three Precepts”; and a staggering three months ago I started my first serial with the eponymous post “Super?”

To date I’ve had 1208 views of my blog–approximately 201 views a month, six views per day. My busiest day so far was April 29, with thirty-one views. It might not seem like a lot, but for me, any views at all is enough to keep me coming back.

And come back I intend to do! I’ve still got almost an entire five chapters of the Pirkei Avot to cover, not to mention three more parts of Super, twenty-five more letters, and ninety-nine more things to be thankful about!

I’m still a newbie. I might’ve been using the internet for as long as I can recall having it, but I’m still only six month into my blog. I’ve still got a lot of ground to cover, a lot of things to learn, and a lot of interesting things to say. I hope you’ll agree with me when I say I hope you’ll be there every step of the way. Just as we can ask whether or not a tree falling in the woods still makes a sound if there’s no one around to hear it, we can ask whether or not a blog makes any difference if there’s no one around to read it.

And maybe I can’t change the world, but I’d at least like to make a difference.

Words will come

I’m a writer. That’s already been established. What’s not been said, however, is that I plan on using this blog for more than a solely personal agenda: I also hope to use it to make some of my writing, both nonfiction and fictional, available for others to read online. Though I do hope some day to be published and well-known, everyone has to start somewhere, and the feedback and general awareness I get here will only help me to reach my goals in the end.

In way of nonfiction, I’ll be posting various essays that I’ve written over the years. Sometimes they’ll be remnants from discussions and chats I’ve had across internet forums from subjects ranging from religion to climate change, but more frequently they’ll probably be essays I’ve had to write for school that are now fairly useless to me since they’ve been graded and those classes have ended. However, they’re still good writing, and I’m sure there’s plenty of people interested in religion, gay rights, deviance, and whatever other topics I might have to write about that will enjoy reading what I’ve already written. I got my grades, and they can get the rest.

As for fiction, I won’t be posting full stories here. That makes it difficult for them to be published later on. However, I will occasionally post writing experiments inspired by writing prompts that have been suggested to me (look at the suggest content page at the top of the website) and that I’ve been given and/or have found online. Who knows, if any of these should acquire a life of their own, I may even turn it into an impromptu serial…. We’ll see about that one.

In any case, I look forward to sharing my thoughts and stories, and I hope you’ll all enjoy them.

The End of the Decade

In this final look at the last decade, everything comes full circle and my tale is finally told.

2008: The year my life ended (and simultaneously began)

I graduated from high school in May. I’d been homeschooled my entire life, and ergo I was the valedictorian by default. I had to write my speech five times before I settled upon something worthwhile that I actually liked. I had a small ceremony, only my family and a couple of friends. That’s not to say my schooling was finished, however; on the contrary, I continued to study mathematics and now also Hebrew. My love of the latter kept me interested in the language of God, but it was my love of physics and my intention to major in the field upon starting college that made me know I had to understand mathematics to a degree I never had before. Unintentionally along the way, I began to enjoy applied mathematics, but decided I could never be a physicist: although I’d come to like math, I could never make it through calculus.

The day before my graduation ceremony, I had my confirmation, during which I read Torah and gave a speech about what being Jewish meant to me. It took five rewrites to find something that was personal enough to be meaningful but general enough to be understood by the masses. In the end, I said being Jewish meant teaching and learning from everyone. In a way, that’s still what it means to me, but it now means so much more than just that. Perhaps I’ll elaborate some day.

I participated in NaNoWriMo again this November, reaching conclusions I could only draw through my characters, but it was in October that my life ended and a new soul was born: I’d been torn in two for years, one half Jewish, the other half gay, and this year at Yom Kippur—the Day of Atonement, the holiest day for all Jews—that chasm inside me was crushed and my two halves became whole in the most inharmonious collision at all possible. A gay Jew? It was unheard of—it simply could not exist! I stared toward the ark as the Torah was read, standing there, torn from God and sent asunder, and upon the parchment in my mind wrote the words of the day:

An abhorrence, you called it, this thing I call love
but you gave it to me, my creator
I stare at the gates as they swing shut above
I’ll repent for this sooner or later

I cried to sleep that night, when finally I was able to calm myself for sleep. But at the same time, the pain showed me the path to healing. I found people I could talk with, and I talked, and I researched, and I found patches to cover my wounds and strings with which to sew them shut. Not all the time could they keep the blood in, but no longer was the spiritual bleeding profuse. I could breathe again, and with every breath, I became closer the ultimate truth I now sought.

2009: The year that changed everything (for the last time)

I spent the early months of the year studying faith and facts, and through this I gained confidence in myself not only as a student of the sciences, but also as a budding scholar of Judaism. I became comfortable being gay and Jewish; I began coming out to more people, something I had never had the courage or the confidence to do beforehand. I was a new person, and would only continue to become newer as the year went on.

In April, for the first time in my life, I considered the prospect of becoming a rabbi. It had been suggested to me by both family and members of my congregation for as long as I could remember, but there was always something holding me back. Now that the chains had fallen, a doorway opened up to me, and a new path began. At the same time, in May, I wrote my first drash (commentary on the Torah) since my Bar Mitzvah seven years sooner.

In the summer I went to Israel on the Alexander Muss High School in Israel program. It helped me break out of my shell, become even more confident in myself; it taught my new ways to see the world, and for six short weeks I saw the glory of a world once only imagined. One of the scenes that stands out most: lying under the stars of the Negev, staring into the Milky Way, stuffy-nosed and sick from a newly discovered allergy to camels. Go figure. My luck.

I came back a better person, and no number of words will do it justice how much that trip changed me for the better and affected and influenced every second of my life thereafter.

Two weeks thereafter, in fact, I started college. I had great teachers, and I learned to appreciate history and sociology like never before, and I came to love math in ways I had never imagined possible. My love of math beforehand had been friendship at best; now it was intimacy. I changed my major from history and education to math and science education and Jewish studies. That defines me pretty well: the convergence of science and faith, teaching and learning.

That’s the definition of wolves, too: They’re savage in the face of danger, but similarly familial animals that teach their young with more love and compassion than some humans that I know of. They’re harbingers of dreams, guides in the astral plane. Likewise, I’m kindred to them. I’m a teacher, a guide, and family often means more to me than anything else in the world.

And I write. That’s altogether why I’m the Writingwolf. It’s in my blood. It’s who I am.

And Everything Changes Some Years

It’s only been in these past four years that I consider the person I am today to have become defined. Certainly, the past twelve or sixteen months have been paramount, but I can trace my way back four years to truly see the seeds of my soul starting to blossom. My life until that point had been critical nonetheless, the insemination of the ideal, the incubation of my coming identity, but in the end they have only been my foundation, not my superstructure. Now, however, with the foundation finally finished, I can at last begin to assume my truest self, my ultimatum, my ultima.

2006: The year that things kept changing, for the better

I was suicidal a lot this year, as I had been and would be for quite some time. There was much to this—my coming out to myself, my anguish thereof, my wish to change, to no longer be gay, all coupled with a particularly turbulent time in one of my longest-lasting, deepest friendships—but in the end, all that came to pass and better, brighter days came to follow.

Recall: My interest in Neopets. Fact: Neopets has a weekly periodical that publishes Neopet-themed stories, articles, comics, and series. I’d attempted to write for the Neopian Times before, but had been fruitless. This time, however, I got one in. My first of presently more than thirty pieces published in the Neopian Times. Truly I’ve grown as a writer since I started in 2002.

At the same time, I was invited to the Neopian Times Writers Forum, and the NTWF became a staple of my life. In addition to the priceless constructive criticism I’ve received there, I’ve made new friends, learned new things, and was first informed of NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month. That November, I joined thousands of other writers in an attempt to write a 50,000 word novel, but I went above and beyond and wrote 150,000 words, proving the theorem that quality is inversely proportional to quantity. But nonetheless, the challenge helped me grow not only as a writer, but also as a person, revealing to me things I had never known before.

2007: Avunculus

For a time I took Latin, and in Latin “avunculus” means uncle. When my sister told me she was having a baby, I asked, “You’re getting a puppy?” I was wrong, and in August I became an uncle at eighteen. It changed my life, adding a new level of complexity and responsibility to my life as I took up the task of babysitting multiple times a week, sometimes even daily. But I liked it. My niece quickly grew attached to me, and I grew even more attached to her.

I participated in NaNoWriMo again this year, for the first time including a gay character in one of my stories. Or perhaps they had always been there, but I had never noticed. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell. Regardless, I’d learned from my folly the year before that it’s much better to focus on a single story than try to connect four for a higher word count. At first intending to write the mythology that had been budding in my mind for seven years now, at the last moment two seemingly unconnected ideas merged together and formed the basis of what I would come to write: Two worlds, vying for power, and the six keepers torn between them. The story has potential, and even now I continue to edit it so that one day it might come to be published.

The year soon after came to a close, leaving left to tell the tale of two of the most influential years of my entire life. It was in 2008 and 2009 that I truly started coming into my own, and it is in my tale tomorrow that those who have met me within the past few months will finally see the person that they’ve come to know throughout this short and seemingly straightforward time.

Two More Years to Me

As my look at the past decade continues, I delve into the years of 2002 and 2003. The former was the start of many things for me, as we’ll soon see, but the latter was one of the last genuine pauses I’ve experienced in my life to date.

2002: An end and a beginning

I celebrated my Bar Mitzvah in May. It was at once my highest moment and also my lowest. I’d been studying my entire life for those few short hours, and as I stood there in front of the congregation, I felt the presence of God like I had never felt him before. And it felt good.

But. There’s always a but. Just as everything has a head, so everything has a tale: Mine was that with my entire life now behind me, there was nothing left to gain from Judaism. I began to drift away.

At the same time, I started writing seriously. Introduced to the computer, and its word processing capabilities in particular, all my stories that I’d held in my head began to come out on digital paper. It changed my life for the better. With a way to write that was both legible and able to keep up with the speed of my mind, I began to fall in love with writing as I never had before.

This is the day I first called myself a writer.

2003:  An excursion; an intermission

This year was an unexciting time for me. I studied religion with new passion, no longer bound to Judaism, but searching for what my heart could call home. I stumbled upon Paganism, and Wicca in particular. It became the whole of my religious life, and although I still wore the mask of Jew, inside I no longer felt like a Jew, but in truth a Wiccan. I was at once an open lie and a closed truth. This would be a suit I’d wear for a long time. If only then I had known what I know now.

Some may wonder what I mean by that. Oftentimes, it’s a statement said in regret: If I had known then what I know now, I never would have done this, I never would have done that. I speak it only mildly differently. I’ve reached a point in my life where I have no regrets. I understand that to regret something is to be displeased with who I am; to want to change the past that has molded me is an affront to my present self, an admission that I do not like who I am, that I would much rather be changed or be someone else entirely.

I do not want to change any longer. I’ve grown comfortable with who I am, and I’m blessed that I’ve been able to reach this point in my life that I feel is reached by those too far and few between. One rarely sees the full impact and influence, the entire significance, of those events that, once done, we immediately regret. It is in this sense that I say if only I’d known then what I know now. The pain and suffering that was still to come has shaped who I’ve become, but if then I had even the slightest foresight of what was waiting just around the turn of the year, I might have better prepared myself. I might have been able to sidestep some of the agony that fate still had in store for me.

Ten Years and Counting

Other wolves may write, but I’m the Writingwolf. Wolf for short. Or Darren. Both work, and they’re only a small number of the names of I go by: Micrody, Dexter, Dextron, D-rab, and among my favorites, gay Jew dude. They’re all me, or at least parts of me, facets of what I show the world at any given moment in time and/or space. Both work.

I’m a writer. I’ve been a writer a long time, and a storyteller my entire life. These are just generalizations, though, things that could apply to a multitude of people, past and present, future and so forth. So what’s so special about me? To get that, you’d have to look at the past.

Ten years, to be precise.

(You could go back twenty and some months, but as it’s the start of the new decade and all, I figured the past ten are a good enough place to start. In all honesty, to get a good picture of me, they’re all you really need to look at.)

Over the next few days, I’ll be posting about the ten years from 2000 through 2009 and talking about some of the most notable moments that have shaped me since then. I’m a storyteller, so there’s always more to say, but here’s a nice place to start.

So with no further ado, with introductions done and did, let’s take a time warp, do a jig, and land back in the big two-triple-oh.

2000: The closest thing to binary since the year 1000

The new millennium began with a lot of hype. Computers were still new in my life, I was only ten, and the whole Y2K thing sounded more like jewelry than doom’s day to me. I didn’t keep many notes back then, still before I seriously began writing (although the cogs of my greatest stories were already in motion, fueled by fantasies of childhood TV shows and Harry Potter). I hadn’t read much before the turn of the century, but thanks to a well known author with initials J, K, and R, I’d gotten into reading big time, drawn from mysteries like the Hardy Boys and Encyclopedia Brown to the world of fantasy and mythology. That was the budding blossom of my love of writing: with a new love of books, when I knew I had to tell the stories rampaging through my mind, I knew writing was the way to do it.

Of course, I didn’t love writing right away. In fact, it wouldn’t be for another two years that I’d truly catch onto it. But for now, my mind was tumbling and twirling through worlds a plenty, fueled by a myriad of inspiration and a newfound love of astrology, and that would become the basis of my life to come. Although I attempted to write multiple times and never kept at it for more than a day at a time, that persistence would stay with me long after my failed attempts had.

2001: The year that changed everything (for the first time)

My sister started college, and the college fad at the time was Neopets. (Fact: It was started by college kids for college kids. That it’s been portrayed as a children’s game to the world at large is a crying shame. But I digress. We’ve still got nine and a half years to go.) So she invited me and although I joined, I was on and off it for quite a while. Like with many things in my childhood, I didn’t see my full love of it at first, but it, too, would become a critical part of my development, in only five year’s time, so keep that bit in mind.

I also began studying for my Bar Mitzvah, a coming-of-age ceremony for Jewish boys at thirteen, when they’re called to the Torah (Pentateuch) for the first time. I read from the Torah for the first time that year, but it wouldn’t be for one more that I’d have my aliyah and become a Bar Mitzvah. But for the time-being, I met weekly with a Hebrew tutor to learn to lead services.

Then 9/11 happened. It was a Tuesday. Hebrew school was cancelled, but my Hebrew lesson was not. My sister was stranded at school with no way to get in touch with us. I didn’t understand what was happening, but I knew that whatever it was, it’d interrupted MacGyver. We watched it every morning, but not today. Instead we watched the towers fall and then piled in the car.

In the car, all I could think of was Hands by Jewel, “If I could tell the world just one thing / It would be that we’re all OK / And not to worry ’cause worry is wasteful / And useless in times like these….”